“Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought.”
—Mary Lyon
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.”
—Les Brown
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
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Having trouble sticking with your goals?
Sorry, no more excuses!
Gac Filipaj, a 52-year-old immigrant, came to the U.S. from war-torn Yugoslavia in 1992 barely speaking a word of English. He garnered a job as a janitor at Columbia University in New York City, a job that allowed him to earn enough money to send needed funds back to his family in the former Yugoslavia. Oh, and so that he could achieve a goal, by hopefully taking advantage of the school’s tuition-exemption benefit program that allows employees to enroll in classes for free …after he learned to speak English, of course.
After entering Columbia’s open-enrollment School of General Studies in 2000, having spent seven years first learning our language, he chose to major in the classics, where he would also have to learn ancient Greek and Latin to graduate. He attended classes at Columbia in the morning and worked his cleaning job at Columbia in the evening, often until 11 p.m. at night.
After Sunday, May 13, 2012, Columbia University won’t just be his employer, it will also be his alma mater. He will be an Ivy League graduate, with a degree in the Classics from Columbia University. A degree he earned “with honors.”
The accomplishment has not gone unnoticed by the deans of Columbia. “The key is he was in class with every other undergraduate at Columbia and competing with them,” Professor Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies, told the TV station. Filipaj told New York’s Daily News that he grew accustomed to seeing the surprised faces of his classmates as they came across him sweeping floors in the hallways of the school.
And after getting such a fancy degree, he remains focused on education. “I want to try, if I can, to get my master’s,” he told CBS New York. “I’d rather clean bathrooms two or three more years and get the master’s than get a lot more money and get a better job and stuff like that.”
An ivy league diploma may not be your goal, but are you employing the same amount of discipline, drive, determination, dedication, and stick-to-itiveness to achieve your goals as Gac Filipaj did to achieve his? It’s never too late to get started now. And the rewards can sometimes be …life altering.
Congratulations, Mr. Gac Filipaj, A.B.
Click HERE to see the inspiring MSNBC piece depicted above.
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Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“No matter how carefully you plan your goals, they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.”
—W. Clement Stone
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.”
—Wilma Rudolph
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
—Herman Melville
Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
Goal Habits.com 