In continuation of our consideration yesterday, I’d like to join William George Jordan in offering a few starting points for coming to the point where you can express unconscious grace in all that you do. To begin with, Jordan observed: “The man who is slipshod and thoughtless in his daily speech, whose vocabulary is a …
Category: Observations on Life
Doing Your Best II
There is no greater habit to develop than that of giving your best in everything you undertake, without excuse, pretense or apology. It is a simple matter, really, yet we in all of our intelligence tend to complicate it unnecessarily. We let our emotions take over, develop bad habitual reactions and develop prejudices over time …
Doing Your Best I
"If a man honestly seeks to live his best at all times, that determination is visible in every moment of his living, no trifle in his life can be too insignificant to reflect his principle of living. The sun illuminates and beautifies a fallen leaf by the roadside as impartially as a towering mountain peak …
Failure as a Success V
You do not need failure to know success. Likewise, you do not need pain to know pleasure, hate to know love or or darkness to know light. That said, both are available in abundance in the world we live in today, so learning to navigate both with dignity, balance and vision is of the utmost …
Failure as a Success IV
Your book of life will rightly contain a number of interesting and diverse chapters. Some lives are filled with more dramatic episodes of change than others, but no matter how you look at it, change is an inevitable part of life. My own life has moved through a number of distinct phases: my childhood, adolescence, …
Failure as a Success III
The modern jets we fly on today are born of an accumulation of successes and failures over the decades. Aircraft designers constantly dream up new design elements in an effort to improve the safety, efficiency and handling characteristics of the aircraft we fly commercially, privately and in the military and some of them work while …
Failure as a Success II
Excerpt from "The Majesty of Calmness" by William George Jordan "Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that swings us to higher levels. It may not be financial success, it may not be fame; it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or mental inspiration that will change us for all the later …
Failure as a Success I
Continuing our elaboration on William George Jordan's brilliant book, "The Majesty of Calmness," I would like to turn now to consider the nature of failure and success. To begin with, life is full of both, so you are wise to develop a strategy for the creative handling of either as a means of ensuring continual …
Self-Reliance IV
One of the side effects of cultivating self-reliance in yourself and in others is that you gain an inner reserve that comes no other way. This bank account of surplus confidence, faith and strength can be drawn upon or even invested in others during times of crisis. This is the quality that separates the fair-weather …
Self-Reliance III
I am of the opinion that material prosperity must be accompanied by internal growth if there is to be true progress. One without the other gives the appearance of progress, but look closely and you see that what appears from the outside to be an old western town is nothing more than a movie set, …
Gregory Hake 