The Greatest Glory in Living

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

-- Nelson Mandela

Looking Good or Learning and Growing

"This is a small difference with huge implications. Each of us has a battle going on within. We want to look good to others, but we also want to learn and grow. However, it is quite difficult to do both at the same time. If we want to look good, we are unlikely to put ourselves in positions where we may make mistakes and fail. But aren’t these the very situations where we are likely to learn and grow the most? To resolve this battle, we end up developing neural connections that cause us to focus on one over the other: looking good or learning and growing."

-- Ryan Gottfredson

Why Waste Time Proving

"Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?"

-- Carol Dweck

Where You Find Peace

"You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level."

-- Eckhart Tolle

The Test of All Knowledge

"The test of all knowledge is experiment… . Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth’.”

-- Richard P. Feynman

Identify Thoughts That create Best Outcomes

"Most people I know experience a spectrum of hopes and fears every day of their lives. The people who experience consistent success have learned how to identify with the thoughts that create the best outcomes. Even these people may still hit rough patches. And when they do, they call someone, they pray, they meditate, they get coached, and they find a way to choose again."

-- Robert Holden

Once You Truly Adopted A Habit

"Once we’ve truly adopted a habit, it comes easily, without decision making. But until that point—and many habits, alas, can never be completely taken for granted—giving ourselves a little boost with treats helps us maintain our self-command.  Goethe pointed out, “Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is destructive.” And whatever liberates our spirit while giving us mastery over ourselves is constructive."

-- Gretchen Rubin

Love Is Our Essential Nutrient

"Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Knowing Your Gut Feeling

"Gut feelings. I get them all the time. Sometimes it is a small gut feeling (like I shouldn’t have eaten that expired yogurt in the back of the refrigerator . . . OK, that one was common sense) but other times there are big gut feelings. How can you tell the difference between a gut feeling and a simple thought or desire? I think it requires getting into the regular practice of tuning out extra noise and getting to know yourself and your desires more deeply. It requires leaning in when things are flowing and moving toward the momentum. When you are in the flow, you can better discern what is working well from what isn’t."

-- Stacie Bloomfield

Greatest Times in Human History

"We are living today in one of the greatest times in all of human history. There are more opportunities and possibilities for you to accomplish more in every area in your life than have ever existed before, and if anything, it is only getting better, year by year."

-- Brian Tracy

Every Time You Take Action

"Every time you take action, remember the rat and the swinging door. See that red light, and force yourself to stick around and find out that what happens. You will almost certainly find that whatever happens is not nearly as bad as you thought it would be."

-- Dr. Aziz Gazipura

We Believe What We Hear Ourseleves Say

"Research shows that we tend to believe what we hear ourselves say, and the way we describe ourselves influences our view of our identity, and from there, our habits. If I say, “I’m lazy,” “I can’t resist a sale,” “I’ll try anything once,” “I never start work until the last minute,” or “I’m lucky,” those ideas become part of my identity, which in turn influences my actions."

-- Gretchen Rubin

Your Unconditioned Self with Ulimited Potential

"When anyone faces a new beginning, addresses a blank page, and starts at zero again, it is likely they will meet their inner fears and doubts. The biggest challenges of our lives often stretch us beyond our self-image to something deeper. Who we think we are won’t win this challenge, but who we really are can.  The fear that our success quota is already used up may cause havoc with our mind. Yet, each time we stop still and reach inwardly to our Unconditioned Self—which houses our unlimited potential—it becomes more possible to discover strengths, liberate talent, and enjoy success. This is how the Self Principle plays itself out."

-- Robert Holden

In The Acquisition of a New Habit

"In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible … Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again."

-- William James

Life Can Be Much Broader

 "When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. That isn't everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you. And you can change.  You can influence it.  Once you learn that, you'11 never be the same again.

-- Steve Jobs

Failure Like Success Is A Skill

"Failure, like success, is a skill. In order to fail well, you have to learn how to do it over and over again. While no one enjoys failing, learning from the experience can provide valuable insight about how to improve your performance in particular domains, which may be critical to your professional or personal development."

-- Lisa Orbe-Austin

The Cure of Time

"You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Habits That Feed Success

"Successful people form habits that feed their success, instead of habits that feed their failure. They choose to have the slight edge working for them, not against them. They build their own dreams, rather than spend their lives building other people’s dreams, and they achieve these dramatic results in their lives through making choices that are the very antithesis of drama—mundane, simple, seemingly insignificant choices."

-- Jeff Olson

Craft A Habit

"Think about yourself—what you’re like, what appeals to you, when you’ve succeeded in the past. When you craft a habit to suit your particular idiosyncrasies, you set yourself up for success."

-- Gretchen Rubin

Have A Growth Mindset

"When someone possesses a fixed mindset, they believe that their abilities, talents, and intelligence, as well as those of others, cannot change. When someone possesses a growth mindset, they believe that their personal attributes are able to change."

--  Ryan Gottfredson

Identify Your Busyness

"An important key to success is the courage to look at your busyness and identify what it is really about. It is my experience that busyness is often an excuse, a defense, or a resistance to an important challenge. In other words, busyness is a blindfold you wear when you’re afraid to face something. Busyness is often just fear. It can also mask a lack of trust. I often challenge my clients to explore how they might be using their busyness to avoid something important, such as intimacy, change, purpose, God, themselves, and even success."

-- Robert Holden

Walk Boldly Ahead

"Hold space for your personhood. You don’t need permission from anyone else to flourish. You don’t have to wait for other people to catch up to you. It is OK to walk boldly ahead. Go to yoga. Run. Wake up early and have quiet time. Practice your art. Buy yourself flowers. Be dedicated to your dreams. Be accountable to yourself. Don’t give so much of yourself to others that you begin to disappear from your own story."

-- Stacie Bloomfield

How You Look At Fear

"You must begin this journey by finding a new way to treat fear. You have to change your relationship with fear. The best way to do that is to follow through with it. This means that you must look fear in the face and stand up to it."

-- Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Be a Warrior for Love

"You will learn a lot from yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love."

--Cheryl Strayed

Either Flowers or Weeds Will Grow

"Here’s a critical point: Once you have initiated the cause, the effect takes place by itself. Once you have pushed the rock down the hill, it rolls by itself, by the law of gravity. Once you have planted a positive or negative seed in your mind, either flowers or weeds will grow. You can control the cause, but the effect happens automatically, whether you want it to or not."

-- Brian Tracy

The Greatest Discovery in Life

"The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself."

-- Myles Munroe

The Force of Massive Success

"Time is the force that magnifies those simple daily disciplines into massive success.  To grasp how the slight edge works, you have to view your actions through the eyes of time. Difficult takes a little time; impossible takes just a little longer."

--  Jeff Olson

Don't Let This Happen To You

"As you move forward on the success journey, you need to remember that what happens in you is more important than what happens to you. You can control your attitudes as you travel on the journey, but you have no control over the actions of others. You can choose what to put on your calendar, but you can't control today's circumstances. Unfortunately, the majority of the fear and stress that people experience in life is from things they can do nothing about. Don't let that happen to you."

-- John C. Maxwell

What Determine What Happen To You

"The most important application of the law of cause and effect is this: Thoughts are causes, and conditions are effects. Your thought is creative.  You determine what happens to you by the thoughts you think, especially those thoughts that are charged with emotion, either positive or negative.  Your thoughts are like the computer in a guided missile. They lead you unerringly to your target."

-- Brian Tracy

Have A Growth Mindset

"Those with a growth mindset, in contrast, believe that intelligence is not finite, and one can improve through effort and hard work. They recognize that failure is an opportunity for growth and learning, rather than a sign of one’s lack of ability. Individuals who adopt a growth mindset approach learning with less stress and anxiety than one with a fixed mindset, and are less likely to have perfectionistic tendencies, since they value mistakes as a chance to learn."

-- Lisa Orbe-Austin

Taking Responsibility of Your Life

"Taking responsibility means figuring out what you want in life and acting on it. Set your goals—then go out and work toward them. Figure out what kind of space you would like to live in … then create it. It doesn’t take a lot of money to create a peaceful, loving home for yourself. Look around and see who you would love to include in your circle of friends … then pick up the phone and make plans to get together. Don’t sit around waiting for them to call you."

--  Susan Jeffers

Be Grateful for All Your Blessings

"Your natural state is to be happy, healthy, joyous, and full of excitement at being alive. You should wake up each morning eager to start the day.  You should feel wonderful about yourself and your relationships with the people in your life. As a fully functioning, mature adult, you should be doing things every day that move you upward and onward toward the realization of your full potential. You should be grateful for all your blessings, in every area of your life."

-- Brian Tracy

Growth Equals To Change

"Growth equals change. If you want to get better, you have to keep changing and improving. That means stepping out into new areas. If you dedicate time to new things related to areas of strength, then in you'11 grow as a leader. Don't forget: leadership, if you're through growing, you're through."

-- John C. Maxwell

Taking One More Stroke

"In daily life, there are many occasions when I could make things easier—in the short run, at least—if I would, metaphorically speaking, “just stop rowing.” But I have found that the achievement of significant goals generally requires me to be able and willing to “take one more stroke,” even though I am dead tired. I’m convinced that it is this ability, as much as any, that allows some people to excel in the challenges they undertake, while other people fail. It is also possible that at some point in my life, my ability to survive will depend on whether I have the fortitude to take just one more breath—and then another. I would like to think that rowing helps me develop this fortitude."

-- William B Irvine

Whatever It Takes To Get The Job Done

"Successful people do whatever it takes to get the job done, whether or not they feel like it. They understand that it is not any one single push on the flywheel but the cumulative total of all their sequential, unfailingly consistent pushes that eventually creates movement of such astonishing momentum in their lives." 

-- Jeff Olson

Success Across Life

"Success across life, work, and leadership requires us to take the reins, taking full ownership of our life and destiny. Having this level of command requires that we are conscious of and in control of the very aspect of ourselves that drives essentially everything we do: our mindsets. When we take charge of our mindsets we become the driver and conscious creator of a brighter future."

--  Ryan Gottfredson

Transit From Limiting Beliefts

"Like the Wright brothers, you can transition from limiting beliefs to expansive possibilities. You can move from absolutes such as I can't do math well to I could do math to I am learning to do math well to I do math well From there, you can keep opening more possibilities to get better at math!"

-- Matthew E. Poll

When You Embrace The Present Momoment

"When we embrace the present moment, when we fully accept it, when we act as if we’ve chosen it, we transcend our mental limits and start to discover things which had previously been hidden from view."

-- Mario Alonso Puig

A Wonderful Skill To Possess

"Once we start thinking of setbacks as Stoic tests, we may discover that instead of dreading them, we look forward to them. Besides giving us a chance to develop our skill in dealing with them, setbacks give us an opportunity to display the skill we have thus far developed. Much as a tennis player can take pride in her playing ability, we can take pride in our ability, when set back, to find a good workaround without becoming angry, anxious, or despondent. It is a wonderful skill to possess—and one that relatively few people do possess."

-- William B Irvine

The Little Choices Do Matter

"Successful people are those who understand that the little choices they make matter, and because of that they choose to do things that seem to make no difference at all in the act of doing them, and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in."

-- Jeff Olson

At Least You Have Tried

"Take a risk a day—one small or bold stroke that will make you feel great once you’ve done it.  Even if it doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to, at least you’ve tried. You didn’t sit back … powerless. Watch what starts to happen when you expand your comfort zone."

--  Susan Jeffers

Being A Builder and Creator

"Regardless of where you work, whether on Wall Street, at a food pantry, or within the walls of your own home, being successful in your work means being a builder and creator of something greater than yourself. It means taking the reins as a contributor and value creator. Rather than just punching the time card or biding your time, you are actively engaged in fulfilling a mission. You are contributing in ways that add tangible (monetary, measurable) and intangible (attitude, morale, energy) value. Others hear and respect your voice, you receive recognition, and you command a salary that allows you to live with abundance. You either have security in your current job or are secure in knowing you can continually support those you are responsible for. You are, and are seen as, someone who can continue to add great value, either in a deeper way within your current position or in a new or higher-level position."

--  Ryan Gottfredson

Don't Forget Your Small Wins

"Also consider your achievements, however small they may seem. All too often we forget small wins along the way and focus on parts of our working life that didn’t go to plan. You can rectify this by reflecting on small achievements and celebrating along the way, which is an important process as this primes your thoughts towards achievements, which over time can make achieving goals part of your everyday life (building your confidence in the process)."

-- Gemma Leigh Roberts

How To Traveled A Noble Path

"Mind you, hard work guarantees nothing in realms of creativity. (Nothing guarantees anything in realms of creativity.) But I cannot help but think that devotional discipline is the best approach. Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that—whatever the outcome—you have traveled a noble path."

-- Elizabeth Gilbert 

Those Simple Daily Disciplines

"Simple daily disciplines—little productive actions, repeated consistently over time—add up to the difference between failure and success."

-- Jeff Olson

How Do You See Yourself

"“We see things not as they are, but as we are,” wrote Immanuel Kant. Your self-image is the lens through which you see the world. If you cannot see yourself being successful at something, you will probably talk yourself out of trying. Or, if you can see you have a talent for something, you may find all sorts of inner strength and external help. All your decisions are based on what you see you are capable of and, also, what you think you deserve."

-- Robert Holden

The Better You Think

"THE BETTER YOU THINK, the better results you will get and the more successful you will be in every area. The most important measure, the only measure of the quality of your thinking, is the results you get, the consequences of what you decide to do as a result of the decisions you make."

-- Brian Tracy

Our Mindsets Determine Our Success

"When we do not see our mindsets as being a key part of our lack of success, we generally incorrectly blame either external factors (e.g., don’t have enough money, time, or resources) or the wrong internal factors (e.g., intelligence, abilities, or personality). This misdiagnosis is problematic for at least two reasons. First, blaming these factors is closer to an excuse than a solution, because we generally cannot control these factors, at least not as easily as our mindsets. Because these factors are largely outside of our control, we hide behind them as an excuse for giving up, accepting a fate of living below our potential. We fail to recognize that others with less ideal circumstances and abilities have reached the levels of success we are seeking. Second, even if we can influence or change these factors, focusing on them instead of our mindsets means that our mindsets will likely to stay the same and continually prevent us from thinking, learning, and behaving in ways that will lead to greater success."

--  Ryan Gottfredson

Serving Others With Your Wisdom

"Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age."

-- Arthur C. Brooks

Use Your Personal Power

"You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don’t, you experience helplessness, paralysis and depression—which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self."

--  Susan Jeffers

Your Choices Every Day

"You are making that choice, every day, every hour, and the impact of those choices—for better or for worse—will spread out over the surface of your life like a thick blanket of water hyacinth." 

-- Jeff Olson