August

Encouragement

Nathaniel Hawthorne, having lost his government post, went home, dejected and on the brink of despair. His wife, learning the reason for his sad state of mind, instead of nagging, set pen and ink on the table, lighted a fire, put her arm about his shoulders and said, "Now you will be able to write your book." Hawthorne took heart and what he produced is The Secret Letter.

Failure

What makes us so afraid of failure? It’s worry about what people think. "What will they say?" we ask, as if it were the ultimate scandal to fail. We assume that because we’ve made one or several mistakes, we’re failures and therefore forever disgraced. What a ridiculous assumption! How many people are completely successful in every department of life? Not one. The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes and turn their failures into opportunities.

Failure means you’ve put forth some effort. That’s good. Failure gives you an opportunity to learn a better way to do it. That’s positive. Failure teaches you something and adds to your experience. That’s very helpful. Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude, not an outcome; a temporary inconvenience; a stepping-stone. Our response to it determines just how helpful it can be. —Zig Ziglar

Soar High

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might. — Marian Anderson