Do not take anything personally

This is the best way to obtain control over whatever life throws at you – good or bad. Life is just the way it is, not because you deserve it, or because you are better than anyone else or even because you are lucky. Similarly when bad things happen for which you are not responsible, that’s just the way it is. You are not bad, your parents and ancestors were not bad either. When you don’t take things personally you remain in control and forgiveness comes easily. If you don’t forgive, the hurt and the damage done will be like a canker and will always stay with you.

	‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.’
	Albert Einstein

Skills covered in this text, and any other skills for that matter, take practice. Practice cannot be delegated.

Nikos Kazantzakis (author of Zorba the Greek) once said:

‘Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.’

I sincerely hope that this text will continue to be helpful in your future. Please read my final, unoriginal yet incredibly powerful, piece of advice to live by:

‘“Just do it”1 And do it brilliantly. Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.’

Literally: ‘All things change and we change with them.’

Community Priest
The Communities of Our Lady
Sydney, Australia