Ever wanted to spread your wings to fly? But fear held you back? Afraid to fly? Afraid to fail? Comfortable and safe in your current situation?

Is it better to stay in a stagnant job, situation, or relationship than to muster up the courage to attempt to fly? What is security? Is anything secure?

Freedom comes at a cost, and fear steps up to the plate in an attempt to hit a home run. Perhaps we might study the wisdom demonstrated to us by Nature. The lilies, the trees, and the stars don’t paralyze themselves in a fear of the unknown. Instead, they flower, bend with the breeze, and shine brilliantly, trusting in a Universal source to see them through.

If you find yourself struggling with the fear of relinquishing security in exchange for the dream of freedom, perhaps you will find wisdom and comfort in the words of those who have gone before us.

Famous Quotes on Security:

• All things human hang by a slender thread; and that which seemed to stand strong suddenly falls and sinks in ruins. ~ Ovid, BC 43 – AD 18.

• Security is the chief enemy of mortals. ~ William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616.

• The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. ~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus, 55 – 117.

• Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed. ~ Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965.

• Only the insecure strive for security. ~ Wayne Dyer.

• Many people think that by hoarding money they are gaining safety for themselves. if money is your ONLY hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a person can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Without these qualities, money is practically useless. ~ Henry Ford, 1863- 1947.

Famous Quotes on Freedom:

• Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929 – 1968.

• Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits. ~ Thomas Jefferson.

• Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. ~ Wayne Dyer.

• All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. ~ Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965.

• Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living? ~ Mohanda Gandhi.

• There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires. ~ Nelson Mandela.

Security vs freedom? Go ahead, step onto the brim of the nest, take a deep breath, and scan the whole world that awaits you. Trust that you can fly. You can fly…high, high, high into the sky.

My yoga teacher, Lezlie, sent me the following quote last night. I read it a couple of times. It seems to hit the nail on the head…

A Messy Process

Evolution is a messy process. So anybody who really wants to make the effort to strive for something new is going to have to be willing to make mistakes, take wrong turns, even to fail, but never give up. The simple truth is this: if not failing is more important to you than genuinely succeeding, you’re never going to make it. If you really want to succeed, you have to have a to fearlessly engage with the evolutionary process until something profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone. ~ Andrew Cohen

Have you ever sat back and lamented in hindsight for all the mistakes you made? People who were negatively affected by your actions? Things that just didn’t turn out the way you had planned, the way you had dreamed?

Never fear, it is all in the past. Today is a whole new day. Andrew Cohen is telling us that we cannot succeed if we don’t take some wrong turns and make some mistakes along the way. Be kind to yourself. Be excited that the traumas of yesterday have built a bridge to an amazing future.

TODAY…

Totally

Outstanding

Delight

Awaits

You

TODAY, this very moment, is when the “profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone.”

It all starts today by you and me picking ourselves up, shaking off the dust, and excitedly moving forward…allowing the good things to come our way.

You have a “big heart, heroic will, tenacity, courage, and commitment.” You can do it! Just start today…

Feeling the need for some inspiration this morning, a Christmas present, Believe: The Words and Inspiration of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, made its way into my hand.

Believe – it all starts with that, doesn’t it? No matter the issue, problem, desire, or cause, your dreams and desires all begin with belief. The problem is, when you are down and out, it is really tough to  believe.

Perhaps the following quotes will inspire and encourage you as much as they did me…

1. The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. – Frank Lloyd Wright
2. You’ll see it when you believe it. – Wayne Dyer
3. We are what we believe we are. – C. S. Lewis
4. I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary. – Lou Holtz
5. Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success. – Pablo Picass
6. When you believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable. -Walt Disney
7. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – Theodore Roosevelt
8. Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours. – Dale Carnegie
9. If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done. – Dale Carnegie
10. Before you can win, you have to believe you are worthy. – Mike Ditka
11. Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. – Henry Ford
12. Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. – Norman Vincent Peale
13. Four things for success: work and pray, think and believe. – Norman Vincent Peale
14. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. – Eleanor Roosevelt
15. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. – W. Clement Stone

Hmmm, there seems to be some magic in believing.

If you want to get into even more of the Christmas spirit this holiday season, go see the movie Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.

In the film, President Nelson Mandela campaigns to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup event as a means to unite his countrymen.  Apartheid, the previous social and political policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by white minority governments in South Africa, was still too painful for the countrymen to embrace Springbok, the all-white Rugby team.  

Mandela meets with the team captain, Francois Pienaar, before the start of the Rugby World Cup to pledge the country’s full support of him and the team. As a gesture of encouragement, Mandela hands Pienaar an envelope containing something that helped him endure his previous 27-year prison term. Later that evening, Pienaar opens the envelope to find the following poem:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The words were so completely captivating, I quickly jotted down a couple phrases so that I could research the poem once I returned home.

The title of the poem is Invictus, written by the English poet William Ernest Henley in 1875. At the age of 12, Henley became a victim of tuberculosis of the bone. In spite of this, in 1867 he successfully passed the Oxford local examination as a senior student. His diseased foot had to be amputated directly below the knee. Physicians had announced that the only way to save his life was to amputate. Henley persevered and survived with one foot intact. He was discharged in 1875, and was able to lead an active life for nearly 30 years despite his disability. With an artificial foot, he lived until the age of 53. The poem was written from a hospital bed.

In my Google search I found that in reality, Mandela actually provided Pienaar with an extract from Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena”speech from 1910.

The speech is notable for the extended passage:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The following passage was quoted by Richard Nixon in his resignation speech on August 8, 1974:

“Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, ‘whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…’”

Wow, Invictus and The Man in the Arena – two powerful documentaries. What a gift of  inspiration from Henley and Roosevelt to show us there isn’t anything that we can’t endure…

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.