One of life's greatest lessons is one that relatively few people ever learn. It is quite a simple lesson, actually, but its implications are profound and somewhat difficult to put into words. The lesson is this: your mind and heart must come into alignment for you to be truly effective in life. You've probably heard …
Tag: purpose
It’s not the critic who counts
"It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things." ~ Theodore Roosevelt I realized a number of years ago that any time you spend as a critic is time that could have been …
Right makes Might
The moment you consecrate yourself to a higher purpose you establish a pole in the earth through which your influence can be felt and known. That pole allows for polarization, wherein all that is agreement with your purpose aligns with you while all that is opposed to that which you stand for allies against you. …
Head, Heart, Hand
"A heart to resolve, a head to contrive and a hand to execute." ~ Edward Gibbon This lovely phrase is the basis upon which mountains are moved. Whatever your intent, when your heart, head and hand are unified in purpose and functioning in harmony, the likelihood that you will achieve your aims improves significantly. Internal …
The Sculpted Figures of Society II
"Real, honest effort, no matter how slight seem results, no matter how weak seem the progress, has no time for mere parade. Their high motives that inspire are: love, honour, truth, justice or those others that lead the ranks of their high purpose. The glowing realization that their work is serious inspires them. Their consecrated …
The Sculpted Figures of Society I
"Over the great doorway of one of New York’s skyscraping office buildings three colossal sculptured figures are posed in crouching attitudes. With their great bowed heads, grimly tense features, and muscles strained like whip- cords they seem to hold on their broad shoulders the terrific weight of twenty or more stories of solid masonry. They …
Facing the Mistakes of Life VIII
"It is a greater mistake to err in purpose, in aim, in principle, than in our method of attaining them. The method may readily be modified; to change the purpose may upset the whole plan of our life. It is easier in mid-ocean to vary the course of the ship than to change the cargo." …
Facing the Mistakes of Life VI
"Musing over the dreams of youth, the golden hopes that have not blossomed into deeds, is a dangerous mental dissipation. In very small doses it may stimulate; in large ones it weakens effort. It over-emphasizes the past at the expense of the present; it adds weights, not wings, to purpose. “It might have been” is …
Facing the Mistakes of Life V
"Omnipotence cannot change the past, so why should we try? Our duty is to compel that past to vitalize our future with new courage and purpose, making it a larger, greater future than would have been possible without the past that has so grieved us. If we can get real, fine, appetizing dividends from our …
The Crown of Individuality VI
A clear cut sense of purpose is the key to effectiveness in living. Childhood is meant to be the time where purpose comes to light. Purpose, as I have mentioned before, is not something that another can give you. Others may serve as guides, pointing to your purpose in a general sense, but it is …