Farewell Quotes

I'm so sad to announce that this will be my final blog post of the year! I honestly cannot believe that this year has come to a close so quickly, but I digress. I spent a quite a bit of time this week thinking of the ultimate way to finish off this blog for the year. I reminisced a little and I read through all of my wildly eclectic blog posts from this entire year to get some solid ideas and I finally decided that I would pull some of the main ideas from my older blog posts and pull out some newer ideas to form a list of all of the my "life mottos" that I have gathered so far and would love to share with you all! So here goes nothing:

1. "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." - William James
I learned this lesson from my grandmother, bless her heart, who has been afraid of living since she was young. Many years of fearing the outside world has kept her held up in her own little home for the past 30 years, where her monotonous routine has become the entirety of her life. Though she doesn't realize it, through this she has taught me a very valuable lesson about letting go of my fears and taking advantageous of every little opportunity that comes my way, despite how scary it may seem. She has taught me that life is about protecting yourself from the world around you, its about diving in, taking risks, and enjoying the experiences that create a life worth living for.

2. "Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self evident. - Arthur Schophenhauer 
I have heard this stated in several different ways by several different people, however its meaning always rings true despite its various mediums. I love this quote so much because it has encouraged me to think outside the boundaries quite a bit. Sometimes we are too caught up in unspoken social rules to move society forward. It takes someone who is a little bit different, but not afraid of that difference to make big changes in the world. I encourage you all to be a little different, think outside of the norm and use these things to better our world.

3. "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Crosby 
Although Bill Crosby might not be the most ethos worthy character in the media today, I still think that his words here are so very true. I have always been a "people pleaser" and I originally thought that this was the ultimate way to reach some sort of self-actualization, but I couldn't have been more incorrect. Life is a give and take sort of thing. You cannot forget entirely about yourself and you cannot forget entirely about others. You must find a happy medium in between these two points. Make yourself happy, but always be aware of others.

4. "Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Edison 
This is a lesson that I have most certainly learned from my Dad. I am so extremely lucky to have such an amazing support system, my family, that never ceases to believe in me and constantly pushes me forward (even when I would prefer that they didn't). My father always told me that I was capable of anything that I put my mind to, and although I was first wary about this growing up, I now know that this holds quite a bit of truth. We are all capable of something truly great. Don't let little bumps in the road discourage you from achieving your goals. And don't ever give up.

5. "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden 
This is a life lesson that I have heard straight from my mother (in other words of course) since I was a child. I have always been a bit of a perfectionist, which many times sets me up to feel as though I have failed. However, my mother always told me, despite how much I so disliked the idea, that there would always be someone smarter than me, someone taller, someone prettier, someone richer, but that I couldn't let that get in the way of who I was. And now I can admit that she was completely right. I was letting what I couldn't change or do interfere with the things that I was and could do. I was measuring my worth in things that I couldn't achieve rather than the things I had achieved. Although this idea is hard to grasp in the highly idealistic society in which we live in, it is the only way to find yourself and be proud of that person. The moral of the story is that you shouldn't let failures or inabilities to keep you from achieving your own personal goals.


I hope that you all find ways to find yourself from some of the lessons that I have talked about here, but also in all of the blog posts from this year! Good luck to all of you! I have really enjoyed sharing my thoughts with all of you!