Your Inadequacies

It isn’t that those who love you ignore your inadequacies. Instead, they will pitch in and cheer you along.. and allow you the opportunity to grow and chances to fail.  

Stephen Goforth

The Educated Mind

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.   

Aristotle

The Strong and Weak

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Boundaries

Boundaries help us to define what is not on our property and what we are not responsible for. We are not, for example, responsible for other people. In short, boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Sometimes, we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. Boundaries are not walls.

The Bible does not say that we are to be 'walled off' from others; in fact it says that we are to be 'one' with them. We are to be in community with them. But in every community, all members have their own space and property. The important thing is that property lines be permeable enough to allow pass and strong enough to keep out danger.

Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or show where you begin and end. The most basic boundary that defines you is your physical skin. The most basic boundary-setting word is no. It lets others know that you exist apart from them and that you are in control of you. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices.

Setting limits on others is a misnomer. We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right. The other aspect of limits that is helpful when talking about boundaries is setting our own internal limits. We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire, without acting it out. We need self-control without repression. We need to be able to say no to ourselves.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Boundaries

What Counts

It is not what you accomplish but how you behave that counts.

Becoming a Person

It is not simply that we can approach and encounter God only as individuals, or that God addresses us only as individuals, but that only by virtue of our relationship with God do we ever become individuals.

Stephen Dunning

Knowing Oneself

It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.

Josh Billings

Bring it On!

Instead of wishing the ball would be hit to someone else, yearn for the ball to be hit your way.   

Stephen Goforth

On Your Own

Independent but not adrift.
John Gardner

Scary Dreams

If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough.

Renewal

If we must have some continuity in our lives – and we must – let it be of the sort that does not prevent renewal.   

John Gardner

Run Away

I used to coach children's soccer, and I would tell my players, "Stand away from the pack, and sooner or later the ball will come to you." In your career choices too: Get away from the pack.  

Robert Shiller

Motivation to Create

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose. 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Progress

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison