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When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.
-- Alex Haley
 

 

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Opportunity to energize life

How good it is to live with responsibility, imagination, joy and meaning. How frustrated you can feel when the world you encounter seems not to share your desire to be joyful, authentic, useful and competent.

Yet out of that very frustration emerges opportunity to energize life with honesty, to encourage enjoyment and innovation. Because even those who seem not to care, hold inside them a yearning to live with fulfillment and meaning.

Remind yourself that just because someone acts rudely doesn’t mean that person wants to be rude. Somewhere in that person, goodness and courtesy long to be expressed.

You cannot avoid negativity. However, you can avoid passing it along, and you can choose not to reflect it back.

Instead, you can reflect back a genuine desire to be useful. You can pass along understanding and enthusiasm, wisdom and joy.

No, it will not put warmth in the heart of every person you encounter. But it won’t hurt and it might even help, and it will certainly improve your own outlook.

— Ralph Marston

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