Thursday, September 18, 2025

No Substitute For Passion

"Passion Increases Your Willpower: There is no substitute for passion. It is fuel for the will. If you want anything badly enough, you can find the willpower to achieve it. The only way to have that kind of desire is to develop passion."

--  John C. Maxwell

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Make Time For Reflection and Inspiration

"The word direction has two broad meanings. It can mean “route,” as in the direction of a journey. It can also mean “guidance,” as in receiving inspiration, heeding advice, and being wise. The most successful and happy people I know are good at making time for reflection and inspiration. They stop regularly to go deeper, to gain perspective, to hold a vision, and to receive direction."

-- Robert Holden

Monday, September 15, 2025

Life Still Goes On Take It Easy

"Maybe I won’t always be successful at my creativity, but the world won’t end because of that. Maybe I won’t always be able to make a living out of my writing, but that’s not the end of the world, either, because there are lots of other ways to make a living besides writing books—and many of them are easier than writing books. And while it’s definitely true that failure and criticism may bruise my precious ego, the fate of nations does not depend upon my precious ego."

-- Elizabeth Gilbert 

Friday, September 12, 2025

The Focus on Value

"The focus on value is why we respect competence. Competence conveys your ability to deliver results, and it shows up in language when you reference your skills, knowledge, and reputation on the current topic. When people with high personal power persuade others, they instinctively focus on communicating signs of competence.* And the more someone communicates competence, the more they are valued by the group. Thus, personal power translates naturally into social status."

-- Chris Lipp

Thursday, September 11, 2025

The Joy of Being Playful

"Joy actually creates positive physical energy. Moments of joy when performing are often what help performers get over past failures and cast off boulders of stress. According to research, joy increases our dopamine levels, which increases activity in the brain associated with “high-level cognition”—memory, attention, creativity, and motivation. What helps create joy? Being playful. As play researcher and author Peter Gray points out, “The predominant emotions of play are interest and joy.”"

-- Brian Levenson


Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Mindfully Choosing Your Habits

"Habit is notorious—and rightly so —for its ability to control our actions, even against our will. By mindfully choosing our habits, we harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth. Better than before! It’s what we all want."

-- Gretchen Rubin

Tuesday, September 09, 2025

Believing The Road Will Be Rocky

"Why is believing the road will be rocky so important for achieving your goal? For starters, despite being so unpleasant, negative emotions like anxiety and worry are useful. And that’s primarily because they can be very motivating. They can motivate us to take extra effort or to plan how we will deal with problems before they arise." 

-- Heidi Grant Halvorson

Monday, September 08, 2025

The Power of You Thoughts

""Thought is creative. Hence, if you know you never perform well at interviews, you will make yourself very anxious each time you have one. If you keep believing you don’t deserve a bigger salary, you make it hard for others to think otherwise. If you keep telling yourself that “they don’t return my phone calls because they don’t like me,” you will lose confidence. If you keep judging the one mistake you made today as “unforgivable,” you will be more afraid of failure in the future. I think, therefore I am—i.e., I am afraid or I am hopeful or I am nervous or I am confident or I am unable—becomes your mantra. As my friend and mentor Tom Carpenter14 says, “Every day you are experiencing the effects of your thoughts.”

-- Robert Holden

Friday, September 05, 2025

The Goals That You Pursue

"The goals you pursue in the classroom, playing field, and workplace, on the other hand, can tell us quite a lot about how you will cope with difficulty, and whether or not you are likely to ultimately succeed. Psychologists who study achievement have been particularly interested in the differences that arise when people focus on performing well to demonstrate ability (being good) versus focusing on progress, growth, and gaining mastery (getting better)."

-- Heidi Grant Halvorso

Wednesday, September 03, 2025

Don't Let Failure Go Into Your Head

"Successful people don't let failure go to their heads. Instead of dwelling on the negative consequences of failure, thinking of what might have been and how things haven't worked out, they focus on the rewards of success: learning from their mistakes and thinking about how they can improve themselves and their situations." 

--  John C. Maxwell