Words of Encouragement

Challenges and difficulties are a part of life and words of encouragement can often help you get out of your rut. It’s easy to tell someone to hang in there and to keep a positive outlook when they are going through tough times but when it happens to you, keeping your chin up isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Even so, it’s not impossible. There are a lot of things you can do to help you stand back up and move forward. Whether you’ve been dealt with a setback while working towards your goal, lost a loved one, or just feel down, inspirational words of encouragement can help.

Words can have a powerful impact on your mindset. Although we’ve all heard the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”, the fact is that words really do have an impact on how we feel. Often times, when things seem pointless, when you’ve just come face to face with yet another failure, it can seem as though it’s the end. It can seem as though no matter how hard you try, the life that you want will always be just out of reach.

During these times, some positive words of encouragement can help you shift your focus. When it comes down to it, how you feel is really just about what you focus on. What words of inspiration and encouragement will do for you is help you put things into perspective.

Who doesn’t go through failures, setbacks, and challenges? We all do. In fact, after you get through this challenging time, you will have more to come in the future. Although that sounds pessimistic, it’s also reality. Those who succeed in life and get what they want as well as those who are the most happiest aren’t people who never face difficulties. If anything, they probably deal with more challenges than most people. The thing that makes them different is how they respond and react to those obstacles.

Yours Faithfully

Yours Faithfully – a funny story with a retold joke about a miser who wanted his wealth buried with him.

His faithful wife kept her promise, but ...

"He, he, he he," giggled Joy, poring into John's work laptop.

"Will you let me focus?" John grumbled. He had been trying to complete his project report.

"This joke is quite hilarious," she replied. "A miser gets outsmarted by his woman. Wanna know how?"

"Hmm

..." he stopped work, knowing he wouldn't be allowed to concentrate now anyway, until she had finished.

With a barely suppressed smile playing on her lips, she told him of this miser who dearly loved his money. He had worked all his life and saved all his money.

Just before he died, he had said to his wife, "Promise me love, that when I die, you will put away all my money into my casket with me. I won't have peace in the afterlife without it."

The loving wife had solemnly promised.

All things eventually reach their expiry date. When he had reached his, he too had expired.

So, he was laid out in his coffin. His wife sat there in the black, with her best friend beside her. When the ceremony finished and the undertakers were ready to close the casket, his wife walked over to the casket and placed a box inside it.

The undertakers locked the casket down and rolled it away.

When she returned to join the other mourners, her best friend whispered, "You are not foolishly sending him off with all his money now, I hope."

"My word is my bond," the faithful wife replied. "I promised him that I'll see him off with all his money with him, in his coffin. I keep my promises."

"You mean, you really did put all his money into the casket with him?" asked her shocked friend.

"I sure did," answered the wife. "I wrote him a check. If he can cash it, then he can spend it!"

Assassin

“Pa,” said Hosh, “I’m submitting a story called 'Assassin', for my College magazine again this year."

"Can you read and check it please, before you go to Office?”

“Sure,” said Rosh, as he walked down the steps and took the printed sheet.

Hosh hugged him and together they sat down on the sofa and read…

Not a sound was heard as she crept up the steps to the tenth floor of the dilapidated building. The sky was clear, but the sun was dying.

She set up her telescopic rifle on the sturdy tripod in the bare room by the broken window.

Her casual attire hugged her smooth and elegant body as she peered through the cross hairs and concentrated. She attached the silencer and adjusted the aim to account for the divergence caused by the silencer.

She clipped the transmitter to the mechanical hand that would press the trigger and control the rifle’s zoom and lateral movements. She tested it again. Satisfied, she descended the steps, and stepped into the deserted street.

Keeping her head low, and never looking up, she walked the two blocks to the Theatre basement garage where her car was parked. She got in, peeled off her face mask and disguise, and put it in the acid canister that sat below the passenger seat in her car.

Changing quickly into a dark business suit, she shredded off her casuals into pieces before feeding them also to the voracious canister. Out of the car in less than two minutes after having climbed in, she drained the acid in the storm water drain and disposed of the canister in the basement junkyard.

Then she climbed back in her car, signed into her iPad and ran her garage script one final time. It instantaneously hacked into the garage CCTV server, paused its unmanned recording, deleted the last three minutes of footage and created an i-movie by repeating the screenshot before the edit-out.

It then restarted the recordings, logged out and deleted its footprint from the registry of the CCTV server and her own iPad. She deleted the script from her iPad and drove out to the Xucorp Complex.

The meeting would be starting in one hour. As she rode the elevator alone in the gleaming Xucorp Main building, she checked her facial expressions in the little vanity mirror she always carried in her purse.

'Everything on schedule?' she spoke to herself in the mirror. She sounded her usual confident self.

Committed now, she waited for the elevator to come to a stop on the tenth floor.

“Everything on schedule?” she asked smilingly, as she walked past her secretary towards the Boardroom.

“Yes ma’am,” her secretary replied.

She nodded pleasantly at Mark, the C.E.O, as she took her seat on his left. She opened her laptop and typed in her Deputy C.E.O. authorization codes. Information about the billion-dollar project began dancing on her screen.

She opened another program on her screen and watched with satisfaction as Mark’s head filled up the little window. It would be perfect. Technology would ensure that, despite the distance and other difficulties. One shot. Clean kill.

They were soon joined by the rest of the project team and the client. It was time. Everyone exchanged greetings and took their seats around the conference table. Lights were turned down. Her presentation began.

Her laptop projected charts and pictures on to the projector screen as she spoke. She cascaded the project window on her screen and activated the little window. No adjustment was needed. She pressed Enter.

A bullet journeyed to its destination. There was no sound, but blood appeared in the little window. She pressed Delete. The window closed instantly and the program self-destructed.

Far away in the dilapidated room, acid exploded from the tripod base, damaging everything along with the rifle. In the Boardroom where she sat, Mark’s lifeless head hit the table with a dull thud. Then, there was chaos.

On cue, she shuddered for the benefit of Boardroom CCTV cameras, looking as shocked at the sight of actual blood, as the others. She knew the camera footage would be viewed and analyzed thousands of times in NYPD and Interpol offices across multiple countries.

Forensic programs, trained animals and specialized detectives would be intensively scanning and extensively sniffing from Earth and Sky over the next month. Mark's exit would stir up the hornet's nest, as the company stock plunged and the greatest manhunt in the history of New York began.

Detectives arrived soon and the investigations began. She sagged, knowing it was going to be a long night.

“A bloody mess!” muttered the chairman as he was leaving.

He looked at her and asked, “Have we lost the project now?”

“Not as long as I live,” she replied tiredly.

“The Board will confirm you as C.E.O. tomorrow. Call the Press Conference before New York Stock Exchange opens. I've got Legal working on Media Releases already."

He walked out to go home and get a couple of hours of shut-eye. A new day had begun.

Knowing Where To Tap

“What do you want to be in life?” asked Mack, as he walked with his son on their daily walk the next day.

“Rich!” replied Mack somberly.

Despite Mack’s grave demeanor and the events of yesterday, Mack laughed at his answer.

“That was not what I asked,” he said, “but that is a good goal. How will you get there?”

“By working hard, getting good Mack's and a bit of luck,” responded Mack.

“Hard work? Good marks?” Mack was beside himself with mirth. “They are a good start, but no, they won’t make you rich. And what is Luck?"

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, Lucius

Annaeus Seneca had said."

"Opportunity is always there. Even if it weren’t there, you can create it. So, opportunity is not the issue. The real question is, how prepared are you? Are you ready to get lucky?”

When Mack didn’t answer for a long time, Mack softened and said, “Effort is important son, but it bears lean fruit."

"For richer pickings, you need vision, passion and reason to direct your efforts. Directed effort is what makes men rich. Knowing where to make the effort makes all the difference!”

“Tools don’t make the expert, knowledge does. You can name your price if you know your stuff. I read a story once, about a steamship boiler failing."

"The owner tried one expert after another, but none could figure out how to fix it. Then, they called an old local mechanic who had been fixing boilers since he was young.”

“The frail old man came, carrying with him just a small bag of tools. He listened to the distraught engineer, asked a few questions, then went into the boiler room. They followed him in.”

“He looked at the maze of twisting pipes, and felt them with his hands. He listened to their heartbeat and heard what they had to say."

"Then humming softly to himself, he reached inside his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the boiler awoke from slumber.”

“As it hissed and roared, the old mechanic put away his tool and left. There was much jubilation on the steamship. Later, the owner received a bill for ten thousand dollars."

"What?" he exclaimed when he saw the invoice, "$10,000 for a puny tap. He hardly did anything. I was prepared to pay him well, but this is outrageous!"

"So he had his solicitor write to the old mechanic, requiring an itemized bill. He got back a bill which read:

• Tapping with the hammer.........$10
• Knowing where to tap ........$9,990”

“Pa, people can’t do that kind of thing in real life,” Mack objected.

“Can't they?" asked Mack, "In 1984, a similar incident is said to have happened at General Electric, Schenectady, New York, with an old-timer named John Steinmetz."

"His consulting charge was $100, and in Steinmetz' day, that was a King’s ransom. Accounting demanded an itemized bill, and he responded with, '$1/tap + $99/knowing where to tap'."

“He wouldn’t get paid today!” persisted Mack. “He’d have to fight for it in court. And be lucky to win!”

“There’s luck again,” answered Mack. “Howard Schultz said that Luck was seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It was seeing what other people don't see and pursuing that vision."

"Today is no different. Don’t multinationals pay millions in salaries to some, when others barely earn pennies. They are not being paid just for their hours. They are being paid for their skills, for their knowledge, for their experience.”

“The mechanic did what no one else could do despite their best efforts. How much was restarting the boiler worth to the steam-ship owner? How much was the time lost unproductively in waiting, worth?"

"How much was he paying in wages while all his crew sat twiddling their thumbs? What was the replacement cost of the boiler? Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“But that’s still blackmail,” countered Mack. “Isn’t it?”

“No, son,” Mack said. “If you overvalue your work, the world will likely step in to knock down your price. But if you undercharge yourself, it's unlikely that the world will step in to compensate you appropriately."

"You can’t rely on others to value you correctly. It is not in their best interests to do so.”

“The mechanic knew where to tap. It only took him a moment to fix the problem, but it took him a lifetime to learn how to recognize it in the first place. And to learn how to fix it. Why do you value knowledge so cheaply?"

"His job seems easy to you because he made it look so easy, because of his intricate knowledge, which took him a lifetime to acquire.”

“To others, it still remained undo-able. Just because something is easy for someone, doesn’t mean that it’s easy for everyone else."

"Become a hammer tapper, always learning new stuff, new tools and techniques, new ways of doing things. Creating a niche is the road that leads to riches.”

“Knowing where to tap the hammer is what will set you apart from the rest. Set you apart from the blind - who will try the same things over and over until they fail so many times, that they declare it impossible."

"For hammer tappers, impossible is just an opinion. To them, impossible reads I M Possible.”