Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Ray Johnston (2014-05-13) from his book, The Hope Quotient:  Measure It. Raise It. You'll Never Be the Same. (p.140). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) So many of us, so many times need to do this, don’t we? Ray gives us a good picture of what he means.   He says, “An old parable tells of a farmer who owned a mule that fell into an abandoned, dry well. The farmer decided that neither the mule nor the well were worth saving, so he enlisted his neighbors to help haul dirt to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery. The old mule brayed hysterically as the first shovels of dirt rained down on him. But as he struggled, a thought struck the mule. Every time a shovel of dirt lands on my back, he thought, I’ll just shake it off and step up. So that’s what he did. Shovelful after shovelful, the old mule fought panic and just kept right on shaking it off and stepping up. Shake it off and step

A thought by Ray Johnston (2014-05-13) from his book, The Hope Quotient:  Measure It. Raise It. You'll Never Be the Same. (p.139). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) This is such a good principle.   It has held me steady all through my life.   Oh, I whine around for a moment but not for very long.   What about you? Ray says, “If you do that, you’ll have a future. If you do that, your family will have a future. If you do that, your kids will have a future. If you do that, your church will have a future. If enough people do that, their country could have a brighter future. No one is going to do well over a decade if they don’t respond to bad news in great ways.” Ray goes on, “The great American inventor Thomas Edison started more than one hundred companies before the age of forty and held more than one thousand patents that changed the way the world works. His inventions of the incandescent lightbulb, the phonograp

A thought by Ray Johnston (2014-05-13) from his book, The Hope Quotient:  Measure It. Raise It. You'll Never Be the Same. (p.136). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) That is just the beginning of the thought.   The whole thought by Ray is, “The team that makes the most mistakes is usually the one that wins, because their mistakes mean they’re trying something. ” He goes on, “John Wooden, the famous UCLA college basketball coach with the most men’s championship banners in history, never let failure keep him from reaching toward success. ‘If you’re not making mistakes,” he said, “then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.’” Here is another good quote, “Johnny Cash, the famous singer who battled serious drug and alcohol abuse, said, ‘You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’