Humor Creates Distance From Tragedy

A person without a sense of humor
is like a wagon without springs.
It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
- Henry Ward Beecher

We laugh to survive.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective:
an awareness that some things are really important, others not;
and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
- Christopher Morley

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
- e. e. cummings

The burden of the self is lightened when I laugh at myself.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Laugh as much as possible, always laugh.
It's the sweetest thing one can do for oneself and one's fellow human beings.
- Maya Angelou

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties
and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Humor Creates Distance From Tragedy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Need for Humor

Be as a Child

Not Too Serious

Cherish the Whimsey
    

Affirming Inner Peace

Today's affirmation:
I am at peace with myself,
and with all that is.

Each one has to find his peace from within.
And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances
but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself.
- Joy Page

We can never obtain peace in the outer world
until we make peace with ourselves.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Guide our feet into the way of peace.
- Luke 1:79

Further reading: Highest and Innermost God

Life Without Stress

Experience This Moment

The Enemy Within
     

Your Wayward Mind

The monsters are in your own head.
- Paula Cole

Beware the Rattlesnake of the Mind
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Rattlesnake of the Mind" is a metaphor inspired by the Zen term, "Monkey Mind," which refers to the mind's tendency to invent an unending sequence of creative stories about everything we see and hear.

Life does not consist mainly,
or even largely, of facts or happenings.
It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts
that is forever flowing through one's head.
- Mark Twain

If you want peace, stop fighting.
If you want peace of mind,
stop fighting with your thoughts.
- Peter McWilliams

You are not your mind. You, a Spiritual BEing,
are neither your mind nor your body.
Mind and body are your tools - to use as you choose.
Sometimes your body appears to have a will of its own,
as when it twitches or pains.
Likewise, your mind often appears to have its own will.
That incessant chattering of regret, disappointment, guilt,
shame, foreboding, worry, and fear
is your Rattlesnake Mind striking off on its own.
Know that your mind can be a vicious rattlesnake, and be cautious.
The mind can be tamed, but only with conscious effort and patience.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Still Your Mind

Ten Little Tips to Feel Happier Right Now

Overflowing Cup of Tea - Zen Koan
      

Listen, Seek to Understand

Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Stephen Covey

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening
when you'd have preferred to talk.
- Doug Larson

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous

Most of the successful people I've known are the ones
who do more listening than talking.
- Bernard Baruch

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;
they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey

Give whatever you are doing
and whoever you are with
the gift of your attention.
- Jim Rohn

Further reading: Pay Attention

Through the Eyes of Another

True Understanding

Be Aware
   

The Winter Season

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
- Anton Chekhov

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there
was in me an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
- Hal Borland

The ending of a job or a relationship
may appear as the darkest night,
but it is merely the Winter season -
the time of renewal and rebirth
that precedes the new planting -
the beginning of the next great cycle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Honor a season for rest and renewal

Winter Blahs

A Joyous Season of Renewal