Like riding a bike..?

People talk about bike riding when they want to remind us that some things, once learned, are not forgotten. What they don’t mention is how we learned. No one learns to ride a bike from a book, or even a video. We learn it by doing it.

Actually by not doing it. We learn by doing it wrong, by falling off, by getting back on, by doing it again.

P.S. this approach works for lots of things, not just bikes. Most things in fact!

What is the only thing that really matters?

• It doesn’t matter what you would do.
• It’ doesn’t matter what you might do.
• It doesn’t matter what you meant to do.
• It doesn’t matter what you want to do.

All that matters is what you actually do!

As Theodore Roosevelt reminded us…

…“IThe credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

Whatever it is that you are thinking about doing, choose to be a doer rather than a spectator.

P.S. It’s also more fun!

Why do we worry?

The reason we worry so much is that we’ve got an amazing imagination. It’s capable of creating the most elaborate, detailed worlds that haven’t happened yet. It may just happen to be focused on the negative right now. What if today we stopped beating ourselves up for being so stressed out and instead admitted, “I […]

It’s all about you…

I saw a story online about Delta Air Lines and effective communication. This last month, Delta sent an email from its CEO, Ed Bastian, to millions of its most loyal passengers. It was an effective email and one of its secrets was the way it repeated a singe word, over and over. In the course […]

My new word is…

…contronym! It’s a new word to me, even though I was an English teacher in a previous life! A contronym is a word that can be its own opposite! In German, contronyms are called Janus words, named after the two-faced God of duality, Janus, in Roman mythology. So…you know synonyms are words that share the […]

What a difference a word makes!

What we say has power to affect others and our experiences with them. And the words we choose to describe ourselves and our situations determines much of our experience! Are we… rich or temporarily blessed, lonely or enjoying solitude, or struggling or growing through resistance? We know that… well-educated isn’t the same as smart, talents […]

You don’t have time?

We will NEVER have “enough” time. Because we can’t “have” time. Time is not something that can be had by us humans. Time isn’t even real! It’s just something we humans created to make our lives more convenient. Time is like a handful of sand…the harder we try to grip it, the more it slips […]

Faith is trust?

“Faith” is trusting the process. We know that SOMETHING is making our heart beat right now, our lungs function, the grass grow, and the planets spin. So whether we admit it or not, what we have is FAITH. We have faith that our heart will keep beating and that we’ll wake up tomorrow morning. We […]

Vacation complaints…

Vacations are a national tradition (as is this perennial childhood complaint!) This post is of actual complaints received by “Thomas Cook Vacations” from dissatisfied customers. I think you’ll be as amazed as I was by them! “We booked an excursion to a water park but no one told us we had to bring our own […]

The “gift” of our breath

The phrase “take a deep breath” is misleading. The breath isn’t something we can just “take.” Breathing is a gift, a miracle, offered to us over and over again. Yet much like our health, we often take it for granted right up until the moment we no longer have it. “Remember to breathe” means remembering […]

July 4 humor!

Bringing you some humor for this special day of days. (And if it seems like it came from one who used to be a teacher, well, you’re right!) Father William, the old priest, made it a practice to visit the parish school one day a week. He walked into the 4th grade class, where the […]