"Strive for excellence, not perfection. Progress comes from maintaining high standards, not eliminating every flaw. Practice wabi sabi, the art of honoring beauty in imperfection, by identifying some shortcomings that you can accept. Consider where you truly need the best and where you can settle for good enough. Mark your growth with Eric Best’s questions: Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today?"
-- Adam Grant
"A more successful approach to changing our lives is to set small, doable, bite-sized, realistic targets and implement specific habits that will take us towards these targets. This will create a momentum that leads you towards your destination. Yes, it may look like it will take longer, BUT it will get you there."
-- Stephen Macdonald
"Each of us came here to do something. And as I see it, true health has nothing to do with diagnosing a disease or prolonging life just for the sake of it; it’s about finding out who we are, paying attention to how we’re called to grow and change, and listening to what makes our heart sing."
-- Gladys McGarey
"The clearer and stronger your intention, the more quickly and easily your creative visualization will work. In any given situation, ask yourself about the condition of your intention. If it is weak or uncertain, look more deeply to see what your doubts, fears, conflicts, or concerns may be. Sometimes your hesitations may be an indication of feelings and beliefs that need to be acknowledged and healed. In some cases, hesitation may be an indication that this is not a truly appropriate goal for you."
-- Shakti Gawain
"When we do not have a clear purpose, goal, or destination, we develop a prevention mindset and focus on not failing, avoiding problems and risk, seeking comfort, and playing it safe. But when our goals and purposes are clear and activated, we adopt a promotion mindset aimed at succeeding, anticipating problems, taking risks, seeking gains, and making progress, even if uncomfortable. As such, depending upon our mindset, we think about and approach our contexts very differently."
-- Ryan Gottfredson
"You cannot find the path until you step on to it. While walking on the path is critical to success, so too is reflecting upon life’s experiences."
-- Michael Edmondson
"You have some very precious capacities which enable you to analyse and reason. Nevertheless, don’t forget that you have other hidden talents which are just as important. Cultivate periods of silence and reflection and you will begin to see facets of reality that you were not aware of beforehand."
-- Mario Alonso Puig
"Making mistakes is a normal, natural and essential part of learning and living. Yet maybe you think that as you're older now, you should be able to do everything perfectly first time. There's no learning in that. Mistakes do not equal 'failure'."
-- Stephanie Philp
"Avoid the comfort zone. Many people become complacent with their current situations; they become so comfortable in their job or relationship that they avoid making any changes at all, even for the better. People who get stuck in a comfort zone, combined with learned helplessness, are almost impossible to help in any way."
-- Andrew Clancy
"There will be times when you want to take a breather. There will be times when it snows (literally or figuratively)! Those are the days that you need to double down and take those actions toward your goal. Those who end up getting out of bed and going to the gym despite their feelings and the snow will say that it was the best thing they did, and afterward they were glad they pushed through the inertia and stayed on course. Their goal of health and fitness is one step closer because of their persistence."
-- Joel Fotinos
"When we have an open mindset, we are primarily concerned about seeking truth and thinking optimally. This desire comes with the beliefs that we have incomplete information and can be wrong. It drives us to be open to and seek out the ideas and suggestions of others to improve our current position and come closer to the truth. With this mindset, we are able to put off our ego’s need to be seen as being right or having all the answers and avoid blind spots that limit the quality of our thinking and decision-making."
-- Ryan Gottfredson
"Extraordinary events are not going to be revealed but rather we are going to realize that if we do not change our limited way of thinking we will be unable to see things from a perspective which allows us to discover doors where before we only saw walls. We need to recover that sense of wonder and surprise we had as children so as to enter what Einstein called “the beauty of mystery”."
-- Mario Alonso Puig
"Compete against yourself. Measure your progress over time, not against an opponent. The risk of competing against others is that you can win without getting better. When you compete against yourself, the only way to win is to grow."
-- Adam Grant
"Marking your progress really helps. Writing a diary, drawing charts of your journey, drawing pictures … all these things help make the process real, remind you of what you have achieved, and keep you focused on the next step. The same applies whether it is working towards your fitness goals or your career goals."
-- Shaa Wasmund
"Successful people understand that lifelong learning demands that they remain open to learning throughout their life to continuously update their ability to be more fully human and engaging."
-- Michael Edmondson
"Forget the money, because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living—that is, to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way."
-- Vishen Lakhian
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"Doing things outside your normal routine will help you become more resilient. When you step out of your comfort zone, yes it might feel uncomfortable at first - stressful even - but it also stimulates your brain and creates new neural connections. If you did that thing again you would feel more comfortable the second time. If you repeated the action enough it would soon become part of your day-to-day life. It would be incorporated into your comfort zone. In this way your comfort zone expands."
-- Stephanie Philp
“Failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, this strategy—trying to avoid failure by outthinking it—dooms you to fail."
-- Ryan Gottfredson
