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Quotes of the Day: Because We Could All Use A Little Dose of Inspiration and Motivation…

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"Nothing Great was Ever Achieved Without Enthusiasm." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing Great was Ever Achieved Without Enthusiasm.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A while back I had a feature on the self help blog called “Quotes of the Day.” I’d post a great inspirational or motivational quote, along with a graphic (almost always starring an animal or two… what can I say… I’m a modern day Snow White, completely obsessed with animals).

Life gets pretty busy sometimes, causing us to often pull away from certain routines. Unfortunately, I dropped this one and simply never picked it back up.

Until now!

I was sitting and spending time with my beloved journal/planner this morning and was in the process of writing down my daily morning entries…

  • Bible verse of the day
  • Vocabulary word of the day (sign up at Dictionary.com!)
  • Quote of the day (one I pull from daily reading that inspires or motivates me)

It occurred to me just how much I enjoy having a particularly inspiring or motivating quote to carry around with me throughout the day and I thought of you.

Yes, you!

I want to make sure you have one each day for your pocket, to pull out whenever you need a little company. I will post them as often as possible on Mondays – Fridays, beginning today with a wonderful quote above from Ralph Waldo Emerson. My life is beautifully busy, so I doubt there will EVER be a whole week with “Quotes of the Day,” but I’ll try to get as many done as possible.

Have a wonderful, enthusiastic rest of the week! ~ Joi (“Joy“)

Always Keep Your Humor Nearby And Apply, as Needed (Pssst…. It’s Always Needed!)

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Quote About the Importance of Having a Sense of Humor

 

“Life is a joke. The only way to survive it is to find the right punchline.” – Becky Alunan

A while back, it struck me just how important it is to have a sense of humor.  My husband and I had looked forward (literally for months) to a particular event.  When the big day finally arrived, we were like cats in a field of catnip.  I bought a great new purple top and we drove out of town to where the “next big thing” was going down.  Okay, okay, so buying a new pink or purple top isn’t that out of the norm for me, but still…

Our first stop was to eat a nice dinner out, of course. So we took the new purple top into a restaurant that’s normally flawless. It was so far from flawless this time that I’m still in shock.  If I’m lucky….if I’m really lucky… my stomach may one day forgive me.  They may have turned me against food forever. Yep. It was that bad.

So, we laughed that off – knowing the dinner wasn’t the big deal of the evening anyway.  We were on our way to that.

We should have stayed at the restaurant.

Months of anticipation, money that could have paid for more Starbucks trips than I care to calculate, and a great purple top all for naught.  So much planning! So much anticipation!

Yet, on the way home, all we could do was laugh about it.  Somehow…. it just struck us as terribly funny.

Isn’t it strange the way things sometimes turn out?  You see a movie or show that you really hadn’t thought much about and BAM it knocks your world off its axis.  Then you look forward to something for two forevers and boing  it bounces off the radar.

Oh well.  New top, good visit with the spouse, good laughs.  Hard to call it a bad evening.

During the ride home, it occurred to me just how important humor is.  I believe humor is the secret behind taking life’s lemons and making lemonade – the missing ingredient, as it were.

I had a really bad burn on my arm one time, courtesy of a grill that decided to shut on me.  It hurt 24/7 like the devil, itself, was running up and down my arm.  The only time it didn’t hurt was when I had aloe vera gel on it.  When the burn was exposed to the elements without the aloe vera gel, it was excruciating.  It felt like the tortures of the damned.

But as long as my cold, comforting salve was on it, everything was as beautiful and right as Halle Berry’s face.

A sense of humor is like a comforting salve for your psyche.  It’ll protect you from the burns of life – as long as you remember to put it on.  So always keep it nearby, you never know when you’ll need to apply it. Liberally.

~ Joi

Some of My Favorite Quotes about Humor:

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. – Wystan Hugh Auden

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. – Sir Francis Bacon

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself. – Ethel Barrymore

Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins. – Henry Ward Beecher

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. – Francis Bacon

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor. – Thomas W. Higginson

Want more Quotes about Humor?

Life Changing Inspirational Quotes by Mother Teresa

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Mother Teresa Quote About Smiling

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
~ Mother Teresa

This Mother Teresa quote about life is a sermon and an education in 16 sentences.  The simplicity of this great woman was part of her beauty.  What takes the rest of us billions upon billions of words to convey, it was a though Mother Teresa said, “Give me 16 sentences and I’ll get my point across.”

And that she did.  Every single time.  She’d have been a Twitter rock star.

More Mother Teresa Quotes:

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

 

 

Sometimes a Surplus of Information Creates a Deficit of Action

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Action Quote About Taking a Step
Humans are pretty funny when you think about it. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, yet we often don’t seem to know what to do with it. It’s as though we’re suffering from information overload and can’t figure out how to dump it all out.

If you’ve watched much golf – or any golf for that matter – no doubt you’ve seen golfers who suffer from something the great tennis player (and even better human being) Arthur Ashe referred to as “paralysis by analysis.” I remember one time thinking I could have baked a pie in the time it took Jim Furyk to hit a shot. He stood over the tiny little ball for what seemed like forever.

Finally, I just bellowed at the tv, “Hit the darn thing! It’s not going to hit back, I promise!”

He spent too much time thinking and, sure enough, the golf shot was lousy.

Sergio is another golfer who often seems lost in time as well as in his own thoughts.

“Doing nothing gets you nothing.” – Sean Reichl

Truth be told, you don’t have to be a golfer to battle with over-thinking.  It gets us all at one time or another.  We gather data, facts, figures, and quotes. Heck, some of us (guilty, guilty, guilty) even print our information out, give it the hole-punch treatment, and house it in an appropriately colored binder. We fill our brains with information but we neglect to carry it out. It’s great to have facts, don’t get me wrong – but if that’s all we’ve got then… Well, then that’s all we’ve got.

To be fair, sometimes it takes a great leap of faith and a significant amount of guts to carry out an action. It’s so much safer to sit back and think about the action.

And think about it, and think about it… And, and, think about it….

The only problem is we end up standing around, doing little more than just getting in our own way. Our intentions are out of this world – but we just can’t seem to get everything out of our brains and into our hands.

People will gather and read everything they can get their hands on about eating healthy, then go out and order the biggest burger their lips will fit around as a prize for all the research.

If you aren’t going to change your game why even bother reading the rule book?

Is there anything in your life that you’ve been “studying on” without “acting on?” Decide, today, to stop standing over the ball – hit it a country mile. It may, or may not, go exactly where you expected it to go – but at least it went. You can always stomp through the rough and hit it again. If it goes in the water, you can roll up your pants and wade out to meet it. You wouldn’t be the first. You wouldn’t be the last.

Oh the stories I could tell you about my miniature golf experiences…

The point is, at some point we have to stop planning to act and just act!

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

Think of at least one thing that you’ve been rolling over in your mind. Maybe you’ve been planning out the great walking regime you want to start, or maybe you’ve been planning to launch an e-bay business. Take ACTION right now. DO SOMETHING that will put these plans and thoughts in motion

The most important thing you can do is this: Take your first step. It’s the toughest, so just go ahead and get it out of the way.

Once you’ve put yourself in motion, keep on keeping on.

I’ll be here cheering you on!
~ Joi