Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success & Happiness

Listen to episode 492 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Climbing the Ladder of Success. Edited and adapted from Personal Power by Keith J. Thomas.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. Remember that for as little as $3 a month, you can gain exclusive access to over 250 additional podcasts from our archive, as well as full transcripts to every episode. And access to our weekend podcast Our Sunday Talks. Go to LivingHour.org/patron to sign up on Patreon and get special access today.

Today’s reading was edited and adapted from Personal Power by Keith J. Thomas, Published in 1917.

Many companies have taken to adopting mottoes to keep always before the minds of their staff and stimulate them to efficient work. Years ago, one of the most popular to be seen hanging in an office was: "Do it now." An enterprising advertising firm later adapted this into the trade-marked phrase, “Do it better.”

Other popular mottos that I have come across include “Do the next thing” and “Do it at once and do it well.” A business friend once told me that he thought a good motto would be, "Do it yourself” — and within sensible limits the phrase is excellent, since many of us are too fond of leaving to others the things we should do ourselves.

It is a good idea to have some such guiding principle in life, some mental spur that will always make us produce our best. Indeed, take for your motto the words “Do your best,” and you will never have cause to complain of failure in life. Whatever you have to do, do it as well as you know how. The habit of doing everything as perfectly as you can will influence your character and your whole future.

Listen to episode 491 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Motivation for Patience & Perseverance. Edited and adapted from How to Get On in the World by Major A.R. Calhoun.

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Today’s reading was edited and adapted from How to Get On in the World by Major A.R. Calhoun, published in 1895.

If success were possible only to women and men of great talents, then there would be little success in the world. It has been rightly said that talent is just as much the ability to stick to a thing, as the aptitude to do it better than another.

Ulysses S. Grant once said, "I will fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer." This statement of General Grant doesn’t indicate so much a man of genius, but rather a man of indomitable perseverance, a perseverance to which he owed all his success. The key to his character was tenacity.

The soldier who begins the battle in doubt is half beaten in advance. The entrepreneur who loses heart after one failure is a fool to have even started. There is a great deal in good preparation, but there is a great deal more in heroic perseverance.

Listen to episode 490 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Motivation for Developing Your Personal Power. Edited and adapted from Personal Power by Keith J. Thomas.

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Motivational Podcast Transcript: "Be not afraid of greatness," says Shakespeare. "Some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." Which are you? I will tell you. You were born great; you can achieve greatness if you will; and if you go about it the right way, you will have greatness thrust upon you.

The mistake so many people make is to confuse greatness with riches. The great person can have all they want, but they need not necessarily become rich. Carlyle was no more intended to be a millionaire than Andrew Carnegie was made to be a Milton. We cannot all be Shakespeares, or Darwins, or Rockefellers, but we can all be great.

If we want money we can get it; if we want power we can get it: the only condition being that we should want it badly enough. Whatever our desire is, we must be prepared to give up all pleasure and all ease to attain it. Fortune is a hard mistress and will brook no rivals. But to the person who is prepared to serve her whole-heartedly, she offers the sure promise of their heart's desire.

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Listen to episode 489 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Success, Education & The School of Life. Edited and adapted from Youth and Opportunity by Thomas Tapper.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Every task you are called upon to do is not in itself a final act, but an initial act. Every task is suggestive of something higher than itself. Every task and object you contribute to the world is a real thing, something that other people will look at, and by it be more or less influenced.

Now, as every object or task that you contribute to your environment defines you, you should take care that it defines you correctly. The task and the thing are photographs of your mental vision. The more care you take with the negative, the better picture of your intentions you will present to your environment and your times.

The records of the past (and the amazing activities of the present) offer you numberless roads to follow. Whichever highway you elect to travel fixes your direction. You can travel the road both bravely and helpfully; bravely, in that you have faith that it leads you where you must go; helpfully, in that you leave evidence of the work of your mind and hands as you go along, and in that it shall inspire love of work in those who come after, and faith in the direction of the road.

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Listen to episode 488 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Taking Control of Your Mind & Body | Health Podcasts. Edited and adapted from Youth and Opportunity by Thomas Tapper.

Visit today's sponsor Swanson Health at Swanson.com. And use coupon code LIFE20 for 20% off.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The truth is that you will succeed in life just as you learn to do your work with mind and body as your two great servants. You must be able to say of yourself, as Jean Jacques Rousseau said of his friend Ignacio de Altuna, "His body was well formed for the residence of his mind."

If he want to have a strong body, you must devote your thought to strength. If you want to be rich in material things, you must think and plan and work thoughts of riches. If you want to be of great use in the world, you must direct your thought upon utilitarian activities. Any or all of these conditions will come about if you keep on thinking about them.

It sounds easy, does it not? And yet, most people fail to master mind and body, although success depends on this very mastery. Why do they fail? There are certain things about the mind and body which must be understood early in life if we wish to succeed. In the years of childhood and youth, and before we know just what we want to do in the world, mind and body are full of strength and freshness. We use them with little or no thought. We do not realize that they are our servants, and come to believe: "I am a mind and body. What they do, I am." But, in fact, we should believe, "I have a mind and a body. What I do with them, I am."

Listen to episode 487 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Overcome Fear | Courageous Living. Edited and adapted from Everyday Efficiency: A Practical Guide to Efficient Living by C.H. Forbes-Lindsay.

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Today’s reading was edited and adapted from Everyday Efficiency: A Practical Guide to Efficient Living by C.H. Forbes-Lindsay, published in 1918.

Fear is the most devastating agency in life. It prevents initiative, paralyzes effort, promotes disease, hampers development and in a thousand ways mars the character. And yet, it is one of the most common defects in character. Most of us are subject to Fear in one form or another. We fear fate, we fear death, we fear disease, we fear poverty, we fear failure, we fear accident, we fear difficulties, we fear responsibility, and on and on.

While writers on the subject agree that Fear often becomes a vice, few offer any practical suggestions for its eradication. The reader is generally advised to use their Reason, which is well enough as far as it goes, but the fact remains that the conclusions of Reason are frequently not sufficient to control action.

Lyman Abbott states that if we look back upon those times in our lives when we thought we were facing danger, we will see in retrospect that the lions were almost ways chained. We know from personal experience that situations which initially excited our fears, were rarely, if ever, as bad as our imagination had pictured them.

Listen to episode 486 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The 3 Pillars of Success and Happiness. Edited and adapted from Success by Lord Beaverbrook.

Visit today's sponsor Swanson Health at Swanson.com. And use coupon code LIFE20 for 20% off.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Success — that is the royal road we all want to tread, for it gives us the opportunity to exercise our abilities and activities to the full.  Like all human affairs, success is partly a matter of predestination and partly of free will. You cannot make genius, but you can improve upon it or destroy it, and most people possess the assets which can be turned into success. But those who possess these precious gifts will have to gather and expand them.

What are the qualities which make for success? They are three: Judgment, Industry, and Health, and perhaps the greatest of these is judgment — for in proclaiming the word judgment one has said everything. In the affairs of the world it is the supreme quality.

Surrounding good judgment there cluster many qualities, like the setting around a jewel: such as, the capacity to read the hearts of others; to draw an inexhaustible fountain of wisdom from every particle of experience in the past, and to turn the current of this knowledge into the dynamic action of the future.

Listen to episode 485 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Cheerfulness & The Wheel of Life. Adapted from Everyday Efficiency by C.H. Forbes-Lindsay.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. To get the best essays from our podcast in heirloom hardcover or digital e-book, please visit InspirationalLifeLessons.com. Today’s reading was edited and adapted from Everyday Efficiency: A Practical Guide to Efficient Living by C.H. Forbes-Lindsay, published in 1918.

Cheerfulness is the lubricant of the "Wheel of Life." It lightens labor, diminishes difficulties, and mitigates misfortunes. After what we may term the essential virtues, Cheerfulness is the most desirable human quality. And it is the most conspicuously absent among Americans. As Emerson once said, "I question if care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the faces of any other population.”

With us the "wheel of life" is allowed to become rusted with worry and clogged with the dust and lint of petty frictions, so that the round of daily life is made doubly difficult and wearing. It IS possible for a cheerless person to achieve success, but they do so at terrible cost to themselves and others. They cannot enjoy money, position, and other attainments, for the power of enjoyment soon passes away from them. They never appreciate the truth that happiness is to be found in living, in endeavor, in the pursuit.

The object striven for seldom brings the anticipated happiness. The person who views life as a painful drudgery to be compensated for by the ultimate realization of a supreme desire has grievous disappointments in store for them — for as Stevenson said: "To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, and true success involves labor. Surely we must look for happiness along the road — not at the end of it.”

Listen to episode 484 of the Inspirational Living podcast: We are the Master of Ourselves and Fate. Adapted from the book Concentration: The Key to Constructive Thought by C. W. Kyle.

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Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: The axiom, ''As you thinketh in your heart so you are,” is the most startling truth ever uttered about humankind. What an amazing statement it is — for it reveals that we are possessed of the power to create and rule ourselves and our environment by the choice and mastership of our thoughts!

The wonderful fascination of this saying lies in the all-embracing statement which it so directly makes. It covers every possible action we take, and clearly states that we are capable of exercising unlimited powers. Look which way we will, we cannot escape from the finality of this decree.

The beauty of this saying is that it is true, just as it is written. You ARE a world within yourself, and you ARE master of yourself. It matters not how well or ill you may exercise your powers of mastery. You are the unquestioned thinker of your own thoughts, which are the tools of your trade. You are the master craftsman of your own designs, and you build constructively or destructively as you will. You make yourself sick or well, rich or poor, strong or feeble, sorrowful or joyous by the character of the thoughts you think.

Listen to episode 483 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Developing a Great and Powerful Personality. Edited and adapted from Leadership by George H. Knox.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: There is a force in the world that is all-powerful — something that transforms us into giants when we open our minds to the highest good. There is a power that enables you to multiply your mental force a thousand times, and even to increase your physical force until you can almost defy fatigue and disease. We see this power every day in the faces of women and men, in the painting of the artist, in the song of the poet, in all the great achievements of humankind.

What is this power? Perhaps no one knows for sure. But as we use electricity without knowing exactly what it is, so does this peculiar something exert an influence greater than that of electricity. Scientists tell us that the entire atmosphere is filled with energy, that there is an ocean of energy enveloping the world, and as we use this force or energy does it come to us in an ever-increasing supply. However, this phenomenon alone cannot account for our personality, nor how we can develop it; how we can become magnetic and attractive; how we can develop capacity for work and leadership.

Help disadvantaged children get a head start by visiting today's sponsor SavetheChildren.org.