saturn

Three people were laying bricks. A passerby asked them what they were doing. The first one replied, "Don't you see I am making a living?" The second one said, "Don't you see I am laying bricks and making a wall?" The third one said, "I am building a beautiful monument." Here were three people doing the same thing who had totally different perspectives on what they were doing. They had three very different attitudes about their work. And would their attitude affect their performance? The answer is clearly yes. Excellence comes when the performer takes pride in doing his best. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it, regardless of what the job is, whether washing cars, sweeping the floor or painting a house. Most people forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well it was done. If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare w...

"There was a time when I was just a dumb lump of red clay. Then one day my master came. He took me, brought me home, rolled and pounded me on a wooden table. Again and again, he poked his fingers into me until finally I yelled out: 'Don't do that! Leave me alone!' But he only smiled and gently said: "Not yet!" Then, whoommmm! I was placed on a spinning wheel and suddenly spun around and around and around until I lost all my sense of direction: 'Stop it; don't you see that I'm getting sick? Quickly, take me from the spinning wheel!' But the master only nodded in understanding and quietly said: "Not yet!" Then he placed me carefully into an oven. I never felt such heat. I yelled and knocked and pounded at the door: 'It is hotter than hell - I'm burning to ashes. Please get me out of here before it is too late.' I could only read his lips as he shook his head from side to side and silently pronounced, "Not yet!...

Essentially, “seek first to understand” implies that you become more interested in understanding others and less in having other people understand you. It means mastering the idea that if you want quality, fulfilling communication that is nourishing to you and others; understanding others must come first. When you understand where people are coming from, what they are trying to say, what’s important to them, and so forth, being understood flows naturally; it falls into place with virtually no effort. When you reverse this process, however (which is what most of us do most of the time), you are putting the cart before the horse. When you try to be understood before you understand, the effort you exert will be felt by you and the person or people you are trying to reach. Communication will break down, and you may end up with a battle of two egos. Seeking first to understand isn’t about who’s right or wrong. It is a philosophy of effective communication. When you practice this metho...

Compassion is a sympathetic feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love for that person. Compassion is the recognition that other people’s problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own---often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude. Compassion is something you can develop with practice. It involves two things: intention and action. Intention simply means you remember to open your heart to others; you expand what and who matters, from yourself to other people. Action is simply the “what you do about it.” Compassion develops your sense of gratitude by taking your attention off all the little things that most of us have learned to take too seriously.

When you interrupt someone, or finish his or her sentence, you have to keep track not only of your own thoughts but of those of the person you are interrupting as well. This tendency (which, by the way, is extremely common in busy people), encourages both parties to speed up their speech and their thinking. This, in turn, makes both people nervous, irritable, and annoyed. It is also the cause of many arguments, because if there’s one thing almost everyone resents, it’s someone who doesn’t listen to what they are saying. Once you begin noticing yourself interrupting other, you’ll see that this tendency is nothing more than an innocent habit that has become invisible to you. This is good news because it means that all you really have to do is to begin catching yourself when you forget. Remind yourself (before a conversation begins, if possible) to be patient and wait. Tell yourself to allow the other person to finish speaking before you take your turn. You’ll notice, right away, ho...

Many people spend a great deal of energy arguing for their own limitations; “I can’t do that,” “I can’t help it, I’ve always been that way,” and thousands of other negative and self-defeating statements. Our minds are powerful instruments. When we decide that something is true or beyond our reach, it’s very difficult to pierce through this self-created hurdle. Suppose, for example, you tell yourself, “I can’t write,” You’ll look for examples to prove your position. You’ll remember your poor essays in high school, or recall how awkward you felt the last time you sat down to write a letter. You’ll fill your head with limitations that will frighten you from trying. In order to become a writer or anything else, the first step is to silence your greatest critic --- YOU!

It is important to know that there is a relationship between your thinking and the way you feel. It’s important to realize that you are constantly thinking. Don’t be fooled into believing that you are already aware of this fact! Think, for a moment, about your breathing. Until this moment, when you are reading this sentence, you had certainly lost sight of the fact that you were doing it. The truth is, unless you are out of breath, you simply forget that it’s occurring. Thinking works in the same way. Because you’re always doing it, it’s easy to forget that it’s happening, and it becomes invisible to you. Unlike breathing, however, forgetting that you are thinking can cause some serious problems in your life, such as unhappiness, anger, inner conflicts, and stress. The reason this is true is that your thinking will always come back to you as a feeling. Try getting angry without first having angry thoughts! Okay, now try feeling stressed out without first having stressful thoughts –...