Happy Labour Day

An industrialist whose production line inexplicably broke down, costing him millions per day finally tracked down an expert. The expert arrived, pulled off his coat, brought out a screwdriver and turned one screw. The factory came back to life. Then, he presented a bill for £10,000. Outraged, the factory owner demanded an itemised version. The expert was happy to oblige. He wrote: "For turning a screw: £1. For knowing which screw to turn: £9,999." 

Adapted from an article titled, "Knowing which screw to turn" dated May 27, 2007 by Calvin Conaway

SUCCESS THROUGH DIFFICULTIES

If you can travel through life without difficulty, the journey would be meaningless, uninteresting and uninspiring. Out of difficulty, men have built the greatest strength of characters. We only see their successes but not what they went through. Otherwise, how did Bill Gates survive after his first business failure? What did Albert Einstein do to overcome his childhood emotional pain of not being able to speak until he was four years old? How did Jim Carrey cope with the effect of homelessness? What can Bethany Hamilton's experience, of having her arm bitten off by a shark, teach us about setbacks? Who would have thought Benjamin Franklin could amount to anything in life when he dropped out of school at age ten? Richard Branson has dyslexia, and so what? Having Stephen King's first novel rejected 30 times only added more value to his chance of success in life. The list is endless. The reality is that not everyone of us will ever become a 'Bill Gates' or an 'Albert Einstein' or 'Jim Carrey' or 'Bethany Hamilton' or 'Benjamin Franklin' or 'Richard Branson.' But everyone of us can achieve our full potential if we have the will. No one can stop you without your cooperation. The requirement is....never giving up. Some people achieve their greatest breakthrough the moment they hit the hardest rock in their lives. Unfortunately, this is when some people give up. A man or a woman with a purpose and determination, no matter how poor his or her chance in life, you will hear from them. A purpose-driven life is unstoppable, no matter the obstacles or difficulties.

CHANGE

You can perceive change either as a threat that sets you backward or as an opportunity that propels you forward. It's all about attitude. The very nature of life is change. As succinctly put by Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, "To resist change is to resist the essence of our existence." When you embrace change, you can survive any circumstance life throws at you.

Epictetus quote

You are only as strong as the people around you.        "The key is to keep company only with people who
 uplift you, whose presence calls forth your   
 best."   - Epictetus

Social Distancing

RANDOM MUSINGS
I am envisioning that "Social Distancing" will succeed in adding a new right to the existing body of human rights as defined by the United Nations Human Rights. The new right I have in mind is the right to "Personal Space and Boundaries."
Wikipedia has described "Personal Space" as the, "Physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which encroachment can feel threatening or uncomfortable." The online encyclopedia has also defined "Personal Boundaries"  as the "guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits." I can also envision how the new right could impact on the way we live and relate with one another in the workplace, at home and in social environments.
What would such right mean to our relationships with one another?

Your Map vs My Map

"If your 'highway' is my 'ravine', and we both act according to our private maps, we are likely to misunderstand each other"
~ Wendy Jago

Pushing to the front

"Give a boy purpose and determination no matter how poor his chance and you will hear from him." ~Pushing To The Front : Success Under Difficulties

Marshy Forest

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

"Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate ones, brave by doing brave ones." ~ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

EMPATHY

EMPATHY Emotion is one of the four ingredients of empathy, i.e, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The others are cognition, the process of acquiring the knowledge and understanding of how others are feeling at any point in time and space; compassion, the ability to act positively to reduce the pains and suffering of others; and communication, the art of active listening and communicating. The four make up the elements that can produce what social scientists would call an emotionally intelligent human being. They are skills for learning, developing and actively practicing, on a daily basis, human virtues such as courage, temperance, compassion, respect, honesty, prudence, etc. They are therefore considered as learnable way of life that let's individual lives a good life. A good life is one that adheres strictly to ethical and moral laws. Ethics are the principles that govern human behaviour and how we conduct our affairs with one another. Morals are concerned with the principles of the rightness and the wrongness of our behaviour as well as the goodness and badness of our character. Law governs society as a whole, dealing with how we interact and connect with one another. It is about treating others as you would want others to treat you. It is in first understanding others that others can understand you. It is in forgiving others their trespasses that your own trespasses can be forgiven. It is in meeting the needs of others that your own needs can be met. It is in not judging others that you are not judged. It is by lifting people up that you are lifted up. The list is endless. It is the law of reciprocity if you wish to call it that way. This is a universal law and another great mystery too. But they are teachable and therefore learnable.

Trump vs Biden

"The path toward victory is virtually impossible after considering the decision for the past few weeks. Please know that I do not make this decision lightly, it was very difficult and painful. We are a grassroots, multi-racial, multi-generational movement which has always believed that real change does not come from the top on down, but from the bottom on up. I congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man, who I will work with to progress our ideas forward. The Democrats will go forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history." ~ Bernie Sander, announcing his suspension of his bid for president. 

Marcus Aurelius on Change

"Is any man afraid of change? What can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or suitable to the universal nature? And can you take a hot bath unless the wood for the fire undergoes a change? And can you be nourished unless the good undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?" Marcus Aurelius, a stoic Roman Philosopher King.