The world belongs to optimists.
That’s all you have to say.
Just keep your eyes on those blue skies
And you will find the way…
To climb the mountain of success-
Now here’s the magic key:
That while you earn, you have to learn
To help humanity.
-Dr. Robert Kavesh (recently deceased)
Beautiful quote from Avatar 2. As I was hearing it in the movie, I was thinking the quote could also be used to describe air / breathing. Here is the original quote:
“The way of water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and in you. The sea is your home — before your birth, and after your death. Our hearts beat in the womb of the world, our breath burns in the shadow of the deep. The sea gives, and the sea takes. Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.”
-Avatar 2
I made a short video as part of the application process to speak at SXSW Edu, which is a yearly conference on education in Austin, Texas.
Here is the video. Enjoy!!!
The other day I sat in a webinar where I heard LL Cool J say something very close to the following:
Humility is a super power. And I’m not talking about pseudo humility, where you are sitting at the back pew of the church thinking you should be sitting in the front. I’m talking about real humility – having the confidence to be humble; embracing your humanity.
“Love is complete when one human being says to another:
You have wounded me and disappointed me.
You have hurt me beyond description.
But I forgive you with all my heart
because I believe you will heal me also
and I refuse to lose faith in you.
I too have not been blameless.
We need to forgive each other.“
-Anthony T. Padovano
“The opposite of belonging, from the research, is ‘fitting in.’ Fitting in is assessing, and acclimating. Here is what I should say, be. Here is what I shouldn’t say, here’s what I should avoid talking about. Here’s what I should dress like, look like. That’s fitting in.
Belonging, is belonging to yourself first. Speaking your truth, telling your story, and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are. And that’s vulnerable.”
-Brené Brown
This was an interview by Tami Simon from Sounds True publishing.
Brené talks about alot here, but she keeps things very simple and fundamental in a way that probably most of us can immediately connect with.
What do you do when you have control?
You make the right choice.
In other words, act responsibly with the power you wield. This is your chance to perpetuate harmony, or to cause disharmony, in your life. Life will reciprocate to you harmony or disharmony, based on how you handle the power you wield.
A deep and beautiful talk on the healing, fulfilling, and transformative power of authentic human connections.
I love what Emily Esfahani Smith says. She is someone I can always count on, much like Brené Brown, to speak very authentically, with a powerful, conscious heart. Emily Esfahani Smith is a researcher and author. The findings that she speaks about are much of what I have noticed in my own explorations and trials and tribulations of experiencing meaning in life. I am grateful also for the interviewer who goes in rapid pace to ensure that Emily covers a lot of ground in useful depth of her knowledge in this area. I truly hope you enjoy this amazing interview.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-William James
I ran into this very nice talk, and included some great quotes below:
“…for a life to be meaningful, you cant keep looking at the life. You have to see how that life is placed in larger, broader context.”
“…a life that is rich in happiness and rich in meaning….theologian Frederick Buechner I think would label that: finding your calling.”
“Your calling, Buechner says, is that place where your deep gladness, and the world’s deep hunger, meets. Your deep gladness is about you, about what makes you engaged and alive.”
“Finding your calling is discovering what it is that makes you feel alive. And then taking those gifts and skills and moving them out into the world to feed the world’s hunger.”
“…the tension we feel between what we want and what the world needs, is in fact something we don’t want to eliminate, but instead we want to encourage and cultivate.”
“When the world pushes and presses and prods and occasionally pummels you, it is in those moments that you can begin to imagine something different. You need the world and all its adversity, just as desperately as the world needs you.”
“To lead a happy and meaningful life, is to understand the tension that exists between what we want and what the world needs, and to recognize that tension as the gift that it is.”
-Mark Hébert
“…if there’s one thing that I’ve come to realize, if there’s one thing that I see as the biggest problem,
it’s not in building a world where we eliminate the ignorance of others.
It’s in building a world where we teach the acceptance of ourselves,
where we’re okay with who we are, because when we get honest, we see that we all struggle and we all suffer.”
Kevin Breel – Confessions of a depressed comic TED talk
Vulnerability is a powerful thing. It directly helps to counteract shame. Vulnerability and empathy. Which all leads to compassion.
Love is key, and you are the keyhole
Thank you
“The wound is the place where light enters you”
-Rumi
Everything is connected therefore everything you do affects everything