=======================
VOTT IF ... 
you could get a short, humorous, informative e-mail each week that was insightful and meaningful to your life?
=======================


Valuing Ourselves
Why is it that when we hear about someone's kindness or courage or nobility, we are all moved? Yes, we are all moved. No matter how hard we try to deny it, these qualities do affect even those who try to sweep it under the rug with the broom of indifference.

There is an important truth here. The fact that we can relate to acts of kindness, courage and nobility demands that there be something within all of us which is kind, courageous and noble. These are not intellectual developments - they are a result of inherent instinct.

So the next time you admire what is really worth admiring in someone else, do so, not out of envy, but in the spirit of camaraderie - for what you admire lies somewhere within you as well.


Time Tippies
Meetings can becomes voracious time grabbers. Well-organized meetings can accomplish good things, but much of the time meetings happen out of habit rather than necessity and waste everyone's time. It is really a good idea to have the purpose, structure and follow-up to any meeting well prepared. That failing, here are two important rules to follow:

1. If at all possible avoid going to meetings
2. If you have to attend, send someone else


Inspiration
Leonardo da Vinci was a genius who represented the noblest attempt of humanity to penetrate and absorb every field of knowledge.  
 
As an illegitimate son, he grew up with little attention or warmth. His relation to nature was closer than to family or friends. It was his compassion for living creatures that led him to be vegetarian. Most of Leonardo's thoughts and work were unusual. He preferred discovering the world of nature to the routine of school. From early childhood, he sketched impressions of things drawing with marked precision and realism. His artist's power of observation combined with a scientist's intuition led him to become the greatest portrait painter of all time, psychologist, zoologist, linguist, botanist, anatomist, geologist, musician, critc and civil engineer. He was a man with vision and ability that inspired him to create ideas that only centuries later were able to be practically applied in the fields of sanitation, hydraulics, aeronautics and engineering due to the material limitations of his time.  
 
Yet, in his own time, he had been either ignored or scoffed at by an unappreciative public. Still he persevered, staying true to himself, following his love of nature and leaving mankind an unparalleled legacy of knowledge, beauty and wonder of the human spirit. 


Funecdotes
Golda Meir (1898-1978) was the stateswoman who became prime minister of Israel in 1969. When interviewed for the book Special People, she was asked how it had felt to be appointed the first woman foreign minister (in 1956). She replied with a smile, "I don't know. I was never a man minister."