Category: Success

Ambition, Community, Confidence, Courage, Identity, Life Advice, Optimism, Podcast, Psychology, Success, Thriving

Pivotal Moments: Confidence

blondeprofilewindWhat moments have changed your life’s direction, for better or worse? What events shaped your future and turned you into the person you are now? Have you ever created major changes in life without some external impetus to force your hand?

What if you could change anything about your life right now? What would you change? Think it over!

One of the most important traits you can develop is confidence. It makes you more attractive. It gives you the courage to live your dreams. It smooths out dozens of small bumps in the road of life and helps you progress much faster toward your inherent potential.

With that in mind, here are a few stories of confidence-related pivotal moments to help you process the concept. PLEASE SHARE your own pivotal moments in the comments sections below! Everyone would love to hear and learn from them.

A Scout is…Confident?

I went to scout camp the summer before 9th grade, and sitting around the fire one afternoon, Coy started spitting watermelon seeds at me as he ate. Coy was one of the “cool” kids and I was not. After several seeds, something in me snapped – something small at first, then bigger. “If you spit one more seed at me,” I warned, “I’ll beat the crap out of you.” Coy calmly took another bite of melon, chewed, then spit a seed at me. Continue reading “Pivotal Moments: Confidence”

Balance, Beauty, Happiness, Money, The Meaning of Life, Thriving, U of Life, Words to Live By

Ephemeral Art

 
This summer, people started building crazy cairns (rock piles that mark a trail) all along the bike trails in the mountain foothills above my home.

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At first they would simply gather rocks and stack them tall; then as months wore on, they grew more elaborate. I started adding sticks for arms and turning them into cairn men. Sometimes others would remove the sticks or knock over the piles, but someone else would always rebuild them.

RightNowCairnNow summer has passed, most of the leaves have dried up and dropped from the sky, and despite a long, gorgeous autumn, the snow can’t be too far away. I’ll still run the trails, but the cold won’t let me linger the way I’ve enjoyed for so many months.

Thanks to the change of seasons, every time I pass a cairn, I think about how ephemeral this world is – nothing is built to last. The only thing that will ever endure is the fleeting moment of “now,” and that truth ought to affect your perspective and priorities. Continue reading “Ephemeral Art”

Ambition, Community, Courage, Enthusiasm, Love, Passion, Success, U of Life

Thank a Teacher

I recently came across this inspiring letter written by a new teacher and she gave me permission to share it here:

So, I’m a brand-new 7th grade English teacher. I work in a school where something like 80% of the kids live below the poverty line. Many of them have families who are barely making it. Many of them wear the same clothes to school multiple days in a row. For many of them, school lunch is the only meal they will eat that day. Many of their parents struggle with drugs, alcoholism, or are incarcerated.

And here I am, some 25-year-old white girl who saw Freedom Writers and wanted to make a difference. Want to know a secret? Some days, I feel like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Continue reading “Thank a Teacher”

Balance, Courage, Happiness, Success, Thinking, Traits

The Secret to Keeping your New Year’s Resolutions

It’s that time of year again! Time to pretend that next year will turn out different than all the other years before it. “This year,” we promise ourselves, we’ll stick to our resolutions, get in shape, stop smoking, get that new job…and then, we know – we just KNOW it, then we will be happy. Then life will be good.

Well? It’s true! You will be happier and life will be better. Or rather, life would be better if you actually kept working at your goals.

Sorry to tell you the bad news, but the other part is probably not true – you will not keep your resolutions this year any better than you ever have before. Next year will end up pretty much like this one except that we’ll all be another year older.

Unless.

Unless you learn one little tiny lesson that changes everything. Continue reading “The Secret to Keeping your New Year’s Resolutions”