A Morning Motivational Quotes

I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!

This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Before going to breakfast, you are in your
room experiencing the gongs of a classic religious bell, a unique and cuddly invitation to the morning meditation session. In ten minutes it will be 7:00 a.m.—dawn’s brisk reminder that life will never be easy. Mornings are a bit cruel.

No one wakes up in the morning and says, 'I want to gain 150 pounds and I will start right now!

I shoved him. "Kishan. Kishan! Wake up!" He woke only halfway and pulled me closer. "Shh, go back to sleep. It's not morning yet." "Yes, it is morning." I pushed against his ribs. "Time to wake up. Come on!" "Okay, honey, but how about a kiss first? A man needs some motivation to get out of bed." "That kind of motivation keeps a man in bed. I'm not kissing you. Now get up.

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)

We all grow tired eventually; it happens to everyone. Even the sun, at the close of the year, is no longer a morning person.

Let my words be more than motivation; let them carry life.

I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.

There is no tomorrow and there was no yesterday; if you truly want to accomplish your goals you must engulf yourself in today.

Without the fear of occasional gaffes, the willingness to be perfectly imperfect, and the heart of a child who creates chaos first thing in the morning for a parent; you are not allowing our inner child to grow. You grow in pain, not in years, and you must cross the bridge without knowing of the pain, the tears, or the trials and tribulations that you will come to have to face, but sweet child of mine, stay the happy child of mine.

You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to your reflexes - that means your [preparation:]. That's where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you're going to get found out now, under the bright lights.

The first few moments of the day are some of the most important as they can determine the mood for the rest of the day.

There is a specific feeling that comes about during the dying embers of a relationship. Different from the Monday morning quarrels before work because you two are tired, different from the “I’m not going to talk to you for a while because I am mad at you” silences. Breaks ups happen instantly, yet the process occurs over a gradual period of time, with tear by tear until what was once whole, rips into two. Breakups are the disappointment we feel when we wanted our lover to finish the story with an exclamation mark, but instead are left with a question mark.

The smallest of implementations is always worth more than the grandest of intentions.

Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.

Daily dance uplift the soul to spiritual realms.

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief - WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care? People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us. For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation. Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order. Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to. You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills. Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left. Trust is maintained when values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep clarity, discipline and consistency in balance, then trust starts to break down. All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.

To conquer new territories you must have courage to lose sight of the shore. Dream big, then dare to wake up and accomplish it. Motivational speaker Robert J. Kriegel has said, “The shame in life is not to fail to reach your dream, but to fail to have a dream to reach.

It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry. It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I'm holding on to it now, and I'm not letting go.

We must be grateful every time we witness a new morning, feel the touch of a loved one, or are blessed with the briefest sound of life.

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.

When you wake up each morning with a burning passion to accomplish a goal, you've already won the day.

Every morning, whether I've slept or not, whether I've made it through the day without crying or given in and sobbed in the shower, where no one can hear me― the sun comes up, and I make my choice.

It takes grace to stop working and go to bed. When in bed, more grace is needed to rise up and begin work again.

What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This, more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission.

Mindful Monday Humans, May your coffee kick in before reality does.

Lavender lilies all dotted with spots. Sun-yellow daffodils clustered in pots. Blue morning-glories climb trellises high. Powder-white asters like stars in the sky. Thick, pink peonies unfold in the sun. Winter adieu now that spring has begun.

Seek God every morning. Trust God every moment.

Never let it happen to you as it did to me. That you wake in the morning, stare at the ceiling, ask yourself, 'What have I got to get up for today?' and answer... 'Nothing.

Early is a priceless timepiece owned by the successful.

With this morning’s sunrise comes a day of things that have never been.

I arise to face my failures every morning, but I never fail to face them.

At that time I could not imagine what would become of me, and I didn't care. It was not judgement day, but another morning.

A major part of living a life of self-motivation is having something to wake up for in the morning—something that you are “up to” in life so that you will stay hungry.

Love is like a morning mist.

Renew your mind every morning with pure thoughts.

Monday is the yardstick against which all that is unpleasant is measured.

each morning we’re born again of yesterday nothing remains what’s left began today

In the dead of a long, black night it is hard to imagine a sunrise on the horizon extending its vibrant and warming rays, but that is how you hold out hope. Have faith that the morning you dream of will eventually come.

Bedtime makes you realize how completely incapable you are of being in charge of another human being. My children act like they’ve never been to sleep before. “Bed? What’s that? No, I’m not doing that.” They never want to go to bed. This is another thing that I will never have in common with my children. Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, “When can I come back here?” It’s the carrot that keeps me motivated. Sometimes going to bed feels like the highlight of my day. Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings. Once the lights are out, you can expect at least an hour of inmates clanging their tin cups on the cell bars.

Someone said that our goals keep us going, but it's our dreams that make us tick. So if you disconnect your goals from your dreams, don't be surprised if one morning you realize that your life is on autopilot.

The best morning rituals are activities that don’t have to happen and certainly don’t have to happen at a specific hour. These are activities that require internal motivation.

Every morning is a fresh breath and blessings.

Don't stop until you're proud

Some people awake each morning dreading the day looking for the negatives in their lives and in others, while some awaken fresh appreciating the opportunity to contribute to life, making the world a better place and see the positives. Neither is right or wrong for we are human, we all make a conscience choice everyday as to who we shall be.

For an early morning I had so much fucking pep in my step. Lust was a great motivator. I was spending time with Tom Cohen. A Tsunami could sweep through the city and I’d still think I was having a great week.

When I was a boy of seven or eight I read a novel untitled "Abafi" — The Son of Aba — a Servian translation from the Hungarian of Josika, a writer of renown. The lessons it teaches are much like those of "Ben Hur," and in this respect it might be viewed as anticipatory of the work of Wallace. The possibilities of will-power and self-control appealed tremendously to my vivid imagination, and I began to discipline myself. Had I a sweet cake or a juicy apple which I was dying to eat I would give it to another boy and go through the tortures of Tantalus, pained but satisfied. Had I some difficult task before me which was exhausting I would attack it again and again until it was done. So I practiced day by day from morning till night. At first it called for a vigorous mental effort directed against disposition and desire, but as years went by the conflict lessened and finally my will and wish became identical.

Naysayers can't prevent your brilliance and purpose from entering the world. It will seep under doors like water flooding into a room. Its shafts will beam through windows like dazzling rays on a bright, summery morning. Within the sunlight are galaxies and constellations filled with opportunities for you to take. All you have to do is create the environment for its manifestation and keep striving, keep going.

There are two types of people in this world- those who pull out of bed each morning at the thought of breakfast and those who are driven by ambition. The former succeed in satisfying hunger pangs and the latter accomplish their life goals.

Articulating and expanding your motivation when you wake up in the morning has the power to change your whole day.

Think the highest thought you can think, Feel into it, then expand it. Do this every morning.

You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say—today I will change the oil in my truck.

You are only Half Happy unless you love them both equally: Friday & Monday!

The miracle of this moment is a glorious time.

God supply my needs, one day at a time.

Every new day brings new adoration and new adventure.

Every morning, look in the mirror. You are beautiful and wonderful.

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in day out Success is the not the thing we will find in a day.It takes continuous efforts and sacrifices to gain success in life. Your little efforts in a day create great differences in life.

For the longest time my company is what got me up in the morning. It was what motivated me every second of every day. Since the moment you started working for me, you are what has gotten me up in the morning. You are what motivates me every second of every day. And still I want more from you. Tomorrow the day is all ours, because I want to talk to you about something.

Upon waking this morning… What if all that remained were the people and things for which I had expressed Gratitude the day before? I shudder to think of all that would found to be missing.

Maybe you don’t need to find more energy, maybe you just need to find a dream that makes you actually want to get up in the morning. Maybe you need to find something that gives back more than it takes. Maybe you need to stop trying to be good at the hundred things that do not light up your soul, and finally choose the one that does—the one that asks you to risk, to lay your heart bare, to try again, even though you’re scared. You’re not failing because you’re not motivated. You’re not supposed to get far on a path that was never yours to walk.

It turns out getting straight A's isn't the same thing as being motivated enough to drag yourself to school in the mornings.

If the thrill of success doesn't make you jump out of bed in the morning, then the fear of failure should do.

The newness of this day is divine.

If you don’t wake up at three in the morning and want to do something, you’re wasting your time.

That moment when you are standing at the edge of a life decision may be terrifying, but if you don't jump in - you'll never know!

Your morning routine generates a 10x return for good or for bad. Make it good.

Every new day, we must refocus, to see the beauty of the moment

It's not so much about what the morning brings; it's what you bring to the morning

You fool, what better motivation are you looking for in the morning than the incredible motivation of the morning sunrise?

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.

To wake up each morning is a blessed gift.

Expecting someone to respect you is the wildest form of ego!

Magical Monday is an amalgamation of passion, perseverance and performance.

What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone. Let yesterday fade into silence. With the morning light, life offers a fresh beginning—tender and whole.

There is something about yourself that you don't know. Something that you will deny even exists until it's too late to do anything about it. It's the only reason you get up in the morning, the only reason you suffer the shitty boss, the blood, the sweat and the tears. This is because you want people to know how good, attractive, generous, funny, wild and clever you really are. "Fear or revere me, but please think I'm special." We share an addiction. We're approval junkies. We're all in it for the slap on the back and the gold watch. The "hip, hip, hoo-fucking-rah." Look at the clever boy with the badge, polishing his trophy. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Cos we're just monkeys wrapped in suits, begging for the approval of others.

I remember a time in a class on a cold winter morning a Japanese girl came with a surgical mask & I thought “wow people would go to extremes NOT to get sick in Japan” afterwards on a break I approached her & asked in a cynical manner: why the mask? Are you afraid of catching a cold? & then she said “in Japan you use it when YOU are under the weather & you don’t want other people to get sick, it is the polite thing to do” wow! that's a lesson I will never forget

What makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning? What puts a smile on your face, the kind you can’t wipe off if you tried? What fascinates you? Motivates you? Overwhelms you in the very best sense? If you don’t know, I suggest not wasting one more single day until you find out.

When a monster grows quiet and crumbles to the ground weeping, you feel sorry for him. You may approach with caution and hope, whispering words of peace. But in the morning he will rise to his full height, roaring and stomping and baring his sharp teeth because he is, after all, a monster.

Our gifts are very pleasant to Him. He loves to see us lay our time, our talents, our substance on the altar not for the value of what we give, but for the sake of the motive from which the gift springs.

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote THINGS FALL APART I couldn't have told anyone the day before it was accepted for publication that anybody was going to read it. There was no guarantee; nobody ever said to me, Go and write this, we will publish it and we will read it; it was just there. But my brother-in-law who was not a particularly voracious reader, told me that he read the novel through the night and it gave him a terrible headache the next morning. And I took that as an encouraging endorsement! The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures and situations.

It wasn't hard going to the gym, as long as he went as soon as he woke up, before he had time to think about not going. Those morning workouts made him feel like he was starting his day like a pinball, with a giant shot of momentum. The feeling sometimes didn’t wear off until six or seven at night (when it was usually overtaken by the feeling that he was just bouncing haplessly from one situation to the next without any real purpose or direction).

If you were blessed to wake up this morning, remember that you have indeed won the grand universal lottery; you have been given yet another chance at life! Your big question is, what will you do with your winnings today? Inshan Meahjohn

By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.

What one needs to do is to keep this correct thinking up and to make it a part and parcel of personality. For that you need to keep reminding yourself at continuous intervals. Write your aims or positive ideas in your diary and read them before sleep and after getting up in morning. You can paste motivational posters in your living room which will give you positive energy.

May the sun at sunrise make you smile, showing you that another day begins. May the wind take your dreams to God and let everything come true. But when it gets dark and everything gets dark, don't lose heart. The stars will shine and soon the moon will appear. But, if clouds cover the sky, close your eyes and realize, that not every day ends as we want, but, they can start as we dream.

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hunter Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers--that we assume that when they go to work the words just flow. Nobody thinks of the effort they made every morning to turn on the switch. You also have to turn on the switch. Nobody is going to do it for you.

I sit quietly with a cup of coffee, and enjoy the silence. I go for a morning run, which relieves stress and is perfect for contemplation. I use the quiet time before my family awakes to write something each morning. And I read, because a good novel is one of my favorite companions.

The woods are so human," wrote John Foster, "that to know them one must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping to the well-trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish to be friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent, reverent visits at all hours; by morning, by noon, and by night; and at all seasons, in spring, in summer, in autumn, in winter. Otherwise we can never really know them and any pretence we may make to the contrary will never impose on them. They have their own effective way of keeping aliens at a distance and shutting their hearts to mere casual sightseers. It is of no use to seek the woods from any motive except sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their sweet, old-world secrets from us. But if they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasures of beauty and delight as are not bought or sold in any market-place. For the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. We must go to them lovingly, humbly, patiently, watchfully, and we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervales, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them. Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship.

Learn to love mornings! Everyday is a fresh start. You've a lot to look forward to. Your whole life is in front of you. You can get up everyday and decide what you're going to accomplish, what goals you're going to work towards. Think about that. Every morning is an opportunity to change what you aren't happy with.

Everyone seems to know this. We are universally tormented by our consciences for what we know we should have done yet did not do. We are tormented equally by what we did but know we should not have done. Is this not a universal experience? Can anyone escape the pangs of conscience at four o’clock in the morning after acting immorally or destructively, or failing to act when action was necessary? And what is the source for that inescapable conscience? If we were the source of our own values and masters of our own houses, then we could act or fail to act as we choose and not suffer the pangs of regret, sorrow, and shame. But I have never met anyone who could manage that. Even the most psychopathic of people seemed motivated at least to mask their malfeasance with a layer of lies (with the depth of that layer precisely proportionate to the severity of the impropriety in question). Even the most malevolent, it appears, must find justification for his or her evil.

Naysayers can’t prevent your brilliance and purpose from entering the world. It will seep under doors like water flooding into a room. Its shafts will beam through windows like the dazzling rays on a bright, summery morning. Within the sunlight are galaxies and constellations filled with opportunities for you to take. Your radiance will materialize, even when you least expect it. All you have to do is create the environment for its manifestation and keep striving, keep going toward your mission.

He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by "Why am I here?" He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honour the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with "Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me." When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.

Perhaps Phillip was just not interested in becoming stronger; perhaps it was not the exercise itself that mattered to him, but the experience of it. Maybe he wanted to set the tone of each morning by always trying, always failing, the consequent band of pain across his chest serving as a reminder of that failure to carry him through the day.

When you wake in the morning take a moment of gratitude to remind yourself of all the blessings you have, whether they be big or small they are still yours to appreciate.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. Jim Rohn

We choose and wear our clothes every morning. Attitude is the same. Positivity is an attitude – we can choose to wear it every morning

Wake up every morning with a good attitude because everyday that you open your eye's gives you another day to try again.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Morning has animated something in me, too, some dormant thing that for years has known only how to sit and wait. Get a move on, it says. Don't let the day get away.

No one ever changed the world waking up at noon.

We have control on every word of the dictionary except for the 2:; "Death" and "Heart

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.

Dreams aren't what you leave behind when morning comes. They are the stuff that fill your every living moment.

Why destroy this Morn, by a Past that is dead & Gone and a Future not yet Born! - RVM.

Purpose is that power that will propel you to get out of bed each morning and push you to make your Dream come true.-RVM

My real motivation, my real reason for picking myself up every morning and struggling on, was my daughter,

I draw comfort from the notion that nature reveals its motivations only slowly; mysteries within mysteries that keep us arrogant, would-be know-alls firmly in our place.

everyday the sunrise I rise, with a since of purpose and a drive to make a difference.

In His presence, we are able to find peace, strength, rest, endurance and all other tools we need for a successful day.

Our society puts more weight on success through acquisition of temporal things, but God requires us to long after those things that have an eternal value.

In everyday life, a blessed act of saying ‘hello, a smile, word of encouragement…’ can uplift someone spirit.

Believe that your day is going to be good and leave it up to the day to prove you wrong.

The Lord's mercies are renewed every new morning, great is his constant love towards all his creation.

Every morning you have two choices: Continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t!" In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.

Every new morning brings new freshness and new renewal.

Every new morning brings new mercy, new love and new grace.

Every new morning brings new sunshine, new joy and new hope.

The future is bright like the morning sun.

May you find a sacred strength to fulfill your dreams in the coming year.

Embrace the sacredness of a new day.

The gift of the moment is a wonderful bliss.

Every day is new sacred time to reach for your dreams.

The joy of this day is splendid.

Don't just wish for success, get up every morning and dominate the day

Maybe our job in life is to help a person run a little farther, to try a little harder, to not give up.

Starting the morning without prayer is like starting a car without gas.

... and the hope, my dear, is when you go to sleep knowing that you may not wake up in the morning!

There are many opportunities in every single day, and Monday is the perfect day to seize them all.

Your morning coffee deserves your full attention. Sip it slowly, no multitasking. A moment of presence sets the tone for your day.

Making these choices [to attend school instead of skipping], as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line. Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school.

Men and women live with a heart-deep uncertainty every morning when they wake. It is why they go to war, why they write poems, fall in and out of love, plan thefts on dark nights, or try to forestall them. Why they pray. Or refuse to pray. It is the uncertainty that shapes and defines our lives. The tears of the world, a longing for joy. Or even just safety. Just that.

The second your eyelids squint open and your arm limply hits the snooze, it’s off to the races. Tell yourself, 'I have a fantastic day planned today,' then go out and prove yourself right.

Each morning, the rising sun tells us that there is hope. However, one must remember that hope alone cannot help unless it is supported by action driven by purpose, will, and dedication. Convert your fears into will, your angst into the desire to rise, and your hope into action, and you shall rise like the rising sun, spreading your warmth into anything that's dark and cold.

You don't have to shine to prove that you are a star, but you need to reason to show that you have the ability. We can think that we have all the answers in the world even though we don't have it, how we can feel jealous of something or someone that was never ours, but we must have a single certainty: that we must take a risk for what we want to achieve and we must never fail to show our opinion .

Be thankful his majesty is your protection, his glory is your motivation, his grace is your help, and his wisdom is your direction. He is infinitely smarter than you and me in our most brilliant moments

In fact, I think that our society expects schools to get students to the point where they do things only for outside rewards. People who perform tasks for their internal reasons are hard to control. Now, I don't think teachers get up in the morning and say to themselves, 'I', going to go to school today and take away all those young people's internal motivations' ...but that's exactly what often happens.

Later that night though, as I stayed awake into the early hours of morning devouring the second novel in a series, I understood what it meant to befriend a book. The books knew me, far better than I knew them; they knew my fears, my doubts, my dreams. They gave words to feelings I did not even realize I experienced. They listened. They consoled. They kept me company. The books gave me a life outside of my own.

When instinct tells you to pay attention and choose tenderness, do it. Community is humanity's greatest strength and community at its core is just love: work motivated by that love, comforts created out of love, bonds fed by love or at least for the desire of it. Being young is so frightening because it feels like you don't have the power to enact dynamic change. In cases like this, in stories like this, where what is happening is so inexplicable and out of control that all you can do is try to give the strong person in your life the pleasure of your time or the snack from your lunch tray or a hug in the morning or the warmth and privacy of your car during their lunch hour… If it is all you can give, it is enough. It has meaning. It is helping. I love you for trying and please, please, please, don't let time steal this part of you.

After years of loss and reflection, your old deluded decisions click together like the works of a watch packed tight within its case--many tiny, turning, interlocking wheels....the force of every decision transferring gear to gear, wheel to wheel, each one motivating a larger energy going in no direction but steep downward to darkness at an increasing pitch. And then one morning the world resembles Noah's flood, stretching unrecognizable to the horizon and you wonder how you go there. One thing for sure, it wasn't from a bad throw of dice or runes or an unfavorable turn of cards. Blame falls hard and can't be dodged by the guilty.

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts. When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that. But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning.

But what was excruciating at first turned cathartic the more he talked. In telling his story, he discovered that he had developed definite ideas about his own motives and decisions. These ideas seemed to have formed in the ether of emotions and dreams, that wooly fog that lay outside the footlights of the conscious mind. They were not large revelations, but were rather like the little epiphanies one suffers and enjoys over a morning cup of tea.

The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth's surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: "I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man's noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.

Someone told me the morning runs are the best healings and I was really curious to to know and yes he was right Birds chirping, cold winds and the view that always was there but blurred because of my impatient eyes rushing for work.

Wake up in the morning and declare what it is that you’ll celebrate today. Even better, write it down. Celebrate all of it—the good, the bad, the not yet happened; the key is that you truly rejoice in the feeling of gratitude for everything.

Regardless of whether you’re clear on your passion or you’re still trying to figure it out, you’ll need one critical piece of information to help you find the motivation to get up and focus on your dreams every day. And that is a very good reason.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. Stop trying to use the past to validate the present, if anything you should use it to motivate you to act differently. #MondayMorning #MondayMotivation #Sales

That morning I sat in the front row with my head in my hands, totally stressed, praying, God, please don’t let my sermon be bad. I’m sure people thought I was in deep prayer for people in the room to have a fresh encounter with Jesus, but unfortunately I was only praying for myself. I desperately didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of the guest speaker who had been so amazing the night before. Then the Lord spoke to my heart: Banning, you have a choice. You can either be a preacher or you can be a son. If you decide to be a preacher, you’ll be good sometimes and at other times you won’t be that good. But if you decide to be a son, you’ll be great all the time, because you are a fantastic son. Everything changed for me in that moment. I said, God, I want to be a son. I don’t want to be anything else. I don’t want to be a preacher. I want to be a son. From that point on, something shifted for me. I was motivated by something different. Now, of course, I do want to be a good pastor, a good preacher, and a good leader. But none of that stuff is what drives me, because when I step off a stage and get alone with Jesus, I don’t want to hear Him say, Banning, you’re a great preacher. I want Him to say, Banning, you’re a great son.

As they had explained in the two hours of training that morning, sometimes the work was like trying to urge people to evacuate before a hurricane: in the time it would take to motivate one obstinate holdout, you could persuade a dozen others to pack up and head north.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts. When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carried the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that. But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning.

Amateurs wait until they feel motivated before writing. Professionals treat it like a job where they clock in and clock out every day—usually around the same time. They write when motivated. They write when not motivated. And sometimes they write when it’s the last thing they want to do.

The afternoon presents an intersection where the momentum that we have gained in the morning may be either sustained or lost – where we can choose to either build on the morning’s foundations and embrace our challenges, or allow the stress and frustration of the day to ruin all our hard work.

If you want real motivation, the kind that will consume every pore of your body, sustain itself not only through the next morning, but many mornings to come, and drives you to achieve your goals, look deep inside and see if you can find it within you. Because you sure won’t find it anywhere else.

Make arrangements, yet don't live for tomorrow. Live throughout today. As you get up every morning, be thankful that you are given one more day to take in more lessons. You are given more opportunities to get on track, to live all the more genuinely and transparently, to love more, and to give more.

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred D Souza. He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have. Stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy.

Do not let difficulties overcome your true purpose; overcome difficulties with your true purpose. Show difficulties what you can do with your life and do something with your life to difficulties. Awake! Arise! Dare to realize who you truly are and what you can truly do! You can do it! Awake and do something!

The only meaning we might have left as a species--indeed, the only thing left that might matter, that might keep us motivated to get up in the morning--is in the small acts of human kindness we show one another, and in my compulsion to be helpful, useful, to keep things moving forward, I've mostly forgotten to be kind.

As J.D. Salinger’s character Seymour says in Franny and Zooey, “This happiness is strong stuff!” Happiness is the strongest stuff in the world. It is more energizing than a cup of hot espresso on a cold morning. It is more mind-expanding than a dose of acid. It is more intoxicating than a glass of champagne under the stars.

The Objective is inspiring and motivates those people who don’t dig numbers. For those who do love numbers, the Key Results keep the Objective real. I know I’ve got a good Objective when Ileap out of bed in the morning eager to make it happen. I know I’ve got the right Key Results when I am also a little scared you can’t make them.

Successful people aren’t born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don’t like to do. The successful people don’t always like doing these things themselves; they just get on and do them. —DON MARQUIS Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. —JIM ROHN

I beg to differ on Charles Bukowski, who says nothing can save you, except writing. Sometimes, absolutely nothing will save you, not the nights you end up wasting waiting for something grand to happen, not the mornings where coffee has no taste and you wake up knowing the day will not be a blast, not the plans and schemes you write down on your imaginary flipchart to make the world go round. You end up stuck, alone and in the disparate points of chaos that drag you down, you have to come up with something to save yourself. Then you make six impossible wishes before breakfast, start walking and working and learn to seize what you call paranormal activity when it comes true.

Let’s say that you have committed to running every day for two weeks, and at the end of those two weeks, you “reward” yourself with a massage. I would say, “Good for you!” because we all could benefit from more massages. But I would also say that your massage wasn’t a reward. It was an incentive. The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. The timing of the reward matters. Scientists learned decades ago that rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milli-seconds afterward. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit. Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two. The neurochemical reaction that you are trying to hack is not only time dependent, it’s also highly individualized. What causes one person to feel good may not work for everyone. Your boss may love the smell of coffee. When she enters a coffee shop and inhales, she feels good. And her immediate feeling builds her habit of visiting the coffee shop. But your coworker might not like the way coffee smells. His brain won’t react in the same way. A real reward — something that will actually create a habit — is a much narrower target to hit than most people think. I

John Knightley only was in mute astonishment.—That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and might now have been still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!—Such a man, to quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!—Could he by a touch of his finger have instantly taken back his wife, there would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up the party. John Knightley looked at him with amazement, then shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I could not have believed it even of him.

In a village people were happy eating rice and vegetables. Then somebody started coming every morning to distribute sweets. Now villagers are happy only in the morning when they get sweets. Rest of the time they remain depressed. The sweets of hope and positivity and motivation being distributed everywhere are actually causing anxiety and depression.

When you left me I was lost. I didn’t know what to do, who I was or what I was going to do. Time froze for me. I woke up every morning with you in my head. That feeling of being lost, not knowing who I was, was terrible. It was so bad that I spent everyday numbing my pain with drugs and alcohol until I passed out. Not because I enjoyed it but because it was the only way I could sleep. When I look back, you had every reason to leave me. I was no good for you. We rotted at my place, didn’t do anything, treated you bad, picked everything over you. I had no motivation to do begin work, debt stacked up higher and higher. Until finally, welcome to rock bottom. Heck im surprised you stayed as long as you did. But when you left and I realized what I did to cause this, I thought to my self that when I look back at this I want to know I tried to get her back. I couldn’t let you go without a fight, I wanted to know that I tried to get you back. And I tried. After I saw you with another person my heart broke in pieces and like pieces of glass it felt stuck in my throat. You told me its what you wanted to do from the beginning and I didn’t want to believe it. But after that I gave up on you and decided to pick up whatever pieces I had left and move on. At least I tried, that’s what I told my self. If I could go back and do it all over again, would I do it differently? Of course, but that’s not reality. I focused on what was. In a way im glad things happened this way. It opened my eyes to a different world, it made me who iam today. It gave me the best motivation possible, to prove to you and my self that I could be better. I used you everyday to get to that extra mile. Waking up every morning at awkward times thinking about you and not being able to fall back asleep. I used that to motivate me to start work everyday at 6am. And now I sit here with my successful career, my new girl friend, debt free and a fat bank account in less then a year and I have no one else to thank but MY SELF! To everyone that has made a mistake, im here to tell you that it always gets worse before its gets better!

You will work long days, early mornings & late nights . you will have many associates, but few or no friends. You will experience doubt, pain, confusion & failure. You will be single unless he or she understands your passion. You will be given props for your hard work. people will want you to do good, but never better than them. For that you will do many things alone.

The murder was debated in the media, and different theories were espoused in print and on the radio and on morning chat shows. Experts were brought in to explain, condemn, justify Alicia’s actions. She must have been a victim of domestic abuse, surely, pushed too far, before finally exploding? Another theory proposed a sex game gone wrong—the husband was found tied up, wasn’t he? Some suspected it was old-fashioned jealousy that drove Alicia to murder—another woman, probably? But at the trial Gabriel was described by his brother as a devoted husband, deeply in love with his wife. Well, what about money? Alicia didn’t stand to gain much by his death; she was the one who had money, inherited from her father. And so it went on, endless speculation—no answers, only more questions—about Alicia’s motives and her subsequent silence.

When I woke up in the morning the Sun was already up but hiding behind the clouds. The trees were swaying in the breeze. The clouds were floating as small boats in the sky. A strange fragrance caught me by surprise. I felt a rapturous frenzy inhaling it. The breeze drifted from the South and made me nostalgic. And life went on charting its own course. Life will paint you a masterpiece if you have the patience to see it!

dominant thoughts or motives, a change in my situation and surroundings will soon follow.” Personally, this is the most important lesson I’ve taken from Emerson and applied to my life. More than just telling us about the power of thought, Emerson teaches us how to think well. By reading his words and re-thinking his thoughts, we can experience what it’s like to think clearly, deeply, and beneficially. Reading a bit of Emerson each morning, I believe, will improve your thinking throughout the day.

The first girl I dated was named Cammie Anthony. She was a year older than me. She had failed eleventh-grade calculus and had to take it again with my class. The specific chemicals that are released when we have a crush are called norepinephrine, dopamine, and endogenous opioids. I remember Cammie reaching to hold my hand in a movie theater. We went to see a horror movie, and it was unclear if we were going as friends or on a date. Norepinephrine is what causes our bodies to have sweaty palms and increased heart rates. I remember lying awake in my bed texting Cammie until three in the morning. Dopamine is energizing; it makes us feel motivated and attentive. I remember every time my phone pinged with a text from Cammie, I felt happy. Endogenous opioids are part of our reward system. It's what makes having a crush feel enjoyable rather than just crushing. Oxytocin and vasopressin are the chemicals that make us feel calm, secure, comfortable, and emotionally attached to long-term partners.

Paul was an attorney. And this was what his as yet brief career in the law had done to his brain. He was comforted by minutiae. His mortal fears could be assuaged only by an encyclopedic command of detail. Paul was a professional builder of narratives. He was a teller of concise tales. His work was to take a series of isolated events and, shearing from them their dross, craft from them a progression. The morning’s discrete images—a routine labor, a clumsy error, a grasping arm, a crowded street, a spark of fire, a blood-speckled child, a dripping corpse—could be assembled into a story. There would be a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories reach conclusions, and then they go away. Such is their desperately needed magic. That day’s story, once told in his mind, could be wrapped up, put aside, and recalled only when necessary. The properly assembled narrative would guard his mind from the terror of raw memory. Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation. The real world is overfull with incidents, brimming over with occurrences. In our stories, we disregard most of them until clear reason and motivation emerge. Every story is an invention, a technological device not unlike the very one that on that morning had seared a man’s skin from his bones. A good story could be put to no less dangerous a purpose. As an attorney, the tales that Paul told were moral ones. There existed, in his narratives, only the injured and their abusers. The slandered and the liars. The swindled and the thieves. Paul constructed these characters painstakingly until the righteousness of his plaintiff—or his defendant—became overwhelming. It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear moral conclusion would be unavoidable. That was the business of Paul’s stories: to present an undeniable view of the world. And then to vanish, once the world had been so organized and a profit fairly earned.

Hope is more than wishing things will work out. It is resting in the God who holds all things in his wise and powerful hands. We use the word hope in a variety of ways. Sometimes it connotes a wish about something over which we have no control at all. We say, “I sure hope the train comes soon,” or, “I hope it doesn’t rain on the day of the picnic.” These are wishes for things, but we wouldn’t bank on them. The word hope also depicts what we think should happen. We say, “I hope he will choose to be honest this time,” or, “I hope the judge brings down a guilty verdict.” Here hope reveals an internal sense of morality or justice. We also use hope in a motivational sense. We say, “I did this in the hope that it would pay off in the end,” or, “I got married in the hope that he would treat me in marriage the way he treated me in courtship.” All of this is to say that because the word hope is used in a variety of ways, it is important for us to understand how this word is used in Scripture or in its gospel sense. Biblical hope is foundationally more than a faint wish for something. Biblical hope is deeper than moral expectation, although it includes that. Biblical hope is more than a motivation for a choice or action, although it is that as well. So what is biblical hope? It is a confident expectation of a guaranteed result that changes the way you live. Let’s pull this definition apart. First, biblical hope is confident. It is confident because it is not based on your wisdom, faithfulness, or power, but on the awesome power, love, faithfulness, grace, patience, and wisdom of God. Because God is who he is and will never, ever change, hope in him is hope well placed and secure. Hope is also an expectation of a guaranteed result. It is being sure that God will do all that he has planned and promised to do. You see, his promises are only as good as the extent of his rule, but since he rules everything everywhere, I know that resting in the promises of his grace will never leave me empty and embarrassed. I may not understand what is happening and I may not know what is coming around the corner, but I know that God does and that he controls it all. So even when I am confused, I can have hope, because my hope does not rest on my understanding, but on God’s goodness and his rule. Finally, true hope changes the way you live. When you have hope that is guaranteed, you live with confidence and courage that you would otherwise not have. That confidence and courage cause you to make choices of faith that would seem foolish to someone who does not have your hope. If you’re God’s child, you never have to live hopelessly, because hope has invaded your life by grace, and his name is Jesus! For further study and encouragement: Psalm 20

One person looks around and see a universe created by a God who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no greater difference between each other, for neither set of beliefs makes us kinder or wiser. William the Bastard forcing Harold to swear over the bones of Saint Jerome, the Church of Rome rent asunder by the King's Great Matter, the twin towers folding into smoke. Religion fueling the turns and reverses of human history, or so it seems, but twist them all to catch a different light and those same passionate beliefs seem no more than banners thrown up to hide the usual engines of greed and fear. And in our single lives? Those smaller turns and reverses? Is it religion which trammels and frees, which gives or withholds hope? Or are these, too, those old base motives dressed up for a Sunday morning? Are they reasons or excuses?

Truth may not be expressed, but truth becomes a reality. Seeing the master, seeing one who is a realized one, you become certain: if you are groping in the dark, don't be worried, and don't feel hopeless. Go on groping! Every night has a morning to it, and sooner or later you will find the door, you will reach to the point. If one man has reached, the whole humanity can reach. He is enough proof. So the question is not whether truth can be spoken or not, the question is whether a presence can create a conviction that there is something that you are missing -- and unless you find it your life will not be complete, will not be perfect.

shame and discipline won’t cut it First, shame is not an agent of change. Like a shot of caffeine in the morning, self-loathing may propel us onto the road of change, but we will find that hatred of self only leads us onto a never-ending roundabout. Like being terrified by a number on the scale in the morning and vowing never to overeat again, a shot of shame may get us through to lunch but never through to our freedom. Self-hatred, shame, and fear—though rampant in so many of our hidden worlds—are simply never going to be capable of creating or sustaining the growth we long for. Yet most women try to use shame as their inner motivator. I know I have.

Let me tell you, there is no other way than to live like this – Love with abandon Laugh uncontrollably Write your heart out Dance in the rain (try it!) Sit and try hatching ideas Fall madly in love with someone Move to the drumbeats of your heart Feel the earth beneath your bare feet Go cloud watching, star gazing and moonbaths Have walks along the beach during sunset or sunrise Overnight with fireflies, savor the evening breeze Find at least one snowflake or a miracle Excite your senses, taste everything Indulge in higher pleasures Smell the morning mist Travel. Travel. Travel. Take a leap of faith Live with Passion Bare your soul Why not? Be bold Revel LIVE

Catapulting change requires meticulous leadership that is mindful of all those elements that are seemingly trivial to most but produce positive outcomes that hit us as hard as tsunamis. It’s the sort of leadership that empowers and engages people to move deep with themselves, and yet it mobilizes them with others in a manner that is coordinated, collaborative, and cohesive. These are fostered because leaders have the innate ability to make you feel that you are working “with” them not “for” them in such a way that motivates you to spring off the mattress each morning to make meaningful contributions because you feel valued, respected, empowered, and connected to an overarching goal.

WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. This is true no matter how big or small, no matter what industry. Everyone is easily able to describe the products or services a company sells or the job function they have within that system. WHATs are easy to identify. HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them a “differentiating value proposition,” “proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition,” HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better. Not as obvious as WHATs, many think these are the differentiating or motivating factors in a decision. It would be false to assume that’s all that is required. There is one missing detail: WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care? When most organizations or people think, act or communicate they do so from the outside in, from WHAT to WHY. And for good reason—they go from clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do. But not the inspired companies. Not the inspired leaders. Every single one of them, regardless of their size or their industry, thinks, acts and communicates from the inside out.

I see how dance transforms the bodies of the stars on the show. I need to lose weight--can it do the same for me? I’m so unmotivated! Absolutely. Dancing you enjoy, so you forget that you’re working out. We associate working out with work and with pain. But dancing is fun and you should go for it if it motivates you to move. All consistent movement helps your metabolism. But I’m not going to say don’t change anything else in your life. You have to be consistent with how often you move, and you need to eat healthily. You can’t dance in the morning and eat cheeseburgers and fries for lunch. What you see on DWTS is a combination of people dancing and changing their habits and their whole lives. In order to do the show, they need to be stronger and they need to be fueled. Your body is your machine; you’ve got to make sure it’s well-oiled.

Consider the following two scenarios involving a policy aimed at encouraging people to recycle soda cans. Scenario 1: Let’s say you live in a place where people aren’t paid to recycle soda cans. On a freezing morning you see a neighbor carrying a large bag, full of cans, on her way to the recycling center. Scenario 2: Your town has changed its policy. Now people can receive a five-cent reward for each recycled soda can. You see your neighbor carrying a large bag of soda cans to the recycling center. What do you think of your neighbor in Scenario 1? In Scenario 2? In the first scenario, you probably think that your neighbor is an environmental steward—a citizen of high character, doing her part for the environment. But once the small, five-cent-per-can reward is in place, you might think that she is either cheap or really down on her luck. “Why,” you might ask yourself, “is she going through so much effort for such a small compensation? Is she a miser?

He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3

Since Jonathan, I had not slept with anyone. I know. Aren’t you disappointed? There was kissing; there were bodies pressed up against the various walls of Cork city night clubs; there were hands in my knickers. There were boys—cute ones, nice ones—who had walked me home after the club kicked out, their jackets draped around my shoulders, their hands laced through mine. But whenever they would imply that they had walked me home for sex, had understood that I wanted to have sex also, I acted all disgraced. “You think I’m that easy, huh?” I said to them, feigning shock that a twenty-one-year-old boy standing without a jacket in February at two in the morning might have an ulterior motive. I would send them packing, triumphant, then I would go inside and feel depressed, stupid and horny. I don’t know who I was trying to impress. I did not want a boyfriend; I did want romance. I wanted passion; I did not want to be someone who was known as easy. I was desperate to be touched; I was terrified of being ruined.

Have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it? That night he had answered no. Tonight he would have said yes. Among other things, he wanted to know where she was; a month ago he’d told himself it was because he wanted the divorce petition served. Tonight he was too exhausted from his long internal battle to bother lying to himself anymore. He wanted to know where she was because he needed to know. His grandfather claimed not to know; his uncle and Alexandra both know, but they’d both refused to tell him, and he hadn’t pressed them. Wearily, Ian leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, but he wouldn’t sleep, and he knew it, even though it was three o’clock in the morning. He never slept anymore unless he’d either had a day of grueling physical activity or drunk enough brandy to knock himself out. And even when he did, he laid awake, wanting her, and knowing-because she’d told him-that she was somewhere out there, lying awake, wanting him. A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered her standing in the witness box, looking heartbreakingly young and beautiful, first trying logically to explain to everyone what had happened-and when that failed, playing the part of an incorrigible henwit. Ian chuckled, as he’d been doing whenever he thought of her that day. Only Elizabeth would have dared to take on the entire House of Lords-and when she couldn’t sway them with intelligent logic, she had changed tack and used their own stupidity and arrogance to defeat them. If he hadn’t felt so furious and betrayed that day, he’d have stood up and given her the applause she deserved! It was exactly the same tactic she’d used the night he’d been accused of cheating at cards. When she couldn’t convince Everly to withdraw from the duel because Ian was innocent, she’d turned on the hapless youth and outrageously taken him to task because he’d already engaged himself to her the next day. Despite his accusation that her performance in the House of Lords had been motivated by self-interest, he knew it hadn’t. She’d come to save him, she thought, from hanging.

Men should not sleep on beds; they shall sleep wherever their tired knees gave up. We are stars! And stars produce heat! Let that never translate to a boring life. There is one object in the universe that eats up more light than any other design and that is a mattress that loves you too much. Things can kill without being crafty. The bedsheets are warm and kind and yet their comfort has killed more man than any murderous hand in history. A star that knows it is a star looks like a person who is always in transformation, figuring things out, exploring identities, and making a mess. They brush their hair back and rub their eyes. A heart in debate. A tongue that agreed on humor. Tired feet. A juggled mind. He might be a police officer turned trapeze artist turned pilot. A father who is also a volunteer, a brother, a warrior, a companion, a neighbor, a rival, and a student. We can see sweat leave our pores and so grow discouraged that we cannot see the progress of internal efforts. But do not be disheartened. Our souls do sweat. It just looks a lot like mundane life incidents that break us, such as the first step of the morning or simply walking home again.

Fortunately for Hypo, and the navy, and the United States, Chester Nimitz was not such an admiral. He was briefed each morning at eight o’clock by his fleet intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Edwin Layton. Layton also had a standing invitation to walk into Nimitz’s office at any hour of any day if he believed he had important information for the C-in-C. (No one else on the staff, except perhaps the chief of staff, had this privilege.) Hypo provided a daily briefing to Layton, who in turn drew on other sources and briefed Nimitz. Layton and Rochefort had known one another when both men were stationed in Tokyo as language officers in the 1920s. They had shared in the long trial of learning Japanese. They counted one another as friends, and this tended to smooth the contours of their professional partnership, which might otherwise had been complicated by the organizational rivalry between the Fourteenth Naval District (of which Hypo was a part) and the Pacific Fleet staff. Nimitz paid close attention to all the intelligence products that crossed his desk. On his first day as CINCPAC, he told Layton, “I want you to be the Admiral Nagumo of my staff. I want your every thought, every instinct as you believe Admiral Nagumo might have them. You are to see the war, their operations, their aims, from the Japanese viewpoint and keep me advised what you are thinking about, what you are doing, and what purpose, what strategy, motivates your operations. If you can do this, you will give me the kind of information needed to win this war.

Having done with the cares of business, Oblomov liked to withdraw into himself and live in the world of his own creation. He was not unacquainted with the joys of lofty thoughts; he was not unfamiliar with human sorrows. Sometimes he wept bitterly in his heart of hearts over the calamities of mankind and experienced secret and nameless sufferings and anguish and a yearning for something far away, for the world, perhaps, where Stolz used to carry him away. ... Sweet tears flowed from his eyes. It would also happen that sometimes he would be filled with contempt for human vice, lies, and slanders, for the evil that was rife in the world, and he was consumed by a desire to point out to man his sores, and suddenly thoughts were kindled in him, sweeping through his head like waves of the sea, growing into intentions, setting his blood on fire, flexing his muscles, and swelling his veins; then his intentions turned to strivings; moved by a spiritual force, he would change his position two or three times in one minute, and half-rising on his couch with blazing eyes, stretch forth his hand and look around him like one inspired. ... In another moment the striving would turn into a heroic act – and then, heavens! What wonders, what beneficent results might one not expect from such a lofty effort! But the morning passed, the day was drawing to its close, and with it Oblomov's exhausted energies were crying out for a rest: the storms and emotions died down, his head recovered from the spell of his reverie, and his blood flowed more slowly in his veins. Oblomov turned on his back quietly and wistfully and, fixing a sorrowful gaze at the window and the sky, mournfully watched the sun setting gorgeously behind a four-storied house. How many times had he watched the sun set like that!

Not every time Self Love means pampering your wants, sometimes it just means to pat yourself while knowing you did the right thing by choosing the path of Patience. Sometimes it's just waking up in the morning and telling yourself, you've got this. Sometimes it is as simple as a cup of coffee or a hot shower after a really tiresome day. Sometimes it's just watching the day pass by, while you take time to assimilate your thoughts and let your mind detangle in the simplicity of literally not doing anything. Sometimes it's the urge to find a reason and purpose to carry on, to feel alive, to live. Sometimes it's watching the sunset paint in a beautiful horizon and sometimes it's just keeping awake just to catch a glimpse of the rising Sun. Sometimes it's getting drenched in the rain or simply madly crazily dancing in the rain not caring of what or who passes by. Because who knows how long you got this dance of Life. Sometimes it's pulling yourself up and letting your heart know all that happens has a reason and you don't have to know all of it. Really you don't have to have all the answers, trusting the Universe is always the Only answer. Sometimes it's just reminding yourself that you can't change the past but value what your past has taught you, that you can't write your future entirely because circumstances always play a part but you can work through your present, you can live and make your present a gift, a present that your future would feel good about. Sometimes it's just knowing that disciplining Life is never easy but that always finds the lasting smile in the end. Sometimes it's just holding on with all your Soul to know that you have done your bit, to know that somewhere someday everything will make sense. Sometimes it's just to know that goals aren't always about achieving something but to be some more of yourself by truly loving yourself, a little bit more each passing day. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

I gesture with the jacket. “Do you want me to leave this somewhere?” I only ask it because it’s polite. I don’t want him to say yes. I don’t know what exactly it is I want him to say, only for it to be something that gives me an excuse to stay here watching him for a few more minutes. Admitting this to myself is a sharp blow to my pride, as, with the exception of my six-year-old self’s desire to marry Dr. Halsal, I’d always thought I was above being fascinated by anyone but myself. On the other side of the stall door, Sean looks up and down the aisle, as if he’s scouting for a place for me to hang the jacket, but then he frowns at me as if that wasn’t what he was looking for at all. “I’m nearly done. Can you wait?” I try not to stare at where his hand rests on the red stallion’s neck. It’s a warning, the way his fingers lean into his skin, telling Corr to keep his distance, but it’s a comfort as well, the way that I would touch Dove to remind her just that I’m there. The difference, though, is that Corr killed a man yesterday morning. I say, “I suppose I have one minute or two to put together.” Sean does the sweep of his eyes that he does, the one that goes from my head to my toes and back again and makes me feel that he’s scanning the depths of my soul and teasing out my motivations and sins. It’s worse than confession with Father Mooneyham. At the end of it, he says, “If you help, this will go faster.” There is a little narrowing to his eyes at the end of it that makes me understand that this is a test. Whether or not I’m brave enough to go into the stall with Corr after yesterday morning, after I’ve had time to think about what happened. The thought of it makes my pulse trip. The question is not if I trust Corr. The question is if I trust Sean. “What would helping look like?” I answer, and Sean’s face clears like a fair day over Skarmouth. He spits on his fingers again and pushes Corr toward the back wall of the stall to give me room to open the door. I stand inside the stall.

You eat one meal a day, only what is given. Through these practices of surrender there grows a ripening of trust as the heart learns to face the mystery of life with patience, faith, and compassion. Monks must go out each morning with a bowl for alms rounds. This is not like street-corner begging. For me, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Just as the sun rises, you walk across the green rice paddies to small villages with packed earthen lanes. Those who wish to offer alms wait for the monks to come and bow before they offer their food. Even the poorest villages will offer part of their food to make merit and as if to say, “Even though we are poor, we so value what you represent that we give of what little we have so that your spirit may be here in our village, in our community, and in our society.” Alms rounds are done completely in silence. When you receive the food, you can’t say, “Thank you; I appreciate the mango you gave me,” or “Thanks for the fish this morning; it looks really good.” The only response you can make is the sincerity of your heart. After you receive this food, you take it back to support and inspire your practice. When the villagers value the monk’s life and give of the little they have, you must take that. The extraordinary generosity of the village brings a powerful motivation in a monastery. The rules about alms food govern monastic life. Monks are not allowed to keep food overnight or eat anything that’s not put into their hands each morning by a layperson. This means that monks can’t live as hermits up in the mountains far from the world. They must live where people can feed them. This immediately establishes a powerful relationship. You must do something of enough value that they want to feed you. Your presence, your meditation, your dignity, has to be vivid enough so that when you bring your bowl, people want to offer food because that’s the only way you can eat! This creates an ongoing dynamic of offering that goes both ways, from those who are in the process of being initiated in the monastery, and those of the community whom it benefits.

I glanced across the room at Thaddeus seated at a long table within a group of shop keepers, and I contemplated him strongly. My heart leaped in my chest at the mere sight of him. I felt myself overcome. The acts of kindness and sweet attention and gratifying moments of passion afforded me by this man since the day of our marriage were purely pleasing. To be loved was a desirous affair! It was the aim of every beating heart! I nearly cast aside my concerns and allowed myself to be consumed by these agreeable sentiments except for one thing: I could not forget how stripped of power and dignity I had felt that very morning. Thaddeus had essentially commanded me to sit and stay like a dog. And I had heeded my master without so much as a growl! This was not me. No one stayed me. I watched those at the table grow more intensely involved in the details of a trade agreement I cared nothing about. Such business bartering was always selfishly motivated. When it appeared that my husband’s attention was engrossed on a point of aggressive negotiation, I excused myself from the weaving party and slipped out the back door. I turned down the alleyway and hurried to a crumbling chimney flue that was easy enough to climb. Almost immediately, a fit of anxiety gripped at my chest, and I felt as if a war was being waged in my gut—a battle between my desire to protect what harmony existed in my marriage and the selfish want to reclaim an ounce of the independence I had lost. This painful struggle nearly persuaded me to reconsider my childish act of defiance. Why was I stupidly jeopardizing my marriage? For what purpose? To stand upon a rooftop in sheer rebellion? Was I really that needy? That proud? I could hear my husband’s command echoing in my mind—no kind persuasion, but a strict order to keep my feet on the ground. I understood his cautious reasoning, and I didn’t doubt he was acting out of concern for my safety, but I was not some fragile, incapable, defenseless creature in need of a controlling overseer. What irked me most was how my natural defenses had failed me. And the only way I could see to restore my confidence was to prove I had not lost the courage and ability to make my own choices and carry them out. Perhaps this act of defiance was childish, but it was remedial as well.

MARCH 31 The cross is evidence that in the hands of the Redeemer, moments of apparent defeat become wonderful moments of grace and victory. At the center of a biblical worldview is this radical recognition—the most horrible thing that ever happened was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. Consider the cross of Jesus Christ. Could it be possible for something to happen that was more terrible than this? Could any injustice be greater? Could any loss be more painful? Could any suffering be worse? The only man who ever lived a life that was perfect in every way possible, who gave his life for the sake of many, and who willingly suffered from birth to death in loyalty to his calling was cruelly and publicly murdered in the most vicious of ways. How could it happen that the Son of Man could die? How could it be that men could capture and torture the Messiah? Was this not the end of everything good, true, and beautiful? If this could happen, is there any hope for the world? Well, the answer is yes. There is hope! The cross was not the end of the story! In God’s righteous and wise plan, this dark and disastrous moment was ordained to be the moment that would fix all the dark and disastrous things that sin had done to the world. This moment of death was at the same time a moment of life. This hopeless moment was the moment when eternal hope was given. This terrible moment of injustice was at the very same time a moment of amazing grace. This moment of extreme suffering guaranteed that suffering would end one day, once and for all. This moment of sadness welcomed us to eternal joy of heart and life. The capture and death of Christ purchased for us life and freedom. The very worst thing that could happen was at the very same time the very best thing that could happen. Only God is able to do such a thing. The same God who planned that the worst thing would be the best thing is your Father. He rules over every moment in your life, and in powerful grace he is able to do for you just what he did in redemptive history. He takes the disasters in your life and makes them tools of redemption. He takes your failure and employs it as a tool of grace. He uses the “death” of the fallen world to motivate you to reach out for life. The hardest things in your life become the sweetest tools of grace in his wise and loving hands. So be careful how you make sense of your life. What looks like a disaster may in fact be grace. What looks like the end may be the beginning. What looks hopeless may be God’s instrument to give you real and lasting hope. Your Father is committed to taking what seems so bad and turning it into something that is very, very good.

A fierce battle was taking place at Tobruk, and nothing thrilled him more than spirited warfare and the prospect of military glory. He stayed up until three-thirty, in high spirits, “laughing, chaffing and alternating business with conversation,” wrote Colville. One by one his official guests, including Anthony Eden, gave up and went to bed. Churchill, however, continued to hold forth, his audience reduced to only Colville and Mary’s potential suitor, Eric Duncannon. Mary by this point had retired to the Prison Room, aware that the next day held the potential to change her life forever. — IN BERLIN, MEANWHILE, HITLER and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.” — ON SUNDAY MORNING, a low-grade anxiety colored the Cromwellian reaches of Chequers. Today, it seemed, would be the day Eric Duncannon proposed to Mary, and no one other than Mary was happy about it. Even she, however, was not wholly at ease with the idea. She was eighteen years old and had never had a romantic relationship, let alone been seriously courted. The prospect of betrothal left her feeling emotionally roiled, though it did add a certain piquancy to the day. New guests arrived: Sarah Churchill, the Prof, and Churchill’s twenty-year-old niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill—“looking quite beautiful,” Colville noted. She was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attaché in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond. “It was obvious,” Colville wrote, “that Eric was expected to make advances to Mary and that the prospect was viewed with nervous pleasure by Mary, with approbation by Moyra, with dislike by Mrs. C. and with amusement by Clarissa.” Churchill expressed little interest. After lunch, Mary and the others walked into the rose garden, while Colville showed Churchill telegrams about the situation in Iraq. The day was sunny and warm, a nice change from the recent stretch of cold. Soon, to Colville’s mystification, Eric and Clarissa set off on a long walk over the grounds by themselves, leaving Mary behind. “His motives,” Colville wrote, “were either Clarissa’s attraction, which she did not attempt to keep in the background, or else the belief that it was good policy to arouse Mary’s jealousy.” After the walk, and after Clarissa and Captain Hillgarth had left, Eric took a nap, with the apparent intention (as Colville

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin Over the asphalt where no other sound was Between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking, loitering and hurried As if blown towards me like the metal leaves Before the urban dawn wind unresisting. And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable. So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?' Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other— And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed To compel the recognition they preceded. And so, compliant to the common wind, Too strange to each other for misunderstanding, In concord at this intersection time Of meeting nowhere, no before and after, We trod the pavement in a dead patrol. I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy, Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak: I may not comprehend, may not remember.' And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten. These things have served their purpose: let them be. So with your own, and pray they be forgiven By others, as I pray you to forgive Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail. For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. But, as the passage now presents no hindrance To the spirit unappeased and peregrine Between two worlds become much like each other, So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore. Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.' The day was breaking. In the disfigured street He left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded on the blowing of the horn. -T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding

We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process in each moment.1 Although we continually notice changes in our experience—in thought, mood, perception, behavior, etc.—we are utterly unaware of the neurophysiological events that produce them. In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself. By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are. I generally start each day with a cup of coffee or tea—sometimes two. This morning, it was coffee (two). Why not tea? I am in no position to know. I wanted coffee more than I wanted tea today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have “changed my mind” and switched to tea before the coffee drinker in me could get his bearings? Yes, but this impulse would also have been the product of unconscious causes. Why didn’t it arise this morning? Why might it arise in the future? I cannot know. The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it. The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move.2 Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.3 More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.4 These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it. The distinction between “higher” and “lower” systems in the brain offers no relief: I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat. There will always be some delay between the first neurophysiological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if there weren’t—even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states—I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?