“Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.” — Florence Scovill Shinn

“To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan… believe… act!” — Alfred A. Montapert

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw

“You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.” – Sheila Graham

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” — Joseph Chilton Pearce

“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves–at what we did or did not do.” — Peter McWilliams

“This represents one of the great tragedies and wastes in life, because so much potential remains untapped — completely undeveloped and unused. Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.” — Stephen R. Covey

“It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” – Philip Adams

“It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth — and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up — that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“The secret of all power is – save your force. If you want high pressure you must choke off waste.” — Joseph Farrell

“‘Know thyself,’ said the old philosopher, ‘improve thyself,’ saith the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” — Stephen R. Covey

“We go where our vision is.” — Joseph Murphy

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” — Goethe

“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.” — Pearl Buck

“When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.” — Lois McMaster Bujold

“There are pauses amidst study, and even pauses of seeming idleness, in which a process goes on which may be likened to the digestion of food. In those seasons of repose, the powers are gathering their strength for new efforts; as land which lies fallow recovers itself for tillage.” – J.W. Alexander

“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” — Henry David Thoreau

“It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.” — Seneca

“At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.” — William Shakespeare

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” — Anne Bradstreet

Note from Louise: I know this is a little long, but the way you will be touched by the end of it is well worth the read.

Story retold by Ajay Kapoor on his Peace and Love page on Facebook. Also see his website at zmeditation.com.

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’

Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ Shay’s father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt . His father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the way Shay!’

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third, Shay, run to third!’

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.

‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.

Young Shay would never forget what it felt like to be a hero that day.

Neither would the other boys.

“The decency of any society can be measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens.”

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willis Nelson

“Avoid destructive thinking. Improper negative thoughts sink people. A ship can sail around the world many, many times, but just let enough water get into the ship and it will sink. Just so with the human mind. Let enough negative thoughts or improper thoughts get into the human mind and the person sinks just like a ship.” – Alfred Montapert

“If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow. And since the only real freedom a person has is the choice of what thoughts he will feed to his Inner-Consciousness he is totally responsible for the outcomes he gets.” — Sidney Madwed

“The power of thought is the ONLY thing over which any human being has complete and unquestionable control. A fact so astounding that it connotes a close relationship between the mind of Man and the source of all power, Infinite Intelligence.” — Napoleon Hill

“The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.” — Seneca

“Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.” — Comte de Buffon

“Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid..” –John Keats

“I define attachment as an inordinate need to have something occur in a specific way, at a specific time, in a specific sequence, etc. and/or an inability to let go of that which no longer serves. We may become attached to unhealthy habits, rigid mindsets, negative thinking, defense strategies, projected schedules, our own plans vs. the plan of Spirit, the first idea vs. the best idea, etc.” — Neva Howell, The Moon Lodge Visions Handbook

“Confidence on the outside begins by living with integrity on the inside.” — Brian Tracy

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.” — Samuel Johnson

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense. — Arnold Bennett

“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.” — Joe Namath

This poem by an unknown author is an extremely simple (although not easy!) guide for achieving happiness in this lifetime!

Everybody Knows,
You can’t be all things to all people.
You can’t do all things at once.
You can’t do all things equally well.
You can’t do all things better than everyone else.
Your humanity is showing just like everyone else’s.

So,
You have to find out who you are, and be that.
You have to decide what comes first, and do that.
You have to discover your strengths, and use them.
You have to learn not to compete with others, because no one else is in the contest of “being you”.

Then,
You will have learned to accept your own uniqueness.
You will have learned to set priorities and make decisions.
You will have learned to live with your limitations.
You will have learned to give yourself the respect that is due.
And you’ll be a most vital mortal.

Dare to Believe,
That you are a wonderful, unique person.
That you are a once-in all history event.
That it’s more than a right, it’s your duty, to be who you are.
That life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish.
And you’ll be able to stay one up on what used to get you down.

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by orginality, overcomes everything” — George Lois

“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.” — Cecil B. DeMille

“We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God’s creative pulse itself.” — Joseph Chilton Pearce

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” — Carl Jung

“Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one’s chosen form.” — Stephen Nachmanovitch