Be yourself, everyone else is taken
Reading one book won’t necessarily change your life.
But reading lots of books over a long period of time will.
Going to the gym once won’t make much difference to your health.
But maintaining a disciplined, daily regimen of exercise over many years will.
One act of love won’t transform your marriage forever.
It’s easy to let fear win.
To let it rob you of your future.
To let it trick you into thinking that you’ll never make it.
To let it encourage you to look suspiciously at the person who looks and sounds different.
To let it make you think small.
To let it make it seem as though the obstacles in your path are much larger than they really are.
To let it deceive you into thinking that this is as good as it gets and there’s no use in trying to make it better.
Some people have a real “look at me, look at me” mentality.
They’ll do anything to get attention, to grab the spotlight, to be noticed.
Some people don’t want anyone to notice them at all.
Give them a compliment and they’ll shrug it off with an embarrassed look.
They want to be invisible, anonymous, hidden from view.
I recently read this quote,
You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner?
The master has failed more times than the beginner has ever tried.
Excellence is not about perfection, it’s about persistence.
It’s not about faultless performance, it’s about learning from the experience.
It’s not about waiting for the right opportunity, it’s about making opportunities.
It’s a new year, or is it?
Does the change of a date signify any other changes?
Will this year be any different?
And I’m not talking about thing that we can’t control. If that’s what we are hoping for, we are bound to be disappointed.
It’s that time of year when pundits make predictions.
Who will win the championship?
What will the economy look like?
What will happen to the climate?
Of course, they have no idea.
Well, here we are again, at the end of another year and what a year it has been!
2020 has been a challenging year for this humble little blog and it’s closing in on 3 million views since starting in 2010.
Thanks everyone for your support this year, I really appreciate all of you and trust that 2021 will be a much better year for you and your loved ones.
I now have written over 2,800 posts on this blog since I launched and here are the 10 posts that have generated the most traffic in 2020: Read the rest of this entry »
One of my annual goals is to read 25 books per year and despite all of the challenges of 2020, once again I have been able to hit this target.
Some books are for self-education, some purely for entertainment, but they have all made a positive contribution to maintaining a healthy attitude and expanding my mind.
So, here are my top 10 favourites from 2020: Read the rest of this entry »
Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society once said,
“Without any labour, there can be no merit.”
What a great reminder of the satisfaction that comes from hard work.
We sometimes want to avoid the arduous journey, but this is what is required, both to be successful and to feel content with our efforts.
If it all comes too easily, we know that it’s not as meaningful.
I know that it has been a tough year for many, but I hope that you don’t think that it’s been a wasted year.
The dreams and goals that you had at the start may have quickly evaporated as elements beyond your control took over, but that’s not necessarily the end of the world.
The black clouds may have blocked the sun for much of 2020, but the sun was still shining.
And we will see it again.
So, instead of just wishing for the year to be over and washing our hands of it, I would like to ask, what have we learned this year?
