Reinvent Yourself

"The biggest intellectual breakthrough in the life of the great poet William Butler Yeats came when he realized that happiness and growth are one and the same.  They could not be separated.  You can notice this for yourself: you are happy when you are growing.  And no growth you have ever made has been effortless.

Watch the nature film of the butterfly struggling to push through the cocoon.  You will see the effort.  You will be moved.  You will see the animating force within living beings.  It’s the force of personal reinvention.  Watch the movie Rocky.  You will see the hidden connection between effort and joy.  Pay attention to your reactions to certain scenes in movies.  Pay attention to your goose bumps and your tears.  They come in response to courage and effort.  They don’t come in response to a scene in which someone is being comfortable.  Pay attention to why you are chocked up.  It is your potential self trying to tell you something." ~ From the book, Reinvent Yourself: How to Become the Person You've Always Wanted to Be, by Steve Chandler

The Good Life - It's Not What You Think

"I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming." ~ Carl Rogers, Psychologist

Perfect (Music Video)

If you could only sense how important you are...

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." ~ Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers

Accept no one's definition of your life

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." – Harvey Fienstein, Actor

How We Learn to Know Ourselves

In the main it is not by introspection but by reflecting on our living in common with others that we come to know ourselves. What is revealed? It is an original creation. Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter.  —Bernard Lonergan, Jesuit 

Dive down into your self...

Dive down into your self,

And there you will find the steps

By which you might ascend.

-     Saint Isaac the Syrian

Our Best Work

Our best work, our finest moments, our joy--happen when we're centered, listening to and trusting ourselves, allowing our hearts and souls to guide us.  They happen when we allow ourselves to fully, completely, and in love, be who we are. ~ Melody Beattie, "Journey to the Heart"