5 powerful quotes I read every morning
I find myself juggling with a lot of stuff these days. The older I get, the more I want to try and make everything count for something. Every day is a challenge and an opportunity to work on my life. After all, my life is my biggest project. And I have been increasingly realising lately that how I start off the day sets the tempo for the whole day. And I found motivating myself with these 5 powerful quotes has been working for me.
1. Patience, Perseverance, and Practice is my way of life
“When I was practicing, I became so exhausted that I wanted to give up. But then I pictured what my opponent would be doing. He must be still practicing so I went back into more practice. And a point came when I wanted to give up again. I pictured what my opponent would be doing. He must be still practicing so I went back into more practice. And then a point came when I could not lift myself anymore. And I pictured that he could not lift himself anymore either. I pictured him in the shower, guess what I did. I went back into more practice. Till now we were at par. This practice would be my winning edge.”
2. Time is of the essence, make every second count.
“Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course? We all have such a bank, it’s called “time”. Every morning, it credits you 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off whats lost, whatever of this you failed to invest on a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against “tomorrow”. You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health and happiness. The clock is running. Make the most of today.” — Marc Levy
3. Curb laziness right at the onset. It is the one true evil in life.
“Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
4. Believe in yourself. Say you can. Be positive.
“To all you youngsters, who feel thwarted and putdown and hopeless, believe in one thing. I read somewhere, I don’t remember where, either in the Old Testament, or maybe in Carlos Castaneda, about a shaman. There was drought, cattle were dying, people were dying, in the desert. And the shaman said, “Build the ditches. Dig ditches.” “But there is no rain.” “Dig the ditches and the rain will come.” Now you non believers may say, “Oh thats nonsense”. Well, believe what you want. Thats the rational mind. But I don’t think rational mind is currently doing too well at the moment. It’s the irrational mind, the subconscious!. All my life, when I was a little boy, I dreamed of where I am now. I may have had the vision, I don’t know. I didn’t have much hope, but everything happened for me. And now I believe, that we can condense time, we can pull it to ourselves. Its not about the future - “Oh, I’ll do something next year.” It doesn’t exist, tomorrow doesn’t exist, the next hour doesn’t exist. It’s all just potential. But what if we can drag time into the present, now, into the solar plexus, into our soul? Build the ditches! Whatever you want to do, believe it, believe it, believe it. Even if you don’t believe, play the game of belief. Act as if you believe. That is power. This is sheer power. And it will happen. Believe you me, from an old fool like me. It has worked in my life and it will work in yours. So never give up! Believe, believe, believe! I don’t care if you are atheist or agnostic or anything. Believe, believe, believe! As I have.” — Anthony Hopkins
5. Keep it simple. Think of the big picture. Everything is still fine.
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” — Carl Sagan
