Iyanla Vanzant
I forgive myself for believing I should have done better when I didn’t know how because as long as you think you should have done better, you’ll be guilty when the truth is you didn’t know how.
Men think the truth, but women feel it and it may not make any sense whatsoever, but it doesn’t mean you dismiss it.
What happens to you doesn’t change who you are and who you are is who you tell yourself you are.
Change confrontation to carefrontation i.e. I care enough about my needs to let you know what is and what isn’t acceptable otherwise you teach yourself that your needs are not important.
I give all meaning to everything I see. If I want to give my life a new meaning, then let me pick thoughts and images that support who I am.
My take away from this sentence, “Be willing to take everybody down to save yourself,” I made it to “Be willing to take everybody down gracefully and compassionately to save yourself,” because sometimes people are coming from their own patterns and story that we’re not aware of entirely and we human beings forget to look at it from their point of view.
It’s not selfish to put yourself first. It’s self-full. To be as good as possible to yourself i.e. be healthy, keep you whole and that doesn’t mean you disregard everyone else. You want to come with your cup full, my cup runneth over. What comes out of the cup is for you’ll and what’s in the cup is mine.
When you see crazy coming, cross the street.
Oprah Winfrey
This one is my number one favourite:
When people show you who they are, believe them, believe them the first time, not the twenty-ninth time. That is particularly good when it comes to men situations because when he doesn’t call the first time, when you’re mistreated the first time, when you see someone that shows you a lack of integrity and dishonesty the first time know that that will be followed by many many many other times that will at some point in your life come back to haunt or to hurt you. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
(If I spend the rest of my time here you might end up with a scripture so let’s move on)
Steve Harvey
When he talked about haters this was my takeaway: When they write it’s a blog and when you respond it’s a press conference.
When he said success is like pulling a wagon this was my takeaway:
The wagon and the rope story.
When you are a person who is success minded. You have a wagon that you are pulling uphill. Attached to this wagon is this very thick rope. You are shirtless. You have a rope on your back and you are pulling this wagon uphill at all times. You are totally responsible for your wagon. You are the only one on the rope. In order for the wagon to go up the hill, you’re going to have to have people, like-minded people i.e. your staff, employees, people who you partner with. The thing of it is that you are the only one responsible for the pull. What you have to be careful of is as you pull this rope up the hill you have to make sure that everybody that’s on the wagon is doing something to get the wagon up the hill. Everybody’s foot got to be hanging off that wagon pushing. Somebody got to get off the wagon and move rocks from under the wheel but what happens along the way, and you got to be careful are people who will get onto your wagon and have no value, get on your wagon and get very very comfortable and all of the sudden their feet are off the ground. They just on the wagon riding and you have them in your life and sometimes they’re your children. It’s okay when they’re children but when they get to a certain age you want them to help out, sometimes it’s your business partner, sometimes it’s the people you hire, sometimes it’s the people in your other department that supposed to be helping with a project and they just got their feet up. Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! You are now making my haul on this rope more difficult than it is. You have to shed it off because your climb with your rope is agonising.
You need to make a list of these people in your lives and what they provide for you and it’s okay. This is a hard list to make but it is important to make this list so that you can see those who are a benefit in your life and those who are a detraction in your life and get those who are a detraction in your life off your wagon.
Pastor John Gray
You are not an accident, there are no accidental lives. You can’t sneak into the earth. You have to be spoken into the earth.
Bishop T. D Jakes
You are significant whether it’s a big thing or a little thing if it brings you gratification if it brings you fulfilment if it seems to fit the complexity of your life because we all are all very complexed people. We are not one-dimensional people. We have assets and liabilities, we have things we love about ourselves and we have things that we don’t but all of it fits not just the good of us even the things that we have labelled as our lesser strengths still fit within the continuity of the purpose. You weren’t supposed to be taller, you weren’t supposed to sing and understanding that you don’t spend your life trying to be what you are not.
Use your disaster as a direction. It is through that adversity that our strength is developed. If everything went the way you wanted it to go you wouldn’t have anything to exercise. It’s the gymnasium of life where you get to work out. You find out things about yourself that you didn’t know, “I’m stronger than I thought I was,” “I’m tougher than I thought I was,” “I’m more resilient than I thought I was.” That self-respect stops you from being at the mercy of other people that validate you to make you feel good about who you are.
These are just a few people I get value from. I also enjoy catching up on Esther Perel’s advice, Dr Phil McGraw, top 10 rules of Jada Pinkett…man, I have a list that goes on…
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.
