Getting Back Up

Jack and Jill by Jessie Willcox Smith

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American songwriter/singer, Ben Harper said, “If I fall, I fall. I'll rise up like anybody else.” Each of us is going to have those times when life has knocked us down to the ground. The hill we were climbing causes us to slip and tumble back to the bottom. Think of the old children’s nursery rhyme, “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.”

The rhyme says that Jack got up and ran home. But my version says, “Jack got up, and dusted off, determined to go on. Back up the hill, along with Jill, to catch the rising sun.” A way of saying, “keep pursuing your dreams.” The only thing that can keep you from pushing forward is YOU. When YOU fall, it is YOU that determines if YOU will get back up.

Your Own Understanding of who YOU are will make the decision of getting back up either easy or hard. By having a positive attitude, it is more likely that you will bounce back up and try again. If you are a negative person, chances are you will stay stretched out on the ground.

All of this isn’t to say that there no difficult challenges to face. I have been through some of those challenges. The process of getting back up and battling through those challenges is not an easy task. But overcoming the challenges was an even greater reward.

Your life will be greater and you will get to see the sunrise in the morning, (aka, your dreams fulfilled). So get up and start heading back up that hill. There is water to fetch, seeds to plant and dreams to harvest.

Infinitely Heroic

Infinitely Heroic

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." -Arthur Ashe

Would you lift a car to save another person? What if that car were on fire at the time? That is exactly what several people did in Salt Lake City recently when an unfortunate accident occurred. A car, a motorcycle, and the driver of the motorcycle injured and trapped beneath a burning car.

Bravery or heroism are words we apply to such people. As one of these fine people said, "That's a big title. I don't consider myself a hero. It's just our humanity ... Everyone is going to help." A very well-said comment in that as people, we simply help take care of each other. In these instances, you can not stand silent and not do something.

Each and every day we do things that are heroic in nature. The big ones are lifting a burning car off an injured man. Or racing up several flights of stairs in a burning building to save people. Maybe even putting your life on the line to protect a nation or a community.

There are also deeds done that make you a hero just in serving other people in small ways. We hold a door open for the person carrying groceries or giving a smile to the stressed out bank teller. A father playing with his kids, or a mother applying a bandaid to a skinned knee.

You have the opportunity each and every day to do something good for another. It is the big and little things we do, serving others, that creates a million heroes. You may not wear a skin-tight action hero outfit but what you do for others will make you look like you do.

And as the quote from one of the 'car lifters' said, "it's just our humanity." When we look out for each other, when we help each other, we in turn are looked after. Be a hero today, do something good and see your life, your best life, become even better.

Success From Failure

"Failure is an event, never a person." -William D. Brown

There are stories which run the full length of history about failure. Stories which tell us how failure is turned into success. Stories which remind us that failure is not a destination but a short term experience.

Everyone is familiar with 3M Post-It Notes. The basic story is of a man named Spencer Silver who worked in the 3M research laboratories. In the late 1960s, he was working on developing a strong adhesive to incorporate it to some of 3M’s current products. After some trial and error he developed an adhesive, but to his own disappointment, it was even weaker than what 3M already manufactured at the time. It stuck to things but could easily be lifted off.

He tried finding uses for it within 3M with little success. Then four years later, another 3M scientist named Arthur Fry was singing in his church’s choir. He used bookmarkers to keep his place in the hymnal but they kept falling out. Then he remembered Silver’s weak adhesive and he used it to coat his bookmarkers. Surprise! With the weak adhesive the bookmarkers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the pages.

From failure, success is born.

• Henry Ford went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor and went bankrupt numerous times before he built Disneyland.
• Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. A teacher described him as “mentally slow."
• The movie Star Wars was rejected by several movie studios before 20th-Century Fox decided to produce what is one of the largest grossing movies in film history.
• After Fred Astaire's first screen test, a memo from the testing director at MGM in 1933 said, “Can’t act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!” Fred Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his home.
• Babe Ruth, considered one of the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.
• Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was turned down by more than twenty-five publishers.
• In 1954, the manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere… son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”
• Dr. Seuss ' first children's book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. The twenty-eighth publisher, Vanguard press, sold six million copies of the book.

Failure occurs a million times a day. What matters is the million times people got back up and tried again.

You have the ability to move on and try again and again. Only you can keep you from doing so. You will learn from the failure and you will succeed. So get up from the failure, get past the failure, learn from the failure and achieve something greater.

Don't Worry

Guido Reni "Worry"

"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy." -Leo Buscaglia

It is something we do quite often, which is to worry. The word itself means "mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated, such as anxiety." It comes from the Middle English worien, or to strangle or constrict. worry can actually choke the joy out of living. It can constrict your ability to move forward.

In an article by Sean Sabourin, he reveals that "the original Greek word for worry literally means to have a divided mind, or to divide into parts." And he notes that it means;

- Worry consumes
- Worry steals
- Worry captivates
- Worry controls
- Worry destroys
- Worry kills

Worry splits our life into many parts and each of those small pieces can tear at our life from many angles. They are destructive and only serve to hold you back from achieving your best life.

You have heard it said, "don't worry, be happy" many times before. I know that worry is a natural part of our human existence. But we can not let it consume and destroy our life. You have the power over worry. You have the ability to rationalize and turn worry into something positive.

When you take worry and put it in context of the bigger picture, everything will work out alright. Whatever happens will happen. You can prepare, you can accept, and you can move beyond the worries of tomorrow. Don't let it take the joy and happiness from your life today.