“Inspiration is the spiritual energy bar to personal growth. A daily dose energizes our commitment to personal development and propels us forward into undiscovered possibility.” ~KW

I’ve fallen in love with creating picture quotes. I enjoy finding the right photo that fits the quote. I love crafting the words that express the idea I want to convey. And I love the idea of a single phrase that can inspire us to live higher, happier, better lives.

Ideas are powerful things that can take on a life of their own, digging like roots deep into our hearts and souls and branching out into the circumstances of our lives as we nourish and tend to the germinating idea.

So today I thought I would share with you some of my favorite picture quotes that express some of my favorite ideas from www.facebook.com/MeanttobeHappy.

10 of my Favorite Picture Quotes

(BTW: All picture quote photos are credited in the original Facebook post. To follow credit links, visit the page and find the original posting)

Life is huge! And life contains huge, overwhelming responsibilities. Parenthood. Morality. Citizenship. Love. Character. Health. When taken as a whole, its easy to find yourself drowning in the sea of big things, lost amongst the trees of an ever expanding forest of goals and obligations.

But when you break life into manageable chunks, it becomes easier to deal with. Large projects and insurmountable problems and overwhelming circumstances become less insurmountable and overwhelming when they are considered and tackled in smaller segments. Elephants are still eaten one bite at a time.

And that’s truly the only way we can go through life anyway–one day, one assignment, one step at a time. So when you feel discouraged or overwhelmed, just remember how continents are crossed and take a moment to adjust your view to the longer perspective, then focus your attention closer to your feet.

Free will is the greatest gift humanity has ever been given. It lifts us from the animal world and separates us from the puppet and victim class.

By the powerful force of choice, small decisions made daily, pours the concrete of our lives beneath our feet, bridging the gap between where we are and where we can go. We either rise to incredible heights or descend into our own personal hells.

No matter where you are in life, a new direction is but a decision away. There is no power more awesome, or underused, than that.

We sometimes forget (or never really figured out) why we’re here. We start to make a little money or get in shape or acquire some prestige, recognition and influence and begin defining ourselves as so much success and accomplishment and forget the deeper purpose of our lives.

It’s not to succeed. At least not in the traditional sense of the word. It is to love. And everything we do and think and feel adds to the universal quotient or takes small withdrawals from it. Everything we do matters. In both large and infinitesimal ways, it changes us, one spiritual particle at a time, into something we later regret or into something we feel happy to have become.

You can be appointed to a position of responsibility. You can be promoted up the corporate ladder. You can be assigned to manage a department. But position and title do not a leader make.

Leadership is not something you impose on others. It is something others see in you. Then leadership happens spontaneously, no matter the rank or position you hold. And what’s more, the title will matter much less as the power of your character will be a reward unto itself.

Too many people are twisted up in ugly knots of self-condemnation. They look in the mirror and train their eyes on nothing but the superficial. They fail to see beneath whatever they perceive on the surface of their lives. They fail to recognize their own divinity, the dazzling potential that waits to be awakened.

You are a product of heaven. You are a child of eternity. You are worthy. Valuable. Beautiful. Amazing. Never let the dead opinions of those whose hearts are discolored with their own pain paint the image of who you are. You are so much more than their opinions or their hate or their inadequacies. Self-underestimation is the single greatest cause of lives lived in the dank cold of mediocrity.

I believe there are untold numbers of people who have given up on happiness. They’ve heard happiness is the result of one or another life strategy, like positive thinking or meditation. They’ve tried it out and gave up because the practice never produced on the promise.

But that’s a lot like adding blueberries to your ice cream, then complaining your health hasn’t noticeably improved. Happiness, like health, is the natural byproduct of a variety of principles regularly applied.

Learn the qualities of happiness, and happiness can’t help but visit you more often and linger longer, even becoming a natural characteristic of your personality and character.

Having just claimed that happiness is the product of many characteristics, not just one pounded relentlessly, there is one trait that nonetheless stands head and shoulders above the rest. And that, of course, is gratitude.

Gratitude is the art the eternal perspective, seeing life, ourselves and others through the window of our divine potential. It is the act of seeing the beautiful within, and in spite of, all the difficulty and challenge and pain life provides. It is the ability and willingness to find benefit in disappointment, lessons in life’s tests and growth from rocky paths we’re called to travel.

Happiness, in fact, can’t exist without a grateful heart focused on the good and positive, learning from trial and tribulation, then refocusing on the beauty that lines the rocky trails.

I’m convinced that even God is less concerned with where you are relative to where others are or you could have been as much as where you’re headed.

What is the trajectory of your life? That’s what truly matters. We don’t need to compare our worst selves to others’ best selves. Or even our current self to our ideal self.

The only relevant question is to ask if we’ve taken a step forward recently. If we have, we’re doing alright!

It is a good thing to be stubbornly dedicated to your goals and dreams. But don’t be so tunnel-visioned that you fail to recognize opportunity when it knocks. Sometimes success is on a road you never expected to take.

The courage and insight needed to take the detour can make all the difference in the world. So go ahead and keep working toward the goals you’ve set for yourself. But keep your eyes open just in case you were meant for something else.

The key to a wonderful life is, right now, in the palm of your hand. The problem is that many of us keep the key locked away in a closet and live life by default, choosing no particular course, passively letting time tick away, hoping for a break, waiting for good fortune to strike you while sitting on the couch with the TV on.

But we don’t have to wait for good fortune. We can make each day sacred and profound by living passionately, loving deeply, and climbing boldly to heights  we’ve never before ascended.

As has been the theme of this post, you are so much more than you think. You are more than the career you chose or your habits or weaknesses or routines you’ve settled into. You are also your infinite potential. But the way you live, the priorities you set, whether consciously or otherwise, your values and character and decisions you make open a window into your soul.

Want to know who someone is? Don’t listen to what they say about themselves. Instead, watch how they live, where their priorities are, how they treat those they need nothing from. And that, by the way, is a clue into your own character as well.

We tend to judge others’ behavior, but our own hearts, knowing we’re better than our behavior. And that may very well be true. But in the end, our behavior, not our hearts, is what others experience and will determine how they feel about us and around us.

There is no role in life of more consequence, more profound, more important and will will do more to change the world for good than the work you do inside your own home. Taken seriously, you will more permanently influence the world for good than in any other way.

If your goal is to change the world, change the life of a child with more love than the child knows what to do with, so much, in fact, that the child grows to give away the excess.

Bite-Sized Inspiration

Sometimes we need a whole meal. At other times, all we need is a good energy bar to carry us forward. That, I think, is what inspirational thoughts can be to our personal growth challenges.

And that’s what I hope to provide you with here and on my Facebook page (from which I’ve taken these picture quotes). I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments below. While you’re at it, let me know which one resonated with you most.

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