Tuesday Inspirational Quotes

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that's all.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.

We all have the same beginning - birth - and we all have the same end - death. So how different can we be?

Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place.

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

This is who I am. I am loving but wounded, and I need someone to take me as I am.

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship

Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is".

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you Sing Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

I love teaching. It's a job that lasts forever. Whatever you teach children today travels with them far into the future.

Now that child reminds me of something our sages taught. When a baby comes into the world, it's hands are clenched, right? Like this?" He made a fist. "Why? Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything, to say 'The whole world is mine.' "But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson." What lesson? I asked. He stretched open his empty fingers. "We can take nothing with us.

Why does February feel like one big Tuesday?

Have I told you about the tension of opposites? he says. The tension of opposites? Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.Sounds like a wrestling match, I say. A wrestling match. He laughs. Yes, you could describe life that way. So which side wins, I ask? Which side wins? He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth. Love wins. Love always wins.

You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five.

Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely--but eventually be able to say, " All right, that was my moment of loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I'm going to experience them all.

THE CURSE May they never Return home at night... May you have no part of eventide, May you have no room of your own, Nor road, nor return. May your days be all exactly the same, Five Fridays in a row, Always an unlucky Tuesday, No Sunday, May you have no more little worries, Tears or inspiration, For you yourself are the greatest worry on earth: Prisoner!

Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish

Dying is not in synonymous with Useless

The first thing everyone notices is the dog.

He mentioned a dear friend Morrie had, Maurie Stein, who had first sent Morrie's aphorisms to the Boston Globe. They had been together at Brandeis since the early sixties. Now Stein was going deaf. Koppel imagined the two men together one day, one unable to speak, the other unable to hear. What would that be like? "We will hold hands," Morrie said. "And there'll be a lot of love passing between us. Ted, we've had thirty-five years of friendship. You don't need speech or hearing to feel that.

It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

As my visits with Morrie go on, I begin to read about death, how different cultures view the final passage. There is a tribe in the North American Arctic, for example, who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that hold it -so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it, and a man has a tiny man inside him. When the large being dies, that tiny form lives on. It can slide into something being born nearby, or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky, in the belly of a great feminine spirit, where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth. Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all. That is what they believe.

[After discussing the importance of the Tuesday workload...] "...'Anyway, I spend a lot of time praying. And my knees are calloused.' ... 'I've spent a lot of time doing the same, ' I said as the light changed. 'That's the only thing that gets me through--on Tuesday's and every other day of the week.

It isn't always easy to live the life you were meant to, but the lessons learned and the rewards are immeasurable.

Choose to tell your own story . The only way you will tell a better story about your life, is choosing to live your own life to the fullest without being apologetic about it or copying others.

[it] isn't something you just get over. You don't go back to being who you were. It's more like a snow globe. War shakes you up, and suddenly all those pieces of your life - muscles, bones, thoughts, beliefs, relationships, even your dreams - are floating in the air out of your grip. They'll come down. I'm here to tell you that, with hard work, you'll recover. But they'll never come down where they once were. You're a changed person after combat. Not better or worse, just different.

In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete. When they hunt for food, the Desana know the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that hole will be filled, they believe, by the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, there would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to goodbye, the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish. "It's only fair," he says.

I knew he was right. Not that I did anything about it.

Every one knows they 're going to die, but nobody believes it... If we did, we would do things differently.

Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.

We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.

My days were full, yet I remained, much of the time, unsatisfied. What happened to me?" - Mitch

You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation. Between these quiet Tuesday night routines, following every comma and right after every pause for breath, is I, love, and you. In the middle of every I love you is a sink full of dishes, whisper of socked feet tangled in white sheets, and gentle kisses against curved cheeks. We lyric ourselves into the laundry that needs to be finished, into the ends of every smile that follows me repeating your name. We write ourselves into the grocery bags we need to carry, the cracks running up our rented walls, the sides of the bed we choose to drag up the sails of heavy eyed dreams. Like the spaces between our fingers, in the spaces between I, love, and you, we wait. The in-betweens have always been my favorite.

Of course, there were a million self-help books on these subjects, and plenty of cable TV shows, and $9 per-hour consultation sessions. America had become a Persian bazaar of self-help.

An artist must regulate his life. Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.) Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am. My only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coco-nuts, chicken cooked in white water, mouldy fruit, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with the juice of the Fuschia. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling myself. I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my ribs and look steadily behind me. My expression is very serious; when I laugh it is unintentional, and I always apologise very politely. I sleep with only one eye closed, very profoundly. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another.

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

when all this started, I asked myself, 'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live?' I decided I'm going to live---or at least try to live---the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

You see," he says to the girl, "you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too - even when you're in the dark. Even when you are falling.

Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it is right alongside their beds.

A little wave is moving up and down and a big wave says to him why it looked so sad? The little wave says sadly what's the point of being happy when we're all just going to crash into the rock? The big wave then tells the little wave to not be so sad about that because it is not just a little wave, but a part of the ocean.

Part of the freedom of being yourself is resisting the temptation to fill every minute with productivity, and allowing a little margin to be bored. I’m learning to practice stillness more regularly. To leave some room for sacred silence when I can. [My husband’s words to my kids in response to their perceived boredom] reminded me of my desire to learn how to be bored well. How to bring my nothing into the presence of Christ, and simply be with him. No agenda, no checklists, no accomplishing allowed. As it turns out, being bored can be super hard work. But it’s the very work of boredom that reminds me that I don’t, in fact, make the world go round. My agenda isn’t the most important one, and many times, may not be important at all. Knowing this is a great first step toward cultivating a lightness of heart.

It’s a strange irony that most people who are truly creative don’t really know where their ideas come from. To be a writer, just like all crafts, is an art form. You can take evening classes in writing at the local library, where you go along every Tuesday night and read out your weekly piece, and that can serve to improve your expertise a little, but to be a Wrong Planet writer you have to first of all be an artist. The art of searching for words radiates from deep inside the writer, and I truly feel that when a true writer is sitting quietly at his desk his movements are beautifully interwoven. His breathing will even come with an effortless grace. The ability to move fluidly in his study in this manner begins with a truly intuitive knowledge, although if the truth were known, there’s a little bit of insanity in the writer that does everyone an awful lot of good.

Those who sat with him saw his eyes go moist when they spoke about something horrible, or crinkle in delight when they told him a really bad joke. He was always ready to openly display the emotion so often missing from my baby boomer generation. We are great at small talk: 'What do you do?' 'Where do you live?' But really listening to someone -- without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return -- how often do we get this anymore?

What you did to us—and to me specifically—was wrong, and you had no right to do that.’” The priest stared unblinkingly into Blanchette’s eyes, waiting but unprepared for what came next. “‘Having said that, it brings me to the real reason I’ve come here. The real reason I’ve come here is to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment that I have felt toward you for the last twenty-five years.’ When I said that, he stood up, and in what I would describe as a demonic voice, he said, ‘Why are you asking me to forgive you?’ And through tears I said, ‘Because the Bible tells me to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me.’” Blanchette said Birmingham collapsed as if he’d been punched in the chest. The priest dissolved into tears, and soon Blanchette too was crying. Blanchette began to take his leave but asked Birmingham if he could visit again. The priest explained that he was under tight restrictions at the rectory. He said he had been to a residential treatment center in Connecticut, and he returned there once a month. He was not allowed to leave the grounds except in the company of an adult. Blanchette would not see the priest again until Tuesday, April 18, 1989, just hours before his death. Blanchette found his molester at Symmes Hospital in Arlington and discovered the priest—once robust and 215 pounds—was now an eighty-pound skeleton with skin. Morphine dripped into an IV in his arm. Oxygen was fed by a tube into his nostrils. His hair had been claimed by chemotherapy. The priest sat in a padded chair by his bed. His breathing was labored. “I knelt down next to him and held his hand and began to pray. And as I did, he opened his eyes. I said, ‘Father Birmingham, it’s Tommy Blanchette from Sudbury.’” He greeted Blanchette with a raspy and barely audible, “Hi. How are ya?” “I said, ‘Is it all right if I pray for you?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I began to pray, ‘Dear Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I ask you to heal Father Birmingham’s body, mind, and soul.’ I put my hand over his heart and said, ‘Father, forgive him all his sins.’” Blanchette helped Birmingham into bed. It was about 10 P.M. He died the next morning.

You do not have to respond to a tiny annoying mosquito with a large hammer. You know what will happen? You will miss and hurt yourself.

Daily Living Practice Your practice this week is to deepen your awareness of what happens in your mind and your body when you are anxious, and to work on quieting your patterns of worry. As you go through each day this week, remind yourself to: Notice your worry patterns and begin to change them by challenging the fear with facts. Practice Powering Down to Transform Anxiety to experience the state of having a quiet mind and a quiet body. Comfort yourself, and challenge yourself to be victorious as you face small and large stresses throughout the week. Read the inspirational quote you have written on the index card. Daily Practice Log Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Time of Day B A B A B A B A B A B A B A Yoga/Meditation I Used Y-CBT Techniques I Used B = Before, A = After 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Low Anxiety Moderate Anxiety High Anxiety

Anything could happen while the dead slept. Which was why some would say a woman shouldn't tread alone through a cemetery at 2:55 on a Tuesday morning in April.

I was grateful I'd been in a plane crash. I got to see my grandfather every single day for months. If that plane hadn't plummeted, we would have stalled at spaghetti Tuesdays. And that's the truth. ... And I didn't ask God why I was in the random plane crash that caused Grandpa to come and live with us. I just bit my lip and said, Thank you.

To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time... That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living.

...we're deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us.

If you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all. Love is so supremely important. "Love each other or perish

There is no experience like having children. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in deepest way, then you should have children.

Embrace aging. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

If you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

... the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.

Love wins. Love always wins.

I hope that one day you will think of me as your friend.

... he does not looking at me as a kid trying to be something more than I am...

Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else.

If you hold back on the emotions--you can never get being detached, you're too busy being afraid. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. You let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely.

Forget what the culture says.

Aging is not just decay. It's growth. As you grow, you learn more.

If you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more.

Accept who you are and revel in that. You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now.

Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue

These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for sense of comradeship. When you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for. You don't get satisfaction from those things.

Offering others what you have to give. I don't mean money. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have. Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Do the kinds of things that come from the heart.

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling.

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

If you really want it, then you'll makeyour dream happen.

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Love is the only rational act.

The inmates invariably reflected back to me in exaggerated ways my own issues, my own stopping places, or as Jungians call it, my shadow. Sometimes I wondered why I so eagerly grabbed my coat, zipped out the door, and drove to the jail on Tuesday nights when it meant that I was forced to confront my flaws.

Clinton was a dominant presumptive nominee: she had 100 percent name ID, the support of the majority of the political establishment, and money up the wazoo. And yet the loyalty that she inspired in some people was matched by the antipathy she stoked in others.

On Tuesday, December 7th, a lot of good things happened: they took the trach out, took the cast off my leg and my PT, Maria, had me standing.

Sinegal trusts his gut more than he trusts Wall Street analysts. “Wall Street is in the business of making money between now and next Tuesday,” he said in the 20/20 interview. “We’re in the business of building an organization, an institution that we hope will be here fifty years from now. And paying good wages and keeping people working with you is very good business.

Tim sat at his bedroom desk, reading his favorite superhero comic. It told the exciting adventures of Lightning Leo as he protected Earth from alien invasion. “I wish I was as brave as Lightning Leo,” said Tim. The next day at school, Tim’s teacher, Mrs. Lee, shocked the class. “Okay, class, quiet down. I have an important announcement. Next Tuesday, each of you will give a speech about your own personal hero. They should be from real life.” Tim’s heart beat fast and his palms began to sweat. He imagined himself feeling scared and freezing in front of his laughing classmates. His friends, Sam and Michelle, tapped him on the shoulder. “Who’s your hero going

I tend to categorize my emotions the same way I categorize my drawers, trying to put like things together. To separate the jeans from the pajamas. If I’m sad, I can’t also be happy. If I’m longing, then I must not be satisfied. But I’m learning in this upside down and inside out kingdom of spirit beings walking around in broken bodies, we are not just one way. Sorrow and peace shake hands in the corner with laughter, anger, and fear. Desire and disappointment often keep company with one another on the bench. You can realize this in any number of ways: laughing at a funeral, pain during childbirth, crying at graduation. We have all experienced the reality of a multicolored life….hope and grief mixed up all together, just like that. You feel the desire of what could be, alongside the disappointment of what is.

To qualify as an adventure, something needs to be enjoyable, awe-inspiring, meaningful, or at least generate a really good story for parties. All of these are worth experiencing in life alongside the wine-and-YouTube routine. So I employed my favorite mental trick that makes anything tough more doable: Picture yourself on the other side.

INSPIRING BOOKS to READ • Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner • Only Love Today by Rachel Macy Stafford • The Lifegiving Home by Sally and Sarah Clarkson • Slow by Brooke McAlary • Simple Matters by Erin Boyle • The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking • Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist • Simply Tuesday by Emily P. Freeman

Wall Street is in the business of making money between now and next Tuesday,

What are you working on? What is inspiring you? Where do you need prodding?