The first:“Practice an attitude of gratitude.”

There’s nothing new or remarkable about this adage.  It’s just that it happened to come after a particularly challenging day at school and served as a gentle reminder that thankfulness is not always automatic – it takes *practice* and is a mindset worth cultivating.

The next day, during another one of those rough “moments” that teachers know so well, I remembered those words.  “Practice an attitude of gratitude.”  And I did.  I made a conscious decision to be thankful for those wonderfully cute kids in my class who are, after all, only 5 and 6 years old, and for whom the agenda of school and curriculum and “work” are delightful unknowns.

The second piece of advise? “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Again.  Nothing new here.

But timing is everything.  And reading this was like a small nudge not to give up.  To keep pressing on.  With writing.  With hope.  With dreams that are as yet unseen, unrealized.  To believe that success – even of the small, insignificant kind – is just around the corner.