Challenges Overcome Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Challenges Overcome. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
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Molière
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Throughout the process, you must show gratitude to those who have helped you get to where you are.
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Gregory S. Works (Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation)
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You have come a long way and have won many battles. Whenever you’re faced with a difficult or challenging situation, you’ll overcome it. Yes, you can.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Difficulties and adversities viciously force all their might on us and cause us to fall apart, but they are necessary elements of individual growth and reveal our true potential. We have got to endure and overcome them, and move forward. Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of like is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.
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William Arthur Ward
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Be the kind of person who dares to face life's challenges and overcome them rather than dodging them.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome,
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it.
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Ray A. Davis
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... for every disability you have, you are blessed with more than enough abilities to overcome your challenges.
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Nick Vujicic
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We can choose to throw stones, to stumble on them, to climb over them, or to build with them.
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William Arthur Ward
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Life keeps throwing me curve balls and I don't even own a bat. At least my dodging skills are improving.
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Jayleigh Cape
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There are no negatives in life, only challenges to overcome that will make you stronger.
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Eric R. Bates
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CONCERNED BUT NOT CONSUMED!
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Ron Sanders
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Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we're afraid of.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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Beautiful souls are shaped by ugly experiences.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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When in doubt, just spit it out. That all challenges can be overcome by speaking the truth, no matter how itcomes out.
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Dan Brown (Deception Point)
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Our scars define us. They tell a story of courage and survival. They tell of who we are at our deepest being, of the challenges we've faced and overcome.
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Lynette Noni (The Gilded Cage (The Prison Healer, #2))
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Every challenge you encounter in life is a fork in the road. You have the choice to choose which way to go - backward, forward, breakdown or breakthrough.
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Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha (Overcoming the Challenges of Life)
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Those who overcome great challenges will be changed, and often in unexpected ways. For our struggles enter our lives as unwelcome guests, but they bring valuable gifts. And once the pain subsides, the gifts remain. These gifts are life's true treasures, bought at great price, but cannot be acquired in any other way.
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Steve Goodier
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You don't love someone because they're a dream of perfection. You love them because of the way they meet their challenges, how they struggle to overcome. You love them because together, you bring out the best in each other.
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Lani Wendt Young (Telesa: The Covenant Keeper (Telesa, #1))
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Some fish love to swim upstream. Some people love to overcome challenges.
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Amit Ray (Walking the Path of Compassion)
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Firestarters are flexible. They recognize situational needs and are able to flow into the accessible role identity most relevant to overcome emergent challenges.
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Raoul Davis Jr. (Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life)
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Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember – if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be. Disappointment’ s cousin is Frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life – friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.
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Chetan Bhagat
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The future will present insurmountable problems- only when we consider them insurmountable.
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Thomas S. Monson (Pathways to perfection;: Discourses of Thomas S. Monson)
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Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Either I felt completely useless, unattractive, and worthless, or that I was pretty much a success, and everything I did was bound to succeed. When I was confident, I could overcome the hardest challenges. But all it took was the smallest setback for me to be sure that I was utterly worthless. Regaining my self-confidence had nothing to do with success...whether I experienced it as a failure or triumph was utterly dependent on my mood.
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Bernhard Schlink (The Reader)
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Today's tears water tomorrow's gardens.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Our scars define us. They tell a story of courage and survival. They tell of who we are at our deepest being, of the challenges we've faced and overcome
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Lynette Noni (The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1))
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Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
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Carol S. Dweck (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)
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Use what you've been through as fuel, believe in yourself and be unstoppable!
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Yvonne Pierre (The Day My Soul Cried: A Memoir)
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If you expect life to be easy, challenges will seem difficult. If you accept that challenges may occur, life will be easier.
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Rob Liano
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The tests we face in life's journey are not to reveal our weaknesses but to help us discover our inner strengths. We can only know how strong we are when we strive and thrive beyond the challenges we face.
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Kemi Sogunle
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You necessarily have to be lost, before you’re found.
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T. Scott McLeod (All That Is Unspoken)
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God can deliver you so well that some people won’t believe your testimony.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Maybe that’s what growing up was really all about. Adults always say how complicated life gets as we age, but really, I think we just look for bigger challenges to overcome. Our biggest fears stretch from sleeping without our beloved teddy bear to finding out that we have no purpose in life. Did time, maturity, and overcoming obstacles offer the kind of contentment so evident in Orvin? Or did we just simply give up and surrender to the life we were already living?
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Renee Carlino (Before We Were Strangers)
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Life isn’t easy for anyone. We all have challenges. We all face adversity. It’s how we overcome it that makes us who we are.
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Tracey Garvis Graves (The Girl He Used to Know)
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When writing, there are some scenes that are emotionally overwhelming. They completely overcome the author, and only when they do this can they cause a similar reaction in the reader. Through this, the author gets to experience multiple lives. If a character's life flashes before their eyes, it flashes before the author's eyes too, and he or she remembers it as his or her own. With reading, we get to live other lives vicariously, and this is doubly so with writing. It is like a lucid dream, where we guide the outcome. In this, we don't merely write *about* a character -- we momentarily *become* them, and walk as they walk, think as they think, and do as they do. When we return to our own life, we might return a little shaken, likely a little stronger, hopefully a little wiser. What is certain is that we return better, because experiencing the lives of others makes us understand their aims and dreams, their fears and foils, the challenges and difficulties, and joys and triumphs, that they face. It helps us grow and empathise, and see all the little pictures that make up the bigger one we see from the omniscience of the narrator.
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Dean F. Wilson
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When something poses as obstacle to you,surmount it and use it as a miracle to move on to greater height.
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Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha (Overcoming the Challenges of Life)
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Without being push to the wall, we will have remained in our comfortable zone. But this circumstance challenges us to find the courage to move on.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (On Eagles Wings:Rise)
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When people try to bury you, remind yourself you are a seed.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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When all seems to be against you, remember, a ship sometimes has to sail against the current, not with it.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Every adversity brings new experiences and new lessons.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Even when she's dethroned by hardship, she still wears the sun as a crown.
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Curtis Tyrone Jones
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Overcoming what frightens you the most strengthens you the most.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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You are not alone in the struggles of life. Entire cosmos is with you. It evolves through the way you face and overcome challenges of life. Use everything in your advantage.
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Amit Ray (Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management)
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Though we have rightly applauded our ancestors for their spiritual achievements (and do not and must not discount them now), those of us who prevail today will have done no small thing. The special spirits who have been reserved to live in this time of challenges and who overcome will one day be praised for their stamina by those who pulled handcarts.
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Neal A. Maxwell
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Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain β€” physical, emotional, and otherwise β€” is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badlyβ€”it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them. For something no one likes, pain does us a whole hell of a lot of good.
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Jim Butcher (Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13))
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Inbetween yesterday's regret and tomorrow's dream is today's opportunity. Seize the chance!
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Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha (Overcoming the Challenges of Life)
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Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed - whether it is at a sport or at your job or in life - you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and make the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.
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Ronda Rousey (My Fight / Your Fight)
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Often, people give up without knowing success was just around the corner; if they had only preserved a little longer, if they had only tried one more time, they could have succeed.
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Ashley Ormon (God in Your Morning)
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Sometimes it's like: If something terrifies you, you should totally do it BECAUSE it terrifies you. And then you'll do it and you'll realise what you're capable of.
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Jonathan Saccone-Joly
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Be like seeds; do not see dirt thrown at you as your enemy, but as ground to grow.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes Life meaningful. ~
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Joshua J. Marine
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At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.
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Richard Bach (Nothing by Chance)
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Failure prepares us to meet life challenges as we face each obstacle and overcome them by earning the crown from the cross we bear.
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Charlena E. Jackson (No Cross No Crown)
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When life hands you dirt plant seeds.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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You have extraordinary power within you to overcome life's difficult challenges.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Challenges are part of life. Overcoming them makes you a stronger person.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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You are not your past. You are the warrior that rose above it to become the example of someone who didn't survive, but thrived in creating the most beautiful last chapter of their life.
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Shannon L. Alder
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For some life is incredibly easy, and for others, life is incredibly hard. Regardless of what side you fall on, you will certainly face challenges in your life. It's how you face and overcome these challenges that will ultimately define you as a person.
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Bryan A. Wood (Unspoken Abandonment: Sometimes the hardest part of going to war is coming home)
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A new challenge keeps the brain kicking and the heart ticking.
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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Hang on! God will be thy strength in any act of your pursuit.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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You have to prepare physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to conquer any mountain.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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If it is going to kill you,” Enso Roshi says, β€œthen let it kill you.
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T. Scott McLeod (All That Is Unspoken)
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Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is bliss, taste it. Life is a dream, realize it. life is a challenge, meet it. life is a duty, complete it. life is a game, play it. life is costly, care for it. life is wealth, keep it. life is love, enjoy it. life is mystery, know it. life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is a sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is Life, fight for it!.
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Mother Teresa
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But there’s a message there for everyone and it is that people can unite, that democracy from below can challenge oligarchy, that imprisoned migrants can be freed, that fascism can be overcome, and that equality is emancipatory. The
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Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
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Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.
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Albert Ellis (The Art & Science of Rational Eating)
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If beautiful lilies bloom in ugly waters, you too can blossom in ugly situations.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Stars do not hide from darkness. Roses do not hide from thorns. Diamonds do not hide from pressure.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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A flower blooming in the desert proves to the world that adversity, no matter how great, can be overcome.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Don’t worry if you think you’re the only one facing challenges. If the people around you don’t seem to have problems, that just means you don’t know them well enough to see their troubles, or they’re very good at hiding them. Problems are inescapable for all living beings. As Nichiren said: β€œNo one can avoid problems, not even sages.” Living a joyful life, I’ve found, is not about trying to avoid the unavoidable. Joy comes from summoning a strong life force to overcome problems, from the smallest irritation to the biggest disaster
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Tina Turner (Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good)
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Truth is never a straight line; it is a circle that will take you back to what you know, in order to challenge your belief in what is fair, what is real, what is forgiveable, what is not and what type of person will you become today now that you know.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Winning requires reaching inside of yourself for that extra gear to accelerate challenges.
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Orrin Woodward
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Instead of saying, β€˜The writing in this scene isn’t good enough,’ you say, β€˜Don’t you want people to walk out of the theater and be quoting those lines?’ It’s more of a challenge.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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Wisdom starts when you know yourself. You will realise that everything aligns itself perfectly when you live your truth, break limiting habits and challenge yourself daily.
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Itayi Garande
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Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
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Joshua J. Marine
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We all have problems. Or rather, everyone has at least one thing that they regard as a problem.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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You were born to dream. You were born to strive. You were born to conquer. You were born to rise.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Life is one long training session, in preparation for what will come. Life and death lose their meaning, there are only challenges to be met with joy and overcome with tranquility.
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Paulo Coelho (Aleph)
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When you believe you have lost your power and control nothing will ever seem easy or simple.
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Shannon L. Alder
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It's not the shit we face that defines us, it's how we deal with it.
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Ahmed Mostafa
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Leadership without adversity is like being in combat without training. The greatest leaders who changed the world came from the most adverse and challenging backgrounds. If they can overcome adversity in their own lives to rise and become a leader, they can use their experience and the wisdom gained from it to overcome challenges that will face a nation. - Strong by Kailin Gow on Leadership
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Kailin Gow
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To have a different life you have be a different person. You have to do what you haven't done. You have to become the person that fits that dream. But most of all, you have to realize that if you don't step into your story it becomes the moral of the story. Your inaction is a lesson you leave to your kids-- I was too afraid to change.
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Shannon L. Alder
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I have lived a life full of love and pain, of Joy and Sorrow, and I live on still. i have many, many years ahead of me, each day with the potential to be filled to the brim with trials to face and challenges to overcome.
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Alethea Kontis (Enchanted (Woodcutter Sisters, #1; Books of Arilland, #1))
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Above all, during the interval, change from β€œego orientation” to β€œtask orientation.” Think: β€œI know this seems like a personal insult, but it is not. It is a challenge to be overcome that calls on skills I have.
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Martin E.P. Seligman (What You Can Change . . . and What You Can't*: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement)
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DAY THREE I DECLARE I have the grace I need for today. I am full of power, strength, and determination. Nothing I face will be too much for me. I will overcome every obstacle, outlast every challenge, and come through every difficulty better off than I was before. This is my declaration.
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Joel Osteen (I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life)
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Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance. Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening β€œoutside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness. We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the force of their personalities. This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life, but for enjoying it as well.
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MihΓ‘ly CsΓ­kszentmihΓ‘lyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience)
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[How do I do it?] Well, it's always a mystery, because you don't know why you get depleted or recharged. But this much I know. I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential. And I've learned from the Bhagavad-Gita and other teachings of our culture to detach myself from the results of what I do, because those are not in my hands. The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me to take on the next challenge, because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy.
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Vandana Shiva
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Is your life story the truth? Yes, the chronological events are true. Is it the whole truth? No, you see and judge it through your conditioned eyes and mind - not of all involved - nor do you see the entire overview. Is it nothing but the truth? No, you select, share, delete, distort, subtract, assume and add what you want, need and choose to.
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
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There’s no way to eliminate the ache of being human, but I do think we can diminish it. This starts when we challenge ourselves to become less afraid to share, more ready to listenβ€”when the wholeness of your story adds to the wholeness of mine. I see a little of you. You see a little of me. We can’t know all of it, but we’re better off as familiars. Any time we grip hands with another soul and recognize some piece of the story they’re trying to tell, we are acknowledging and affirming two truths at once: We’re lonely and yet we’re not alone.
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Michelle Obama (The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times)
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Assembling a coherent portrait of Muhammad’s life required piecing together scattered fragments and structuring them in an organized manner. What emerged from the reconstruction was the realization that Muhammad had endured terrible setbacks and traumatic suffering, only to turn his brokenness into an asset, unlocking latent abilities to improve the world around him. Moved by his own experience in overcoming challenges, Muhammad dedicated himself to inspiring others to see their imperfections as the very source of their potential. Despite all the pain, Muhammad refused to see himself as a victim. His nickname al- Badr Laylat At-Tamam (the fullest moon) referred to illumination of the darkness by his bright shining face.
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Mohamad Jebara (Muhammad, the World-Changer: An Intimate Portrait)
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Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.
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Julia Glass (The Whole World Over)
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Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsidersβ€”even in their own homes. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselvesβ€”and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, β€œI’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, β€œI’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.
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Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
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The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains… Why? Because no one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment. Nietzsche was striving to correct the belief that fulfillment must come easily or not at all, a belief ruinous in its effects, for it leads us to withdraw prematurely from challenges that might have been overcome if only we had been prepared for the savagery legitimately demanded by almost everything valuable.
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Alain de Botton (The Consolations of Philosophy)
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He hit her with his best smile. Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath. 'Oh no, not that seductive face. I'm overcome with the need to take off these awful clothes. What is happening? I do not understand. Oooh. Ahhh.' She touched her wrist to her forehead. 'Somebody help me. I'm being drenched with my own fluids.' Evil woman. 'See now, you shouldn't have done that,' Kaldar said. She gave him an innocent look. 'You've made yourself into a challenge. Now I'll have to seduce you out of principle.' 'You can try. Not that you'll get anywhere. If you were in love, that would be one thing, but we both know this is pride talking.' Audrey patted his forearm. 'It's all right. I won't tell anybody about your shameful failure. I'll keep it completely confidential.' She pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key. 'I'll remind you of this when you're collapsing on my sheets, all happy and out of breath.' He leaned closer. "I'm picturing it in my head. Mmm, you look lovely.' 'Whatever fantasies help you get through the day.' Audrey said. 'So kind of you.' 'I'm all about being charitable when it doesn't cost me anything.' Charity? For me? Before this was all over, either they would be lovers or they'd kill each other. Right now, he had no idea which it would be.
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Ilona Andrews (Fate's Edge (The Edge, #3))
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But the paradox of their success is that most modern readers are unaware of the overwhelming obstacles both women had to overcome. Without knowing the history of the era, the difficulties Wollstonecraft and Shelley faced are largely invisible, their bravery incomprehensible. Both women were what Wollstonecraft termed β€œoutlaws.” Not only did they write world-changing books, they broke from the strictures that governed women’s conduct, not once but time and again, profoundly challenging the moral code of the day. Their refusal to bow down, to subside and surrender, to be quiet and subservient, to apologize and hide, makes their lives as memorable as the words they left behind. They asserted their right to determine their own destinies, starting a revolution that has yet to end.
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Charlotte Gordon (Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley)
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We have gone sick by following a path of untrammelled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behaviour, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very centre of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling. And at the centre of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation. The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honours the past, honours the planet and honours the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. Thank you very, very much.
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Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival)
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I personally believe mavericks are people who write their own rulebook. They are the ones who act first and talk later. They are fiercely independent thinkers who know how to fight the lizard brain (to use Seth Godin’s term). I don’t believe many are born, rather they are products of an environment, or their experiences. They are usually the people that find the accepted norm does not meet their requirements and have the self-confidence, appetite, independence, degree of self reliance and sufficient desire to carve out their own niche in life. I believe a maverick thinker can take a new idea, champion it, and push it beyond the ability of a normal person to do so. I also believe the best mavericks can build a team, can motivate with their vision, their passion, and can pull together others to accomplish great things. A wise maverick knows that they need others to give full form to their views and can gather these necessary contributors around them. Mavericks, in my experience, fall into various categories – a/ the totally off-the-wall, uncontrollable genius who won’t listen to anyone; b/ the person who thinks that they have the ONLY solution to a challenge but prepared to consider others’ views on how to conquer the world &, finally, the person who thinks laterally to overcome problems considered to be irresolvable. I like in particular the third category. The upside is that mavericks, because of their different outlook on life, often sees opportunities and solutions that others cannot. But the downside is that often, because in life there is always some degree of luck in success (i.e. being in the right place at the right time), mavericks that fail are often ridiculed for their unorthodox approach. However when they succeed they are acclaimed for their inspiration. It is indeed a fine line they walk in life.
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Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
β€œ
One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man were handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words: β€œIt is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him, and asked, β€œWhat have you done?” He said: β€œI handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: β€œBut don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” β€œHow could I know?” the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said: β€œIf, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.” While versions of this story are very old, it seems the most modern of tales. Like that minister, who might have recognized the Messiah if he had raised his eyes from his Bible to look into the youth’s eyes, we are challenged to look into the eyes of the young men and women of today, who are running away from our cruel ways. Perhaps that will be enough to prevent us from handing them over to the enemy and enable us to lead them out of their hidden places into the middle of their people where they can redeem us from our fears.
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Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday Image Book. an Image Book))