Daily Gratitude: “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

Wow this is so profound. Each part has gold in it.

Fear manifests itself as hurt because it’s also more “acceptable” to tell someone you’re hurt than it is to say “I’m scared”.

And the imagination part is key. Our imaginations are powerful even when you think you’re not a creative person. Just think about a slight pain you have or had. Pretty soon, it increases. And it’s not long before the worst possible outcome is there in the front of your mind.

In 2025 at Vol State I felt this sharp shooting pain in my foot. Every step i took was like an electrical shock in my foot and up my leg. I can tell you that within 10 steps I had at least 5 major things wrong with my foot.

By the time I was able to hobble over to a place to sit, I was sure my race was over. And of course, all the attendant emotions floated up with that thought.

Turns out it was a metal strip that had somehow punctured the sole of my shoe and gone through the insert and up into my foot. Once it was removed my foot was fine. But my imagination took off prior to having all the facts. Of course that’s a survival mechanism we humans have. If we waited to have all the facts before we acted, we’d get eaten by the big tiger pursuing us.

We just have to recognize these facts and take our time before losing control of our responses. It was a good lesson for me.

Daily Gratitude: “Excellence happens not by accident.
It is a process.”

This is another way to talk about the compound effect.

People are always being critical and envious when it appears someone became a big success “overnight”. What they don’t realize is that the success didn’t happen that way. Many many hours of work have gone into whatever they achieved.

But more importantly, this is a key thing for each of us to remember when it seems things aren’t moving forward. Just keep at it. Each day that you work toward your goal, something happens. There’s progress. But you may not see it and even worse, you may not see it for quite awhile.

If you keep working, though, one day you’ll see the results of that effort. Your first reaction may be that it’s a fluke but it isn’t. It means that all you’ve been doing has actually been having an effect. The more you keep going, the more the effect will show up. There may be plateaus. Realize that that’s exactly what they are, plateaus. The body is integrating all the effort and there will be another peak soon.

Just keep doing what you’re doing. You will get there!

Daily Gratitude: “Man becomes conscious of himself through his resistance to others.”

This is a good way to gauge if something within you needs improvement or work. If you start to hold up your hand and push back against someone or some idea, it’s a sign that there may be something in you that you ought to examine. It may be that once you do that examination, you’ll identify it and decide you still believe it. Let’s say a person you know never leaves a tip and that begins to bother you. In the grand scheme of this thing we call life, is it really important whether ANOTHER person leaves a tip? Why does it bother you? It doesn’t really matter and that’s why it’s a sign that you should look at it. Something is going against your personal values. I’ll bet that once you look within, you’ll see that it may be just one annoying thing about your friend but maybe it’s made you see other things you don’t like. This is good because then you can decide if your friend’s good points outweigh these minor annoyances. When you realize that you’ll be able to either tell them that this bugs you or you may just decide it won’t bother anymore . But it also possible that you’ll reassess the friendship. That sounds harsh but it’s also how little things can lead to disastrous endings.

Any time you’re feeling the “that bothers me” or the “no way” thoughts and feelings about something, it’s time to examine what it is actually telling you. The “thing” in front of you is a nicely wrapped package but what it’s hiding is buried deep under the wrapping, inside the box and stuffed under a bunch of the styrofoam peanuts. It’s the pearl inside the clam shell. You have to dig to find it but it’s worth it.