Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success & Happiness

Welcome to Our Sunday Talks. Today’s talk was edited and adapted from 4 Minute Essays by Dr. Frank Crane, published in 1919. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: I can do as I please. And I can always refuse. Hence I know that I am responsible for my actions. I will accept this responsibility and play my role honorably. I will not never seek excuses for my weakness. I know I do not understand all the secret springs of the acts of others, hence I will be charitable in my judgments. I know that what I know is to what I don’t know as the number one is to infinity, hence I will try always to be teachable. I know that the past cannot be changed, hence I will make the best of it; and that I cannot control the future, hence I will not worry about it.

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Listen to episode 1135 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Living in the Great Eternal Now. Adapted from How to Stay Young by Christian D. Larson.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: It is only in the now that you can live. You can live neither in the past nor in the future. You may think of the past or the future, but you can live only in the now. To train the mind to concentrate the whole of attention upon the great eternal now is to develop the consciousness of the "isness" of the now, and to consciously feel that its purpose is to eliminate the consciousness of age completely. 

It is not possible for the mind to feel that it is growing old, so long as it feels that it lives in the now, and that the now is. The now is eternal; that is, the now eternally is now. The now never ceases to be now; therefore to live in the now is to continue to be now, what you are now. 

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Listen to episode 1134 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Living the Optimistic Life. Edited and adapted from Helen Keller’s essay on optimism.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Let it be remembered that the world’s philosophers — the Sayers of the Word — were optimists; so also are the men and women of action and achievement—the Doers of the Word. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. 

The optimist believes, attempts, achieves. They stand always in the sunlight. Some days the wonderful, the inexpressible, arrives and shines upon them, and they are there to welcome it. The soul of the optimist meets its own and beats a glad march to every new discovery, every fresh victory over difficulties, every addition to human knowledge and happiness.

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

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Welcome to Our Sunday Talks. Today’s talk was edited and adapted from Light on Life's Difficulties by James Allen. Gain access to more episodes (ad-free) by becoming our patron for as little as $3 a month.

By becoming a patron, you'll also gain access to our entire archive of Inspirational Living podcasts, plus full transcripts. Learn about the benefits our patrons receive by going to https://livinghour.org/patron. Thank you.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Each of us stands unique and alone, in a world where we comprehend within ourselves the mysteries of the universe. The riddle of life is not to be found in nature but in your own life. There are no problems without. Every problem that presents itself for solution is to be found in the life of you. Solve the inner problem, and the outer becomes revealed.

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

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Listen to episode 1133 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Here is Your Key to Success. Edited and adapted from The Keys to Success by B.C. Forbes.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Nobody can hand you a ready-made key to open the door of success. You must fashion your own key and find the combination of the lock for yourself. 

No magician can waft you to the heights of fortune and fame. You cannot fly there on the wings of an airplane. 

The road, often rocky, has to be traversed on foot. You, and you alone, can supply the motive power. You, and you alone, must put forth the necessary exertion. No one can remove from your shoulders the burden of the effort. You must do your own climbing. 

Nor are there any mystic short-cuts. The full distance must be honestly, even painstakingly traveled.

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

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Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1132 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Emotional Forces that Drive Success. Edited and adapted from How to Develop Your Will Power by Clare Tree Major.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Self-control is emotional control. Like all forces inherent in human nature, the emotional forces work equally thoroughly in either direction, as builders or as destroyers. You are, whether you like it or not, dealing with forces, with laws, with energy, which must expend themselves, must carry out their predestined mission — forces as blind and as inevitable as the forces of electricity or the laws of gravitation. 

You must either be hurled to destruction by them, or you must control and use them. You cannot escape them. They are part of your nature. The more vital and intense your nature, the greater your possibilities of power. The fact that you are awake enough to be interested in self-development is sufficient proof of your own possibility of superseding in development the masses which make up the great average class of humanity. 

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

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Listen to episode 1131 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Succeed in the Game of Life. Adapted from “If I Were Twenty-One” by Dr. Frank Crane.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt:Never forget that anyone can be happy if they choose to be. Happiness does not depend on circumstance, but upon YOU. This is perhaps the greatest truth in the world, and the one most persistently disbelieved.

Happiness, said Thomas Carlyle, is as the value of a common fraction, which results from dividing the numerator by the denominator. The numerator, in life, is What We Have. The denominator is What We Think We Ought to Have. Humankind may be divided into two classes: the Fools and the Wise. The fools are eternally trying to get happiness by multiplying the numerator; the wise divide the denominator.

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1130 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Power of Cheerfulness. Adapted from The Optimistic Life by Orison Swett Marden.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt:Joyous people are not only the happiest, but the longest lived, the most useful and the most successful. A sense of humor, the love of fun in human nature, is a normal, natural lubricant which oils life's machinery, makes it run smoothly, and relieves that grinding of the bearings which prematurely wears away so many lives. 

The 19th century women’s activist Lydia Maria Child used to say: "I think cheerfulness in every possible way. I hang prisms in my window to fill the room with rainbows." This is the right kind of philosophy, the great medicine of the mind, the best tonic for the body. The habit of looking on the sunny side, the laughter-side or ludicrous side of things, is a fortune in itself. I would rather be a millionaire of cheerfulness and sunshine than of dollars. 

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1129 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Be Calm, Cool & Collected. Adapted from a lecture by Dr. George Lincoln Walton.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: If we are to change our mental attitudes, we should begin by modifying them by suggestion. In attacking faulty mental habits, suggestion is the most potent agent at our command. There is nothing new or pseudo-scientific about the practical employment of self-suggestion toward achieving poise and equanimity. Lao Tzu urged his followers to guard their vitality by entering into harmony with their environment. And Cicero claimed that to learn to live without tumult is the best training for the fulfillment of a wish.

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION

Listen to episode 1128 of the Inspirational Living podcast: We Must Strive to do Great Deeds. Edited and adapted from a speech by Teddy Roosevelt.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt:It is not the critic who counts; not the one who points out how the strong person has stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the men and women who are actually in the arena, whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strive valiantly; who err; who come short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.

These are the brave souls who actually strive to DO the deeds; who know great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best knows the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

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Get our popular 3 books of Life Lessons in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Go to: https://livinghour.org/books

Get our podcast with full transcripts and without ads by visiting: https://livinghour.org/patron 

Transform your life in 30 days with our MAJESTY meditation program: https://livinghour.org/majesty. Get 30% off with the coupon code: INSPIRATION