The Funny Thing Is...by Ellen Degeneres

• Be nice to everyone, even though you don't want to and you may not like certain people. Be kind, friendly, and respectful even if people are not nice to you. That way, you're not dragged down to their level. Also, there's nothing that annoys arrogant jerks more than people being nice to them.
• Try to have some quiet time every day.
• Try to put time aside to listen to "you". It's easy to forget what "you" want, who "you" are, with all the noise. Check in with "you" every day.
• There's never a need to overdo anything.
• Know you are special.
• The key to life is balance. Think of a seesaw. On one side is Give, the other side Take. If you just give and give and give, you've got nothing left. You're empty.
• Start thinking positively. You will notice a difference.
• Stop being wishy-washy about things!
• Work, but have playtime. Recess.
• There's no reason to live a life of regret.
• The saying "It's the thought that counts" was coined as an emotional Band-Aid by someone who left all of her shopping until nine o'clock Christmas Eve. If it's really the thought that counts, then why don't we ever tell people what we were thinking when we were scrambling to buy them their last-minute panic gift?
• Since we can't, as adults, get away with throwing bad presents against a wall and bursting into tears, Christmas is the time of year when we all become really good at lying.
• Silence is where all of our answers are. It's where our truth is.
• Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
• You'd think with all these innovations that are speeding things up for us and moving us along, people would be early--or at least on time--when they're going places. But somehow, everybody's still always late.
• As long as people don't harm anything or anyone, they have the right to hate anything, but really, it's a shame to waste that kind of energy on hate. It's such a negative and draining emotion. Also, you're shutting yourself out of a possible opportunity to grow in some new area, to try to understand something that up until now you haven't understood.
• Adversity builds character. Translation: You become bitter and angry and then people hate you even more.
• Is the easier way always the better way for me?
• Don't care too much about what other people think, or you'll never do anything.
• There are a lot of self-righteous people out there. And if you try to adjust your life to please them, you're just going to go crazy and risk being as unhappy as these self-righteous kooks are.

2/18/2006