Dr. Thomas Maples

Inspirational Quotes

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Abraham Lincoln

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Father’s Guide to Wisdom

As a healing professional, I see that a significant source of anxiety present for people, in general, is that they fear failure. This fear can ultimately be a paralyzing experience, an experience that can eventually affect the outcome of one’s life. However, fear is a primary human emotion, one of which prompts our life journey forward, allowing us the essential tools needed to survive.

While fear itself is a needed element for necessary survival skills, we need to be mindful of where we place it. For if we learn the habit of displacing it in areas that are beneficial to our life, we run the risk of ultimately enacting the very things we fear in life the most.

We are taught at an early age to fear the F. Yes, failure means the lack of success. But much worst, when compared to others in let us say a school or work setting, it merely means you did not meet up to another’s expectations. But, from where does this need to meet other’s expectations come? Isn’t our job to ultimately develop a deeply engrained love for ourselves, so that we may freely and willingly give that love to another individual. It is in this paradox that I see the beauty of today’s quotes from one of the most outstanding leaders of all time, and a man of true poetic transcendental individualism.

Abraham Lincoln knew the subject of failure intimately. As a leader, he governed a country that was in shambles. Even at a time of war, Lincoln stood up to the disdain that surrounded the fundamental human rights his policies sought to enact. His greatest accomplishment was to have never given up, even in the face of the numerous business and political defeats he underwent during his lifetime. For this, his rivals loathed his existence. But he marched to a different heartbeat and saw a vision not many took the time to visit. Ultimately, the 16th President of the United States was grounded in a direction others refused to see. He never saw failure in his undertakings, even though the sting of its lessons haunted him throughout his life. The moral of his saying, it only takes one success to achieve greatness in life so don’t be content with the failures present.

As for Waldo, his words ring especially true these days. Be yourself. The world bombards each of us with images that strive to make us feel inferior. As a tool, inferiority is a weapon best used to keep the herd in check; it promotes individual weakness to keep the mass in unison and safe. The only problem, while the pack believes it is safe, the predators are always near, lurking for the opportunity to pounce.

The moral of today’s sayings, be yourself. Accomplishment happens when you turn your failures into success. We have the choice to see achievement or loss. We chose our reality and can see it as a source of darkness or the light of lessons learned as we move forward to greater heights. Waldo and Lincoln’s sayings show us that the only failure in life is a lesson not learned. To stand in the wake of this knowledge, avenues of individual growth occur despite the direction the herd may wish to lead us.

Namaste. May God bless you along your journey to believe, achieve, and advance confidently in the direction of your dreams.

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