Tag Archives: succeed

How the Mighty Have Fallen

We used to be number one in almost everything but, over the last couple of decades, America has been losing the competitive edge after so many years of being on top. We saw it in the schools when the byword was that it’s more important that students should feel good about themselves than learn useless information in their classes. I’ve spoken to teachers from the elementary school grades up through college level and they are all saying the same thing. …

The Tape We Hear Inside Our Head

I had often wondered why some people work hard to succeed and some people don’t want to work at all. Are we wired that way or are we listening to a tape that our parents and teachers planted inside our head from the time we were young through all the days of our life? We know it’s not a case of genetics because those are medical traits that are handed down from parents to their offspring. So, if it’s not …

Knowing When to Give Up

There’s a fine line between knowing when to give up and knowing when to keep trying until you succeed. I was taught that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. And if you still don’t succeed, keep trying until you do. And, for most of my life, that’s the axiom I’ve lived by. I might have to walk away from something for a while and then go back to it and try again, to see if I …

Do You Know How to Read?

Let me start out by saying I don’t like emoticons and I don’t use them. My rationale is that I don’t see authors using them in the books I read because they credit the reader with being intelligent enough to read a passage and know whether the author was being sarcastic, humorous, sorrowful, apologetic, angry, pleased, rude, cavalier, or a whole host of other emotional responses. To this day, I have refused to memorize what those silly things mean because …

Fake it Till You Make it

When I first heard the words, “fake it till you make it,” I was cynical. I couldn’t imagine anything that started with the premise of deception, having a positive impact. But, here it is, years later, and I’m ready to concede my error. Integrity has always played a big part in my life; I’m a “take me or leave me” kind of person, so don’t expect me to change who I am in order to please you or to make …

If I Were Twenty Again

I wouldn’t want to be twenty again but wisdom comes at a hefty price and you usually don’t acquire it until you are a great deal older. I have often thought that I don’t really have any regrets for the decisions I’ve made in my life, but the other day I revisited that opinion and I came away with a different perspective. Now that I am at the other end of life, looking back is much easier because I have …

Laziness and Procrastination

While I realize that procrastination is not another term for laziness, I’ve also seen how procrastination can engender laziness. Procrastination can start out as a fear of failure or a dozen other root causes, but after a while, you can get so accustomed to not pushing yourself to do anything difficult, that you stop trying. It’s the part about giving up and giving in that seems to have such a damaging effect on one’s life and distorts one’s perception of …

Financial Discontent

In these days of a failing economy, high unemployment, and massive home foreclosures, you would think that anyone who had a job that covered expenses would feel blessed. Instead, the opposite seems to be true. It sometimes seems as though a whole society is discontented with their lives even when they have so much to be thankful for. I can understand wanting to improve your lot in life and setting goals for yourself. I can even understand feelings of failure …

Connie H. Deutsch