inspiring quotes

Mush Talks #9: Become Happier through Gratefulness

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Last week I talked about how happiness affects our relationships, work, health and success in life. So this week, I start talking about ways to increase our level of happiness – starting with gratefulness. Not mentioned in the video, but being happy and grateful for everything we have doesn’t mean we can’t strive for more and better.

Some beautiful quotes on gratitude:

  1. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. –Charles Dickens
  2. Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. –Eckhart Tolle
  3. If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get. Frank A. Clark
  4. If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily. –Gerald Good
  5. Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. –Melody Beattie
  6. He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. –Epictetus
  7. Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. –Oprah Winfrey
  8. Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful. –Buddha
  9. It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same moment. –Naomi Williams
  10. This a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before. –Maya Angelou

You may watch Mush Talks 1-8 here, and please feel free to share 🙂

20 Chinese quotes that pack 4,000 years of wisdom

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Year of the Monkey

  1. A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers.
  2. Better to be a diamond with flaws than a pebble without imperfections.
  3. Be not afraid to move slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
  4. A gem will not be perfect without carving and polishing, nor a man perfected without trials.
  5. Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.
  6. When you drink water, remember the spring.
  7. If heaven made him, earth can find some use for him.
  8. Dig the well before you are thirsty.
  9. If you don’t want anyone to know, don’t do it.
  10. Teachers open the door; you enter by yourself.
  11. A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.
  12. A book holds a house of gold.
  13. A filthy mouth will not utter decent language.
  14. A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there is no meeting of the minds.
  15. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
  16. Do good, reap good; do evil, reap evil.
  17. A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
  18. One generation plants trees, the next enjoys the cool shade.
  19. Studying is like rowing a boat upstream; if you don’t move forward, you move backward.
  20. Be patient in one moment of anger, to save yourself hundred days of sorrow.

The image is of one of the best Chinese New Year cards I received this year, from none other than the most creative Stepworks team; click to see the beautiful animated version.

Wishing you a happy Year of the Monkey!

20 Inspiring Birthday Quotes

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  1. May you live all the days of your life. -Jonathan Swift
  2. From our birthday, until we die, is but the winking of an eye. -William Butler Yeats
  3. Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again. -Menachem Mendel
  4. Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow. -Margaret Fuller
  5. Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. -Chili Davis
  6. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am. -Bernard Baruch
  7. If I’d known I was going to live this long (100 years), I’d have taken better care of myself. -Ubie Blake
  8. Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you have got to start young. -Fred Astaire
  9. Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.  -Mahatma Gandhi
  10. The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. -Michael Althsuler
  11. The way I see it, you should live everyday like it’s your birthday. -Paris Hilton
  12. God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. -Voltaire
  13. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. -Oprah Winfrey
  14. Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new. -Sammy Hagar
  15. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? -Satchel Paige
  16. You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. -John Mason
  17. Don’t just count your years; make your years count. –Ernest Meyers
  18. It takes a long time to become young. -Pablo Picasso
  19. Just hit my 75th birthday; I am feeling great. -Colin Powell
  20. And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that counts. It’s the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln

For daily inspiration on happiness, motivation and success, also check our Dinchack Facebook Page and Dinchack App

10 of the most inspiring quotes by Nelson Mandela

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mandelaAn excerpt from last year’s post, on Nelson’s Mandela’s 94th birthday:

  1. There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
  2. A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
  3. After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
  4. Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what they had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
  5. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
  6. If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.
  7. It always seems impossible until its done.
  8. Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.
  9. There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
  10. We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

For more quotes and resources on happiness, motivation and success, check out Dinchack Facebook page.

10 more inspiring birthday quotes

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1.  Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.  -Mahatma Gandhi

2.  The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. –Michael Althsuler

3.  The way I see it, you should live everyday like it’s your birthday. –Paris Hilton

4.  God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. -Voltaire

5.  The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. –Oprah Winfrey

6.  Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new. –Sammy Hagar

7.  How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? –Satchel Paige

8.  You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. –John Mason

9.  There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. –George Santayana

10. Don’t just count your years; make your years count. –Ernest Meyers

Which one did you find most inspiring? Please share your own inspiring birthday quotes too. Also see 10 inspiring birthday quotes.

Monday morning inspiration!

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“No one has ever talked himself (or anyone else) out of an undesired emotion by hurling insults or by delivery a moral lecture.” -Nathaniel Branden

“Don’t worry about the whole world: if you do it will overwhelm you. Worry about one wave at a time. Please yourself. Do something for you, and the rest will fall in line. -David Seabury

“You are not going to live forever. With the years ahead of you, why not start now to concentrate on making your life as meaningful, free, exciting, and joyous as possible?” -Harry Browne

“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” -Alexander Pope

“To be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you somebody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” -EE Cummings

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[Photo taken on the streets of Olango Island. I wondered what’s making them so happy]

 

10 inspiring quotes about travel

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  1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain
  2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine
  3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
  4. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang
  5. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson
  6. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
  7. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark
  8. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
  9. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes
  10. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

Which one did you like best? And would you like to share any other inspiring quotes?

[Photo of sunset at the Monkey Temple in Bali, during a 12-hour holiday. Some more amazing photos here.]

5 inspiring quotes by Leo Buscaglia

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  1. Don’t spend your precious time asking, ‘Why isn’t the world a better place?’ It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is ‘How can I make it better?’ To that there is an answer.
  2. The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.
  3. Too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
  4. Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, ‘Did you bring joy?’ The second was, ‘Did you find joy?’
  5. A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in the entire world. There is nothing that is an accident. You are a special combination for a purpose – and don’t let them tell you otherwise… only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours.

If haven’t read or heard Leo Buscaglia, please search for his talks on YouTube. His lectures on love and living are extremely motivational!

[Photo of the Bride’s Pool Waterfalls in Hong Kong, taken last week]

Read more inspiring pieces and quotes in my book, Dhinchak Life

 

10 Inspiring Quotes by Super Achievers

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“I struggled just getting the ball up to the rim level. I couldn’t do it at first.” (Kareem Abdul Jabbar – basketball champion)

“What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn’t lived it.” (Edward Albee – 3 Pulitzer Prizes for Drama)

“If you don’t fall down, you are not trying hard enough.” (Tenley Albright – Olympic Gold Medal Figure Skater and Surgeon)

“I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.” (Maya Angelou – Poet and Historian)

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I would regret is not trying.” (Jeff Bezos – Founder of Amazon.com)

“I do not know the word ‘quit’. Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” (Susan Butcher – Champion dog-sled racer)

“There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior.” (Benjamin Carson – Pediatric Neurosurgeon)

“I have always felt that I did well as a student because I lacked confidence.” (Denton Cooley – pioneer of heart transplants)

“The Godfather was a very under-appreciated movie when we were making it. I almost got fired.” (Francis Ford Coppola – filmmaker, producer and screenwriter)

“My parents telling me to stop doing it is probably what caused the company to be created.” (Michael Dell – Founder of Dell)

Selected from Academy of Achievement – one of my favorite inspiration sites.

[Photo taken in Hong Kong during MacLehose 6-7 and the ‘Needle Hill’ climb]

5 inspiring quotes by Steve Jobs

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“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.” (Fortune)

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” (Macstories.net)

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” (Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me.” (Wall Street Journal 1993, shared by UK Guardian)

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square hole; the ones who see things differently; they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” (Think Different, narrated by Steve Jobs)

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How to choose your allies…

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Just finished reading another wonderful book by Paulo Coelho: The Way of the Bow. It’s a short and simple story that covers many of the values which inspire our daily work: innovation, flexibility, adapting to changes, enthusiasm, team work etc. Here are some inspiring pieces from the chapter on ‘Allies’…

“The best allies are those who do not think like everyone else. When you seek companions, trust your intuition and pay no attention to what anyone else may say. People always judge others by taking as a model their own limitations, and other people’s opinions are often full of prejudice.”

“Join with those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticize those who do not think like them.”

“Join with those who are flexible as the wood of your bow. They are people who do not hesitate to change direction when they encounter some insuperable barrier. They have the qualities of water: flowing around rocks, adapting to the course of the river…”

“Join with those who sing, tell stories, take pleasure in life, and have joy in their eyes, because joy is contagious and can prevent others from becoming paralyzed by depression, loneliness and difficulties. Join with those who do their work with enthusiasm.”

[Photo of a river in Qing Yuan, China]

Check out Mush’s photos, videos and Facebook page

 

Inspiring quotes about Change

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“If there’s no difference between your tomorrow and today, you are as good as dead.” (Imam Ali AS)

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” (Reinhold Niebuhr)

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” (Maria Robinson)

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“Growth mean change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.”

“When you are finished changing, you are finished.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and the willingness to change. At such a moment, there’s no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready.” (Paolo Coelho)

“Life is too short to try and change others.” (yours truly)

[Photo of Danxia Peaks in ShaoGuan, China – taken yesterday]

Inspiring Quotes: Life and Living

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Someone in my family died a couple of days ago. A wonderful and kind woman who had been fighting a disease for a long time. And there are two other people, very close to me, who are struggling for life – a two and a half year old and a 60 year old.

We have no control over when and how we will die. But we can choose how we live – with gratefulness, happiness, peace, contentment, love, laughter, fulfillment, forgiveness, action… or with complaints, anger, worries, greed, hate, jealousy, procrastination…

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrow.” (Pope Paul)

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.” (George Bernard Shaw)

“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” (Leonardo Da Vinci)

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain)

“Death is not the greatest of loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” (Norman Cousins)

“Have courage to live. Anyone can die.” (Robert Cody)

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” (Charles Darwin)

“A man whose today is the same as yesterday is as good as dead.” (Imam Ali)

“Life is too short to complain.” (Yours truly)

[Photo of a Muslim graveyard in Sarajevo]

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10 Inspiring Quotes on Forgiveness

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Millions of Muslims around the world are celebrating their Eid (pronounced as eed) Festival today. It’s a day of family, friends, feast, festivity and forgiveness. I hope the following quotes inspire you to forgive others, and yourself, for all the wrongs of the past.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.  Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it can never be shown against one. (Henry Ward Beecher)

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. (Mahatma Gandhi)

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. (Lewis B. Smedes)

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge. (Isaac Friedmann)

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury. (E.H. Chapin)

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much. (Oscar Wilde)

Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. (Anonymous)

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness. (H. Jackson Brown)

There is no love without forgiveness; and there’s no forgiveness without love. (Byrant McGill)

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart – forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits. (Hannah More)

Which one did you like best? Do you have a favorite quote on forgiveness? Please share through comments.

[Photo of a popular shrine in Iran, taken in July 2009]

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