The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold. The writing explained that it was lying among thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this: The real stone would feel warm, while ordinary pebbles are cold.

So the man sold his few belongings, bought some simple supplies, camped on the seashore, and began testing pebbles.

He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw them down again because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times. So, when he felt one that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet he went on and on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold – throw it into the sea. Pick up another. Throw it into the sea.

The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months. One day, however, about mid afternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm. He threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done. He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the one he wanted came along, he still threw it away.

So it is with opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it’s easy to fail to recognize an opportunity when it is in hand and it’s just as easy to throw it away.

- Author Unknown Bits & Pieces, Economic Press

He even made American Express card commercials because of it! However, until we read his book, High Adventure, we don’t understand that Hillary had to grow into this success.

You see, in 1952 he attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. A few weeks later a group in England asked him to address its members.

Hillary walked on stage to a thunderous applause. The audience was recognizing an attempt at greatness, but Edmund Hillary saw himself as a failure. He moved away from the microphone and walked to the edge of the platform.

He made a fist and pointed at a picture of the mountain. He said in a loud voice, “Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing!”

- Brian Cavanaugh
“The Sower’s Seeds”

In his book, “A View from the Zoo”, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.

The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.

When it doesn’t get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.

Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they’d get it too, if the mother didn’t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.

The late Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.

Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, “I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished and they go to work.

“They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they’re knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they’ve accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do.”

- Craig B. LarsonIllustrations for Preaching & Teaching from Leadership Journal

On the way to the battle, they stopped at a religious shrine. After praying with the men, the general took out a coin and said, I shall now toss this coin. If it is heads, we shall win. If it is tails we shall lose.

Destiny will now reveal itself.

He threw the coin into the air and all watched intently as it landed. It was heads. The soldiers were so overjoyed and filled with confidence that they vigorously attacked the enemy and were victorious.

After the battle. a lieutenant remarked to the general, No one can change destiny.

Quite right, the general replied as he showed the lieutenant the coin, which had heads on both sides.

The HR manager interviewed him then watched him cleaning the floor as a test.

“You are employed.” He said.” Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start.”

The man replied “But I don’t have a computer, neither an email.”

I’m sorry”, said the HR manager, “If you don’t have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn’t exist, cannot have the job.”

The man left with no hope at all. He didn’t know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10Kg tomato crate. He then sold the tomatoes in a door to door round. In less than two hours, he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the Operation three times, and returned home with $60. The man realized that he can survive by this Way, and started to go everyday earlier, and return late Thus, his money doubled or tripled every day.

Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles. 5 years later , the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US .

He started to plan his family’s future, and decided to have a life insurance.

He called an insurance broker, and chose a protection plan. When the conversation was concluded, the broker asked him his email. The man replied, “I don’t have an email”. The broker answered curiously, “You don’t have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an email?!!”

The man thought for a while and replied, “Yes, I’d be an office boy at Microsoft!”

The old alley cat stopped and asked her, “What are you doing?”

The young cat slowed down and replied that she had been taught that joy, happiness, success and luck were all in the tip of her tail.

“All that I have to do is catch the end of my tail, and I will have the happy life, she said.

The old alley cat replied, “I’ve been around for a long time, and I know that joy, happiness, success and luck are in the tip of my tail; but, you know if I don’t chase it and work my very hardest and don’t worry about it, the happy life follows me wherever I go. My tail follows me everywhere, so I don’t need to chase it.”

Happiness isn’t a place, a time, or a possession. You have to make it happen. The ways to make it happen is to stop worrying about everything and just go about your business, and do your very best. Then, if you really work hard, your happiness will follow you just like the alley cat’s tail.

One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, “Oh, what a horrible thing to happen.” The farmer said simply, “We’ll see.” He was so at peace and so calm, that everyone in the village got together and, admiring his attitude, gave him a new horse as a gift.

Everyone’s reaction now was, “What a lucky man.” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

A couple days later, the new horse jumped a fence and ran away. Everyone in the village shook their heads and said, “What a poor fellow!”

The farmer smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

Eventually, the horse found his way home, and everyone again said, “What a fortunate man.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Later in the year, the farmer’s young boy went out riding on the horse and fell and broke his leg. Everyone in the village said, “What a shame for the poor boy.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him.

Everyone said, “What a fortunate young man.”

The farmer smiled again – and said “We’ll see.”

Moral of the story: There’s no use in overreacting to the events and circumstances of our everyday lives. Many times what looks like a setback, may actually be a gift in disguise. And when our hearts are in the right place, all events and circumstances are gifts that we can learn valuable lessons from.

As Fra Giovanni once said:

“Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me… the gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.”

Do you know why a Car’s WINDSHIELD is so large & the Rear view Mirror is so small?
Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE.  Look Ahead and Move on.

Friendship is like a BOOK.  It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.

All things in this life are temporary.  If going well, enjoy it,  If going wrong, don’t worry, they can’t last long either.

Old Friends are Gold!  New Friends are Diamond!  If you get a Diamond, don’t forget the Gold!  Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a Base of Gold!

Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says, “Relax, sweetheart, it’s just a bend, not the end!

When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when GOD doesn’t solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.

A blind person asked Swami Vivekanand: “Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?”  He replied: “Yes, losing your vision!”

When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.

WORRYING does not take away tomorrows’ TROUBLES, it takes away today’s PEACE.

His family owned no washing machine and, since gasoline was rationed, they could ill afford trips to the laundry several miles away. Keeping clothes clean became a problem for young John’s household.

A family friend was drafted into the service, and his wife prepared to go with him. John’s family offered to store their furniture while they were away. To the family’s surprise, the friends suggested they use their Bendix while they were gone. “It would be better for it to be running, ” they said, “than sitting up rusting.” So this is how they acquired the washer.

Young John helped with the washing, and across the years he developed an affection for the old, green Bendix. But eventually the war ended. Their friends returned. In the meantime he had forgotten how the machine came to be in their basement in the first place. When the friends came to take it away, John grew terribly upset — and said so!

His mother, wise as she was, sat him down and said, “Wait a minute, Son. You must remember, that machine never belonged to us in the first place. That we ever got to use it at all was a gift. So, instead of being mad at it being taken away, let’s use this occasion to be grateful that we had it at all.”

The lesson proved invaluable. Years later, John watched his eight-year-old daughter die a slow and painful death of leukemia. Though he struggled for months with her death, John could  not begin healing from the loss until he remembered the old Bendix.

“I am here to testify,” he said, “that this is the only way down the mountain of loss…when I remember that  Laura Lou was a gift, pure and simple, something I neither earned nor deser