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

Listen to episode 31 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Power of Truth (The Simple Truth About Life). Edited and adapted from The Power of Truth by William George Jordan. Podcast Excerpt: For the individual, there is no such thing as theoretical truth. A great truth that is not absorbed by our whole mind and life, and has not become an inseparable part of our living, is not a real truth to us. If we know the truth and do not live it, our life is — a lie. In speech, the person who makes Truth their watchword is careful in their words. They seek to be accurate, neither understating nor over-coloring. They never state as a fact that of which they are not sure. What they say thus has the ring of sincerity, the hall- mark of pure gold. If they praise you, you accept their statement without question or hesitation. Their promise counts for something, you accept it as being as good as their bond; you know that no matter how much it may cost them to verify and fulfill their word by deeds, they will do it.

Listen to episode 30 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Be Calm, Cool & Collected. Adapted from a Harvard lecture by Dr. George Lincoln Walton. Podcast Excerpt: We live in an age where discretion is the better part of valor. The person who exercises this discretion is less at risk for harm, but does not see so much of life as the more forceful individual. It is true that the hypochondriac is prone to live longer, but what a life! The time has past when the young child can say, "And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Now the prayer is more like this: "Don't even mention death to me or I shall lie awake all night!" Today’s parents are raising children in ways that bring into prominence the little worries; that cause the tempest in the teapot; that bring about the worship of the intangible, and the magnification of the unessential. If we had lived in another age, we might have dreamt of the eternal happiness of saving our neck, but in this one we fret because someone said something that offended us....

Listen to episode 29 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Living a Purpose Driven Life. Edited and Adapted from the book The Architects of Fate by Orison Swett Marden. Podcast Excerpt: Those who push themselves to the front of the world’s stage are not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. They are the men and women who choose a specialty and master it completely. A one-talent individual who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than the person with 10 talents, who scatters their energy and never knows exactly what to do. A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life. It is the individual of intense purpose, directed toward a single idea, who turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt them, who cuts their way through obstacles and forges to the front. Concentration is the keynote of every success story...

Listen to episode 28 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Kahlil Gibran on Love & Marriage (Soul Mates). Edited and adapted from Gibran’s book The Prophet. Podcast Excerpt: If love leads you to marriage, remember this: You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. You shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone---just as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music.....

Listen to episode 27 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Build Better Life Habits (Getting Unstuck). Adapted from book The Mind & Its Education by George Herbert Betts. Podcast Excerpt: Building better habits will require something of heroism on our part. For to follow the well-beaten path of custom is easy and pleasant, while to break out of the rut of habit and start a new line of action is difficult and disturbing. Most people prefer to keep doing things as they always have done them, to continue reading and thinking and believing as they have long been in the habit of doing, not so much because they feel that their way is best, but because it is easier than to change. Hence the great mass of us settle down on the plane of mediocrity, and become "old fogies." We learn to do things passably well, cease to think about improving our ways of doing them, and fall into a rut. Only the few go on. They make use of habits as the rest do, but they also continue to modify them at critical points of action, and so make their habits an ally instead of accepting them as a tyrant.

Listen to episode 26 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Civil Disobedience & Citizenship. Edited and adapted from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Podcast Excerpt: Today’s podcast has been adapted from Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay on Civil Disobedience, produced in celebration of Martin Luther King Day. Dr. King was a great admirer of Thoreau’s essay, describing it as an eloquent argument for why we are obligated to non-violently disobey laws we believe are unjust.... How does it become a person to behave toward this American government we have today? I answer, that you cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the government of endless war and mass imprisonment, who serves the interests of corporations, banksters, and Wall Street over those of individual citizens and small business owners... There are millions who are (in their opinion) opposed to this eternal war on terror, this abrogation of our rights, this mass incarceration of their fellow citizens, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves good citizens, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and thus do nothing.....

Listen to episode 25 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Succeed in Anything. Edited and adapted from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Podcast Excerpt: Persistence is an essential factor of success in life. And the basis of persistence is the POWER OF WILL. Will-power and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. People who achieve great success are sometimes known as ruthless. Often they are misunderstood. What they have is will-power, which they mix with persistence, to insure the attainment of their objectives. Most people are ready to throw their aims and purposes overboard, and give up at the first sign of opposition or misfortune. Only a few carry on despite all opposition, until they attain their goal: the Steve Jobses, the Andrew Carnegies, the Mahatma Gandhis, the Thomas Edisons. While there may be no heroic connotation to the word "persistence," the quality is to the character of a person what carbon is to steel....

Listen to episode 24 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Power of Words. Edited and adapted from The Mental Cure by Warren Felt Evans. Podcast Excerpt: Words are the index of character. They enclose within them our thoughts, and the tone with which they are spoken indicates the state of our affections. The utterance of a single word can reveal the love, fear, or hate that lurks within it, and, as such, our life and character are laid open to public view. By the effect of our words, others can perceive the cause. The heart is the fountain; words are the stream. If the fountain is clear as crystal, the issuing spring will be the water of life....

Listen to episode 23 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Triumph of Idealism: Living a Life that Matters. Edited and adapted from How to Fight the Battles of Life by Carl Hilty. Podcast Excerpt: Many people in our day and age, even well-intentioned people, have lost their faith in idealism. They regard it as something we outgrow after college, and something of little use in later life. Theoretically, they say, idealism has much to commend it, but, practically, things turn out to be brutally material. These individuals thus divide life into two parts: one where we may indulge ourselves in high-minded theories and sentiments, and, indeed, are to be encouraged in them; and the other where we wake rudely from this dream and deal with reality as best we can.

Listen to episode 22 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Book of Tea | Zen & The Art of Tea Drinking. Edited and adapted from The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō. Podcast Excerpt: There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealization. Western humorists were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa. Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning. Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humor itself—the smile of philosophy. All genuine humorists may in this sense be called tea-philosophers---Thackeray, for instance, and of course, Shakespeare. In this imperfect world of ours, it is perhaps in our demure contemplation of the Imperfect that the West and the East can meet in mutual consolation.....

Listen to episode 21 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Sleep Better, Peacefully & Fast. Edited and Adapted from the book The Victorious Attitude by Orison Swett Marden. Self-Help Podcast Excerpt: We never awake the same exact being as when we went to sleep. We are either better or worse. We changed while we slept. While our senses were wrapped in slumber, the subjective mind was busily at work. It was either building up or tearing down. If we go to bed holding a grudge against a neighbor, with a resolve to "get back" at somebody who has hurt us; if we have hatred or jealousy in our heart; if we are envious of another's success, and if we go to sleep nursing these feelings, we awake in a depressed, exhausted state, feeling bitter, pessimistic, irritable, and unhappy. The destructive spirit was at work all night, running amuck among the delicate brain and nerve cells, furiously tearing down what beneficent Nature had taken such pains to upbuild. But, when we take pleasant, kindly, loving thoughts to bed with us, we awake refreshed, in a happy, contented frame of mind. Our sleepless faculties spent the hours in upbuilding, performing friendly functions for us during the night.Few people ever think of preparing the mind for sleep, yet it is even more necessary than it is to prepare the body. Most of us take great pains to put the latter in order; we undress, maybe take a warm bath, perhaps massage the face with lotion; we make sure that our bedroom is properly heated or cooled, and that our bed is clean and comfortable, but to the matter of preparing our minds, we don’t give it a thought. ---------------- Visit today's sponsor Ettitude (makers of fine organic bedding and accessories) at the following link: Inspirational Sleep.

Listen to episode 20 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Transform Your Life & Thinking (Neville Goddard). Edited and Adapted from a lecture by Neville Goddard. Podcast Excerpt: The purpose of today’s talk is to bring about a psychological change in you, the individual. Humanity, understood psychologically, is an infinite series of levels of awareness. And you, individually, are what you are according to where you are in the series. Consciousness is the only reality. And where you are conscious of being psychologically determines the circumstances of your life. The ancients knew this great truth, but our modern teachers have yet to discover it. There is only one substance in the world. Our scientists call it energy, while scripture defines it as consciousness.....

Listen to episode 19 of the Inspirational Living podcast: Conquering Melancholy on New Year’s Eve. Edited and Adapted from an essay by Charles Lamb. Podcast Excerpt: Everyone has two birthdays: two days, at least, in every year, which set us upon reflecting on the lapse of time as it affects our mortal duration. As we grow older, the custom of honoring our proper birthday often passes away and is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and toys. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be ignored. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common humanity...

Listen to episode 18 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Art of Lying in Bed. Edited and Adapted from an essay by G.K. Chesterton. Podcast Excerpt: Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience, if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus. I have fancied that it might be accomplished with several buckets of paint and a broom. But if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one’s face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it is necessary to stick to pencil drawing for this form of artistic expression....

Listen to episode 17 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Secret of Financial Success (Dare to Think Big). Edited and Adapted from Three lectures on "The Laws of Financial Success" by B.F. Austin. Podcast Excerpt: Financial success is won by those who dare to think big. Little thoughts, plans, and ideals beget little interest, little effort, little enthusiasm in the individual, and awaken little or no interest in the minds of others. The radical difference between the pop-corn vendor at the fair and the next Steve Jobs is in the size of their ideas and concepts. Pop-corn ideas beget a pop-corn life. Great ideas, projects, and enterprises rouse the soul of the individual to the effort, courage, and daring that is commensurate with grand ideas.