Life as a set of challenges
The importance of challenge | Enjoying the full flow of the moment | Building a secure future | Standing out as an individual | Making sense of life's complexities | Contributing to a better world | Engaging with something bigger than ourselves
Life cannot escape the challenges of life. And through overcoming these challenges, we live the “good life.”
“I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”
Plato
“Here’s the great challenge of life. You can have more than you’ve got because you can become more than you are.”
Jim Rohn
“To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like.”
Mike Gafka
“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.”
William Frederick Halsy, Jr.
“Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.”
General George S. Patton
“We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them.”
M Scott Peck
“I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out, that's when I've really learned.”
Carol Burnett
“I've often thought that when something is hard for you, whether it's going to law school or anything else that challenges you, that's probably what you should do.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton
“The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr
“There is no point at which you can say, Well, I am successful now. I might as well take a nap.”
Carrie Fisher
“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
Richard M. Nixon
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Enjoying the full flow of the moment:
Experiencing life as it is, not thinking back to the past and what might have been or anticipating the future and what might be; a non judgemental outlook which takes others and life at face value and manages the ups and downs of life positively
“There is no better than her.”
Cherie Carter Scott
“Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
Henry Miller
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
Robert Brault
“It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.”
Margaret Bonnano
“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The word “no” is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.”
Arthur Miller
“If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.”
Taisen Deshimaru
“People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days.”
Robert M. Young
“Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.”
André Gide
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
Elbert Hubbard
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard
“Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations.”
Jane Austen
“The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.”
Germaine Greer
“If the going is real easy, beware, you may be headed down hill and don't know it.”
(anon)
Establishing a solid platform for the long-term future based on a well organised life style, the discipline of good habits and the astute management of financial affairs
“Sacrifice in the short-term is the price you pay for security in the long-term.”
Brian Tracy
“The seven deadly sins... food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
Alan Lakein
“People are living longer than ever before, a phenomenon undoubtedly made necessary by the 30-year mortgage.”
Doug Larson
“Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.”
George Burns
“We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.”
Charles F. Kettering
“Create your future from your future not your past.”
Werner Erhard
“The trouble with the future is that is usually arrives before we're ready for it.”
Arnold H Glasow
“If you do not think about your future, you cannot have one.”
Joh Galsworthy
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Peter F Drucker
Standing out as an individual in your own right
Excelling in a vocation or field of endeavour to make a distinctive personal impact and create influence within the peer group; the insight, creativity and courage to pursue individuality rather than conform to others’ expectations
“It’s wise to define success on your own terms and not on someone else’s.”
EJ Zelinksi
“In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ''finding himself.'' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.”
Thomas Merton
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.”
Rollo May
“Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.”
Bob Dylan
“All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find it on your own terms.”
Harrison Ford
“Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential.”
John Amatt
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to dark place where it leads.”
Erica Jong
“No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.”
Barbara De Angelis
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost.”
Martha Graham
“What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.”
Germaine De Stael
Making sense of life’s complexities
The refusal to take the easy way out and accept the simple answers to the big questions of life; the determination to keep exploring and evaluating the issues and potential solutions to find a meaningful “life outlook.”
“We have to learn to make our own way through a complex world without the benefit of an accepted trustworthy route map.”
Guy Claxton
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
Anais Nin
“To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.”
Albert Einstein
“No one can give you any answers. There aren’t any. You have to discover for yourself—you must learn to navigate the mystery.”
Bill Hicks
“It took Deep Thought, the supercomputer, more than 7 million years to compute the answer: the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The answer: “4.”
. Douglas Adams
“More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
Woody Allen
“The greatness happiness is to be a philosopher.”
Baltasar Gracian
“There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.”
Olive Goldsmith
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russell
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
Niels Bohr
“Asking the right questions is as important as giving the right answers.”
Julian Baggini
Contributing to a better world
Connecting to others – the immediate circle of family and friends, local community and wider society - to build a legacy; a legacy of leaving the world a better place than you found it; a concern and compassion of others which translates ideals into practical action
“Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society.”
Charles Gow
“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Etienne de Grellet
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.“ Seneca
“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”
Clarence Darrow
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
Leo Buscaglia
“The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.”
Ronald Firbank
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
Charles Bukowski
“Consideration for others is the basic of a good life, a good society.”
Confucius
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
John F Kennedy
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.”
Samuel Johnson
“I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
Charles de Gaulle
Engaging with something bigger than ourselves
Living within a bigger life purpose with the kind of spiritual meaning which transcends the day-to-day stuff of life; a life based on authentic and fundamental values
“We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.”
Calvin Coolidge
“The reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe…The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Immanuel Kant
“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”
Douglas Adams
“I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”
Woody Allen
“The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God.”
Daniel Webster
“The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.”
M Scott Peck
“If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.”
Woody Allen
“The individual who comes into the world with the notion that he is going to instruct it in matters of highest importance may thank their stars if they escape with a whole skin.”
Arthur Schopenhaur
“All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven his own way.”
Frederick the Great
“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
Martin Luther King, Jr