Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen

Introduction
We know everything we need to know to end the needless emotional
suffering that many people currently experience
...

It is difficult to translate the spirit of a live presentation into the written
word
...
When you are reading these
stories, please forget everything you ever learned in your speed-reading
classes
...
Listen to the words in your heart as well as in your
mind
...
Let it touch you
...

Some stories will speak louder to you than others
...
Some will make you cry
...

Some will give you a warm feeling all over
...
There is no right reaction
...

Let it happen and let it be
...
Take your time
...
Savor it
...
It represents thousands of hours of
culling the "best of the best" from our 40 years of combined experience
...
It may be a little too rich
...
It is all essence with very little froth
...
There are more explanations and
explorations of how to apply the lessons and principles to your everyday
life
...
Take the time to digest them and make
them your own
...
When a
story makes you think of another person, call the person it brings to
mind and share it
...
They are meant to inspire and motivate you
...
Many of the stories will be
in their voice, not ours
...
For all of those that are from fellow speakers and
trainers, we have included a contributors section in the back of the book
where we have listed their name, address and phone number so you can
contact them yourself if you wish
...

Share With Us
We would love to hear your reactions to the stories in this book
...

We also invite you to send us stories you would like to see published in
future editions of Chicken Soup For The Soul You can send us either
stories you have written or stories written by others that you have liked
...
O
...
com
You can also' visit the Chicken Soup For The Soul site on
America Online at keyword: chickensoup
...


ON LOVE
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides
and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love
...

Tielhard de Chardin

Love: The One Creative Force
Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house
...


...
Be
the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness
in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting
...
They were asked to write an
evaluation of each boy's future
...
" Twenty-five years later another sociology
professor came across the earlier study
...
With the
exception of 20 boys who had moved away or died, the students learned
that 176 of the remaining 180 had achieved more than ordinary success
as lawyers, doctors and businessmen
...

Fortunately, all the men were in the area and he was able to ask each
one, "How do you account for your success?" In each case the reply
came with feeling, 'There was a teacher
...

The teacher's eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile
...
"I loved those boys
...
if that were possible
...
We laughed and cried and held hands and told
each other of our love and agreed that it was time
...
" He laughed at the
absurdity of that; Dad didn't believe in reincarnation
...
"
My father and I were so deeply connected I felt his heart attack in my
chest at the moment he died
...

Day after day I prayed to hear from him, but nothing happened
...
And yet four long
months passed and I heard and felt nothing but grief at his loss
...

One day, while I was lying on a massage table in a dark quiet room
waiting for my appointment, a wave of longing for my father swept over
me
...
I noticed that my mind was in a hyper-acute state
...
I checked to make sure I was awake and
not dreaming, and I saw that I was as far removed from a dreamy state
as one could possibly be
...
Then I thought, "I've been trying to control the
messages from the other side; I will stop that now
...
Her magnificent silver hair crowned her sweet face
...
She
looked as she had a dozen years ago, before the wasting away had
begun
...
She

seemed to be waiting and did not speak
...

I said, "Oh, Mother, I'm so sorry that you had to suffer with that horrible
disease
...
Then she smiled—a beautiful smile—and
said very distinctly, "But all I remember is love
...

I began to shiver in a room suddenly gone cold, and I knew in my bones
that the love we give and receive is all that matters and all that is
remembered
...

Her words are the most important I have ever heard, and that moment is
forever engraved on my heart
...
With their love, they created a little girl
...

When she was very little, he would pick her up, hum a tune and dance
with her around the room, and he would tell her, "I love you, little girl
...
" The little girl would pout and say, "I'm
not a little girl anymore
...
"
The little girl who-was-not-little-anymore left her home and went into
the world
...
She saw that he truly was great and strong, for now she
recognized his strengths
...
It didn't matter where she went in the world, the
man would call her and say, "I love you, little girl
...
The great man was damaged
...
He was aphasic, they explained to the girl
...
He could no longer smile, laugh, walk, hug, dance
or tell the little girl who-was-not-little-anymore that he loved her
...
When she walked into the
room and saw him, he looked small and not strong at all
...

The little girl did the only thing she could do
...
Tears ran from both of their eyes and she drew
her arms around the useless shoulders of her father
...
She remembered the
wonderful times together and how she had always felt protected and
cherished by the great man
...

And then she heard from within the man, the beat of his heart
...
The heart beat on,
steadily unconcerned about the damage to the rest of the body
...
She heard what she needed
to hear
...

I love you I love you I love you Little girl Little girl Little girl
And she was comforted
...
Along with a rather short
stature, he had a grotesque hunchback
...
Moses fell hopelessly in love with her
...

When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and
climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with
her
...
After several attempts at conversation,
Moses shyly asked, "Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?"
"Yes," she answered, still looking at the floor
...
"You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, the
Lord announces which girl he will marry
...
Then the Lord added, 'But your wife will
be humpbacked
...
Please, Lord, give me the hump and let her be
beautiful
...
She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand and later
became his devoted wife
...
He is also one of the most genuinely
loving people we know
...
As a result, Lee became a hugger
...
His colleagues dubbed him "the
hugging judge" (as opposed to the hanging judge, we suppose)
...
On the
outside it reads "A heart for a hug
...
Lee will take out his
Hugger Kit, go around to people and offer them a little red heart in
exchange for a hug
...
At a conference in San Francisco, the local news
media challenged him by saying, "It is easy to give out hugs here in the
conference to people who self-selected to be here
...
"
They challenged Lee to give away some hugs on the streets of San
Francisco
...
First he approached a woman walking by
...
I'm giving out these hearts in
exchange for a hug
...
"Too easy," challenged the
local commentator
...
He saw a meter maid who was
being given a hard time by the owner of a BMW to whom she was
giving a ticket
...
I'm the hugging judge and I'm
offering you one
...

The television commentator threw down one final challenge
...
San Francisco bus drivers are the toughest, crabbiest,
meanest people in the whole town
...
"
Lee took the challenge
...
This has got to be one of the most stressful jobs in the
whole world
...
Would you like one?" The six-foot-two, 230-pound bus driver got
out of his seat, stepped down and said, "Why not?"
Lee hugged him, gave him a heart and waved good-bye as the bus
pulled out
...
Finally, the commentator said,
"I have to admit, I'm very impressed
...
Nancy
is a professional clown and she was wearing her clown costume,
makeup and all
...
"
When they arrived at the home, they started giving out balloon hats,
hearts and hugs to the patients
...
He had never
before hugged people who were terminally ill, severely retarded or
quadriplegic
...
But after a while it became
easier, with Nancy and Lee acquiring an entourage of doctors, nurses
and orderlies who followed them from ward to ward
...
These were 34 of the
worst cases Lee had seen in his life
...
But out of their commitment to share their love and to make
a difference, Nancy and Lee started working their way around the room
followed by the entourage of medical staff, all of whom by now had
hearts on their collars and balloon hats on their heads
...
Leonard was wearing a
big white bib which he was drooling on
...
There's no way we can
get through to this person
...
He's a fellow
human being, too, isn't he?" Then she placed a funny balloon hat on his
head
...

He took a deep breath, leaned down and gave Leonard a hug
...
Lee
turned to the staff for some sort of explanation only to find that every
doctor, nurse and orderly was crying
...
"
How simple it is to make a difference in the lives of others
...
Hansen

It Can't Happen Here?
We need 4 hugs a day for survival
...
We need 12 hugs a day for growth
...
Most people respond by saying, "You could never hug people
where I work
...

Dear Jack,
I started out this day in rather a bleak mood
...
I just grumbled
something but then I began to think about hugs and everything during
the week
...

Well I decided to make it "hugs day" and I started giving hugs to the
customers who came to my counter
...
An MBA student jumped up on top of the counter and
did a dance
...
These
two Xerox repair guys, who were kind of just walking along not really
talking to each other, were so surprised, they just woke up and suddenly
were talking and laughing down the hall
...
I'm sorry that this letter is so long but I'm just
really excited
...
I couldn't
believe this was happening
...
S
...
He said,
"Wow! Policemen never get hugs
...
It helps the immune system, cures depression,
reduces stress and induces sleep
...
Hugging is nothing less than a miracle drug
...
It is organic, naturally sweet, no artificial
ingredients, nonpolluting, environmentally friendly and 100 percent
wholesome
...
Great for any occasion, fun to give and
receive, shows you care, comes with its awn wrapping and, of course,
fully returnable
...
No batteries to wear out, inflation-proof,
nonfattening, no monthly payments, theft-proof and nontaxable
...
When we
open our hearts and arms, we encourage others to do the same
...
Are there any words you'd like to say?
Are there any hugs you want to share? Are you waiting and hoping
someone else will ask first? Please don't wait! Initiate!
Charles Faraone
Jack Canfield

Who You Are Makes A Difference
A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in high
school by telling them the difference they each made
...
First she told them how
the student made a difference to her and the class
...
"
Afterwards the teacher decided to do a class project to see what kind of
impact recognition would have on a community
...
Then they were to follow up on the
results, see who honored whom and report back to the class in about a
week
One of the boys in the class went to a junior executive in a nearby
company and honored him for helping him with his career planning
...
Then he gave him two
extra ribbons, and said, "We're doing a class project on recognition, and
we'd like you to go out, find somebody to honor, give them a blue
ribbon, then give them the extra blue ribbon so they can acknowledge a
third person to keep this acknowledgment ceremony going
...
"
Later that day the junior executive went in to see his boss, who had been
noted, by the way, as being kind of a grouchy fellow
...
The boss seemed very surprised
...
His surprised boss said, "Well, sure
...
As he gave him the last extra ribbon, he
said, "Would you do me a favor? Would you take this extra ribbon and
pass it on by honoring somebody else? The young boy who first gave
me the ribbons is doing a project in school and we want to keep this
recognition ceremony going and find out how it affects people
...

He said, "The most incredible thing happened to me today
...
Imagine
...
Then he put this blue ribbon that says 'Who
I Am Makes A Difference' on my jacket above my heart
...
As I was
driving home tonight, I started thinking about whom I would honor with
this ribbon and I thought about you
...

"My days are really hectic and when I come home I don't pay a lot of
attention to you
...
Besides your mother, you are the most
important person in my life
...
His
whole body shook
...
Now I don't need to
...

As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance
...
Time and again he kept
hurling things out into the ocean
...

Our friend was puzzled
...
I was wondering what you are doing
...
You see, it's low tide
right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore
...
"
"I understand," my friend replied, "but there must be thousands of
starfish on this beach
...
There are
simply too many
...
Can't you see that
you can't possibly make a difference?"
The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish,
and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "Made a difference to
that one!"
Jack Canfield and Mark V
...

In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers
...
The time came for the old man to get off
...
"I can see you love
the flowers," he explained, "and I think my wife would like for you to
have them
...
" The girl accepted the
flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the
gate of a small cemetery
...
Hansen

A Brother Like That
A friend of mine named Paul received an automobile from his brother as
a Christmas present
...
"Is this your car, Mister?" he asked
...
"My brother gave it to me for Christmas
...
"You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you
nothing? Boy, I wish
...

Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for
...
But what the lad said jarred Paul all the
way down to his heels
...
"
Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added,
"Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"
"Oh yes, I'd love that
...
He thought he knew what the lad wanted
...
But Paul was wrong again
...

He ran up the steps
...
He was carrying his little crippled brother
...

"There she is, Buddy, just like I told you upstairs
...
And some day I'm gonna
give you one just like it
...
"
Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car
...

That Christmas Eve, Paul learned what Jesus meant when he said: "It is
more blessed to give
...

"Yes, I do
...
But that's because I've had some inspiring teachers
...
Many years ago, when I worked as a
volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liza
who was suffering from a rare and serious disease
...
The doctor
explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he
would be willing to give his blood to his sister
...
'
"As the transfusion progressed, he lay in a bed next to his sister and
smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks
...
He looked up at the doctor and
asked with a trembling voice, 'Will I start to die right away?'
"Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was
going to have to give her all his blood
...
"
Dan Millman

Big Ed
When I arrived in the city to present a seminar on Tough-Minded
Management, a small group of people took me to dinner to brief me on
the people I would talk to the next day
...
At dinner he informed me that he was a
troubleshooter for a huge international organization
...

"Joe," he said, "I'm really looking forward to tomorrow because all of
the guys need to listen to a tough guy like you
...
" He grinned and winked
...
I knew the next day was going to be different from what he
was anticipating
...

Three years later I returned to that city to present another management
seminar to approximately the same group
...
At
about ten o'clock he suddenly stood up and asked loudly, "Joe, can I say
something to these people?"
I grinned and said, "Sure
...
"
Big Ed went on to say, "All of you guys know me and some of you
know what's happened to me
...
Joe, I think you'll appreciate it by the time I've finished
...
I wondered
what in the world that had to do with being tough
...
But I couldn't see
what love had to do with it
...
What kind of courage would it take to tell my
wife I loved her? Couldn't anybody do it? You had also said this should
be in the daylight and not in the bedroom
...
My wife looked up and asked me

what I had said, and I answered, 'Oh nothing
...
' For a minute she looked startled
...
'
"We talked a while about how love, if there's enough of it, can dissolve
all kinds of tensions, and suddenly I decided on the spur of the moment
to call my oldest son in New York
...
When I got him on the phone, I blurted out, 'Son, you're liable to
think I'm drunk, but I'm not
...
'
'There was a pause at his end and then I heard him say quietly, 'Dad, I
guess I've known that, but it's sure good to hear
...
' We had a good chat and then I called my youngest son in
San Francisco
...
I told him the same thing and this,
too, led to a real fine talk like we'd never really had
...

"I began to read books on the subject
...

"As some of you guys here know, I really changed the way I work with
people
...
I learned what it was
like to try to get to know people's strengths rather than dwelling on their
weaknesses
...
Maybe the most important thing of all was that I really
began to understand that an excellent way to show love and respect for
people was to expect them to use their strengths to meet objectives we
had worked out together
...
Incidentally, talk about practical!
I'm now executive vice-president of the company and they call me a
pivotal leader
...
When
we got out, my friend said to the driver, "Thank you for the ride
...
"
The taxi driver was stunned for a second
...
I admire the way you
keep cool in heavy traffic
...

"What was that all about?" I asked
...
"I believe it's the
only thing that can save the city
...
I believe I have made that taxi driver's day
...
He's going to be nice to those 20 fares because someone
was nice to him
...
Eventually the
goodwill could spread to at least 1,000 people
...
"
"I'm not depending on it," my friend said
...
If out of
ten I can make three happy, then eventually I can indirectly influence
the attitudes of 3,000 more
...
"
"Nothing is lost if it doesn't
...
He neither received a larger tip nor a
smaller tip
...
"
"You're some kind of a nut," I said
...
I have made a study of this
...
"
"But they're not doing a good job
...
Why shouldn't someone say a kind word to them?"
We were walking past a structure in the process of being built and
passed five workmen eating their lunch
...
"That's a
magnificent job you men have done
...
"
The workmen eyed my friend suspiciously
...

"Ah
...
You must all be very proud
...
I said to him, "I haven't seen anyone like you since
Man of La Mancha
...
Somehow
the city will benefit from their happiness
...
"You're just one man
...
Making people in
the city become kind again is not an easy job, but if I can enlist other
people in my campaign
...

"Yes, I know," he replied
...
"
Art Buchwald

A Simple Gesture
Everybody can be great
...
You don't have
to have a college degree to serve
...
You only need a heart full of grace
...

Martin Luther King, Jr
...
Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered
articles
...
As they walked Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill,
that he loved video games, baseball and history, that he was having a lot
of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his
girlfriend
...
The afternoon passed pleasantly with a few
laughs and some shared
small talk, then Mark went home
...
They ended up in the same high school where
they had brief contacts over the years
...

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met
...
"You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to
leave a mess for anyone else
...
But after we
spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had
killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that
might follow
...
You saved my life
...
Schlatter

The Smile
Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at
your children, smile at each other—it doesn't matter who it is—and that
will help you to grow up in greater love for each other
...
This is a whimsical and fabulous book
and works as a children's story as well as a thought-provoking adult
fable
...

Saint-Exupery was a fighter pilot who fought against the Nazis and was
killed in action
...
He wrote a fascinating story based on that
experience entitled The Smile (Le Sourire)
...
It isn't clear whether or not he meant this to be
autobiographical or fiction
...

He said that he was captured by the enemy and thrown into a jail cell
...
From here,
I'll tell the story as I remember it in my own words
...
I became terribly nervous and
distraught
...
I found one and because of my shaking
hands, I could barely get it to my lips
...

"I looked through the bars at my jailer
...
After all, one does not make eye contact with a thing, a corpse
...

"As he came close and lit the match, his eyes inadvertently locked with
mine
...
I don't know why I did that
...
In any case, I smiled
...
I know he didn't want to, but my smile
leaped through the bars and generated a smile on his lips, too
...

"I kept smiling at him, now aware of him as a person and not just a
jailer
...
'Do
you have kids?' he asked
...
' I took out my wallet and nervously fumbled for the
pictures of my family
...
My eyes filled with
tears
...
Tears came to his eyes, too
...
Out of the jail, quietly and by back routes, out of the town
...
And without another word,
he turned back toward the town
...
"
Yes, the smile—the unaffected, unplanned, natural connection between
people
...

I'm not afraid to call it the soul
...

We couldn't have hate or envy or fear
...
Saint-Exupery's story
speaks of that magic moment when two souls recognize each other
...
Falling in love is one example
...
Why do we smile when we see a baby? Perhaps
it's because we see someone without all the defensive layers, someone
whose smile for us we know to be fully genuine and without guile
...

Hanoch McCarty

Amy Graham
After flying all night from Washington, D
...
, I was tired as I arrived at
the Mile High Church in Denver to conduct three services and hold a
workshop on prosperity consciousness
...
Fred Vogt asked me, "Do you know about the
Make-A-Wish Foundation?"
"Yes," I replied
...

They gave her three days
...
"
I was shocked
...
I couldn't
believe it
...
"T" or Arnold
Schwarzenegger
...
Why would a kid with only a few days
to live want to come hear a motivational speaker? Suddenly my
thoughts were interrupted
...
Before me
stood a 17-year-old girl wearing a bright red and orange turban to cover
her head, which was bald from all of the chemotherapy treatments
...
She said, "My two goals were to graduate
from high school and to attend your sermon
...
They didn't think I'd have enough energy
...
"
Tears welled in my eyes; I was choked up
...
I was totally moved
...
Thanks for wanting to come
...

I've attended many healing seminars in the United States, Canada,
Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia
...

That Sunday afternoon I held a seminar that Amy and her parents
attended
...

I humbly asked the audience if they wanted to learn a healing process
that might serve them for life
...
They unanimously wanted to learn
...
Then I paired
them off with a partner to feel the healing energy emanating from
themselves to another
...
"
The audience was in alignment and it was an ecstatic feeling
...
Five
percent of us have it so dramatically pouring forth from our hands that
we could make it our profession
...
I want to bring her up here and let you all send healing lifeforce energy toward her
...
She did not request it
...
"
The audience chanted, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Amy's dad led her up onto the stage
...
(The
doctors hadn't let her walk for the two weeks prior to this seminar
...

Two weeks later she called to say that her doctor had discharged her
after a total remission
...

I have learned never to underestimate the healing power we all have
...
We just have to
remember to use it
...
Hansen

A Story For Valentine's Day
Larry and Jo Ann were an ordinary couple
...
Like any other ordinary couple, they
struggled to make ends meet and to do the right things for their children
...

Much of their conversation concerned what was wrong in their marriage
and who was to blame
...

"You know, Jo Ann, I've got a magic chest of drawers
...
"I want to
thank you for filling them all these years
...
"What do you
want, Larry?"
"Nothing
...
"
This wasn't the first time Larry had done something odd, so Jo Ann
pushed the incident out of her mind until a few days later
...
You put down the right numbers 15 out of 16 times
...
"
Disbelieving what she had heard, Jo Ann looked up from her mending
...
Why stop now?"
"No reason
...
"
Jo Ann shook her head and went back to her mending
...

Nevertheless, the next day when Jo Ann wrote a check at the grocery
store, she glanced at her checkbook to confirm that she had put down
the right check number
...

She tried to disregard the incident, but Larry's strange behavior
intensified
...
"I appreciate all
your effort
...
"

Then "Gee, Jo Ann, the house looks spiffy
...
" And even "Thanks, Jo Ann, for just being
you
...
"
Jo Ann was growing worried
...

Her fears that something peculiar was happening to her husband were
confirmed by 16-year-old Shelly, who complained, "Dad's gone
bonkers, Mom
...
With all this makeup and
these sloppy clothes, he still said it
...
What's wrong
with him?"
Whatever was wrong, Larry didn't get over it
...

Over the weeks, Jo Ann grew more accustomed to her mate's unusual
behavior and occasionally even gave him a grudging "Thank you
...
"I am going to do the dishes
...
"
(Long, long pause
...
Thank you very much!"
Jo Ann's step was now a little lighter, her self-confidence higher and
once in a while she hummed
...
"I rather like Larry's new behavior," she thought
...
This time it was Jo Ann who spoke
...
I don't think I've ever told you how much I
appreciate it
...
But it's one I'm thankful to live
with
...

Jo Ann Larsen, Deseret News

Carpe Diem!
One who stands as a shining example of courageous expression is John
Keating, the transformative teacher portrayed by Robin Williams in
Dead Poets Society
...

These young men, as Keating points out to them, have lost sight of their
dreams and ambitions
...
They plan to become doctors,
lawyers and bankers because that is what their parents have told them
they are going to do
...

An early scene in the movie shows Mr
...
"Look at these pictures, boys," Keating tells the
students
...
They planned to take the world by storm and make
something magnificent of their lives
...
Now they
are all pushing up daisies
...

Keating leans into the cluster of preppies and whispers audibly, "Carpe
diem! Seize the day!"
At first the students do not know what to make of this strange teacher
...
They come to
respect and revere Mr
...

All of us are walking around with some kind of birthday card we would
like to give—some personal expression of joy, creativity or aliveness
that we are hiding under our shirt
...
The only problem is that she is the girlfriend of a famous
jock
...
Then he remembers
Mr
...

And so he does
...
In the process he gets turned away by her, punched in
the nose by her boyfriend and faces embarrassing setbacks
...

Ultimately she feels the genuineness of his caring and opens her heart to
him
...
He has made his life
extraordinary
...
I
developed a crush on a cute girl I met in a pet store
...
But somehow none of this seemed to matter
...
And it seemed to me
she enjoyed my company as well
...

On the threshold of calling her, I sat and looked at the phone for about
half an hour
...
I felt like a high
school boy, bouncing between excited anticipation and fear of rejection
...
But I felt too enthusiastic about being
with her to let those fears stop me
...

She thanked me for asking and told me she already had plans
...
The same voice that told me not to call advised me to
give up before I was further embarrassed
...
There was more inside of me that wanted
to come to life
...

I went to the mall and got her a pretty birthday card on which I wrote a
poetic note
...
As I approached the door, that same disturbing voice
cautioned me, "What if she doesn't like you? What if she rejects you?"
Feeling vulnerable, I stuffed the card under my shirt
...
This way I would not be at risk
and would avoid rejection or embarrassment
...
Feeling ill-at-ease, I began to make my exit
...
It came in a whisper, not unlike that of Mr
...
It prompted
me, "Remember Knox Overstreet
...
How can I go
around telling other people to live their vision, I asked myself, when I
am not living my own? Besides, what's the worst thing that could

happen? Any woman would be delighted to receive a poetic birthday
card
...
As I made that choice I felt a surge of
courage course through my veins
...

1 felt more satisfied and at peace with myself than I had in a long
time… I needed to learn to open my heart and give love without
requiring anything in return
...
As I handed it to her I felt an incredible
aliveness and excitement—plus fear
...
") But I did it
...
She said,
"Thanks" and put the card aside without even opening it
...

I felt disappointed and rejected
...

I offered a polite good-bye and walked out of the store
...
I began to feel exhilarated
...
I
had expressed my heart and that felt fantastic! I had stretched beyond
fear and gone out on the dance floor
...
(Emmet Fox said, "Do it trembling if you must, but do it!") I
had put my heart on the line without demanding a guarantee of the
results
...
I opened my
feelings to her without an attachment to a particular response
...

My exhilaration deepened to a warm bliss
...
I realized the purpose of the
whole experience: I needed to learn to open my heart and give love
without requiring anything in return
...
It was about deepening my
relationship with myself
...
Mr
...
But most of all, I was proud
...
Through that simple interaction I clearly saw the dynamics that
are required to make any relationship and perhaps the whole world
work: Just keep putting your love out there
...
But that is not
what hurts us
...
We were born

to love
...
We
function most powerfully when we are giving love
...

But this is the kind of upside-down thinking that has caused so many of
our problems
...
It is not about what comes back; it is about what goes out!
Alan Cohen

I Know You, You're Just Like Me!
One of our closest friends is Stan Dale
...
Several years ago, in
an effort to learn what the people in the Soviet Union were really like,
he took 29 people to the Soviet Union for two weeks
...

While walking through a park in the industrial city of Kharkov, I
spotted an old Russian veteran of World War II
...
This is not an act of egotism
...
I went up to this old man sitting with
his wife and said, "Druzhba i mir" (friendship and peace)
...
S
...
S
...
R
...
Druzhba i mir
...

For the next few minutes he and his wife spoke in Russian as if I
understood every word, and I spoke English as if I knew he would
understand
...
We hugged, and laughed and cried, all the
while saying, "Druzhba i mir, Americanski
...
I love you!"
After about five minutes we said good-bye, and the seven of us in our
little group walked on
...
He came up to me,
took off his Order of Lenin medal (probably his most prized possession)
and pinned it to my jacket
...
Then we
both cried, looked into each other's eyes for the longest time, and said,
"Dossvedanya" (good-bye)
...
Every day we met and touched hundreds of people in

every possible and impossible setting
...
There are now hundreds of school
children from the three schools we visited who will not be quite so
ready to think of Americans as people who want to "nuke" them
...
They gave us flowers, cakes,
buttons, paintings, dolls, but most importantly, their hearts and open
minds
...
We hugged, kissed, danced and drank
champagne, schnapps and vodka with the bride and groom, as well as
Momma and Poppa and the rest of the family
...
Four
hours later, none of us wanted to part
...

The following night "our family" was feted by us at our hotel
...
We
danced every dance as if we were passionate lovers, which is exactly
what we were
...
How would you feel when
you arrived at your hotel in Moscow, if there were a telephone message
waiting for you, written in Russian, from Mikhail Gorbachev's office
saying he regretted he could not meet with you that weekend because he
would be out of town, but instead he had arranged for your entire group
to meet for two hours in a round-table discussion with about a halfdozen members of the Central Committee? We had an extremely frank
discussion about everything, including sex
...
Yes, how
would you feel? Probably just like us
...
" We are going to have to hug them, and kiss them
...
And we are going to have to sit and talk and walk
and cry with them
...
Then the
saying, "I know you, you're just like me!" will take on a mega-meaning
of, "This is 'my family,' and I will stand by them no matter what!"
Stan Dale

Another Way
The train clanked and rattled through the suburbs of Tokyo on a drowsy
spring afternoon
...
I gazed absently
at the drab houses and dusty hedgerows
...
The
man staggered into our car
...
Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby
...
It was a
miracle that the baby was unharmed
...
The laborer aimed a kick at the retreating back of the old
woman but missed as she scuttled to safety
...
I could see that one of his hands was cut
and bleeding
...
I
stood up
...
I'd been
putting in a solid eight hours of Aikido training nearly every day for the
past three years
...
I thought I was tough
...
As students
of Aikido, we were not allowed to fight
...
Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection
with the universe
...
We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it
...
I tried hard
...
My forbearance exalted me
...

In my heart, however, I wanted an absolutely legitimate opportunity
whereby I might save the innocent by destroying the guilty
...
"People are in danger
...
"
Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage
...
"A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese
manners!"

I held on lightly to the commuter strap overhead and gave him a slow
look of disgust and dismissal
...
I wanted him mad, so I pursed my lips and
blew him an insolent kiss
...
"You're gonna get a lesson!" He gathered
himself for a rush at me
...
I remember the strangely joyous, lilting quality of
it—as though you and a friend had been searching diligently for
something, and he had suddenly stumbled upon it
...
We
both stared down at a little old Japanese man
...
He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer,
as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share
...
"C'mere and talk with me
...

The big man followed, as if on a string
...

If his elbow moved so much as a millimeter, I'd drop him in his socks
...
"What'cha been
drinkin'?" he asked, his eyes sparkling with interest
...

"Oh, that's wonderful," the old man said, "absolutely wonderful! You
see, I love sake, too
...
We watch the sun go down, and we look to
see how our persimmon tree is doing
...
Our tree has done better than I expected, though,
especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil
...

As he struggled to follow the old man, his face began to soften
...
"Yeah," he said
...
" His
voice trailed off
...
"
"No," replied the laborer
...
" Very gently, swaying with
the motion of the train, the big man began to sob
...
I'm so ashamed of myself
...

As I stood there in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my makethis-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I felt dirtier than he was
...
As the doors opened, I heard the old
man cluck sympathetically
...
Sit down here and tell me about it
...
The laborer was sprawled on the seat
with his head in the old man's lap
...

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench in the station
...

I had just seen Aikido in action, and the essence of it was love
...
It would be a
long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict
...
It does not mean he wants to
be fed or to be let out or anything of that sort
...

If you have a lap handy, he'll jump into it; if you don't, he's likely to
stand there looking wistful until you make him one
...
Then his motor really
revs up; he squirms to get comfortable; he "makes big hands
...
He looks at you with wide open eyes of adoration, and he gives
you the cat's long slow blink of ultimate trust
...
If he senses that it's all
right, he may stay in your lap for a cozy nap
...
Either way, he's all right
...
"
In our household he isn't the only one who has that need: I share it and
so does my wife
...
Still, because I am a schoolman as well as a parent, I associate it
especially with youngsters, with their quick, impulsive need for a hug, a
warm lap, a hand held out, a coverlet tucked in, not because anything's
wrong, not because anything needs doing, just because that's the way
they are
...
If I could do just
one, it would be this: to guarantee every child, everywhere, at least one
good purring every day
...

Fred T
...
Although her heart was filled with sadness, she also
had a strong feeling of determination
...
Now that was no longer
possible
...
But she still wanted her son's
dreams to come true
...
"
Mom smiled back and said, "Let's see if we can make your wish come
true
...
She explained her son's final wish and asked if it might be
possible to give her six-year-old son a ride around the block on a fire
engine
...
If you'll have your
son ready at seven o'clock Wednesday morning, we'll make him an
honorary fireman for the whole day
...
They're all manufactured right here in Phoenix, so we can get
them fast
...
Bopsy got to sit up on the back of the truck and help steer
it back to the fire station
...

There were three fire calls in Phoenix that day and Bopsy got to go out
on all three calls
...
He was also videotaped for the local
news program
...


One night all of his vital signs began to drop dramatically and the head
nurse, who believed in the Hospice concept that no one should die
alone, began to call the family members to the hospital
...
The chief
replied, "We can do better than that
...
Will
you please do me a favor? When you hear the sirens screaming and see
the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that there is
not a fire? It's just the fire department coming to see one of its finest
members one more time
...
"
About five minutes later a hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital,
extended its ladder up to Bopsy's third floor open window and 14
firemen and two fire-women climbed up the ladder into Bopsy's room
...

With his dying breath, Bopsy looked up at the fire chief and said,
"Chief, am I really a fireman now?"
"Bopsy, you are," the chief said
...

Jack Canfield and Mark V
...
" Signs like that have a way of attracting small
children, and sure enough, a little boy appeared under the store owner's
sign
...

The store owner replied, "Anywhere from $30 to $50
...
"I have
$2
...
"Can I please look at them?"
The store owner smiled and whistled and out of the kennel came Lady,
who ran down the aisle of his store followed by five teeny, tiny balls of
fur
...
Immediately the little
boy singled out the lagging, limping puppy and said, "What's wrong
with that little dog?"
The store owner explained that the veterinarian had examined the little
puppy and had discovered it didn't have a hip socket
...
It would always be lame
...
'That is
the little puppy that I want to buy
...
If you
really want him, I'll just give him to you
...
He looked straight into the store owner's
eyes, pointing his finger, and said, "I don't want you to give him to me
...
In fact, I'll give you $2
...
"
The store owner countered, "You really don't want to buy this little dog
...
"
To this, the little boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a
badly twisted, crippled left leg supported by a big metal brace
...

"Dr
...
"
"I do," retorted Holmes, "I feel like a dime among a lot of pennies
...

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In the fall of 1988 my wife Georgia and I were invited to give a
presentation on self-esteem and peak performance at a conference in
Hong Kong
...

When we arrived in Bangkok, we decided to take a tour of the city's
most famous Buddhist temples
...

However, there was one temple that left an indelible impression in our
hearts and minds
...
The
temple itself is very small, probably no larger than thirty feet by thirty
feet
...
It weighs over
two-and-a-half tons and is valued at approximately one hundred and
ninety-six million dollars! It was quite an awesome sight—the kindly
gentle, yet imposing solid-gold Buddha smiling down at us
...
Next to the glass case was a typewritten page
describing the history of this magnificent piece of art
...
The monastery was to be
relocated to make room for the development of a highway through

Bangkok
...
What's more, rain began to
fall
...

Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha
...

As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and
thought it strange
...
He went to
fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away
at the clay
...
Many hours of labor went by before the monk stood
face to face with the extraordinary solid-gold Buddha
...
The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be
attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering
of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese
...

As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself,
"We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness
created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a 'golden Buddha' a
'golden Christ' or a 'golden essence,' which is our real self
...
Much like the monk with the
hammer and the chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence
once again
...
As I grew older and wiser, I discovered
the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and
decided to change only my country
...

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled
for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would
have none of it
...

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able
to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the
world
...

"Are you on the Notre Dame football team this year?" the judge asked
...
"
"What position?"
"Center, Your Honor
...
"
Coach Frank Leahy, who was in the courtroom, was surprised
...
So when the
proceedings were over, he took Szymanski aside and asked why he had
made such a statement
...

"I hated to do it, Coach," he said
...
"
Dallas Morning News

Covering All The Bases
A little boy was overheard talking to himself as he strode through his
backyard, baseball cap in place and toting ball and bat
...
Then he tossed the ball in
the air, swung and missed
...
He paused a moment to examine
bat and ball carefully
...
" He swung the bat
hard and again missed the ball
...
"What a pitcher!"
Source Unknown
After church one Sunday morning, my five-year-old granddaughter was
intently drawing on a piece of paper
...
"But no one knows
what God looks like," I said
...

Jacque Hall
What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly
...

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me
...

Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine
because I alone choose it
...

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears
...

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me
...
I can
then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests
...
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I
can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and
for ways to find out more about me
...
This is authentic and
represents where I am at that moment in time
...
I can
discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and
invent something new for that which I discarded
...
I have the tools to survive, to be
close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the
world of people and things outside of me
...

I am me and I am okay
...
I could smell her before
I rounded the entrance to where she slept, standing up, by the public
phones
...
If she was not
asleep, she mumbled incoherently
...

One Thanksgiving we had so much food left over, I packed it up,
excused myself from the others and drove over to Fifth Street
...
Leaves were swirling around the streets and hardly
anyone was out, all but a few of the luckless in some warm home or
shelter
...

She was dressed as she always was, even in summer: The warm woolly
layers concealing her old, bent body
...
She was squatting against a wire fence in front
of the playground next to the post office
...

I pulled my shiny car to the curb, rolled down the window and said,
"Mother
...
" and was shocked at the word "Mother
...
is
...

I said, again, "Mother, I've brought you some food
...
Why don't you take it to someone who
really needs it?" Her words were clear, her manners gracious
...

Bobbie Probstein

Response/Ability
the game we play is let's pretend and pretend we're not pretending
we choose to forget who we are and then forget that we've forgotten
who are we really?
the center that watches and runs the show that can choose which way it
will go
the I AM consciousness that powerful loving perfect reflection of the
cosmos
but in our attempt to cope with early situations
we chose or were hypnotized into a passive position
to avoid punishment
or the loss of love
we chose to deny
our response/ability
pretending that
things just happened
or that we were being controlled
taken over
we put ourselves down
and have become used to this masochistic posture
this weakness
this indecisiveness
but we are in reality free
a center of cosmic energy
your will is your power
don't pretend you don't have it
or you won't
Bernard Gunther

The Rules For Being Human
1
...

You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of
this time around
...
You will learn lessons
...
Each day in
this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons
...

3
...

Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation
...
"
4
...

A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have
learned it
...

5
...

There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons
...

6
...
"
When your "there" has become a "here," you will simply obtain another
"there" that will again look better than "here
...
Others are merely mirrors of you
...

8
...

You have all the tools and resources you need
...
The choice is yours
...
Your answers lie inside you
...
All you need to do is
look, listen and trust
...
You will forget all this
...

George Bernard Shaw

Children Learn What They Live
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn
...

If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive
...

If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy
...

If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty
...

If children live with encouragement, they learn to be confident
...

If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves
...

If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal
...

If children live with honesty and fairness, they learn what truth and
justice are
...

If children live with friendliness, they learn that the world is a nice
place in which to live
...

With what are your children living?
Dorothy L Nolte

Why I Chose My Father To Be My Dad
I grew up on a beautiful sprawling farm in Iowa, raised by parents who
are often described as the "salt of the earth and the backbone of the
community
...
They expected us to do
morning and evening chores, get to school on time, get decent grades
and be good people
...
Six children! It was never my idea that there
should be so many of us, but then no one consulted me
...
Like all children, I thought
that there had been a great universal mistake and I had been placed in
the wrong family—most definitely in the wrong state
...
The winters in Iowa are so freezing cold that you
have to make rounds in the middle of the night to see that livestock
aren't stranded in a place where they would freeze to death
...
Winters are that cold in Iowa!
My dad, an incredibly handsome, strong, charismatic and energetic man
was always in motion
...

We honored him and held him in the highest esteem
...
There were no inconsistencies in his life
...
Farming, his chosen work, was his passion; he
was the best
...
He felt at
one with the earth and took great pride in planting and harvesting the
crops
...
He refused to
use soil additives or feed the animals anything other than natural grains
...

Today I can see how conscientious he was because this was in the mid1950s before there was an attempt at universal commitment to earthwide environmental preservation
...
The
relationship we developed from these times together was simply
unforgettable
...
I learned so

much about him
...
Indeed the heart of today's men's groups is about
groping for a father they never really knew
...

Back then I felt as if I was secretly his favorite child, although it's quite
possible that each of us six children felt that way
...
The bad news was that I was the one selected by
Dad to go with him for these midnight and early morning barnyard
checks, and I absolutely detested getting up and leaving a warm bed to
go out into the frosty air
...
He was most understanding, patient, gentle and was
a good listener
...

It was during these times when he was a model teacher—always
focusing on the whys, the reasons for doing
...
He talked about
his war experiences, the whys of the war he served in and about the
region, its people, the effects of war and its aftermath
...
In school I found history all the more exciting and
familiar
...
He instilled a need and love of traveling
...

He talked about the need and love of learning and why a formal
education is important, and he talked about the difference between
intelligence and wisdom
...
"You can do it," he'd say over and over
...
You are bright, you have a good mind and, remember, you're a
Burres
...
I had more
than enough confidence to tackle any course of study
...
D
...
Though the first
doctorate was for Dad and the second for me, there was definitely a
sense of curiosity and quest that made both easy to attain
...
I write and teach on a similar theme
...
He talked about the concept of being and becoming and not
just having and getting
...
"Never sell out on your
heart," he said
...
He said, "Always listen to your instincts and know
that all the answers you'll ever need are within you
...
Be still enough to find the answers within and then listen to them
...
Your goals
should stem from your values, and then your work will radiate your
heart's desire
...
Care about people," he
said, "and always respect mother earth
...
"
My father
...
My dad modeled what he
talked
...
I knew he felt me
worthy, and he wanted me to see that worth
...
He had thought about his life and he lived it daily
...
He married and has loved the same woman for a lifetime
...
They are the greatest lovers I've known
...
I thought he was overly possessive and protective of
his children, but now that I'm a parent I can understand those needs and
see them for what they are
...
I also see how determined he was that we be caring
and responsible adults
...
They are devoted spouses and
parents, and agriculture is their chosen work
...
There is a twist to all this, and I
suspect it's because of his taking me on those midnight rounds
...
I began a career as an
educator, counselor and university professor, eventually writing several
books for parents and children to share what I had learned about the
importance of developing self-esteem in the childhood years
...

They continue to be passed on
...
She's a tomboy, a beautiful 5
foot 9 athlete who letters in three sports each year, frets over the
difference between an A-and a B, and was just named a finalist in the
Miss Teen California contest
...
People always tell me
that my daughter possesses a great kindness, a spirituality, a special fire
deep inside that radiates outward
...

The rewards of esteeming their children and being dedicated parents
have had a most nourishing effect on the lives of my parents as well
...
It is
December
...
Because of obligations at home, my mother
was only able to stay with him for the first few days
...

That night I first called my dad in Rochester to say Merry Christmas
...
Then, I called my mother in Iowa
...
"This is the first time your father and I have ever
spent the holidays apart," she lamented
...
"
I had 14 dinner guests arriving, all ready for a festive evening
...
She called my brothers
...
It was settled
...
I called my father to tell him of
the plans
...
" My brother arrived in Rochester and knocked at my
father's hotel door
...
"You have to tell him, Bobbie
...
"
"Go, Dad," I said gently
...
Tim and my dad started for Iowa
...
By now, all my guests had arrived and all were a
part of this ordeal
...
We called my sister to get the
names of nearby open shopping centers so they could stop for the only
gift my dad would consider giving Mom—the same brand of perfume
he has given her every year at Christmas
...
At 11:50 they drove into the farmstead
...

"Mom, I visited Dad today and he said to bring you his laundry," my
brother said as he handed my mom the suitcases
...
"
Said my father coming out from his hiding, "You won't have time to do
them tonight
...
"Merry
Christmas, Mother!"
"Oh, you kids
...
She
was unable to continue
...

Though I was 2,000 miles away from them, it was one of the most
special Christmases I've shared with my parents
...
That's the strength of
children who love and honor their parents and, of course, the committed
and marvelous marriage my parents share
...
Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise
what's been taught them
...
It was this past
Christmas that I most fully understood why it was necessary that these
two people be my parents
...

Bettie B
...
" So they organized a school
...
To make it easier to administer the curriculum,
all the animals took all the subjects
...

Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop
swimming in order to practice running
...

But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that
except the duck
...

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in
the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up
instead of from the treetop down
...

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely
...

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly
well, and also run, climb and fly a little, had the highest average and
was valedictorian
...
They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined
the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school
...
Reavis

Touched
She is my daughter and is immersed in the turbulence of her 16th year
...
School was not going as well as she had hoped,
nor as well as her mother and I had hoped
...
I
wanted to reach out to her and wrench away all the miseries that had
taken root in her young spirit
...

As a family therapist I've been well-educated about inappropriate
expressions of intimacy between fathers and daughters, primarily by
clients whose lives have been torn apart by sexual abuse
...
How much easier it was to
hold and comfort her when she was two or three or even seven
...
How could I console her while still
respecting the necessary boundaries between a father and a teenage
daughter? I settled for offering her a back rub
...

I gently massaged her bony back and knotted shoulders as I apologized
for my recent absence
...
I assured
her that it's hard to beat the back rub of a concerned father, especially if
he's a world class back rubbing concerned father
...

I told her about the shrunken antique Asian man who had placed third in
the contest
...
"He poked and prodded with prestidigitatious precision," I
explained, showing my daughter a sample of what I'd learned from the
old man
...
Then I told her about the woman who had
placed second
...
With her back rub, her fingers awakened in tired
muscles and weary bodies an urge to vibrate and quiver and dance
...

'That's weird," emanated faintly from a face muffled by a pillow
...
After
a time she asked, "So who got first place?"
"You'd never believe it!" I said
...
Softer than soft
...
Tiny hands saying more than words
could ever express
...
About trust
...

And then I gently and softly touched her as I had learned from the
infant
...
I realized that she, in fact,
was the infant who had taught me about the touch of the infant
...
I
explained how I had become an even better back rubber for a 16-yearold daughter painfully stretching herself into adult shape
...

Victor Nelson

I Love You, Son
Thoughts while driving my son to school: Morning, Kid
...
I don't think my hair was ever as long until I went away to
college, but I think I'd recognize you any way by what you are: a little
shaggy around the ears, scuffed around the toes, wrinkled in the
knees
...

Now that you're eight I notice I don't see a whole lot of you anymore
...
I saw you for 42
seconds at lunch and you reappeared for supper at five
...
Certainly as serious as,
if not more important than, the things the other commuters on the road
are doing
...
You've got to
learn what you are able to do and what you aren't—and you've got to
learn how to deal with that
...
Yeah,
you'll even have to learn how to pretend that name-calling doesn't hurt
...
I only hope you remember how it feels—in case
you ever decide to rank a kid who's smaller than you
...
I remember the last time I yelled at
you—told you we'd be late if you didn't hurry—but, on balance, as
Nixon used to say, I haven't given you as many pats as yells
...
I especially like your
independence, the way you take care of yourself even when it frightens
me just a little bit
...

Why is it that fathers are so slow to realize that eight-year-olds need as
many hugs as four-year-olds? If I don't watch out, pretty soon I'll be
punching you on the arm and saying, "Whaddaya say, kid?!" instead of
hugging you and telling you I love you
...
Why is it that eight-year-olds are so slow to realize that 36year-olds need as many hugs as four-year-olds?

Did I forget to tell you that I'm proud you went back to a box lunch after
one week's worth of that indigestible hot lunch? I'm glad you value your
body
...
…I want to talk about last night
...
Those times are so special
...
Every time we try to plan something together, it's
not as good or rich or warm
...

You're better with numbers than I'll ever be
...
And we were both happy when the Yankees won
...
He'll probably outlive all of us
...
There are so many things I want
to say
...
I want to savor the moment and
you've already spotted a couple of your friends
...
Miller

What You Are Is As Important As What You Do
Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying
...
My friend and
proud father Bobby Lewis was taking his two little boys to play
miniature golf
...
00 for you and $3
...
We let them in free if they are six or younger
...
00
...
You
could have told me that the older one was six; I wouldn't have known
the difference
...
"
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Who you are speaks so loudly I can't
hear what you're saying
...

Patricia Fripp

A Mom's Life
Take your plate into the kitchen, please
...

Don't leave it there, take it upstairs
...

I'm talking to you
...

Did you brush your teeth?
What are you doing out of bed?
Go back to bed
...

What do you mean, there's nothing to do?
Go outside
...

Turn it down
...

Tell your friend you'll call her back
...
No, she's not home
...

Take a jacket
...

Take one anyway
...

Get the toys out of the hall
...
Get the toys off the stairs
...

Hurry up
...

I'll count to ten and then we're going without you
...

I mean it
...


I said, Stop it!
I don't want to hear about it
...

That's it
...

Give me a kiss
...

Make your bed
...

Set the table
...

Please move your chair in to the table
...

Just try a little
...

Stop playing and eat
...
It's too close to the edge
...
That's better
...

You don't always get what you want
...

Don't argue with me
...

Go to your room
...

One more minute
...

Where did the cookies go?
Eat the old fruit before you eat the new fruit
...
I've taken all the mushrooms out
...
If you want to ask me something, come here
STOP YELLING
...

I'll think about it
...

Ask your father
...

Don't sit so close to the television, it's bad for your eyes
...

Calm down and start over
...

Did everyone fasten their seat belts?
I'm sorry, that's the rule
...
I'm sorry, that's the
rule
...
My wife has taken our six-year-old to his
first piano lesson
...

The four-year-old watches tiny, anthropomorphic beings hurl one
another from cliffs in the other room
...

Aaron Malachi, the four-year-old, apparently bored by the cartoon
carnage and the considerable personal power obtained by holding the
television's remote control, enters my space
...

"Want some more cereal?"
"No
...
"
"Want some eggs?"
"No
...
"
For all I know, ice cream may be far more nourishing than processed
cereal or antibiotic-laden eggs but, according to my cultural values, it is
wrong to have ice cream at 10:45 on a Saturday morning
...
About four seconds
...
"
"Me and you and Mommy?"
"That's right
...
"
"And Ben?"
"Yes
...
"
"We have very much of life left
...
"
"What do you mean?"
"Until all the people die and the dinosaurs come back
...

"What do you mean, Aaron, 'until all the people die'?"

"You said everybody dies
...
The cavemen lived in caves, dinosaur caves
...
"
I realize that already for Aaron life is a limited economy, a resource
with a beginning and an end
...

I am faced with an ethical decision
...
I stare at the newspaper
...
Larry Bird is angry at somebody, but I can's see
who, because Aaron's foot is in the way
...
Or maybe my neurotic, addictive, middle-class
sensibility is just making me think that
...
It was Kevin McHale that Larry Bird
was angry at
...
But Jerry
Sichting is no longer with the Celtics
...
Jerry Sichting is
playing for Sacramento or Orlando or he has disappeared
...
It's obvious what a good job the nuns and priests did with me
...
Heaven and hell were not connected by long
distance service
...
I don't want Aaron to get burned, but I want him to
have a strong frame
...

Is that possible? It is possible to have a sense that God, spirit, karma,
Y*H*W*H, something—is transcendent, without traumatizing the
presentness of a person, without beating it into them? Can we have our

cake and eat it too, ontologically speaking? Or is their fragile
sensibility, their "there-ness," sundered by such an act?
Sensing a slight increase in agitation on the table, I know that Aaron is
becoming bored with his guy
...

"Aaron, death is something that some people believe
...
"It's not like a killing
game
...
"
"Yes," I say with some relief, "let's play video games
...
"
"What?" Aaron stops and turns from where he has run, already halfway
to the arcade
...
"
Another perfect Saturday for a perfect family
...

Michael Murphy

Just Say It!
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could
make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you
waiting?
Stephen Levine
One night, after reading one of the hundreds of parenting books I've
read, I was feeling a little guilty because the book had described some
parenting strategies I hadn't used in a while
...
" It
had stressed over and over that children need to know that
unconditionally and unequivocally that you really love them
...
As I
knocked, all I could hear were his drums
...
So I opened the door and, sure enough, there he was
sitting with his earphones on, listening to a tape and playing his drums
...
I'm always good for one
...
"
He said, "Oh, thanks, Dad, I appreciate it
...
I felt it was really important to get back up
there and have another chance to say those three magic words
...
"You got
a second, Tim?"
"Sure, Dad
...
What do you need?"
"Son, the first time I came up here to share a message with you,
something else came out
...
Tim, do you remember when you were learning how to drive, it
caused me a lot of problems? I wrote three words and slipped them
under your pillow in hopes that would take care of it
...
" Finally after a little small

talk, I looked at Tim and said, "What I want you to know is that we love
you
...
That's you and Mom?"
I said, "Yeah, that's both of us, we just don't express it enough
...
I know you do
...
As I was walking downstairs, I
started thinking, "I can't believe this
...
"
I decided I'm going back there now and let Tim know exactly how I
feel
...

I don't care if he is six feet tall! So back I go, knock on the door and he
yells "Wait a minute
...
Could that be you, Dad?"
I said, "How'd you know that?" and he responded, "I've known you ever
since you were a parent, Dad
...
I suppose you didn't tell
me what you wanted to tell me?"
I said, "How'd you know that?"
"I've known you ever since I was in diapers
...
I just want
to express to you how special you are to our family
...
It's who you are as a person
...
"
He looked at me and he said, "Hey, Dad, I know you do and it's really
special hearing you say it to me
...
" As I was walking out the door, he said, "Oh, hey,
Dad
...
What's he going to say to me?" I said, "Oh
sure
...
"
I don't know where kids get this—I'm sure it couldn't be from their
parents, but he said, "Dad, I just want to ask you one question
...
"
"Hey, thanks for taking the time
...
"
I think what Tim taught me, more than anything else that night is that
the only way you can understand the real meaning and purpose of love
is to be willing to pay the price
...

Gene Bedley

A Legacy Of Love
As a young man, Al was a skilled artist, a potter
...
One night, his oldest son developed a severe stomachache
...
But the malady was actually
acute appendicitis, and the boy died suddenly that night
...
To make matters worse his wife left
him a short time later, leaving him alone with his six-year-old younger
son
...
In time Al became an
alcoholic
...
Eventually
Al died alone in a San Francisco motel room
...

"What a complete failure!" I thought
...
You
see, I knew Al's now adult son, Ernie
...
I watched Ernie with his
children and saw the free flow of love between them
...

I hadn't heard Ernie talk much about his father
...
One day I worked up my courage to ask him
...
"I know your father was basically the
only one to raise you
...
Then he said, "From
my earliest memories as a child until I left home at 18, Al came into my
room every night, gave me a kiss and said, 'I love you, son
...
He had not left any material possessions behind
...

Bobbie Gee Winning The Image Game

On Parenting
Your children are not your children
...

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you
...

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
...

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday
...
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows might go swift and far
...

Kahlil Gibran

ON LEARNING
Learning is finding out what you already know
...

Teaching is reminding others that they know it just as well as you
...

Richard Bach

I Like Myself Now
Once you see a child's self-image begin to improve, you will see
significant gains in achievement areas, but even more important, you
will see a child who is beginning to enjoy life more
...
I know mathematics
well, and I teach it well
...
Now
I teach children, not math
...
When I don't have to know all the answers,
I seem to have more answers than when I tried to be the expert
...
I asked him
one day why he thought he was doing so much better than last year
...
"It's because I like myself
now when I'm with you," he said
...
All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark
Eklund was one in a million
...

Mark also talked incessantly
...
What impressed me so
much, though, was the sincere response every time I had to correct him
for misbehaving
...

One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too
often
...
I looked at Mark and said, "If
you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!"
It wasn't ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, "Mark is talking
again
...

I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning
...
Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark's desk, tore off two
pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth
...

As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me
...
The entire class cheered as I walked back to
Mark's desk, removed the tape and shrugged my shoulders
...
"
At the end of the year I was asked to teach junior high math
...
He was
more handsome than ever and just as polite
...

One Friday things just didn't feel right
...
I had to stop this
crankiness before it got out of hand
...
Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they
could say about each of their classmates and write it down
...
Chuck
smiled
...
Have a good
weekend
...
On Monday I gave each student his or her list
...
Before long, the entire class was smiling
...
"I never knew that meant anything to anyone!" "I
didn't know others liked me so much!"
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again
...
The
exercise had accomplished its purpose
...

That group of students moved on
...
As we were
driving home, Mother asked the usual questions about the trip: How the
weather was, my experiences in general
...
Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply said,
"Dad?" My father cleared his throat
...

"Really?" I said
...
I wonder
how Mark is"
Dad responded quietly
...
"The
funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend
...

I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before
...
All I could think at that moment was, Mark, I
would give all the masking tape in the world if only you could talk to
me
...
Chuck's sister sang "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic
...
The pastor said the
usual prayers and the bugler played taps
...


I was the last one to bless the coffin
...
"Were you Mark's math
teacher?" he asked
...
"Mark
talked about you a lot," he said
...
Mark's mother and father were there, obviously
waiting for me
...
"They found this on Mark when he
was killed
...
"
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook
paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times
...

"Thank you so much for doing that," Mark's mother said
...
"
Mark's classmates started to gather around us
...
It's in the top drawer of my
desk at home
...
" "I have mine, too," Marilyn said
...
"
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out
her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group
...
"I think
we all saved our lists
...
I cried for Mark and for all his
friends who would never see him again
...
Mrosla

You Are A Marvel
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a
moment that will never be again
...

When will we also teach them what they are?
We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a
marvel
...
In all the years that have passed, there has
never been another child like you
...

You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven
...
Yes, you are a marvel
...

Pablo Casals

All I Ever Really Needed To Know I Learned In
Kindergarten
Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten
...

These are the things I learned: Share everything
...
Don't hit
people
...
Clean up your own
mess
...
Say you're sorry when you hurt
somebody
...
Flush
...
Live a balanced life
...

Take a nap every afternoon
...
Be aware of wonder
...
The roots go down and the plant goes
up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that
...
So do we
...
Everything you need to
know is in there somewhere
...
Ecology and politics and sane living
...
Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to
always put things back where we found them and clean up our own
messes
...

Robert Fulghum

We Learn By Doing
Not many years ago I began to play the cello
...
But these words
carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very different
processes: (1) learning to play the cello; and (2) playing the cello
...
In short, I will go on
"learning to play" until I have 'learned to play" and then I will begin to
play
...
There are not two processes, but one
...
There is no other way
...
She thought of how little these children from poor
neighborhoods actually had to be thankful for
...
The teacher
was taken aback with the picture Douglas handed in
...

But whose hand? The class was captivated by the abstract image
...
"A
farmer," said another, "because he grows the turkeys
...
"It's your hand, Teacher," he mumbled
...
She often did that with the children
...
Perhaps this was everyone's Thanksgiving,
not for the material things given to us but for the chance, in whatever
small way, to give to others
...
In many
ways it is a Third World country
...
These facts it shares with the rest of Harlem, yet here
many people are also separated from the more affluent parts of the city
by language
...

At a junior high that rises from a barren patch of concrete playgrounds
and metal fences on East 101st Street, Bill Hall teaches the usual
English courses, plus English as a second language to students who
arrive directly from Puerto Rico, Central and South America, even
Pakistan and Hong Kong
...
Bill Hall is faced with them
...
As a chess player himself, he
knew this game crossed many cultural boundaries, so he got permission
from a very skeptical principal to start a chess club after school
...
Never having seen women playing chess, they
assumed this game wasn't for them, and without even a female teacher
as a role model, those few who did come gradually dropped out
...
Their friends made fun of them for staying after school, and
some parents felt that chess was a waste of time since it wouldn't help
them get a job, but still, they kept coming
...

Gradually, their skills at both chess and English improved
...
Because he paid for their subway fares and

pizza dinners, no small thing on his teacher's salary, the boys knew he
cared
...

To help them become more independent, Bill asked each boy to captain
one event, and to handle all travel and preparation for it
...
Gradually, too, this new sense of
competence carried over into their classrooms and their grades began to
improve
...
With a little money supplied by the Manhattan Chess Club,
he took them to the State Finals in Syracuse
...
After finishing third in their own state, they were eligible for
the Junior High School Finals in California
...
In real life, these
ghetto kids would never "get past New Jersey," as one teacher put it
...
In that national competition, they finished seventeenth out
of 109 teams
...
On one of their days at a New York chess club, the team
members met a young girl from the Soviet Union who was the Women's
World Champion
...

Though no U
...
players their age had ever entered these games, officials
in Bill's school district rallied round the idea
...
Of course, no one thought
his team could win, but that wasn't the goal
...
When Pepsi-Cola came up with a
$20,000 check, Bill began to realize that this crazy dream was going to
come true
...
But as veterans of Spanish Harlem, they also
made very clear that they were representing their own neighborhood
...
S
...
,"
but "The Royal Knights
...
The experience and deliberate style of their Soviet opponents
were something they had never previously encountered
...
The Russians weren't invincible after
all; just people like them
...
Unlike the Soviet players, who had been taught
that slowness and deliberation were virtues, the Knights had a streetsmart style that made them both fast and accurate
...
Though
they had been selected at random for their need to learn English, not for
any talent at chess, and though they had been playing for only a few
months, they won one match and achieved a draw in another
...

It was a conviction they would need
...
As Bill urged
the boy to explain to me, he had done so well on a test that the teacher,
thinking he had cheated, made him take it over
...
"If this had been a school in a different neighborhood,"
said Bill, "none of this would have happened
...
"Maybe the teacher
was just jealous," the boy said cheerfully
...
"
And so they had
...

Every principal in the school district was asking for a chess program,

and local television and newspapers had interviewed The Royal
Knights
...
Though all the
boys were worried about their upcoming separation, it was the other
team members who persuaded the boy who got that invitation to accept
it
...
"We promised to write him
every week," said another
...
"
With career plans that included law, accounting, teaching, computer
sciences—futures they wouldn't have thought possible before—there
was no telling what continuing surprises they might share at reunions of
this team that had become its own support group and family
...

"Hanging out in the street and feeling like shit," said one boy, who now
wants to become a lawyer
...

"Just lying on my bed, reading comics, and getting yelled at by my
father for being lazy," said a third
...
Hall thought we were smart," explained one to the nods
of the others, "and then we were
...

He was quite a little boy
...

But when the little boy
Found that he could go to his room
By walking right in from the door outside,
He was happy
...

One morning,
When the little boy had been in school a while,
The teacher said:
"Today we are going to make a picture
...

He liked to make pictures
...

But the teacher said:
"Wait! It is not time to begin!"
And she waited until everyone looked ready
...
"
"Good!" thought the little boy,
He liked to make flowers,
And he began to make beautiful ones
With his pink and orange and blue crayons
...
"
And she drew a flower on the blackboard
...

"There," said the teacher
...
"
The little boy looked at the teacher's flower
...

But he did not say this,
He just turned his paper over
And made a flower like the teacher's
...

On another day,
When the little boy had opened
The door from the outside all by himself,
The teacher said,
"Today we are going to make something with clay
...

He liked clay
...

But the teacher said,
"Wait! It is not time to begin!"
And she waited until everyone looked ready
...
" "Good!"
thought the little boy, He liked to make dishes, And he began to make
some That were all shapes and sizes
...
"
And she showed everyone how to make
One deep dish
...
"
The little boy looked at the teacher's dish
Then he looked at his own
...

It was a deep dish
...


And pretty soon
He didn't make things of his own anymore
...

This school was even Bigger
Than the other one,
And there was no door from the outside
Into his room
...

And the very first day
He was there, the teacher said,
"Today we are going to make a picture
...
She just walked around
the room
...

"What are we going to make?"
"I don't know until you make it," said the teacher
...

"Why, any way you like," said the teacher
...

"Any color," said the teacher,
"If everyone made the same picture,
And used the same colors,
How would I know who made what,
And which was which?" "I don't know," said the little boy
...

He liked his new school, Even if it didn't have a door Right in from the
outside!
Helen E
...

I was born the first moment that a question leaped from the mouth of a
child
...
I am Socrates exciting
the youth of Athens to discover new ideas through the use of questions
...
I am Aesop and Hans Christian
Andersen revealing truth through countless stories
...
I am Mary McCleod
Bethune building a great college for my people, using orange crates for
desks
...

The names of those who have practiced my profession ring like a hall of
fame for humanity
...
Washington, Buddha, Confucius,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Buscaglia, Moses and Jesus
...

I have wept for joy at the weddings of former students, laughed with
glee at the birth of their children and stood with head bowed in grief and
confusion by graves dug too soon for bodies far too young
...

Despite the maps, charts, formulas, verbs, stories and books, I have
really had nothing to teach, for my students really have only themselves
to learn, and I know it takes the whole world to tell you who you are
...
I speak loudest when I listen the most
...

Material wealth is not one of my goals, but I am a full-time treasure
seeker in my quest for new opportunities for my students to use their
talents and in my constant search for those talents that sometimes lie
buried in self-defeat
...

A doctor is allowed to usher life into the world in one magic moment
...


An architect knows that if he builds with care, his structure may stand
for centuries
...

I am a warrior, daily doing battle against peer pressure, negativity, fear,
conformity, prejudice, ignorance and apathy
...

And who do I have to thank for this wonderful life I am so fortunate to
experience, but you the public, the parents
...

And so I have a past that is rich in memories
...

I am a teacher
...

John W
...

Source unknown …

Make It Come True
In 1957 a ten-year-old boy in California set a goal
...
In order to accomplish his goal,
the young boy had to overcome some obstacles
...

Malnutrition took its toll, and a disease called rickets forced him to wear
steel splints to support his skinny, bowed-out legs
...
He politely
asked Brown for his autograph
...
Brown, I have your picture on my wall
...
You're my idol
...
He
proclaimed, "Mr
...
My friends call me O
...
"
O
...
Simpson went on to break all but three of the rushing records held
by Jim Brown before injuries shortened his football career
...
Set a goal and make it come
true
...

Henry Ford
Rocky Lyons, the son of New York Jets defensive end Marty Lyons,
was five years old when he was driving through rural Alabama with his
mother, Kelly
...

As his mom drove carefully down the winding two lane country road,
she turned onto a narrow bridge
...
Fearing the
truck would tip over, she attempted to jerk it back up onto the road by
pressing hard on the gas pedal and spinning the steering wheel to the
left
...

The truck flipped over and over down a 20-foot ravine
...
"What happened, Mama?" he asked
...
"
Kelly was blinded by blood
...
Her gums were torn out, her cheeks
pulverized, her shoulders crushed
...

"I'll get you out, Mama," announced Rocky, who had miraculously
escaped injury
...
But she didn't move
...

"No, Mama," Rocky insisted
...
"
Rocky wriggled back into the truck and managed to push Kelly out of
the wreckage
...
Fearing that no one would be able to see her little boy in the
dark, Kelly refused to let him go alone
...
They crawled inches at a time
...

To urge his mother on, Rocky told her to think "about that little train,"
the one in the classic children's story, The Little Engine That Could,
which managed to get up a steep mountain
...
"
When they finally reached the road, Rocky was able to see his mother's
torn face clearly for the first time
...
Waving his arms
and pleading, "Stop! Please stop!" the boy hailed a truck
...

It took 8 hours and 344 stitches to rebuild Kelly's face
...

Rocky's heroics were big news
...
"It's not like I wanted it to happen," he
explains
...
" Says his mother,
"If it weren't for Rocky, I'd have bled to death
...
Students sat in five rows of six desks
...
The bulletin board featured student
work
...
Yet something seemed different that day I
entered it for the first time
...

Donna was a veteran small-town Michigan schoolteacher only two
years away from retirement
...
The training focused on language arts ideas that would
empower students to feel good about themselves and take charge of
their lives
...
My job was to make classroom visitations
and encourage implementation
...
All the
students were working on a task, filling
a sheet of notebook paper with thoughts and ideas
...
"
"I can't kick the soccer ball past second base
...
"
"I can't get Debbie to like me
...
She
worked on with determination and persistence
...
Everyone was
writing sentences, describing things they couldn't do
...
"
"I can't hit one over the left-field fence
...
"
By this time, the activity engaged my curiosity, so I decided to check
with the teacher to see what was going on
...
I felt it best not to interrupt
...
"
"I can't get my daughter to put gas in the car
...
"

Thwarted in my efforts to determine why students and teacher were
dwelling on the negative instead of writing the more positive "I Can"
statements, I returned to my seat and continued my observations
...
Most filled their page
...

"Finish the one you're on and don't start a new one," were the
instructions Donna used to signal the end of the activity
...

When students reached the teacher's desk, they placed their "I Can't"
statements into an empty shoe box
...
She
put the lid on the box, tucked it under her arm and headed out the door
and down the hall
...
I followed the
students
...
Donna entered the
custodian's room, rummaged around and came out with a shovel
...
There they began to
dig
...
When the
hole approached three-feet deep, the digging ended
...

Thirty-one 10- and 11-year-olds stood around the freshly dug grave site
...
So did their teacher
...
" The students complied
...
They lowered their
heads and waited
...

"Friends, we gather today to honor the memory of 'I Can't
...
His name, unfortunately, has been spoken in every public
building—schools, city halls, state capitols and yes, even The White
House
...
He is survived by his brothers and sister

'I Can', 'I Will' and 'I'm Going to Right Away
...

Perhaps some day, with your help, they will make an even bigger mark
on the world
...
Amen
...
The activity was symbolic, a metaphor for life
...

Writing "I Can'ts," burying them and hearing the eulogy
...
And she wasn't done yet
...

They celebrated the passing of "I Can't" with cookies, popcorn and fruit
juices
...
She wrote the words "I Can't" at the top and put RIP in
the middle
...

The paper tombstone hung in Donna's classroom for the remainder of
the year
...
The student then
remembered that "I Can't" was dead and chose to rephrase the
statement
...
She was one of mine
...

Now, years later, whenever I hear the phrase, "I Can't," I see images of
that fourth-grade funeral
...

Chick Moorman

The 333 Story
I was doing a weekend seminar at the Deerhurst Lodge, north of
Toronto
...
Sunday night, as I was coming home, I stopped the car when
I got to Barrie
...

It was a mess
...

That same night Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway
...
Bob was the vice president of Telemedia
Communications, which owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and
Quebec
...

The following night I was doing another seminar in Toronto
...
They shared their conviction
that there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie
...
He was now committed
to the idea of helping the people who had been caught in the tornado
...
At the top of a flip chart he wrote three 3s
...

Finally someone said, "Templeton, you're crazy
...
"
Bob said, "Wait a minute
...
I just asked you if you'd like to
...
" He then drew a large T underneath
the 333
...
" On the other side he
wrote, "How we can
...
' We're not going to
spend any time on the ideas of why we can't
...
On the
other side we're going to write down every idea that we can come up
with on how we can
...
" There was silence again
...
"
Bob said, "That's a great idea," and wrote it down
...
We don't have radio stations across Canada
...
They only had stations in Ontario and Quebec
...
That stays
...
They
usually don't work together and to get them to do so would be virtually
impossible according to the standard way of thinking
...
" (That would be like getting Tom Brokaw and Sam
Donaldson to anchor the show
...
They
are not going to go on radio
...

That was on a Friday
...

They had 50 radio stations all across the country that agreed to
broadcast it
...
Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored the
show and they succeeded in raising 3 million dollars in 3 hours within 3
business days!
You see you can do anything if you put your focus on how to do it
rather than on why you can't
...
A man was standing
there with a huge box of food, a giant turkey and even some pans to
cook it in
...
My dad demanded, "Who are you?
Where are you from?"
The stranger announced, "I'm here because a friend of yours knows
you're in need and that you wouldn't accept direct help, so I've brought
this for you
...
"
My father said, "No, no, we can't accept this
...

Obviously that experience had a profound impact on my life
...
By the time I was 18 I had created
my Thanksgiving ritual
...
Then I
would dress like a delivery boy, go to the poorest neighborhood and just
knock on a door
...
The note concluded, "All that I ask in
return is that you take good enough care of yourself so that someday
you can do the same thing for someone else
...

Several years ago I was in New York City with my new wife during
Thanksgiving
...

Normally she would be home decorating the house for Christmas, but
we were stuck here in a hotel room
...
I said, "Let's go someplace where we can really
appreciate who we are, what we are capable of and what we can really
give
...
I urged them:
"C'mon, let's go to Harlem and feed some people in need
...
We'll just
be the delivery people
...
We've got enough
...
C'mon
...
When I returned from the interview, they said
"We just can't do it
...
The rent-acar places are all out of vans
...
"
I said, "Look, the bottom line is that if we want something, we can make
it happen! All we have to do is take action
...
We just don't have one
...
"
They insisted, "We've called everywhere
...
"
I said, "Look down at the street
...
Do you see all those
vans?" They said, "Yeah, we see them
...
First I tried walking out in front of vans as
they were driving down the street
...

Then we tried waiting by the light
...
Since today is Thanksgiving, we'd like to know if you
would be willing to drive us to Harlem so we can feed some people
...

Eventually we got better at asking
...
We'd like to help
some underprivileged people, and we're curious if you'd be willing to
drive us to an underprivileged area that we have in mind here in New
York City
...

Then we started offering people $100 to drive us
...

We had talked to about two dozen people who all said no
...
" Sure enough, the perfect van drove up
...

We went up, knocked on the window and we asked the driver, "Could
you take us to a disadvantaged area? Well pay you a hundred dollars
...
I'd be happy to take you
...
"
Then he reached over on the seat and grabbed his hat
...
" The man's name was

Captain John Rondon and he was the head of the Salvation Army in the
South Bronx
...
He said, "I'll take you
places you never even thought of going
...
Why do
you people want to do this?" I told him my story and that I wanted to
show gratitude for all that I had by giving something back
...
When we arrived, we went into a store where
we bought a lot of food and some baskets
...
Then we went out to start feeding people
...
It was both an
astonishing realization that people lived this way and a truly fulfilling
experience to make even a small difference
...
Miracles like this happen every day—even in a city where "there
are no vans
...
That's because Markita Andrews has generated more than eighty
thousand dollars selling Girl Scout cookies since she was seven years
old
...

It starts with desire
...

For Markita and her mother, who worked as a waitress in New York
after her husband left them when Markita was eight years old, their
dream was to travel the globe
...
"You'll go to college and
when you graduate, you'll make enough money to take you and me
around the world
...

But desire alone is not enough
...

"Always wear your right outfit, your professional garb," her aunt
advised
...
Wear your Girl Scout uniform
...
Always smile, whether they buy or not, always be
nice
...
"
Lots of other Scouts may have wanted that trip around the world
...
But only Markita went off in her
uniform each day after school, ready to ask—and keep asking —folks to
invest in her dream
...
I have a dream
...
"Would you like to invest in one dozen or two dozen
boxes of cookies?"
Markita sold 3,526 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that year and won her
trip around the world
...

And Everything Else
...
The difference is
Markita has discovered the secret of selling: Ask, Ask, Ask! Many
people fail before they even begin because they fail to ask for what they
want
...

And everyone is selling something
...

"My mother is a waitress: she sells the daily special
...
One of my favorite
teachers was Mrs
...
She made geography interesting, and that's
really selling
...
Selling is part of the
whole world
...
Courage is not the absence of
fear
...
And, as Markita has
discovered, the more you ask, the easier (and more fun) it gets
...
Markita was asked to sell Girl Scout cookies to
another guest on the show
...

"Girl Scout cookies?! I don't buy any Girl Scout cookies!" he replied
...
I put 2,000 rapists, robbers,
criminals, muggers and child abusers to bed every night
...
And,
Mister, I think it would be a good idea for you to take some of these
cookies back for every one of your 2,000 prisoners, too
...

The warden wrote a check
...
Hansen

Did The Earth Move For You?
Eleven-year-old Angela was stricken with a debilitating disease
involving her nervous system
...
The doctors did not hold
out much hope of her ever recovering from this illness
...
They said that few, if
any, were able to come back to normal after contracting this disease
...
There, lying in her hospital bed, she
would vow to anyone who'd listen that she was definitely going to be
walking again someday
...
Whatever therapies could be applied to her case
were used
...
They
taught her about imaging—about seeing herself walking
...
Angela would work as hard as
possible in physical therapy, in whirlpools and in exercise sessions
...
People were screaming,
equipment was falling and glass was breaking
...
But don't tell that to Angela
...
And now only a few years later, she's back in
school
...
No crutches, no wheelchair
...
He shook my hand
and said, "My name is Tommy Tighe, I'm six years old and I want to
borrow money from your Children's Bank
...
And so
far all the kids have paid it back
...
I want to make a bumper sticker that says, 'PEACE,
PLEASE! DO IT FOR US KIDS,' signed 'Tommy'
...
He needed $454 to produce 1,000 bumper
stickers
...

Tommy's dad whispered in my ear, "If he doesn't pay the loan back, are
you going to foreclose on his bicycle?"
I said, "No, knock on wood, every kid is born with honesty, morality
and ethics
...
I believe he'll pay us
back
...

We gave Tommy a copy of all of my tapes and he listened to them 21
times each and took ownership of the material
...
" Tommy convinced his dad to drive him up to Ronald
Reagan's home
...

Tommy gave a two-minute, irresistible sales presentation on his bumper
sticker
...
50 and
said, "Here, I want one of those
...
"
I asked, "Why did you ask him to buy?" He said, "You said in the tapes
to ask everyone to buy
...
I did
...
"
He sent a bumper sticker to Mikhail Gorbachev with a bill for $1
...
S
...
Gorbachev sent him back $1
...
"
Since I collect autographs, I told Tommy, "I'll give you $500
...
"
He said, "No thanks, Mark
...
When you get older, I'd like
to hire you
...
"When I get older, I'm going to hire
you
...
Marty
Shaw, the journalist, interviewed Tommy for six hours and wrote a
phenomenal interview
...
Tommy said, "I don't think I am old enough
yet; I think you have to be eight or nine to stop all the wars in the
world
...
" Tommy has good taste in role models
...
A Hallmark franchisee had faxed a copy of the Register
article
...
After all, they saw that Tommy had nine goals for
himself:
1
...

2
...

3
...

4
...

5
...

6
...

7
...

8
...

9
...

Hallmark wanted my company, Look Who's Talking, to book Tommy
to speak
...

Joan Rivers called Tommy Tighe to be on her syndicated television
show
...

"Tommy," Joan said, "this is Joan Rivers and I want you on my TV
show which is viewed by millions
...
He didn't know her from a bottle of Vicks
...

"Great!" said Tommy
...
You can afford to pay for
my mom, too, can't you, Joan?"
"Yes!" Joan replied
...
You
can make that happen, can't you, Joan?"
"Yes," she answered
...
You can get us tickets, can't
you?"
"Yes
...
Did I tell you my mom doesn't drive? So we can use your limo,
can't we?"
"Sure," said Joan
...
He was so handsome,
interesting, authentic and such a great self-starter
...

At the end of the show, Joan leaned in and asked, "Tommy, do you
really think your bumper sticker will cause peace in the world?"
Tommy, enthusiastically and with a radiant smile, said, "So far I've had
it out two years and got the Berlin Wall down
...
Hansen
*To date Tommy has sold over 2,500 of his bumper stickers and has
repaid his $454 loan to Mark Victor Hansen's Children's Free Enterprise
Bank
...
00
to Tommy Tighe, 17283 Ward Street, Fountain Valley, CA 92708
...
When we had just started
our self-esteem training program called Little Acorns to teach children
how to say no to drugs, sexual promiscuity and other self-destructive
behavior, we received a brochure for an educational conference in San
Diego
...
But we didn't
see how
...
There was no way we could afford the airline tickets
or any of the other expenses
...

The first thing I did was to call the conference coordinators in San
Diego, explain why we just had to be there and ask them if they would
give us two complimentary admissions to the conference
...
So now we had the tickets
...

She said, "Great! But we're in Miami and the conference is in San
Diego
...
" I called an airline I knew
was doing well at the time, Northeast Airlines
...
She put me directly through to the president, Steve
Quinto
...
He said, "Of course I will,"
just like that
...
He said, "Thank you for asking
...
The best thing I can ever do is
to give of myself and you've asked me to do that
...
" I was blown
away, but I thanked him and hung up the phone
...
" She said, "Great! Where do
we stay?"
Next I called the Holiday Inn Downtown Miami and asked, "Where is
your headquarters?" They told me it was in Memphis, Tennessee, so I
called Tennessee and they patched me through to the person I needed to
talk to
...
He controlled all of the Holiday
Inns in California
...
He asked if it would
be okay if he put us up in their new hotel in downtown San Diego as his
guest
...
"
He then said, "Wait a minute
...
"
I said, 'I'll figure it out if I need to buy a horse
...
What we need now is a way to get
back and forth from the hotel to the campus twice a day
...
They said, "Would a new Olds 88 be okay?" I said it
would be
...

We did wind up buying our own meals for part of the time but before
the conference was over, I stood up, told this story at one of the general
assemblies and said, "Anyone who wants to volunteer to take us to
lunch now and again would be graciously thanked
...

We had a marvelous time, learned a lot and connected with people like
Jack Canfield who is still on our advisory board
...

This last June we graduated our 2,250th family from the Little Acorn
training
...
Thousands of educators have come to get ideas
on how to do self-esteem training in their classrooms while they're still
teaching the three Rs
...
Seventeen nations sent representatives including some

ministers of education
...

So you see you can get anything you want if you just ask enough
people
...
He spent the next six
months in traction with a broken back
...
Only two weeks after he
was dismissed from the hospital, he returned home one afternoon to find
his mother lying semiconscious on the floor from an overdose of
sleeping pills
...

During the following months Rick began to formulate an idea—the
development of a course that would equip students with high selfesteem, relationship skills and conflict management skills
...
Over 80 percent
responded, "Absolutely not
...
The top answers were relationship skills: How to get along
better with the people you live with
...
How
to handle conflict
...
How to understand the
normal development of a child
...

And how to intuit the meaning of life
...
In his quest for information on what should be included
in the course, he asked over 2,000 students in 120 high schools the same
two questions:
1
...
List the top ten problems in your life that you wish were dealt with
better at home and in school
...


Loneliness and not liking themselves topped the list of problems
...

Rick slept in his car for two months, living on a total of $60
...
Most
days he ate peanut butter on crackers
...

Rick had few resources but he was committed to his dream
...
He set out to visit everyone on his list to
ask for their expertise and support
...
"You're too young
...
Get your
degree
...
" They were
less than encouraging
...
By the time he turned 20, he had sold his car, his
clothes, had borrowed from friends and was $32,000 in debt
...

His first appointment at a local foundation was a huge disappointment
...
The
vice president of the foundation was a huge dark-haired man with a cold
stern face
...

When he was through, the vice-president pushed up a stack of folders
...
We've funded all these
education programs
...
Yours will, too
...
You're 20 years old, you have no experience, no
money, no college degree
...

Rick began a study of which foundations were interested in funding
projects for teenagers
...
Rick worked for over a
year laboriously writing grant proposals, each one carefully tailored to
the interests and requirements of the individual foundations
...

Proposal after proposal was sent out and rejected
...

Rick's parents were begging him to go back to college and Ken Greene,
an educator who had left his job to help Rick write proposals, said,

"Rick, I have no money left and I have a wife and kids to support
...
But if it's a turndown, I'll have to go back to
Toledo and to teaching
...
Activated by desperation and conviction, he
managed to talk himself past several secretaries and he secured a lunch
date with Dr
...
On
their way to lunch they passed an ice cream stand
...
Rick nodded
...

He crushed the cone in his hand and, with chocolate ice cream running
between his fingers, he made a surreptitious but frantic effort to shake it
loose before Dr
...
But Mawby did
see it, and bursting into laughter, he went back to the vendor and
brought Rick a bunch of paper napkins
...
How
could he request funding for a new educational program when he
couldn't even handle an ice cream cone?
Two weeks later Mawby phoned
...
We're sorry,
but the trustees voted against it
...
For two years he had been working for a dream; which would now
go down the drain
...
"
The tears came then
...

Since that time Rick Little has raised over $100,000,000 to fund his
dream
...
Three million kids per year are
being taught important life skills because one 19-year-old refused to
take "no" for an answer
...
S
...
The purpose of this foundation is to identify and expand
successful youth programs all over the world
...

Adapted from Peggy Mann

The Magic Of Believing
I'm not old enough to play baseball or football
...
My
mom told me when you start baseball, you aren't going to be able to run
that fast because you had an operation
...
When I play baseball, I'll just hit them out of the park
...

Edward J
...
"An Exceptional View of Life"

Glenna's Goal Book
In 1977 I was a single mother with three young daughters, a house
payment, a car payment and a need to rekindle some dreams
...
(Imagination mixed with Vividness becomes
Reality
...
And as we vividly picture in our mind what we desire, it will
become a reality
...
I knew the
Biblical truth that the Lord gives us "the desires of our heart" (Psalms
37:4) and that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7)
...

I began cutting up old magazines and gathering pictures that depicted
the "desires of my heart
...

I was very specific with my pictures
...
A good-looking man
2
...
Bouquets of flowers (I'm a romantic)
4
...
An island in the sparkling blue Caribbean
6
...
New furniture
8
...
(I was working for a company that had no female officers
...
)

About eight weeks later, I was driving down a California freeway,
minding my own business at 10:30 in the morning
...
I looked at the car because it was a
beautiful car
...
Now I was in deep trouble
...
"Who me? I didn't look at
you!" He followed me for the next 15 miles
...
I parked, he parked
...
Then I
found out that he had a hobby
...
Big
ones! And he was looking for somebody to decorate
...

About three months before we were getting married, Jim said to me, "I
have found the perfect place to go on our honeymoon
...

John's Island down in the Caribbean
...
It was then that we were moving into
our gorgeous new home and furnishing it with the elegant furniture that
I had pictured
...
)
By the way, the wedding was in Laguna Beach, California, and included
the gown and tuxedo as realities
...

In some sense this sounds like a fairy tale, but it is absolutely true
...

God has filled our lives with the demonstration of these powerful
principles of faith at work
...
Imagine it
vividly
...
Convert your ideas into concrete realities through this simple
exercise
...
And, remember, God has
promised to give His children the desires of their heart
...
" Under that heading he wrote
down 127 goals
...
Look
at the list of Goddard's goals which appears below
...
They include climbing the world's major mountains,
exploring vast waterways, running a mile in five minutes, reading the
complete works of Shakespeare and reading the entire Encyclopedia
Britannica
...
Nile River
2
...
Congo River
4
...
Yangtze River, China
6
...
Orinoco River, Venezuela
8
...
The Congo
10
...
Brazil
12
...
The Sudan (John was nearly buried alive in a sandstorm
...
Australia
15
...
The Philippines
17
...
Ethiopia
19
...
Alaska
Climb:
21
...
Mount Aconcagua, Argentina
23
...
Mount Huascaran, Peru
25
...
Mount Ararat, Turkey
27
...
Mount Cook, New Zealand
29
...
The Matterhorn
31
...
Mount Fuji
33
...
Mount Bromo, Java
35
...
Mount Baldy, California
37
...
Visit every country in the world (30 to go)
39
...
Learn to fly a plane
41
...
Iguacu Falls, Brazil
43
...
Sutherland Falls, New Zealand
45
...
Niagara Falls
47
...
Coral reefs of Florida
49
...
Red Sea
51
...
The Bahamas
53
...
North and South Poles
55
...
Panama and Suez Canals
57
...
The Galapagos Islands

59
...
The Taj Mahal
61
...
The Blue Grotto
63
...
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
65
...
Climb Ayers Rock in Australia
67
...
Lake Victoria
69
...
Lake Tanganyika
71
...
Lake Nicaragua
Accomplish:
73
...
Dive in a submarine
75
...
Fly in a blimp, hot air balloon and glider
77
...
Skin dive to 40 feet and hold breath two and a half minutes
underwater
79
...
Play flute and violin
81
...
Take a parachute jump
83
...
Go on a church mission
85
...
Study native medicines and bring back useful ones
87
...
Learn to fence
89
...
Teach a college course
91
...
Explore depths of the sea

93
...
Own a horse, chimpanzee, cheetah, ocelot and coyote (Yet to own a
chimp or cheetah)
95
...
Build own telescope
97
...
Publish an article in National Geographic Magazine
99
...
Broad jump 15 feet
101
...
Weigh 175 pounds stripped (still does)
103
...
Learn French, Spanish and Arabic
105
...
Visit birthplace of Grandfather Sorenson in Denmark
107
...
Ship aboard a freighter as a seaman
109
...
Read the Bible from cover to cover
111
...
Become familiar with the compositions of Bach, Beethoven,
Debussy, Ibert, Mendelssohn, Lalo, Rimski-Korsakov, Respighi, Liszt,
Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Toch, Tschaikovsky, Verdi
113
...
Compose music
115
...
Watch fire-walking ceremony (In Bali and Surinam)
117
...
Light a match with a 22 rifle
119
...
Climb Cheops' pyramid
121
...
Learn to play polo
123
...
Circumnavigate the globe (four times)
125
...
Marry and have children (Has five children)
127
...
Live to see the
21st Century (He will be 75)
John Goddard

Look Out, Baby, I'm Your Love Man
It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to
have an opportunity and not be prepared
...

Les Brown and his twin brother were adopted by Mamie Brown, a
kitchen worker and maid, shortly after their birth in a poverty-stricken
Miami neighborhood
...
Upon graduation, he became a city sanitation
worker in Miami Beach
...

At night he would take a transistor radio to bed where he listened to the
local jive-talking deejays
...
A hairbrush served as his
microphone as he practiced his patter, introducing records to his ghost
listeners
...
But Les didn't
listen to them
...

One day Les boldly went to the local radio station during his lunch
break from mowing grass for the city
...

The manager eyed this disheveled young man in overalls and a straw hat
and inquired, "Do you have any background in broadcasting?"
Les replied, "No, sir, I don't
...
"
Les thanked him politely and left
...
But he underestimated the depth of
Les Brown's commitment to his goal
...
He wanted to buy a nicer house
for his adoptive mother, whom he loved deeply
...

Mamie Brown had taught Les to pursue his dreams, so he felt sure that
he would get a job at that radio station in spite of what the station
manager had said
...
Finally the station manager gave in and took
him on as an errand boy—at no pay
...

Eventually his enthusiasm for their work won him the confidence of the
disc jockeys who would send him in their Cadillacs to pick up visiting
celebrities such as the Temptations and Diana Ross and the Supremes
...

Les did whatever was asked of him at the station—and more
...
He stayed in the control rooms and soaked up
whatever he could until they asked him to leave
...

One Saturday afternoon while Les was at the station, a deejay named
Rock was drinking while on the air
...

Les stayed close
...
As he prowled, he said to himself
...
He would have run down the street
for more booze if Rock had asked
...
It was that station manager, as he knew it would be
...
Klein
...
"I know
...
"
"Yes sir, I know
...
I sure will
...
"
Les did dial the telephone, but it wasn't to call in another deejay
...
"You all go out on the
front porch and turn up the radio because I'm about to come on the air!"
he said
...
"Mr
...

Mr
...

Les darted into the booth, gently moved Rock aside and sat down at the
turntable
...
And he was hungry
...
There were none before me and there will be none after me
...
Young and single and love
to mingle
...
Look out, baby, I'm your lo-o-ove
man!"
Because of his preparation, Les was ready
...
From that fateful beginning, Les went on to a
successful career in broadcasting, politics, public speaking and
television
...
He spoke hardly any English, but he was always friendly
and through smiles and sign language, we got to know each other
...

During the day Le worked in a bakery and at night he and his wife
listened to audio tapes to learn English
...

In Vietnam the Van Vu family was one of the wealthiest in Southeast
Asia
...
However, after his father was
brutally murdered, Le moved to South Vietnam with his mother, where
he went to school and eventually became a lawyer
...
He saw an opportunity to
construct buildings to accommodate the ever-expanding American
presence in South Vietnam and soon became one of the most successful
builders in the country
...
He escaped by
killing five soldiers and made his way back to South Vietnam where he
was arrested again
...

After serving time in prison, Le got out and started a fishing company,
eventually becoming the largest canner in South Vietnam
...
S
...

He took all of the gold he had hoarded, loaded it aboard one of his
fishing vessels and sailed with his wife out to the American ships in the
harbor
...

After gaining access to the president of the Philippines, Le convinced
him to make one of his boats available for fishing and Le was back in
business again
...


But en route to America, Le became distraught and depressed about
having to start over again with nothing
...

"Le," she told him, "if you do jump, whatever will become of me?
We've been together for so long and through so much
...
" It was all the encouragement that Le Van Vu needed
...
In Vietnam, family takes care of family, and Le
and his wife found themselves ensconced in the back room of his
cousin's bakery in the Greenspoint Mall
...

Now, as they say, here comes the "message" part of this story:
Le's cousin offered both Le and his wife jobs in the bakery
...
Their total annual
income, in other words, was $15,600
...
The cousin would finance the remainder with a note for
$90,000
...
They kept clean by taking sponge baths for two years in
the mall's restrooms
...
Each year, for two years, they lived on a total, that's
right, a total of $600, saving $30,000 for the down payment
...

Then, of course, we'd have to buy furniture
...

Then we'd have to buy gasoline for the car as well as insurance
...
So I knew that if we got that apartment, we'd
never get our $30,000 together
...

They still owed $90,000 to his cousin, he said, and as difficult as the
past two years had been, they had to remain living in that back room for
one more year
...

Then, and only then, the Van Vus went out and got their first apartment
...

Do you think that Le Van Vu is a millionaire today? I am happy to tell
you, many times over
...
What I wanted to do was show that
everybody has the capacity to be self-sufficient and all we have to do is
to activate them
...
I would then see them as a group for three hours
every Friday
...

The first thing I said after I shook hands with everybody was, "I would
like to know what your dreams are
...

"Dreams? We don't have dreams
...

The rats are eating up my kids
...
"That's terrible
...
How can that be helped?"
"Well, I could use a new screen door because there are holes in my
screen door
...
"
I told him I had some money if he would go to the store and buy some
screening and go and fix the lady's screen door
...
"
The next week, when the group was seated, I said to the woman, "Well,
is your screen door fixed?"
"Oh, yes," she said
...

I said to the man who did the work, "How do you feel?"
He said, "Well, you know, it's a very funny thing
...
"

That helped the group to begin to dream
...
These
small steps began to get people to see and feel that something really
could happen
...
One woman shared that
she always wanted to be a secretary
...
)
She said, "I have six kids, and I don't have anyone to take care of them
while I'm away
...
"Is there anybody in this group who would take
care of six kids for a day or two a week while this woman gets some
training here at the community college?"
One woman said "I got kids, too, but I could do that
...
So a plan was created and the woman went to
school
...
The man who put in the screen door became
a handyman
...
In 12 weeks I had all these people off public welfare
...

Virginia Satir

Follow Your Dream
I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch in San
Ysidro
...

The last time I was there he introduced me by saying, "I want to tell you
why I let Jack use my house
...
As a result, the boy's high school career was continually
interrupted
...

"That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday
owning a horse ranch
...
Then he drew a detailed floor plan
for a 4,000square-foot house that would sit on the 200-acre dream
ranch
...
Two days later he received his paper back
...
'
"The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked,
'Why did I receive an F?'
'The teacher said, 'This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you
...
You come from an itinerant family
...
Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money
...
You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later
you'll have to pay large stud fees
...
'
Then the teacher added, If you will rewrite this paper with a more
realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade
...
He asked his
father what he should do
...
However, I think it is a very important
decision for you
...
He stated, 'You can keep the F and I'll keep
my dream
...
I still have that school paper framed over the
fireplace
...
When the teacher was leaving, he said, 'Look, Monty, I can tell
you this now
...
During those years I stole a lot of kids' dreams
...
'"
Don't let anyone steal your dreams
...

Jack Canfield

The Box
When I was a senior in college, I came home for Christmas vacation and
anticipated a fun-filled fortnight with my two brothers
...
The day before
my parents went to Boston, my father took me quietly aside to the little
den behind the store
...
In fact, when you pulled the bed out, it filled
the room and you could sit on the foot of it and play the piano
...
He opened it
and showed me a little pile of newspaper articles
...

"What are they?" I asked
...
"
As I began to read, I saw at the bottom of each neatly clipped article the
name Walter Chapman, Esq
...

"Because I didn't want your mother to know
...
I wanted
to run for some political office also, but she told me I shouldn't try
...
I just wanted to try
for the fun of it
...
When each item would be printed, I'd cut it out and hide it in this
box
...
"
He watched me as I read over a few of the articles and when I looked
up, his big blue eyes were moist
...
"Did you write something else?" "Yes, I sent
some suggestions in to our denominational magazine on how the
national nominating committee could be selected more fairly
...
I guess I tried for something too big
...
"
"Maybe, but don't hold your breath
...


The next morning our parents left on the bus to the Haverhill Depot
where they took a train to Boston
...
I'd never known my father liked to write
...

The Mystery of the Hidden Box
...
She crossed the Square and walked briskly
through the store
...
"Your father's
dead," she said without a tear
...
A nurse bent over him, looked up at Mother and said
simply, "He's dead
...
A priest said, 'I'll call
the police," and disappeared
...
Finally an ambulance came and took them both to the only
morgue where Mother had to go through his pockets and remove his
watch
...
Mother told us the shocking tale without shedding a tear
...
We didn't cry either and we took turns waiting on the customers
...

"Oh, too bad," and he left
...
He'd always been healthy and
happy and he'd cared for frail mother without complaining and now he
was gone
...
The "old man" was gone
...
Normally I would never have opened what
I viewed as a dull religious publication, but just maybe that sacred
article might be there—and it was
...

I'd been brave, but seeing Dad's bold recommendations to the national
convention in print was more than I could bear
...
I pulled out the box from behind the piano and

under the clippings I found a two-page letter to my father from Henry
Cabot Lodge, Sr
...
I didn't
tell anyone about my box
...

Florence Littauer

Encouragement
Some of the greatest success stories of history have followed a word of
encouragement or an act of confidence by a loved one or a trusted
friend
...
When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell his
wife that he was a failure and had been fired from his job in a
customhouse, she surprised him with an exclamation of joy
...

"Where on earth did you get that?" he exclaimed
...
"I knew
that someday you would write a masterpiece
...
So here is
enough to last us for one whole year
...

Nido Oubein

Walt Jones
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes
to your adventure
...
Florence Brooks
joined the Peace Corps when she was 64 years of age
...
D
...
Then there was Ed Stitt, who at age 87, was
working on his community college degree program in New Jersey
...

Probably no one person has stirred my imagination over the years more
than Walt Jones of Tacoma, Washington
...
When she died, someone said to
Walt that it must be sad losing such a long-time friend
...
"
"Why was that?"
"I don't want to be negative or say anything to defame her wonderful
character, but she kind of petered out on me in the last decade
...
Ten years ago when I
was 94, I told my wife we ain't never seen nothin' except the beautiful
Pacific Northwest
...
'What do you think of that?'
"She said, 1 think you're out of your mind, Walt
...

'"We'd get mugged out there
...
' Then she asked me, Who's going to drive, Walter?' and I said, 'I
am, Lambie
...

"I'd like to make footprints in the sands of time before I check out, but
you can't make footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your
butt
...
"
"So now that she's gone, Walt, what do you intend to do?"

"What do I intend to do? I buried the old gal and bought me a motor
home
...
"
Walt got to 43 of the states that year selling curios and souvenirs
...
Too many of
them will club you over the head for four bits or sue you for whiplash if
you get into an accident
...

"Walt?" he was asked
...

"Who was the woman sitting by your side? Who's your new lady friend,
Walt?"
To which he replied, "Yes, she is
...
"
"Lady friend? Walt, you've been married three times, you're 104 years
of age
...
"
"Well," he responded, "I quickly discovered that man cannot live in a
motor home alone
...
You probably miss having someone to talk
to after having had a companion all these years
...
"
"Too? Are you inferring that you have a romantic interest?"
"I just might
...
"
"What?" he said
...
"
"Sex?" he replied
...
"
"Why?" he asked
...
"
Walt considered the question and said, "Well, if she dies, she dies
...
When asked why he
was taking his money out of a secure bank account and putting it into a
condo development, he said, "Ain't you heard? These are inflationary

times
...
"
How's that for positive thinking?
In 1980 he sold off a lot of his property in and around Pierce County,
Washington
...
He
assembled his friends and quickly made it clear that he was not cashing
in his chips, but he had sold off the property for cash flow
...
I got four grand a month comin' in
until I'm 138
...
He
walked out resplendent in his white beard and black hat looking a little
like the late Colonel Sanders, and Johnny says, "It's good to have you
here, Walt
...
"
"110?"
"110
...

That's what I am
...
"
That would get your attention, wouldn't it? One hundred and ten years
of age—a green, growing human becoming
...

"How old would you be if you didn't know the date you were born and
there weren't no durned calendar to semi-depress you once a year? Ever
heard of people getting depressed because of a calendar date? Oh,
Lordy, I hit my 30th birthday
...
Oh,
no, I hit my 40th birthday
...
Oh, no I'm 50 years old
...
They sent me dead
roses with cobwebs
...
And as a result of a little condominium
investment I made a few years ago, I've made more bucks since I was
105 than I did before
...
"
"Missing a birthday
...

Bob Monwad

Are You Strong Enough To Handle Critics?
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better
...

Theodore Roosevelt

Risking
Two seeds lay side by side in the fertile spring soil
...
I want to unfurl my tender buds like banners to announce
the arrival of spring
...

The second seed said, "I am afraid
...
If I push my way
through the hard soil above me I may damage my delicate sprouts
...
No, it is
much better for me to wait until it is safe
...

A yard hen scratching around in the early spring ground for food found
the waiting seed and promptly ate it
...

Patty Hansen

Try Something Different
When we first read the following story, we had just begun teaching a
course called "The Million Dollar Forum," a course designed to teach
people to accelerate their income up to levels of a million dollars a year
or more
...
Trying harder doesn't always work
...
We need to break out of our paradigm prisons,
our habit patterns and our comfort zones
...
It's just
past noon, late July, and I'm listenirg to the desperate sounds of a lifeor-death struggle going on a few feet away
...
The whining
wings tell the poignant story of the fly's strategy: Try harder
...

The frenzied effort offers no hope for survival
...
It is impossible for the fly to try hard enough to succeed
at breaking through the glass
...

This fly is doomed
...

Across the room, ten steps away, the door is open
...
With
only a fraction of the effort now being wasted, it could be free of this
self-imposed trap
...
It would be so
easy
...
Regrettably, it's an idea
that will kill
...
It may
not offer any real promise for getting what you want out of life
...

If you stake your hopes for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever,
you may kill your chances for success
...
He wrote:
I would very much like to bring my dog with me
...
Would you be willing to permit me to keep him
in my room with me at night?
An immediate reply came from the hotel owner, who said,
I've been operating this hotel for many years
...

I've never had to evict a dog in the middle of the night for being drunk
and disorderly
...

Yes, indeed, your dog is welcome at my hotel
...

Karl Albrecht and Ron Zenke, Service America

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off
your goal
...
They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of
his freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one's own way
...
Frankl Man's Search for Meaning

Consider This
Consider this:
—After Fred Astaire's first screen test, the memo from the testing
director of MGM, dated 1933, said, "Can't act! Slightly bald! Can dance
a little!" Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills
home
...
Lacks motivation
...
"
—When Peter J
...

Phillips, constantly said, "Peter J
...
" Peter was totally
illiterate until he was 26
...
Now he owns the street corners he
used to fight on and just published his latest book: Mrs
...

—Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his
own compositions instead of improving his technique
...

—The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to
be an engineer
...

—Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution, gave up a medical
career and was told by his father, "You care for nothing but shooting,
dogs and rat catching
...
"
—Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas
...

—Thomas Edison's teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything
...
His teacher described him as "mentally slow,
unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams
...


—Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and
ranked 15th out of 22 in chemistry
...

—The sculptor Rodin's father said, "I have an idiot for a son
...
His uncle called him uneducable
...
He was
described as "both unable and unwilling to learn
...
The teacher recalled that
Williams denounced the judges' choices and their intelligence
...
W
...

—Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally
succeeded
...

—Winston Churchill failed sixth grade
...
His greatest contributions came when he was a
"senior citizen
...
By 1975 it had sold more than 7
million copies in the U
...
alone
...
It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a
blockbusting movie and a highly successful television series
...
Hansen

John Corcoran—The Man Who Couldn't Read
For as long as John Corcoran could remember, words had mocked him
...
In school he'd sit at his desk, stupid and silent as
a stone, knowing he would be different from everyone else forever
...
Don't be scared
...
And John couldn't tell them that
the left side of his brain, the lobe humans use to arrange symbols
logically in a sequence, had always misfired
...
In third grade
a nun handed a yardstick to the other children when John refused to read
or write and let each student have a crack at his legs
...
Then he was passed
on to the next grade and the next
...

In his senior year, John was voted homecoming king, went steady with
the valedictorian and starred on the basketball team
...
College? It
would be insane to consider
...
He took
a deep breath, closed his eyes
...

On campus John asked each new friend: Which teachers gave essay
tests? Which gave multiple choice? The minute he stepped out of a
class, he tore the pages of scribble from his notebook, in case anyone
asked to see his notes
...
And he lay in bed, exhausted but unable to
sleep, unable to make his whirring mind let go
...

He got the diploma
...
Now what?
Maybe he was addicted to the edge
...

Maybe that's why, in 1961, John became a teacher
...
Each day he had a student read the textbook
to the class
...

Then he met Kathy, an A student and a nurse
...
A
rock
...
I can't read
...
He must mean he can't read well
...
Kathy filled out his
forms, read and wrote his letters
...

At age 28 John borrowed $2,500, bought a second house, fixed it up and
rented it
...
And another
...

Then one day his accountant told him he was a millionaire
...

Who'd notice that a millionaire always pulled on the doors that said
PUSH or paused before entering public bathrooms, waiting to see which
one the men walked out of?
In 1982 the bottom began to fall out
...
Threats of foreclosures and lawsuits tumbled
out of envelopes
...
Soon he knew they'd have
him on the witness stand and the man in black robes would say: "The
truth, John Corcoran
...
He put up his house as collateral to obtain one last
construction loan
...
"
Then he cried
...

Painstakingly—letter by letter, phonetically—she began teaching him
...
And
John Corcoran was learning to read
...
To heal, he had to come clean
...


"Illiteracy is a form of slavery!" he would cry
...
We need to become obsessed with teaching people to
read!"
He read every book or magazine he could get his hands on, every road
sign he passed, out loud, as long as Kathy could bear it
...
And now he could sleep
...

Yes, that dusty box in his office, that sheaf of papers bound by ribbon
...

Gary Smith

Don't Be Afraid To Fail
You've failed many times, although you may not remember
...

You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn't you?
Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat? Heavy hitters, the
ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot
...
H
...
English novelist
John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books
...

Don't worry about failure
...

A message as published in the
Wall Street Journal by United
Technologies Corporation,
Hartford, Connecticut 06101
United Technologies Corporation 1981

Abraham Lincoln Didn't Quit
The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us
...
I felt a call to that duty
...
If you
want to learn about somebody who didn't quit, look no further
...
He
lost eight elections, twice failed in business and suffered a nervous
breakdown
...

Lincoln was a champion and he never gave up
...
He had to
work to support them
...

1831 Failed in business
...

1832 Also lost his job—wanted to go to law school but couldn't get in
...
He spent the next 17 years of his
life paying off this debt
...

1835 Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was
broken
...

1838 Sought to become speaker of the state legislature—defeated
...

1843 Ran for Congress—lost
...

1848 Ran for re-election to Congress—lost
...

1854 Ran for Senate of the United States—lost
...


1858 Ran for U
...
Senate again—again he lost
...

The path was worn and slippery
...
"
Abraham Lincoln After losing a senate race
Source Unknown

Lesson From A Son
My son Daniel's passion for surfing began at the age of 13
...
Daniel's love of the ride was tested one fateful afternoon
...

"How bad?"
"Bad
...
"
Mike rushed him to the emergency room and they were then sent to a
plastic surgeon's office
...

I was on an airplane flying home from a speaking engagement while
Dan's eye was being stitched
...
He greeted me at the gate and told me Dan
was waiting in the car
...
I remember thinking the waves must have been
lousy that day
...
"
A traveling working mother's worst nightmare had come true
...
I swung open the door, and
my youngest son with the patched eye was leaning forward with both
arms stretched out toward me crying, "Oh, Ma, I'm so glad you're
home
...

"It's okay, Mom," he comforted me
...
"
"What?" I asked, confused by his logic
...
The doctor says I can go back in the water in eight days
...

For the next seven days he kept pressing me to let him go back on the
board
...


"Mom, you taught us never to give up what we love
...
"
Mother To Son
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
...

And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floorBare
...

So, boy, don't you turn back,
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard
...

I gave in
...
Now he's a
man with a responsibility
...

I was tested in my own backyard on an important principle that I teach
audiences in distant cities: "Passionate people embrace what they love
and never give up
...

Lao-tzu
If you could come to my office in California to visit with me today, you
would notice across one side of the room a beautiful old-fashioned
Spanish tile and mahogany soda fountain with nine leather-covered
stools (the kind they used to have in the old drug stores)
...

But if those stools could speak, they would tell you a story about the
day I almost lost hope and gave up
...

Cowboy Bob, my husband, had purchased a small dry cleaning business
with borrowed money
...
Then the bottom fell out
...

I felt that I had no special talent, no training, no college education
...
But I remembered someone in my past who
thought I had a little ability—my Alhambra High School English
teacher
...
I thought, "Now if I
could write a 'Shoppers Column' for the small weekly newspaper in our
rural town, maybe I could earn that house payment
...
So I pushed my two children before me
in a rickety baby stroller with a big pillow tied in the back
...
I was determined that my children would not lose their home as I
often had done as a child
...
Recession
...
I asked if I might buy advertising space at wholesale
and sell it at retail as a "Shoppers Column
...
But
they were wrong
...
I made enough money for the
house payment and to buy an old used car that Cowboy Bob found for
me
...
When the clock struck three, I grabbed my newspaper
samples and flew out of the door to drive to my appointments
...

"Why?" I asked
...
His store was the most popular in
town
...
"There must be something wrong
with your advertising," they explained
...
Those four ads would have made the house payment
...
Ahlman one more time
...
Surely he will listen
...
He was
always "out" or unavailable
...

This time, as I walked into the Rexall drug store, he was there at the
prescription counter in the back
...
I said, "Everyone respects your opinion, Mr
...
Would
you just look at my work for a moment so that I can tell the other
merchants what you think?"
His mouth turned perpendicular in an upside down U
...

Suddenly all of my enthusiasm left me
...
I didn't want to sit at the soda fountain
without buying something, so I pulled out my last dime and ordered a
cherry Coke
...
Would my babies lose
their home as I had so many times when I was growing up? Was my
journalism teacher wrong? Maybe that talent she talked about was just a
dud
...

A soft voice beside me on the next soda fountain stool said, "What is the
matter, dear?" I looked up into the sympathetic face of a lovely grey
haired lady
...

Ahlman, who everyone respects so much, will not look at my work
...
She took my marked
issue of the newspaper in her hands and carefully read it all the way

through
...

Ahlman!
She told Ruben to buy the advertising from me
...
Then she asked me for the names of the four
merchants who had turned me down
...
She gave me a hug and told me they were waiting for me and
to go back and pick up their ads
...
I learned that Ruben was a darling man who
bought from everyone
...
He was just trying to keep his word to her
...
Ahlman from the beginning
...
My advertising
business prospered and grew into four offices, with 285 employees
serving 4,000 continuous contract advertising accounts
...
Ahlman modernized the old drug store and removed the
soda fountain, my sweet husband Bob bought it and installed it in my
office
...
I'd pour you a cherry Coke and remind you to never
give up, to remember that help is always closer than we know
...
Try another path around
...

And, finally, I would serve you these sparkling, refreshing words of Bill
Marriott of the Marriott Hotels:
Failure? I never encountered it
...

Dottie Walters

For Me To Be More Creative, I Am Waiting For
...
Inspiration
2
...
Reassurance
4
...
My turn
6
...
The rest of the rules
8
...
Wider fairways
10
...
The stakes to be lower
12
...
A significant relationship to:
(a) improve
(b) terminate
(c) happen
14
...
A disaster
16
...
An obvious scapegoat
18
...
A Dow-Jones of 1500
20
...
Mutual consent
22
...
A more favorable horoscope
24
...
The two-minute warning
26
...
Richard Nixon to be re-elected
28
...
Tomorrow
30
...
My annual checkup
32
...
The stakes to be higher

34
...
My way to be clear
36
...
An absence of risk
38
...
My uncle to come home from the service
40
...
More adequate safeguards
42
...
The statute of limitations to run out
44
...
A cure for herpes/AIDS
46
...
Wars to end
48
...
Someone to be watching
50
...
Better birth control
52
...
An end to poverty, injustice, cruelty, deceit, incompetence,
pestilence, crime and offensive suggestions
54
...
Chicken Little to return
56
...
My ego to improve
58
...
My new credit card
60
...
This meeting to be over
62
...
The unemployment checks to run out
64
...
My suit to come back from the cleaners
66
...
A signal from Heaven
68
...
The gems of brilliance buried within my first bumbling efforts to be
recognized, applauded and substantially rewarded so that I can work on
the second draft in comfort

70
...
Various aches and pains to subside
72
...
The wind to freshen
74
...
Next season
76
...
My current life to be declared a dress rehearsal with some script
changes permitted before opening night
78
...
The next time around
80
...
My ship to come in
82
...
My dissertation to be finished
84
...
The check to clear
86
...
My doctor's approval, my father's permission, my minister's
blessing or my lawyer's okay
88
...
California to fall into the ocean
90
...
The Iceman to Cometh
92
...
A better write-off
94
...
The rates to go down
96
...
The rates to stabilize
98
...
Weekend rates
100
...
You to go first
David B
...

Don Juan
Roger Crawford had everything he needed to play tennis—except two
hands and a leg
...
He had no
palms
...

The doctor said Roger suffered from ectrodactylism, a rare birth defect
affecting only one out of 90,000 children born in the United States
...

Fortunately Roger's parents didn't believe the doctor
...
'They never allowed me to
feel sorry for myself or take advantage of people because of my
handicap
...
"I asked Dad to write a note to my teachers,
asking for a two-day extension on my assignments
...
At age 12, Roger managed to win a spot on the
school football team
...
Then one day he got his chance
...
But at the ten-yard line,
a guy from the other team caught up with Roger, grabbing his left ankle
...


"I was still standing up," recalls Roger
...
The referee ran over and threw
his hands into the air
...
"
Roger's love of sports grew and so did his self confidence
...
Eating in the lunchroom
with the other kids watching him fumble with his food proved very
painful to Roger, as did his repeated failure in typing class
...
"You can't do
everything—it's better to concentrate on what you can do
...
Unfortunately,
when he swung it hard, his weak grip usually launched it into space
...
The snug fit made it possible for Roger to swing,
serve and volley like an ablebodied player
...

But Roger persisted
...

Surgery on the two fingers of his left hand enabled Roger to grip his
special racket better, greatly improving his game
...

Roger went on to play college tennis, finishing his tennis career with 22
wins and 11 losses
...
Roger now tours the country,
speaking to groups about what it takes to be a winner, no matter who
you are
...
We all have them
...
I've simply learned what I can't do—such as
play the piano or eat with chopsticks—but more importantly, I've
learned what I can do
...
"
Jack Canfield

Yes, You Can
Experience is not what happens to a man
...

Aldous Huxley
What if at age 46 you were burned beyond recognition in a terrible
motorcycle accident, and then four years later were paralyzed from the
waist down in an airplane crash? Then, can you imagine yourself
becoming a millionaire, a respected public speaker, a happy newlywed
and a successful business person? Can you see yourself going white
water rafting? Sky diving? Running for political office?
W
...

The 16 surgeries Mitchell endured after the motorcycle accident burned
more than 65 percent of his body, left him unable to pick up a fork, dial
a telephone or go to the bathroom without help
...
"I am in charge of my
own spaceship," he said
...
I could choose to see
this situation as a setback or a starting point
...

Mitchell bought himself a Victorian home in Colorado, some real estate,
a plane and a bar
...

Then four years after the motorcycle accident, the plane Mitchell was
piloting crashed back onto the runway during takeoff, crushing
Mitchell's 12 thoracic vertebra and permanently paralyzing him from
the waist down
...
What
did I do to deserve this?"
Undaunted, Mitchell worked day and night to regain as much
independence as possible
...
Mitchell later ran for Congress, turning his odd
appearance into an asset with slogans such as, "Not just another pretty
face
...

Mitchell's unshakable Positive Mental Attitude has earned him
appearances on the "Today Show" and "Good Morning America" as
well as feature articles in Parade, Time, The New York Times and other
publications
...
"Now there are 9,000
...
I tell people that I have had two big
bumps in my life
...
You can step back, take a
wider view and have a chance to say, "Maybe that isn't such a big deal
after all
...
"
Jack Canfield and Mark V
...
Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger
...
"
Her father told her, "If you do, I know how to handle it so let's start
running!"
That's just what they did every day
...

After a few weeks, she told her father, "Daddy, what I'd really love to
do is break the world's long-distance running record for women
...
As a freshman in high
school, Patti announced, "I'm going to run from Orange County up to
San Francisco
...
) "As a sophomore," she went
on, "I'm going to run to Portland, Oregon
...
) "As a
junior I'll run to St
...
(About 2,000 miles
...
" (More than 3,000 miles away
...
" She focused not on what she had lost, but on what
she had left
...
" Her dad ran every mile at her side, and her
mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything
went wrong
...
They built a
giant poster that read, "Run, Patti, Run!" (This has since become her
motto and the title of a book she has written
...
A doctor told her
she had to stop her run
...
"
"Doc, you don't understand,' she said
...
Isn't there a
way I can keep running?" He gave her one option
...
He warned her that it would be

incredibly painful, and he told her, "It will blister
...

She finished the run to Portland, completing her last mile with the
governor of Oregon
...
"
After four months of almost continuous running from the West Coast to
the East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington and shook the hand of the
President of the United States
...
"
I told this story at one of my seminars not long ago, and afterward a big
teary-eyed man came up to me, stuck out his big meaty hand and said,
"Mark, my name is Jim Wilson
...
" Because of her noble efforts, he told me, enough money
had been raised to open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers
around the country
...
Hansen

The Power Of Determination
The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned,
potbellied coal stove
...

One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames
...
He had major burns over the lower half of his
body and was taken to the nearby county hospital
...
The doctor told his mother that
her son would surely die—which was for the best, really—for the
terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body
...
He made up his mind that he
would survive
...
When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the doctor
and his mother speaking quietly
...

Once more the brave boy made up his mind
...

He would walk
...
His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless
...
Every day his mother
would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control,
nothing
...

When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair
...
This
day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair
...

He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot
...
Then, stake by stake, he
began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that he would walk
...
There was nothing he wanted more than to
develop life in those legs
...

He began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the sheer
joy of running
...

Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who was not
expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never
hope to run—this determined young man, Dr
...
But out of it has come the marvelous story about Captain
Gerald L
...

His plane was shot down over the China Sea on February 3,1966, and
he spent the next seven years in a succession of prison camps
...
After days of
torture on the Vietnamese version of the rack, he signed the confession
they demanded
...

Even worse was his guilt over having cracked
...
Robinson Risner
...
Welcome to Heartbreak
Hotel," he said
...
Bob Hansen?" Coffee asked
...
Listen, Jerry, you must learn to communicate by tapping on the
walls
...
"
Risner had said "we"! That meant there were others
...

"Have they tortured you, Jerry?" Risner asked
...
And I feel terrible that they got anything out of me
...
The
important thing is how you come back
...
Resist to
the utmost of your ability
...
Lick
your wounds and bounce back
...
Don't get
down on yourself
...
"
For days at a time Coffee would be punished for some minor infraction
by being stretched on the ropes
...

"Then, when he was being punished," Coffee says, "I would be on the
wall doing the same for him
...
The kids are
doing great
...
The boys swim

and dive off the dock, and little Jerry splashes around with a plastic
bubble on his back
...
"Little Jerry? Who's Jerry?" Then
he realized
...
There was no way she could know that all her
previous letters had been undelivered, so she talked about their new son
matter of-factly
...
" The letter concluded:
All of us, plus so many others, are praying for your safety and return
soon
...
I love you
...
Over and over
they played scenes of what it was going to be like to be back
...
Every
Sunday the senior officer in each cell block would pass a signal—
church call
...
"
Coffee says: "I realized that despite being incarcerated in this terrible
place, it was my cup that runneth over because someday, however,
whenever, I would return to a beautiful and free country
...

"Today it is our duty to return your belongings," one said
...

"This
...
Yes, it was his
...
A little loose, but definitely his ring
...

My kids were 11 or 12 years old when my ring had been taken away
...
During the prime years of my life, I had

sat in a medieval dungeon, had my arm screwed up, had contracted
worms and God knows what else
...
And I thought of Bea
...

Next to the aircraft were several dozen American military people who
smiled at them through the fence and gave them the thumbs-up signal
...

"Commander Gerald L
...
" (He had been
promoted two ranks in his absence
...
It was the
first American military uniform he had seen in many years
...

"Commander Gerald L
...
"
"Welcome back, Jerry
...
When the plane was loaded, the pilot taxied
directly onto the runway without holding short, then locked the brakes
and jammed his throttles forward
...
The roar
was horrendous as the brakes were released and they lurched forward on
the runway
...
It was a strong, sure voice
...
We've just left North Vietnam
...

The first leg of their trip home took them to Clark Air Force Base in the
Philippines
...
God bless
...
There were
television cameras, but the men had no idea that at that very moment in
the small hours of the morning, millions of Americans back home were
riveted to their television sets, cheering and weeping
...
Coffee's stomach churned as he waited the interminable few
seconds for Bea to pick up the phone in Sanford, Florida, where she and
the children were waiting
...
It's me
...
Yes
...
I think everybody in America saw you
...
I'm kinda scrawny
...
I'm just anxious to get
home
...
Afterwards, in response to
the parish priest's welcome, here is what Coffee said
...
Faith in myself
to simply pursue my duty to the best of my ability and ultimately return
home with honor
...
Faith in my country, its institutions and our national
purpose and cause
...
Our lives are a continuing journey—
and we must learn and grow at every bend as we make our way,
sometimes stumbling, but always moving, toward the finest within us
...
If we weren't, we wouldn't be around
today
...
In many ways, we've been blessed
with a savvy and spirit that isn't given to everybody
...

Down in the reception room of the Institute of Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation, over on the East River at 400 East 34th Street in New
York City, there's a bronze plaque that's riveted to the wall
...
But I never quite made the time to pull over to one side and
read the words on that plaque that were written, it's said, by an unknown
Confederate soldier
...
I read it and then I read
it again
...
I'd like to share it with you
...

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey
...

I was given infirmity, that I might do better things
...

I was given poverty, that I might be wise
...

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God
...

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things
...
Almost
despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered
...
Betty Tisdale is a world-class heroine
...
She had already
adopted five orphaned Vietnamese girls with her former pediatrician
husband, Col
...

As a U
...
Naval doctor in Vietnam in 1954, Tom Dooley had helped
refugees flee from the communist north
...
His influence changed my life forever
...
While in Saigon, she fell in love with the orphans at An
Lac (Happy Place), run by Madame Vu Thi Ngai, who was later
evacuated by Betty the day Vietnam fell, and returned with her to
Georgia to live with Betty and her ten children
...
She called Madame Ngai and said, "Yes! I'll come and get the
children and get them all adopted
...
She just knew that she'd do it
...

In moments she began to move mountains
...

She simply decided to do it and she did it
...
" That kept her motivated
...

However, upon her arrival, the head of Vietnam's social welfare, Dr
...
She quickly
discovered war orphans are fortunate to simply be alive
...

Betty went to the hospital pediatric department, obtained 225 birth
certificates, and quickly created birth dates, times and places for the 219
eligible babies, toddlers and youngsters
...
My fingers just created birth
certificates
...
It was now or never
...


...
Benning resisted, but Betty brilliantly and
tenaciously persisted
...
His duty, too, was not answering
Betty's calls, no matter how urgent and of life-saving importance they
were
...
She had come too far and done
too much to be stopped now
...
Betty enrolled her with her heart and
asked her to intercede
...
Benning be used as
the interim home for the orphans of An Lac
...
When Betty arrived in Saigon, she went to Ambassador
Graham Martin immediately and pleaded for some sort of transportation
for the children
...
The Ambassador agreed to help if all the papers
were cleared through the Vietnamese government
...
Dan signed the
last manifest, literally, as the children were boarding the two airforce
planes
...
Most had never been away
from the orphanage
...
She had recruited soldiers and
the ABC crew to help strap them in, transport them and feed them
...
Every volunteer cried with joy and appreciation that they had
tangibly contributed to another's freedom
...
There
was a $21,000 expense for a United Airlines plane
...
Tisdale
guaranteed payment because of his love for the orphans
...

Every child was adopted within one month of arriving in the United
States
...

Betty has proven over and over again that you can do anything at all if
you are simply willing to ask, to not settle for a "no," to do whatever it
takes and to persevere
...
Tom Dooley once said, "It takes ordinary people to do
extraordinary things
...
Hansen

Are You Going To Help Me?
In 1989 an 8
...

In the midst of utter devastation and chaos, a father left his wife
securely at home and rushed to the school where his son was supposed
to be, only to discover that the building was as flat as a pancake
...
As he looked at the pile of debris that once
was the school, it looked hopeless, but he kept remembering his
commitment to his son
...
Remembering his son's classroom would be in the back
right corner of the building, he rushed there and started digging through
the rubble
...

The fire chief showed up and tried to pull him off of the school's debris
saying "Fires are breaking out, explosions are happening everywhere
...
We'll take care of it
...
" To which this loving,
caring Armenian father asked, "Are you going to help me now?"
The police came and said, "You're angry, distraught and it's over
...
Go home
...

Courageously he proceeded alone because he needed to know for
himself: "Is my boy alive or is he dead?"
He dug for eight hours
...
24 hours
...
then, in the
38th hour, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son's voice
...
I told 'em that if you were alive,
you'd save me and when you saved me, they'd be saved
...

'There are 14 of us left out of 33, Dad
...
When the building collapsed, it made a wedge, like
a triangle, and it saved us
...
Hansen

Just One More Time
There's a 19th-century English novel set in a small Welsh town in which
every year for the past 500 years the people all gather in church on
Christmas Eve and pray
...
There they set up a
creche scene, complete with manger
...
Their hymns warm the chilly December air
...

There is a myth in that town, a belief that if all citizens are present on
Christmas Eve, and if all are praying with perfect faith, then and only
then, at the stroke of midnight, the Second Coming will be at hand
...
Yet the
Second Coming has eluded them
...
"
"Then why do you go each year?" he asked
...
As it
says in the New Testament, we need only have faith as small as a grain
of mustard seed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven
...
it is at those moments that we need that small bit of faith that
kept that man coming back to the stone ruin on Christmas Eve
...
Just this next time, perhaps I'll make the breakthrough then
...
Perhaps we have even come to the conclusion
that there's no possibility of change or growth
...
Please go back, my
friend, just this one more time
...
I'd estimate five million people could
have beaten me in the pole vault the years I won it, at least five million
...

Greatness is all around us
...
What is fantastic about all the conventions I go to is that the
greatest in the business will come and share their ideas, their methods
and their techniques with everyone else
...

They don't hold back
...

I'll never forget the time I was trying to break Dutch WarmerDam's
record
...
I said, "Dutch, can you help me? I seem to have leveled off
...
"
He said, "Sure, Bob, come on up to visit me and I'll give you all I got
...

For three days, Dutch gave me everything that he'd seen
...
To make a long
story short, I went up eight inches
...
I've found that sports champions and heroes willingly do this
just to help you become great, too
...

That's his obligation
...
Eighty-five percent answered it
completely
...
Great people will tell you their
secrets
...
Go
where they are, get around them, talk to them
...

Bob Richards, Olympic Athlete

ECLECTIC WISDOM
This life is a test
...
Had it been an actual life You would
have received Further instructions on Where to go and what to do!
Found on a bulletin board

You've Got Yourself A Deal!
When Marita was 13, it was the era of tie-dyed T-shirts and frayed
jeans
...
One day I saw her out in the
driveway rubbing the hems of her new jeans with dirt and rocks
...
She continued to grind on as I recounted my soap opera of childhood
deprivation
...
She replied
without looking up, "You can't wear new ones
...
" Such
total loss of logic! How could it be the style to ruin new clothes?
Each morning as she would leave for school I would stare at her and
sigh, "My daughter looking like that
...
Fit for a duster, I
thought
...
But where would they go? They were so
tight and stiff they couldn't move
...

One day after she had left for school, it was as if the Lord got my
attention and said, "Do you realize what your last words are to Marita
each morning? 'My daughter looking like that
...
Have you
ever looked at the other girls in junior high? Why not give them a
glance?"
I drove over to pick her up that day and observed that many of the other
girls looked even worse
...
I offered a compromise: "From now on
you can wear anything you want to school and with your friends, and I
won't bug you about it
...
"
"But when I take you out with me to church or shopping or to my
friends, I'd like you to dress in something you know I like without my
having to say a word
...

Then I added, "That means you get 95 percent your way and I get 5
percent for me
...

"Mother, you've got yourself a deal!"
From then on I gave her a happy farewell in the morning and didn't bug
her about her clothes
...
We had ourselves a deal!
Florence Littauer

Take A Moment To Really See
We have all heard the expression: "Remember to stop and smell the
roses
...

I am as guilty as anyone of tuning out the world in this manner,
especially when I am driving on California's overcrowded streets
...

I was driving to a business appointment and, as usual, I was planning in
my mind what I was going to say
...
"All right," I thought to myself,
"I can beat the next light if I race ahead of the pack
...
A young couple, both
blind, were walking arm-inarm across this busy intersection with cars
whizzing by in every direction
...
Each of them had a white cane extended, searching for
clues to navigate them across the intersection
...
They were overcoming what I felt was one of the
most feared handicaps—blindness
...
My thought was quickly interrupted by horror when I saw
that the couple was not walking in the crosswalk, but was instead
veering diagonally, directly toward the middle of the intersection
...
I was frightened for them
because I didn't know if the other drivers understood what was
happening
...
Every car in every
direction came to a simultaneous stop
...
Nobody even yelled, "Get out of
the way!" Everything froze
...


Amazed, I looked at the cars around me to verify that we were all seeing
the same thing
...
Suddenly the driver to my right reacted
...
To your right!" Other people followed
in unison, shouting, "To your right!"
Never skipping a beat, the couple adjusted their course as they followed
the coaching
...
As they
arrived at the curb, one thing struck me—they were still arm-in-arm
...
Yet
I immediately sensed
the sighs of relief exhaled by everyone stopped at that intersection
...
Here were human beings stepping
outside themselves for a moment to help four people in need
...
The first is: "Slow down
and smell the roses
...
) Take
time to look around and really see what is going on in front of you right
now
...

The second lesson I learned is that the goals we set for ourselves can be
attained through faith in ourselves and trust in others, despite seemingly
insurmountable obstacles
...
Their obstacle was eight lines of cars aimed straight at them
...

We too can move forward in attaining our goals, putting blinders on to
the obstacles that would stand in our way
...

Finally, I learned to really appreciate my gift of sight, something I had
taken for granted all too often
...
How often we forget the simple yet incredible gifts we have
in our life
...
Since then I have made the decision to really see life
as I go about my daily activities and use my God-given talents to help
others less fortunate
...
Take a moment to see what is going on around you
right now, right where you are
...

Jeffrey Michael Thomas

If I Had My Life To Live Over
Interviews with the elderly and the terminally ill do not report that
people have regret for the things they have done but rather people talk
about the things they regret not having done
...

I'd relax
...

I would be sillier than I have been this trip
...

I would take more chances
...

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers
...
I would perhaps have more
actual troubles but I'd have
fewer imaginary ones
...
Oh, I've had my moments and if I
had it to do over again,
I'd have more of them
...
Just moments
...

I've been one of those people who never go anywhere without a
thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute
...

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier
in the spring and stay that way later in the fall
...
I would ride more merry-go-rounds
...

Nadine Stair (age 85)

Two Monks
Two monks on a pilgrimage came to the ford of a river
...
Without
more ado, one of the monks took her on his back, carried her across and
put her down on dry ground on the other side
...
But the other monk after an
hour started complaining, "Surely it is not right to touch a woman; it is
against the commandments to have close contact with women
...
They worried that like most fouryear-olds, she might feel jealous and want to hit or shake him, so they
said no
...
She treated the baby with
kindness and her pleas to be left alone with him became more urgent
...

Elated, she went into the baby's room and shut the door, but it opened a
crack—enough for her curious parents to peek in and listen
...
I'm starting to
forget
...
I knew I should not have gone
alone, but I was very competent and just took a chance
...
When I
got a cramp, I realized at once how foolish I was
...
I tried to remove
my weight belt, but I was so doubled up I could not get to the catch
...
I could
see my watch and knew there was only a little more time on the tank
before I would be out of air
...
I wasn't
wearing a wet suit, but couldn't straighten out and couldn't get to the
cramped muscles with my hands
...

I called out in my mind, "Somebody, something, help me!"
I was not prepared for what happened
...
I thought, "Oh no, sharks!" I felt real terror
and despair
...
Around into my field
of vision
came an eye—the most marvelous eye I could ever imagine
...
It was the eye of a big dolphin
...

It moved farther forward, nudging under and hooking its dorsal fin
below my armpit with my arm over its back
...
I felt that the animal was conveying security to me,
that it was healing me as well as lifting me toward the surface
...

At the surface it drew me all the way into shore
...

It felt like another lifetime
...
I felt so light and free and alive, and just wanted to play in
the sun and the water in all that freedom
...
I noticed that there were a lot
of dolphins there, farther out
...
I was very tired then, almost
collapsing and he made sure I was safe in the shallowest water
...
We stayed that way for
what seemed like a very long time, timeless I guess, in a trance almost,
with personal thoughts from the past going through my mind
...
And all of them
left
...

"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start the bidding for me?"
"A dollar, a dollar," then, two! Only two?
"Two dollars, and who'll make it three?
'Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three
...

The music ceased, and the auctioneer, With a voice that was quiet and
low, Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?" And he held it up with the
bow
...

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand
What changed its worth?"
Swift came the reply:
"The touch of a master's hand
...

A "mess of potage," a glass of wine;
A game—and he travels on
...
"
But the Master comes and the foolish crowd

Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand
...
Welch

More Chicken Soup?
Many of the stories and poems you have read in this book were
submitted by readers like you
...
We invite you to
contribute a story
...
You may
submit an original piece or something you clip out of a local newspaper,
a magazine, a church bulletin or a company newsletter
...

In addition to future Servings of Chicken Soup For The Soul, some of
the other books we have planned are Chicken Soup For The Woman's
Soul as well as Chicken Soup For The
...

Just send a copy of your stories and other pieces, indicating which
edition they are for, to the following address:
Chicken Soup For The (Specify Which Edition) Soul
P
...
Box 30880
Santa Barbara, CA 93130
Tel: 805-563-2935
Fax: 805-563-2945
Web site: http://www
...
com
You can also visit our Chicken Soup For The Soul site on AOL at
keyword: chickensoup
...

For information about speaking engagements, other books, audiotapes,
workshops and training programs contact any of the authors directly
...
He is both a dynamic,
entertaining speaker and a highly sought-after trainer
...

He is the author and narrator of several bestselling audio- and
videocassette programs, including Self-Esteem And Peak Performance,

How To Build High Self-Esteem, Self-Esteem In The Classroom and
Chicken Soup For The Soul—Live
...

Jack has co-authored numerous books, including the Chicken Soup For
The Soul series, Dare To Win and The Aladdin Factor (all with Mark
Victor Hansen), 100 Ways To Build Self-Concept In The Classroom
(with Harold C
...

Jack is a regularly featured speaker for professional associations, school
districts, government agencies, churches, hospitals, sales organizations
and corporations
...
Jack is also
on the faculty of Income Builders International, a school for
entrepreneurs
...
It attracts educators,
counselors, parenting trainers, corporate trainers, professional speakers,
ministers and others interested in developing their speaking and seminar
leading skills
...
O
...
chickensoup
...
His presentations cover sales excellence and strategies;
personal empowerment and development; and how to triple your
income and double your time off
...
Throughout his career, he has
inspired hundreds of thousands of people to create a more powerful and
purposeful future for themselves while stimulating the sale of billions of
dollars worth of goods and services
...
He is coauthor of
the Chicken Soup For The Soul series, Dare To Win and The Aladdin
Factor (all with Jack Canfield) and The Master Motivator (with Joe
Batten)
...
His message has made him a popular television and radio
personality, with appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, PBS and
CNN
...

Mark is a big man with a heart and spirit to match—an inspiration to all
who seek to better themselves
...
O
...
chickensoup

---