Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think)

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as you wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself,
It’s later than you think

from Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think)

Abraham Lincoln Quote

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my ax.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Are you boring?

Great tips on finding if you are boring from The Happiness Project. I would hope they follow up with an article on how not to be boring. But the first step to change is recognition right? Anyway tip 7 is especially applicable to speakers:

Audience posture. Back in 1885, Sir Francis Galton wrote a paper in 1885 called “The Measurement of Fidget.” He determined that people slouch and lean when bored, so a speaker can measure the boredom of an audience by seeing how far from vertically upright they are. Also, attentive people fidget less; bored people fidget more. An audience that’s upright and still is interested, while an audience that’s horizontal and squirmy is bored.

The power of words

Excellent (very long) article with author Alan Moore. Here are a couple of quotes about words that stood out to me:

Magic and language are practically the same thing, they would at least have been regarded as such in our distant past. I think it is wisest and safest to treat them as if they are the same thing. This stuff that you are dealing with – words, language, writing – this is dangerous, it is magical, treat it as if it was radioactive.

If you want to expand people’s consciousness, give them better language, wider language, new words. Learn to love words, learn to delight over a new word that you’ve found.

In praise of lazy

“Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” -Walter Chrysler

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Fantastic book from one of my favorite authors. Here is a short anecdote from the book. It is a conversation between Nobody Owens (Bod) and Nehemiah Trot a poet and ghost. in this passage Bod ask Trot about revenge.

“..Oh I had my revenge, Master Owens, and it was a terrible one. I wrote, and had published a letter…I would henceforth write not for them, but only for myself and posterity, and that I should, as long as I lived publish no more poems — for them! Thus I left instructions that upon my death my poems were to be buried with me, unpublished, and that only when posterity realized my genius…only then was my coffin to be disinterred, only then could my poems be removed from my cold dead hand, to finally be published to the approbation and delight of all. It is a terrible thing to be ahead of your time.”

“And after you died, they dug you up, and printed your poems?” [asked Bod]

“Not yet, no. But there is plenty of time. Posterity is vast”

Get The Graveyard Book on amazon

Don Hewitt’s secret to success

Even the people who wrote the Bible were smart enough to know, ‘tell them a story.’ The issue was evil in the world, the story was Noah…Now the Bible knew that and for some reason or another I latched on to that.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Read more about Don Hewitt

Exhibit B

History can never be made by one man we must smash this one quickly
History is made only by the masses of the people this is clear
Even a cursory glance at the falasfallacious presentation
of history by the American capitalist system will demonstrate just this

Take George Washington as bad as he is
Put him in the middle of Valley Forge by himself surrounded
by the British he can do nothing

Take Martin Luther King as righteous as he is
Put him in the middle of Birmingham by himself, speaking out against racism
He would be lynched

But you take this same King, you take this same Washington
Put them in Valley Forge, put them in Alabama
Surround them with thousands of people who have the same ideas they do
Willing to make those ideas reality and the situation changes drastically

Exhibit B, Speaker unknown
Edutainment – BDP

A couple quotes about happiness

Happiness is not having what you want. It is wanting what you have. -Unknown

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. -Unknown

find more quotes on being happy here.