It’s been one of those days today. I couldn’t string together two coherent sentences if I tried. So I am very grateful that others, older and wiser than I have written so much about gratitude that I can borrow a few of their words to share with you today.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes about gratitude.

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven. ~Johannes A. Gaertner

The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated. ~William James

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ~William Arthur Ward

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart

When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears ~Anthony Robbins

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Author Unknown

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~John F. Kennedy

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. ~French Proverb

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” ~William A. Ward

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. Epictetus

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

Thanks for being here! Don’t forget to share your favorite gratitude quotes in the comments!

Photo Credit: Burningwell.org

When I posted last night that I was happy to be getting back into the routine of daily blogging, it was with the thought that I was doing a good thing for myself. This morning, I’m wondering just how good it is.

As a creative person I’ve always Detested — with a capital ‘D’ — any type of structured environment. Schedules and I do not get along, and haven’t been on speaking terms for years. Ditto with the alarm clock. I truly cherish my freedom to be able to go where I want, when I want, and to be able to write when the mood strikes.

However, as a creative person working at making a living as a creative person, I also know that I need some sense of structure and routine in my working life at the very least. Case in point — almost three months between blog posts. (Being a diabetic means I also have to have some semblance of routine in the rest of my life too if I want to keep it under control. But that’s a story for another day.)

So anyway, back to the story here… This morning when I was trying to decide what to write I went searching for a quote to sum up how I feel about creating a work routine that works for me. I was really shocked to find a whole raft of thoughts that portray routine in a really negative way. For example:

“Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.” Henri de Lubac

“Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly” – George Eliot

“Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.” – Arthur Helps

“The less routine the more life.” – Amos Bronson Alcott

“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.” – Henry Van Dyke

That last one by Van Dyke really resonates with me. I’ve had some friends who schedule every minute of every day, and day in and day out never change their routine at all. They call it good time management. I call it no time to live, but they’re my friends and I love ‘em so I put up with having to make appointments to spend time with them. But I can certainly see the point that is being made here.

As a person who hates being labelled and stuffed into a box — whether of my own or anyone else’s making — being so bound by a routine that there’s no room for change would be a fate worse than death.

But I know that in order to be a good writer, I have to have some type of routine that requires me to spend time with my butt in the chair with a pen in my hand. So I guess the challenge is to find that happy medium that gets the job done and falls somewhere between the no-room-to-live, destroyer of creativity brand of routine and having no routine at all. I’ve come to the conclusion this is another one of those things that there’s no right or wrong answer for — it’s another one of those life choices that is unique to each one of us.

For me, I’m thinkin’ my routine will look something like this: write and work out in the morning, do client work in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the day doing whatever the heck I want.

Oh, and I did find my quote finally:

“Most of life is routine – dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you’ll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.” – Ben Nicholas

So what about you? Where do you fall on the routine spectrum? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Today’s post is gonna be short and sweet. I’ve been fighting with a new wordpress theme on my marketing blog all day and I’m beat. Top it all off with what I thought was going to be a quick trip to the store, and two hours later… What was I thinking?

So tonight I shall defer to the experts and share with you my top 10 favorite quotes on setting goals.
There are so many great ones it’s hard to narrow it down, so this is my own personal preference. If you’ve got one to share, feel free to leave it in the comments.

1. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. – Earl Nightingale

2. This one step – choosing a goal and sticking to it – changes everything. – Scott Reed

3. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving yoru goals. – von Goethe

4. You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures. – Charles. C. Noble

5. Setting goals for your game is an art. The trick is in setting them at the right level neither too low nor too high. – Greg Norman

6. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. – Mark Victor Hansen

7. A goal is created three times. First as a mental picture. Second, when written down to add clarity and dimension. And third, when you take action towards its achievement. – Gary Ryan Blair

8. Reduce your plan to writing… The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire. – Napoleon Hill

9. Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal. – E. Joseph Crossman

10. Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.- Anthony Robbins

Don’t forget to leave your favorite quotes on setting goals in the comments!