Quotes: Week 1

Happy New Year!

I hope you are enjoying the New Year so far. I can’t believe the first week is almost over! I feel like I’m already slacking off on my new year’s resolutions haha!

If 2019 hasn’t gone off to a great start for you, remember that everything happens for a reason. Everything that happens in your life is put there in front of you so you can learn something from it and consequently, grow. It’s like the little quote I stumbled across a few days ago…

“You win some and you learn some” – Barry Johnson.

Maybe you’ve heard of it before. I wish I’d known of it earlier because it elegantly and perfectly encapsulates the message behind Young and Unheroic in a neat, little bundle of words! The message that you can never really fail if you learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are opportunities to grow stronger. It’s not a matter of winning or losing; you either win or you learn.

And what a wonderful and fitting segue into today’s topic which is a wrap-up of this week’s quotes from the jar of 365 quotes!!

If you’ve noticed, since January 1^st, I’ve been uploading the Quote-of-the-day each morning on this blog from my 365 quotes jar!

The quote appears underneath the Young and Unheroic header; however, I have noticed that it doesn’t show up on the mobile version, so I thought it would be a great idea to make a summary each Sunday of the past week’s quotes in a blog post just like this one!

Let’s begin!

QUOTES: WEEK 1

Jan 1st

The early bird catches the worm.

Of all the 365 quotes in the jar, none could have been more fitting for this particular day than this quote!

On January 1^st, our family decided to catch the first sunrise of the year atop the glorious Mt Coot-tha, which meant rising at 3am! If it wasn’t for this alarmingly appropriate Quote-of-the-day, I think I would have fallen straight back to sleep!

In all seriousness, waking up early is a life-transformer! During high school, I stayed up late every night so when I got to university, I was desperate to change. I learned how to get up early and it was amazing. There’s just something magical about early mornings and I can’t believe that for all those years of my life, I was missing out on these holy hours because I was sleeping in so late.

You can get so much done if you wake up before the rest of the world!

By getting up before dawn on January 1st, I guess we were able to catch that metaphorical worm – the sunrise! And from what I saw through my sleepy eyes, it sure was a magnificent sight, and definitely worth waking up for.

Jan 2nd

Tomorrow starts today!

I love this quote, don’t you?

If tomorrow starts today, then are we already setting it up to be a disappointment if we’re spending today wastefully, lazily, and lacking motivation?

What you do today influences your tomorrow! You can’t move forward if you aren’t doing things TODAY that are taking you one step closer to your goals. If you want tomorrow’s dreams to become a reality, then you must start putting in the effort TODAY.

What you do today is going to get you to where you want to be tomorrow.

Jan 3rd

Your biggest fan might be in the farthest corner, so look up, smile big and make sure they can see you.

I can’t trace this quote back to a single point in my life. The words kind of pieced themselves together through variations of the saying that I’ve heard here and there.

I’ve heard it from skating coaches in the days when I was performing routines as an artistic roller skater. I’ve also heard it in a section of the documentary “Samba to Slow Fox” (1986) which I saw as a bonus feature after viewing the spectacular film “Strictly Ballroom” by Baz Luhrmann.

The quote would appeal to performers – dancers, skaters, stage actors – because in essence, it means that when you’re out there on that stage in front of an audience, you’re so small and barely recognisable to the person sitting in the back row. So in order to emotionally reach out to even the person in the farthest corner of the arena or theatre, every movement and every expression you make needs to be larger than life.   

Maybe, the people in the audience have even paid to see you. Including the person in the very back row. So that’s why the quote says to look up and smile BIG!

I wish I could do this when I was a skater. I think it’s so important to emotionally connect with the audience every second of the performance.

This quote doesn’t have to be exclusive to performers and entertainers! Whether you’re behind a computer or a camera, putting pen to paper, filming, in a laboratory, out in the field, in a classroom, a kitchen, a hospital, a store, or an office, there’s nothing stopping you from putting your craft out there and reaching out to your audience, whether they may be in the back row of a lecture theatre or in the farthest corner of the continent.  

Jan 4th

Every day we are writing the pages of our life’s story. Make sure that at life’s end, you can read your story and be satisfied. Make it an uplifting story!

I heard this concept when I was a schoolgirl listening to an inspiring presentation about mental health from the organisation, ‘breakingFree’.

It made me realise that each morning, we wake up to a blank page and what we do next determines what gets ‘written’ on that page. And collectively, those pages make up our life story.

Make your one life an emboldening story that would empower others who read it. One where you grew stronger from every battle lost. One where you never let any battle crush you, no matter how long it took you to fight the war. One where you came out unheroic countless times but every time, you rose from the ashes like a hero. Embrace life in all its rawness and be the hero of the one story you get to write in this life.

Jan 5th

You’re a girl on a mission!

There’s an interesting story that goes with this quote… The morning of January 5^th, before I had pulled this quote out of the jar, I got out of bed and walked into the bathroom, and all the while I was thinking of this exact quote! Now, this is before I had even pulled it out of the jar! Why I was thinking of this quote, I’m not entirely sure.

It was such a shock and coincidence to return to my room and then pull this quote out of the jar! Of all the 360 quotes left in there! Astonishing. And to make the story even more astonishing, two days before, I had watched a video where ‘girl on a mission’ was mentioned.

Wow, it’s like this quote really wanted to get out of the jar and spread its message! If that’s the case, then let’s all spend the day as if we’re on a mission! Not a minute of the day should be spent being idle and bored. Let’s be productive, fast-paced, and efficient! There’s not a minute to lose for someone who has a mission to complete!

Jan 6th

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain

We all want to know the secret to success. What are the tips and tricks to achieve big?

What this quote wisely tells us is that the only way to get any closer to your goals is to simply take that first step.

Want to be 25 push-ups ahead of everyone else?

Want to be a 3km run in front of the pack?

Want to be a day ahead? 10 pages of reading ahead? 2 hours of practice ahead of the rest?

ONE STEP AHEAD?

All you have to do is start NOW. Don’t keep dreaming about your goals forever. Go and make it a reality! Speak it into existence, one step at a time!

The difference between you and everyone else can simply be the fact that you made a start, and from then on, you haven’t stopped since.

Be unstoppable.

I feel like the 365 quotes jar is proving to be a fantastic way to start the day with some motivation. It’s easier to improve the state of your heart and mind with just ONE quote each day to guide you, rather than a million morals and virtues weighing down on your shoulders, don’t you think?

Watch out for the quote-of-the-day each morning on the blog!

Love, Young and Unheroic