How smart are you?

"Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune."
-Jim Rohn

You are valuable

Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
-Og Mandino

The Power to Change

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
-Stephen Covey

Help One Another

If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
-Zig Ziglar

Mind over Matter

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.
-BUDDHA

Be Open

It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, the one most responsive to change.
-Charles Darwin

Live today as if it were your last

Here is something the Dalai Lama once said:

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

Try to make every day count, time is so short, live life.

Success

Don't sacrifice your success on account of what people say. They don't know what you sacrificed to be where you are. Sometimes even you don't. - Prerana Srinivasan

Family

Becoming responsible adults is no longer a matter of whether children hang up there pajamas or put dirty towels in the hamper, but whether they care about themselves and others -- and whether they see everyday chores as related to how we treat this planet.
-Eda Leshan

Appreciation

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship. -Amelia Earhart

BELIEVE

“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

Love Love Love

In the spirit of Valentine's Day here is a beautiful quote on love...

Once in awhile, Right in the middle of an ordinary life, Love gives us a fairy tale.
~ by Anonymous ~

Opportunity

A second ago is gone, and a second from now might be. Now is all you've got. Go for it!
-Lyn St. James

Dali Lama's Instructions for Life

Instructions for Life

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
Respect for selfRespect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

Disappointment

Disappointment is often the salt of life. - Theodore Parker

EGO

“If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” -Deepak Chopra

Mind over Matter

“How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most”
-Stephen R. Covey

Soul Searching

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. ~Alan Alda

Success

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
-Albert Einstein

Attitude

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

-Charles R. Swindoll

Teamwork

“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Empowerment

Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand -- and melting like a snowflake. -- Marie Beyon Ray

Loss

First, I would like to apologize for not keeping this blog up to date. My dog Tungsten passed away suddenly 2 weeks today. I was very close to him, as close as you can get to a dog. I miss him greatly and I thought it only appropriate to use a loss quote for today.
This is for anyone who has lost anyone or animal. Namaste, MJ.


“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” -Walter Anderson