How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
Stephen CoveyRead
We are free to choose our actions, . . . but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.
Interpretation
We can decide what we do, but we can't control the outcomes of those decisions.
This quote by Stephen Covey highlights the distinction between our ability to make choices and the inevitability of their consequences. While we have the freedom to act according to our will, the results of those actions are often beyond our control, reminding us to take responsibility for our choices and to be mindful of their potential impact.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal responsibility.
How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee.
Listen with your eyes for feelings.
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, _x000D_ we're tied to that which is infinite.
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
Those caught in the cycle of self-concern suffer helplessly, while the compassionate are more free and, implicitly, more happy.
What we know matters but who we are matters more.
Being free brings a lightness, a carefree surrender to all that is happening around you, and, above all, an acceptance of reality.
I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.
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