A mother repeatedly called upstairs for her son to get up, get dressed and get ready for school. It was a familiar routine, especially at exam time.
"I feel sick," said the voice from the bedroom.
"You are not sick. Get up and get ready," called the mother, walking up the stairs and hovering outside the bedroom door.
"I hate school and I'm not going," said the voice from the bedroom, "I'm always getting things wrong, making mistakes and getting told off. Nobody likes me, and I've got no friends. And we have too many tests and they are too confusing. It's all just pointless, and I'm not going to school ever again."
"I'm sorry, but you are going to school," said the mother through the door, continuing encouragingly, "Really, mistakes are how we learn and develop. And please try not to take criticism so personally. And I can't believe that nobody likes you - you have lots of friends at school. And yes, all those tests can be confusing, but we are all tested in many ways throughout our lives, so all of this experience at school is useful for life in general. Besides, you have to go, you are the Head Teacher."
What did the Zen master say to the hot dog vendor? “Make me ONE with everything.”
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has to really want to change.
AA - ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS SLOGANS
"Pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth."
"Happiness is appreciating what you have, not getting what you want."
"If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it."
"Remember: It's ok to look back but don't stare."
“Alcoholic drinking's three stages: impulsive, compulsive, repulsive."
"Those who abandon their dreams will discourage yours"
"We can no longer be content with just getting by."
"I spent a lifetime in hell and it only took me twelve steps to get to heaven."
"Would you like to be right or happy?"
"When I came to recovery I realized that being a child for 28 years nearly killed me"
"We came to these rooms not because we drank a lot, but because we drank too much."
"Serenity is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it."
"Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open. "
"Remember; don't run so fast that your guardian angel can't keep up"
"The longer I'm sober, the drunker I was."
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
"We have good news and bad news here. The good news is you never have to drink again even if you want to. The bad news is that we're your new friends."
"I am the black sheep of the family. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and found the rest of the herd."
"No Suffer, No Growth”
"I don't thank God for opening the gates of Heaven and letting me in, I thank God for opening the gates of Hell and letting me out"
"I came for my drinking and stayed for my thinking."
"Sobriety is its own reward."
"I didn't want to go to A.A. I had lost alot of friends to A.A.!"
"To thine own self be true."
"Slippery Souls need Sober Shoes"
"Happiness keeps You Sweet, Trials keep You Strong, Sorrows keep You Human, Failures keep You Humble, Success keeps You Glowing, But Only God keeps You Going!"
"It's not what I know in recovery that keeps me sober. It's what I Do that keeps me sober."
"I used to be a hopeless dope fiend; today I'm dopeless hope fiend."
"Suit up and Show up, Don't shoot up and throw up"
"If God made anything better than this, He kept it for himself!"
"If I Forget 'What' I am, It doesn't Matter 'Who' I am."
"god helps those who help themselves do nothing and nothing will happen"
"I searched for the enemy that I could not see, when I looked in the mirror the enemy was me."
NA - NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS SLOGANS
“Meeting makers make it”
“We learn the program won’t work if we adapt the program to our lives we must adapt our lives to the program”
“More will be revealed.”
“When in doubt take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth”
“Nothing changes if nothing changes”
“Things that aren’t of a spiritual nature won’t fly”
“Just for today”
“Turn it over”
“You are a member when you say you are so act like it”
“What I can’t do alone we can do together”
“Never alone never again”
“I’m still lost but at least I can see where I’m going”
“Anxiety is the price we pay for playing God”
“If you don’t find recovery at a meeting chances are you didn’t bring it with you”
“If you do what you always did you will get what you always got”
“I’m allergic to drugs every time I use them I break out in a pair of handcuffs”
“Feelings ain’t facts”
“My responsibility is my ability to respond to what God puts into my life”
“First things first”
“Let go let God”
“What you put into a situation is exactly what you will get out of a situation”
“If I’m not the problem there is no solution”
“HALTS-Hungry Angry Lonely Tired or Serious”
“Feelings are like clouds if we refuse to cling onto them”
“Live in the here and now separate from the problem”
“Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy”
“Call your sponsor not your connection it is cheaper”
“Happiness comes from the inside not the outside”
“A day at a time a minute at a time or a second at a time”
“EGO stands for easing God out”
“Stay away from people, places, things and situations that may lead you to using”
“Write about your feelings don’t act on them”
“Principles before personalities”
“Live and let live don’t complicate”
“Reality is a power greater than ourselves”
“Share your experience, strength and hope”
“What comes around goes around”
“Faith can’t be taught…it can only be caught”
“Procrastination is fear in five syllables”
“Move your feet first…the feelings will follow”
“Don’t worry about tomorrow…God is already there”
“If God brings you to it…he will bring you thru it”
“I’m a very persuasive person, I can persuade myself of anything”
Keep your hands in your pants and give the newcomer a chance.
“The fear of feeling the pain is worse than the pain itself”
“Before engaging your mouth…make sure your mind is in gear”
“Are you around recovery or in recovery”
“Fear =frustration, ego anxiety and resentment”
“N.U.T.S…not using the steps”
“There’s still a monkey on my back…Lack of step work wakes him up”
“No one can piss you off without your permission”
Abraham Lincoln
“In the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
“ Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
“I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.”
“Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and loss of self control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.”
“We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.”
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
“Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”
“Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these I reckon will give you a good lift.”
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
Albert Einstein
“Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
“I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details’
‘The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.”
“You can't blame gravity for falling in love.”
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”
“The only source of knowledge is experience.”
“Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
“The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.
Bill Cosby
“A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.”
“Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.”
“Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.”
“Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.”
“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
“I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”
“The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.” “The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now.”
“There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.”
“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.” “You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.”
Bob Hope
“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.”
“A sense of humor is good for you. Have you ever heard of a laughing hyena with heart burn? “
“I do benefits for all religions - I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.”
“I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom.”
“I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”
“I love to go to Washington - if only to be near my money.”
“If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.”
“Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.”
“People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.”
“When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things - not the great occasions - that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.”
“You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”
“You never get tired unless you stop and take time for it.”
Carl Rodgers
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.”
“In my early professionals years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?”
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
“The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true.”
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research --neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction."
Henny Youngman
Patient: “I have a strange problem, doctor. Whenever I drink coffee, I get an ache in my left eye. What should I do?” Doctor: “Take the spoon out of the cup.”
In New York's garment district a little old man was hit by a car. While waiting for an ambulance, the policeman tucked a blanket under the guys chin and asked, "Are you comfortable?" the man said, "I make a nice living."
He's a real pain in the neck; of course, some people have a lower opinion of him.
When my wife asked me to start a garden, the first thing I dug up was an excuse.
Martin Luther King
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, ''Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!''
“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
“Intelligence plus character is the true meaning of education.”
“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.”
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”
Muhammad Ali
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ''Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.''
“Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them -- a desire, a dream, a vision”.
“I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights.”
“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”
“A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
“I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.”
“Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.”
“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths.”
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
“What keeps me going is goals.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.”
“In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.”
“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
“All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen”
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
“I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.”
“Give all to love; obey thy heart.”
“Self-trust is the first secret to success.”
Rodney Dangerfield
“A girl phoned me the other day and said... Come on over, there's nobody home. I went over. Nobody was home.”
“I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”
“I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.”
“I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap.”
“I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. he told me to wear a brown tie.”
“I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous - everyone hasn't met me yet.” “I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.”
“I worked in a pet store and people would ask how big I would get.”
“Most of the arguments to which I am party fall somewhat short of being impressive, owing to the fact that neither I nor my opponent knows what we are talking about.”
“My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too.”
“My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.”
Victor Frankl
“Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.”
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'”
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.”
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.”
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.”
W.C. Fields
“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.”
“Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There's nothing like having a midget for a butler.”
“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.”
“Don't worry about your heart, it will last you as long as you live.”
Will Rodgers
"We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can."
"Try to live your life so that you wouldn't be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."
"People are marvelous in their generosity, if they just know the cause is there."
"The Lord so constituted everybody that no matter what color you are you require the same amount of nourishment."
"Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers."
"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." "Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion."
"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
"Everyone is ignorant, only in different subjects."
"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
"People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide."
"No man is great if he thinks he is."
"Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth."
"Never miss a good chance to shut up."
"Always drink upstream from the herd."
"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in."
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."
"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today."
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."
"The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them." "We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."
"Things will get better-despite our efforts to improve them."
"I never met a man I didn't like."
Richard Wheeler, MA, LPC Adolescent - Adult - Behavioral Health Substance Abuse - DUI - Relationship Coaching 439 North Duke Street, Lancaster PA , 17602 Tel: 717.892.1547 • Fax: 717-459-3336
