“Our greatest danger in life is in permitting the urgent things to crowd out the important.”
~ Charles E. Hummel
“A wide ocean of possibilities lies before your child, but there is nothing simple about the journey to adulthood. Will you be there to guide and protect your child from the dangers along the way? It all begins with knowing your child.”
~ Lance Wubbels and Mac Anderson
When you promote yourself or any worthy cause, a miracle can happen. As you will see in Today’s Story, persistence brought about a beautiful miracle – but only because success was the only option for this little girl.
Andrew’s Miracle
A little girl went to her bedroom and pulled a glass jelly jar from its hiding place in the closet.
She poured the change out on the floor and counted it carefully. Three times even. The total had to be exactly perfect. No chance here for mistakes.
Carefully placing the coins back in the jar and twisting on the cap, she slipped out the back door and made her way 6 blocks to Rexall’s Drug Store.
She waited patiently for the pharmacist to give her some attention, but he was too busy at this moment.
Tess twisted her feet to make a scuffing noise. Nothing. She cleared her throat with the most disgusting sound she could muster. No good.
Finally, she took a quarter from her jar and banged it on the glass counter. That did the trick!
“And what can I do for you?” the pharmacist asked in an annoyed tone of voice. “I’m talking to my brother from Chicago whom I haven’t seen in ages,” he said without waiting for a reply to his question.
“Well, I want to talk to you about my brother,” Tess answered. “He’s really, really sick….and I want to buy a miracle.”
In a softening voice; “I beg your pardon?” said the pharmacist.
“His name is Andrew and he has something bad growing inside his head and my Daddy says only a miracle can save him now. So how much does a miracle cost?”
“We don’t sell miracles here, little girl. I’m sorry but I can’t help you,” the Pharmacist said.
“Listen, I have the money to pay for it. If It isn’t enough, I will get the rest. Just tell me how much it costs.”
The pharmacist’s brother was a well dressed man. He stooped down and asked the little girl, “What kind of a miracle does your brother need?”
“I don’t know,” Tess replied with her eyes welling up with tears. “I just know he’s really sick and Mommy says he needs an operation. But Daddy said they can’t pay for it, so I want to use my money.”
“How much do you have?” asked the man from Chicago.
“One dollar and eleven cents,” Tess answered barely audibly. “It’s all the money I have, but I can get some more if I need to.”
“Well, what a coincidence,” smiled the man. “A dollar and eleven cents — the exact price of a miracle for little brothers.”
He took her money in one hand and with the other hand he grasped her mitten and said, “Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let’s see if I have the miracle you need.”
That well dressed man was Dr. Carlton Armstrong, a surgeon, specializing in neuro-surgery.
After evaluating Andrew’s condition, he made all the arrangements. The operation was completed free of charge and it wasn’t long until Andrew was home again and doing well.
Mom and Dad were happily talking about the chain of events that had led them to this place. “That surgery,” her mom whispered, “was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost?”
Tess smiled. She knew exactly how much a miracle cost. “One dollar and eleven cents.”
Unknown Author
Miracles can happen in your life and business pursuits when you are persistent and when your heart is in the right place at the right time. This principle of success applies to your need to be relentless at promoting yourself, your abilities and your talents.
Sir Issac Newton’s first Law of Motion states: “An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force.”
Don’t be an ‘object’ that stays at rest. Set a positive direction. Put this idea into motion. Be persistent, even relentless, at promoting yourself. As you do, you will see your career gain momentum and ongoing success will continue to follow you.
“There is only one way to succeed at anything, and that is to give it everything.”
Vince Lombardi
“It is good to appreciate that life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now – this day – this hour.”
~Charles Macomb Flandrau
“Think of special ways you can appreciate others that will touch their lives in a personal way. These gifts are especially meaningful when they are given for no special reason except to show that you care about them, and you appreciate their presence in your life. I call these ‘angel gifts’ because they always seem to come at a time when you need them most.”
~Barbara Glanz
Submitted by RJO, Chicago, IL
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
– Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia
At any given task, just one person in the entire world can be the absolute best. The rest fall somewhere between #2 and #6,000,000,000. Where on that continuum they fall, may be critical to you or your business. Choose the best you can find and get to work.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
– Voltaire
Action taken now has higher value than better action taken later. Whatever you do, do it as well as you can and put it into action. Don’t wait feeling that you can make it even better – time lost is time lost forever.
“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur!”
– Red Adair
Not much to add here. Either you get it or you don’t.
Submitted by Bob Stovall
by John Maxwell
Men and women who lead on the highest level are quite extraordinary. They are people of action who have their priorities in line. I’ve found that there are some common threads in these uncommon leaders.
They are:
Futurists:
Their dreams are bigger than their memories.
Lobbyists:
Their cause outlives and out speaks their critics.
Catalysts:
They initiate movement and momentum for others.
Specialists:
They don’t do everything; they do one thing well.
Optimists:
They believe in their cause and their people beyond reason.
Economists:
They value every resource as a steward of their cause.
Activists:
They are doers and empower others by their actions.
Strategists:
They plan how to use every resource available to be successful.
Enthusiasts:
They have a passion that defies logic and magnetically attracts others.
Pragmatists:
Their legacy is that they solve the practical problems people face.
Industrialists:
They roll up their sleeves and work hard.
Finalists:
They labor with diligence and dedication to the end so that they finish well.
Submitted by RJO
Chicago, IL
“The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.”
~Thane Yost
“Advance planning is like taking the deep breath before the plunge. It’s the calm before the storm. And that’s when it’s time to prepare, while it’s calm, to ensure success no matter what unexpected storms might come up. Advance planning is the first step to exceeding expectations.”
~Robin Crow
Submitted by RJO,
Chicago, IL
“Life is short, God’s way of encouraging a bit of focus.” ~ Robert Brault
by Alexander Green
In just a few weeks, millions of young men and women will graduate from high school or college.
As a friend or family member, you may be wondering what to give this year. Fortunately, I know just the gift your graduate wants.
Cash. (Yes, the same thing he or she wanted last year.)
However, it never hurts to throw in a lagniappe, something small but meaningful. Ideally, a graduation gift should encourage the graduate’s dreams, with one eye on the past and the other on the future.
That’s why I like to tuck the envelope inside a copy of James Allen’s timeless classic, As a Man Thinketh.
Born in Britain in 1864, Allen was a slight boy who suffered from poor health. In 1879, his father – out of work and facing insolvency – sailed to America, hoping to set up home and send for his family. Soon after arriving, however, he was robbed and murdered.
At age 15, Allen was forced to work as a factory knitter and later as a private secretary to support his family. He found the work mindless and unfulfilling but took solace in the evening among his books, often reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Whitman into the early hours.
In 1903, he decided to devote himself fulltime to writing and that same year published his best-known book, As a Man Thinketh.
It’s a slim volume, one that can be read in less time than it takes to snooze through the average commencement address. But it packs a powerful wallop.
The essential premise is that, even if you’re unaware of it, your underlying beliefs shape your character, your health, your circumstances, and, ultimately, your destiny. Your thoughts create your reality. You literally are what you think.
For this reason, you should be at least as meticulous about the ideas you feed your mind as the food you feed your body, since your life will largely become what your thoughts make it.
This is not to say that your mind alone can heal a serious illness, fix your finances, or change the world. Allen was no purveyor of New Age mumbo-jumbo. He was, above all else, a pragmatist and an advocate of hard work and effort. Yet he understood that every great undertaking begins with a particular state of mind.
Or, as he put it:
Allen insists that circumstances don’t make you. They reveal you. And while you can’t always command the situation, you can always command yourself.
Allen was hardly the first to recognize this. More than 2,300 years old, The Dhammapada begins with these words:
Mind is the forerunner of all actions.
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a corrupt mind,
suffering follows,
As the wheel follows the hoof of an ox pulling a cart.
Mind is the forerunner of all actions.
All deeds are led by mind, created by mind.
If one speaks or acts with a serene mind,
happiness follows,
As surely as one’s shadow.
Sadly, Allen – frail throughout his life – died of consumption at 47. His nineteen books have sold millions of copies – all of them are still in print – but most were published posthumously. Allen was never a wealthy man, at least in the traditional sense.
Yet he believed deeply in his mission. His words have inspired men and women the world over. And he was an enormous influence on followers like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale.
More than anything else, As a Man Thinketh is a meditation. But it is also a revelation. Allen demonstrates how your life is enhanced and ultimately perfected by inward development.
It’s a fine message for graduates just setting out to tackle the world – and not a bad reminder for the rest of us, either.
Others have preached a similar message, of course. But few have put it in more poetic language:
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
Carpe Diem,
Alex
P.S. If you’d like to pick up an inexpensive gift copy of Allen’s book, click here.
Alexander Green is the Investment Director of The Oxford Club. The Oxford Club Communique, whose portfolio he directs, is ranked among the top 5 investment letters in the nation for 10-year performance by the independent Hulbert Investment Digest. Alex is the author of The New York Times bestseller “The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy… and Get On With Your Life” and, more recently, “The Secret of Shelter Island: Money and What Matters.” He has been featured on Oprah & Friends, CNBC, National Public Radio (NPR), Fox News and “The O’Reilly Factor,” and has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, among others. He currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and Winter Springs, Florida with his wife Karen and their children Hannah and David. www.spiritualwealth.com/about-us/
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do that the things you did do. So leave the safe harbor and Dream, Discover and Explore – while you can.”
– Mark Twain
“Your future is in your hands so why not – “Go For It.”
– Tim Connor
