Chicken Soup for the Soul

Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.

There is no right reaction. There is only your reaction.

You don’t want to get to the top of the ladder only to find out you had it leaning up against the wrong wall.

The Rules For Being Human 1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around. 2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid. 3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.” 4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson. 5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned. 6. “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.” 7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. 8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. 9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to Life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust. 10. You will forget all this. Chérie Carter-Scott

The dynamics that are required to make any relationship work: Just keep putting your love out there.

Slow down and take the time to really see. Take a moment to see what is going on around you right now, right where you are. You may be missing something wonderful. Jeffrey Michael Thomas

Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. . . . Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. Mother Teresa

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? Stephen Levine

The truth is that our wellbeing is dependent on our giving love. It is not about what comes back; it is about what goes out!

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying. Ralph Waldo Emerson

One At A Time A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing.” “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.” “I understand,” my friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?” The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!” Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen

I am in charge of my own spaceship. It's my up, my down. I could choose to see this situation as a setback or a starting point.

Don't let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what.

On Love The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire. ~Teilhard de Chardin

If you stake your hopes for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever, you may kill your chances for success.

We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha' a 'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self....Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again.