your word of the day: rise

Rise up to your highest potential and help others rise to theirs. When small-minded thinking and toxic opinions threaten to bring you down, rise above them. Rise up singing. Rise up in joy. Rise every morning grateful for the promise of a new day. Rise above what you thought were your ultimate limitations. Create a new, higher level of limitations, then rise above them, too. When idiots spew their hateful venom your way, rise above it. Take a higher road. Lighten your load of emotional baggage and rise above your nonproductive habits. Educate yourself so you can rise above ignorance. When you feel as though the muck and grime, the ooze and slime of every day could pull you down and hold you in its lowly clutches, be as light as a feather and rise.

Excerpted from Words of Wisdom for Women, by Rachel Snyder (Fall River Press, 2003); buy it here. Also available in slightly different format here, under the original title, 365 Words of Well-Being for Women (McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, 1997). Or, visit your independent bookseller and recommend that they order a few copies of the original “365…”