Rowing Motivational Quotes

Don't follow your passion, but always bring it with you.

Growth is ugly, it's hideous, it's all the things we don't like but my god, once you walk through the fire of confusion you will feel burning passion within your flame.

I don't wear the opinions of others anymore, I learnt to dress myself.

Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What's six minutes of pain compared to the pain they're going to feel for the next six months or six decades. You never forget your wins and losses in this sport. YOU NEVER FORGET.

Your attitude will either make or break you, we cannot change fate and the tragedies that enter our lives but we can choose how we want them to change us.

It began when they come took me from my home And put me in Dead Row, Of which I am nearly wholly innocent, you know. And I'll say it again I..am..not..afraid..to..die. And the mercy seat is waiting And I think my head is burning And in a way I'm yearning To be done with all this measuring of truth. An eye for an eye A tooth for a tooth And anyway I told the truth And I'm not afraid to die. And the mercy seat is burning And I think my head is glowing And in a way I'm hoping To be done with all this weighing up of truth. An eye for an eye And a tooth for a tooth And I've got nothing left to lose And I'm not afraid to die. And the mercy seat is glowing And I think my head is smoking And in a way I'm hoping To be done with all this looks of disbelief. An eye for an eye And a tooth for a tooth And anyway there was no proof Nor a motive why. And the mercy seat is waiting And I think my head is burning And in a way I'm yearning To be done with all this measuring of truth. An eye for an eye And a truth for a truth And anyway I told the truth But I'm afraid I told a lie.

We all have the power within us, to make something of ourselves, the thing is very few believe it.

Keep your mindset strong, your heart pure, your intentions kind and your dreams big.

They use to tell me dreams were just a vivid imagination, so I wrote them into my story and sold it by myself.

... In a ROWE* people don't have schedules. They show up when they want. They don't have to be in the office at certain time, or anytime. They just have to get their work done. How they do it ? When they do it ? Where they do it ? It's totally up to them. Meetings & this kind of environments are Optional. What happens ... ? Almost across the board ! - Productivity goes up - Worker Engagement goes up - Worker Satisfaction goes up - Turnovers goes down - Autonomy .. Mastery .. Purpose - these are the building blocks of new way of doing things." ______________________________________________________________ *ROWE: results-only work environment

The freedom they have to do great work is more valuable, and harder to match, than a pay raise—and employees’ spouses, partners, and families are among ROWE’s staunchest advocates.

学如逆水行舟，不进则退 / Studying is like rowing a bot upstream, not moving forward is to fall behind

One reason the concept of becoming better can scare us is that it requires us to step out of a place that we recognize and have possibly grown comfortable with.

The human spirit holds remarkable strength, in times of adversity and pain, some stand taller after they've fallen proving that you can't measure a want, a desire or a dream on the logic of physical reality.

I don’t for a moment think I am any braver or better than anybody else. This is how I attempt to explain what gives me the strength to do what I do; when that thunderbolt of an idea first hit me and inspired me to row across oceans, it filled me with a sense of purpose so strong that it overcame my fears. Even when boredom, frustration, fatigue or despair threatened to overwhelm me, it was that powerful sense of purpose that kept me going.

Our Life is like a Boat that can Float. Some Row and Go! Some Blink and Sink!!-RVM

I don't believe in the word " incurable " I believe to find a cure we need to deconstruct the cause.

The crew rowed like demons as Orpheus played “Shake It Off” at double tempo to keep them motivated.

Better is about believing you can be – and do – more than you thought. And at the heart of becoming better at anything is the ability to make better choices.

When we’re brave enough to try something else we can often change what we understand to be possible or worth doing, and ultimately who we believe ourselves to be.

The more human connect moments you can sow, the more benefits you can grow.

We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas. Perhaps we hold on to our superstitions about creativity in order to make our own deficiencies seem more excusable. For when we tell ourselves that masterful abilities are simply unexplainable, we're also comforting ourselves by saying that those superheroes come endowed with all the qualities we don't possess. Our failures are therefore no fault of our own, nor are those heroes' virtues to their credit, either. If it isn't learned, it isn't earned. When we actually meet the heroes whom our culture views as great, we don't find any singular propensities––only combinations of ingredients quite common in themselves. Most of these heroes are intensely motivated, but so are many other people. They're usually very proficient in some field--but in itself we simply call this craftmanship or expertise. They often have enough self-confidence to stand up to the scorn of peers--but in itself, we might just call that stubbornness. They surely think of things in some novel ways, but so does everyone from time to time. And as for what we call "intelligence", my view is that each person who can speak coherently already has the better part of what our heroes have. Then what makes genius appear to stand apart, if we each have most of what it takes? I suspect that genius needs one thing more: in order to accumulate outstanding qualities, one needs unusually effective ways to learn. It's not enough to learn a lot; one also has to manage what one learns. Those masters have, beneath the surface of their mastery, some special knacks of "higher-order" expertise, which help them organize and apply the things they learn. It is those hidden tricks of mental management that produce the systems that create those works of genius. Why do certain people learn so many more and better skills? These all-important differences could begin with early accidents. One child works out clever ways to arrange some blocks in rows and stacks; a second child plays at rearranging how it thinks. Everyone can praise the first child's castles and towers, but no one can see what the second child has done, and one may even get the false impression of a lack of industry. But if the second child persists in seeking better ways to learn, this can lead to silent growth in which some better ways to learn may lead to better ways to learn to learn. Then, later, we'll observe an awesome, qualitative change, with no apparent cause--and give to it some empty name like talent, aptitude, or gift.

I have attended weddings, with chipped nail paints. I have worn same blue denim for days in a row. I have not followed etiquette sometimes, I was too happy to bother. I have picked up fights, ugly ones too. I have been notorious because I stood up for myself. I have flaws. I am flawed. But I have come to realize, It’s okay to life a life others don’t understand. My life should be my LIBERATION, Not anyone’s REGULATION.

The biggest and first obstacle any artist faces is not believing they can do something. You have the talent. Just believe you are capable of doing it, because you are. Writing anything, for anyone, regardless of expertise, is like crossing the Atlantic in a canoe. What you are doing is saying "I don't know how to row". Start rowing, you will get there. Just know it will take time and perseverance, but you will get there!

It's life, it's happening to you right now, what are going to do with your time here? Are you going to help people? are you going to chase your career, start a family or buy many properties; independently? Whatever it is, make a choice and do something with it - one thing is certain, most people die living their life, never a day before or after, only when their truly experiencing. That could be tomorrow, would you be proud of everything you became and achieved? If not, now is your second chance.

But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self.

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.

But if adventure has a final and all embracing motive it is surely this: We go out because it is in our nature to go out, to climb mountains and to sail the seas, to fly to the planets and plunge into depths of the oceans. By doing these things we make touch with something outside or behind, which strangely seems to approve our doing them. We extend our horizon, we expand our being, we revel in the mastery of ourselves which gives an impression, mainly illusory, that we are masters of the World. In a word, we are men and when man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.’ Wilfred Noyce

One of the greatest tragedies of our culture is that millions of young people spend many hours, days, weeks and years listening to lectures, reading books and writing papers with a constantly increasing resistance. This has become such a widespread phenomenon that teachers on all levels, from grade school to graduate school, are complimented and praised when they can get the attention of their students and motivate them to do their work. Practically every student perceives his education as a long endless row of obligations to be fulfilled. If there is any culture that has succeeded in killing the natural spontaneous curiosity of people and dulling the human desire to know, it is our technocratic society.

Modern armies no longer line up in neat rows and charge each other from opposite sides of a battlefield. Strangely, however, they still train that way, for example, during marching drills. This practice is useful, it turns out, not to prep for actual battle conditions, but to build trust and solidarity among soldiers in a unit. Our species, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, is wired to form social bonds when we move in lockstep with each other.48 This can mean marching together, singing or chanting in unison, clapping hands to a beat, or even just wearing the same clothes. In the early decades of the 20th century, IBM used corporate songs to instill a sense of unity among their workers.49 Some companies in Japan still use these practices today.

And in many other cities which for him were all identical - hotel, taxi. a hall in a cafe or club. These cities, these regular rows of blurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linens, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in the sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corner of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath - the revenge of a heavy body - forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had a toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke, although goodness knows how many cigarettes had already been unconsciously consumed, In general, life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone - a mysterious, invisible manager - continued to take him from tournament to tournament; but occasionally there were odd moments, such quietness all around, and when you looked out into the corridor - shoes, shoes, shoes, standing at all the door, and in your ears the roar of loneliness.

As the other startups do at the end of their presentations, Shen offers to the batch the expertise of his team's members: "Kalvin and Randy are developers," he says, and as for himself, he knows how to stay motivated in the face of rejection. "I've gotten rejected thirty days in a row," he says, a reference to his putting himself through "Rejection Therapy," in which one must make unreasonable requests so that one is rejected by a different person, at least once, every single day- inuring one to the pain of rejection. (One example of Shen's first bid to be rejected: he asked a flight attendant if he could move up to first class for free. In another case, he saw an attractive woman on the train and decided he would ask her for her phone number, and when she would turn him down, he would have fulfilled the day's required quota of rejection. He sat near her, fell into a conversation, and when they got off the train and he asked for her number, she said, "Sure." He categorized this as "Failed Rejection.") "So if you need to get pumped up for your sales calls, talk to me. p121

Poor Superman is about a married man who, much to his own surprise, enters into a passionate love affair—with another man. The experimental theatre which hosted the play here is a small place, and we happened to wind up sitting in the front row. Practically on the stage. The actors were often within a few feet of us. So, during the big love scene, when the two male leads start passionately stroking and kissing each other’s stark naked bodies... and doing this so close to me that I could have touched them both with only a little effort... I sat there in mute panic, thinking, “Please don’t either of you fellows get an erection. Just don’t. Should I look away? Should I close my eyes? Should I just keep watching as if I’m not obsessing about your genitals? Aren’t you done kissing and touching yet? Because if this goes on any longer, one of you could have an involuntary reaction, if you get my drift! And I am a total stranger sitting within four damn feet of you, in case you hadn’t NOTICED!” Though my seat wasn’t as dark as usual, the writing lesson was very memorable: Don’t ever pull your reader out of the frame. Bad research. Anachronistic writing. Self-serving polemics and lectures barely disguised as narrative. Incongruity and lack of continuity. Weak characterization, leaden pacing, lack of motivation, stiff dialogue, lazy plotting... There are a thousand ways for novelist to wind up naked onstage while an appalled audience obsesses about her exposed genitals at a critical moment.

Those who have the FREEDOM to Row can get to where they want to Go!-RVM

Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don’t have schedules. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.

Those who have the FREEDOM to Row can get to where they want to Go!- RVM

Our Life is like a Boat that can Float. Some Row and Go! Some Blink and Sink!!-RVM

Part 1. My Life Story. - If I can do it, so can you- I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared

Part 1. My Life Story. - If I can do it, so can you- I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared

Let’s apply our model to the work of a new employee. What is his motivation? It is very much based on self-interest. So you should give him a clearly structured job with a low CUA factor. If he does well, he will begin to feel more at home, worry less about himself, and start to care more about his team. He learns that if he is on a boat and wants to get ahead, it is better for him to help row than to run to the bow.

By the mid-1980s, [Stephen Jay Gould] had emerged as a major public figure, using his background as a paleontologist to dive into controversies with radical stances on the ways new species emerge and how evolutionary change comes about. His [popular history of life] college class was composed of around six hundred students who, taking it as a distributional requirement, were unlikely to become science majors. This audience proved an ideal focal group for Gould to try out his new theories and presentations. Every Tuesday and Thursday in the fall he held forth, lecturing with dramatic flourish to undergraduates who either sat rapt in the front rows or sprawled sleeping in the rear ones.

Those who have the FREEDOM to Row can get to where they want to Go!

I am not confined to the standard of society. I am breaking barriers.

If you were stranded in the ocean in a small boat with a paddle, I’d tell you to pray to God, but row for the shore!

Rowing against the current or running against the wind is not going to make you a successful person because success is achieved with minimum efforts but maximum gain.

Even supermotivated people who’re working to exhaustion may not be doing deliberate practice. For instance, when a Japanese rowing team invited Olympic gold medalist Mads Rasmussen to come visit, he was shocked at how many hours of practice their athletes were logging. It’s not hours of brute-force exhaustion you’re after, he told them. It’s high-quality, thoughtful training goals pursued, just as Ericsson’s research has shown, for just a few hours a day, tops. Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, says he’s been playing the violin since he was two but didn’t really start practicing deliberately until he was twenty-two. Why not? There was no lack of motivation—at one point, young Noa was taking lessons with four different teachers and, literally, commuting to three different cities to work with them all. Really, the problem was just that Noa didn’t know better. Once he discovered there was an actual science of practice—an approach that would improve his skills more efficiently—both the quality of his practice and his satisfaction with his progress skyrocketed. He’s now devoted himself to sharing that knowledge with other musicians.

The effect of “sleep deficit” is cumulative. If you sleep less one night, you feel its ill effects the next day. Missing sufficient sleep many days in a row builds up a “sleep debt.” A “sleep debt” seriously hampers the following: •Information processing •Motivation •Judgment •Reaction time •Short-term memory •Alertness

The greatest education to be had can be found in a library full of books. There, we can meet with those who are no longer alive, visit faraway places, relive history from a front row seat, listen to many of the greatest minds who have even lived, take advice from the greatest of counselors, and learn from many of the world’s greatest teachers; all in a lonely aisle flanked with some dusty old books.

The ship of relations sails smoothly only when the rowing of ship by two or all or majority sailors on board is in the same direction, having same speed and same frequency. Otherwise, there would be only wastage of time & energy of all on board, without any movement towards the natural goal & purpose of joyous, fruitful journey.

The ship of relations sails smoothly only when the rowing of ship by two or all or majority sailors on board is in the same direction, having same speed and same frequency. Otherwise, there would be only wastage of time & energy of all on board, without any movement towards the natural goal & purpose of joyous, fruitful journey

This feeling of irritability and alienation meant I was malleable. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse? No tools with which to bargain. If you stroll up to a stranger and tell them that unless they comply with your demands they’ll never see you again, it’s unlikely that they’ll fling themselves at your feet and beg you not to go. They’ll just wander off. When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way? If we were cops right now, we’d look for a motive. If our peace of mind, our God-given right to live in harmony with our environment and one another, has been murdered, who are the prime suspects? Well, who has a motive?

Every villain has their motive, sweet little Halen. Usually a virtuous one.

Terry, the most overweight of our teammates, is all the way in back for the entire run. He is yelling that he can’t do it, so Ken goes and runs by his side, motivating him and pushing him the whole time. Ken talks to Terry about believing in himself, and tells him that by the end of the week he will not be last. Ken asks a few of us to continue to push Terry, even though we are pretty exhausted. Some of us have never run hills before, and we’re still out of shape.

Sometimes to take two steps in a row, one after the other, I need to make a contract with myself.

For me, better is energy-giving, flourishing, stretching, thriving, making progress one step at a time.

By acting or performing our way into a new way of thinking, we can sometimes unearth elements of us that we didn’t believe were possible.

Once people can begin to articulate something specific that they can do, take responsibility for and control, a sense of choice begins to take root, and they move from being a spectator to a participant.

Thirteen Reasons I Don’t Go to Sporting Events Anymore 1. Every time I went, they asked me for money. 2. The people sitting in my row didn’t seem very friendly. 3. The seats were very hard. 4. The coach never came to visit me. 5. The referees made a decision I didn’t agree with. 6. I was sitting with hypocrites—they only came to see what others were wearing! 7. Some games went into overtime, and I was late getting home. 8. The marching band played some songs I had never heard before. 9. The games are scheduled on my only day to sleep in and run errands. 10. My parents took me to too many games when I was growing up. 11. Since I read a book on sports, I feel that I know more than the coaches anyway. 12. I don’t want to take my children because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best. 13. I can play sports anywhere, I don’t need to go to a stadium. Do these reasons sound familiar? Have you lost your passion for local church ministry? Are you treating Jesus’ bride like a social club or an extra-curricular activity?

I read voraciously as a kid. And one day, I realized that in books, everything is possible." Megan pictured in her mind the library beneath them, its rows upon rows of books "You know how science fiction movies have mad scientists who keep endless jars of brains in some secret back room? Well, if you think about it, what you have down there--" she inclined her head in the direction of the library "--is a room full of brains. Every book is someone's brain. When I read a book, I'm basically reading someone's mind. Not their thoughts exactly, but you get an idea of their worldview, or at the very least, you get an idea of their understanding of humans. When I was a kid, it felt like that helped. I could understand the characters in books because I knew their motives. Books helped me figure people out." She laughed. "I guess. Or maybe they're just a good escape. But, I mean, libraries include everything we can think of in the universe. All possibilities. If someone has imagined it, it's in a library. That's pretty amazing.