She could have chosen to be/remain a victim, instead she chose to be an inspiration. She chose greatness over littleness.

Thanks Mimi, for sharing that this morning.

I also will read anything by Tony Robins (saw your earlier post). I have two of his CD programs that GB gave me (a friend had given to him).

From the link:

"Things didn’t take a complete turn for the better in the early years with Franklin as she discovered he was having an affair with her secretary. Eleanor hit bottom. But this was also the turning point where she started to consider who she wanted to be and started on a new, more independent path in life.


She became more politically active and connected with the people while traveling throughout the U.S. She focused on improving civil rights and helping the women, the poor and the working-class. She wanted to close gaps in society and give people more equality.


Making such an interesting journey – both outward through the physical world and inward through the mental world – of course teaches you a thing or two. Here are just a few Eleanor’s awesome thoughts on life.


“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”


It becomes easier to be bold when you learn to use fear to your advantage. Every time you face a fear you gain the 3 important qualities above. And the next thing that comes along will be easier to handle.



And if you have to handle a big fear, whatever it may be, and later realise you actually survived it, many things in life you may have feared previously seems to shrink. Those fears become smaller. They might even disappear.

And you might think to yourself that what you thought was a fear before wasn’t that much to be afraid of at all. All is relative. And every triumph, problem, fear and experience becomes bigger or smaller depending to what you compare it to.


For more thoughts on how to handle fear have a look at 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear and Top 24 Tips for Making Your Self Confidence Soar. And while we are on the subject of facing your fears, it might also be helpful to remember the words of Eleanor’s husband, Franklin:


“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”


“Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”


Whatever you do, there will always be some people who criticize you. You can´t avoid it. Well, perhaps if you never do or say anything. But how much fun would that be? And would that even help? Probably not, because then they’ll just complain about you never saying anything.


Criticism doesn’t always come from what you do. It’s quite often about the other guy/gal. Maybe s/he needs to vent jealousy, bitterness, anger or frustration. Or feel a need to show that his/her point of view or belief is the right one. Maybe money is tight or the cat was run over last week. So whatever you do, people will always be able to find things in your life to criticise. There is not much you can do about that. So you might as well do what you feel is right for you.



“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”


I’ve slowly come to realise how powerful this thought is. And how useful it can be when you actually start to use it. But coming around to this thought, to accept that you really control so much in life can be a bit counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp. It can take some time.


But you choose and you control how you react and feel. So even though what anyone says to you, it’s up to you if you want feel inferior or down about it. Achieving this amount of control over yourself takes some training of course and isn’t something you master in a weekend. But as you realise that this thought is true and applying it to your life a world of possibilities starts to slowly open up.

But how do you let criticism and negative thoughts not get to you? One way is to not care too much about what other people think (regardless if it´s positive or negative thoughts). You can read more about that in How to Handle Criticism and Get Something Good Out of It.


“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”


This is a great thought. Curiosity is so useful but also an often forgotten quality. We are curious like crazy when we are young. But that curiosity often seems to dissipate as we grow older.


Maybe school makes it harder to follow your curiosity as we for many years spend out days in a place with more order and many rules. A place where we have to move as a group and reach the same goals at the same time as the rest of the class. Maybe it’s because society doesn’t encourage curiosity that much. Or maybe it’s because as we grow older we don’t value and work at our curiosity as much as we perhaps could.


Curiosity is a great driving force. As long as you are curious fears and obstacles become smaller. You feel like you just have to keep moving forward and keep exploring. To more often adopt a mental frame of curiosity is one of the better ways to see and explore the world, to move yourself toward new experiences and to have great fun at the same time.


It’s a bit like being a kid all over again.


“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.”


To keep complaining about your circumstances, what happened to you and how mistreated you were is – after the initial experience and reaction - pretty pointless. Not because you shouldn´t complain and it’s bad behaviour in some way. But because it’s not useful for you.


People don’t like complainers so if you go on and on they might stop listening. Or start to avoid you. Complaining won’t solve your problems either. What has happened has happened.


Complaining isn’t that useful for you. It’s much better to put whatever happened behind you, to make a plan and take action today to improve today and tomorrow. This might sound corny.


But you choose what you want to do.


You can choose to continue complaining and become addicted to the feeling and experience of it. And get a strange satisfaction out of complaining.


Or you can choose to use your time and energy for something better, more fun and exhilarating than complaining. For more on developing a positive outlook read Take The Positivity Challenge! and Top 5 Tips for Living a More Positive Life.


“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”


This may sound like an empty cliché but it surely works. One of the best ways to become happier is simply to make others happier.


When you make someone else happy you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: ”Wow, I really made him/her happy!”.


And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. And so the two – or more - of you keep building an upward spiral of positivity and happiness.


So be smart and bold, take more trips down a road less travelled than it should be. Focus on giving happiness instead of zeroing in on receiving it. It’s better for everyone."

I BUMPED UP THE WHOLE THREAD...

While I admire much about the inspiration that an obviously talented ER brings to history...I am surprised at the willoingness to include the writings of a known adulteress (lesbian relationship well documented after her H's affair with Lucy Mercer) here on MB. Perhaps time has dulled the sting of her affair (very long term) and her works out pace her actions... I don't know. I looked up to her until I became more learned about her true nature.

sorry for the TJ.

But she didn't have an affair did she?

I would have a problem with that but not her personal sex life...which has not been documented...

I've read her biographies by BLANCHE WIESEN COOK....if anything, she's at least bisexual..cause she also had some longterm emotional entanglements with men...recall reading the letters....

she DID have an affair.

she carried on her relationship while still married to FDR.

he did not die until 1945...her affairs continued for decades.

and more...

FDR & Lucy Mercer Rutherford: Lucy was Eleanor's social secretary in the period before 1918. In September, 1918, Eleanor discovered a packet of love letters from Lucy to FDR. Eleanor later admitted, "the bottom dropped out of my own particular world & I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time." FDR and Eleanor immediately stopped living as man-and-wife. Lucy was dismissed but came back during FDR's later years.

FDR & Marguerite 'Missy' LeHand, his "other wife." FDR's son Elliot wrote in his book about his father, "everyone in the close knit inner circle of father's friends accepted it as a matter of course. I remember being only mildly stirred to see him with Missy on his lap as he sat in his wicker chair in the main stateroom holding her in his sun-browned arms...He made no attempt to conceal his feelings about Missy." FDR left Missy half of his 3 million dollar estate. Note: before FDR got polio, he was widely known as a womanizer and playboy.

FDR & his floozy cousin Margaret Suckley. As early as 1920 she was missidentified as his wife in a newspaper photograph of them at a ball game. Eleanor who was sitting behind them was cropped out of the picture. FDR built a secret lovenest on his estate for their trysts. For details of their affair see MARGARET SUCKLEY CLOSEST COMPANION, by Geoffrey Ward, 1995.
FDR blackmailed Princess Martha of Norway, mother of three small children, into having sex with him in return for war aid to her husband Crown Prince Olav and Norway during 1941.

Eleanor & Lorena Hickok lesbian affair- Hickok was an unattractive 5' 8" 200 pound reporter who moved into the White House to be near Eleanor. Some of the content of their letters to each other: "Hick longed to kiss the soft spot at a corner of Eleanor's mouth; Eleanor yearned to hold Hick close; Hick despaired at being away from Eleanor; Eleanor wished she could lie down beside Hick and take her in her arms." (Goodwin p.222) On March 7, 1933, Eleanor wrote to Hickok: "Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn't be wearing it." Enough?

Eleanor and the much younger Joseph Lash- in a very funny scene, military intelligence on FDR's orders bugged Eleanor's room in the Chicago Blackstone Hotel in March 1943 where she was having sex with Joe and sent the recordings to FDR for his listening pleasure. This led to a row between ER and FDR because she was told about the bugging afterwards by the hotel. FDR also read Joe's intercepted love letters to ER. Eleanor also had a long affair with Earl Miller, FDR's bodyguard

Did they have an open marriage?

Every time I admire someone from history, I find out they had these wierd sexual preferences or they had affairs, or they abused their parents, or disowned their children...

Does greatness just come with peculararities, or inability to be faithful...or what?

Is there anyone out there short of Jesus Christ who was a great person without a tainted personal life?

this is a bit more than a tainted life....

they had children and obviously set a horrible example for them.

there have been many great leaders throughout history that remained faithful. greatness was not acheived by the Roosevelts... it was thrust on them in 1941....remember how popular George Bush was after 9/11. Imagine if there was a defined enemy to go after when that happened. He would be beloved on a scale not seen since JFK (one of our other great adulterers).

Speaking of those PERCEIVED as great... Princess Di....ten years ago today the exagerated legend of another adulteress began.

Media creations.

and the last time I checked...an open marriage was adultery.

I think that perhaps it is more that some people are able to recognize and appreciate greatness, or just something good, regardless of the source. These same people I think usually are also pretty understanding that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are a little more accepting of that fact.

I think that loving people in spite of their shortcomings is another trait that is probably common in these same people. The term "Unconditional" comes to mind.

I think that it has a lot to do with how rigidly people like to follow rules, and how good they think they are at it. When you have a nice, strict, clearly defined set of rules where you can easily define "People who do or say or feel anything on this list are bad and worthy of my contempt", it can take a lot of the confusion out of life.

Sometimes I almost envy them.

This came from a POSITIVITY BLOG..so let's stay in that vein..although your point is well-taken, MEDC...

Regardless of Eleanor's skeletons, her quotes ARE GREAT...

I think much WISDOM comes from LIFE'S STRUGGLES AND CONFLICTS which she most certainly had to deal with..

fair enough Mimi...

but be careful of the people you look up to. I can give you some fantastic quotes from people that were responsible for the slaughetr if millions.

my point....pretty packaged words coming from the tongues of deceivers should viewed with a great suspicion.

Thanks, MEDC...

GOOD POINT..

You've got me to thinking...

Can't say I really LOOK UP to Eleanor, though...

Again, I do like the quotes...

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Mimi,

I took a look at that Blog, and the overall history and existence of the Roosevelts and all politics, etc aside, I see the positive and good in the quotes that were used.

Maybe I'm just not in "deep thinking" mode, but darn it, sometimes I think it's ok to take a Good Inspirational Quote and use it in a positive way in your life without having to discect it and the person that said it. No offense to anyone on that,,,, just how I'm feeling right now.

Thanks for the thread, Mimi!

BM... good point...to a point...

how do you feel about this quote..



does it have any less meaning considering the words were spoken by Hitler? Personally, I would think so.

My point to Mimi was...and it seems like it was well taken...is that it is odd on an infidelity forum to be quoting a woman that spent decades mired in infidelity and extremely promiscuous behavior.