When life gets dark and dreary, when the clouds of discontent swell and burst hard upon you with so much utter violence and ferocity you can scarcely take it anymore, let this simple poem inspire you through the toughest parts of your most challenging moments.

Words are the bodies the soul of an idea is born into. The quality of our words attracts others to our cause or repels them from it. Sometimes, the quality of an idea is enough to give it wings. At other times, the words used to convey an idea are the nails in the coffin of its premature death.

Most people think failure is a bad thing to be avoided, to be ran from, hidden, afraid of and discouraged. And frankly, it doesn’t feel good at all. In fact, it feels terrible, sometimes like you’ve been slammed in the face with the shovel. It’s a fall, a step back, evidence you suck! But it’s not that at all.

Too often, our words get drowned in the noise of our own behavior. We tell others to live one way and yet fall woefully short ourselves. This is inevitable because we are all imperfect beings. The problem is less our inconsistency and more our lack of humility.

Why do we start paying so much attention to things like wrinkles and nose lengths and freckles and blemishes and all our perceived imperfections? Why do we look so closely at the so-called blemishes that we miss the beauty that surrounds the “blemish” entirely?

Have you ever wished you had done things differently? Or wished someone else hadn’t done what they did? Have you ever longed to go back and repeat something from your past so you could go a different way, choose a different path, change your mind, do over the thing you did or was done to you?

Do you struggle to get things done? Do you procrastinate until it’s either too late to finish or too late to finish adequately? Well, did you know there was a simple mind trick that can magically transform your procrastinating ways into the motivation you need to finally be a productivity wizard?

Motherhood is a profession worthy of a 7-figure celebration. In fact, Motherhood is the highest paying job on the market. What other position pays in the currency of so profound and deep a love as a Mothers’ love?

Find the burning WHY that drives you and the HOW will follow. Your WHY is what burns in your soul. It is the reason behind your activity. It is the fundamental purpose and passion that animates you.

There’s a reason Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan and not Michael Phelps or Michael J. Fox or Michael Jackson. His name became synonymous with basketball because basketball is what he focused all his time on. He lived and breathed it. He married it. What have you married? What do you live and breathe?

When it seems like everyone has betrayed you, don’t lose hope. Remember, most people are decent. Even when it is difficult to see, most are behind the scenes of life, doing the work of living decent lives.

It’s often the very first step that’s the hardest. Writing the book is not always the toughest part. It’s writing the first word on the first page. Running a business is often easier than exercising the guts to start it. The first step of every journey is often the most difficult to take which is why relatively so few journeys are conscientiously taken and so few dreams fulfilled.

It’s often the simplest things that have the most profound effects on our lives. It’s also often the case that those simple things—especially if the effects of doing them are not immediately apparent—get put off most regularly.

There is a startling power contained in the seed of Decision. When unleashed, it can be used to build an amazing life of purpose, passion and meaning, to realize a dream, end a bad habit, start a good one, influence people, improve relationships, develop a talent, learn a skill, add joy and happiness to the rush of living.

Here’s the challenge with problem-in-every-opportunity thinking: We become blind to the possibilities the problem presents when we are geared to seeing only, or even primarily, the problem.

What do you do when life painfully crashes and burns and you find yourself scraped, bruised and buried under the weight of disaster and heartache? Do you run and hide? Or do you get up and fight back with all that’s inside of you?

You are limited only by the limits you place on your imagination. But once you open the door to any possibility, you free yourself of self-imposed confines and restrictions.

Sometimes we need a step-by-step how-to manual of 101 Ways to live Happier Lives to get us through the vicissitudes of life. Other times, all we need is a reminder, inspiration to look anew at the old to start making changes. I invite you to begin now to become who you most want to

The truth of the matter is that the mind records all it experiences. Add sharp emotion to the experience, and you have a recipe for an elephant-like memory of the nitty gritty. So can forgetting the acts of others against us truly be forgotten? Not likely. So what could the admonition to forgive and forget really mean then?

To say I’ve been unfocused in the wilderness of new ideas is an understatement. But as the old proverb goes, if you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either one. I would add that if you’re chasing 20 rabbits, a raccoon and a squirrel or two, you might as well say goodbye to everything else you used to do. And so am simplifying the online clutter I’ve been creating of late. See how…