Healthy and Gracious Lifestyle

Having a healthy and gracious lifestyle is very important. It not only keeps you fit and in the pink of health, it also enables you to do many of your favourite things. To have a healthy and gracious lifestyle, you have to take the following measures:

1) Have enough of sleep a day to stay active and to concentrate in doing your daily activities.

2) Have a balanced diet which most importantly includes fruits and vegetables and of course not to forget your
favourite food.

3) Have at least eight glasses of water a day to quench your thirst and also to prevent your body from dehydration.

Being gracious to others is also important. When you speak well and politely with confidence, people would respect you. Looking at the bright side of things and adopting a positive attitude towards life is one form of being gracious, determined and persevered. It trains you to always look ahead of life despite failure and not thinking of the negative side of things. Kindness and courtesy are also forms of being gracious to others. Have good manners while interacting with people and accept people for who they are. Have a strong will to achieve your goals and in no time, you would be one of the great successors in the world.

Freedom

Freedom is the ability to act without restraint. In the context of internal control, freedom is also known as self-determination.

Now to share with you a poem:

Freedom from war.
Freedom from death.
Freedom from pain.
Freedom from political ideology.
Freedom from religious hypocricy.
Freedom from racial, ethnic, or class intolerance.
Freedom from material or moral indulgence or imbalance.
Just what true freedom ought to be.

God-Fearing

God loves and He doesn't want us to be afraid. And if you live right, there's no need to fear anything.

It's like if you drive a car within the speed limit, there's no fear of getting caught for speeding. (Of course, some people drive too fast and have no fear. We call these sort of people 'fools'!)

God loves, and because of that, we have the freedom to choose whatever we want to believe.
Here are a few different definitions of 'God-fearing' that religious people might come up with. Choose whichever you want to believe.

'Fear', when talking about God, is synonymous with 'respect', 'reverence', 'piety', 'awe toward a supreme power', etc

'God-fearing' is an archaic term that's been bouncing around for so many years that we're not too sure of the original meaning. Similar to terms like 'God-parents' and 'God speed' (or is it 'God's speed'?).

Logic tells us that God cannot love evil, because evil is the opposite of love. God loves, but He doesn't love everything.

God loves the sinner, but not the sin, and He gets pretty peeved when we sin. If we die as a sinner, we go to Hell, and I reckon that's where most souls go. Hell, whatever that is, and God's anger, sound like things to REALLY fear!

Fortunately there’s a simple way out of this. Because God is love, He's a forgiving God. It's like if you cheat on your partner, you say you're sorry and you really mean it, and you promise never to do it again. Then, if you're lucky, your partner will forgive you. It's like that with God, but you're always lucky in that if you ask, with sincerity from your heart, He always forgives and then you are safe. All pretty simple really.

As we said at the top of this page, if you live right, as your heart tells you is God's way, then there's no need to fear anything.

Maximising Potential

There are many different ways to maximise your potential. One of them is to set high goals and aim to achieve what you want. It can be both physically and academically. Maximising your potential can also mean that you discover your talent and work very hard to be sucessful in it. As you see those famous singers, actors and actresses are an inspiration to you and you would so much want to be like them, they get "paid" for all these things. When they were young, they worked hard for it and now, they have achieved and realised their dream of becoming one of the most famous people in the world. I personally believe that everyone would have their own perspective and way of achieving their goals and dreams.

"Discover Your Own Genius"
There's an old Hindu story about where the gods hid the secret to mankind's greatest gifts. It goes something like this.
There was a time when all men were gods. But they so abused their divinity that Brahma decided to deprive them of their divine power.
Brahma assembled the minor gods to discuss where they should hide this power so that man wouldn't find it.
"What about in the earth?" they said. "No," said the Brahma, "they'll dig it up."
"What about the ocean depths?" they suggested. "Or the jungles. Or the mountains. Or the skies."
"No," said the Brahma. "Sooner or later man will explore every region of the world and the universe."
After much discussion, the gods turned to Brahma in despair.
Brahma then decided. "This is what we'll do. We'll put it in the one place man will never think of looking. In the very depths of man himself."
And that's what they did.


When you follow your dreams, God smiles knowingly to himself. Learn how to make the most of your natural gifts by Maximising your Potential.

Integrity

Once there was an emperor in the Far East who was growing old and knew it was coming time to choose his successor. Instead of choosing one of his assistants or one of his own children, he decided to do something different.
He called all the young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, "It has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you." The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One seed. It is a very special seed. I want you to go home, plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring to me, and the one I choose will be the next emperor of the kingdom!"
There was one boy named Ling who was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the whole story. She helped him get a pot and some planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown.
After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Ling kept going home and checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by. Still nothing.
By now others were talking about their plants but Ling didn't have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Ling didn't say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow.
A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she encouraged him to go, and to take his pot, and to be honest about what happened. Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace.
When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by all the other youths. They were beautiful, in all shapes and sizes. Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, "Hey nice try."
When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the emperor. "Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!"
All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Ling was terrified. "The emperor knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!"
When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. "My name is Ling," he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him. The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!" Ling couldn't believe it. Ling couldn't even grow his seed. How could he be the new emperor?
Then the emperor said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow. All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grown, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!"

This story is a good example of how integrity is very inportant and makes me understand that honesty really is the best policy.

Truth

Truthfulness is very important. Someone who is truthful is honest and frank in what he or she says. When you say you want to tell someone the truth, you emphasise the fact that you are telling someone something in an open and honest way, without trying to hide anything. Although at times when you tell someone the truth they might get hurt, but at least you are not hiding anything from the person. Truth can also mean that you are admitting your mistakes as you have done something wrong, and not being dishonest about it. Lying is the opposite of telling the truth. Lying is strongly not encouraged but there are rare occasions where white lies surface. A white lie is when someone says something untruthful in order to avoid hurting someone else's feelings, not for an evil purpose.

Love

Love is having very strong feelings of affection towards someone, commonly conceived of romantically, as a deep, ineffable feeling of intense, and tender attraction shared in passionate relationships. When you love someone or something, you treasure it very much and feel that it is important to you. There are different types of love: Religious love, familial love, unconditional love and many others. When there is unconditional love for someone, there are no conditions and limitations attached to it. No matter how bad or ugly the person or thing may be, the love for it will still remain as much as before. Religious love can be expressed in similar terms to interpersonal love. It describes feelings of deference or acquiescence. Most religions show their devotion or love to their respective gods by prayer, services, good deeds and personal sacrifices. Familial love is a type of affinity or natural affection between members of a group bound by common ancestry or blood ties. The cultural idea of familial love is one that is committed, unconditional, selfless, emotionally full, and reciprocally returned by ohters.