Tidbits of Wisdom from Shannon L. Alder

Sometimes the bridges you burn light the way out of your darkness, but the memory of the blaze will be burned into your heart and mind forever.

Try not to be a man or woman of success, but rather a man or woman of inspiration. If you're successful, they will flock to you for money or fame, but if you're inspirational, they will flock to you because they love your soul and how you change theirs.

Take the high road. People will rise up to join you or fall out of sight.

Money isn't the solution to your problems. It only lets you carry your unhappiness around in style.

The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.

Your dream is to feel good; God's dream is for you to do good.

The purpose of life is the lesson.

People who fit don't seek. The seekers are those that don't fit.

Shame without repentance doesn't lose power when it is spoken, it only seeks approval.

When people don't respect one another seldom is there honesty.

To be a strong and empathetic person always requires us to trust that God will send angels to the people's heart we tried to reach, but couldn't.

Cruelty is a language that the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the heart feels forever.

Confidence is knowing who you are and not changing it a bit because of someone's version of reality is not your reality.

I don't argue with fools; I educate.

Staying silent is like a slow growing cancer to the soul and a trait of a true coward. There is nothing intelligent about not standing up for yourself. You may not win every battle. However, everyone will at least know what you stood for you.

Where loved ones failed you, guardian angels stand ready to catch your fall.

Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn't validate your worth.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't being said. The art of reading between the lines is a life long quest of the wise.

True regret is knowing you missed your only opportunity to be simply a good friend to someone that was exactly like you.

The purest love always reveals itself during acceptance.

Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you.

Tough love and brutal truth from strangers are far more valuable than Band-Aids and half-truths from invested friends, who don't want to see you suffer any more than you have.

If your love for another person doesn't include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.

When you spend time worrying, you're simply using your imagination to create things you don't want.

Clarity and focus doesn't always come from God or inspirational quotes. Usually, it takes your mother to slap the reality back into you.

When you stop living your life based on what others think of you, real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self-acceptance opened.

Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.

You can be broken into a dozen shattered pieces and still heal the world because service has its own medicine -- hope.

Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When I is replaced by we, illness becomes wellness.

If you're going to love someone or something then don't be a slow leaking faucet, be a hurricane.

Chasing a person doesn't give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.

When you judge other people without wanting to know the true story behind their actions, is usually when there is something inside of you that is so broken that if you found out what you believed about them was a lie, you wouldn't want to accept it or mak.

The day your soul has died is the day you don't care about anyone's pain unless it builds you up or makes you richer.

You don't have to say everything to be a light. Sometimes a fire built on a hill will bring interested people to your campfire.

Never love someone beneath your level of evolution. If you want a monkey, you can visit one at your local zoo.

You know your testimony is strong when your roots are so deep that other people's storms will never knock you over.

Insecure people only eclipse your sun because they're jealous of your daylight and tired of their dark, starless nights.

Every storm is a classroom and every person a lesson or teacher.

Strength of character comes from being hit by stray verbal stones, while protecting discarded ciphers in the snow.

It is not what you leave to your children that matters, but what you leave in them.

Sometimes, we are unable to break free because we are held captive by divine assignment because in our problem God has given us a unique purpose.

The actions of our closest friends say a lot about our character--what we overlook, what we contribute to and what is important to us when the world doesn't take notice.

The biggest battles you face in love are the battle to know your worth and the battle to know when your boundaries need to be protected.

The meaning you apply to what has happened to you is your decision. There will be critics that have their version, but God didn't call them to be your audience, someone else did.

People who made their dreams come true didn't simply go after it. They changed the person they were, in order to fit the type of person that would live that type of dream.

There really is nothing normal about being in love with someone. It's a million emotions with a million excuses.

If you have never met a woman that would never give up, then you have never met a woman that has seen miracles.

We live with the scars we choose.

The purest form of faith happens when you reach the bottom of your reasoning and find there is nothing that you can do that will make sense out of what you have been through.

In my fantasy world everyone has a happy ending. No one is told who they should be, how they should feel, who they are allowed to love, what they should believe and how they should look. Sadly, everyone in my world can't seem to get along with one another because everyone is so darn different.

Give up trying to convince people who you are, instead confuse them. It is a lot more fun!

When love and duty are one then grace is within your soul.

When you have a plan in your mind of what the best life is for you, but it doesn't match your life, you have pain.

If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd.

The only chains you should wear in life are the chains of commitment.

Sometimes God doesn't deny, he delays.

When you are offered a miracle take it. Otherwise, show God your tail so he can move on and give it to someone who doesn't want to be in hell any more.

God will bring you a gift. However, it is up to you to stop shaking the same box and expecting something wonderful will fall out of it again. After a while, you are going to break that box and it won't remind you of that moment when it meant everything to you.

Telling the world you are trying is not doing.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Often, love is a tangled web of lies that only a broken heart would weave. Seldom is dishonesty the whole person, rather it's the pain.

Forgiveness happens when you stop wishing for someone else to become what you want them to be.

Don't pursue anything that doesn't fill your soul with joy because you can always go to Disneyland.

Some people develop a wishbone where their backbone should be.

Anyone can find the dirt on someone, but very few can wipe it from their own shoes.

Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.

You will know the person who was meant to be in your life by how they make you feel spiritually. If they live in such a way that inspires you to become better then you have found someone you can evolve with vs. raise.

Music is feelings in search of words.

Evolving is not arrogance. It is confidence that won't be pulled backwards, by those that feel left behind.

There is an excitement in creating a life, rather than maintaining a life you are not excited about living.

Silence is best reserved for the fearful and foolish.

Courage can't exist without action. Anything else is a lion without his roar.

When you understand what love is you will understand that mercy and forgiveness feels better than any form of revenge.

That is who I was yesterday. Today I walk with God.

God helps everything come to pass. However, he reminds us that nothing comes to stay.

When you forget yesterday and embrace the new vision of what you are to become through the eyes of your best friend, you have found a new sister standing by the open door that was once closed in your heart.

If you have something over a person you're not in a relationship; you are in a situation.

Dreams are built around the word hello, but in the end fate only knows the word goodbye.

You had me at hello, goodbye and everything in between.

When you only know your faults and failures, you allow yourself and others to downgrade your dreams and belittle your wants.

Love will drive you insane, but never let it drive you stupid or blind.

No one likes a person that should of all over the place.

You can ignore your heart and mind, but it will always find its way home.

The healthy should be reminded that we are all dying because it is through our own reminder of mortality that we accelerate our good intentions, into actions people can see.

Where you hang your feelings is where you hang your focus.

Distance and time might keep people apart, but the heart and mind will always stay connected by memories, miracles and the power of two unlikely souls that were destined to meet.

If you continue to dig the same hole in the same place in your life, eventually you will be standing in a grave.

Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.

Carve your names on hearts, not tombstones.

If they truly loved you they won't devalue you.

I've never been bothered with my conduct. I've only been bothered by people that don't get it correct when they gossip about me.

Sometimes another person's fear tells you that everything you're about to do is right.

The only healthy marriages that survive are the ones where two people became best friends and learned how to rescue one another, over and over again.

God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them.

We have all at one time been stranded on islands shouting lies across the seas of misunderstanding, hoping the fog will carry our mischief to the distant ports in people's minds.

How can you follow your heart, unless you know why you have allowed it to be empty for so long and didn't have the courage to fix it?

This much is true: When you are about to effect the lives of hundreds of people, Satan will do everything he can to prevent it from happening. Often pride and anger are his best assassins.

I don't fear the future. I fear letting it pass by me, without ever trying to make it mine.

A fantasy is nothing more than a dream you were too scared to chase.

Silence by any other name is called shame.

No one ever gets mad at being shamed by someone unless some shame is felt.

Stop expecting the world to affirm you as a person. Half of the world will like you and the other half will hate you, despite what you say or do. Christ knew this truth, but he did his life mission anyways.

Whether you deny your wounds or see them clearly, they bring a great source of power because they lived in the same place as your heart.

The only way through pain is love.

Why would anyone want perfection when growth comes from flaws?

You will never get to your destination on time if choose to walk two paths through life.

You either live the life that is easy or you live the life that is difficult, but appreciate it more.

Buried emotions are caged nighthawks that have fallen in love with the moon. They don't understand the sun because they were born with the darkness of shadows in their soul.

Always give your resume of good deeds when you run into someone that you wronged many years ago. They simply need to know today's version of you, before they judge you on yesterday's news.

You can't have the rainbow without the storm.

When you heart knows it doesn't belong there, it will continue to self sabotage your future, until you make the choice you wanted, but found a million excuses not to pursue.

You know you have found your life mission when you say, I dare you to try and take this away from me.

It is not the words or the actions you should trust, rather the pattern.

Choosing a mate is not a matter of can they do the job, rather will they. A partner of potential doesn't make for a happy marriage. Their actions have to be in line with your needs.

The truth is this: People that give you focus, energy and anger do care. If you were nothing then you wouldn't be able to affect them. Behind every over reaction was first the thought that your opinion mattered and your respect was once of value or you wouldn't get the response you got.

Fight for what you want because forever is a long time to be a quitter.

When you really want something, you will give up a million times, but your heart keeps taking you back to the starting line.

The only way to move from your reality to God's reality is through people who love you.

I will never give up on what I love. I will never back down. I will never let go of anything that is important to me. I will hold my course steady and my God will help me see it through. This is my promise, my anthem and my path. This is my future and I own it.

Denial is the way people handle what they cannot handle.

Joy comes when you turn it over to God to deal with. This is when you will feel the true release from it's weight.

If you want to be an honorable man, then be what you pretend to be.

You might lose battles in your life time. However, every person that stands bravely on the side of justice, for people that have no voice, wins the true battle -- -Gods.

The higher you climb, the more Satan will take notice. Keep climbing! Heaven's gate has a lock.

Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children's happiness.

You will finally have dignity when you realize that you are not on the path, but have become the path for others.

Worry is like a roller coaster ride that you think will take you somewhere, but it never does.

Being a good person doesn't mean you fit the life of every person you meet.

Words matter, but what matters more than words is forgiveness and compassion.

Kindness is love in action, not feeling emotions or thoughts of empathy only. Kindness is doing!

All of us at one point end face up in a ditch, but only a few will choose to look up at the stars and dream.

God has witnessed everything done to you. Those that love God will feel shame for what they did. Those that don't ....do not know God or have a concept of repentance or forgiveness.

If you want your prayers answered, you get off your knees and do the one thing you're praying someone else will do for you.

Set the standards for what you expect of people and the correct ones will join your cause.

Surviving isn't around us, but in us.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing that solutions don't come from individuals, but rather experiences.

Be honest with who you are, what you want and how you want to be treated. Boundaries only scare off the people that were not meant to be in your life.

You won't understand where home is until you realize it is the only place your mind takes you back to when every journey ends badly.

You really won't know where your home is until you meet your own kind and realize you're both playing the same game.

Timing is only lack of enough emotions.

There is no such thing as timing if that person lives in your heart and mind.

Common people are often enough; that is why God made so many of them. Your job is to be -- - EXTRAORDINARY.

When a person thinks you are too good for them, they create a wall without even taking a chance. The best life that God has in store for a person is often thrown away because of what he or she thinks they deserve. True love is not the life you had, but the life you never realized you could have.

Our dreams will always tell us what we are missing in our lives. The smaller we make them tells God how little faith we have in him to make them come true.

Your tears for others will float you closer toward God.

Live in such a way that when you die you leave God in your will for your children.

You can spend the rest of your life fighting to be respected, accepted and understood by the people you have created a life with or you can start living a life where that isn't a daily goal and ambition in your relationship.

What you value at the highest level needs to be in alignment with your partner or you will have conflict.

When people hurt it is because they feel they are going to lose something. The question to ask is: What?

Love is a combination of virtues. The amount you receive from someone is based on the percentage of those virtues learned and applied. Unhappiness in a relationship is not a lack of love, but a lack of virtues in the percentages your significant other needs.

You are not your past. You are the warrior that rose above it to become the example of someone who didn't survive, but thrived in creating the most beautiful last chapter of their life.

If you can't dream big, you will never see the vivid colors of probability over the darkness of possibility.

The best plot twists are the ones you didn't expect.

If you are reading this then you have wasted another day of your life day dreaming, rather than planning the life God intended you to live.

Your soulmate wasn't suppose to be perfect. You were meant to see the cracks in her soul and fill them with what you have and she was meant to see yours. Together you would be complete.

You will never get what you want if you believe that you are not worthy of having it. God doesn't create us to be defeated.

Quitters always believe the lies they tell themselves because delusion is easier to live with than the reality that they settled for an easier path.

The only person worth being in your life is a person that will never make you feel like you are worthless.

It is not what happens to you that matters; it is how you feel about it that does.

Mental illness is not something you misunderstand in this era. Get educated because bias is no different than racism.

If two people truly have feelings for one another then they don't have an affair. They get a divorce and they sort out their feelings. You are accountable for the people you hold hostage in a marriage when your mind and heart refuse to fully commit to them.

We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day--who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.

What lies between where you are and where you want to be sometimes requires traveling through the Twilight Zone.

Self worth is not measured by what you have, no matter how full your life is. Rather, it comes from what you are, how authentically you're really living your life, and how much you are willing to give to something other than your own insecurities.

The destination is not the journey. The destination is the person you choose to enjoy the journey with.

You will learn how much someone loved you, by how quickly they dismiss you.

The best of who you are is not from who you have in your life, rather who they helped you become because they loved you.

Truth and facts are woven together. However, sometimes facts can blind you from seeing what is actually going on in someone's life.

Bargaining with God is pointless. He already has a thousand followers that will do what you bargained to do for free.

You need to forgive people you don't understand; if not, try to understand people you want to forgive.

Do you really think all angels are sweet and gentle? You must have forgot that the front lines of the War in Heaven were littered with bold women that had something to say.

Satan will always provide a witness to where you have been, in order to challenge your fate.

Love is so many things, but it is not safe.

When you know what you want you will be excited about it and give every ounce of effort to making it come true. No excuse or fear will get in your way because peace is found in focus.

The biggest lie women tell themselves about men: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

If someone is not spiritually present during a time when you need their help, then how will their physical presence make a difference?

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness.

Commonsense will never come from following your heart; wisdom is only stored in the mind.

You will never know the moon or stars, unless you breathe in their solar system and inspect it from many diverse vantage points as possible.

When things don't add up, either you don't have a calculator or you forgot to use commonsense by simply asking.

If soulmates did exist I am pretty sure they would never divorce you, dump you, kick you out, separate from you or make you an option. They would never give up because you meant that much to them.

You cannot become a peacemaker without communication. Silence is a passive aggressive grenade thrown by insecure people that want war, but they don't want the accountability of starting it.

There will always be people afraid of the monsters in the night. They are usually the ones that look for them because they have proven they exist in themselves.

Guilt is a lazy feeling that takes no action; the wings of integrity are the only thing that sets it free.

Leave a legacy of love, not a legacy of fear.

Extraordinary change can happen in your life, but it will take extraordinary people, extraordinary courage and extraordinary faith to believe that this won't be a repeat of your past.

Unless she scares the hell out of you, blows the cobwebs from your mind, scorches your heart with passion, melts your chains with goodness and lights a fire in your pants...then she is not the one.

Every writer dreams about the day they can step into their fiction and wander its hallways.

One of the easiest things for a rescuer to do is to love people without a soul because we genuinely believe that our love can fill the void inside them. Unfortunately, it drains us of our own love. The love of self.

Delusions are hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding insane people living in a backwards world.

There is nothing more dangerous to the adventurous spirit than a secure future that can predict the same sun on every horizon because they only see the same view.

Never mix business with religion, or you might end up losing your testimony when the business agreement is no longer something you or Christ would put up with.

Unhappiness comes from living the life of two people -- the one people want you to be and the one you want to be.

Long standing hatred between a man and a woman is just unspoken attraction that has bruised egos.

Peace can only be achieved by a contrite spirit, open communication and tolerance.

Behind every angry soul is a wounded child that just wanted you to love them for who they are.