First you make your habits, and then your habits make you.
Break those habits that can break you. Adopt those practices that will become the new habits that will help you achieve the success you desire.
Your habits are a form of exercise. The harder you work at something, the harder it is to quit. The easier it is to do, the harder it is to change. Your habits are either the best of servants or the worst of masters.
You are what you repeatedly do.
You gain the advantage in any situation through one medium: time. You can do things before they need to be done. You can position yourself ahead of time in the best place.
Think ahead of any approaching action. Make a plan and you will always have the advantage. Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
In life, as in chess, forethought wins. You can be the winner if you plan ahead.
Love is the most important ingredient of life. Your life echoes emptiness without it. With it, your life vibrates meaning and warmth. Love will shine through even in hardship.
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.
If you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.
Treasure the love you receive above everything else. It will survive long after your wealth and good health have vanished. The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
Life in abundance comes only through great love.
The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, for time and chance happen to everyone. Take a second look at what appears to be someone's "good luck." You'll find not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking.
Opportunity is around you all the time, but you have to be ready for it. When your chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it.
When you are prepared for opportunity, your chance for success is sure to come. The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. The tide of opportunity comes to everyone.
It will be your constant effort to be first-class in everything you attempt that will help you conquer the heights of success. Always do more then you're supposed to do and you can have, be, or do anything you want.
Do a little more than average and from that point on your progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the effort you put in. You can do a little more each day than you think you possibly can. There is always a best way of doing everything. Find it.
To enjoy enduring success, you should travel a little in advance of the rest of the world. True success comes from being successful in little things.
Make it your life-rule to do your best.
Traditionally, I have used a Thanksgiving letter to share some of my thoughts and quotations of others that had meaning for me. Here is a recent essay.
The days got shorter. The temperatures dropped lower. Green leaves grew colorful. And the frost comes on the pumpkin. These are the certain signs of Autumn and the coming of the end of the traditional Harvest season for us. We are not as directly connected to the land and the cycles of the farm as our ancestors, but we benefit from those cycles nonetheless. What wisdom and sensitivity there is to have a holiday like Thanksgiving.
Most lives are filled with tasks. Career, family and community demand so much of our time and the demands seems to be always growing. Thanksgiving, to me, is not about turkeys and cranberry sauce, but rather a set time to reflect on the many gifts and opportunities that we are fortunate enough to have in our lives.
No one sails through life without challenges and difficulties. Reversals of fortune in life, work and health and relationships are the script of our existence, and yet each of us can make a rather extensive list of things for which we are thankful. Starting my list are the expected and usual—life itself and the health of my family and self. But the next level of gratitude for me includes my friendships, my relationship with my community, my work, my team, and those who have entrusted me with their health and care. I am truly blessed to have chosen a profession which I love and which provides constant challenges and rewards and satisfactions.
I encourage each of you to take some time every day to acknowledge those things for which you are thankful. Make an effort to make sure that those things displace the negatives, the downers. Make sure that the only turkeys that you allow in your life are the ones that grace your holiday table.
May you and your dear ones have a rewarding holiday and a peaceful, satisfying and productive year to come.
Keep Smiling,
Sander White, DDS, and the team of Advanced Dental Concepts
