the quotes collective: erin

"Blogging prowess"--I ain't got it. What I do have is a lot of thoughts jumbled up in this ol' brain of mine--a huge spectrum of emotions and feelings experienced on a daily basis and some years of personal introspection banked in my own vault. When Jenn introduced the idea of featuring favorite quotes, I immediately thought of this one:

If you've perused pinterest for any amount of time, you've probably seen it and possibly pinned it yourself. I tried to "research" (google search) the original link or the author. I just found a lot of links to tumblrs and flickrs and quote sites and forums, but no answer to its origin. Author unknown it is.  

Eight words that are clear, concise, to-the-point with a powerful message; effective and relatable; easy to remember. Heck, if you can't remember the eight words, maybe take this approach:

(Side note: the tattoo is reportedly on the hip of an all-time favorite musician--songwriter, artist, singer, tattoo enthusiast Mr. Butch Walker. But this entry isn't about him. Sorry for the distraction.)

I stumbled across this quote during a time in my life that was one of the toughest. Correct that. It was the toughest time in my life where I was challenging myself to self-examine some poor choices, some big mistakes, some nasty feelings and some rather unpleasant circumstances surrounding my life. This message was just what I needed. I have become a big believer in lessons and learning from mistakes. Consequently, I've become a firm believer that those that do NOT try to learn from the past are wasting valuable time and opportunities for a bigger, better, healthier life. Bitterness is an ugly, encompassing power that can take hold of you. I fought, and I fought hard to get "better" and put the "bitter" behind me.  

Everyone has their own struggles. Many of life's challenges that others have experienced are 10x, 100x worse than what I've faced. We've all had tough times; some feel them worse than others; some handle them better than others. I think if more people strived to be "better" instead of "bitter," then we'd all be headed in a more positive direction. I know it's easier said than done. I fight to have this philosophy permeate through me daily.  It's not always there, but sooner or later, I snap back to it, and I feel "better" for it.  

Now, maybe I need to get that tattoo like the one pictured above...

this post comes to you all the way from australia by my one of my oldest friends, erin. she's a good gal to get to know. pop by her blog, and say howdy!

have you got a quote you love? something that's touched you? made you laugh? gave you strength? i would love to include it as a guest post here. i've got one spot left! if interested, email me: criticalcrass (at) me (dot) com.