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Are you almost disgusted with life, little man?
I'll tell you a wonderful trick that will bring you contentment, if anything can
Do something for somebody, quick!
Are you awfully tired with play, little girl?
Wearied, discouraged, and sick -
I'll tell you the loveliest game in the world,
Do something for somebody, quick!
Though it rains like the rain of the flood, little man
and the clouds are forbidding and thick,
You can make the sun shine in your soul, little man
Do something for somebody, quick!
Though the stars are like brass overhead, little girl,
and the walks like a well-heated brick
and our earthly affairs in a terrible whirl,
Do something for somebody, quick!
This is a real test... given by the Human Relations Dept. at many of the major corporations today. It helps them get better insight concerning their employees and in their prospective employees.
Dr. Phil scored 55 when he took this test on Oprah. Oprah Winfrey got a 38. Some people pay a lot of money to find this information out! Read on, and take the test yourself... this is very interesting... but, don't be overly sensitive!
The following 10-question personality test is pretty accurate, and it only takes a few minutes. Take this test for yourself and have a pen or pencil and paper ready. Don't peek, but begin the test as you scroll down and answer.
Answers are for who you are now and not who you were in the past.
Ready? Begin.
1. When do you feel your best?
A) in the morning
B) during the afternoon and early evening
C) late at night
2. You usually walk (how?)...
A) fairly fast, with long steps
B) fairly fast, with little steps
C) less fast head up, looking the world in the face
D) less fast, head down
E) very slowly
3. When you talk to people, you...
A) stand with your arms folded
B) have your hands clasped
C) have one or both your hands on your hips
D) touch or push the person to whom you are talking
E) play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair
4. When relaxing, you sit with...
A) your knees bent with your legs neatly side by side
B) your legs crossed
C) your legs stretched out or straight
D) one leg curled under you
5. When something really amuses you, you react with...
A) big appreciated laugh
B) a laugh, but not a loud one
C) a quiet chuckle
D) a sheepish smile
6. When you go to a party or social gathering, you...
A) make a loud entrance so everyone notices you
B) make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know
C) make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed
7. You're working very hard, concentrating hard, and you're interrupted. You...
A) welcome the break
B) feel extremely irritated
C) vary between these two extremes
8. Which of the following colors do you like most?
A) Red or orange
B) black
C) yellow or light blue
D) green
E) dark blue or purple
F) white
G) brown or gray
9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep, you are...
A) stretched out on your back
B) stretched out face down on your stomach
C) on your side, slightly curled
D) with your head on one arm
E) with your head under the covers
10. You often dream that you are...
A) falling
B) fighting or struggling
C) searching for something or somebody
D) flying or floating
E) you usually have dreamless sleep
F) your dreams are always pleasant
Now add up your total number of points... and compare below.
OVER 60 POINTS:
Others see you as someone they should 'handle with care.' You're seen as vain, self-centered, and who is extremely dominant. Others may admire you, wishing they could be more like you, but don't always trust you, hesitating to become too deeply involved with you.
51 - 60 POINTS:
Others see you as an exciting, highly volatile, rather impulsive personality, a natural leader, who's quick to make decisions, though not always the right ones. They see you as bold and adventuresome, someone who will try anything once, someone who takes chances and enjoys an adventure. They enjoy being in your company because of the excitement you radiate.
41 - 50 POINTS:
Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who'll always cheer them up and help them out.
31 - 40 POINTS:
Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful and practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expects the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you, realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over if that trust is ever broken.
21 - 30 POINTS:
Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It would really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment, expecting you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then, usually decide against it. They think this reaction is caused partly by your careful nature.
UNDER 21 POINTS:
People think you are shy, nervous, and indecisive, someone who needs looking after, who always wants someone else to make the decisions and who doesn't want to get involved with anyone or anything. They see you as a worrier who always sees problems that don't exist. Some people think you're boring. Only those who know you well, know that you aren't.
Remember, this only a sample test. It it not an absolute reflection of you or your personality. It simply allows you to understand how others may view you... as a friend, as an associate, as a quality resource, as a soulmate, etc. Hopefully it helped make you feel better about yourself.
Once, long ago, an Indian warrior found an eagle's egg on a mountaintop, and he put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. When the time came, the chicks hatched, and so did the little eagle, who had been kept warm in the same brood.
The tiny eagle grew along with the hatchlings. After some time it learned to cluck and cackle like chickens, to scratch the ground, to look for worms. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air onto the lower branches of the bushes, just like all the other chickens.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. Up there in the bright blue, this bird glided with graceful majesty among the wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle was awestruck. It turned to the nearest chicken and asked, "Who's that?"
The chicken looked up and answered, "Oh, that's the golden eagle, the king of the birds. He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth... we're chickens."
So, the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.
-A fable from Anthony De Mello (Walking on Water)-
A couple of Wednesdays ago, I got an evening phone call from the pediatric ICU at Presbyterian Hospital, in Charlotte, NC, where I work as a child life specialist. Usually when they call at night, it means something bad has happened. This, however, was different. My coworker told me that the most amazing thing had just happened and she just had to call to tell me.
We had a patient who has really grown up in and out of the hospital. All the staff knows her and her family. She had been in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for about a month, and had been intubated - on life support. She was not doing well. The doctors had approached mom about taking her off life support the Saturday before. Mom was okay with it, and said that she'd been through so much and if was her time to go she wanted to honor that. So they had taken her off.
It was Wednesday and she was still alive. Amazing. The doctors approached mom about taking off her oxygen mask. Mom was supportive, and began praying over her daughter. The mother of another young patient who was in the bed next to her began praying with her.
The nurse practitioner went to the nurses’ station to chart that she had taken off the oxygen mask. While doing so, she looked up at the security monitor that videotapes the double doors leading into the PICU. It records anyone who may be waiting outside the doors to get in since it is a secure unit. She saw a man standing there, and it looked a little funny to her, so she decided to walk down the hall to open the double doors personally. When she opened them, no one was standing there.
She walked back down to the nurses station to finish charting, assuming he had walked away, but saw him still standing there on the monitor. So she opened the doors with a button near the nurses’ station and leaned over to see him walk in, but no one was standing there.
She pulled over another nurse and both stood staring at this man on the monitor and opening the doors to find no one there. The nurse practitioner leaned in closely to look at the man on the monitor and said, 'Oh my gosh. That's an angel. You can see his wings!'
They said that the sun starting shining so brightly and the whole PICU was strangely filled with light. They said he was a tall man and you could see wings behind him.
They pulled over all the staff of the PICU and the two praying mothers and everyone was staring at this man on the monitor and opening the doors to find no one there. Crying, everyone pulled out their camera phones to take pictures, but no one could get it to show up on their camera. The mother of the girl pulled out her camera phone and finally got a picture of the angel who was guarding the doors to the PICU. He turned out as a man of light. I have attached the picture from her phone.
The girl was later discharged from the hospital to go home.
A grateful whale (As Reported In The SF Chronicle)
On the front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, Dec 15, 2005, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.
The fifty-foot whale was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.
A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her - a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.
They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around - she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.
There are more words in the Oxford English Dictionary than any one individual could possibly know.
In the second edition of the 20-volume series, published in 1989, there are 171,476 words in current use and 41,156 obsolete words. With so many to choose from, could you select just three to live by? The three that come to mind when I pondered this question are faith, hope and love. To me, these are more than just words—they are powerful forces in life that fuel my spirit to live, survive and thrive. As water, oxygen and food are needed to fuel the body…faith, hope and love are needed to fuel the spirit.
Without faith, hope and love, it would be difficult to live a life full of meaning and purpose.
When life events shake our foundation, it is our faith that provides us with the courage to endure and overcome hardship. When fear gets the best of us, our hope for a better tomorrow keeps us moving forward. And as the Apostle Paul wrote, “There are three things that remain—faith, hope and love—and the greatest of these is love.”Love is a gift from God Himself; it allows us to overcome hate, evil, resentment and other destructive emotions. Our love for ourselves and for others defines what we want in life and the actions we take to achieve it.
In her memoir, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, author and holocaust survivor, Dr. Edith Eva Eger wrote, “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, on the Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”
She survived because her hope and faith remained strong; she knew that she wanted to live so she never gave up. Her love for herself and life got her through this horrid time in history.
Our lives are enhanced when hope, love and faith are the essence of our existence. They help us to live each and every day with meaning and purpose.
Lord, let hope, faith and love infuse our being, living and thinking.
The following is one of the oldest sermon illustrations used in the Christian church.
It also tests one’s understanding of the Christian life.
There once lived an ugly, hunchback dwarf. No one ever invited him to a party. No one showed him love or even attention. He became disillusioned with life and decided to climb a mountain and throw himself from its peak into the abyss.
When he ascended the mountain, he met a beautiful girl. He talked to her and discovered that she was climbing the mountain for the same purpose. Her suffering was at the other extreme. She had everyone’s attention and love, but the one she loved had forsaken her for another girl, one with riches.
She felt life had no meaning for her any longer, so they decided to make the ascent together.
While they climbed, they met a man who introduced himself as a police officer in search of a very dangerous bandit who had robbed and murdered many people. The king had promised a large reward to the person who captured him.
The police officer was very confident: “I will catch him because I know he has a feature by which he can be recognized. He has six fingers on his right hand. The police have been looking for him for years. For the last two or three, nothing has been heard from him, but he must pay for a multitude of past crimes.”
The three climbed the mountain. Near its peak was a monastery.
Its abbot, although he had become a monk only recently, had quickly attained great renown for saintliness. When they entered the monastery, he came to meet them. You could see the glory of God in his face
As the girl bowed to kiss his right hand, she saw he had six fingers.
With this, the story ends.
Those who hear this story are perplexed. It can’t finish like this! What happened to the dwarf, the girl, the policeman? Was the criminal caught?
The story’s beauty is that it does finish here.
Something beautiful has happened: A criminal hunted because of his many robberies and murders has become a great saint, renowned for his godly life. All the rest is of no further interest.
The great miracle has been performed. Christ has been born in the heart of a man of very low character.
Are our broadest hopes broad enough? Shall there be a nook or abyss, in all the universe of God, finally unlightened by the Cross? Shall there be a sin, or sorrow, or pain unhealed? Is the very universe, is creation in all its extent, a field wide enough for the Son of God?
In ancient Greece, (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.
One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”
“Hold on a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything, I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”
“Triple filter?”
“That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test.”
“The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”
“No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and...”
“All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”
“No, on the contrary...”
“So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”
“No, not really.”
“Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”
This is why Socrates was a great philosopher & held in such high esteem. We should all use this triple filter each time we hear loose talk about any of our friends, family and other associates.
It's hard to imagine that before he founded the Holiday Inn motel chain, travelers had few places to spend a night on the road
In the early 1950s, a new Interstate Highway system, cheap gasoline, big cars, and prohibitively expensive air travel meant that even millionaires packed up the family and took to the road for driving vacations. It was summer, 1951, when Kemmons Wilson, one of Memphis' most well-known businessmen, left on a two-week trip to Washington, D.C., with his wife and five children.
A highly successful real estate agent and homebuilder, Wilson was famous in Memphis for constructing bigger and better houses than his competitors, but charging similar prices. One of his pet phrases -- "The space in the middle of a house doesn't cost anything" -- explained his common-sense approach to both building houses and life in general.
That's why Wilson was particularly galled at the $2-per-child surcharge that roadside motels commonly attached to his bill on that fateful trip. The room was already rented, Wilson reasoned. Why should it cost more if a few kids are running around the space in the middle? At the end of the vacation, Wilson told his wife he was going to start his own hotel chain.
EVERYBODY STAYS THERE.
The result was Holiday Inn motels, the roadside home-away-from home for millions that ushered in the modern hotel era and popularized the roadside perks that Americans have come to love (albeit take for granted): air conditioning in every room, free parking, free ice, in-room phones, rates by the room and not the number of people, and high cleanliness standards.
While the chain has seen its ups and down depending on the fickle taste of the U.S. vacationer and business traveler, more than 1,000 Holiday Inns today dot byways in all 50 states and in more than 50 countries. According to the company, 96% of Americans have stayed in a Holiday Inn at least once.
Wilson was born in Osceola, Ark., in 1913. His father died when Kemmons was still an infant and his mother, Doll Wilson, took a job as a dental assistant in Memphis. Wilson's future entrepreneurialism was fueled by early necessity. In fact, his most amazing accomplishment may have come when he was 20. As the Great Depression hit, Doll Wilson lost her job, and her son quit school to try selling popcorn and soda.
MUSIC MAN.
When that didn't get him very far, Wilson borrowed $50 from a good friend to buy his own popcorn machine, which he set up in a movie theater lobby. By 1933 -- the very nadir of the Depression -- Wilson had saved enough ($1,700) from selling popcorn that he purchased a house for Doll and himself to live in.
Jukeboxes were the entrepreneur's next frontier. He purchased the local Wurlitzer franchise, prospered, and started buying lots and building houses. Upon deciding to build his motels, Wilson filched the "Holiday Inn" moniker from a 1942 Bing Crosby film of the same name. Wilson employed his homebuilding experience to immediate effect. He chose ideal locations for the first four Holiday Inns, all in Memphis.
The first, which opened in 1952 just off a two-lane highway on the outskirts of the town, charged $6 per night. Wilson's business contacts throughout the state translated into wildfire growth. By 1959 100 were in operation, and at the chain's peak in 1975 1,700 Holiday Inns were spread around the world.
"I'LL TAKE THE REST."
As the 1970s and 1980s wore on and companies began to value and appeal to the "middle market," that vast area that most people and companies fall under, Wilson had long figured out that most people wanted simplicity, quality, and low-cost. The Economist quoted him in 2003 as once saying, "You can cater to rich people, and I'll take the rest. The good Lord made more of them."
All the while, Wilson started other companies, such as theater and real estate concerns, under the rubric Kemmons Wilson Cos., to sell to this same customer base. Wilson eventually sold the Holiday Inn franchise in 1990. Today, all five of his children participate in Kemmons Wilson Cos., headquartered in Memphis.
Though Wilson never did get that high school degree, he nonetheless gave his most famous public statement when he was invited late in life to speak at a commencement ceremony at the school. "I really don't know why I'm here," Wilson said. "I never got a diploma, and I've only worked half-days my entire life. I guess that's my advice to you. Work half-days every day. And it doesn't matter which half, the first half or the second half."
Wilson died at his home in Memphis on Feb. 11, 2003. A short anecdote told by a friend at Wilson's funeral service summed him up best. Wilson, who flew 65 mission as a World War II pilot, was asked by a friend why he gone ahead and volunteered. His response:
"I don't think they can win that war without me."
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