Someday, in the moment of death, your whole life will pass before you. In a few fractions of a second—because time no longer applies—you will see many incidents from your life in order to learn. You will review your life with two questions in your consciousness: Could I have shown a little more courage in these moments? Could I have shown a little more love? You will see where you let fear stop you from expressing who you are, how you feel, or what you need. You will see whether you were able to expand into these moments, just a little, to show love, or whether you contracted.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
Every moment of our lives we are either growing or dying—and it’s largely a choice, not fate. Throughout its life cycle, every one of the body’s trillions of cells is driven to grow and improve its ability to use more of its innate yet untapped capacity. Research biologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who was twice awarded the Nobel Prize, called this syntropy, which he defined as the “innate drive in living matter to perfect itself”. It turns conventional thinking upside down…As living cells—or as people—there is no staying the same. If we aim for some middle ground or status quo, it’s an illusion—beneath the surface what’s actually happening is we’re dying, not growing. And the goal of a lifetime is continued growth, not adulthood. As Rene Dubos put it, “Genius is childhood recaptured”. For this to happen, studies show that we must recapture—or prevent the loss of—such child-like traits as the ability to learn, to love, to laugh about small things, to leap, to wonder, and to explore. It’s time to rescue ourselves from our grown-up ways before it’s too late.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
When you inhabit any of these three roles, you’re reacting to fear of victimhood, loss of control, or loss of purpose. You’re always looking outside yourself, to the people and circumstances of life, for a sense of safety, security, and sanity.
—David Emerald
The focus in the Creator Orientation is on a Vision or an Outcome. You orient your thoughts and actions toward creating what you most deeply want to see or experience in life.
—David Emerald
So you can see that if you direct that force at several objectives, it becomes divided, and each objective receives a fairly weak stimulus, which results in a slow reaction, or no reaction at all. Do you have a great, ultimate goal to reach that requires attaining lesser objectives along the way? Well then, let the many lie inactive and direct your force at the nearest or first; once you accomplish that, take up the next and so on.
—Roger McDonald (b.1941) Australian Novelist, Poet, Screenwriter, Writer
The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda—Christ’s kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga—upon the earth.
—Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet
Aristotle said, ‘Time does not exist except for change.’ The origin of the word change is the Old English cambium, which means “to become”. In other words, time does not exist except for becoming something new. What, exactly, are you choosing to become?
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.—As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
I am not more gifted than the average human being. If you know anything about history, you would know that is so—what hard times I had in studying and the fact that I do not have a memory like some other people do… I am just more curious than the average person and I will not give up on a problem until I have found the proper solution. This is one of my greatest satisfactions in life—solving problems—and the harder they are, the more satisfaction do I get out of them. Maybe you could consider me a bit more patient in continuing with my problem than is the average human being. Now, if you understand what I have just told you, you see that it is not a matter of being more gifted but a matter of being more curious and maybe more patient until you solve a problem.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Your purpose is to act on the resources God gives you. If God gives you a bucket of fish, you have to distribute those fish. If you don’t, they’re going to rot, attract a bunch of flies, and start stinking up your soul.
—Russell Simmons (b.1957) American Music Promoter
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The shadow disguises itself in our projections, when we react intensely to a trait in others that we fail to see in ourselves.
—Connie Zweig (b.1949) American Minister, Columnist, Psychotherapist
When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
—Viktor Frankl (1905–97) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist
Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021) Hungarian-American Psychologist
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practice self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before—that of doing as I willed.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor
The more comfort becomes your priority, the more contracted you become with fear.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Poor people and most of the middle class are not willing to be uncomfortable. Remember, being comfortable is their biggest priority in life… The only time you can actually grow is when you are outside your comfort zone.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Rich people are wiling to act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wander at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
What one thing could you do in your personal and professional life that, if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life? Quadrant II activities have that kind of impact. Our effectiveness takes quantum leaps when we do them.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
We automatically give to each person we meet, but we choose what we give. Our words, our actions, must consciously set the stage for the life we wish to lead.
—Marlo Morgan (1937–98) American Novelist, Author
Say no to the drug of gradualness. It was Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke out strongly against making slow changes. Either we risk or we don’t, he said. Either we change or we don’t. There’s no acceptable middle ground because it lulls us into complacency. Lasting changes rarely occur when we ease our way into the future. They come when we leap. The leap themselves can be small or large. Once we take action, we see things differently and for many of us there’s no going back.
—Robert Cooper (b.1947) British Diplomat
If we do not consciously and consistently focus on the spiritual part of ourselves, we will never experience the kind of joy, satisfaction, safety, and connectedness we are all seeking.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author