Photo credit: BouncebackCafe.com ©2010
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
— Anonymous
With all of the turmoil of sorting through my parent’s stuff, closing up the house and moving Dad into a care facility, lately I’ve been focused on the past. I think that the past will teach us if we choose to learn. Unfortunately, mining the past for lessons can be a little like the old saw about the room full of horse manure: there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
The last time I was at my parent’s house I grabbed several sets of slides. For those of you who are too young to remember, slides were developed from slide film. Instead of printing the picture on photo paper, the image was developed and the film material was sliced up and mounted in a cardboard frame. Slides were much cheaper to process and had a special viewer which projected the image on a screen or a white wall.
Many years ago, I had purchased a Kodak Carousel projector. To see the slides, each one has to be Continue reading » Finding Lessons in Our Past
Question: Why are YOU successful?
People who believe good events have permanent causes try even harder after they succeed. People who see temporary reasons for good events may give up when they succeed, believing success was a fluke.
— Martin E.P. Seligman
Back in the years when I was a hiring-manager I often invited prospective sales people to tell me about one of their successes; and then I asked them what they attributed that success to… and about fell out of my chair when, time after time, they would tell me, “just lucky I guess…”
Huh? I mean, aside from forfeiting the obvious opportunity to brag, if they truly weren’t aware of what led to their success, how in the world could I expect them to do it again on our sales team?
How’d You Get So Lucky?
Though no longer employed as a sales manager, I still think there’s merit in looking back over recent Continue reading » Just Lucky, I Guess
When we are capable of living in the moment free from the tyranny of “shoulds,” free from the nagging sensation that this moment isn’t right, we will have peaceful hearts.
— Anonymous
I have reached the conclusion that part of the reason that we get discouraged is that we believe that we’re supposed to be different than we are. One of my resolutions for Lent is that I will listen to audio books by one of the Christian writers that I like for 15 minutes each day. This usually works out pretty well because I walk the dog for 30-40 minutes each day and I can easily choose to listen to something for 15 minutes – IF I PICK Continue reading » Deciding What Is “Enough”
Are you living in the moment? Tell us how you do it!
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
This was, apparently, our week of “NOW” posts. We definitely think you should get yourself some NOW time, and of course, we think you could do with some – now. In fact, I invite you to get yourself a cup a tea and put your feet up while you read on…
We opened the week at Bouncebackcafe.com admiring a traditional holiday toy – the snow globe. And suggested it as a intriguing zen analogy for a settled and clear mind – one that’s ready to Continue reading » Into the Now We Go
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
— John Lubbock
Today I stumbled across The Happiness Project
, a book that hasn’t even been released yet. It is Gretchen Rubin’s account of how she tried to take all the wisdom that is out there about how to be happy and integrate it into her life.
It’s a little like the idea behind Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
only instead of food, the author focused on happiness (which some people would say is the same thing.) In a recent post, Gretchen writes about choosing to let go of one of her resolutions – “entertain more” – after having struggled with it for several years.
What she found was that when she let go of her expectation to “entertain more,” she was able to invite people over and actually enjoy both the event and their company. By not “entertaining” in the way she had been trained, she was able to Continue reading » Reasonable Expectations
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