You can let it screw you

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1. Because reality is what it is, logic dictates it's best to deal with the world the way the world is and not the way you wish it were. Goal in life should be to discover what reality actually is, not try to wish it away. 
2. Rarely do we see the world as it is.  Most of the time we see what we want to see.  Most love to be deluded since it feels so warm and fuzzy compared to the harness of reality. But self-delusion leads us to believe we're immune to the consequences of our own destructive tendencies. Actions always have consequences, one must never be misled just because the payback for their choices are not always immediate.  
3. The worst place to live is in denial, denial only makes things worse.  You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. 
4. Your perception of reality may not have any connection to reality itself, which should scare the hell out of you. 
5. To counteract con games, question everything and love truth more than anything, even your own ideology.  Be willing to even let go of cherished beliefs if that’s where it leads. 
6. Those who would deceive - despise questions. How others react to questions is revealing. Always ask are ideas based upon logic or emotion? Consensus does not mean something is true for the majority is often wrong. 
7. Stop the BS. The most foolish thing you can do is lie to yourself, if you lie to yourself, there is no hope. 
8. If you want to take control of your future stop blaming others for your situation. Stop playing the victim or feeling sorry for yourself.  If you think like a victim you'll act like a victim. Victims are weak, powerless and easy targets because they give away their power by not taking responsibility for their actions and decisions. 
9. Be Different. Be Brave. Be a Trendsetter and move on. Forget whose fault it is, the only question should be, what are you going to do about it.

People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.

Winston Churchill  

This Is It - This Kenny Loggins tune from 1979 says it well.   

This is it, make no mistake where you are, don’t be a fool anymore. The moment is now, the waiting is over, here’s your miracle - stand up and fight. 

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

Naiveté is never an admirable trait in adults. Dennis Prager

99% of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. George Washington Carver

Why Is Reality So Important?

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What are you most excited about in your life right now?

1. Goals are great but shortly after achieving them the excitement fades. Most of life is lived in the pursuit of goals while only a tiny percent of our time is actually spent in the exhilaration phase of "Yes...I did it!"  
2. It's easy to get caught up in the pursuit of one's goals and trick yourself into believing that on some magical day when you get that job, that promotion, graduate, move, retire, get married, or get divorced, then on that mythical day things will be good and  then you'll start to enjoy life.  Much of life loses its meaning if your main reason for living is waiting for some day down the road that may never happen. 
3. Or you can choose the Red Pill and be aware of and take pleasure in and ... cherish the moments of your life as they happen. This present moment is the only thing you posses, tomorrow is but a dream, all else is a memory. You can choose to be obsessed with regrets about the past, or worries for the  future, or you can unplug more often and turn off autopilot, to savor the moments of  your journey as they unfold.  
4. Why not create a new habit, make each day an adventure and yes some will be small adventures, while others will be one heck of a wild ride. This happens if you will refuse to be normal and do what few people do, make each day a great day. Great days begin the night before when you create a clear plan of action so every morning when you awake, you're ready to act and ready to live your life as... you chase your dreams.
5. Curiosity is a wonderful tool, it lets you wake up in the morning and say "what if" I did things differently today, what if I knew what I needed to do and I refused to allow distractions to keep me from following my plan?  What if I took more chances and experimented more to discover what works?
6. Start each day with magic; unleash the power found in gratitude. Consider your blessings, remind yourself of all the good things you have, rather than the things you lack.  Stop waiting for better opportunities to magically appear because the opportunities in front of you - right now - are your best opportunities, but they could be gone tomorrow.

• It’s you and only you. No one else determines your destiny; nobody else can come alive for you but you. 

The best day of your life is the day you decide your life is your own - that is the day your life really begins. Bob Moawad  

Ability to see the opportunities in front of one's nose is a constant struggle. George Orwell
 

Make today one of the Good Times you look back on with a smile and a wink

Lets Celebrate... Another Day Of Living
Sing Out And Be Free
I Ain't Wastin' No More Time  If this 1987 Whitesnake hit does not rock you,  we can't be friends.
 

"The Station"  This poem by Robert Hastings illustrates why fear and regret are twin thieves..

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1. Got to be willing to fail over and over again for only a small percentage of sales, deals or proposals ever close. Best way to achieve long-term success...be prepared for short-term failure. 
2. See yourself as a problem solver and never stop trying new things; this makes "failure" a wonderful source of information. If you want to succeed embrace failure, it's how you figure out what works, and what doesn't work. 
3. Doing what’s risky and uncertain is seldom easy which is why people who dare are so richly rewarded.  
4. Success in business, marriage, friendship, writing a book, or mastering a new skill demands persistence. Creating great things is a process that seldom happens overnight.  
5. The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn the better you get. John Maxwell
6. Easy days don’t exist when you’re doing amazing things.  There are no guarantees in life. If you’re afraid of failing, you’ll never get very far. Practice making a friend of failure, be willing to crash and burn, and even look stupid. 
7. The core difference between winners and losers: the willingness to fail. Winners know the simple formula for success; double the rate of failure. Winners dislike failure as much as anyone, but they accept that success never happens without it. We all screw up big time but mistakes don't have to define you. It's how you handle mistakes that matter. Forgive yourself and move on. 
8. If you're not excited and scared s***less about what you're doing it's probably not worth doing. Making the most out of life mean being scared to death but taking the next step anyway.
9. Life is full of pain, disappointment and a seemingly never-ending stream of hardships, obstacles, failures, injustices and curve balls. The good news: perspective, life throws everyone curve balls.
10. To prepare for reality, remind yourself, "Today I will encounter interference, ingrates, rudeness, disloyalty, hostility, selfishness, busybodies, egomaniacs, liars, jealous people, cranks, rejection, frustration, lost jobs, incompetent "professionals", so called bad luck, loans that aren’t granted, sales that don’t close, dishonest friends, lovers, spouses who walk out, and deals that fall through at the last moment and of course stupid drivers.  
11. It's essential to see good things happening in spite of the fact that life is frequently often unfair.
12. Goal in life is not stay stuck but to move quickly through pain and the 5 stages of grief.  First comes denial, then anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. The longer you dwell in any stage, the longer you'll stay stuck and the greater its power to harm you. 
13. Striving for perfection is the best way to hide from creating something excellent. Strive for excellence because this world doesn't reward perfectionists, but those who get things done. Perfection is a fantasy and an illusion. The illusive search for perfection is the direct path to anxiety, anger, addiction, depression, and paralysis. 
14. Go start something. It's OK if it's a little rough around the edges, just create value and then improve it out as you go.  Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, it's all anyone can do. 
15. Success is never a straight line but a constant series of unexpected twists, turns and setbacks.

• Become an instigator not a responder
• Initiate ideas and projects
• Invite friends over for a spontaneous dinner party.                            

Question is not who is going to let me; 

The question is - Who is going to stop me? Ayn Rand    

Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance.

Talent will not.

Nothing more common than unsuccessful people with talent. 

Genius will not. 

Unrewarded genius is almost legendary. 

Education will not.

The world is full of educated derelicts.

Perseverance, determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge.

If everything is under control, you're just not going fast enough. 

Mario Andretti.  

From 1979 Don't Let Nothing Stand In Your Way Ain't No Stopping Us Now

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Show me a man who can make a decision and act on that decision and I'll show you a man who will succeed. Dale Carnegie 

1. Research shows those who believe they will become successful are more likely to become successful. People who believe they are fast runners tend to run faster. People who believe they’re going to do well on a test are more likely to do well on the test. 
2. It turns out that crazy successful people are confident and even a bit delusional as they don't just believe but act like they are rock stars even before they are rock stars. (U.C. Berkeley School of Business)  
3. That's why the first sale is ALWAYS to yourself. You've got to sell yourself on your self, if you don't believe in yourself no one else will, this lets your confidence turn thoughts into action.  
4. Perfectionism is the mortal enemy of an exciting life because there are no perfect plans. Learn to live not knowing everything before you act. Sometimes you just have to make the call and say this is good enough. 
5. No choice is still a choice. For simple decisions, when you're full of pep, use your brain. Take 5 minutes to decide, not 5 hours. For complex decisions or tired, use intuition, your sixth sense, and go with your gut instinct. Trusting your gut is powerful because your gut is the collection of your entire subconscious past experiences.
6. Nothing is more difficult and therefore more precious than the ability to decide. Napoleon.  Learn to make decisions that seem a little irrational from the outside yet feel totally right on the inside. 
7. If unsure what to do next, outline all of your options and write them out. None will be perfect and all will involve some degree of discomfort. Life is not about the choices you want, it's about the choices you have. 
8. Everything in life is a trade off since everything has a price.  If you're watching TV, you're not reading a book. If you're reading a book, you're not working. If you're working, you're not sleeping. 
9. If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never make much progress or create anything original. Overthinking is wanting all the answers and then doubting all the answers. Think. Plan. Act. And then polish it as you go.  
10. The best survivors, SuperSurvivors spend almost no time in emergencies getting upset over what’s lost or feeling distressed when things go badly.  Stop over analyzing, relax, stay cool and manage your emotions. This helps your brain make right choices. When angry or emotional it's almost impossible to think logically and you're more likely too overreact.    
11. If you’ve hit rock bottom, you can’t afford to do things conventionally. You can reinvent yourself and reawaken your power, your magic, and your dreams because you are more powerful than you realize so envision yourself doing thing boldly.
12. What's the best way to discover what works, experiment more. Be a scientist, experiment and replace "I'm going to try something," and say this instead, "I have an hypothesis, I wonder if this will work?"  Followed closely by "fascinating" to replace tacky expletives. 
13. Are you waiting for someone to give you what you want? Good luck with that! Sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and leap. Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage.

                                   Only Two Choices In Life

• You Can Fit In Or You Can Stand Out - (You Can't Do Both)
• But if You Fit In... You Will Disappear 

 You're only a little spark of madness, you mustn't lose it. Robin Williams

There’s a microscopically thin line

between being brilliantly creative 

and acting like a gigantic idiot. 

When in doubt make a fool of yourself. Cynthia Heime

Fine line between genius and insanity. 

I like to use it as a jumping rope. Anon

I want to stay as close to the edge as possible without going over. Out of the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

You laugh at me because I am different. 

I laugh at you because you are all the same. Daniel Knode 

It’s none of my business what people say of me or think of me.

I do what I do. It makes life so much easier. Anthony Hopkins  

if you own your flaws and imperfections - they can't be used against you.

Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?

I Made Up My Mind, I Ain't Wastin' No More Time

Art Williams - The original - "Just Do It"

15 Things Happy People Do To Make their Lives Spectacular

1. They see bad times as temporary and search for the good, the valuable lesson in every situation, setback and difficulty.
2. They refuse to give little things or little people the power to steal their happiness. 
3. Instead of complaining they ask, “What’s the solution?”
4. They refuse to live in the past, instead they constantly think and talk about their dreams and their future.
5. They have a sense of control in their lives from having concrete goals. They don’t let worries stay vague and scary, but create specific plans to handle those concerns. 
6. They focus on the abundance in their life rather than concentrating on the things they lack. This allows them to count their blessings daily and talk about the things for which they are grateful.
7. They find humor in the absurdity of life, especially their own eccentric behaviors. Human beings are the only animals that can laugh at them self. It's easy to laugh at others, but if you can laugh at your own quirks, you'll always be happy. 
8. To keep their sanity from the all insanity that exists in the world they know what makes them happy and they do more of those things. It's often simple things such as taking pleasure in hobbies, music, friends, exercise, religion, cycling, cars, dogs, nature, books, travel, the traveling rings, Blue-Tongued Skinks, turtles, African Senegal parrots, comedy clubs, conversation, the beach, but especially dogs, cycling, and cars.
9. They change their attitude by reframing situations. Rather than saying, “I have to go to work, or “I have to exercise”, they replace it with "I get to go to work or “I get to exercise” along with the optional, "and I (expletive deleted) love it.”  
10. They accept that people seldom act the way they want them to act. They know that since they can’t control people, it only makes sense to have fewer expectations, this way when people do what they say they would do, they are both happy and grateful.
11. They know it's easy to be happy for the big things in life like, a new car, a promotion or a better job, but big events in life are rare while it's the little things that are far more common, so they appreciate and take joy in the abundance of the little things.
12. They look for the offsetting positives when things they dislike happen because they know if they wish to be depressed, it's quite easy; simply ruminate on negative things and negative people. 
13. Before they do anything they ask, will this make me happy? Watching TV or playing video games for 3 hours a night might be fun now, but they ask twenty years from now will I be happy that I did?
14. They know that everything in life is temporary and not everyone or everything is meant to stay. Sometimes the best thing to do is turn the page and accept that things will never go back to how they use to be. 
15. They develop the skills, attitudes and mindset to be happy. It requires work just as everything worthwhile does, so they put in the effort to change their attitude and actions.  

Why Optimism Rocks

1. Positive emotions flood the brain with the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin that not only make you feel good, they also improve the learning center of your brain to help you organize new information and keep that information in the brain longer and then retrieve it faster.
2. Sadness and despair are negative emotions that create apathy; the belief that nothing matters. 
3. Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow. Seth Godin 
4. Being optimistic gives your brain a competitive edge. When you have a positive mindset, you’re smarter, more motivated and more successful.  
5. Being optimistic allows your brain to stay open to possibilities, to think logically, more creativity, to feel less anxiety, to be better at complex problem solving and even be better negotiator.
6. Optimists see more opportunities, set more goals, and put more effort into attaining those goals. 
7. Optimists cope better in high stress situations and interpret adversity as temporary. 
8. Optimism is the foundation for both change and courage. Optimism not only boosts brainpower, it's a powerful predictor of work performance. Optimistic salespeople outsell pessimistic counterparts by over 50%. 
9. Your brain is organized to act on what it predicts will happen next. As such your outlook becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that directly influences both your behavior and performance.
10. During difficult tasks, optimistic people produce better results. If you believe there will be a positive payoff for your effort you can't help but work harder.
11. Optimists focus on all the reasons they will succeed especially when they concentrate on their core signature strengths and constantly remind them self of all the relevant skills they have, not the ones they lack. 
12. Optimists possess clear vision for an exciting life. They get energized because they never stop thinking and talking about where they are going and their plans to make their dreams reality.
13. The optimist searches for the opportunity in every difficulty while the pessimist searches for the difficulty in every opportunity.   

But Pessimists

1. Pessimists have little or no clear vision of a fantastic life, they are walking, talking BMW's that is they live to bitch, moan and whine. 
2. Pessimists think about and focus on what they don’t have, and talk incessantly about the problems they have, or will have.

Why Gratitude Radically Rocks
 

1. The average person today has more opportunities than any other time in history. A computer and an Internet connection gives you access to more information and connects you to more people than even Einstein could have ever imagined. 
2. Consider being grateful for all the problems you don't have.
3. Grateful people are more energetic, more emotionally intelligent, more forgiving and happier. 
4. Gratitude is the foundation for happiness, especially when you're down or things are less than perfect, which is exactly when gratitude is the most powerful.
5. They accept that people seldom act the way you want them to act. They know that since they can’t control people, it only makes sense to have fewer expectations, this way when people do what they say they would do; you're happy and grateful. 
6. Expectations are the root of much disappointment and pain. If you think you're entitled to any thing other than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you've fallen into a trap that destroys both happiness, and dreams. If you feel entitled to something why would you have gratitude when you actually get it. Tell me who is grateful for getting paid after working all week? 
7. If you constantly expect people to do what they said they would do and or to constantly do what you want them to do, be prepared to be frequently disappointed. Expect less and you'll be less disappointed. 
8. Don't keep your gratitude a secret, you'll feel better as will those you share it with. 

Proof You Can Control Your Attitude

"We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."  Victor Frankl

Man's search For Meaning 

A Sad Soul Can Kill You Quicker Far Quicker Then A Germ.  John Steinbeck 

It’s none of my business what people say of me or think of me. I do what I do. It makes life so much easier. Anthony Hopkins 

Always Look For The Bright Side In honor of Brians everywhere and offbeat comedies anywhere, a curious song from the 1979 hit movie, The Life Of Brian.

Want a little more pep in your step, belt it out! -- Get A New Attitude

These people questioned reality and the conventional wisdom of their day and steadfastly refused to give up on the things they believed in.  

1. Henry Ford started from scratch, had little schooling, and went bankrupt several times. He was told the V8 motor was impossible. People thought he was unbalanced, and he was, with an enthusiasm for cars.  During his first 3 years in the auto business he declared bankruptcy twice. 
2. Edison dreamed of a lamp that would work with electricity. He only had 3 months of schooling by the age of ten. A teacher said he was too stupid to learn anything and was considered unteachable. In spite of this perceived handicap, he became one of the most prolific inventors in history. He was fired from a telegraph company.  While playing with putty he created carbon filament and “failed” 10,000 at inventing the light bulb but he refused to give up.  Eventually he received 1,093 patents. Men with negative minds tried to convince him that he could not build a machine that would record and reproduce the human voice because no one else ever had.
3. Albert Einstein didn’t talk until he was 4 or read until he was 7 and was thought to be retarded. A Munich schoolmaster said he would never amount to much. He did not do well in college. In 1921 he won a Nobel Prize in physics. His PhD thesis was rejected as irrelevant and fanciful, but became the seed of quantum physics, which has changed the world.  But good old Al was also known to get lost walking home from work.
4. Colonel Harland Sander’s restaurant went out of business because a new freeway bypassed it. Then in 1955 at the age of 65, he received his first SS check for $105 and used it to begin a new career. The Colonel got into his battered car and visited potential franchisees everywhere, enthusiastically telling them of his fried chicken, and his eleven secret herbs and spices.
5. Wright brothers were unreasonable because they dreamed of a machine that would fly through the air. Everyone laughed at their attempts to fly. 
6. Marconi dreamed of a system for harnessing the forces of ether. He wanted to send messages through the air. His friends had him committed. 
7. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress after being in prison for his faith.
8. Charles Dickens has the tragedy of his first love, then came David Copperfield.
9. Helen Keller serves as evidence that no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality.
10. Robert Burns cursed by poverty, became a drunkard, and then wrote great poetry.
11. Beethoven was deaf.
12. Milton was blind.
13. Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace while living in a small house with his wife…and...13 children. 
14. Sergio Zyman failed at “New Coke,” only to spend the next seven years making money as a consultant rebuilding his reputation, then to return to Coke and made a fortune for himself and Coke. 
15. Bernie Marcus worked as a cabinetmaker to get through pharmacy school. Later he was fired from a home improvement store. Now he is a billionaire after founding Home Depot. 
16. Walt Disney was fired from an ad agency because he had no imagination or drawing ability. He went bankrupt several times. His dream was to build a massive theme park in the middle of a hot Florida swamp for Disney World was rejected by over 300 investors. 
17. Babe Ruth held the record for home runs, 714, and also held the record striking out 1,330 times.
18. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
19. Fred Smith came up with the idea for FedEx as a student at Yale. USPS, UPS and his business professor and delivery expert in the U.S. said there was no market for it. No one would pay a fancy price for speed and reliability. Smith was not even the first to come up with the idea, just the first to act on it. 
20. John Creasey The English novelist received 753 rejection slips before his 600 books were published.
21. Oprah was fired from her first job as a reporter and told she would never make it on TV. 
22. The Beatles were rejected by Decca records and told guitar bands were out. 
23. Univac invented the computer but refused to talk to any business that inquired about it. IBM later said only 5 or 6 people in the world would be interested in a computer. In 1976 Steve and Steve created Apple computers. 
24. Airplane one of the funnies movies ever was rejected by every major movie studio until Michael Eisner made history when he realized it’s potential and gave it the green light. 
25. Mark Victor Hanson never stopped believing in his book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, even after it was rejected 140 times. 
26. This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. Western Union internal memo, 1876. 
27. Lucile Ball was sent home with a note from her drama class stating she was wasting her time because she was too shy to put her best foot forward. 
28. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball class and went home and cried. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
29. Howard Schultz had idea for a chain of stores selling just coffee for $3.00 in paper cups. Yet he never gave up on his idea for Starbucks even after being turned down by over 200 banks. 
30. Marilyn Monroe was rejected from 20th Century-Fox after producers decided she was not pretty enough for movies. 
31. Twilight author Stephenie Meyer had 9 rejections from literary agents, before she received a $750,000 three-book deal.
32. Tim Ferriss had 26 publishing rejections for The 4-Hour Workweek which spent 7 consecutive years on The New York Times Bestseller list, from 2007 to 2013. 
33. Jack LaLanne was a junk food junkie and was sickly as a child, but that changed when his mother took him to a Paul Bragg lecture. Jack is credited with starting the American fitness revolution. His birthday feats are the stuff of legends. In 1984 (age 70): handcuffed, shackled and fighting strong winds and currents, he towed 70 rowboats, along with several people, from the Queen’s Way Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, one mile. He was the picture of health well into his 90’s.
34. Dr. Seuss' first children's book was rejected by twenty-three publishers," while the twenty-fourth publisher sold over six million copies.
35. Jerry Seinfeld’s first time on stage didn’t go so well. On seeing the audience he froze and was booed and jeered off stage. He came back to the same stage the following night and had the audience in hysterics.
36. Elvis Presley after his first performance at the Grand Ole Opry, was fired and told “you can’t sing, you ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” 
37. Ray Bradbury's senior thesis advisor told him he could never make a living with his kind of writing.
38. Alex Haley received 200 rejection notices before Roots became a mega-best-seller.
39. John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was turned down by more than thirty agents and fifteen publishers. There are now more than sixty million copies of his books in print. 
40. At Fred Astaire’s first screen test someone said, “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Not handsome. Can dance a little." After becoming a star, Astaire displayed those discouraging words on the wall of his mansion in Beverly Hills as a reminder to never give up.  
41. Alexander Graham Bell’s banker said to him, “Get that toy out of my office immediately.”
42. Harry Warner, President of Warner Brothers pictures, said in 1927, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
43. Jack Nicholson, upon accepting his Academy Award for Best Actor in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, said something like, “I dedicate this to my agent—who told me ten years ago I had no business being a serious actor.” 
44. Winston Churchill failed English.
45. Steve Job’s first computer, which was built in his garage, was turned down by Atari, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM because it was “a useless machine with no market.”
46. Johann Gutenberg combined two previously unconnected ideas: the wine press and the coin punch. 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: 

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw 

Some of the most remarkable people throughout history were a bit odd, many even had serious emotional issues to deal with, yet others were downright miserable: writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, composers like Rossini and Mahler, statesmen like Lincoln and Churchill, and artists like Michelangelo and Gauguin to name just a few.

So what’s your excuse? 

Is it some "handicap", or perhaps it's your age? 

If so, consider September's two posts.  

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