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Living Life Poetically: Dream Catchers
“Dream Catchers” is a poem inspired by a conversation I had with someone close to me. They had good intentions. But my goodness, talking to them was such a buzzkill. I felt like I had to defend every decision I was making toward my personal goals and objectives, and every…
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“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”
In a marathon, the runners typically stop running at the finish line. We don’t see anyone of them deciding to run an extra mile because the finish line is simply where the race ends. This saying about following the crowd, likely by Francis Phillip Wernig (aka Alan Ashley-Pitt), is similar…
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“Being deeply loved gives you strength, while loving deeply gives you courage.”
During challenging times, we may need to lean on loving family and friends for support. Their support gives us strength; and something as simple as a hug or a listening ear can go a long way. So, the idea that being deeply loved gives us strength makes complete sense. However,…
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“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
What a shame it would be if a caterpillar decided to remain in its cocoon. Fortunately, nature runs its course and a metamorphosis occurs. The caterpillar eventually emerges as a butterfly–having no choice in the matter. We too are faced with the prospect of major change. But we typically do…
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“You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.”
This quote is by former baseball player Steve Garvey. The quote isn’t just about reaching for the stars and having ambitious goals. Instead, it’s about the consequence of not having ambitious goals. Therefore, the key message here is being stuck. Without setting goals that are almost out of reach, we…
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“If you’re doing something outside of dominant culture, there’s not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.”
Whether we want to believe it or not, things like our age, gender, race, and socioeconomic background play a factor in where we go to school, when, if we attend college, what we major in, the career we pursue, when we start a family. The list goes on. Simply put,…
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“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.”
It’s human nature to come up with every excuse in the book before we finally start something. And a very common excuse we get ourselves to believe is that it’s just not the right time to begin. Sounds like a logical reason. But there’s a difference between the condition being…
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“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”
This quote is not to be taken literally. It’s from the classic children’s story, Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie. In the story, Peter Pan’s ability to fly is significantly influenced by his belief that he can without any second thought or hesitation. While the story is made-up, the core principle…
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“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
It’s easy to assume people who show courage aren’t afraid–that they lack fear. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s fear in all of us, and this quote, by Mark Twain, reminds us that fear is not necessarily absent in the midst of courage. It’s there. However, what…
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“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
We all have that voice inside our head that says we can’t do something. And so we don’t do it, which only proves the voice in our head was right. This quote, by Vincent Van Gogh, is about silencing that voice the best way we can–by doing the thing it…



























