Help me, O Lord, to make a true use of all disappointments and calamities in this life, in such a way that they may unite my heart more closely with you. Cause them to separate my affections from worldly things and inspire my soul with vigor in the pursuit of true happiness.
1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. 2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. 3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.
Six Ways to Make People Like You
1. Become genuinely interested in other people. 2. Smile. 3. Remember that a person's name is, to him or her, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. 4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. 5. Talk in the terms of the other person's interest. 6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.
Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
1. Avoid arguments. 2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never tell someone that he or she is wrong. 3. If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. 4. Begin in a friendly way. 5. Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes. 6. Let the other person do the talking. 7. Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers. 8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. 9. Sympathize with the other person. 10. Appeal to noble motives. 11. Dramatize your ideas. 12. Throw down a challenge; don't talk negatively when a person is absent; talk only about the positive.
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. 2. Talk about your own mistakes first. 3. Call attention to other people's mistakes indirectly. 4. Ask questions instead of directly giving orders. 5. Let the other person save face. 6. Praise every improvement. 7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. 8. Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct. 9. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
Let us not seek out of you what we can only find in you, O Lord. Peace and rest, and joy and bliss, which abide only in your abiding joy. Lift up our souls above the weary round of harassing thoughts to your eternal presence. Lift up our minds to the pure, bright, serene atmosphere of your presence, that we may breathe freely, there repose in your love, there be at rest from ourselves and from all things that weary us: and thence return, arrayed in your peace, to do and to bear whatsoever shall best please you, O Blessed Lord.
It is not smart to slip into your conversation little boasts about yourself—the college you went to, the degrees you earned, the plum positions you held. First of all, it sounds proud and diminishes you ever so slightly in the eyes of the other person. Secondly, it sets a trap for your own feet, because eventually (think about it), if you develop a relationship with the person you are speaking to, he or she will find out your true measure. If you have presented yourself too highly, your fall in his esteem will be the worse.
If, on the other hand, you have wisely refrained from boasting, your new friend will be continually delighted with pleasant discoveries about you, which will be all the more pleasing to him because you did not brag at all. This is just another application of Jesus’ parable about taking the lowest versus the highest seat at a formal dinner (Luke 14).
Some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind.
Have a set of principles that are inviolate. Defend those principles to matter what it might cost you...One of my proudest accomplishments was that I didn't sell my soul for the sake of popularity...if you are chasing popularity...it's just a fleeting moment, but principles last forever.
Resistance training is any exercise that causes the muscles to contract against an external resistance, with the expectation of increases in strength, tone, mass, and/or endurance. . . . The overload is constantly increased to facilitate adaptation. . . . The body adapts to exercise and needs to be constantly challenged in order to continue to grow and change.
Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of the object upon itself, and its own triumph. Henri Amiel
The Jealous are Troublesome to others, but a Torment to themselves. William Penn
The old way in my Christian life was to be always preparing to live for God. Satan was well pleased. We do a lot more talking about the Christian life than living it, seems to me... we prepare on Sunday morning. We prepare at retreats, and fill our notebooks with great weekend insights that land on the shelf. How many times have I practically knocked over spiritually dying people trying to get to the women’s Bible study on time? That’s the parable of the Good Samaritan.
So I have started praying for random people—at the mall, at the cemetery where I walk. One benefit I find is that if you pray for the person you pass at the mall, you cannot simultaneously judge him, lust after him, or engage in any other fleshly preoccupation. I think this new posture is taking on a momentum of its own and producing a new lifestyle. It primes the pump, you see, and creates a groove between oneself and God that gets deeper and more natural day by day.
Ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.
We, undisciplined in discernment of the inward, knowing nothing of it, run after the outer, never understanding that it is the inner which stirs us; we are [like] one who sees his own reflection but not realizing whence it comes goes in pursuit of it.
