If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin’!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin’!
‘Taint no use to sit an’ whine
When the fish ain’t on your line;
Bait your hook an’ keep a-tryin’–
Keep a-goin’!
When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin’!
Though ’tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin’!
As of today, I hope I leave you with a direction correction
away from the flaws you see in our reflection.
They aren’t flaws to me they are simply protection
So start today, take a good long look in the mirror and say
‘I am who I’ve been looking for’
You are who you’ve been looking for.
So stop looking for more unless you are looking in the mirror
because it is about time for you to see clearly that:
You are who you’ve been looking for.
And that empty feeling you got,
that hole in your chest
you only got that feeling because you think you are not blessed
with everything you need.
You see we live in a consumerist society
which means they need you to buy stuff
and the easiest way to sell it is to tell you
How long does it take to learn?
To bait a hook with a wiggly worm,
To make a bed, to wash a plate,
To swim, to dive to figure skate,
To iron a shirt to mend a seam,
To walk with balance on a beam?
How do you think grown-ups know?
It’s great to be alive, and be
—A part of all that’s going on;
To live and work and feel and see
—Life lived each day from early dawn;
To rise and with the morning light
—Go forth until the hours grow late,
Then joyously return at night
—And rest from honest toil—it’s great!
It’s great to be a living part
—Of all the surging world alive,
And lend a hand in field and mart,
—A worker in this human hive;
To live and earn and dare to do,
—Nor ever shirk or deviate
From course or purpose we pursue!
—Until the goal is won—it’s great!
You think that the failures are many,
You think the successes are few,
But you judge by the rule of the penny,
And not by the good that men do.
You judge men by standards of treasure
That merely obtain upon earth,
When the brother you’re snubbing may measure
Full-length to God’s standard of worth.
The failures are not in the ditches,
The failures are not in the ranks,
They have missed the acquirement of riches,
Their fortunes are not in the banks.
Their virtues are never paraded,
Their worth is not always in view,
But they’re fighting their battles unaided,
And fighting them honestly, too.
Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400.
It carries over no balance from day to day.
Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.
What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!
Each of us has such a bank. It’s name is TIME.
Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds.
Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance.
It allows no overdraft.
Each day it opens a new account for you.
Each night it burns the remains of the day.
If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.
There is no going back. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow”.
You must live in the present on today’s deposits.
Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success!
The clock is running. Make the most of today.
Poem from “Poems that Have Helped Me“
I have hoped, I have planned, I have striven,
To the will I have added the deed,
The best that was in me I’ve given,
I have prayed, but the gods would not heed.
I have dared and reached only disaster,
I have battled and broken my lance,
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
I feel so sentenced by your words,
I feel so judged and sent away,
Before I go I’ve got to know,
Is that what you mean to say?
Before I rise to my defense,
Before I speak in hurt or fear,
Before I build that wall of words,
Tell me, did I really hear?
Words are windows, or they’re walls,
They sentence us, or set us free.
When I speak and when I hear,
Let the love light shine through me.
There are things I need to say,
Things that mean so much to me,
If my words don’t make me clear,
Will you help me to be free?
If I seemed to put you down,
If you felt I didn’t care,
Try to listen through my words,
To the feelings that we share.
Source: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg
If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost;
For out in this world we find
Success begins with a person’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.
The Paradoxical Commandments were written by Kent M. Keith in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders. It is often found in slightly altered form.
In 1997, Keith learned that the poem “The Paradoxical Commandments” had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa’s children’s home in Calcutta, India; and, two decades after writing the original poem, Dr. Keith wrote a book of the same title expanding on the themes of the poem: Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World.
Good timber does not grow with ease, The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.