After a While

After a While - a poem by Veronica A Shoffstall

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and and your eyes open with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too
uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure, that you really are strong and you really do have worth and you learn and you learn with every good-bye you learn.

If you liked this poem, you might also enjoy reading 'I am me' by Virginia Satir.

Related » Unhealthy Relationships

Make Your Own Luck

"Shallow people believe in luck. Strong people believe in cause and effect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you believe luck is some kind of magic that only favors certain people, well, today is your lucky day - here's how you go about creating your own luck.

Professor Richard Wiseman has been researching luck for more than 10 years. In his book The Luck Factor, he lists some common traits that he observed in lucky people; emulating which (he believes) can make anyone lucky.

His four tips to get lucky:

1. Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right. Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. In addition, they take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities by, for example, meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.


2. Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine. These make you more flexible and also increase your awareness, helping you to identify opportunities that you might have otherwise missed.


3. Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well. Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else.


4. Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

Summary: Lucky people are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

"Luck is believing you're lucky" - Tennessee Williams

Related » Secrets of Success
» Overcoming Failures

The Rules of Life

A summary of the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott

1. You will receive a body: You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.


2. You will learn lessons: You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called LIFE. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think of them as irrelevant and stupid.


3. There are no mistakes, only lessons: Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately work.


4. A lesson is repeated until learnt: A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learnt it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.


5. Learning lessons does not end: There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned.


6. "There" is no better than "here": When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here".


7. Others are only mirrors of you: You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.


8. What you make of life is upto you: You have all the tools or resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.


9. Your answers lie inside you: The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.


10. You will forget all this.

Related » Facts of Life
» Life As I Know It
» Secrets of Success