"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
""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
"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
"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
"Being busy can make you feel important, but is what you are busy about important? This is the sort of “Intelligent Question” a good coach asks. In my experience, permanently busy people tend to confuse busyness and success, adrenaline and purpose, and effort and effectiveness."
-- Robert Holden
"When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices—or even a function of our own past choices. In turn, we surrender our power to choose. That is the path of the Nonessentialist. The Essentialist doesn’t just recognize the power of choice, he celebrates it. The Essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us."
-- Greg McKeown
