Giving What Is Within You

High in the Wudang mountains of China there lived a wise woman. One day she found a precious stone while sitting by the banks of a running stream, and she placed this highly valued item in her bag. The next day a hungry traveller approached the woman and asked for something to eat. As she reached into her bag for a crust of bread, the traveller saw the precious stone and imagined how it would provide him with financial security for the remainder of his life. He asked the woman to give the treasure to him, and she did, along with some food. He left ecstatic in his good fortune and the knowledge that he was now financially secure.

A few days later the traveller returned and handed back the stone to the wise woman. "I've been thinking," he told her. "Although I know how valuable this is, I'm returning it to you in the hopes that you can give me something even more precious." "What would that be?" the woman inquired. "Please give me what you have within yourself that enabled you to give me that stone," said the man.

Photo by jhandelman; narrative slightly modified from Excuses Begone by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

The Afternoon of Life

Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.
-- Carl Gustav Jung

Photo by AnnuskA - AnnA Theodora

The World Needs People Who Have Come Alive

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
-- Howard Thurman

Photo by AnnuskA - AnnA Theodora

Live Each Season

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Photo by Liz. :)

Strength and Confidence Comes From Within

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.
-- Anna Freud

Photo by marceliacooper

Unaware That We Are Unique

We are all born with wonderful gifts. We use these gifts to express ourselves, to amuse, to strengthen, and to communicate. We begin as children to explore and develop our talents, often unaware that we are unique, that not everyone can do what we're doing!
-- Lynn Johnston

Photo by Rona Keller

The Dawn Will Come

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up.
-- Anne Lamott

Photo by Solitaire Miles

The Ways of Truth and Love

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it -- always.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Photo by Bahman Farzad

Find Something Creative

My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
-- Miles Davis

Photo by daystar297

Every Child Comes With the Message

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

Photo by mitchellk81

Nothing is Left Undone

Learning builds daily accumulation, but the practice of Tao builds daily simplification. Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contridictory thinking is eliminated. Then one does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. One who wins the world does so by not meddling with it. One who meddles with the world loses it.
-- Tao te Ching, 48. Lao-Tzu

Photo by ༺lifemage༻

Train of Thought

Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
-- Laurence J. Peter

Photo by ShaunW (shandys_preston)