Photo by Finvara
The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.
Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready.
As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room …. just wait.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged, it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my life.”
She went on to explain, “Old age is like a bank account, you withdraw from what you’ve put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing.”
And with a smile, she said:
“Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.”
From author unknown.
Photo by Nicholas Bonanno
Yesterday, I wrote about How to Choose Your New Mind Pattern on LearnThis owned by Mike King. Please visit me on there.
Today, I want to share you “The Pickle Jar”. A story about love of a father.
Here it is ….
The pickle jar as far back as I can remember sat on the floor beside the dresser in my parents’ bedroom. When he got ready for bed, Dad would empty his pockets and toss his coins into the jar.
As a small boy I was always fascinated at the sounds the coins made as they were dropped into the jar. They ended with a merry jingle when the jar was almost empty. Then the tones gradually muted to a dull thud as the jar was filled. I used to squat on the floor in front of the jar and admire the copper and silver circles that glinted like a pirate’s treasure when the sun poured through the bedroom window.
When the jar was filled, Dad would sit at the kitchen table and roll the coins before taking them to the bank. Taking the coins to the bank was always a big production. Stacked neatly in a small cardboard box, the coins were placed between Dad and me on the seat of his old truck. Each and every time, as we drove to the bank, Dad would look at me hopefully. “Those coins are going to keep you out of the textile mill, son.
You’re going to do better than me. This old mill town’s not going to hold you back.” Also, each and every time, as he slid the box of rolled coins across the counter at the bank toward the cashier, he would grin proudly.
“These are for my son’s college fund. He’ll never work at the mill all his life like me.” We would always celebrate each deposit by stopping for an ice cream cone. I always got chocolate. Dad always got vanilla. When the clerk at the ice cream parlor handed Dad his change, he would show me the few coins nestled in his palm. “When we get home, we’ll start filling the jar again.”
He always let me drop the first coins into the empty jar. As they rattled around with a brief, happy jingle, we grinned at each other. “You’ll get to college on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters,” he said. “But you’ll get there. I’ll see to that.”
The years passed, and I finished college and took a job in another town. Once, while visiting my parents, I used the phone in their bedroom, and noticed that the pickle jar was gone. It had served its purpose and had been removed. A lump rose in my throat as I stared at the spot beside the dresser
Where the jar had always stood. My dad was a man of few words, and never lectured me on the values of determination, perseverance, and faith. The pickle jar had taught me all these virtues far more eloquently than the most flowery of words could have done.
When I married, I told my wife Susan about the significant part the lowly pickle jar had played in my life as a boy. In my mind, it defined, more than anything else, how much my dad had loved me. No matter how rough things got at home, Dad continued to doggedly drop his coins into the jar. Even the summer when Dad got laid off from the mill, and Mama had to serve dried beans several times a week, not a single dime was taken from the jar.
To the contrary, as Dad looked across the table at me, pouring catsup over my beans to make them more palatable, he became more determined than ever to make away out for me. “When you finish college, Son,” he told me, his eyes glistening, “You’ll never have to eat beans again…unless you want to.”
The first Christmas after our daughter Jessica was born, we spent the holiday with my parents. After dinner, Mom and Dad sat next to each other on the sofa, taking turns cuddling their first grandchild. Jessica began to whimper softly, and Susan took her from Dad’s arms. “She probably needs to be changed,” she said, carrying the baby into my parents’ bedroom to diaper her. When Susan came back into the living room, there was a strange mist in her eyes. She handed Jessica back to Dad before taking my hand and leading me into the room.
“Look,” she said softly, her eyes directing me to a spot on the floor beside the dresser. To my amazement, there, as if it had never been removed, stood the old pickle jar, the bottom already covered with coins. I walked over to the pickle jar, dug down into my pocket, and pulled out a fistful of coins.
With a gamut of emotions choking me, I dropped the coins into the jar. I looked up and saw that Dad, carrying Jessica, had slipped quietly into the room. Our eyes locked, and I knew he was feeling the same emotions I felt.
Neither one of us could speak.
From author unknown.
Photo by Katrina †
“There is a difference between wanting something….and to be ready to accept it.”
- Napoleon Hill -
Many people has written their vision, just like you have done, and they did not achieve anything. Why there are some who are successful, and there are some who don’t? What makes the difference? Why some people is extremely successful, and others keep struggling and never become really successful? It is not because there is a higher power that prefers just some people, who reaches and touches some chosen ones. Most of the times, the successful people are the ones with the strongest faith.
The unbreakable and unshakeable faith is an important element to bring your vision to physical reality. Everyone with great achievements has absolute faiths that their vision will come true. They know without a doubt that their dreams will come to them. These people don’t waste time with having one minute faith and then let themselves drown back into fears and doubts the next minute. It will only attract confusion and worries. People with great achievements will only focus to their vision and raise that vision with faith, whatever their situation at the moment. They know that it is just a matter of time before their visions are realized physically.
“Believing things that you can see and touch means you don’t believe at all,” said Abraham Lincoln, “but to believe in what you cannot see is a victory and a bless.”
Faith is not only a strong agent in achieving our dreams, but also keeping us focused, calm, and exists for ourselves and our lives. If we have faith that our dreams are coming to us, we will not rush for it. Rush is a manifestation of fear. Fear is based on doubt and the lack of faith. Fear, doubt, and lack of faith are based on our lack of knowledge that we are one with the highest intelligence.
The Gender law said that your kindness will return to you in the right form and the right time. This Super law directs creation, and you are creating success. This law states that everything “new” emerge because some existed energy united, and that everything has their own incubation times or development times. When we have faith, we don’t try to rush to that dream before that dream is ready to bear fruit, just as we don’t rush a baby to be born before nine months passed. Faith gives us patience with our visions and dreams. Success will come. Success is already there and waiting for you to attract it.
Don’t attract yourselves from this creative stream with self-doubts, limiting faiths, or the lack of understanding. The only thing that can go wrong is your thought. When you find that you are beginning to rush, worry, stop! When you are acting in a hurry, you are breaking your connection with the highest intelligence and will not receive power and wisdom which are your rights. Reconfirm that you are one with the source of everything. Your faith will not shake if you are always in relation with the truth about who you are. Listen to “the distinctive soft sound” from your intuition which tells you what to do.
When you get a message from your intuition, act! Don’t worry about what others will think. They may be more interested about what people will think about themselves than to value you. Before you perfect your intuitive ability, you may do some “mistakes.” You might be wrong to think that an impulsive thought to buy a car as the sound from the highest intelligence in you, but slowly, you will build your “intuitive muscle.” You will learn how to listen and act in faith. You will recognize “The soft distinctive sound” when you hear it, and you will develop the courage to believe and follow it in any moment.
When you act with a total faith while listening to your inner wisdom, everything will be discovered according to the divine command, exactly at the right time: never too early or too late. Whatever help, resources, or relationships you need will come to you when you need them. Whatever wisdom or knowledge that you also need is searching for you. Although you don’t know which way to take on the next corner, you will be given the necessary book, meet the person you need to meet, or get the money you need to achieve your dream, and it always happen in the perfect time.
Once again, we can depend on our mind to understand how this principal works. On intellectual level or consciousness, your vision must be here now, at this very moment. You have to visualize yourself in the picture and see through your own eye from inside your vision. On subconscious level or spiritual, your vision also must be here now at this very moment. Do this with your emotion. Be involved emotionally in your vision. Be passionate with the vision. Remember, human passion will not spread its energy for something ordinary. On physical level, your vision does not have other choice than to start manifestation.
The Success Story of Starbucks
Starbucks coffee is an American classic story of success, and the business is built on the idea to create, not to compete. At 1982, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz left his 75000 dollars salary job at Xerox to reach the dream of his business. He never sees himself competing in the existing coffee market, which was at that time in a low condition with the raising interest in tea, price wars, and low quality products. But, Schultz developed a new mind set for coffee, gourmet coffee, and created a whole new market. He didn’t react to an existing market; he filled the gap which no one even saw as a probability.
The result was a surprise! Starbucks grew from about six stores and less than 100 employees in 1987 to more than 1300 stores and 25000 employees in 1997. Sales and profit rose more than 50% a year for six years in a row, and they hired more than 500 new employees every month.
With creating, not competing, Howard Schultz developed a whole new industry, which shows further evidence that competition does not have any effects to success.
Nobody is prepared to accept something until they believe they are able to accept it. Before something can come to us, we have to imagine it and believe that it is ours.
