Success Or Failure Is Not Change, But Choice

There is one thing that we all have in common. That is…at some point in our life, we will face adversity. It’s not a matter of if but…when.

I have come to realize that the difference in our success or failure is not change, but choice. When adversity strikes, it’s not what happens that will determine our destiny; it’s how we react to what happens.

I’m reminded constantly about the human spirit and the determination to succeed. We’ve all seen many news stories about the courage of some people who literally come back from the dead and go on to be successful in all areas of their lives.

Now they could have given up their will to live, but instead there was something inside which was pushing them to survive.

One person who epitomises the courage and the will to survive is Lance Armstrong. He has survived testicular cancer, and a tumour that metastasized to his brain and lungs. His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy, and his prognosis was originally poor, yet he survived and went on to win the Tour de France 7 years in a row.

In the link below is a 3 minute inspirational movie which is about staying strong and not letting circumstances defeat you. So just sit back, turn up your speakers and enjoy.

Click here to watch and be inspired!

And don’t forget to pay it forward by sharing this email with friends, family and co-workers. They’ll thank you for it!

Don’t Take Life For Granted

I was reminded at the weekend of how fragile our lives are.

My niece was getting married on Saturday, and her mother has had one kidney transplant which rejected and been on dialysis for nearly 20 years.

She’s had quite a few problems throughout her life and the main one is that her body has a disease which rejects new kidney transplants. Because of this she has had to endure dialysis on an almost daily basis.

This was the least of her worries until the week before her daughter’s wedding, when she was rushed to hospital as she was violently ill and had dangerously low blood pressure. She found out that she had contracted a Staph infection from a new set of needles used during her dialysis.

On Friday, the day before the wedding, she was given the news that the Staph infection had attached to a heart valve, which is very serious. She has had a pump installed in her arm which pumps penicillin 24 hours a day for up to 6-8 weeks. She accepted the news but all she wanted to do was attend her daughter’s wedding.

Her heart specialist agreed to let her go to the wedding as long as she was back in hospital that night. She made it and she looked really happy. She was exhausted when she left for the hospital, but at least she saw her daughter get married.

No-one knows what the future holds for her and it’s been a tough life for my brother and their 3 daughters as well. The one constant within the family though, is their love for each other.

Whatever you do, don’t take your life for granted. Live life to the full.

What Will Your Final Wish Be?

If you accumulated a substantial amount of wealth before you died, what would you want done with it once you’re gone?

There was a man who had worked all of his life and had saved all of his money. He was a real miser when it came to his money. He loved money more than just about anything, and just before he died, he said to his wife, "Now listen, when I die, I want you to take all my money and place it in the casket with me. I want to take my money to the afterlife."

So he got his wife to promise him with all her heart that when he died, she would put all the money in the casket with him.

Well, one day he died. He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black next to her closest friend. When they finished the ceremony, just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said "Wait just a minute!" she had a shoe box with her, she came over with the box and placed it in the casket.

Then the undertakers locked the casket down and rolled it away.

Her friend said, "I hope you weren’t crazy enough to put all that money in the casket."

She said, "Yes, I promised. I’m a good christian, I can’t lie. I promised him that I was going to put that money in that casket with him."

"You mean to tell me you put every cent of his money in the casket with him?"

"I sure did," said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account and I wrote him a check!"

Now I don’t think I’d go that far, but it does make you think about the disposal of your assets once you die. That is why it’s so important to have a will, especially if you are quite wealthy. It’s much easier to disperse your wealth accordingly if you have a plan set up.

Most families don’t have any problems after the death of a loved one, but, in the absence of a will, it’s more than likely that your family will squabble about their rights to your inheritance.

It would be a shame to put a blight on your memory just because you didn’t have a will. Do it now! Even if you’re in your early 20’s, you do need a will, and it is much more urgent if you are a young entrepreneur who’s going places.

How Poor Are You?

One day a father and his rich family took his son to a trip to the country with the firm purpose to show him how poor people can be.
They spent a day and a night in the farm of a very poor family. When they got back from their trip the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
"Very good Dad!"
"Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked.
"Yeah!"
"And what did you learn?"
The son answered, "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden, they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden, they have the stars. Our patio reaches to the front yard, they have a whole horizon." When the little boy was finishing, his father was speechless.
His son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are!"

Wealth really is a state of mind isn’t it? You can have all the riches you want but on the other hand you can be the poorest person in the world.

It’s a matter of how you think about the riches that are already a part of your life. You have to be grateful for what you have and appreciate any new riches you attract.

Wealth comes in many forms other than monetary, and it’s all in the way you think about it.

Is Obesity Going To Take Over The World?

Why do really obese people go to the "all-you-can-eat" restaurants? Logic should tell them that it’s only going to add to the problem. The problem is that they’re passing their bad habits on to their children and their children’s children, so it becomes a merry-go-round. I’ve seen it in my own family with the children emulating what the parents eat and drink and consequently they’re all dangerously overweight. And they don’t care!

The cost to society in the future is going to be enormous as more and more adults and children will be afflicted by Diabetes and Heart Disease. And guess what? You and I as taxpayers will foot the bill!

"Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you’ve met your New Year’s resolution."
Jay Leno
US comedian & television host (1950 - )

The above comment by Jay Leno may be funny, but it’s not funny when you walk around the streets and see so many overweight adults and kids.

I saw a story on TV last week of a 16 year old boy who was so fat they had to get a special horse lifter from a vet’s surgery to get him into hospital. His obesity had put so much pressure on his lungs that he could hardly breathe. He lived at home and his mother took no responsibility for him being in that condition. To me, that’s child abuse.

We need to get junk food out of the schools and off TV so that future generations might have a fighting chance of staying healthy.
 

Do You Have A Successful Marriage?

You may ask what credentials I have to be even talking about having a successful marriage. The fact that I’ve been married to the same man for 38 years is probably a very good start! We’re still madly in love after so many years together and we can’t bear to be apart from each other for too long a time. We have also worked together for the past 8 years, so if anything was going to pull us apart it would be the amount of time we spend with each other!

We also have an expanding family. We have 4 adult children, each married to a great partner, and 6 beautiful grandchildren. We all live close to each other so there’s quite a lot of family inter-action as well. I believe that an essential element of creating an outstanding family is to set the right example to your children, especially while they are very young. It has always amazed me how observant children can be.

They take in everything they see and hear, and they can even feel the atmosphere in the home, whether it’s full of love and joyfulness, or anger, tension and hostility. It’s easy to understand how this can affect their own behavior, their attitudes and even their personalities. They really do become a product of their environment. It makes you stop and think back about the kind of example you have been setting in the past.

Intimacy to me means a close loving relationship you have with another person while still retaining your own identity. Sharing your life with people who know that what they see is what they get, is very satisfying. Even though I’m "someone’s wife and someone’s mother", I’ve never felt that I’ve lost my identity.

My husband is of the same opinion and we have been on an equal footing since the day we met. When my husband introduces me as his "wife", I feel proud of the fact that I’m married to this wonderful man. I personally hate the term "partner" that’s used a lot today. To me it sounds like a business arrangement. I’ve never felt that my husband "owns" me. If you truly love someone then titles are trivial and don’t have any real meaning.

Women Can Do Everything!

My main goal in life was to have a happy and healthy family, and I seem to have achieved it. However, whether you believe it or not, there is an imbalance between the sexes.

I was thinking about my two daughters the other day and how we as women have learned to multi-task without too much effort. I’ve watched both of them handle two to three tasks at a time.

I look at myself and what I used to do when my children were little. I’d be doing the washing holding a baby in my arms and kept a toddler out of mischief all at the same time! It was the same thing everyday and when I look back over those times I still don’t know how I managed with 4 kids under 6. I guess we just get in and do it and wait for our hubby’s to come home from work so that they can take over!

Even today I multi-task. I can read a book, watch TV and listen to the conversations going on around me, whereas my husband has a lot of trouble doing one thing at a time!

It’s been said that man is the superior being, but I totally disagree. I cannot imagine a man having to cope with the many situations that we have to deal with.

A woman’s lot in life is not an easy one and I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to change anything about my life. I’m loved and cherished by my husband and my ever expanding family, and that’s all that matters.