Taking Risks

ay after day, the father drove to work along the same dreary highway to the same dreary job. Sometimes his daughter went to his office with him. On one of these occasions she noticed a winding road running parallel to the highway. "Oh, Daddy, let's take that road today," she suggested.

After some grumbling and mumbling, the father agreed and turned off to take the side road.

To their delight, the road was lined with full trees and a rainbow of flowers. They came upon a quaint little village in which there was an office with a sign in the window which said, "Clerk Wanted. Inquire Within." The job seemed perfect and the man accepted it with excitement he hadn't felt in many years.

Sometimes we have to risk taking a different path in order to arrive at a different place. How else can we change things in our lives that need to be changed? And how easy to do it, once we're willing to risk something out of the ordinary.

Shame-filled people feel that something is wrong at their very core. It is a sense of being bad. . . .

Nobody is rotten to the core.

Whenever we start to believe we are bad all the way through, we can picture good things we have done, days when someone else was happy to be with us, and see for ourselves that we have many good points that outweigh the bad.

If we have done something wrong, we must apologize and make amends. Making a mistake is not the same as being worthless. Mistakes are a natural part of living, not something to be ashamed of.

Our freedom to make mistakes is one of our greatest assets, for this is the way we learn humility, persistence, courage to take risks, and better ways of doing things.

All of us are valuable and lovable. How could we be otherwise? Since mistakes are natural aspects of growth, we can salute them in ourselves and others as signs of life and celebrate our ability to learn and to forgive.

Last Updated by Virginia Young on Thursday, 27 February, 2003 at 9:29 PM.

SEND MAIL TO virginia
RETURN TO MAIN PAGE
web design

GeoCities
1