Author Archives: Susan L Hart

Appreciate the Beauty of Life

“Take time to smell the flowers” is such a well-known phrase, I suppose it may be almost cliche. However, how many of us actually live it? Intentionally taking notice of life’s beauty is a regular habit we would all benefit from cultivating.

The beauty of life is all around us, all the time, but we are often too overwhelmed with our daily work and personal problems, or the ugliness in the news, to notice it.

Life is a precious gift. When we see the beauty and feel gratitude for it, we are essentially saying thank you for that gift. Gratitude is a great amplifier. That which we focus on expands and ripples outward.

Not only do we give ourselves a much needed healing elixir, but we raise our vibration and people around us feel it. Just one more seemingly small way (but it’s huge!) that we can heal the world around us.

The featured photo is one I took in Thailand. This little spirit house was tucked into the corner of a property near the road. I noticed it as I walked home one day, and luckily I had my camera with me. 🙂 It was a little bit of unexpected beauty…

“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.” ~ Saul Bellow

More Inspirational Quotes:

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” ~ T.S. Eliot

“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.” ~ Toni Morrison

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” ~ Rumi

“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.” ~ Roman Payne

© Susan L Hart 2023

This post is an excerpt from my ebook Becoming Bigger: Realizations of Self & Humanity. Get it free when you subscribe for my monthly newsletter.

Susan L Hart 2023 / HartInspirations.com

Eternally

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We don’t remember
our other soul lives spent here,
alien Earth plane.

Swaths of sand smooth and
soften hard edges of past
civilizations.

We visit, then with
infinite impermanence,
return to dust too.

Susan L Hart 2023 / HartInspirations.com

Musings of a Movie Star

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I woke up this morning wondering what it would be like if the world had no mirrors. Yes, that’s right, none at all, so that we never saw the reflections of our own faces. We’d have to focus on the merits of our internal landscape much more, yes?

I also have wondered (many times) how different the world would be if the first department in the women’s section of a department store were not cosmetics. This would probably apply to men too, if as much emphasis were put on their beauty as their building of empires.

Physical beauty is a product of nature, and its measuring stick is still too often based on the subjective opinion of a culture or society. Norma Jean was born with the sort of good looks that society craved at the time. The world at large bought into Hollywood’s manipulation of Norma Jean into Marilyn Monroe, imagining they were the same. They were not.

The woman hidden beneath the glamorous facade was crying to be seen for her inner self, trapped by her own drive for success, and Hollywood’s desire to profit from it.

And I wonder, even though we’re slowly getting smarter about all of this, how much are we still buying into society’s definition of who we should be? What do you think?

“If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.” ~ Clifford Odets

Marilyn Monroe quotes:

“The true things rarely get into circulation. It’s usually the false things.”

“It was more fun dreaming about being a movie star than actually being one.”

“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”

“I’m for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It’s really tragic.”

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”

“All we demanded was our right to twinkle.”

Susan L Hart 2023 / HartInspirations.com

Nothing Is Free

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Work is just one way we find meaning in life. Perhaps some find no meaning in work at all, hence the faction of society who hope or expect things will show up for free.

This mentality, if it takes over, can lead to the downfall of a society. Everything is an exchange of energy. Someone has to do the work for things to be produced. If we all decided everything should be for free, where would society be?

I suppose with the advent of AI, we could in future all stay home and play video games all day long, and let the robots do the work. Then we’re not talking about the downfall of society, but rather a complete waste of human potential.

“I want it for free” is such a losing proposition…

Vision, aspirations, and the work required are important, most particularly to the growth of our souls. Robots will never really replace us, at least not the ones who understand this.

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.” ~ Michael Jordan

“A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.” ~ Frederick Douglass

Susan L Hart 2023 / HartInspirations.com

Embrace Your Bigness

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We live in a world where there are those who would do anything to make us believe we are small, our potential limited. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You are big.
You are part of everything.
Your potential is infinite.
Or, as Rumi so poetically put it,
“You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

Inspirational Quotes:

“Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.” ~ Roy T. Bennett

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” ~ William Faulkner

“You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.” ~ Rumi

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.” ~ William Blake

Susan L Hart 2023 / HartInspirations.com