There are a few personal qualities we can all develop to bring more success into our lives. They come from small changes we make throughout our lives, one step and one day at a time. 【小题1】

· Patience. This is probably one of the most difficult of the personal qualities to develop. 【小题2】 To achieve true success and happiness in your life, you need to cultivate (培养) patience. Only through patience will you gain the clarity ( 清晰的思维能力) required to overcome the problems that you face in life.

· Courage. Far too often I see people fail to reach their potential ( 潜力) because they’re afraid. They aren’t afraid of growth, but they’re afraid of taking risks. 【小题3】 So stop fearing what could go wrong and begin focusing on what could go right.

· Self-confidence. You need to believe that you have what it takes to achieve your goals. 【小题4】 It truly is that simple. To be successful, you first need to have belief in your abilities. If you don’t, you may not take action to move forward or improve yourself fully.

· Integrity ( 正直). Integrity is super important. 【小题5】 Practice this quality daily. The best way to cultivate integrity in your life is by being honest, and open in everything that you do.

Growth that Starts from Thinking

It seems to me a very difficult thing to put into words the beliefs we hold and what they make you do in your life. I think I was fortunate because I grew up in a family where there was a very deep religious（宗教的）feeling. I don’t think it was spoken of a great deal. It was more or less taken for granted that everybody held certain beliefs and needed certain enhancements of their own strength and that that came through your belief in God.

But as I grew older I questioned a great many of the things that I knew very well my grandmother who had brought me up had taken for granted. And I think I might have been a quite difficult person to live with if it hadn’t been for the fact that my husband once said it didn’t do you any harm to learn those things, so why not let your children learn them? When they grow up they’ll think things out for themselves.

And that gave me a feeling that perhaps that’s what we all must do—think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

I don’t know whether I believe in a future life. I believe that all that you go through here must have some value, therefore there must be some reason. And there must be some “going on”. How exactly that happens I’ve never been able to decide. There is a future—that I’m sure of. But how, that I don’t know. And I came to feel that it didn’t really matter very much because whatever the future held you’d have to face it when you came to it, just as whatever life holds you have to face it exactly the same way. And the important thing was that you never let down doing the best that you were able to do—it might be poor because you might not have very much within you to give, or to help other people with, or to live your life with. But as long as you did the very best that you were able to do, then that was what you were put here to do and that was what you were accomplishing by being here.

And So I have tried to follow that out—and not to worry about the future or what was going to happen. I think I am pretty much of a fatalist（宿命论者）. You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund (基金).

For weeks, I’ve been thinking of bigger, deeper questions. How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball-simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.