David W. Jones Quotes

Planning is helpful. If you don't know what you want, you'll seldom get it. But, no matter how well you plan, you will fare better if you expect the unexpected. The unexpected, by nature, comes unseen, unthought, unenvisioned. All you can do is plan to go unplanned, prepare to be unprepared, make going with the flow part of your agenda, for the most successful among us envision, plan, and prepare, but cast all aside as needed, while those who are unable to go with the flow often suffer, if they survive.

Full minds create chaos.

What is the secret of your serenity?" a student asked Sophia
"Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable," she replied.

Sophia sat in meditation on the riverbank when a student bent down to place two enormous pearls at her feet as a gift.
She opened her eyes to see the pearls. She picked one up, but dropped it. It rolled down the hill upon which she was sitting and into the river. The student chased after it and looked all afternoon, diving, coming up for air, diving back down.
"Sophia," he asked. "Could you show me where it went in? I can't find it."
"Right there," she said throwing the other pearl in the river.

People who go to Disney who have magic in themselves experience magic there, just as people who go to the grocery store who have magic in themselves experience magic at the grocery store. The principle is simple: fun, joy, and happiness, are something we bring to life, not something life, circumstance, or situation bring to us. There are truly no magic kingdoms, only magic people.
Fun, joy and happiness are choices, orientations, approaches, attitudes, a way of living in the world, not the world itself ...

Once we face our fear, once we treat our anxiety itself as a thing, we can then choose otherwise. Instead of filling the unknown in our minds with expectations of the tragic, we can choose to fill the void with a different expectation – the expectation of adventure.
For example, Seneca, the Greek philosopher, refused to be afraid of what he did not know. When asked if he was afraid of dying, he replied, "Absolutely not, why should I be afraid of something I know nothing about." His orientation toward the unknown of death was not to fill the gap in his understanding with horror but potential.

Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve were doing when they got into so much trouble? As I read the story, they were shopping. The forbidden fruit was not scattered throughout the garden, not in many places, not in multiple locations, but one place, one site, one location and one location only. Perhaps they just came upon it, "Oh, look, the forbidden fruit ... " or, perhaps, they were looking for something, searching, shopping. Somewhere in their dissatisfaction they thought, "If only we had something more ...