We generally get inundated with requests from people who have attanded the seminars to have copies of the various motivational pieces read out by Rod.  This page contains some of the more popular ones.  

If I Had My Life To Live Over - by Erma Bombeck  

Erma Bombeck needed an organ transplant, and even though she could have been moved to the head of the waiting list, due to her prominence and wealth (like Mickey Mantle), she refused to do such, and subsequently, died from organ failure.

If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television-and more while watching life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.  

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't 

show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.  

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to 

assist God in a miracle.  

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get 

washed up for dinner."  

There would have been more "I love you's"... more "I'm sorry's" ..but mostly, given 

another shot at life, I would seize every minute…..look at it and really see it ….. live it…...and never give it 

back.

Stop sweating the small stuff. 

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

Instead, let's cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us. Let's think about what God HAS blessed us with. And what we are doing each day to promote ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, as well as spiritually. Life is too short to let it pass you by.

We only have one shot at this and then it's gone.

I hope you all have a blessed day.

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE WITH BUT YOUR OWN THOUGHTS

Both heaven and hell are states of consciousness, the net resultant of our beliefs and feelings at any time. Many people think that both heaven & hell are places where one goes after death, and many others think that neither heaven nor hell exists at all. The truth is that both hell and heaven DO exist, but are merely states of the mind and we experience them right here on this earth now.

When you have true peace of mind and an adequate understanding of your life, you are already in heaven; and  when you are full of fear, anxiety, hatred, or physical pain, you are in hell. The conventional descriptions of both places are but an attempt to provide symbolical pictures of states of mind.

Whether you are to live in hell or heaven or in hell depends solely upon the kind of thinking you indulge in all day long. And, fortunately, you can, by taking a little trouble, train yourself to make heaven-like thinking a constant habit.

The doors to hell are swing doors. There are no locks or fastenings upon them. They swing in or out at a push and you can go inside any time you choose to do so, and , by the same token, you can also come out again any time you choose.

The ay out of hell is to begin thinking thoughts of health, happiness and success at this very moment, and to keep it up hour after hour and day after day in spite of all appearances. If only you will do this with determination, you will be through the swing doors and out of your difficulties before you know what has happened. .

 If some condition in your life is not to your liking, change your mind about it - and keep it changed. If someone is displeasing you, change your mind about him/her, and Keep it changed.   If there is some sad memory that haunts you, change your mind about it - and keep it changed.

Most students of metaphysics are ready to change their minds about a problem, especially when they have just attended a lecture or talked with a teach, but they do not keep it changed .

This is the crux of the matter. If you will change your mind concerning anything and absolutely keep it changed, that thing must and will change too. It is the keeping up of the change of thought that is difficult. It calls for vigilance and determination. But surely it is worth which seeing that it is the key to Dominion.

Make an experiment now. Change your mind concerning some particular thing in your life and keep it changed. I guarantee you that you will be amazed and delighted at the result.

No matter what problem you may have to face today, there is a solution, because you have nothing to deal with but your own thoughts.  As you know, you have the power to select and control your thoughts, difficult though it may be at times to do so. As long as you think that your destiny is in the hands of other people, the situation is hopeless.

People say: "It is useless for me to struggle because of such and such a reason. If only I had a profession. If only I had married someone else. If only I had not bought this business. If only I had gone abroad within I had the change." - and so on.

Make an experiment now. Change your mind concerning some particular thing in your life and keep it changed.

Time

Stand before me on the sign of infinity, all you of the earth.
With the granting of the law of provination comes the application of change.

I will give you the key.
And with this knowledge, please realise, comes the responsibility of sharing it.
I will show you the way.

It's very simple. Throughout the universe there is order.

In the movement of the planets, in nature and in the functioning of the human mind.
A mind that is in its natural state of order, is in harmony with the universe
and such a mind is timeless.

Your life is an expression of your mind.
You are the creator of your own Universe -
For as a human being, you are free to will whatever state of being you desire through the 

use of your thoughts and words.

There is great power there.

It can be a blessing or a curse - It's entirely up to you.
For the quality of your life is brought about by the quality of your thinking -
think about that.

Thoughts produce actions - look at what you're thinking.

See the pettiness and the envy and the greed and the fear and all the other attitudes that 

cause you pain and discomfort.

Realize that the one thing you have absolute control over is your attitude.

See the effect that it has on those around you.
For each life is linked to all life and your words carry with them chain reactions
like a stone that is thrown into a pond.

If your thinking is in order, your words will flow directly from the heart
creating ripples of love.

If you truly want to change your world, my friends, you must change your thinking.

Reason is your greatest tool, it creates an atmosphere of understanding,
which leads to caring which is love.

Choose your words with care.

Go forth ... with love. 

The Reading Killer by Roal Dahl

The most important thing we’ve learned,

so far as children are concerned,    

is never, Never, NEVER let

them near your television set  - 

or better still, just don’t install

the idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we’ve been,

we’ve watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about ,

and stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week in someone’s place we saw

a dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

until they’re hypnotized by it.

Until they’re absolutely drunk

with all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still;

they don’t climb out the window sill.

They never fight or kick or punch,

they leave you free to cook the lunch

and wash the dishes in the sink  -  -

but did you ever stop to think,

to wonder just exactly what

this does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND:

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY - A FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK  -  HE ONLY SEES!!

““All right!”  you’ll cry.  “All right!”, you’ll say,

“But if we take the set away,

what shall we do to entertain

our darling children!  Please explain!”

We’ll answer this by asking you,

“What used the darling ones to do?

How used they keep themselves contented

before this monster was invented?

Have you forgotten, don’t you know?

We’ll say it very loud and slow:

THEY........USED.......TO.........READ!!!!  They’d READ and READ,

and READ  and READ!!!

Resignation

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have
decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again.

I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.

I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.

I want to lie under a big oak tree and play doctors and nurses with my friends on 

a hot summer's day. I want to return to a time when life was simple; When all I knew 

were colours, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, and it didn't bother me, because 

I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't care.  All I knew was to be happy because I was blissfully unaware of all the things that should make me worry or upset. I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible.  

I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.  

I want to live simply again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones. I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.  

So . . . here's my cheque book and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my mobile phone. 

I am officially resigning from adulthood.  

And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, cause...
......"Tag! You're it."

Hope You'll join me! 

Just For Today

Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life’s problems at once.  I can do something for twelve hours that would appal me if I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

Just for today I will be happy.  This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that “most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be”.

Just for today I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires.  I will take my “luck” as it comes, and fit myself to it.

Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind.  I will learn something useful.  I will study.  I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.

Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways:  I will do somebody a good turn, and not get found out; if anybody knows of it, it will not count. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do – just for exercise.  I will not show anyone that my feelings are hurt:  

they may be hurt, but today I will not show it.

Just for today I will be agreeable.  I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low, act courteously, criticize not one bit, not find fault with anything and not try to improve or regulate anybody except myself.

Just for today I will have a program.  I may not follow it exactly but I will have it.  I will save myself from two pests:  hurry and indecision.

Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself, and relax.  During this half hour, some time, I will try to get a better perspective of my life.

Just for today I will be unafraid.  Especially I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful, and to believe that as I give to the world, so the world will give to me.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in Kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday school.  

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.  

• Play fair.  

• Don’t hit people.  

• Put things back where you found them.  

• Clean up your own mess.  

• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.  

• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.  

• Wash your hands before you eat.  

• Flush.  

• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.  

• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.  

• Take a nap every afternoon.  

• When you go out in the world watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  

• Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die.  So do we.

•   And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.  

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.  The Golden Rule is love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.  Take any of these items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.  Think 

what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.  Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are – when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Everyone Needs This List To Live BY

Everyone needs this list to live by...   

 Notes From The Fool's Handbook

How to Fail in Everything

• Knock everything systematically. No matter what you hear of, depreciate if and predict the worst. This will build up an inferiority complex in yourself that will inevitably destroy anything good in your life that you otherwise might allow to slip by.

• Mind everyone else's business.  This will ensure your neglecting your own.

• Always try to please everyone, and take everyone's advice.  This will leave your mind in complete chaos.

• Try to live on bluff. You are certain to be found out before long, and then no-one will respect you again.  Easy.

• Believe everything you hear. Someone said it, so, of course, it must be true....

• When you get a good idea, run about and tell everyone.  This gives them a chance to discourage you by throwing cold water on it, and it causes your own spiritual energy to leak away like a "ground" in an electric circuit.

• Never perform today what can possibly be postponed till tomorrow, or, better still, next week.

• Leave the important things to someone else instead of seeing to them personally.

• Make a point of arriving the day after the fair.

• Have no organised movements.  Trust to luck for everything.

• The day after the fire is the best time to insure.

• Avoid notebooks and rely purely on memory.

• Never be original.  Find out what is usually done and copy that.

• Realise that you have nothing more to learn.  This will easily destroy all danger of success.

• Tell yourself that it is now too late, and that you really did not have the proper equipment; and it will be especially helpful to keep saying that people are against you.

• Never learn from experience.   Keep on doing the same darn fool things time after time.

• Never wait to hear the other side of the story.  Knowing both sides will only unsettle your mind.

• Use your wit destructively. Be smart at the expense of absent people.  This is sure to be carried to them and will make enemies for you, something you can't be by life without more of.

• Stand on your dignity. Never forget that you have a position to keep up, even if you have nothing to keep it up on.  Never do any work that is not just to your liking.  This policy should bring you safely into the breadline.

• Try to get EVERYTHING on the cheap.  Beat down everyone.  EVERYONE. Study and practice to become the perfect "chiseller".  This will build an invincible poverty complex.

• Be a sanctimonious humbug, and when you bungle things, say it is "the Lord's will" or "the Devil made me do it" or that the trouble is that you are too good for your surroundings.

• Sit down and wait for something better to turn up.  This is the sovereign recipe for failure. 

• Finally, conduct your life in all respects as if there were no God. 

• A fool in the Bible usually means a person who will not make use of the intelligence that God gives him.  Hmmmmmmm. 

I CAN

I can’t give you solutions to all of life’s problems, doubts or fears.

But I can listen to you,

And together, we will search for answers.

I can’t change your past with all its heartache and pain,

Nor the future with it’s untold stories.

But I can be here now when you need me to care.

I can’t keep your feet from stumbling.

I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall.

Your joys, happiness, triumphs and successes are not mine;

Yet I can share in your laughter.

Your decisions in life are not mine to make, nor to judge;

I can only support you, encourage you,

And help when you ask.

I can’t prevent you from falling away from friendship,

From your values, from me.

I can only pray for you, talk to you and wait for you.

I can’t give you boundaries which I have determined for you,

But I can give you the room to change, room to grow,

Room to be yourself.

I can’t keep your heart from breaking or hurting,

But I can cry with you and help you pick up the pieces

And put them back in place.

I can’t tell you who you are.

I can only love you and ALWAYS be your friend.

My Prayers Have Been Answered

Please Hear What I Am NOT Saying

Don’t be fooled by me.

Don’t be fooled by the faced I wear.

For I wear a mask, a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off,

and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature to me, but don’t be fooled.

For God’s sake, don’t be fooled.

I give you the impression that I am secure, that confidence is my name and coolness is my game, that the water’s calm and I’m in command, and that I need no-one.

But don’t believe me. 

My surface may seem smooth by my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever concealing.

Beneath lies no complacence.

Beneath lies confusion and fear and aloneness.

But I hide this. 

I don’t want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed.

That's why I frantically created a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated façade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation.

My only hope, and I know it.

That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, if it’s followed by love.

It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison walls,

from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.

It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth something.

I don’t like to hide.

I don’t like to play superficial games.

I won’t stop playing them.

I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me, but you’ve got to help me.

You’ve got to hold out your hand, even when it’s the last thing I seem to want.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes the bland stare of the breathing dead.

Only you can call me into aliveness.

Each time you’re kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings; very small wings, but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling you can breathe life into me.

I want you to know that.

Who am I, you may wonder.

I am someone you now well.

For I am every man you meet, and I am every woman you meet.                                                                                               

The purpose of the workshops, seminars and training offered by the Foundation is to give yourself the ‘breathing space’ to reflect on your  life, go within and develop your self awareness, identify limiting beliefs which are holding you  back and leave feeling more relaxed, joyful and centered with a clear way forward.

Click here to watch video feature of Rod Briggs 

discussing the origins of happiness

*****************

See pictures of the latest South African 

Retreat/Safari here  

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