Best Wishes for New Year and Words of Inspiration
I was traveling in New York, recently to promote our upcoming TBLI CONFERENCE™ USA 2013 . One of the meetings I had was with Andrea Pizziconi who I hadn’t seen for quite a while. It was an inspiring afternoon for both of us. Andrea told me about a speech that she found inspiring when things seemed tough and pulled it up on her blackberry. I read the speech by Theodore Roosevelt and it totally resonated with me.
This has been a tough year for many of us and I hope Theodore Roosevelt’s words give you the strength to persevere and finish the path that we started. Sometimes the challenge seems insurmountable and we need a little push and reminder, why.
The Man in the Arena
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic” Theodore Roosevelt, delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910
