"That’s the way goal-oriented people spend their lives. Each goal, successfully reached, finds them better equipped, with more experience, to set the next goal. Goals for such people tend to ascend in stair-like fashion, each one a bit more demanding and fulfilling than the one before. In a few years they find themselves accomplishing, with surprising ease, goals that would have been impossible for them when they first began their journey into meaning."
-- Earl Nightingale
"We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it. It might seem like a stretch, but I really think the best thing you can do if you want to make art is to pretend you’re starring in your own remake of Groundhog Day: Yesterday’s over, tomorrow may never come, there’s just today and what you can do with it."
-- Austin Kleon
"You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO . . . Try to do some BAD work—the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell—you are not responsible for the world—you are only responsible for your work—so DO IT."
-- Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse
“For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info you need.”
-- Amy Krouse Rosenthal
"The people who want to control us through fear and misinformation—the corporations, marketers, politicians—want us to be plugged into our phones or watching TV, because then they can sell us their vision of the world. If we do not get outside, if we do not take a walk out in the fresh air, we do not see our everyday world for what it really is, and we have no vision of our own with which to combat disinformation."
-- Austin Kleon
"The dictionary defines will as choice, intention, inclination, determination, tendency, and in order to make it the will of Omnipotence you must animate it, make it alive within you by enthusiasm, feeling, and animation until it becomes embodied in the subconscious mind. When man learns to choose wisely, he will choose happiness, peace, security, joy, health, abundance, and all the blessings of life."
-- Joseph Murphy
"For now is the only time that we have. It is our only negotiable currency. Yesterday is a canceled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. It is only today that we may spend in the noble effort of using all the gifts that God gave us."
-- Og Mandino
"Knowledge is different. You can read and gain knowledge; you can go to school and gain knowledge. With self-awareness or introspection, you step back from the canvas of life, and you take an honest look in the mirror at the person behind the mirror and say, “What am I good at? What do I believe in? What’s important to me? What do I really want to be when I grow up?” This has to do with introspection and authentic self-awareness. We don’t do much of that today, in my opinion."
-- Denis Waitley
"It’s interesting—and often quite astonishing—that people with goals tend to live longer than people without them. It’s as if they can extend their lives simply because they have something to do. It must be the interest that lends vitality and energy to their live"
-- Earl Nightingale
"There are no rules, of course. Life is an art, not a science. Your mileage may vary. Take what you need and leave the rest. Keep going and take care of yourself. I’ll do the same."
-- Austin Kleon
"Laugh together. The more laughter, the better the quality of life. So focus on subjects that make you both laugh. That, too, will make you feel present. It’s impossible to laugh without being present. Your mind must be where you are if anything is going to be funny. People who laugh cannot have negative thoughts at the same time."
-- Ichak K. Adize
"Men don’t fail; they give up trying.” Often it is not the wrong start but the wrong stop that makes the difference between success and failure. To quit while we’re ahead would be silly; to quit when we’re behind is even sillier. It requires will to hold on a little longer. It requires wit to know that the measure of success is not the luck, the breaks of the game, but the conquest of failure. 'The trouble with most of us,' it has been said, 'is that we stop trying in trying times.' There is wisdom even in puns."
-- Elihu Root
"The Life Principle as it flows through you takes the shape of the mental mold which you prepare for It. Let us take the analogy of water, which will take the shape of any vessel into which it is poured, yet it ever remains the same H2O, regardless of the shape and size of the container. Your thoughts, imagery, and mental patterns mold, fashion, and shape your life."
-- Joseph Murphy
"Self-confidence comes from proving your belief in yourself by your little achievements and your small successes as you go along. Self-esteem gives you permission to believe that you have something inside of you that should be developed. That in itself creates motivation for you to seek, to learn, to read, to role model, to discover, because you believe that you’re worth more than your present circumstances. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. You’re as good as anybody else—no better, but as good."
-- Denis Waitley
"We think about our goal as we have our morning coffee and breakfast, while we’re in the shower, and it comes to us again and again during the day. We are on course. We are moving toward the fulfillment of our current goal. And it is often the last thing we think about as we drop off to sleep. It is our aiming point. And people with aiming points tend to reach them."
-- Earl Nightingale
"Success must be enjoyed. It may be won with tears but it must be crowned with laughter. Otherwise the effort may be worthwhile—it may be good or even great—but for the individual without the inner laughter, which is known by another name as satisfaction, there can hardly be success."
-- Og Mandino
"People with goals on which they have set their hearts and minds are always moving toward those goals. Even while we sleep, our deep minds are working on the project. That’s why we often awaken, early in the morning, with the solution to a problem that had repeatedly resisted our conscious attempts to solve it the day before."
-- Earl Nightingale
"Eliminate temptations that are obstacles to being present. All kinds of screens—from TV screens to smartphones to tablets—populate our lives everywhere. Even when you go to restaurants to eat, often there are TVs blaring, and you cannot avoid looking up to see what’s going on. People eat or drink as they watch screens around them. Screens have invaded homes, too. I have visited families who installed them in their dining rooms so they can watch TV as they eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. With smartphones and tablets, people can double- or triple-task simultaneously: eating, speaking on the phone, and watching TV. No wonder people often can’t remember what they ate or exactly what they said or were told."
-- Ichak K. Adize
"Man must take charge of his own mind and not permit others to govern it for him. Creed, dogma, tradition, superstition, fear, and ignorance rule the mind of the average man. The average man does not own his own mind. It does not belong to him. It is often ruled over and governed by the rank superstitions of others."
-- Joseph Murphy
"Part of knowing your purpose is knowing what your life work is. What is it that gives your life a sense of meaning and purpose? Once you find that, it puts you in your power place."
-- Les Brown
"Without a goal we are much like the man with a boat and nowhere to go. Goals give us the drive and energy we need to remain on the track long enough for their accomplishment. Like the captain of the ship about to leave port, we should be able to tell anyone our next port of call—and perhaps the one after that too."
-- Earl Nightingale
