Choose Habitual Excellence

 

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
- Will Durant (commonly attributed to Aristotle)

Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise,
risking more than others think is safe,
dreaming more than others think is practical,
and expecting more than others think is possible.
- Anonymous

Excellence is not a destination to be arrived at,
but a path of continual attention and improvement.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's affirmation:
While I choose never to be dissatisfied or unhappy
with my current level of knowledge or accomplishment,
I constantly seek excellence in all domains that truly matter to me.

Further reading: Creating Your Future

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life - 5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits

Choice

Play to win, but be a good loser
     

Our Free Will is Constrained, and Precious

 

Our circumstances define the playing field, not the outcome.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life consists not in holding good cards
but in playing those you hold well.
- Josh Billings

Customs form us all.
Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs,
are consequences of our place of birth.
- Aaron Hill
Yet within these quite extreme constraints, progress, success, and happiness are still possible.

You play the hand you're dealt.
I think the game's worthwhile.
- Christopher Reeve

All men and women are born, live, suffer and die;
what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams,
whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things,
and what we do to make them come about.
We do not choose to be born.
We do not choose our parents.
We do not choose our historical epoch,
the country of our birth,
or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.
We do not, most of us, choose to die;
nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death.
But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
- Joseph Epstein

Our Free Will is Highly Constrained,
Which Makes the Free Will that We Do Have Even More Precious.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We all have free will, but only within the harsh constraints of predestination.
Within the limits placed upon our lives by the circumstances of our genes,
our place and condition of birth, the parenting we receive,
and other events beyond our control,
we are defined by the free will we can still exercise.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Make Your Dreams Come True

Do What You Can Do

Choose to Soar
    

Play Full-Out

 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
- widely misattributed to Mark Twain

I have accepted fear as a part of life -
specifically the fear of change...
I have gone ahead despite the pounding
in the heart that says: turn back.
- Erica Jong

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars,
or sailed to an uncharted land,
or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
- Helen Keller

Play full-out and enjoy all of Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Think Big, Act Big

Become a Seeker

Don't Wait!

My thoughts on "safety" versus living full-out
      

Try Something New

 

Unless you try to do something
beyond what you have already mastered,
you will never grow.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only
grow if you are willing to feel awkward and
uncomfortable when you try something new.
- Brian Tracy

If you put yourself in a position where you have to
stretch outside your comfort zone,
then you are forced to expand your consciousness.
- Les Brown

To the degree we're not living our dreams,
our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.
- Peter McWilliams 

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future.
You must break out of your current comfort zone and
become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
- Denis Waitley

Further reading: Take Charge of Your Life

Time to Move On

Finding Joy in Our Troubled Lives

Your Intuition is Your Guide
      

Let Your Life Follow Your Heart

 

Everyone should carefully observe
which way his heart draws him,
and then choose that way with all his strength.
- Hasidic Proverb

To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying Amen
to what the world tells you you ought to prefer,
is to have kept your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson 

Happiness is a choice.
You grieve, you stomp your feet,
you pick yourself up and choose to be happy.
- Lucy Lawless

As you awaken,
may your dreams greet you by name,
and may you answer, "Yes!"
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Let Your Life Follow Your Heart.
Let your heartfelt longings be your guide.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Courage has a Quiet Voice

Choose Your Attitude

Honor Your Heart
       

Fully Engage with Life

 

The key to success, and to happiness,
is being fully engaged in life -
leading yourself with inspiration and committed action -
setting your own fine and honorable example.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
- Confucius

You can choose to follow your heart always.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Further reading: I Dreamed a Dream

Live With Enthusiasm

Think Big, Act Big

Choose to Follow Your Heart
   

Your Life is an Adventure

 

Choose in ways that support your dreams.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Sharpen your pencil as you create the story of your life.
Ask today as you consider the many choices in your view -
what is the highest and best use of your talents, skills and abilities?
When you answer that, seize the opportunity to sharpen
those qualities even more sharply by applying your focused effort.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The big question is whether you are going to be able
to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
- Joseph Campbell

Further reading: Choose to Soar

Pursue Your Dreams

Choosing a Joyful Life

Personal Boundaries       

Never Lose Sight of Your Dreams

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.
For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

- Henry David Thoreau

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,

then they seem improbable, and then,
when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable.
- Christopher Reeve

Winners Dream Big Dreams.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We come this way but once.
We can either tiptoe through life
and hope we get to death without being badly bruised
or we can live a full, complete life achieving
our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.
- Bob Proctor

Further reading: Don’t Quit

Hold Fast to Your Dreams

What You Become

Boldly Sail the Storms of Life        

Consider Making the Choice to be of Service

 

Create your future from your future not your past.

Begin building the future through
"conversation for possibility."
- Werner Erhard

Imagine the future you want.
Then design that future.
Then implement that future.
Choose.
Choose to soar.
Choose to be of service.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The golden age is before us, not behind us.
- William Shakespeare

Life is the future, not the past.
- Terry Goodkind

Fill your heart with the creative power
to accept the past,
decorate the present
and transform the future.
- Osho

Today's affirmation:

I trust my intuition to deliver
powerful visions of my inspired future,
and I empower my intent to
transform those visions into reality.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What Are You Going To Do About It?

Create Your Own Future

Embrace Change

        

May You Delight in Dancing Lightly With Life

 

May your life always be Counterpoint to the Clamor of the World.
May you delight in Dancing Lightly With Life.
May you soar on eagle wings, high above the madness of the world.
May you always sing Melody in the Symphony of Your Life.
May you taste, smell, and touch your dreams of a beautiful tomorrow.
May your sun always shine, and your sky be forever blue.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world,

we lose connection with one another - and ourselves.
- Jack Kornfield

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness.
It does not believe that I do not want it.
- Mary Oliver

The world clamors, "Do more! Be all that you can be!"
But our Father whispers, "Be still and know that I am God [Psalm 46:10]."
- Joanna Weaver

Today's affirmation:
I am Counterpoint to the Clamor of the World.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Ten Little Tips to Feel Happier Right Now

A Life of Harmony

Make Healthy Choices to Relieve Stress

Try Meditation

12 Ways to De-Stress Your Life
    

Live Your Best Life, Always

Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.
- Theodore Roosevelt

And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
- C. S. Lewis

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job,
tell 'em, Certainly I Can. -
and get busy and find out how to do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt

You are only as old as you think you are.
- Anonymous

What is age but a number.
What you can dream, you can become, at any age.
Live your best life, not your age.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Growing Up Without Growing Old

Never Too Late

Ways to Stay Young
     

Take Action on Your Dreams

 

Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.
- Thomas A. Edison

A dream doesn't become reality through magic;
it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
- Colin Powell

If you dream of something worth doing
and then simply go to work on it
and don't think anything of personalities,
or emotional conflicts, or of money,
or of family distractions;
it is amazing how quickly
you get through those 5,000 steps.
- Edwin Land

Vision without action is merely a dream.
Action without vision just passes the time.
Vision with action can change the world.
- Joel A. Barker

To lead a great life:
Dream, Take Action, Repeat.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Some people dream of success
while others wake up and work hard at it.
- Anonymous

Further reading: You Are What You Do

Walking Your Path

Fulfilling Your Dreams

Action Beats Inaction
    

Make a Habit of Excellence

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
- Will Durant (commonly attributed to Aristotle)

Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise,
risking more than others think is safe,
dreaming more than others think is practical,
and expecting more than others think is possible.
- Anonymous

Excellence is not a destination to be arrived at,
but a path of continual attention and improvement.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Today's affirmation:
While I choose never to be dissatisfied or unhappy
with my current level of knowledge or accomplishment,
I constantly seek excellence in all domains that truly matter to me.

Further reading: Creating Your Future

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life - 5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits

Choice

Play to win, but be a good loser
     

Our circumstances define the playing field, not the outcome

Our circumstances define the playing field, not the outcome.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life consists not in holding good cards
but in playing those you hold well.
- Josh Billings

Customs form us all.
Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs,
are consequences of our place of birth.
- Aaron Hill
Yet within these quite extreme constraints, progress, success, and happiness are still possible.

You play the hand you're dealt.
I think the game's worthwhile.
- Christopher Reeve

All men and women are born, live, suffer and die;
what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams,
whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things,
and what we do to make them come about.
We do not choose to be born.
We do not choose our parents.
We do not choose our historical epoch,
the country of our birth,
or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing.
We do not, most of us, choose to die;
nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death.
But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
- Joseph Epstein

We all have free will, but only within the harsh constraints of predestination.
Within the limits placed upon our lives by the circumstances of our genes,
our place and condition of birth, the parenting we receive,
and other events beyond our control,
we are defined by the free will we can still exercise.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Make Your Dreams Come True

Do What You Can Do

Choose to Soar
    

Freedom to Explore, Dream, Discover

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
- widely misattributed to Mark Twain

I have accepted fear as a part of life -
specifically the fear of change...
I have gone ahead despite the pounding
in the heart that says: turn back.
- Erica Jong

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars,
or sailed to an uncharted land,
or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
- Helen Keller

Play full-out and enjoy all of Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Think Big, Act Big

Become a Seeker

Don't Wait!

My thoughts on "safety" versus living full-out
      

Move out of your comfort zone

 

Unless you try to do something
beyond what you have already mastered,
you will never grow.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only
grow if you are willing to feel awkward and
uncomfortable when you try something new.
- Brian Tracy

If you put yourself in a position where you have to
stretch outside your comfort zone,
then you are forced to expand your consciousness.
- Les Brown

To the degree we're not living our dreams,
our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.
- Peter McWilliams 

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future.
You must break out of your current comfort zone and
become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
- Denis Waitley

Further reading: Take Charge of Your Life

Time to Move On

Finding Joy in Our Troubled Lives

Your Intuition is Your Guide
      

Choose the Way of Your Heart

Everyone should carefully observe
which way his heart draws him,
and then choose that way with all his strength.
- Hasidic Proverb

To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying Amen
to what the world tells you you ought to prefer,
is to have kept your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson 

Happiness is a choice.
You grieve, you stomp your feet,
you pick yourself up and choose to be happy.
- Lucy Lawless

As you awaken,
may your dreams greet you by name,
and may you answer, "Yes!"
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Let Your Life Follow Your Heart.
Let your heartfelt longings be your guide.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Courage has a Quiet Voice

Choose Your Attitude

Honor Your Heart
       

Live Life Full Out

The key to success, and to happiness,
is being fully engaged in life -
leading yourself with inspiration and committed action -
setting your own fine and honorable example.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
- Confucius

You can choose to follow your heart always.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Further reading: I Dreamed a Dream

Live With Enthusiasm

Think Big, Act Big

Choose to Follow Your Heart
   

Say a Hearty YES to Your Adventure

Choose in ways that support your dreams.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.
The process never ends until we die.
And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Sharpen your pencil as you create the story of your life.
Ask today as you consider the many choices in your view -
what is the highest and best use of your talents, skills and abilities?
When you answer that, seize the opportunity to sharpen
those qualities even more sharply by applying your focused effort.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The big question is whether you are going to be able
to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
- Joseph Campbell

Further reading: Choose to Soar

Pursue Your Dreams

Choosing a Joyful Life

Personal Boundaries       

Dream Big Dreams

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.
For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

- Henry David Thoreau

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,

then they seem improbable, and then,
when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable.
- Christopher Reeve

Winners Dream Big Dreams.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We come this way but once.
We can either tiptoe through life
and hope we get to death without being badly bruised
or we can live a full, complete life achieving
our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.
- Bob Proctor

Further reading: Don’t Quit

Hold Fast to Your Dreams

What You Become

Boldly Sail the Storms of Life