The roads leading to our personal goals are beset with potholes, unexpected closures, incorrect estimates, and speed traps. Then of course we also have to contend with the unskilled drivers, traffic jams, and people who can’t choose a lane. Simply put, it is never a direct path and things will get in the way.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by life’s setbacks, these are some proverbs that always remind me to slow down, breathe, think, and gain perspective:
Change, like sunshine, can be a friend or foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk.
If the counsel is good, it does not matter who gave it.
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Experience without learning is better than learning without experience.
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
Whenever you fall, pick something up.
A genius is one who shoots at something no one else can see and hits it.
One has no need of a guide to a village one can see.
The difficult is done at once, the impossible takes a little longer.
Many irons in the fire, some must cool.
Knowledge is a wild thing and must be hunted before it can be tamed.
Learn weeping, and you shall gain laughing.
Only some of us can learn by other people’s mistakes. The rest of us have to be the other people.
Exasperation is the mind’s way of spinning its wheels until patience restores traction.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.
A ship in harbor is safe–but that is not what ships are for.
“I must do something” will always solve more problems than “Something must be done.”
A tale never loses in the telling.
Nothing dries sooner than tears.
One who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.
The work will teach you how to do it.
Goals are different than plans. Plans must go off without a hitch and be completed by a specific date. Goals are just end results that would be nice to have, and the deadlines are flexible. Plans fall apart and must be rewritten from scratch; goals are everlasting and adaptive to change. So make goals, not plans, and please do be kind to yourself when the progress wears thin. You got this.
Adam Harrell 
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