Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Friends and Friendship”
Here’s the bad news: Virtue isn’t a golden ticket to a pain-free life. Bad things happen to good people as often as they happen to bad people. It seems unfair, but in the natural order of the world, suffering is random. To expect otherwise is to sentence oneself to despondency, disillusionment, bitterness, and anger. Here’s the good news: The magic power that …
A master carpenter who had worked for the same builder for nearly 50 years announced he was retiring. The builder told him how much he appreciated his work and presented him with a $5,000 bonus. Then he asked if he would build just one more house. He owned a magnificent lot with a spectacular view and wanted to build a …
Positivity is a powerful change agent. For one thing, people who go through life with the positive perspective that the glass is half full are much happier and more productive than those who see it as half empty. It has nothing to do with how much water is really in the glass. What matters is how we think about how …
Here’s a little quiz to test your honesty. Now be completely honest. Would you:
Trustworthiness is essential to good relationships, and honesty is essential to trustworthiness. Being honest isn’t simply telling the truth, though. It’s also being sincere and forthright. Thus, it’s just as dishonest to deceive someone by half-truths or silence as it is to lie. But what if honesty requires us to volunteer information that could be damaging or hurtful? For example, …
There are all kinds of love. The passionate romantic love immortalized and often fantasized by poets and novelists; Platonic love among friends, the love of humanity preached by missionaries and ministers, the love of country, and even the love of our work. I’ve been fortunate to have experienced all of these forms but none has impressed me more than the deep, enduring …
Five birds are sitting on a telephone wire. Two of them decide to fly south. How many are left? Three, you say? No, it’s five. You see, deciding to fly south is not the same as doing it. If a bird really wants to go somewhere, it’s got to point itself in the right direction, jump off the wire and …
People don’t always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou When I had four teenagers
Trustworthiness is essential to good relationships, and honesty is essential to trustworthiness. Being honest isn’t simply telling the truth, though. It’s also being sincere and forthright. Thus, it’s just as dishonest to deceive someone by half-truths or silence as it is to lie. But what if honesty requires us to volunteer information that could be damaging or hurtful? For example, …
If we interviewed 100 happy people, I think the most prominent common denominator would be good relationships.
Here are the best quotes about Christmas that I could find. If you have any to add to the list, please post them in the comment box below.
As I celebrate my 73rd revolution around the sun (December 10) I am immensely grateful, not only to still be alive, but because the Josephson Institute and its CHARACTER COUNTS! program have emerged from our most challenging year ever poised to reach new levels of impact on the character of our kids and the ethical quality of the country. There …
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of your past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for …
Despite the advice of preachers and philosophers warning us of the shortcomings of money, it’s hard to argue with Gertrude Stein’s observation: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” Although money is better at reducing suffering caused by poverty and relieving anxiety caused by debt than it is at making us happy, it can buy lots of things that make …
Good companions are people you spend time with when you want to have a good time. Good friends are the people you want to be with when you’ve had a bad time. ~ Michael Josephson
Five Things to Teach our Children. 1. Be a good friend 2. Be kind even to those who don’t deserve it. 3. Learn from every experience. 4. Do your share even when others don’t do there’s. 5. Start and finish a job even when you don’t feel like it. Michael Josephson Do you have any others to add?
Personal Note: I just learned that a very dear friend, Ron Kinnamon, one of the original board members of the Josephson Institute and a founding father of CHARACTER COUNTS! passed away on July 30. Ron was not only a tremendous personal friend and friend of the Institute he was also one of the finest men I’ve had the fortune to …
Small Pleasures. Watching an old episode of Blue Bloods and Tom Selleck as Commissioner Reagan pronounced very solemnly:He was quoting me! Tom is a friend and was a JI Board member for 15 years and we had many joint appearances. I just wish he added: “There’s a big difference between what you have a right to do and what is …
— compiled by Michael Josephson — All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~ Abraham Lincoln The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. ~ Author Unknown An ounce …
Whatever you are, be a good one. – Let’s have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. – Most folks are
Disdain for money is a common theme among moralists and philosophers. But money’s not the problem. It’s what people do to get it and what they do with it when they get it. In Fiddler on the Roof, a poor man sings of his daydreams of the wonderful life he’d have if he were a rich man. And surely it …
— compiled by Michael Josephson — If you want to be on speaking terms with happiness, learn the language of gratitude. – Unknown Gratitude unlocks
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. – Melody Beattie
1. Be a good friend. 2. Be kind even to those who don’t deserve it. 3. Learn from every experience. 4. Do your share even when others aren’t doing theirs. 5. Start and finish a job even when you don’t want to.- Michael Josephson Click to see poster.
Listening to politicians’ nasty rhetoric, one might think that leadership has to be aggressive and confrontational, but consider this parable about leadership. A student assigned to write an essay about an effective leader wrote this story: “I’ve been taking a bus to school for years. Most passengers keep to themselves and no one ever talks to anyone else.
If you had the choice of winning $1 million in the lottery or saving a stranger’s life, which would you choose? I suspect many of you think you should say, “saving a life,” but what you are really thinking is how much better your life would be if you were rich. If the test was which act improves the world …
[Revised July 4, 2014] (What follows are lengthy musings of an ethicist struggling to live his values in the real world.) Have you ever found yourself in a place (I don’t mean a physical location) you really don’t want to be in and wondered how you got there and how you can get out of the bad place and get …
In 1968, when Kent M. Keith was a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, he wrote the Paradoxical Commandments as part of a booklet for student leaders. He describes the Commandments as guidelines for finding personal meaning in the face of adversity: 1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. 2. If you do good, people will accuse you of …
Though I am Jewish, I have always loved Christmas and what is commonly called the Christmas Spirit. Of course, I don’t mean the crassly commercialized version of the Christmas Spirit that stresses consumerism, but the spirit of love, forgiveness, family, friendship and — remember this phrase? — “Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men.” To those who celebrate Christmas, …
