I have been part of a group of runners who had the main street of Leningrad, Nevsky Prospekt interrupted on a Friday Afternoon for us to run down with the mayor of Leningrad and other dignitaries to support Ending World Hunger. I have also been hospitalized for major depression five times. Is this having it all. I couldn’t keep up the commitment that saw me run down that promenade and make a huge difference to world relations, I also ran the Moscow peace Marathon when I was there and after a few years my knees told me that they didn’t like  me running 100 kilometres a week anymore.

here are the fifteen quotes I have chosen on the subject, some from the famous, others quite unknown.

1. We have an official retirement age, in out country it is 65. People live to their 80’s in retirement. Wayne Dyer tells a story where a passenger on an airplane asked him how long he had been retired when he was about 70 years old. Wayne replied why do you think I am retired. I will retire the day they put me in a box. He lived up to this touring Australia the week before he recently passed away.

2. Leonardo Da Vinci left many a great gift to the planet. One of his obsessions was flight, he created designs for helicopters and gliders centuries before they came into being. This quote has also survived from his time. This link is to some other amazing things he did Why the sky is blue.

3. I have found that I feel the most full and content when I am doing good deeds that assist people and the planet. Focusing on myself takes me down a path that is not a great place to be.

4. How often my mind has said to me that you can’t do that, or no one will listen to you is uncountable. When I have achieved my greatest  triumphs is when I have said thank you for sharing and ignored it allowing for me to breakthrough and get it done.

5. The joy and imagination of youth where nothing is impossible. Oh but if we could bottle this and drink its essence when the naysayers said to behave ourselves as we got older.

6. The story we tell our-self about how we are travelling in life is what makes possible apathy or success. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King had stories just like us. Change yours if you want to live life more fully.

7. Popes and dying. The Eastern philosophies teach that you cannot really live until you realize that you are going to die one day. Our whole society in the west is focused on denying this until the moment it happens.

8. I love these 4 things. The lines that you can barely read say like no one is watching you, like you have never been hurt, like no one can hear you and as though heaven was on earth. 4 prescriptions to live full out without excuses.

9. Postscript , you cannot change that which has gone before, write your dreams down and go at it full bore, the past won’t care.

10. Ever had those days were you laugh and smile uncontrollably. They are the special ones. Replicate them as often as possible and you will live a fantastic life.

11. My friend Emeli has a saying, Get real, Get it Done. It is a fantastic way to look at life, because living it through another’s ideals or wishes is fake as it can be, your heart will shatter into a million pieces eventually.

12. We actually are living our lives full out moment to moment. Just that a lot of the time we know we could do better. Seek out resources to help you break through when you become blocked in your creativity.

13. We all have this silly assumption that we will wake up tomorrow, some people don’t and really we never know when it will be our turn. Big dreams full out, action like we only have this moment to fulfill them

14. I had a friend at high school who I wrote The Boston Gobbler, a satirical look at our life in a rural Victorian town. it lasted three episodes because the thrusting horses in the letters to the editor offended our conservative Christian head master. I gave up having my words in print for 40 years because i let the opinion of someone else define who I became. I love writing with a passion.

15. Whoever and whatever you believe about being brought to this mortal plane, it was for a purpose or it would not be your turn. make it a brilliant one.

I am looking forward to Sunday, Jules and Clare are brilliant facilitators and live their lives full of purpose more than most.

until next time Namaste my dear friends.