Teaching Your Mind to Inspire Others: 25 Big Lessons Made Simple
My mother was a classroom teacher for more than 40 years and during that time she positively impacted the lives of thousands of her students. Her professional accolades were many from loving students, appreciative parents, admiring co-workers and mentoring principals. I knew this but, to me, she was my mother and my guiding light though sometimes I didn’t appreciate the glow and refused to take heed of her wisdom.
Having reached age 70, I am embarking on a Life Review and finally able to seek an understanding of my mother the total person. This post is about the part of her I have come to miss most: the every day philosopher who sought to find meaning and joy in life so as to embody serenity and inspire others.
She had big ideas and shared them clearly and effectively.
Here are my favorites – the Top 25 Lessons — found 16 years after her passing and written by her own hand on scraps of paper and stuffed in a variety of books. Apologies to those quoted without attribution. My mother would never plagiarize and certainly would never dream I’d actually publish these.
Character: Better to be despised for the right than praised for the wrong.
Gratitude: Thankfulness is the soil in which joy thrives.
Egotism: An anesthetic to dull the pain of stupidity
Karma: Always remember that what you bring into the lives of others will someday come back into your own.
Words: Words do not break bones but they can break hearts.
Permanency: Time and words can never be recalled.
Experience: Experience often trumps theory.
Staying Focused: Busy souls have no time to be busy bodies.
Listening: Listen, listen, listen…and then listen some more.
Daydreaming: Happy are those who believe in daydreaming.
Serenity: When you are at peace with yourself any place is home.
Beauty: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen.
Hardships: Rough paths lead to desirable destinations.
Success: The place in the road where preparation and opportunity meet but too few recognize it because it’s often disguised as hard work.
Prayer: True prayer is a way of life not an emergency route.
Time: Lost time is never found.
Humility: Take your rewards and honors lightly.
Persistence: Worse than a quitter is a person who is afraid to begin.
Friends: Friends you can meet everywhere. Enemies you must make.
Happiness: Happy are those who can look back with pride and stride forward with hope.
Hypocrisy: A hypocrite is one who is not himself/herself in a place of worship.
Leadership: You can’t lead anyone farther than you have gone yourself.
Compassion: The tenderness you must feel for those whose problems are bigger than yours.
Seeking: Look to your memories for comfort, your friends for understanding and your faith for hope and peace.
Maturity: One of the greatest advantages of our later years is that we no longer have to scream: we can talk. We don’t have to run: we can walk. Grow older with me. The best is yet to be.
I end this piece with a longing for more and an appreciation that I stumbled upon her wise lessons while rummaging through memorabilia in my quest to better understand my past and the significant people in it. Onward with my Life Review!
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