Posts Tagged ‘quote’

The Best Way to Succeed

June 12th, 2010

My husband and I were talking recently and he made a comment that has stuck with me. He said:

“The quickest way to succeed is to help others succeed.”

I thought about this for a long time and I think he’s really right. Of course, there are a lot of different ways to “succeed” and not all of them involve helping someone else succeed. But, meeting a need for someone else, helping them to be successful, well, that is a pretty good, and often very quick, way for you to be successful yourself. Maybe there are times when it’s not the “quickest” way to succeed, but I think it might just be the BEST way to succeed.

So often, I think we compete with each other when we should be helping one another. I know that I don’t usually think about how I can help someone else succeed. Instead I think about how I can succeed – how I can succeed at blogging, at being a mom and wife, at teaching yoga, or at whatever other projects and interests I’m currently trying my hand at. But, how different would my relationships be if instead of focusing on myself and my own success I focused more on others and THEIR success. And, at least according to my husband, doing that could very well lead to the success I want for myself. Even if it doesn’t, by focusing on others and their success I would have improved the world just a little bit by making it a more compassionate, gracious, and relational place. And isn’t that a beautiful form of success in and of itself?

What have you done today to help someone else succeed?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Back home in the blogosphere

June 15th, 2009

Today I realized that I had over 1,000 unread blogs in my google reader. Ridiculous, I know. But, life has been such lately that not only has my blog writing suffered, but my blog reading has been pretty much none existent. But, after a few days of feeling ready to re-enter the blogosphere I think I can now officially say, yes, I’m back. Maybe not for good, and it might still be a little sporadic, but I miss blogging and reading blogs and I’m ready to come back to it. So, I marked all my unread blogs as read and I’m starting fresh, jumping back in starting today and looking forward to it. Smile.

So, expect more posts in the days and weeks to come, there are a few bouncing around in my head already. But, for now I leave you with this quote from the book He Leadeth Me by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.:

“Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God’s will was not hidden somewhere ‘out there’ in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back. It demanded absolute faith: faith in God’s existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support whatever – only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed. Once understood, it seemed so simple. I was amazed it had taken me so long in terms of time and of suffering to learn this truth. Of course we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. There remains deep down in each of us a little nagging doubt, a little knot of fear which we refuse to face or admit even to ourselves, that says, ‘Suppose it isn’t so.’ We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God’s hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is the ultimate criterion, the final test of all faith and all belief, and it is present in each of us, lurking unvoiced in a closet of our mind we are afraid to open. It is not really a question of trust in god at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith.”

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Some Thoughts to think about from a Friend

March 12th, 2009

Today I read two great posts that really hit home for me on my friend Tara’s blog, Story-Formed.

The first is called “Hungry, anyone?” and I recommend you go check it out.

The second was mostly this quote from Henri Nouwen that I thought I’d share with you here as well:

“So what about my life of prayer?  Do I like to pray?  Do I want to pray?  Do I spend time praying?  Frankly, the answer is no to all three questions…The truth is that I do not feel much, if anything, when I pray.  There are no emotions, bodily sensations, or mental visions.  None of my five senses is being touched – no special smells, no special sounds, no special sights, no special tastes, and no special movements.  Whereas for a long time the Spirit acted so clearly through my flesh, now I feel nothing.  I have lived with the expectation that prayer would become easier as I grow older and closer to death.  But the opposite seems to be happening.  The words “darkness” and “dryness” seem to best describe my prayer today.

Maybe part of this darkness and dryness is the result of my overactivity.  As I grow older I become busier and spend less and less time in prayer.  But I probably should not blame myself in that way.  The real questions are, “What are the darkness and the dryness about?  What do they call me to?”…

Are the darkness and dryness of my prayer signs of God’s absence, or are they signs of a presence deeper and wider than my senses can contain?  Is the death of my prayer the end of my intimacy with God or the beginning of a new communion, beyond words, emotions, and bodily sensations?…

The year ahead of me must be a year of prayer, even though I say that my prayer is as dead as a rock.  My prayer surely is, but not necessarily the Spirit’s prayer in me.  Maybe the time has come to let go of “my” prayer, “my” effort to be close to God, “my” way of being in communion with the Divine, and to allow the Spirit of God to blow freely in me.“

rejoicing in the joureny -
Bethany

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Listening Quote

January 28th, 2009

I found this quote on one of the blogs I read today and I just had to share it…

“I have come to the conclusion that the most important character quality is soft-heartedness. This involves listening to what God is telling us, within the context of Scripture, prayer, crises, and relationships. God is constantly communicating with his people.

The better we listen, the more productive we become for God’s purposes.”

-David Kinnaman

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A Winter Quote

December 6th, 2008

“It is not the high summer alone that is God’s… All man’s winters are His – the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness, even ‘the winter of our discontent.’
Winter does not belong to death, although the outside of it looks like death. Beneath the snow, the grass is growing. Below the frost, the roots are warm and alive. Winter is only a spring too weak and feeble for us to see that it is living. The cold does for all things what the gardener has sometimes to do for valuable trees: he must half kill them before they will bear any fruit. Winter is in truth the small beginnings of the spring.
Winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need: ‘My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my Son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak, and foolish; you must become a child – my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.” – George MacDonald

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