Microsoft Word who will cry when u die doc

33. 
See Your Children as Gifts 
On Father’s Day, my son Colby brought home a hand – made card from school. On the front of it was his small 
handprint and inside the card, above a little photograph of my child, were these words: 
Sometimes you get discouraged because I am so small And always leave my fingerprints on furniture 
and walls. But every day I’m growing – I’ll be grown up someday. And all those tiny handprints will surely 
fade away. 
So here’s a final handprint, just so you can recall, Exactly how my fingers looked, when I was very small. 
Love, Colby 
Children grow so very quickly. It seems like just yesterday that I stood in the delivery room waiting for the 
birth of my son, and then two years later, for the birth of my daughter, Bianca. It is easy to promise yourself you 
will spend more time with your kids “when things slow down at work” or “when I get that big promotion” or 
“next year when I get a little more time.” But if you don’t act on life, life has a habit of acting on you. The 
weeks slip into months, the months slip into years and before you know it, that little child is now an adult with a 
family of her own. The greatest gift you can give to your children is the gift of your time. And one of the 
greatest gifts you will ever give yourself is that of enjoying your kids and seeing them for what they truly are: 
the small miracles of life. 
In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran makes the point far more eloquently than I ever could when he writes, “Your 
children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.” 

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34. 
Enjoy the Path, 
Not Just the Reward
In my work, I am often asked to teach people how to set and achieve goals. When I ask my audiences, “Why is 
it so important that you realize your goals?” they often answer, “Because getting the things I want will make me 
happy.” While there is an element of truth in this answer – getting the things we want often does bring a 
measure of joy into our lives – it somehow misses the mark. The real value of setting and achieving goals lies 
not in the reward you receive but in the person you become as a result of reaching your goals. This simple 
distinction has helped me to enjoy the path of life while, at the same time, staying focused on meeting my 
personal and professional objective. 
As one of my favorite philosophers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, observed, “The reward for a thing well done, is to 
have done it.” When you achieve a goal, whether that goal was to be a wiser leader or to become a better parent 
you will have grown as a person in the process. Often, you will not be able to detect this growth, but the growth 
will have occurred. So rather than savoring only the rewards that have flowed form the achievement of that 
goal, celebrate the fact that the process of reaching your destination has improved the person you are. You have 
built self – discipline, discovered new things about your abilities and manifested more of your human potential. 
These are reward in and of themselves. 

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