Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success & Happiness

Listen to episode 214 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Wake up & Live | Mindfulness Exercises. Edited and adapted from Wake Up & Live by Dorothea Brande.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: There are dozens of small ways by which we can make our minds both keener and more flexible – two qualities that are necessary for those who intend to live successfully. We all succumb too easily to the temptation to find a routine which allows us to get our day’s tasks done with a minimum of effort and conscious attention — a fact which might have no unfortunate effects at all if we used the time we save by our routines to a good purpose.

But the cold truth is that we do nothing of the sort. We apply the habit of routines to our whole lives, growing mentally and spiritually more flaccid, more timorous, less experimental with every day we spend supported by the rigidity of habit. Habit takes care of most of our ordinary activities. We get through our work by using only that part of our intellect which has been trained to consider the work’s specific problems. When we meet a novel thought or situation, we fall back on an analogy and act according to the prejudice or emotion which it arouses in us.

Even those who think of themselves as extraordinarily hard workers are not usually in that state of mental training which allows them to get the most from their lives.....

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Listen to episode 200 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Build Personal Magnetism | Magnetic Charisma. Adapted Stepping-Stones to Success by Horace D. Hitchcock.

Self-Development Podcast Excerpt: Henry Ward Beecher once said: "There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure bearing, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good; whose coming into a room is like the bringing of a lamp there."

That is personal magnetism. It is that quality of personality which attracts, causes admiration in others, and is a compelling force to success and good living. A person may be beautiful and brilliant mentally, but if they lack "personal magnetism" they are dull and uninteresting to those with whom they come in contact.

Personal magnetism is the magic flame that lights up the inner soul. It is that wonderful charm which, when properly cultivated and used, is a priceless treasure.

It is true that all things of influence can be made to produce good or evil. The conventional terms "good influence" and "bad influence" pertain directly to the qualities of magnetic personality. This quality is inherent in all of us, yet very few people know of its possibilities or that it can be developed like any other quality of mind.

Once again we are reminded of that great principle: Like produces like. Good influence produces good influence and, inversely, bad influence produces a negative quality.

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Related Self-Help Podcasts:

The Art of Charm

The Power of Kindness

Listen to episode 199 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Sun Tzu: The Art of War | Leadership and Management. Adapted from the classic work by Sun Tzu.

Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. If you value our podcast, don’t forget to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to us on YouTube. If you feel inspired to leave us a review at the iTunes store, that would be much appreciated too. Today’s reading is a collection of quotes from Sun Tzu’s classic The Art of War, which was written in China during the 5th century B.C.

“If you know your opponent and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not your opponent, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither your opponent nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“Supreme excellence consists of breaking your opponent’s resistance without fighting.” “There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.”

“When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and places confidence in them, they will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders.”

“There are roads which must not be followed, competitors who must not be attacked, positions which must not be contested, commands of the bureaucrats who must not be obeyed.”

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

Listen to episode 197 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Arthur Schopenhauer: Quotes, Wisdom & Philosophy Talk. Adapted from A Multitude of Counsellors by J.N. Larned.

Self-Help Podcast Excerpt: The most general survey shows us that the two foes of happiness are pain and boredom. We may go further, and say that in the degree in which we are fortunate enough to get away from the one, we approach the other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscillation between the two. Needy surroundings and poverty produce pain; while, if we are more than well off, we are bored. Nothing is so good a protection as inward wealth, the wealth of the mind, because the greater it grows the less room it leaves for boredom. . . .

The conclusion we come to is that the individual whom nature has endowed with intellectual wealth is the happiest. Men and women of inner wealth want nothing from outside but the gift of undisturbed leisure, to develop and mature their intellectual faculties, that is, to enjoy their wealth. In short, they want permission to be themselves, their whole life long, every day and every hour. . . .

The value we set upon the opinion of others, and our constant endeavor in respect of it, are each quite out of proportion to any result we may reasonably hope to attain; so that this attention to other people's attitude may be regarded as a kind of universal mania which everyone inherits. In all we do, almost the first thing we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score. . . .

Listen to episode 192 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Sowing & Reaping. Edited and adapted from a book by the same name by Booker T. Washington.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: What I am about to tell you now is true of all the pursuits of life. We get out of every venture just what we put into it; no more, no less. To attain success we must put forth hard and honest labor. At the back of all success there is hard, persistent labor. There is no royal road — those who think there is always fail.

No person ever reaped any success in life who did not sow wisely. As each person takes up the serious business of life, they must do something — they must labor and wait. In order to reap something, something must be done. Value for value is the real standard of life's exchange of benefits.

Show me someone who is always grumbling, always finding fault with their condition, never satisfied with their opportunities, and I will show you a person who does not appreciate the opportunities in the environment in which they are to work out their success or failure.

Hard labor is the keynote to success. One of the wisest things Ex-senator B. K. Bruce ever said was that "luck is a fool." So it is. There is no luck; it is all labor and patience.

Every man and woman who wants to succeed must learn the process of overlapping. That is, no person who wishes to succeed should be afraid of doing just a little more than lies in the direct line of their duty. They must be interested in their work and the ways in which it impacts the lives of others.

Listen to episode 189 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Native American Wisdom | The Girl & Boy Scouts of America. Adapted from Indian Scout Talks: A Guide for Boy Scouts & Camp Fire Girls by Charles Eastman.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: To be in harmony with nature, one must be true in thought, free in action, and clean in body, mind, and spirit. This is the solid granite foundation of character.

Have you ever wondered why most great men and women were born in humble homes and passed their early youth in the open country? There a child is accustomed to see the sun rise and set every day; there the rocks and trees are personal friends; the child’s geography is born with them, for they carry a map of the region in their head.

In civilization, there are many deaf ears and blind eyes. Because the average child in the town has been deprived of close contact and intimacy with nature; what they have learned from books they soon forget, or are unable to apply. All learning is a dead language to the student who gets it second hand.

It is necessary that you should live with nature, my friends, if only that you may verify to your own satisfaction your schoolroom lessons. Further than this, you may be able to correct some error, or even to learn something that will be a real contribution to the sum of human knowledge. That is by no means impossible to a sincere observer.

Listen to episode 185 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Life is an Adventure: Dare to Live It. Adapted from The Open Door by Hugh Black.

Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: In faithless and bitter moods, people may sometimes say that there is nothing new under the sun, though we know as fact that there is nothing but the new. Dr. Johnson may say that a blade of grass is always a blade of grass whether in one country or another, but we know that there are no two blades of grass alike even in the same field.

Life speaks to us with many voices, and not one of them without significance. It speaks to us in the world without and in the world within, by the infinitely little and the infinitely great. The human comedy appeals to laughter and tears, pity and pride; and above all it calls to us to be more than mere spectators. We too are in the play, and must make our part in it as it goes along unrehearsed.

By faith the human mind makes its journey through the world for knowledge, and by faith the soul makes its journey through life. The true heart is not afraid to make either journey, and tastes the relish of living.

Generations ago artists used to discuss solemnly and tragically the great question of whether life is worth living, and wrote books and articles and poems on the subject. The only answer of any value was that of the rogue, who replied that it all depended on the liver. The jaundiced eye will see everything blurred in a haze of yellow. The value of life will only be known by living, and the adventurous nature has at least all the chance there is.

Listen to episode 182 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Art of Becoming You | The Power to Be Oneself. Adapted from The Aim of Life by Philip Stafford Moxom.

Motivational Podcast Excerpt: The thoughts that I wish to present to you now gather themselves naturally about two simple propositions: The first of these is: Every one ought consciously to have an aim in life. Whether we are conscious of it or not, everyone has a ruling tendency; but everyone should also have a controlling and persistent purpose in life.

No one has a right to live aimlessly, for no one has a right to abandon reason and self-control, and consent to be a mere waif drifting like a plaything of the winds. We are endowed with powers that make us capable of good and often great achievement. We are gifted with reason and conscience and will, in order that we may both become and do that which is noble and beneficent.

In the mythology of the Greeks, Phaethon aspired to drive the flaming chariot of the sun. The task was beyond his human powers, and his disastrous rashness resulted in his death by a bolt hurled from the hand of Zeus; but the Naiads, who buried him, wrote in his epitaph: "He could not rule his father's car of fire; Yet it was much so nobly to aspire."

The individual who drifts aimlessly through the years from youth to age does not truly live. Indeed, those whose aim is even lower than the highest, less than the greatest, is nobler than those who have no conscious purpose in life. But, besides being ignoble, a purposeless life is inefficient; to aim at nothing is to hit nothing.