“wife and two children on the spot of barren dirt that hours before had been his home and everything he owned, he spoke the words I will keep with me always. He said, “We have lost absolutely everything. We have nothing left other than the clothes on our backs.” Then, after a brief pause, he continued, “But I guess we are lucky since our whole family is safe and sound. We have everything important.” To have lost everything and still have everything seems contradictory, but it’s not. As I reflect on the lessons presented by the young father, I realize that we all spend a lot of time accumulating things that in the final”
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Jim Stovall
“experience, and most of those experiences are painful and costly. If you can learn from someone else’s pain and expense, you are a wise person, indeed. I would encourage you to read this book, cover-to-cover, but also keep it as a reference text using the sections and individual columns as a resource you can revisit as your life journey calls for specific wisdom. It is my hope that this is not a one-time encounter that you and I are having. My hope is, in the coming months and years as you travel toward your own personal”
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Jim Stovall
“Our memories are not totally fact or completely fiction. They are a conglomeration of the thoughts that we put together to explain to ourselves who we are. Just like a beautiful flower garden will look totally different in daylight as opposed to dark, the memories of our past are held hostage by our perspective.”
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Jim Stovall
“that we would receive the overwhelming message that the vast majority of adults feel they have no talent in these areas. On the other hand, if we were to conduct the same poll among 4-year-olds, we would find that virtually all of them are convinced they can sing, and virtually all of them have confidence in their ability to dance. Most of the 4-year-olds have little or no real talent, but, instead, they are endowed with incredible confidence in their own potential. This confidence, or certainty of success, is something we were all born with but we later traded in for a strong dose of what we call realism. Shortly after we reach school age, we are taught lessons about the world that revolve around us, limiting our vision and becoming realistic.”
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Jim Stovall
“great legacy starts with a great life, and every great life starts with a great plan.”
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Jim Stovall
“We, here in Western civilization, have failed to master the concept of living in the moment. We spend so much time worrying about yesterday or planning tomorrow that we fail to live today.”
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Jim Stovall
“Love is a treasure for which we can never pay. The only way we keep it is to give it away.”
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Jim Stovall
“Anything good, honorable, and desirable in life is based on love. Anything bad or evil is simply life without the love involved.”
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Jim Stovall
“In order to be truly happy in the largest sense of that word, we must have something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.”
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Jim Stovall
“reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book”
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Jim Stovall
“gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will”
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Jim Stovall
“... sometimes in life, you either laugh or you cry. And I prefer to laugh.”
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Jim Stovall
“I finally know that joy does not come from avoiding a problem or having someone else deal with it for you. Joy comes from overcoming a problem or simply learning to live with it while being joyful.”
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Jim Stovall
“in their lives, becoming ever-more beaten down, will often be heard to say, “I knew that was going to happen.” On the other hand, the winners in every arena of life seem to continue to win time after time and expect it as their due. As we go about our daily”
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Jim Stovall
“by literally millions whether in newspapers, magazines or today’s popular social media such as emails and Facebook. Through the generosity of Jim who is contributing his many years of work to be published in a book by the non-profit Napoleon”
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Jim Stovall