For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it is a set of inspirational quotes that I deliver every day on Twitter.  I have been doing it for a few months and it’s my way of adding value to my followers. If you would like to read the others you can find a Collection of Twinspiration Oct. 10 – Nov. 10 and you can also  follow me @jimminy.

“A true gentleman is calm and at ease; the Small man is fretful and ill at ease.” ~ Confucius, The Analects Book VII, Verse 36

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” ~ Albert Pine

“One’s gratitude is a far greater judge of character than one’s attitude.”

“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.” ~ Albert Einstein

“Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor done.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.” ~ Horace

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” ~ Mark Twain

“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

“There is no formula for success, except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~ Arthur Rubinstein

“In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must, each day, surmount a fear.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The world doesn’t revolve around me (or you), but by people caring for others.” ~ A Life Defined By Death

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ~ Hellen Keller

“Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring.” ~ Herman Melville

“In giving, a man receives more than he gives; and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given.” ~ George Macdonald

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

“Today is not the time to be thankful for what we have accomplished and have individually, but what we can accomplish and share together.”

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” ~ Voltaire

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

“We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.” ~ Ian Malcolm

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” ~ Shakespeare

“Little things you take for granted may be something huge and astounding to someone who doesn’t experience them every day.”

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~ Albert Einstein

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” ~ Confucius

“Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.” ~ Randy Pausch

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” ~ Bertrand Russell

“Our wise acts accompany us through life to please us and help us. Just as surely our unwise acts follow us to plaque and torment us.” ~ George Clason

“We were making the future,” he said, “and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!” ~ H.G. Wells

I found this old post that I removed from the internet several months ago on a CD containing a lot of my former works that expounded on the raw emotional insights of my life. I wrote it at the end of Thanksgiving Break ’07 and I have, since, found a small sense of self motivation that helps me keep going. (Mild use of highly vulgar language within.)

During break, I took the time to understand why I’m not doing well in school. Since school began, I’ve found that I have no standard for self-motivation. This lacking sector therefore has caused quite a bit of strife in my life. So I went in search of a solution for my problem.

Quite frankly, the problem I found is I lack any reason to give a fuck about anything related to myself if another is not getting anything from it. Now I’m not saying I’m a selfless person, because that’s not true, I achieve my highest potential when acting in a selfless regard by which I normally benefit from the action itself. I find that I’m am merely a mediocre being with the potentiality to achieve above most peoples standards if I choose to. This brings forth my dilemma, I don’t give a fuck about achieving anything if I don’t feel it helps someone other than me.

It’s been this way for years I was merely mediocre in high school only achieving about a 3.0 on average. However, when it came to achieving for the chance to please another I was capable to achieve almost a 4.0, if only to prove myself to another I expressed my potential. I have adopted this methodology once again in an attempt to try and achieve more than merely mediocre. The problem in doing this is that I now have no one in which I would wish to prove myself to, no reason to achieve above mediocrity for.

I have turned to an unlikely source for motivation my ex. The reason I have chosen her is because she is the only thing that I ever wished to achieve anything for. The problem is I understand that I have about a 0% chance of ever re-achieving anything with her. I fail to want to prove to her knowing this. However, with nowhere else to turn I shall turn to the one source of past inspiration for the future inspiration of my
life fleeing from mediocrity.

The realization that everything that I seek means nothing to me in any sense. I am not worried about money, except to live from, I seek no indulgences outside my personal vices which I have begun to abstain from. I feel that everything shall fall together as it may and I really have no reason to try and influence the cosmos’ actions to affect myself. I seek no reason for life, life is what it is there shall be no reason in seeking the unseekable, I shall just live it.

The realization that one shall not try to change another’ view of life unless it would be beneficial to the other party to see life as something else. The influence one has on others should provide a more meaningful presence or essence to that persons life.

The realization that I have no reason to worry about anything no reason to wonder what could happen, just wait to see what will. I mean if you were to worry yourself with the wonder you will have wasted the time you could have been experiencing what happened or enjoying something else while waiting.

“Memories are nothing, Memories are everything, Memories are what was and will be.”

(I wrestled with the posting of this article, even though this is the story of one of the most defining moments in my life. I hope his wisdom will spark your ambition also.)

I’ll begin with who I used to be. I was a geeky kid who had a hard time socially, who was slowly devoured by his pain. His pain led him into a world that was self-centered and effortlessly anti-social. He desperately wanted to be like the other kids, but feared giving a bit of himself away and of rejection. So for years he stayed in his head and remained seperated from the people in the physical world that surrounded him.

This all changed with an inspirational story about someone close to me. It was the telling of my cousin’s life, he died at the age of five, yet he held the wisdom and heart of a man. He was born with a disorder that caused deformation of the majority of his organs, extreme pressure on his brain, and an enlarged tongue. Even facing such hardships, he was always filled with hope, happiness and courage. When people told him he couldn’t do something, either because they felt he wasn’t capable or just worried about his safety; he would prove them wrong by atleast attempting to accomplish that which they said he could not. The boy understood more about life than most people ever do.

Knowing that someone this young and in his state had the courage and hope to take what people told him and go in the face of it, changed my life for the better. I found that trying to open up to others was better than not trying at all, that the world doesn’t revolve around me (or you), but by people caring for others. I realized I was a nobody that was currently headed to nowhere and I needed to change. i found the person I am seeking to be today, the person I wish I would have known so long ago. I found the person who is helpful to those who seek it and even those who do not. I found a person who no longer fears his emotions and rejection, but lives with what he gets. A person who knows he finds happiness by helping others. A person who lets others get know him and who he is as that person. A person who will try his best to get were he plans to be and plans to be trying his best once he gets there. Thus,  my life as it is now can be defined by my cousin’s death, an event I will never forget.