"Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'" – Pearl S. Buck

"Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little." – Plutarch

"You are free to fail a thousand times, and then to get back up and achieve stunning success." - Ralph Marston

"When it becomes more difficult to suffer than to change ... you will change." - Dr. Robert Anthony

I'm ready to change...more later...

"Don't ever let somebody tell you, you can't do something...You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you, you can't do it. You want something, go get it. Period." - Will Smith as Chris Gardner

"The distance doesn't matter; only the first step is difficult" - Mme du Deffandad

"When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge." – Tuli Kupferberg

"Your life (year) becomes the thing you have decided it shall be." – Raymond Charles Barker

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." - Chinese Proverb

Welcome to my new journey

Happy New Yearrrrrrrrrrrr!

"Time invested in improving ourselves cuts down on time wasted in disapproving of others." - Anonymous

"Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." – Ella Fitzgerald

"The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose." - John McEnroe

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." - Chinese proverb

"There are no more hours in a bad day than in a good one!" - Unknown

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself." – Anna Quindlen

"The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it." - Alex Haley

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." – Andy Warhol

"Rate the task above the prize; will not the mind be raised? Fight thine own faults, not the faults of others; will not evil be mended?" – Confucius

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is." - Erich Fromm

"Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle." – James Russell Lowell

"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments, but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." – Joseph Addison

"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses." – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." - Mother Teresa

"Then give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you." - Madeline Bridges

"When I do things without any explanation, but just with spontaneity... I can be sure that I am right." - Federico Fellini

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." – Harvey Fierstein

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." - Carl Bard

"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time." – St. Francis De Sales

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." – Steve Jobs

"The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration." -Kurt Vonnegut

"Saints are sinners who kept going." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings." - William Blake

"I am what time, circumstance, history have made of me, certainly. But I am also much more than that. So are we all." - James Baldwin

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever." – Isak Denison

"Ambition and patience make a powerful team. Ambition gives you the drive and the enthusiasm to get things started, and patience sees them through. Without ambition, you would never get going. Without patience, you would give up long before the goal was reached.

When you choose to develop and activate both your ambition and your patience, you've created a relentless combination. For not only will you be effective, that effectiveness will continue to be applied over time.

With enough ambition, you can make just about anything happen, but not right away. The most effective effort is continuing effort, and that is what patience makes possible.

You never have to choose between ambition and patience. You can live with them both at the same time, and when you do, great things will happen.

Success comes to those who know when to push and when to wait. Balance ambitious effort with a deep, underlying patience, and the results you achieve will be truly amazing." – Ralph Marston

"Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!" - Derwood Fincher

"People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else." - Unknown

"Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit." - Conrad Hilton

"When solving problem, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves." - Anthony J. D'Angelo

"Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them." – Elbert Hubbard

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience." – Henry Miller

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only difference between stumbling blocks and steppingstones is the way in which we use them." - Unknown

"It is easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own." – Jessamyn West

"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." - Ovid

"Your three best doctors are faith, time, and patience." - Fortune Cookie

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying." – Friedrich Nietzsche

Determination

"What we hope to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence." - Anonymous

"The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone." – Orison Swett Marden

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus." – Alexander Graham Bell

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." – John Ruskin

"Only by acceptance of the past can you alter it." – Mary Kay Ash

"The heart, like the grape, is prone to delivering its harvest in the same moment it appears to be crushed." - Roger Houseden

"Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly." - Old Eskimo proverb

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again." - Flavia Weedn

"When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row." - Alice Paul

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anais Nin

"I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: Turn back, turn back; you'll die if you venture too far." – Erica Jong

(yes I really am up this early. in what must be a record as i've really been up since 2:30, hours before my typical insane AM wake up call...it's gonna be a long day...going forward this time shall be referred to as: ungodly AM)

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear." – Mark Twain

"To change one's life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions." – William James

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success." – Henry David Thoreau

"Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over." – F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." - Anonymous

"When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this — you haven't." – Thomas Edison

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for." - Epicurus

"If we wait for the moment when everything is ready, we shall never begin." – Ivan Turgenev

"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." – Muhammad Ali

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." – Samuel Beckett

"Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes." – Washington Irving

"Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use." - Charles M. Schultz

"It isn't hard to be good from time to time. What's tough is being good every day." - Willie Mays

"It's not what you are, but what you don't become that hurts." – Oscar Levant

"Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage." - Claude Bristol

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly." – Richard Bach

"No one should shrink to fit the idea someone imposes on them. No one!" - Meg Ryan

"We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

"Take a deep breath, count to ten, and tackle each task one step at a time." - Linda Shalaway

"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level." - Dr. Joyce Brothers

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts." - Rita Mae Brown

"It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life." - Elizabeth Kenny

"If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time." – Chogyam Trungpa

"When in doubt, tell the truth." - Mark Twain

"No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently." - Agnes DeMille

"If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters." – Abigail Van Buren

"You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

"This is your time here, to do what you will do. Your life is now." - John Mellencamp

"Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him." – Aldous Huxley

"There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way." - Christopher Morley

"If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out." - Arthur Koestler

"Don't postpone joy." - Bumper Sticker

"Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." - Malachy McCourt

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We must not give only what we have; we must give what we are." - Cardinal Mercia

"Create the kind of self you will be happy to live with all your life." - Foster C. McClellan

I'm not the average girl from your video
and I ain't built like a supermodel
I'm learning to love myself unconditionally
Because I am a queen

[snip]

When I look in the mirror and the only one there is me
my face is exactly as it's supposed to be
And I know our creator didn't make no mistakes on me
My feet, my thighs, my lips, my eyes; I'm lovin' what I see

Lyrics to Video by India.Arie (modified slightly to reflect me)

"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Discontent is the first step in progress. No one knows what is in him till he tries, and many would never try if they were not forced to." - Basil Maturin

"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours." - Wayne Dyer

Last time I posted this quote I acknowledged I too have heard it attributed to two sources, and b/c I love it so much always knew I'd repost it and credit the other source, as I'm doing today.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson

"It's always too early to quit." - Norman Vincent Peale

"What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere." – Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong

"The more you prepare, the luckier you appear." - Terry Josephson

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." – Michelangelo Buonarroti

"It takes as much stress to be a success as it does to be a failure." - Emilio James Trujillo

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing—that's why we recommend it daily." - Zig Ziglar

"The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running." - Anonymous

"Your temporary inconvenience is only for permanent improvement!" – Gospel veteran Daryl Coley

"Do not fear mistakes, there are none." – Miles Davis

"When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself." – Isak Dinesen

"An optimist is the human personification of spring." - Susan J. Bissonette

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference." – Virginia Satir

"Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals. I never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger." - Lou Holtz

"Then give to the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you." - Madeline Bridges

"Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help. - Thomas Fuller

"A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day." – Albert Schweitzer

"Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall." - Oliver Goldsmith

"We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies." – Etty Hillesum

"The best way to predict your future is to create it." - Peter Drucker

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Elbert Hubbard

"The miracle is this--the more we share, the more we have." - Leonard Nimoy

"Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny." – Don Sutton

"The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside." - Dag Hammarskjold

"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Castaneda

"Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid." – Lady Bird Johnson

"The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on." – Julia Alvarez

"Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can." - John Wesley

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood." – Marie Curie

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King Jr

"Action is the antidote to despair." – Joan Baez

"I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be." – Groucho Marx

"There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us." – Margaret Mitchell

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone." - Coco Chanel

"Come to the edge."

"We can't. We're afraid."

"Come to the edge."

"We can't. We will fall!"

"Come to the edge."

And they came.

And he pushed them.

And they flew.

Guillaume Apollinaire

"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them." – Bernard Baruch

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin

"Ruin and recovering are both from within." – Epictetus

"My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flower or weeds." - Mel Weldon

"Nobody has things just as he would like them. The thing to do is to make a success with what material I have. It is a sheer waste of time and soul-power to imagine what I would do if things were different. They are not different." - Frank Crane

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody." – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan

"I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it." - Maya Angelou

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be." - Marcel Pagnol

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." – Kurt Vonnegut

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do." – Freya Stark

I'm still watching The Biggest Loser. I feel split right down the middle about it. On the one hand I really really love to see them push themselves physically. I cheer them when the run and am jealous they have a trainer yelling in their face pushing them to their limits.

On the other hand, I cringe every. single. time. they "predict" how much weight they'll drop or their faces fall when they didn't lose what they expected or when they strategize losing by saying so and so needs to shed xxlbs or else. It's just bizarre.

This week, watching it and America's Next Top Model, I noticed a bit of irony.

"Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be" - George Sheehan

"To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest" - Anonymous

"Each person must live their life as a model for others." - Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

"Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." - Motto of the Special Olympics

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." - Thomas Edison

"Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little." – Plutarch

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes.

All the things you have collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will all expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

Our gender, skin color, ethnicity will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?

"Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well." - Jim Rohn

"If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." – Michelangelo

"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all." - Sam Ewing

"Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals." - Jim Rohn

"If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances." - Julia Sorel

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." - Mark Twain

"Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get." - Ray Kroc

"The impossible is often the untried." - Jim Goodwin

"What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" - Robert Schuller

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." - W.M. Lewis

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are." - Malcolm Forbes

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given." - Gandalf to Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." – Anatole France

"Just don't give up on trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." – Ella Fitzgerald

"If you are doing your best, you will not have time to worry about failure." - Robert Hillyer

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Nelson Mandela

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself." - Anna Quindlen

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." - George Eliot

"Courage is the human virtue that counts most — courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have." – Robert Frost

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." - Unknown

"Love, and do what you like." - Saint Augustine

"I want to sing like the birds sing not worrying about who hears or what they think." - Rumi

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" - Vincent Van Gogh

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will" – George Bernard Shaw

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable are the kind who do nothing." - William Feather

"Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure." – Jack Lemmon

"The Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does." – Warren Buffett

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen." – Frank Lloyd Wright

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still." - Chinese Proverb

"The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it." - Alex Haley

"...so often we look at a calendar of days as merely a symbol of the passage of time. We forget why we are on this earth. We forget that there is a reason for all of the pain and all of the struggle. We forget that we were put on earth to learn something. If everything were perfect in this life, we would never learn anything new. We would not be able to elevate our spirits through the events that happen to us." - Lynn V. Andrews

"If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine." - Morris West

"Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing those you hold well." - Josh Billings

"Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength." - Sigmund Freud

"All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail." – Dorothea Brande

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." - Mohandas Gandhi

"I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings." - Elie Wiesel

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows." - Michael Landon

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience." – Victoria Holt

"If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn." - Bernie Siegel

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out." – James Bryant Conant

"The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed." - Nelson Boswell

"People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning." – Lao-Tzu

"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads." - Erica Jong

"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." – John Updike

"Be yourself. No one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong." - James Leo Herlihy

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang excep

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up." – Anne Lamott

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more." – Louis L'Amour

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." - Hannah More

"Worry is a misuse of the imagination." - Dan Zadra

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity." – Amelia Earhart

"There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains." - Richard Nelson

"If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fear." - Glenn Clark

"A bend in the road is not the end of the road...unless you fail to make the turn." - Unknown

"To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it." - Confucius

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." - William Saroyan

"To fight fear, act. To increase fear—wait, put off, postpone." - David J. Schwartz

"The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free." - Oprah Winfrey

"As difficult as it seems, you can be sure of this: At the core of the heart, you have the power to move beyond the old issues that are still hindering your freedom. The hardest things—the ones that push you up against your limits—are the very things you need to address to make a quantum leap into a fresh inner and outer life." - Doc Childre and Howard Martin

"Take it slowly. The deepest resentments are wrapped up in a lot of hurt and pain. We think we're protecting ourselves by not forgiving. Acknowledge that and go easy on yourself. Forgiveness means that you've decided not to let it keep festering inside even if it only comes up once in awhile. Forgiveness is a powerful yet challenging tool that will support and honor you, even in the most extreme circumstances." Doc Childre and Howard Martin

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free." - Catherine Ponder

"We probably wouldn't worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do." - Olin Miller

"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan." – Eleanor Roosevelt

"Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go." - Sylvia Robinson

"In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest!" -Henry Miller

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I've lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"You miss 100 percent of all the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Philo

"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." - Samuel Johnson

"Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day." - Will Durant

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." - Carl Bard

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." – Carl Jung

"There are only 2 choices; make progress or make excuses." - Ellen Mikesell

"Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it." - Arthur Ashe

"Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar." – Erica Jong

"It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life." - Elizabeth Kenny

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself instead of a second-rate version of someone else." - Judy Garland

"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and of true progress." - Nicholas Murray Butler

"Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me." - Carol Burnett

"When you follow your bliss, doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else." - Joseph Campbell

"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish." - John Quincy Adams

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are." - E. E. Cummings

"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes." - Henry J. Kaiser

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." - Epictetus

"Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark." - George Iles

"You've got to say, I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it. It's called perseverance." - Lee Iacocca

"Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality." - Ralph Marston

"You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is." - Ellen Degeneres

"There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely." - Ugo Betti

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Albert Schweitzer

"People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you'll know exactly what to do." - Michelle Ventor

"We cannot hold a torch to light another person's path without brightening our own." - Ben Sweetland

This time of the day is starting to become my favorite time. It used to be anytime from 11pm to 2am was me time. I like the quiet & knowing when I walk down the hall @ this insane hour, most of my neighbors are still asleep. I like that it's just me in the gym. As I was bent over lacing up my sneakers, in the dim light I looked @ my legs. In the distance I heard a train toot it's horn. I felt like I was in a Nike commercial.

I don't know if that mind game did the trick, but I had a GREAT run this morning. I normally don't talk much about the running b/c to date it's all be laborious, I just trudge thru it. But today, as I was toggling the treadmill screen to the ♥ rate monitor settings, I didn't have that pre-run dread. Once I started, I felt like I floated the entire time, I couldn't believe 30 mins had passed. I actually clapped my hands @ the 29 min mark.

I think the fake iPod knows it's days are numbered. All this week the remote didn't work, this morning it did. I flipped to MTV and caught my fave song (Mr. Brightside) and pretended I had headphones on. Yes still. I looked str8 ahead and ran like I had music in my ears. I ran for the hunger I've been feeling right before bed and as soon as I wake up. I ran for the strength to stick to the food challenge. I ran for all the times in the past when I told myself I couldn't.

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." - Vincent Van Gogh

Hot damn, I'm a runner.

"Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all." - Buddha

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't...you are probably right." - Henry Ford

"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." - Michael Jordan

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

"I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we're not wise enough to see it." - Oprah Winfrey

"I have tried and I cannot find, either in Scripture or in history, a strong-willed individual whom God used greatly until He allowed them to be hurt deeply." - Charles Swindoll

"Don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." - General George S. Patton

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor." - Alexis Carrel

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Your three best doctors are faith, time, and patience." - Fortune Cookie

"There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them." - Andre Gide

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It is what you do in 2005, that determines what you will be in 2006."

"Make the decision, then do something - no matter how small - toward accomplishing what you want."

"If you're going to be obsessive about something, why not be obsessive about your fitness level?"

"I don't want to be perfect, I just want to be a little better each day. And it's working."

"Change the mind, and the body will change itself."

"If you want what you do not have, you must do what you have not done."

Unknown Authors

"You get whatever you settle for."

"I wake up every day with the realization that this is it, that there's only one shot at this life and I can either enjoy the ride and live it to its fullest and to my highest potential or I can stay the way I am."

"Your past does not equal, nor does it dictate, your future."

"One definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result."

"The quality of your fuel determines the quality of your body."

"We fail because we don't strike the iron while it's hot. We don't take immediate action toward achieving what we want. We decide to wait until tomorrow, or next week, or even next month."

Unknown Authors

"Envy can be a positive motivator. Let it inspire you to work harder for what you want." - Robert Bringle

"Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was." - Richard L Evans

"Whatever you are, be a good one." - Abraham Lincoln

"The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you." - Mary Tyler Moore

"There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win." - Elie Wiesel

"Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins." - Sioux Indian prayer

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"Embrace your uniqueness. Time is much too short to be living someone else's life." - Kobi Yamada

"The first step towards the solution of any problem is optimism." - John Baines

"If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten." - Anonymous

"Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible." - William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

"There is a transcendent power in example. We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly." - Anne Sophie Swetchine

"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world." - William Cobbett

"It's never the end of the world. It's already tomorrow in Australia." - Charles M. Schultz

"Honor your mother at heart, in speech, and by action." - Elijah b. Raphael

"Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." - Aldous Huxley

"Always aim for achievement, and forget about success." - Helen Hayes

"Man improves himself as he follows his path; if he stands still, waiting to improve before he makes a decision, he'll never move." - Paulo Coelho

"You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be." - David Viscott

"The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." - Lena Horne

"All the masterpieces of art contain both light and shadow. A happy life is not one filled with only sunshine, but one which uses both light and shadow to produce beauty." - Billy Graham

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." - Henri Bergson

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - Robert Collier

"Don't regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many." - Unknown

"You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - Christopher Robin to Pooh

"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow'." - Anonymous

"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them." - Ann Landers

"It isn't hard to be good from time to time? What's tough is being good every day." - Willie Mays

"Today is a new day, you will get out of it just what you put into it." - Mary Pickford

"Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?" - Dale Carnegie

"In my life, I've learned that at precisely those times when life seems to get worse that you may actually be getting ready to make a leap. When you feel like you're getting nowhere - stagnating, even slipping backward - what you're actually doing is backing up to get a running start." - Dan Milman

"Have patience with all things, but first of all with yourself." - St. Francis de Sales

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." - Carl Rogers

"Do, or do not. There is no try." - Yoda

"My life tomorrow will be the result of my attitudes and the choices I make today."

"I can do this...I know I can. It's just going to take time & patience."

"Rather than aiming for being perfect, just aim to be little bit better today than you were yesterday."

Unknown Authors

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle." - Erin Majors

"If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." - Mary Pickford

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better." - Sydney J. Harris

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." - Vernon Law

"You must once and for all give up being worried about success and failures. Don't let that concern you. It's your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures." - Anton Chekov

"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use." - Earl Nightingale

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." - Lou Holtz

"Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention." - Greg Anderson

"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change." - Euripides

It's one of those weeks. *sigh* I really need these two quotes today.

"I'm looking forward to looking back on all this." - Sandra Knell

"Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength." - Charles Spurgeon

"Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer." - Norwegian proverb

"Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal." - Pamela Vault Starr

"It doesn't matter what other people think about you, all that matters is what you think about yourself." - Jesse Katsopolis

"You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

"If you can't be a good example, then you?ll just have to be a horrible warning." - Catherine Aird

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." - Beverly Sills

"Enthusiasm finds the opportunities, and energy makes the most of them." - Henry S. Haskins

"In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high." - Henry David Thoreau

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong

"The greater part of our happiness depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances." - Martha Washington

"You have failed only when you quit trying. Until then, you're still in the act of progression. So, never quit trying and you'll never be a failure." - Tommy Kelley

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." ? Ursula K. LeGuin

"It's so important to believe in yourself. Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief keeps you searching for the answers, and then pretty soon you get it." - Wally "Famous" Amos

"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use." - Earl Nightingale

"A year from now, you may wish you had started today." - Karen Lamb

"Discipline is remembering what you want." - David Campbell

"Change your thoughts, and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

"The odds of hitting a target go up dramatically when you aim at it." - Mal Pancoast

"I am always doing things I can't do; that's how I get to do them." - Pablo Picasso

"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." - Frank Outlaw

"Tough times never last, tough people do." - Robert Schuller

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop" - Confucius.

"Are you humbly grateful? Or grumbly hateful?" - Pastor Roland Smith

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Tomorrow hopes that we have learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne

"There's an important difference between giving up and letting go." - Jessica Hatchigan

"Fall seven times, stand up eight." - Japanese proverb

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." - Beverly Sills

"Self-discipline is when your conscience tells you to do something and you don't talk back." - W.K. Hope

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure ? try to please everybody." - Herbert Bayard Swope

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." - Gen. Norman Schwarzkoff

"One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." - Sigmund Freud

"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it." - Lee Holz

"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be absolutely determined to enjoy what you do." - Gerry Sikorski

"Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway." - Harper Lee

"The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - William Faulkner

"Whatever you do or dream you can do - begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." - Johann Goethe

"The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." - Dolly Parton

"Two little words that can make the difference: START NOW." - Mary C. Crowley

"Good habits are as easy to form as bad ones." - Tim McCarver

"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - Saint Francis

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

"The odds of hitting a target go up dramatically when you aim at it." - Mal Pancoast

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. " - Vince Lombardi

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan