Stories or Quotes that teach, or warm us !!

[Kohinoor]

From time to time, stories or sage sayings pop up. They might not be Classics (we already have a topic for that) but they can certainly be worth repeating.

This thread will be devoted to such stories, quotes, or maxims that we can all do with knowing (and even thinking of daily?). Here are a few to start off


Post #2 - The Boys Down at the Stable - Bob Proctor advised me of this one - tells of all those who would "cut you down if you let them". Know them, and ignore them.

Post #3 - Some sayings I love - funny, sage, mind-bending, and certainly thought-provoking.

Koh

[Kohinoor]

The Boys Down At The Stable

(from Bob Proctor)



A number of years ago a woman by the name of Ann came to a seminar. She was a beautiful actress.

Ann told me of a time that she and three of her girlfriends went to try out for a stage play. She got the leading role in the play and her friends, unfortunately, did not even get in the supporting cast. She worked very hard on her lines over the coming months.

On opening night she was so excited! However, none of her girlfriends showed up to support her. She was devastated… They were good friends she thought.

Ann was in the habit of talking to an older friend of her dad who was a mentor to her. His name was Hap. She phoned Hap and he listened to her story of what transpired. He said, “I am going to send you a letter and I want you to read it and I want you to remember it.”

Here is the letter that he sent her:

Dear Ann,

Once upon a time, there was a fellow by the name of Al Capp who wrote a comic strip called “L’ll Abner”. Many years ago he had some characters in his strip who lived in a town near Dogpatch. They were the town bums, the n’er do wells, the failures whose whole aim in life was to pass judgment on others. Their criticism and ridicule became so vehement that in time the rest of the people in the town became acutely conscious of it. “The boys down at the stable”, as they were called because that’s where they spent most of their time, soon set the social standards of the town. Nobody could do anything without their sanction.

Because they lived within the structure of their crummy little worlds, they would laugh and point their fingers at anyone and everyone who tried to be better than he was. As a result, the people feared the ridicule of the boys down at the stable so much that they stopped trying. Soon everybody became bums and the town died.

In every social structure, Ann, whether it be family, town, county, or state, there are “the boys down at the stable”. They are the jealous ones. They are too scared to try something different. They show their ignorance by laughing at those who do. Learn to recognize them, Ann, for what they are. Don’t let them hurt you. It takes a certain amount of toughness to succeed. One has to rise above those who would tear you down so that they can laugh and say, “I told you so!”.

There are too many of us who love you and want you to make it. I could put myself at the top of the list. You aren’t going to fall flat on your face as they would have you. You are going to do a superb job. Remember this show is only a small step in the direction of greater things you will do, many of which are beyond your wildest dreams. All you have to do is want to. One of the things I like about you best is that you always give it hell for a try.

The show will be a success because of you and others like you who try. There are only winners in the cast. The losers are gathered down at the stable laughing and hoping for your failure. If we could dig down deep inside them, I’m sure we’d find they want to win also but are too scared to try, and they attempt to cover up their own failures as human beings by laughing at others. In a sense, I’m sorry for them. Their guilt must make them very unhappy people.

Much love, and give ‘em hell, Hap

The next time you step out to chase your dreams and someone laughs at you, remember this wonderful note above. You are capable of achieving anything you desire.

[Kohinoor]

One-liners that speak to me:-

"Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, it empties today of its strength." - Corrie Ten Boom

"If it isn’t a little scary, it probably isn’t worth your time" - Ted Murphy, Entrepreneur

“Yesterday, you said tomorrow.” - Nike

“You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.” - Jennifer Freeman

“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them - just find a different way to stand.” - Oprah Winfrey

"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia, until we ultimately become enslaved by it" - Robert Heinlein - 1907-1988, Novelist and Screenwriter

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” - Rebecca Solnit

"If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought."

"Is this something you want or something someone else wants you to want?"

"In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." - Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965, Theologian, Philosopher, and Physician

For those who might be in the wrong place e.g. career-wise:-
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it's stupid.” Your clear waters are out there, and this difficult period of uncertainty is a reminder to stop climbing trees; and find an environment that better suits your soon to be celebrated scales and fins. Albert Einstein

Few people take objectives really seriously. They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined. - Richard Koch, Author

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. - Winston Churchill


to be continued.....

Come on back regularly for another dose of mental medicine !!

Koh,

[Kohinoor]

A happy bump - read this thread when you have time-out with a black coffee, and enjoy some heart-warming or light-switch-on quotes !!

Have a great day,
Koh

[Gequino]

This is a very useful thread, thanx a lot for creating it. Will copy it and read during my holiday in property in Athens in one week.

[Kohinoor]

An engaging story all about Merlin (a Great Pyrenees dog) - I related so much to this tale - I hope you do too.

Lessons Merlin Taught Me
Today, Merlin came home to me by way of a UPS truck.
My beloved, forever shedding Great Pyrenees partner in crime these last 11 years passed on to another form of life. He died because half of his heart had given out, proving my suspicions from his puppyhood that he, like the Whoville Grinch, had a heart that was simply several sizes too big.
After I kissed his nose for the last time at the doggie hospital, I arranged to have his ashes delivered to me, which was supposed to take a day or two at most. Instead, they called me yesterday (14 days later) to tell me they’d accidentally tried to deliver him to another family and that he was still on the UPS truck, on his way to me this time. Today, true to form, a sweating UPS truck driver sprinted to my door with Merlin solidly lodged under his arm.

As I carried Merlin (in his new state) upstairs, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Nothing in the entire world caused greater gnashing-of-teeth for Merlin than the UPS truck and its attached men in brown. It was the only single thing that taunted him into trampling down fences and sprinting for blocks down rush-hour traffic streets … and here’s how he ended up, lodged in the bowels of the evil incarnate monster itself (AND during the holiday season to boot) in herkyjerky, stop-and-go fashion for two full weeks.

That, my friend, is Karma. Take it from Merlin: If you’re chasing after anything in life with some level of misdirected anger, that very thing will likely get the better of you in the end.

That being said, I’ll give Merlin credit for helping me maintain misdirected frustration and hurt over the last 11 years – even this last year. Merlin was a high-spirited, conniving creature who liked to skitter around on his tippy-toes and create instant wainscoting in every home by sliding drooly, dirty tennis balls along the wall. But he’d also follow me from room to room when he knew I was upset until I’d finally flump down and throw my arms around him. He loved me unconditionally with great warmth and a giving soul that knew no other way to be. And that was a lesson I did, indeed, learn from Merlin.

This last year didn’t start well. As the New Year began, I found myself struggling with a business I didn’t really like, recovering from a lost love I really wasn’t recovering from, and paying ridiculous rent I didn’t really want to pay anymore. So, ’round about March, Merlin and I had a talk and decided to stop with the misdirected frustration and start creating a better story.

And so we did. As I say in all the stuff I write, “If you don’t like the situation you’re in, recognize you created it and fix it.”

It was time to take my own medicine. Merlin and I drove all around the town of Laguna Beach in my little convertible until we found our new home.
With the move made in March to a lovely place just a block from the beach, I then tackled the not liking-my-business issue with renewed determination. Fact is, if you’re not doing what you love to do every day, you’re cheating yourself. I knew there were too many good and exciting people out there to work with, and as I focused on THIS fact, those very people started coming in the door.

It wasn’t until July that I got up the nerve to e-mail the one person I wanted to work with most – my most favorite past client. This client and I have tried and failed at working together twice before, and hitting that initial “SEND” button this time around wasn’t easy. Ten minutes later, however, we were on our way to working together again and now we’re back on track and working quite harmoniously. (Can you imagine? I waited all that time … well, ok, waited and worried all that time with a host of negative scenarios drummed up in my head … and it really just took a little bit of love and a single action step on my side.)

I delight in what I do every day for this man’s company. It’s not easy and it has its tenuous, warbly-chin, pounding headache moments. But, I delight in it. Pure and simple as that. It’s supposed to be that simple, I believe.
On a connected note this year – I also “happened” upon an entire web programming team that’s proven quite capable of handling all my client urgencies. I’ve since added the entire lot to the Armitage, Inc. fold, and as my in-house web team tripled in size, the subsequent client list began to grow, and business is bustling.

What I find most amazing about my new web team is that I was solidly prepared to NOT like working with them after all the experiences I’d had through the years with not-so-great programming teams. But, again, it’s all about focusing on what I want to expand, not on what I don’t want to expand. Fortunately, somewhere along the way, I also realized that chasing programmers down rush-hour streets while barking my fool head off was only going to succeed in getting ME killed – yet another lesson I learned from Merlin, who always and eventually gave up the chase with a shrug and, instead, nosed an easy path home.

On the opposite end of the work spectrum, I somehow ended up in an outrigger canoe club on the wild ocean this summer. How a landlocked Denver girl ever found her way to jumping in and out of a Hawaiian-style 6-man canoe is something I still can’t quite fathom myself, much less explain to anyone else. My friend, Deb, a fellow spin-class victim, made me promise to try it and, after my first grudging day, I was hooked. Line and sinker, I might add. In our last race of the season, we paddled 31 miles to Catalina Island. Aside from this odd sport opening up a host of uncommon injuries and new battle scars, it also opened up a whole new community of fun, athletic people to me – people from all walks of life who would have never crossed my path otherwise.

I figured it was Merlin’s affable spirit guiding the way. After all, he was the one compelled to wander the neighborhood, moseying into open garages and neighbors’ family rooms (for criminy’s sake) to welcome newbies to the neighborhood or obligingly stand for a friendly ear scratch. When his frantic Mom (me) would finally track him down, my extraverted pup would have a whole new set of friends for me to meet. Merlin only expected to find love, and his expectations always rang true.

As I’ve spent the last few weeks packing away Merlin’s food bowls, leashes and palm tree-woven collar, I continue to come across drifting Merlin hairs that waft and swirl in the breeze. I grab at them and stuff these precious few hairs into a silver box on my dresser. (They even smell like his doggie shampoo.) I wipe tears away and then laugh at my pathetic-ness: I’m now desperately saving the one item that used to drive me to the brink of insanity. As a fastidious (aka: clean freak) Virgo, Merlin’s hair, hair and MORE HAIR was initially a frustration. When he was a puppy at our first house together, we got into the habit of sitting together for hours on the patio as I brushed him and gabbled about my day, piling the new haystack of captured Merlin hair in a basket nearby. I can still remember the spring day when Merlin and I were out on our daily walk and I realized that the birds in the neighborhood were padding their dear nests with Merlin’s soft hair. Telltale tufts of white would peek at us from this branch or that bush, a downy welcome gift for their tiny baby birds.

That discovery stopped me in my tracks. All this time, I’d been bothered about something that others considered a luxurious gift. I never looked at Merlin the same way again. Indeed, Merlin was my luxurious gift, all gentle eyes, gray-tipped ears, endless shedding hair, drooly chest and giant soul of him.

So, here I sit with Merlin perched on my lap. (This must be nirvana for Merlin – he is, at last, a lap dog.) And his lessons are here in my head:

• If you chase after something in anger, it will find a way to bite you back.
• Be sure to follow your closest friends from room to room when you know they’re upset.
• Give generously of your warmth and soul. You’ve got more where that came from.
• Be the first to press the “SEND” button when you haven’t talked to someone in a while.
• Be the first to wag your tail and say “HELLO,” too.
• There is something about the very essence of you that, while normal or everyday in your own opinion, is considered a magical and gracious gift to others.
• Delight in your days. It’s supposed to be that simple.
• And lastly, never lose sight of your family and friends. They’re the home you want to return to, even if the only way to get there is by UPS truck.

Diane Armitage
After 25 years of writing for Bob Proctor, Diane Armitage is releasing a new book on Dec 1, 2019: “Conversations With Bob: 25 Years of the Most Memorable (Sometimes Super-Whacky) Chats with my Mentor Bob Proctor that Transformed my Ordinary Life to Spectacular.”

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Koh again - you had to read the whole story to get perspective, but, in the end, it is that last group of learnings that puts a huge smile on my face, along with an occasional abashed thought as I realise I can do better than I have been in some aspects. But overall, what a lovely warm story Diane has written. I plan to send the lady an email to let her know just how special I think she is for having put that together for all of us.

Hope you got something from it too,

Koh