Inspirational Living: Life Lessons for Success, Happiness, Motivation, Spiritual Growth, Self-Help & Positive Thinking

Listen to episode 181 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Daily Success Habits: Be Proactive, Decisive & Tactful. Adapted from Beginning Right (How to Succeed) by Nathaniel C. Fowler. Motivational Podcast Excerpt: LIFE has three seasons: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What you did yesterday overlaps into today, and what you do today is carried over into tomorrow. Which is the most important of the three? No single one of them, because any one by itself is incomplete. If you did your duty yesterday, the work of today becomes easier to accomplish. If you attend to the work of today, tomorrow will be open to you and its duties will not be so difficult to perform. While each day has its place — yesterday, today, and tomorrow — inattention to any one of those days will materially affect the life and action of the remaining two. You cannot recover yesterday. It has passed out of your life forever. If it was a day of mistakes, they must be corrected today or tomorrow. The importance of today is not vested wholly in today. It is in tomorrow as well. Today is yours. Tomorrow may be. Unless you anticipate the morrow today, tomorrow you will not have tomorrow well in hand. Individuals of great accomplishment do not consider any one day as all-important. They do today's work not wholly because it is of today, but because it will affect tomorrow. Regret yesterday if you will. Be sorry for your backsliding. You may have lost a day. If you have, you must make it up today and tomorrow. Related Motivational Podcasts: The Secret of Life & My Success The Key to Success & Motivation

Listen to episode 180 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Duty of the Scholar | Baccalaureate Sermons. Adapted from The College and The Higher Life by Elmer Hewitt Capen. Inpsirational Podcast Excerpt: The question, “What is the significance of higher education and what is the proper function of the educated individual?” ever recurs. To be sure, the educational problem has been in a sense worked out, and we have come to take for granted the facilities and instruments of higher learning. But the financial outlay for these is enormous, and is increasing year by year, and the procession of college graduates is large, and growing in volume every day. We thus often hear the queries, "Why?" and, "To what end?" To answer such question will be the aim of today’s talk. Nor does it seem to me that the task is a difficult one. The answer certainly is given in the words of one of Jesus’s immortal parables: "Behold the sower went forth to sow." It is not the scholar's business to reap great rewards and to gather in rich harvests. Your place is at the beginnings of things. You lay the foundations. You set up principles. You give out without any thought of what is to come back to you. As a teacher you must impart; as a leader you must go before; as an inspirer, you must have the power of touching other lives and filling them with new impulses; and in every possible way you must prepare the world for harvests that can only be gathered in some far-off future when your very name shall have passed from human remembrance. Related Education Podcasts: College vs. The School of Life How to Get a Real Education

Listen to episode 179 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Your Hidden Talents | Best Commencement Addresses/Speeches. Adapted from The College and The Higher Life by Elmer Hewitt Capen. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Every individual should look within and around. You should make an inventory of what you have, and consider how the things in your possession are related to the things you would wish to acquire — how being and doing are parts of the same abiding reality and are to be present in every achievement. Thus, and thus only, can you properly interpret the everlasting commands of your soul. Let me remind you that your talent, your endowment of intellect and moral perception, is a gift. This is what you brought with you into the world. It affords no ground for vanity, nor even of self-congratulation. You have no more right to pride yourself upon it than people have to pride themselves upon inherited wealth. It should rather make you humble; though of course it may invite to gratitude. It may make you thankful that you are thus gifted and set apart. But even though you may be conscious of unusual power and means of accomplishment, it affords no reason for elation. It is only so much to start with. Related Motivational Podcasts: The Aim of Life The Secret of Life & My Success

Listen to episode 178 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Value of Being Thrifty (Money & Generosity). Edited and adapted from “On the Threshold” by Theodore Thornton Munger. Success Podcast Excerpt: There was a time when Americans were considered a thrifty people. However, that time has long since passed — which seems entirely natural, as thrift is more apt to be a phase than a characteristic of the life of a nation — a habit more than a principle. Thrift pertains to details. It is both our glory and our fault that today we are impatient of details. Our courage prompts to risks; our large-mindedness invites to great undertakings — both somewhat adverse to thrift, because great undertakings are for the few, while thrift is for all. Large enterprises make the few rich, but the majority prosper only through the carefulness and detail of thrift. I begin by insisting on the importance of having money. Speculate and preach about it as we will, the main factor in civilized society is money. As the universe of planets needs some common force like gravitation to hold them to their place, so society requires some dominating passion or purpose to hold its members in mutual alliance. Money supplies this end. Without some such general moving force, society would be chaotic; people could not work together, could achieve no common results, could have no common standards of virtue and achievement. The famous English novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton once said: "Never treat money affairs with levity; money is character." And indeed character for the most part is determined by one's relationship to money. Find out how one gets, saves, spends, gives, lends, borrows, and bequeaths money, and you have the character of the person in full outline. "If one does all these wisely," said Henry Taylor, "it would almost argue a perfect individual." Related Motivational Podcasts: The Secret of Financial Success How to Be Rich Without Money

Listen to episode 177 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Being a Gentleman (The Art of Manhood & Manliness). Edited and adapted from “On the Threshold” by Theodore Thornton Munger. Motivational Podcast Excerpt: Every man should desire above all else to be regarded as a gentleman. There once was a time when the greatest offense you could levy on man was to call him not a gentleman. But today we struggle to even understand what the term gentleman means. So today we will search it with definitions. The word gentleman undoubtedly comes from the Latin gens, meaning tribe or family — hence all the one-sided and incomplete notions that a gentleman is a man of family. It is a good thing to born into a loving family, with inherited tastes and traditions; but birth does not make the gentleman. The writer Julius Hare famously said that a gentleman should be gentle in everything; at least in everything that depends upon himself — in carriage, temper, construction, aims, desires. He ought, there- fore, to be mild, calm, quiet, temperate; not hasty in judgment, not exorbitant in ambition, not overbearing, not proud, not rapacious, not oppressive. Other classic writers describe the gentleman as possessing a character that is distinguished by strict honor, self-possession, forbearance, generous as well as refined feelings, and polished deportment — a character to which all meanness, explosive irritability, and peevish fretfulness are alien; to which, consequently, a generous candor, truthfulness, dignity, and self-respect have become natural. The gentleman is never unduly familiar; takes no liberties; is cautious of questions; is neither artificial nor affected; bears himself tenderly towards the weak and unprotected; is not arrogant; cannot be supercilious; can be self-denying without struggle; is not vain of his advantages; habitually subordinates his lower to his higher self; is (in his best condition) electric with truth, buoyant with veracity. Related Motivational Podcasts: How to Be a Gentleman & Lady The Power of Courtesy

Listen to episode 176 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Building Character & The Influence of Friendships. Edited and adapted from “On the Threshold” by Theodore Thornton Munger. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: There are many turning-points when the question of success or failure is decided again and again. Life is a campaign, in which a series of fortresses are to be taken; all previous victories and advances may be thrown away by failure in the next. Nearly the last of these is companionship; if one wins the victory here, the reward of a prosperous life of character is within his reach. At the risk of logically inverting my subject, I will speak first of friendship; and I must beg your patience while I put a foundation under my suggestions. If there were but one general truth that I could lodge in the mind of anyone or all men and women, it would be this: that true life consists in the fulfillment of relations. We are born into relations; we never get out of them; all duty consists in meeting them. The family, the community, the humanity at large — these are the sources of our primary and abiding duties, as well as of our happiness — the sum-total of ethics and spirituality. It is not enough to love only our own family. Love is a great and wide passion, demanding various food and broad fields to range in. When one is only “all about family" they may have a sound nature, but it will not be a large or generous one; and they will shrink rather than expand with years, and sink into the inevitable sadness that attends old age. Related Inspirational Podcasts: How to Choose Your Friends Wisely The Limits of Friendship

Listen to episode 175 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The 4 Pillars & Agreements of a Purpose Driven Life. Edited and adapted from “On the Threshold” by Theodore Thornton Munger. Motivational Podcast Excerpt: Individuals may be divided in many ways, but there is no clearer cut division than between those who have a purpose and those who are without one. It is the character of the purpose that at last determines the character of the person — for a purpose may be good or bad, high or low. It is the strength and definiteness of the purpose that determines the measure of success. It would be absurd for me to assure you that if you aim and strive with sufficient energy to become a great statesperson, or the head of a corporation, or a famous poet or artist, or any other specific high end, you will certainly reach it. For though there are certain rich prizes that any person may win who will pay the price, there are others that are reserved for the few who are peculiarly fortunate or have peculiar claims. The Providence which (blindly to us) endows and strangely leads, apportions the great honors of life; but Providence has nothing good nor high in store for the one who does not resolutely aim at something high and good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success. Nothing will take its place: Talent will not — nothing is more common than unsuccessful men and women of talent. Genius will not — unrewarded genius is a proverb. The chance of events, the push of circumstances, will not. The natural unfolding of faculties will not. Education will not; the country is full of unsuccessful educated people; indeed, it is a problem of society what to do with the young men and women it is turning out of its colleges and professional schools. There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose. Purpose underlies character, culture, position — attainment of whatever sort. Related Motivational Podcasts: Living a Purpose Driven Life Personal Mission Statements

Listen to episode 174 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Happiness: The Advantage of Marriage & A Happy Home. Edited and Adapted from Marriage: a Lifelong Honeymoon by Bernarr Macfadden. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Without a home, there can be no true happiness for a man or a woman. No matter how completely one’s ambitions may have been satisfied, we are still an outcast, a vagrant, until we have a home of our own. We cannot know or feel the real, exalted, satisfying happiness that is supposed to come to a human being at some time of their life until independent home conditions are brought into existence. All boys and girls, as they approach maturity, yearn first of all for happy homes of their own. They may change after maturity; unhealthy environments may pervert their true nature, but if left to the dictates of their inner selves, they will grow up yearning more and more for this first essential element of life’s happiness. The home is the foundation of all that is good, true, and exalted. It is the foundation of civilization; if it falls and disappears from society, with it must go all that is best in human life. Within the home, you will find the culmination of all your social, physical and spiritual yearnings. It is the home that brings out all that is best and true and noble in human character. True happiness, therefore, cannot be found outside the realm of home life. It encircles the true home like a halo; it cannot be found anywhere else. I admit that home and happiness rarely go together in the present unhealthy state of civilization. But this is not the fault of the home. It is the fault of those who try ineffectually to make the home. Related Podcasts: The Key to Freedom & Happiness The Secret of Happiness

Listen to episode 173 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Living Your Golden Age (The Youthful Edge). Edited and Adapted from Turn Back the Years by Harry J. Gardener. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: In ancient history, the time when Pericles lived was called The Golden Age. But in in today’s talk, I am referring to something far different. I am applying the term Golden Age to that state in life (which can be any age), where you have reached complete control of your personality. In order to remain young, it is essential that you be young. And by that I mean, you must be adaptable. You should be able to pick up and dash off to a concert or party at a moment's notice, not hem and haw about how you're going to arrive late or that you're really too tired to go, or what you'll wear. You should have the capability to go away for a weekend the moment you get a sudden, unexpected invitation, or you should be able to adapt yourself immediately in event of a surprise meeting with some old friend. Spontaneity is one of the prime points in being youthful. The minute you settle permanently into the same easy chair to watch the same TV show, wearing the same pajamas and pair of slippers, the same lamp over your shoulder, from that moment on you are doomed to old age just as surely as if all your friends had uttered the sentence themselves and as if Time were your executioner. So be alive, be joyful, and if you can't be happy, at least never show your unhappiness, or wear it like a bleeding heart on your sleeve. People don't want to hear your troubles any more than you want to hear theirs. Change your events in your social calendar from week to week. Try to see lots of different people, and never go the same places with the same faces week after week if you can possibly avoid it. Related Inspirational Podcasts: The Benefits of Growing Older How to Look Younger

Listen to episode 172 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Emotional Intelligence & Interpretive Dance. Edited and adapted from How to Develop Your Personality by Clare Tree Major. Self-Development Podcast Excerpt: HAVE we forgotten how to feel? Life today is so external that it almost seems as though we have. However, our personal ideal will not be realized unless every part of our nature is developed, the emotional as well as the physical and mental. We must know how to feel, to feel keenly, but also to control our feelings. Are you looking at a beautiful painting? Don't merely catalogue it in your mind. Sit down before it and let it sink into your soul. See the sunset as a real thing, not as exquisite painted coloring. Go up on the hill-top with the artist. Sit with them there until the vision they saw of the opening of the heavens thrills your own feeling into responsiveness. There are some feelings that we can neither put into word nor into action, and they are sometimes the very deepest, most sacred feelings of which the soul is capable. There are unconscious depths from which our more familiar and external characteristics spring. Did you ever stand alone on the seashore and let the song of the mighty ocean fill your soul with its transcendent melody? You look out to the horizon across the roaring, foaming billows, and you know that far, far beyond your vision still rolls and tosses this great mass of living water. And your soul is thrilled with a sense of the insignificance of the trivialities of life, and some glimpse of the destiny of humanity comes to you, so that you go home conscious of a strange uplift that helps you to see above and beyond the petty annoyance of the daily grind, that helps to keep you in that perfect poise which is the essence of individuality. It is in moments like these, when all that is external is forgotten, when the inner self is bathed in the glory of its natural life, that we gain the perspective that is needed if we are to make of ourselves all we are capable of becoming. Related Self-Development Podcasts: The Inward Life How to Be Self-Confident

Listen to episode 171 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Soul Growth & Spiritual Evolution (Theosophy). Edited and adapted from Self-Development & The Way to Power by L.W. Rogers. Spirituality Podcast Excerpt: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast. I’d like to start today with some special news. Starting this Sunday, June 25th, we will be launching a new podcast exclusively for our patrons at Patreon.com. The show is called “Our Sunday Talks” and it will deal with topics related to spirituality from both Eastern and Western perspectives. While we do touch occasionally on the spiritual on the Inspirational Living podcast, the Our Sunday Talks series will focus on this aspect of life, including discussions on the soul, mystical experiences, enlightenment, love, God, prayer, and much more. This weekly podcast will be released every Sunday and be available exclusively to those listeners who are sponsoring the Inspirational Living podcast at the $3 a month level or higher. If you are currently sponsoring our podcast at the dollar a month level, you can gain access to the new series by upgrading your donation to the $3 a month level. If you haven’t become a patron of our podcast yet, and would like to gain access to the upcoming Our Sunday Talks series, you can do so today by going to: LivingHour.org/patron. I look forward to seeing you among our Patreon community. Now, on to today’s reading, which was edited and adapted from Self-Development and The Way to Power by L.W. Rogers, published in 1916..... It is the natural right of every human being to be happy — to escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer, and it is only because of our ignorance that we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy.

Listen to episode 170 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Laugh and Live: Douglas Fairbanks' Healthy Lifestyle. Edited and adapted from the work of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Self-Help Podcast Excerpt: We must also remember that out of energy and enthusiasm comes something else that must not be neglected ... in fact it must be cultivated and guarded from the very beginning . . . laughter. The mere possession of energy and enthusiasm makes us feel like laughing. We want to leap and jump and dance and sing. If we feel like doing so, don't let us be afraid to do it. Get out in the air and run like a child. Jump ditches, vault fences, swing the arms! Never fail to get next to nature when responsive to the call. Indeed, we may woo this call from within ourselves until it comes to be second nature. When we rise in the morning, let us be determined that we will start the day with a hearty laugh. Laugh because you are alive, laugh with everything. Let yourself go. That is the secret — the ability to let one's self go! If you follow this religiously you will be surprised how successful the day will be. Everything gives way before it. There is one thing in this good old world that is positively sure — happiness is for all who strive to be happy — and those who laugh are happy. Everybody is eligible — you — me— the other guys and gals. Happiness is fundamentally a state of mind — not a state of body. And mind controls. Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable "banana peel" of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene — if we will but so much as smile. It's all a state of mind, I tell you — and I'm sure of what I say. That's why I have taken up my proverbial fountain pen. Do you ever laugh? I mean do you ever laugh right out loud — spontaneously — joyfully. Well, if you don't, you should. Start off the morning with a laugh and you needn't worry about the rest of the day. Related Self-Help Podcasts: Mental & Physical Fitness How to Improve Your Personality

Listen to episode 169 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Art of Self-Mastery (Success via Self-Discipline). Edited and adapted from The Kingship of Self-Control by William George Jordan. Motivational Podcast Excerpt: Every person has two creators — their God and themselves. Our first creator furnishes us with the raw material of our lives and the laws in conformity with which we can make that life what we will. The second creator — ourselves — has marvelous powers we rarely realize. It is what we make of ourselves that counts. When someone fails in life, they often will say, “I am as God made me.” But when they succeed, they proudly proclaim themselves “self-made”. We are placed into this world not as a finality, but as a possibility. Our greatest enemy is: ourselves. In our weakness, we are a creature of circumstances; in our strength, we are the creator of circumstances. Whether you be victim or victor depends largely on you. No one is truly great merely for what they, but ever for what they may become. Until you are truly filled with the knowledge of the majesty of your own possibility, you are merely groping through the years. To see our lives as we might make it, we must go up alone into the mountains of spiritual thought, as Jesus went alone into the Garden, leaving the world to get strength to live in the world. We must there breathe the fresh, pure air of recognition of our divine importance as an individual. And then with mind purified and tingling with new strength, we must approach the problems of our daily lives. Related Motivational Podcasts: The Art of Self-Control How to Be Self-Confident

Listen to episode 168 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Ben Franklin’s Wisdom. Edited and adapted from Poor Richard’s Almanack, a yearly publication produced by Benjamin Franklin from 1732 to 1758. Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: If you could have Half your Wishes, you would double your Troubles. Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One. Tomorrow, every fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes. A Fool is one who cannot conceal their Wisdom. Think of three things: whence you came, where you are going, and to whom you must account. Pride dines on Vanity, sips on Contempt. The Proud hate Pride – in others, that is. Well done is better than well said. Necessity never made a good bargain. The Sun never repents of the good it does, nor does it ever demand compensation. Fear to do ill, and you need fear nothing else. Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices. Glass, China, and a Reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended. Fish & House Guests stink in 3 days. Wink at small faults; remember that you have great ones. Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. Related Inspirational Podcasts: Confucius Wisdom: Best Quotes & Sayings The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Listen to episode 167 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Positive Success Principles: Integrity, Laughter & Love. Edited and adapted from How Success is Won by Bernarr Macfadden. Motivational Podcast Excerpt: My message today is sent forth with the hope that it will enthuse you who are struggling at the bottom of the ladder of life, and that it may help you to understand that the greatest rewards are easily within reach of those who are willing to struggle on persistently, with a definite and unswerving aim continuously in view. In the strongest terms, I want to emphasize the importance of interest in your work. I maintain that without it success was never achieved by anyone. The one straight road to success is to learn to love your business. You can do best that which you love best. If you have started in a business which you cannot learn to love, then you should go into some other business. You will never succeed in our age of competition unless you can find real pleasure in your work. The mere making of money is not a sufficient incentive. You must find your highest enjoyment in the task itself. No person who works along that line can fade. That is my judgment based on my own experience and observation. Determination, persistence, attention to detail, in fact nearly every necessary characteristic in accomplishing results in any sphere of life, depends upon love for your work. Related Motivational Podcasts: Do Your Best & Love Much The Self Made Man & Woman