Life Lessons

Grit and Resilience “It matters not how straight the gate How charged with punishment the scroll I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul.” —William Ernest Henley   If you are the kind of person who gets things done, have you ever noticed how many people wonder how you do it?

Give this some thought: That you’re reading this sentence means that you are wealthier and better educated than 99% of people throughout human history. You likely have almost immediate access to more than half of all of the knowledge ever created by the human race. It also means you have

Born in mid-19th century Britain, this young man was brought into a world that that did not suffer hard times easily. His father’s business failed a few years after he was born, and when his father immigrated to America to remake his fortune, as many others were doing, his dad

From the second you grasp that you have the power to have a positive impact on the people around you, most people work to do just that. Prior to that flash of insight, we’re usually occupied with everyday life, often forgetting to add meaning to our actions or ask why we feel unsatisfied. Suddenly, however, you wake up one day and the world is different. As if from a dream, you realize that you want people to look back on your life and remember the good things you did; that you lived a life of significance.

Way back in 1902, the author James Allen, one of the very first motivational authors wrote:

“As masters of our own thoughts we are makers of ourselves, shapers and authors of our environment.”

Did you ever wake up just a little down, and as you are preparing for an outing you start to have one negative thought after another? If it continues for long, you might even decide to skip that fall picnic you have been planning to go to for weeks. You think about last week and feel sad about things that happened—you find yourself suddenly pessimistic and anxious about what tomorrow will bring—and in a flash you realize that today, you just don’t like anything. Well, here’s a good-news flash, it’s not you that’s the problem!