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Archives for September 2011

It’s Better to Have Character than Be a Character

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Character
Character

The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back. – Abigail Van Buren

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. – Judith S. Martin

Your life may be the only Bible some people read.  – Author Unknown

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands. – Anne Frank

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. – Abraham Lincoln

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. – Billy Graham

Don’t try to be different.  Just be good.  To be good is different enough.  – Arthur Freed

Character is much easier kept than recovered.  – Thomas Paine

Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. – J.C. Watts

Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up. – Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day. – Abraham Lincoln

More quotes about character.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. – Oscar Wilde

Poster Attribute: Buy This Allposters.com

Powerful Self Help Lesson 1923

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It’s been a while since I’ve had a “Thursday Throwback” post on the blog. It’s not that I’ve lost my fascination with “older” books, not by a long stretch! I’ve simply been very (make that VERY) busy with current books that I’m reading for pleasure, information, and to review on this blog as well as my food blog.

Every now and again, however, I feel the need to cuddle up on my couch with a slightly chubby and extremely spoiled cat, a cup of coffee, and an author from the distant past.  F.D. Van Amburgh, Elsie Lincoln Benedict, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Orison Swett Marden, and Grenville Kleiser are a few of my absolute favorites.

Last night was a busy night for me.  I mean, I had so much to do!  I had to walk with two of my daughters, watch Survivor, and then play a baseball game. Actually, I watched as the St. Louis Cardinals played, but with all of my gyrations, umpiring, and coaching, I feel like I’m playing. In the middle of all of it, I asked Elsie Lincoln Benedict if she’d like to sit on the couch with me. She’s wild about Albert Pujols, so she was game. She understood that our visits would be limited to commercials, but that was fine with her.  She’s all about number 5.

The following is an excerpt from Elsie Lincoln Benedict’s excellent series of books aptly titled “How to Get Anything You Want.”  This excerpt is from Lesson 1 and, as you’ll see, it’s the perfect place to begin. I’m typing this in just as it is in the text, which is from 1923, so the wording will be a little different from what you’re accustomed to, unless of course (like me) you also read a lot of older books.  In no time at all, you won’t even notice the different ways of wording things. You’ll only notice the brilliance of the author.  I’m typing in the words  exactly as they appear in the original book – where the author has written certain thoughts in ALL CAPS, I’m doing the same.

I figure if she wants to yell these particular words, I’ll hand her the megaphone.

How Your Predominant Moods Make Your Life
by Elsie Lincoln Benedict, 1923

A man on a country road stopped another and said, “If I keep walking in this direction, how far will I have to go to reach Chicago?”

If you keep going in the direction you are headed now it will be about twenty-five thousand miles,” the other answered, “but if you will turn around and go in the opposite direction it is about a mile and a half.”

If you, dear friend, have been wondering why you did not reach the place in life or acquire the things you desired, perhaps you have been expending your energies in exactly the opposite direction from what you should.

If you have been getting some of the things you wanted but failed at others you have been headed right on some and wrong on others.

Now there are certain things inside every one of us that keep turning us, like  a weather vane, in certain directions, and those things are our predominant moods.

You cannot entertain a certain mood and not act upon it sooner or later, any more than a man walking straight toward a thing could fail to reach it ultimately.  The moods that PREDOMINATE deep, deep inside our hearts are living, vital forces, and they create actualities in our lives which exactly correspond to their own nature.

What happens down through the years, in the by and large of a man’s life, fits these predominant moods of his just as if they were coats made to order.

For that is what the outer conditions of our lives really are – garments made by ourselves when we least suspected it, in exact accordance with the pattern we carried in our subconscious minds….

….. The very first thing for you to know as we start out on this journey is that our lives are not just a series of accidental happenings, as we have supposed, but are the OUTER CIRCUMSTANCES built directly or indirectly, innocently, usually unknowingly but nevertheless inevitably, by groups of INNER FEELINGS.

These INNER FEELINGS constitute our moods. The “feeling” (not the thought) you have about any given thing or person is your predominant attitude toward that person or thing.

This is especially true of those feelings you cannot explain – that don’t seem to be based in reason or fact or anything you can lay your hand on, but which just ARE. These prepare the soil in the garden of your subconscious.

Each and every seed brings forth something sooner or later, and that something is always of the nature of the seed.

A tomato seed cannot bring forth an American Beauty rose.  But if you plant rose seeds year in and year out, no matter how poor the soil, you are going to harvest roses sometime.

The acts of every person spring from the secret seeds which he has planted or allowed to be planted in his subconscious mind.

A man’s acts bring the results you see in his life, but the act, in every case, was rooted in a thought or feeling which he could have controlled had he known how…..

…. You will get a better idea of just how these moods build the realities of your life if you will think of yourself as owning a very powerful cannon.  This is your own subconscious mind.

Now this cannon is different from any you ever saw in real life, in that it is constructed on the boomerang principle. Every shot fired from this queer piece of artillery comes back to you, AND IT DOESN’T COME BACK ALONE.

It returns to your feet LADEN WITH RESULTS, REALITIES, ACTUAL OCCURRENCES.

Whether these actualities are helpful or harmful, destructive or constructive, what you desire or what you despise, depends entirely on THE DIRECTION IN WHICH YOU KEEP YOUR CANNON POINTED MOST OF THE TIME.

*******************************************************

Elsie Lincoln Benedict certainly doesn’t need my $3 words trailing her million dollar thoughts, so I’ll be brief (perhaps for the first time in my life).  The “take away” lesson from this would be: Always pay close attention to your thoughts and even closer attention to the ones you put on repeat.   If we think of our thoughts as the ammunition in our cannon, how foolish we’d be to not choose wisely.

 

Viktor E. Frankl Quote

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“We who lived the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer significant proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” – Viktor Frankl

Viktor E. Frankl (1905 – 1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, however he is best remembered as a Holocaust survivor. The very thought of the people he spoke of in the quote above is as mind-boggling as it is touching. This is one of my all-time favorite quotes because the truth it preaches is something I embrace with all my heart and soul.

Many of the things that happen to us are beyond our control.

  • loved ones get sick
  • accidents happen
  • dreams fall through
  • jobs are lost
  • the economy bites
  • we grow older (an adventure in itself)
  • children grow up
  • and the beat goes on!

Irregardless of what life throws your way, you will always have one freedom:  As Frankl so eloquently worded it, we always have the freedom to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.  Choose wisely!

To learn more about Viktor Frankl, read his biography, Recollections: An Autobiography.

Clara and Clarence

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Flowers on Kentucky Dam Village Golf Course

“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.” – Betty Smith

I have a few people I’m excited for you to meet. You could say I”m even anxious for you to meet them! I think they have something important to teach you; a beautiful illustration to draw for you; and a life-changing way of looking at life that live inside your heart forever.  Their names are Clara and Clarence, but before making the introductions, there’s one thing you should know:  They both recently died.

There are many things in life that I do not do:

  • budget my money well
  • budget my money at all
  • pass by a Starbucks
  • stick to a diet
  • begin a diet
  • sit still
  • worry (life’s too short)
  • clean closets (life’s too short)
  • skip any of the 20,000 words women say daily
  • read the obituaries

Which is why it’s so strange that a few nights ago, while sitting with my husband, getting my 20,000 in, and looking through our local newspaper, I stopped at the obituaries section.  Some of the recently departed were represented with recent photographs and a few were represented with photographs that were apparently taken in their hey day (personally, that’s what I’d want!).  Two individuals were represented by sweet recent pictures, with pictures of each one of them below. Clever families! These two individuals (no doubt you’ve guessed by now that they’re the stars of this post, Clarence and Clara) caught my eye and I had to read more about them.

Clarence, with his very handsome pictures, was “above the fold,” so I read about him first. Kind of surreal, isn’t it? An entire life’s story summed up in 3 paragraphs. Twitter has nothing on obituaries.

First of all, I should tell you that Clara and Clarence (although their names sound as though they were twins or married SO long even their names began to look alike), were not related. They simply happened to pass away on the same day, rejoined their prospective spouses on the same day, and caught the eye of an overly caffeinated self help blogger on the same day.

Clarence wore a hat in each of his pictures. He had a precious smile in the more recent picture, and something about the smile told me he was a charmer. In the younger picture, he wore his Marine’s uniform and a serious expression replaced the smile. I guess that isn’t hard to understand.  The younger Clarence had movie star looks – with his strong manly facial features and George Clooney eyebrows.  Handsome Clarence lived to be 88 years old!  He was married to his wife for 48 years before losing her to Heaven. As I read the words, I couldn’t help smiling at the sweet reunion they surely had.

I hope he wore his hat.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

Clara’s adorable recent picture brought a tear to my eye.  Something about her eyes remind me of my grandmother’s eyes.  The same sparkle and the gleam was in this grandmother’s eyes that were in mine. Something about those eyes told me that these ladies were a lot alike, and I’m going out on a limb here, but I bet neither of them short-changed their 20,000 words a day either. In fact, Clara’s obituary stated that she liked sharing stories… that’s my girl!  No wonder I felt such a bond.

Clara beat Clarence by a few years.  This lovely lady lived to be 92 years old.  She was born in 1919!  How amazing is that? The fact that she was married in 1936 blew my youngest daughter’s mind. Clara, too, was preceded in death by her spouse. They had been married 57 years when she lost him.  The happy ending, of course, is that she found him.

I couldn’t help staring at Clara’s younger picture. What a beauty! The picture was apparently taken in the ’30s, which tells me she made one stunning bride.  In this picture, her hair’s up in the back and she’s wearing some sort of an elaborate flower in her hair.  Her beautiful face reminds me of the character Ado Annie in Oklahoma – and I’m willing to bet that  Mrs. Clara had at least as much spirit and sass.

After reading their life stories (infuriatingly summed up in mere paragraphs – I’d have loved to learn more about each), I finally pulled myself away from their beautiful faces.  I noticed that a few things lingered in my mind and heart:

  • The things each must have seen! Think about the things you and I have seen in our lifetimes. Now, imagine that these two saw all of those as well as SO much more. How fascinating it would have been to sit down with either of them and get their thoughts about past presidents, world events, inventions, fashion, cars, and more.
  • Each had long, successful marriages and were each reunited with their sweethearts.
  • One of the things said about Clara was that she enjoyed spending time with her family. I hope everyone realizes that, when it comes to their parents and grandparents, the world literally lights up when you walk through the door.  Make it happen as much as possible and keep that light burning as long as you can.
  • During their last days, how short their lives must have seemed and how fast they must have seemed to fly by.

The last thought has especially stayed with me. Think back over your own life. No matter how many years your thoughts will have to span, it seems to have all gone by so fast. Think of past silly worries (extra weight, dining room tables, “he said this instead of that,” your spouse not getting what you wanted for your birthday or Christmas, the scratch on your car…).  Today, do any of them really matter?  Don’t you regret ever spending time feeling sad, worried, or mad about the silly stuff?!

“Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” – Grace Hansen

Make no mistake about it, each of us will one day have our lives boiled down to a couple of paragraphs. I’m not trying to depress you and I DO NOT want you to think about death.  Au contraire! I want you to think about life!  I want you to think about living your life out loud, making each moment count double, laughing more, smiling longer, rolling with the punches, loving more, and spreading happiness and laughter everywhere you go.  I want you to get as much joy and adventure out of walking through your front yard as you would on an African safari.  When you look at the world, I want you to see a playground – not places you wish you could go, cars you wish you could drive, money you wish you had…. None of that creates happiness.

Happiness comes from within, not without. Over the years, my husband and I have lived everywhere from Madisonville, Kentucky to Wichita, Kansas and from Washington, Indiana to Pensacola Beach, Florida.  From Rantoul, Illinois to Webster City, Iowa!  Shew, I’m glad we’ve settled down here in Owensboro, Kentucky – it’s not easy always remembering a new phone number, zip code, or address!

When we were first married, Michael (husband) was in the Air Force.  With a baby on the way, we lived in a tiny little apartment near the Military Base in Illinois.  You could sit on the couch and see the entire apartment. Other servicemen and their families lived in the apartment complex and people were coming and going 24 hours a day. Saying it was noisy is an understatement. Tiny, noisy… and I loved it!

“We spend too much time living in the ‘what if’ and need to learn to live in the ‘what is.’” – Rev. Leroy Allison

When Michael and I, along with our three beautiful daughters and (at the time) one beautiful cat lived on Pensacola Beach, Florida – we had come a long way from that tiny noisy apartment. You practically needed a tour guide to take you from one end of the beach house to the other. Practically the entire back of the house was glass, so we could watch dolphins, seagulls, boats, waves, and pelicans as we ate at the dinner table, as I cooked in the kitchen, and as we watched tv in the living room. Noisy? Not unless you call the sounds of the ocean noisy.

Moral of the story (do written words count toward the 20,0000? If so, I annihilate that humble little goal): I swear to you, if you take the fact that I had my 4 girls then (the cat was a girl, too)  – I was no happier in the beach house than in my noisy little apartment.  I smiled and laughed (and talked, Lord, I talked) in each home.  It matters not WHERE life puts you, it matters how much life is IN you.

It’s possibly the strangest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve kept the pictures of Clara and Clarence. In case I ever feel the weight of the world or have cause to feel down, I’m going to look at their pictures and let them remind me that life doesn’t last forever. Life is as beautiful as it is precious and like any fun ride, there will be ups as well as downs. But are we ever really ready to get off the ride?!

If the heroes of our story could come back to earth and be the age you are right now, what do you think they’d do? Would they worry and fret over things that don’t matter or would they know that “all this” doesn’t last forever? Imagine how they’d look… I mean really look… at a butterfly or tree.  Imagine how they’d close their eyes and listen to a songbird as though it were a concert.

Most of all, can you imagine the look on their faces when they were able to see their loved ones again?! They’d embrace them with their body, heart, and spirit.

We still have it all! Butterflies, birds, trees, family, friends… they’re things we often take for granted.  The next time you see a butterfly, really look at it. SEE the beauty, fragility, and splendor. It’s like life. So much beauty but  far too often, we look past it rather than at it.

It’s my deepest hope that Clara and Clarence will help you slow down and enjoy life more. Embrace it. I want you to live life with such passion that when you leave a room, people notice the void!

Maya Angelou said it best with one of my favorite quotes of all time,  “Life likes to be taken by the lapel and told, “I’m with you kid. Let’s go!” 

Don’t ever let me catch you without life’s lapel in your hands!