One Harmless Cigarette

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” - Jim Rohn

You have seen this same thing most anywhere you go. Cigarette butts laying near the intersections of our roads, along the curbs of sidewalks and tossed down the alleys of our cities. It is a regular habit of many people to toss these out their window.

Do these particular cars come without ash trays?

We have also seen those who do use their car ash tray, pull up to an intersection, open the door and dump their ashes and cigarette butts on the ground. Could it be that all of these people believe cigarette filters are biodegradable. In fact cigarette butts are not biodegradable in the sense that most people think according to folks at CigaretteLitter.Org. It can take acetate filters many years to actually decompose.

They go on to say, "What happens after that butt gets casually flicked onto the street, nature trail, or beach? Typically wind and rain carry the cigarette into the water supply, where the toxic chemicals the cigarette filter was designed to trap leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening the quality of the water and many aquatic lifeforms. Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion butts littered every year, the toxic chemicals add up!"

In the compiled results of a shoreline cleanup day published by The Ocean Conservancy, volunteers in 68 countries covered a combined 34,000 miles of shoreline and collected 7 million pounds of litter, 80 percent of which had been washed from land into the water. Of the 7.7 million items of debris collected worldwide in 2006, cigarettes and cigarette butts accounted for roughly 1.9 million, the sixth consecutive year they have topped the list.

Within cities the cost to clean up these small and seemingly insignificant eye sores is astounding. In San Francisco, annual clean up costs run close to $11 million; a cost that is shared by taxpayers. It is $11 million that could have gone to parks, school funding or other needed public services.

But there are many that only consider themselves.

In surveys, many smokers blame their littering behavior on a lack of well-placed bins for cigarette butts. Yet, would these same people toss a cigarette out at the curb of their home. There is no handy trash bin available along their driveway at home, so is it littered with cigarette butts? Somehow I doubt that is the case.

Ashtrays have been available in cars for quite a few years. The excuse of no nearby trash bin does not work for the car driver. Although the mindset not to dirty their own property is the same one which keeps them from dirtying the ash tray in their car.

Yet no thought is given to tossing, also known as littering, a cigarette butt elsewhere. My point is not to single out just cigarette smoking as there are plenty of other examples. All of us share in many seemingly harmless bad choices.

There are many acts of responsibility which go undone.

A German pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” Each of us need to take on responsibility for life around us. To look beyond our own self and see that everything we do impacts others.

By taking others into consideration when making our decisions improves life for all.

It is not just about you. It is about all of us.

Stop for a moment and think about your actions. Take responsibility in these small areas of your life will mean added responsibility in bigger areas of your life. Take on both the big and small responsibilities and see it change your life for the better.

Stay inspired my friends!

Sweeping With An Attitude

To end this fine week, there are two great quotes I often repeat a few times per year. Each speak to much of what I believe and how I try to conduct my own life.

Please read them and be inspired to live your life the same.


"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." - Martin Luther King Jr.


"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do.

It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break an organization, a school, a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play the string we have. And that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you." - Charles Swindell


Stay inspired my friends!

A Simple Way

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” - Dr. Seuss

There are days when you struggle to figure out what you want, need or would like to do. There are distractions happening all around you and the answers simply do not come along.

For me, I have those days trying to find the answers to questions posed to me. In some instances, I struggle for a good share of time on and then I simply set them aside for a while. In those moments I will go and do something completely different.

Take my mind off the issue, allowing it to open up.

Typically I will research other issues, read part of a book, or even surf the web just throwing out search words. In once particular case I searched the internet using the words "doctor seuss answers" because I figured he always has an answer for most anything.

And something new out of the blue happens.

As I read through the information, the quote shown above struck me as simple enough. So I went back to the work problem and started from scratch looking only at the most basic and simple of solutions. To my delight, the solution came fairly quickly.

It was a reasonably simple solution as well. Was it Dr. Seuss who helped me find the answer or dumb luck? I tend to think it was a matter of looking at it from a different perspective; the easy perspective.

We tend to over complicate our lives and over think it.

Sometimes the answer is truly simple and it is the question we made complicated. Try not to over complicate your life. Sometimes the best way to get past the complicated is by choosing not to let it be complicated.

Taking the simple path you can get to your destination quicker. If a boulder sits in the way, it might be easier to walk around rather then trying to roll it out of the way. You will find a way.

Stay inspired my friends

Confidence With Learning

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship." - Aeschylus

It starts early in life, from the moment we are born.

We begin our learning process.

We learn new sounds while in the womb, figuring out the voice of our mother or father.
With first light of birth, we connect voices to faces, processing every bit of information.

On it goes through pre-school, elementary, high-school and college.
It matters not not that you go through all of the formal education.
Knowledge is a constant thing in our life.

The more we learn, the more we understand the world around us.
The more we learn, the more we understand our place in it.

We can choose not to learn.
We can choose ignorance and become mired in the mud of life.

Or we can choose to learn and lift ourselves to greater possibility.

These are choices we can make each and every day.

Choose to learn more each day.
Choose to make your life greater.

Stay inspired my friends.