Live Inspired Vlog 198: Sweet Little Nuggets of Truth

What the Diary of Anne Frank Teaches Us Today

Alright, well good morning, friends!

Welcome to Live Inspired- Wednesday morning- with John O’Leary.

I am always thrilled just to spend a couple minutes with you on these Wednesday mornings- mid-week, the hump day, baby!

Here we go! The day before Thanksgiving.

You know, I think as we begin another day, most truth, it’s not typically all that complicated to understand. It’s just complicated to actually step into and live.

So most truth isn’t really difficult for us to get our heads wrapped around, whether it’s around forgiveness or love or goals or dreams or faith or possibility or choice or whatever it may be.

It’s not complicated to understand. It’s just difficult to actually implement and step into and boldly proclaim through our lives.

It’s why I love to not read as much around fiction, as much around biography.

One of my favorite biographies was actually a journal kept in the early 1940s by a little girl living in an attic in the Netherlands.

Her name was Anne Frank.

As she kept a journal, she had no desire whatsoever that one day, 80 years downstream or so, that you and I might still be talking about her.

Instead, she was keeping track of her family, keeping track of her parents, keeping track of what was happening around her in the Netherlands, keeping track of the challenges that she faced as a young teenage girl.

And dreaming about goals and love and life.

And one of the more remarkable things that she wrote, and the whole book is full of sweet little nuggets of truth, not always easy to implement but easy, I think, to understand.

One thing that Anne Frank said was, “If you want to put a smile on someone’s face, try having a smile on your own.”

If you want to make someone happy, try being happy yourself.

That’s good advice.

In a marketplace that is so surrounded with fear and frowns and negative activity and difficulty and adversity, it’s become very easy to walk around so doomed and gloom, stuck in focus on all the things that are wrong with us and around us.

But what that beautiful young lady reminded us decades ago (1942-1944, I think was when she was writing) is the possibility that is alive and well within each of our lives to be an agent for good during our life and then again long after our life has been taken from us.

Little things aren’t.

Smiles matter.

Joy spreads.

Life is good.

The sun still continues to rise.

And the best is yet to come.

I thought about Anne Frank recently as I listened to my friend Rich Donnelly.

Rich wrote a book called The Chicken Runs at Midnight.

Guys, if you haven’t heard about this story yet, first of all cruise on over to my website: johnolearyinspires.com. Check out the podcast. Check out Rich Donnelly’s episode.

This is a guy who made it to the very tippity-top of the ladder. He’s a major league baseball player, then he’s a coach, he wins a World Series, but in winning everything, he begins to lose everything, including his daughter.

But not before she teaches him the greatest gift. And I’m not going to give that one away because I want you to check out the podcast, but let me tell you this: When you hear his story, when you hear his heart, when you hear his passion and his daughter’s lesson, you will begin to again realize that miracles still happen and they are alive and well within your own lives.

I want to thank you for being part of our Live Inspired community.

I want to encourage you to check out the Rich Donnelly podcast anywhere you get your podcasts, go to Live Inspired with John O’Leary.

I want you to get ready to have an amazing Thanksgiving because this is the truth: The best is yet to come.

Little things aren’t.

Smiles spread.

Joy still wins.

So for this time and until next time, this is John O’Leary.

And this is your day. Live Inspired.

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