Motivating Quotes
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
Everyone is better than me at tennis.
Except for the ones I don’t compare myself to.
I never compare myself to people who I could possibly beat at tennis.
Or people who’ve complimented me on my game over the years.👏
Or even the matches I’ve won.🥇
🎾 I only compare myself to people whose game I admire…
🎾 Who’d whoop me in singles.
🎾 Played D1 at a collegiate level.
🎾 Or went to Wimbledon.
Either way. The point is, comparing never helps. It only hurts.
When you compare yourself to others, you always lose.👎
💡Here’s an idea instead: compare yourself to yourself.
Think about yourself 5 years ago - is there something you’re doing now you haven’t done before?
Think about yourself 10 years ago - is there something you can do now that you’ve improved upon, gotten better, honed a skill?
Have you surprised yourself with newfound ability in any way?
I bet your answer is a solid yes for at least one of these questions. ☑️
Compare yourself to see how far you’ve come. 🙌
Compare yourself within reason.🫶
And give yourself a break, will ya?
Yes, those are my grandmother’s sneakers, visor, and tennis whites.
I probably have glass in my foot.
I broke something special last night.
A long time ago, my mom got me three water glasses from the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
Each one described a color: yellow, purple, and orange. 🟨🟪🟧
Their descriptions were interesting and she couldn’t decide which one captured me the most.
So she gave me all three and I used them…
Through my first apartment.
Through the first of many breakups
and heartbreaks.
Through job changes,
and life changes.
The glasses were in my kitchen when I painted it myself.
I painted it a shade of cantaloupe, if you were curious.
The glasses were with me when I moved into a new place with my husband.
And when we had our first child and moved out of the city.
A few years ago, the purple one broke, and I thought - it’s okay, I still have yellow and orange.
And then the yellow glass broke, and still I was ok.
The language on the orange was the strongest and perhaps it suited me best.
But last night, I hit the orange glass with the lid of a pot I was cleaning. (Perhaps I shouldn’t do dishes….)
And just like that – it was gone.
Of course, I wanted to preserve what it said. But as I tried to piece it together, it shattered even more and I managed to walk over the shards on the floor with bare feet.
One accident sometimes leads to another.
Yet the glass is just a glass. Words are more lasting, they read:
🔸You are extroverted, cheerful, impatient, and loud.
🔸You seek adventure.
🔸Your down-to-earth attitude is very attractive.
🔸You love sports and nature.
🔸You are quite talkative.
🔸You are always willing to help, but you will never be pushed around.
I think there might be a reason this one broke last. And luckily, I don’t really need the glass anymore. I know who I am. 🧡
I do find that words help most things.
But this is one example of a time that words don’t help.
If you feel like you’re not good at something, best thing you can do is start doing more of it.
Because it gets easier and easier to say you’re not good at something.
Without really trying.
It’s like I’m going for my own Oscar.🏆
Maybe an award for: “The Most Likely To Remember A Stranger.”🖐️
Or even: “The Most Likely To Be Remembered By A Stranger.”🤔
Every day I rack up points towards it.
Meet every single person I can. 🤝
But more than just meet them, I try to learn something.💡
Like the checkout clerk at Trader Joe's yesterday.
Who complimented my organic red strawberries. 🍓
I thought they looked especially good for not being quite in season. 🍓
He said he thought so too, and apparently that means a lot - since he’s colorblind.
What kind? The red-green kind. 🟥🟩
His father was colorblind as well, and was rejected when he tried to join the United States Air Force.
Because he couldn’t see red lights and without red lights he couldn’t fly a plane. ✈️
So he joined the US Army.
I was only buying 3 items yesterday, 2 bags of frozen corn and those strawberries.🌽🌽
And yet, look how much I learned. 🫶
The exchange would have ended after he said he was colorblind. But I happened to ask what type of colorblind.
Since my dad is an ophthalmologist, I know there’s more than one kind.👓
There’s actually three primary, but several types of colorblindness.
I was curious. So I asked.
And I got so much color.❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
I’m always after more color. 🎨
But you might already know that. ✨
Anyone ever just want to sit still and listen to the rain? ☔️💧🌧️
Feel paralyzed into inaction because you’re overwhelmed by all you have set out to accomplish? ✔️✔️✔️
Right now perhaps you have camp deadlines and scheduling dilemmas for your kids who are looking for activities to keep them busy this summer. 🛶⛺️
The problem with planning is that it constantly puts you into the future.🔮
And then it’s almost as if you’re wishing time away.⏳
I know we’re not consciously trying to do this.
In fact, I often see people posting a photo caption that says: “Can we please slow down time??”
But we can’t. ✋
Because the busier we are, the faster the time goes.🏃🏻♀️
And this is from someone who loves to be busy so I am guilty. Like, big time.
But, I encourage you to sit down. Do nothing. Listen to the rain. Put your phone in another room. Drink in some quiet. Reflect. Don’t plan.
🛝Remind yourself of your own childhood.
🛝Remember that you were a kid once.
🛝And you rarely lived in the future.
🛝You lived for the moment.
And that was a form of comfort, a form of contentment.
🪁Be a kid in your head.
☘️March has only just begun. It’s a long month full of possibility.
🍃We will soon get to turn the page on another season, another quarter of the year.
We will even change clocks and lose an hour.⏰
Time is passing quickly enough.⌛️
Don’t forget to take some back for yourself.💚
✨You could be the reason.✨
You could be the only thing standing between a person and their utter despair.
You could be the reason someone decides to persevere through another day.
You may not be able to change someone’s mind about the very biggest of things, but you can change someone’s mind about other things.
Little things.
Like whether people cast warmth in their direction. Often enough.
How they have been feeling helpless and hopeless and like they’re out of options.
How they’ve been feeling like the world smiles on others but it doesn’t smile on them.
You can smile on them.😊
You can make their world feel tighter. Lighter. Closer. More connected.
You can warm them up, if even for a moment.☀️
You can help them through another hour. ⌛️
And if more people did this, they could add to those hours because kindness compounds.
🪷Kindness abounds.
🪷Kindness erupts.
🪷Kindness explodes.
🪷Kindness is contagious.
And unlike most viruses, I hope you catch this one. 🙌
🪴Nature is our Caregiver🪴
This is the amaryllis my girls put into soil the day after Christmas. 🌺
It’s been fun to notice small growth from day to day.🎋
Behind it is a maple syrup candle I got in Toronto a few winters ago, it reminds me of a special weekend visit with my mother. 🍁
If what you’re hearing on the news is too much, try to quiet one sense and bring out another.
🐿️ Use your eyes – is there anything in nature that’s changing: colors, geese flying south, anything different about this time of year?
🚌 I noticed there was a touch more daylight as I was walking my daughter to the bus stop early this morning.
☀️ An hour later, I don’t think I could have been happier to use my sunglasses.
Your nose – are there any particular scents that bring you joy?
🍪 Bake something delicious.
🍠 Cookies, cornbread, pancakes, heck – even a sweet potato brings out the most wonderful smell in a kitchen.
Touch: are there fabrics that you love? 🧣Velvet. Suede. Vegan leather. Chenille. An old wool sweater. A cozy college sweatshirt. Something to wrap around you, offer comfort.
💫 Envelop yourself in other senses.💫I find whenever I’m having trouble making sense of something, I start to focus on my other “senses.”
We are lucky to have one another.
🍎 Lean into your friends, family, neighbors, bus drivers, teachers…
We are each other’s natural caregivers. 🕊️
Let nature take care of you, too.