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A Grandfather’s Top Ten List That’s Pure Gold

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Grandfather's Advice

The following is a wonderful article from a book from 1947.  The book’s title, Words to Live By, sums up this author’s thoughts perfectly.  They are, indeed, words to live by.   The author, Will Durant, wrote these ten rules for his own grandchildren – but, as you’ll see, many of the rules apply to people of all ages.

Send a list to your own children and/or grandchildren.  For that matter, send it to everyone you know.  Personally, I think the world would be a much better place if every single one of us read through… then lived out… the following grandfatherly advice.

FOR VERY YOUNG PHILOSOPHERS
by Will Durant

EDITOR’s NOTE:  Mr. Durant, as everyone knows, is the distinguished author of an impressive list of important books, including the multivolumed The Story of Civilization.  But when we asked him to contribute some thoughts to the “Words to Live By” page, he stepped out of his role as philosopher and historian into that of grandfather.  The advice he gives here was written for his own three grandchildren.

  1. Begin the day with cleanliness.  Keep your bathroom immaculate.
  2. Before leaving your room in the morning put all discarded clothing into a dresser or a closet.
  3. Dress yourself neatly; other people can judge us only by what they see, until they know us well; and their judgments will affect our progress and our happiness.
  4. Enter into the life of the family and the community with good cheer; make little of your troubles, much of your good fortune.
  5. Do not speak while another is speaking.  Discuss, do not dispute.  Absorb and acknowledge whatever truth you can find in opinions different from your own.
  6. Be courteous and considerate to all, especially to those who oppose you.
  7. Reduce to a minimum your reading, hearing, and watching of material intended for immature minds.  The mind is formed by what it takes in.  Don’t be a wastebasket.
  8. Do some studying every day; grow old while learning.
  9. Combine external modesty with internal pride.  Your modesty will make it easier for those around you to bear with you; your internal pride will stir you to shun meanness and sloth.
  10. You will find the Golden Rule the simplest and surest secret of happiness.

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Reduce to a minimum your reading, hearing, and watching of material intended for immature minds.  The mind is formed by what it takes in.  Don’t be a wastebasket. Leave it to a grandfather to beautifully sum up what the rest of us have been trying to convey for two forevers.  I love this!

Thursday Throwback to 1923: How to Get What You Want in Life

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Today’s Thursday Throwback is from a real powerhouse of motivation:  Elsie Lincoln Benedict.  This is an excerpt from a lesson-lecture that she delivered to students in various cities of the United States long, long, long ago.  Don’t let the multiple longs fool you, though.  The advice, the motivation, the inspiration, and the grit will leave an impression on you.  I plan to publish more of this amazing lady’s teachings on Self Help Daily because she moves me.  She simply moves me.

I will type in Elsie Lincoln’s Benedict’s words as they appear in the texts I have.When I skip around a little (because some illustrations simply aren’t built for time traveling), you’ll see a family of dots….. just call them The Dots and follow them to the next room.  Once or twice you’ll notice something in parenthesis – this is where I pitch in my two cents for clarification.  Having read the entire series of lectures, some things may be clearer to me – and I thought I’d wipe the window, so that you can see more clearly as well.

When the writing/teaching begins, Elise Lincoln Benedict is addressing the subject of “Making Your Desires Materialize.”

Enjoy! ~ Joi

HOW TO MAKE YOUR DESIRES MATERIALIZE by Elsie Lincoln Benedict, 1923

The distance we cover (in the pursuit of our desires) depends on the number of hurdles we are able to take and the speed with which we cover the distance between.

We may run along for quite a while on smooth ground, thinking “Everything’s going to be smooth from here on,” but pretty soon looming up ahead we descry an obstacle.  It may be a low one which we scarcely notice.  Or it may be a high one.  If we refuse to scale it, thinking it looks impossible, or if we are tired of running, we can stop right there and our progress ends….

But if we draw upon our courage we will always find that this hurdle, high and forbidding though it appears, is nothing compared to the first ones (previous obstacles, trials and tribulations). Because we have developed strength from jumping those before – a strength we are not aware of till we put it to the test, but which never fails us if we take a good jump and try for it….

There come times in every human life when the game doesn’t seem worth the candle. But it is.  When the price looks bigger than the prize.  But it never is.

The price is always less, when you come right down to paying it, than it looks to be – just as a piece of work looks impossible as long as you postpone it but is suddenly easy when you begin.

Life always lets you make your own decisions and she takes you at your word.  Your words always express themselves in your secret attitudes.

To try to fool others is bad enough, but to fool yourself is fatal.  You never can really fool your subconsciousness. It knows whether you really want a thing or not, and whether you are in earnest.

If you are not it lets you alone.  But if you are it will find a way. It will help you get what you really want MOST.

You may not believe it at first glance, but many poverty-stricken, sick, shiftless failures already have what they want most in life.

They won’t admit it to you, but in their inmost souls they know it is true.

They don’t really want riches, health, and success MOST.  They only WISH they wanted these things most.

What they really want most of all is doing what they please with their time, taking things easy, sleeping late, overeating, being free of responsibilities – and they are getting every one of them!

They delude themselves with the notion that they are getting them for nothing – that success, health and happiness would cost more.  But the fact is that they are paying the highest price for the worst articles when the very best could be had at a bargain.

If you have ever seen a man trying to get out of work, you know that he worked twice as hard at it as those who pitched in and did something….

Your great subconscious will get for you the things you want MOST in life.  It will do so more completely and more quickly than you can believe.  It will do so with unerring accuracy and unfaltering, unswerving perfection.

If you want happiness, success, fame, it will show you how to get them.  They must be paid for, but the price is not as high as you think, not even as great as that we pay for failure.

I often think of the world as a colossal department store.  In it are all the things we want, displayed on the counters within reach of all, and to be had the moment we pay for them.

If we really want the things we SAY we want, we will do what we always do to get the things we want in the store – walk up and pay for them and TAKE them.

You see something you say you want.  But if you are not willing to pay for it, Life knows you only wish for it.

– – – – – – – – – –

I’ll continue the lecture next Thursday.  Trust me, it only gets better!

A Self Help Lesson Courtesy of Booker T. Washington

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“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” – Booker T. Washington

Booker T WashingtonOne of my pet peeves is hatred. The crazy thing is, I don’t just cringe when I see one person hating another one. I don’t just feel uncomfortable around someone who hates people who look, love, or believe differently from them. And  I don’t just want to throw things when people show hatred toward animals.

I’m ill at ease in the company of any sort of hatred.  Sure, I know I carry it too far – I call it my Mary Poppins complex and I’ve carried it too far to put it down now.

My most extreme anger and disgust is, of course, saved for those who hate and harm children, other individuals, and animals.  I always wonder, “Who do haters think they are?!”

Think about it this way.  Everything’s relevant. If any of us hate someone we feel is “beneath us” (whether it’s in intelligence, wit, charm, looks, money, power, etc..) – do we not realize that there are those out there who have more on the ball than us?  Would we want to be on the receiving end of their ridicule or snarls?  Would we want them to talk down to us or make fun of us?  Would we want them to snap at us if we were to ask a simple question or berate us if we made a mistake?

No one is perfect and, make no mistake about it, no one has the right to hate anyone else.

I once wrote a post in which I said that we shouldn’t hate other people – under any circumstances.  I heard from a woman who listed about 20 types of people she hated.  When I said that we never know what others have gone through to get to where they are, she got so mad that I’m pretty sure I joined the list.   She wanted no part of anything that resembled compassion and seemed to cringe at the thought of loving others.  In the end, I asked her if she realized how hard she was fighting for HATE.  She said, “Yes I do.”

So, I hope she’s happy being hateful.

That’s the thing.  Since my daughters were old enough to talk, I’ve always taught them to find as few foods, colors, books, and so on that they claim to hate.  They were weaned on the Mary Poppins Complex.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it as long as I’m able to write, type, speak, or gesture:  The more things we hate – the more hate resides inside of us. At the risk of sounding like a First Grade Reader….. Hate is ugly. Love is beautiful.

Booker T. Washington is one of my personal heroes.  He was a brilliant, brilliant man with an incredible mind.  Unfortunately, he lived during a time when the color of his skin brought out a lot of hatred and ugliness from people with not so incredible minds.

When I think of the nasty looks, hateful comments, and cruel injustices that Booker T. Washington and other blacks had to endure during this period of time, it makes me want to cry a river.  You and I will probably never know the sort of hatred Mr. Washington saw first-hand.  But he wasn’t bitter and he wasn’t filled with anger and hatred.

Rather, he said, “I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”

The next time you feel hatred rising in your heart toward a co-worker, neighbor, driver in front of you (!!!), family member, etc – remember Booker T. Washington’s words and ask yourself, “Is it worth belittling my own soul?”

Not even the worst driver on earth is worth that, and I was nearly hit by her this morning.

I’ll leave off with excerpts of an article written by author Sloan Wilson (“The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit“):

A long while ago, I had a job I didn’t like and a boss who seemed to me to be a major menace.  For months I would come home and tell my wife about the horrible new attrocities he had committed.

“I really hate this guy,” I often said to my wife, and when she remonstrated, I added, “He’s just a guy who was made to hate!”

It was right after one of these stormy sessions that I happened to read these words, “I will allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”  I have never been so strongly affected by one sentence, for in a flash it showed me how small and mean I had become.

At just about this time I began to work harder at my writing during evenings and weekends.  When I stopped wasting energy on hatred, I found I had lots more strength for better things.  – Sloan Wilson, “On Hate” (Words to Live By, 1956)

Wonderfully Sound Advice From a Grandfather’s Wise Lips

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My husband and our youngest daughter, Stephany, were recently dining at O’Charley’s here in Owensboro. I’d dance across broken glass for their rolls. Fortunately our server didn’t hold me to it.

After we had been there about 5 minutes, a family was seated beside us: A grandfather, a grandmother, and their pride and joys – two grandsons. One grandson was about 4 and the other was around 9. The 4 year old was having a great time showering his grandmother with smiles and love. The older boy was kind of surly. You got the impression that he had been pulled away from something electronic to go to supper with his grandparents.

He sat by the wall, beside his grandfather, but apparently decided that he just HAD to get out and sit at the end of the table. So he made a big production out of squeezing between his grandfather’s chair and the wall – sniping at a man who was showing remarkable patience. Then, when the child got to the end of the table, he put on a mini-drama of looking at his obnoxious belt buckle as though it had been scratched up in the process.

By this time, I had a feeling something was about to come out of the grandfather’s mouth. He didn’t disappoint.

The grandfather looked at the little drama brat and said, “Suck it up.”

My daughter and I practically high-fived. The child, not sure what had hit him, sat down and FINALLY wrapped up his performance.

Several things hit me (between rolls):

  1. What’s with parents these days?! I would say, “What’s with kids these days?” – but kids are kids and are, in a big sense of the word, like clay.  As parents, we form them into  what they are and will be.  If you are a parent and you are reading these words – PLEASE (for your child’s sake as well as everyone else’s) teach them manners.  Teach them to respect other people, especially their grandparents.  No parent should want to raise a child that’ll look as ugly and bratty as that child did that night.  Our daughters would have never, ever treated their grandparents with anything but graciousness, love, and respect.
  2. The grandfather’s advice is pure gold. Not only was his phrase dead-on for that mini brat, it was dead on for bigger brats as well.  Adults can be just as bratty as any child could ever hope to be. There aren’t a lot of differences between a rude little boy showing his backside in a restaurant or a rude big boy showing his backside at work.  Or a mother screaming at her kids in the middle of a store (really, ladies, get a grip).

I love grandfathers.  They have a certain, no-nonsense way about them.  They serve up, usually with just a handful of words, the sort of lessons that the rest of us spend thousands of words on.   They don’t flap around, yell, or have overly-dramatic moments.  They don’t tear up or say things like, “…after all I’ve done for you…”  No, not these guys.  After all, they were weaned on John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.  There’s not an ounce of drama queen in them.

They simply size up the situation and say what needs to be said.

The next time any of us are tempted to whine about anything (weather, bills, hurt feelings, dust bunnies, gas prices, etc.) we should let the grandfather’s words ring through our head.  Oh, yeah.  We should most definitely Suck it up.

What’s the best advice your grandfather ever gave you?  Or, if you’re a grandfather – what’s the best advice you every gave?   Let us know in the comments!

How to Put Your Best Brain Cell Forward

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We all want to present ourselves in the best possible way. We want people to realize how smart we are – heck, we want them to think we’re even smarter than we actually are. If they walk away thinking they’ve just been in the presence of a frigging genius? Sweet.

Increase Brain Power.com has a great article, Get Smarter or Appear Smarter, that you’ll want to read. There’s some fantastic advice within these 10 tips.  Below are a few of my favorites, click the link above for the rest.

#7. Specialize in some obscure area. If you know even a little bit about the history of the Inuit people or the origin of gold mining, you’ll likely be the only one in the room who does. Not only does this set you apart, but any errors you make will go undetected. Of course, while talking a bit about your “specialty” may impress, you might also bore your audience with too much, so take it easy.

#1. Talk about what you know. You will always appear smarter if you stick to topics you know something about. In fact, if there are areas in which you are very knowledgeable, try to steer the conversation in that direction.

So, how about it?  Do you have any words of wisdom you’d like to share?  What do you do to present yourself in the brightest light?  Leave your advice in the comments!