Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: knowledge learning education wisdom soul self-improvement self-nurture growth spirituality growth change

Every day I learn more than I teach,

Virginia Church Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: education experience growth aging attitude self-improvement growth

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
English proverb The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: difficulties challenges obstacles problems growth ability practice troubles adversity problems difficulty growth learning self-improvement skills problem-solving

When you're finished changing, you're finished.
Benjamin Franklin Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: personal growth

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed--it is a process of elimination.
Elbert Hubbard The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: change growth

There is a stigma attached to being in crisis. But I say, Let's normalize it. Let's admit that none of us have it together.
Ronit Herzfeld "Master of Startup Disasters" by Rekha Balu, Fast Company, June 2000
Categories: growth self-improvement

You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you: You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth are the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
Bruce Mau "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" by Bruce Mau. Fast Company, October 2000
Categories: growth change

You remain young as long as you can still learn, can accept new conventions, and can stand contradictions.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Random House Webster's Quotationary
Categories: youth growth learning

With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: aging maturity growth

All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth
Categories: growth maturity self-improvement

All great experience has a guarded entrance and a windowless facade.
Robert Grudin Time and the Art of Living
Categories: experience growth learning

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed... Great necessities call out great virtues.
Abigail Adams The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: character growth adversity

When the explorer is ready, the guide will appear.
Himalayan saying "Idea Summit" by Anna Muoio, Fast Company, January/February 2000
Categories: attitude growth self-improvement

Change is disruptive--that's the point!
Karen Bredfeldt "Make Change, Minimize Distraction" by Cathy Olofson in the January 1999 issue of Fast Company Magazine
Categories: change growth transitions

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: growth knowledge education

Being faithful to the truth of one's own life is essential. And it is difficult to know when change represents a genuine willingness to engage life at its deepest level, and when it represents a simple cop-out. To keep our choices grounded in our deepest freedom, focused on willingness to love, will require continual effort to be faithful.
Elaine M. Prevallet, S. L. "Minding the Call" by Elaine M. Prevallet, S.L., Weavings, May/June 1996
Categories: authenticity change growth

As the fruit ripens, so does man mature; after many rains, suns and blows.
Jose de la Luz y Caballero The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: aging growth maturity

All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau Walden
Categories: change growth transition

Change can be exhilarating, joyous, liberating. But it can also be terrifying, because, in a deeper sense, you are questioning your very identity and sense of value. But take the risk. It's worth it.
Dee Hock Fast Company, July/August 1999
Categories: change growth self-improvement

It's never too late -- in fiction or in life -- to revise.
Nancy Thayer Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: change self-improvement growth

Once you recognize within yourself a hunger for something beyond just continuing, once you taste even the possibility of touching the meaning enfolded in your life, you can never be completely content with just going through the motions. There is no going back. Learning cannot be undone. The wisdom touched in moments of real intimacy penetrate the soul with knowledge of who and what we are. It transforms us.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer The Invitation
Categories: growth self-improvement self-knowledge

Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: change growth goals

Heroics have no place in real personality growth. Hard and consistent work do have a central and very real place, but not heroics.
Lawrence LeShan, PhD Meditating to Attain a Healthy Body Weight
Categories: personal growth self-improvement

Everyone has difficulty with the steps of inner growth, even with the outer obstacles seem easily surmountable. What's more, the prizes of our
Gail Sheehy Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life
Categories: personal growth self-improvement

We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: limitations growth self-improvement

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.
Kahlil Gibran The Broken Wings
Categories: growth self-improvement change

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.
Winston Churchill The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: change growth self-improvement

...the soul is a universe of its own, with its own waters and its own rules of navigation.
Thomas Moore The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
Categories: growth meditation self-awareness

Just as so many rivers, so many showers of rain from above, so many medicinal springs do not alter the taste of the sea, so the pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man. For it maintains its balance, and over all that happens it throws its own complexion, because it is more powerful than external circumstances.
Seneca Light from Many Lamps
Categories: adversity pain growth

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is.
Norman Vincent Peale Positive Thinking Every Day
Categories: life growth self-knowledge

This is the way of the most wise and useful people - the more they know, the more they long to know.
Dale Dauten "What have you done worthwhile today?" by Dale Dauten, Arizona Republic, 10/30/2000.
Categories: growth education self-improvement

You can't understand the world and how you respond to it until you first know yourself. You can't change the things you don't like about yourself until you search out the things that influence you and motivate you and hurt you.
Stedman Graham You Can Make It Happen : A Nine-Step Plan for Success
Categories: self-awareness growth self-improvement

Growth and change are never easy...If it were easy, you would have done it long ago.
Lawrence LeShan Meditating to Attain a Healthy Body Weight
Categories: change growth self-improvement

If you don't realize there is always someone who knows how to do something better than you, then you don't give proper respect for others' talents.
Hortense Canady Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: respect mentors talents growth

Our own beliefs create inner turmoil or harmony and lifelong learning. If we can assimilate every event as instruction, nothing is wasted, no experience is for naught.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: beliefs learning self-improvement growth

The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth
Categories: hope despair change growth

Perfection leaves so little room for improvement. So little space for acceptance -- or joy. On the path we have chosen, progress is the simple pleasure to be savored.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: perfectionism self-improvement happiness growth

When we learn how to be truly present with our joy and our sorrow, with our longing and our desires, layer upon layer of our selves and the world are revealed. We cannot know in advance what this revelation will look like or what action it will inspire or compel us to take.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer The Invitation
Categories: authenticity self-awareness growth self-improvement

... you and your mistake are not the same thing... you are not a failure because something you do fails.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: mistakes failures self-awareness growth

...time it self, because it protects you from shapelessness, because it makes you pace yourself, and because it reminds you to keep moving, could very well be one of your greatest allies... But only if it persuades you to keep moving, and not to panic.
Barbara Sher Live the Life You Love : In Ten Easy Step-By Step Lessons
Categories: time progress change growth

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: education learning wisdom growth

There is no freedom like seeing myself as I am and not losing heart.
Elizabeth J. Canham "Clutch Clinic" by Elizabeth J. Canham, Weavings, March/April 1997
Categories: self-love acceptance growth self-awareness

One sure-fire way to stay creative: force yourself to learn something new.
Harvey Mackay "For many, creative spurt in life comes after age 60" by Harvey Mackay, Arizona Republic Feb. 9, 2000
Categories: learning growth self-improvement creativity

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: curiosity learning growth change

The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: education learning wisdom growth

Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism.
Julie Cameron
Categories: courage belief faith growth

It's not whether we make mistakes that matters, it's understanding the opportunity they afford us.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: mistakes failures growth self-improvement

Lessons are usually where you look for them: you can learn something from anyone.
Brian Koval "Shifting Gears," Fast Company magazine, September 1999
Categories: growth learning education self-improvement

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: education growth self-improvement self-awareness

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
Lisa Alther Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: growth learning tolerance openness

The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth
Categories: personal growth maturity attitude

All the best transformations are
Fay Weldon Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement

No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.
Martin Buber Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth spirituality character

Each human organism is conceived with a potential for becoming a complete human being--as a seed contains the potential for becoming a complete plant. But his becoming may be completed in an infinite variety of ways.
Francis Wilson Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: growth self-improvement potential possibilities

Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far...
Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
Categories: rut routine exploration discovery growth

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: growth self-improvement spirituality thought

You don't have to be afraid of change. You don't have to worry about what's being taken away. Just look to see what's been added.
Jackie Greer Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change growth transitions loss

Changing your life, of course, is a matter of definition. It could mean opening your mind to a new concept or causing you to look at the commonplace from a different perspective or with new insight. It doesn't have to be revolutionary to be significant.
Carolyn Warner Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change growth learning self-improvement

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself.
Rainer Maria Rilke Simple Abundance
Categories: growth self-improvement meditation self-knowledge

This [is] the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way and yet it turns out we were really moving upward all the time.
Frances Willard To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: progress change growth self-improvement

Better to ask than to go astray.
Italian proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: growth learning education self-improvement

Maturity is:
the ability to stick with a job until it's finished;
the ability to do a job without being supervised;
the ability to carry money without spending it; and
the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.
Abigail Van Buren Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: maturity growth self-control wisdom

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.
Marya Mannes Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: maturity growth self-improvement self-knowledge

Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: age growth change materialism vanity

As-if principle: If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
William James Words for All Occasions
Categories: character growth self-improvement self-determination

Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to "see" reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in the possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.
Erich Fromm Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: truth understanding reality growth

Life, as I see it is not a location, but a journey. Everything is in flux, and is meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there.
Henry Ford Business Lessons for All by Peter Krass, Bottom Line Personal, Jan 1, 1998
Categories: personal growth change self-improvement

What we actually learn, from any given
Blaine Lee The Power Principle: Influence with Honor
Categories: growth adversity challenge difficulty

Men are like wine; some turn to vinegar,
Pope John XXII Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: aging growth experience wisdom

While it is wise to accept what we
Elaine N. Aron The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
Categories: acceptance hope change growth

At first people found a few diamonds in the yellow clay, and they were delighted with their good fortune, even while they supposed that this was to be the full extent of their find.
     Then, upon digging deeper, they came upon the blue clay, and, to their amazement, they then found as many precious stones in a day as they had previously found in a year, and what had formerly seemed like wealth faded into insignificance beside the new riches.
     In your exploration of Bible Truth, see to it that you do not rest satisfied in the yellow clay of a few spiritual discoveries, but press on to the rich blue clay underneath.
Emmet Fox, on mining for diamonds in S. Africa The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life
Categories: spirituality truth understanding growth

Only after you challenge your biases and stereotypes-- what Francis Bacon called the 'idols which beset men's minds'--can you help others do the same.
Carlo Brumat 'School for Leaders' by Eric Ransdell, Fast Company Magazine April 1999
Categories: leadership change rethinking growth

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
Leo Tolstoy Simple Abundance
Categories: change self-improvement growth life

For one of the most marvelous lessons you learn on a path of personal transformation is that when your heart is open to change, you're able to recognize the personal signals of encouragement your authentic self is constantly sending, no matter how unlikely the source.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance
Categories: change growth self-improvement authenticity

Simply, health is an ongoing process, often painful, of an organism becoming the most--the best--it can be. And disease is anything, sometimes painful, often painless, that interferes with the process of health.
M. Scott Peck A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered
Categories: wellness bad habits growth self-improvement

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.
Gail Sheehy Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change growth self-improvement rut stagnation

There is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change transitions growth self-improvement

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting a stretch and grow and reach new heights.
Pauline R. Kezer Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change self-improvement transitions growth

The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
Will Garcia The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
Mary Antin Simple Abundance
Categories: personal growth self-improvement change

It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth self-improvement creativity becoming

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.
Lou Holtz "Trying times hope to build real character" by Harvey Mackay,Arizona Republic, 10/31/2001
Categories: character adversity challenges growth

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer The Invitation
Categories: courage risk growth dreams

Everyone does one thing better than you. If you learn one good idea a thousand times, you will have a thousand good ideas.
Bob Gaudreau "Meet the Head Coach " Fast Company, April 2000
Categories: teamwork cooperation education growth

Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress, there is disintegration.
Grenville Kleiser The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: purpose progress life growth

... awareness has to be conclusive. It has to include recognizing our own frustrations, insecurities, and shortcomings, our limits and limitations, even our darkest and most destructive feelings, and the way we may feel overwhelmed or pulled apart. It challenges us to "work with" these very energies consciously and systematically.
Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting
Categories: mindfulness attention growth self-improvement

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry Kissinger Power Quotes
Categories: success achievement growth self-improvement

All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold and reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it.
Eileen Caddy Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: self-awareness patience growth meditation

When we don't prune in the garden, Nature does it for us through wind, ice, hail, fire, and flood. One way or another, the boughs will be shaped and strengthened. If we don't prune away the stress and plow under the useless in our lives, pain will do it for us.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: change pain growth authenticity

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.
Julie Cameron The Artist's Way
Categories: idea self-image growth progress

Let no one be discouraged by the thought of how much there is to learn. Each new step becomes a little surer, and each new grasp a little firmer.
Gertrude Jekyll Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: growth education learning experience just do it

Bloom where you're planted.
Mary Engelbreit Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: purpose meaning fulfillment growth

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: change progress improvement growth

No one keeps up his enthusiasm automatically. Enthusiasm must be nourished with new action, new aspirations, new efforts, new vision. It is one's own fault if enthusiasm is gone.
Papyrus Words for All Occasions
Categories: enthusiasm goals dreams growth

Be gentle with yourself.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: growth self-improvement self-esteem perfectionism

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: talents skills character growth

In youth we learn, in age we understand.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: aging maturity growth wisdom

...success and failure are like the two sides of the Mobius strip. They appear different, yet are fundamentally the same.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: success failure growth learning

We are not what we know. We are what we are willing to learn.
Council on Ideas "Insights from the World's Most Expensive Fortune Cookies," Spirituality and Health, Spring 2001.
Categories: growth education self-improvement potential

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.
Julia Cameron The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Categories: personal growth character development

Too often in our lives accomplishment and doing overshadow growth and becoming.
Linda Dillow Calm My Anxious Heart : A Woman's Guide to Contentment
Categories: focus priorities personal growth

The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur.
Aristotle The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: truth knowledge growth nature

The process of forgiveness -- indeed the chief reason for forgiveness -- is selfish. The reason to forgive others is not for their sake. They are not likely to know that they need to be forgiven. They're not likely to remember their offense. They are likely to say, "You just made that up." They may even be dead. The reason to forgive is for our own sake. For our own health. Because beyond that point needed for healing, if we hold on to our anger, we stop growing and our souls begin to shrivel.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth
Categories: forgiving restoration healing growth

The butterfly becomes only when it's entirely ready.
Chinese proverb Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: growth patience change progress

Every knock is a boost.
Elbert Hubbard The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: growth mistakes criticism progress

Better a sick body than an ignorant mind.
Greek proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: wisdom education knowledge growth

It is not enough to be good if you have the ability to be better.
Alberta Lee Cox The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations
Categories: success self-improvement growth change

To be known and loved is a transforming experience. It calls us from skepticism to belief, from caution to action, from despair to hope.
Larry J. Peacock "Echoes of Love" by Larry J. Peacock, The Upper Room Disciplines 1994
Categories: love transformation growth meaning

Great love -- the kind that illumines and transforms us -- always includes a keen awareness of limitation as well. Though love may inspire us to expand and develop in new ways, we can never be all things to the one we love, or someone other than who we are. Yet once accepted, limitation also helps us develop essential qualities, such as patience, determination, compassion, and humor. When love comes down to earth -- bringing to light those dark corners we would prefer to ignore, encompassing all the different parts of who we are -- it gains depth and power.
John Welwood The Spirit of Loving
Categories: love growth change self-improvement

Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine living life at the rate of an infant.
Bruce Mau "An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth" by Bruce Mau Fast Company, October 2000
Categories: growth learning change creativity

I am complete but not finished.
Greg Anderson The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness
Categories: self-esteem growth acceptance wellness

You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and what you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.
Warren G. Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: self-awareness vision growth self-improvement

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension.
Joshua L. Liebman The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: growth self-improvement change acceptance

...when the fight begins within himself
A man's worth something.
Robert Browning The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: self-awareness growth self-improvement change

You don't need to become perfect all at once.
Thomas E. Clarke, S.J. "Fear and Anger on Our Side," Weavings, May/June 1997.
Categories: perfectionism self-improvement growth acceptance

Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it.
Katherine Anne Porter Love and Relationships: Inspirations for Meditation and Spiritual Growth
Categories: love relationships marriage growth

Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: victory self-improvement growth change

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.
Virginia Woolf The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: maturity growth relationships society

I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days.
Chekhov Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: growth education learning self-improvement

If I should fail you, do not sorrow;

Ogden Nash I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Ogden Nash
Categories: change personal growth failure

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth change vision patience

Assuming that the same program will work for all of us is like feeding oats to a tiger or birdseed to a horse.
Barbara Sher Live the Life You Love
Categories: exercise self-improvement growth individuality uniqueness

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life--specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown; and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you venture too far.
Erica Jong Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: fear change transitions growth procrastination

Reason does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order to gradually progress from one level of insight to another.
Immanuel Kant Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: reason insight growth education learning

That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.
Lisa Alther Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change growth self-improvement friendships relationships

Every experience, every thought, every word, every person in your life is a part of a larger picture of your growth... Let everything energize you. Let everything bless you. Even your limping can bless you.
Macrina Wiederkehr A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary
Categories: growth self-improvement learning present mindfulness

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: action adventure risk change growth

A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: personal growth imperfections adversity character

"Know thyself" was the inscription over the Oracle at Delphi. And it is still the most difficult task any of us faces. But until you truly know yourself, strengths and weaknesses, know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you cannot succeed in any but the most superficial sense of the word. The leader never lies to himself, especially about himself, knows his flaws as well as his assets, and deals with them directly. You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and why you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.
Warren Bennis Thoughts on Leadership: A Treasury of Quotations
Categories: leadership self-awareness self-improvement growth authenticity

If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness thou must not gratify it.
William Penn The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: self-control habit change growth self-improvement

Habit is habit and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain Franklin Seasons DayPlanner, October 20, 1993
Categories: habit rut character change growth self-improvement

The doctor and the pastor ask about your health, but eternity makes you responsible for your condition.
Soren Kierkegaard Thoughts on Leadership: A Treasury of Quotations
Categories: spirituality growth personal responsibility self-improvement

Would you be young again?
So would not I--
One tear to memory given,
Onward I'd hie.
Caroline Oliphant Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: age aging attitude focus growth wisdom

I have long been fascinated by how we humans participate in our own evolution. Our growth process always seems to be happening in two directions at the same time: back to who we were originally--our true selves; and forward to what we can become--fulfilling that true self.
C. Diane Ealy The Woman's Book of Creativity (The Business of Life)
Categories: creativity growth self-improvement learning change

It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.
Lydia M. Child Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: age aging growth self-improvement self-esteem self-confidence

There is no road or ready way to virtue.
Sir Kenelm Digby Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: growth self-improvement character morality ethics

Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought-element within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.
James Allen As a Man Thinketh
Categories: thought attitude character growth self-improvement

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
Madeleine L'Engle Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: age aging growth memory memories remembrances

An ass does not stumble twice over the same stone.
French proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: learning change growth self-improvement habit

Life is half spent before one knows what it is.
French proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: life learning growth time aging

Faith is something we grow into; doubt is something we grow out of. Gradually. And the movement is not always forward -- out of doubt into faith. It is a line that wavers. As the picture a partially filled cup, we sometimes speculate: is the cup half full, or half empty? If we see faith as the contents of the cup, is it half full of faith, or half full of doubt? And if we look at the cup -- our experience -- and see one-half doubt, is doubt all we see? As God looks at the half-full, half-empty cup, what does He see? The doubt? Or the faith? Or, if faith is nearly a tiny seed -- say, a mustard seed -- can God see it? Is He moved by it? Or is He too busy gazing at the ample doubt that may surround that speck of faith? We know the answer: God sees such faith. And is moved.
James Long "Beyond the shadow of doubt" by James Long, Discipleship Journal, Issue 40.
Categories: faith doubt trust growth spirituality

This is a youth-oriented society, and the joke is on them because youth is a disease from which we all recover.
Dorothy Fuldheim Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: youth age aging wisdom growth self-knowledge

Humility is good in every situation, because it produces that teachable spirit which makes everything easy.
Francois Fenelon "A Humbler Answer" by Jennifer Roasania, InTouch, May 2001.
Categories: humility humbleness learning growth teamwork

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.
Warren Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: learning growth education self-improvement self-actualization

But we cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.
Karl Jaspers Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: conflict personal growth relationships marriage

An adventure is going into the unknown. If you know exactly where you are going, exactly how you will get there, and exactly what you will see along the way, it is not an adventure... Because they involve the unknown, adventures are inherently dangerous to a greater or lesser degree. Yet it is also only from adventures and their newness that we learn. If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything.
M. Scott Peck In Search of Stones
Categories: risk courage learning growth challenge

Many people never go after their dreams for a better life because they are afraid of change.
Stedman Graham You Can Make It Happen : A Nine-Step Plan for Success
Categories: dream change growth attitudes self-improvement

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant "Find the gem amid the 'blah, blah, blah' by Dale Dauten, Arizona Republic, April 16, 2001
Categories: education self-improvement growth self-awareness learning

We have met the enemy and he is us.
Walt Kelly Power Quotes
Categories: discipline growth self-improvement procrastination bad habits

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.
Louise Driscoll Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: dreams growth self-improvement vision self-nurture

Most of us simply lack the imagination to envision the full scope of potential change in our lives. We are too invested in the present to consider the possibility of a threatening -- or even a promising -- future.
(uncredited) "Where are you on the Web?" Fast company, October 1999
Categories: vision imagination change growth future

And the day came when the risk [it took] to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.
Anais Nin Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: risk courage strength growth self-improvement

In order to develop love -- universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it -- one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.
Chogyam Trungpa The Spirit of Loving
Categories: love life mystery personal growth

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
A Bronson Alcott American Quotations
Categories: support strength growth education mentor

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
George Bernard Shaw The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: flexibility change personal growth circumstances

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: mentoring parenting relationships growth nurturing

... we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.
Shakti Gawain
Categories: inspiration creativity courage risk growth

Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn't matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you're going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.
Harvey Mackay "Confusion inevitable with any change" by Harvey Mackay, Arizona Republic, 8/30/2000
Categories: change growth self-improvement success fulfillment

I bend but do not break.
Jean de la Fontaine Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: flexibility growth learning change strength

Creativity doesn't just leak away; it gets buried. Buried by years of looking for the one right answer in school, by hundreds of multiple choice tests and rigid lesson plans; buried by boring jobs, workplace politics, restrictive rules, and fear of failure, and it gets buried by our own definition of "noncreative." We don't need to learn how to be creative; we need to unlearn how to be uncreative!
G. Lynne Snead and Joyce Wycoff To Do Doing Done!
Categories: creativity growth learning education self-improvement

Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.
M. Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
Categories: problems difficulties growth self-improvement self-awareness

Rough spots sharpen our performance. And more often
Harvey Mackay 'Achievers focus on road rather
Categories: overcoming adversity problems challenges growth

A book gives knowledge, but it is life that gives understanding.
Hebrew proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: knowledge education wisdom growth experience

Most people feel like a fraud when they assume a new role. Unaware that this is a normal experience, they fear being exposed. Such fear inhibits spontaneous creativity and undermines your ability to work at optimal speed. Accept that feeling, and unlock your creative responses to change.
Ronit Herzfeld "Master of Startup Disasters" by Rekha Balu,Fast Company, June 2000
Categories: learning education growth creativity change

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them.
J. Harold Smith Words for All Occasions
Categories: mistakes growth self-improvement personal responsibility

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
Rollo May Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: freedom free will self-improvement personal growth

Happiness is the indication that man has found the answer to the problem of human existence: the productive realization of his potentialities and thus, simultaneously, being one with the world and preserving the integrity of his self.
Erich Fromm Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: happiness joy potential growth self-improvement authenticity

I am a part of all I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margins fades
For ever and ever when I move.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Compact Treasury of Inspiration
Categories: experience growth change exploration discovery

We turn not older with years, but newer every day.
Emily Dickinson The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: future growth aging maturity attitude

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mignon McLaughlin Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: happiness flexibility change fear growth

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.
Jean Nicholas Grou The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: acceptance pain trouble adversity growth

Whenever your present situation, I
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People : Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Categories: habits change self-improvement personal growth

All adversity is really an opportunity for our souls to grow; all adversity is really a form of growing pains.
John Gray Handbook for the Soul
Categories: growth difficulties problems adversities challenges

I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life
Categories: growth education learning adversity challenges

Spend enough time around success and failure, and you learn a reverence for possibility.
Dale Dauten 'Hope is secret to thriving in corporate life' by Dale Dauten, Arizona Republic, March 4, 1999
Categories: hope potential possibility growth change

I believe that to nurture my soul and to fulfill my soul's purpose, I must learn from every event in my life. I must come to realize that every experience has within it a seed of a tremendous gift -- a soul gift -- some new gift.
John Gray Handbook for the Soul
Categories: adversity challenges growth problems difficulties

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement renewal

To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it.
Tacitus Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: constructive criticism growth learning blame

There are no perfect human beings! My personal judgments are that no perfect human being is possible or even conceivable, but that human beings are far more improvable than most people believe.
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership: A Treasury of Quotations
Categories: perfectionism expectations self-improvement growth change

If we are wise, we discover that our answers come only when we work them out for ourselves. Others may contribute to our understanding, but the acquiring of personal wisdom is always an inside job. No one can do it for us.
Leo Buscaglia Born for Love: Reflections on Loving
Categories: personal growth education learning self-improvement

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
Bertrand Russell The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: happiness meaning purpose fulfillment growth

Man's capacities have never been measured. Nor are we to judge of what he can do by precedents, so little has been tried.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: potential ability growth self-improvement goals

Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: learning life skill growth success

Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: learning potential growth ability genius

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Baruch Spinoza The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: growth self-improvement learning education success

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and rootpuller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: criticism learning growth education instruction

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at the present.
English proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: proverb advice wisdom growth change

I so love the Spanish proverb "God says, 'Choose what you will and pay for it,'" which stresses that life holds no easy answers, that conscious choices are often costly ones. We must live with and pay for their consequences. Understanding this, we learn what it means to be fully human. Furthermore, we can exploit every delay as a cycle of growth.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: choice life living consequences growth

I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.
M. Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled
Categories: spirituality thinking thought growth change

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: life risk living present growth

When coasting in our comfort zones, we don't grow. We continue to do more of the same...Maintaining a comfort zone can, paradoxically, lead to discomfort in the long run. If by being comfortable we avoid important life issues, internal tension accumulates...Eventually, as both internal and external pressures for change persist, the "comfort zone" ceases to serve us.
Eric Allenbaugh Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: comfort growth change rut decisions life

All experience is an arch to build on.
Henry Brooks Adams Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: experience life growth learning change

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: practice work effort growth progress

I am still learning.
Michelangelo The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: learning education wisdom growth change

Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.
Paul Tillich The Artist's Way
Categories: destiny self-determination growth vision mission

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.
Samuel Butler The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: life feelings instinct growth learning

Don't water your weeds.
Harvey Mackay Harvey Mackay's United Features syndicated column
Categories: growth priorities change bad habits self-improvement

We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults.
Horace The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: self-nurture patience change growth perfectionism

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please--you can never have both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: truth honesty integrity growth character

Practice is the best instruction of them all.
Publilius Syrus Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: practice repetition growth learning education

In every difficult situation is potential value. Believe this, then begin looking for it.
Norman Vincent Peale Positive Thinking Every Day
Categories: circumstances difficulties value growth learning attitude

The relationships we have with the world are largely determined by the relationships we have with ourselves.
Greg Anderson The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness
Categories: relationships acceptance self-esteem growth wellness

Superfluous branches
We lop away that bearing boughs may live.
William Shakespeare (King Richard II) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: growth discipline focus balance priorities

Live your life and forget your age.
Norman Vincent Peale Positive Thinking Every Day
Categories: life living aging growth happiness

To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero.
Matthew Fox The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: creation spirituality imagination growth learning

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau Walden
Categories: education learning wisdom growth self-improvement

The absence of change is worse than inaction, it is atrophy.
Carolyn Warner Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change action stagnation growth self-improvement flexibility

It is happily and kindly provided that in every life there are certain pauses, and interruptions which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light; points of time where one course of action ends and another begins.
Samuel Johnson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: transitions changes end begin learning wisdom growth change

All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
Sheldon Kopp Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: character self-knowledge self-acceptance courage change growth

Success is not a destination that you ever reach. Success is the quality of your journey.
Jennifer James Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: success growth change life balance joy happiness

Our history is not our destiny.
Alan Cohen Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: past future growth mistakes success failure

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order.
Eudora Welty Simple Abundance
Categories: time understanding growth growing up maturing journaling

Sometime in your life you will go on a journey.
It will be the longest journey you have ever taken.
It is the journey to find yourself.
Katherine Sharp Simple Abundance
Categories: self-awareness meditation journaling growth maturation authenticity

If you are aware of your weaknesses and are constantly learning, your potential is virtually limitless. You can build something that will be a legacy.
Jay Sidhu 'A Leader's Journey' by Pamela Kruger, Fast Company Magazine, June 1999
Categories: growth change failure mistakes education potential

A pilgrimage, after all, is a strenuous undertaking, one in which companionship and support may be pivotal.
Julie Cameron The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: change journey growth self-improvement support encouragement

Self-observation is the groundwork for self-knowledge, and it is self-knowledge that effects change.
Elizabeth O'Connor Our Many Selves: A Handbook for Self-Discovery
Categories: self-awareness introspection meditation self-improvement personal growth

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide Simple Abundance
Categories: growth change transitions maturation self-improvement discovery

Better to accept whatever happens.
Horace The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: acceptance growth change problems difficulties challenges

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
Samuel Johnson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: wisdom learning education ignorance growth self-improvement

What gets in your way can take you to someplace new.
Sarah East Johnson "Living Dangerously" by Harriet Rubin, Fast Company, January/February 2000
Categories: obstacles detours problems difficulty growth challenges

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.
Wilson Mizner Words for All Occasions
Categories: listening communication talk speech learning growth

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Charles Dederich Cassell Companion to Quotations
Categories: future present past growth opportunity renewal

Fear is the instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: fear education learning wisdom growth change

Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.
Morihei Ueshiba The Art of Peace
Categories: growth self-improvement learning life journey self-awareness

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: challenges difficulties problems learning wisdom growth

If we don't forgive ourselves for our
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Handbook for the Soul
Categories: soul growth forgiveness anger resentment grudge

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.
Alan Alda Simple Abundance
Categories: self-awareness self-knowledge meditation intuition growth self-improvement

Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: life change growth vision dream goal

I am a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me.
Thomas Wolfe Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: growth change evolution self-improvement learning education

Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: trouble difficulties challenges problems growth change

There are always risks when you chase after a dream because growth requires that you leave your comfort zone and enter
Stedman Graham You Can Make It Happen : A Nine-Step Plan for Success
Categories: risks dream growth failure success experience

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: challenges difficulty problems learning growth change

The most valuable time-management technique that I've learned is patience. Patience is a muscle that I strengthen every day... You can't hurry a learning curve...
Alison Crawford "Unit of One," Fast Company, November 1999.
Categories: patience haste hurry learning growth time

I hope that you will abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience--to appreciate the fact that life is complex.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled
Categories: problems challenges difficulties life living growth

The struggle of the mind to keep itself free from every sort of bondage--to remain curious, open, unsatiated in all its relations with nature--is tenfold more difficult than the cultivation of a stable, satisfying point of view, but a thousandfold more precious.
Gardner Murphy Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: opinion open-mindedness growth learning education

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.
Karl Jaspers Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: reason growth learning education knowledge wisdom

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
Ralph Waldo Emerson American Quotations
Categories: adversity challenge growth problems difficulties learning

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: education learning experience life wisdom growth

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a while, as glasses being rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: wisdom relationship friends growth learning creativity

Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: change growth wisdom soul mistakes success

He who seeks advice seldom errs.
Phillipine proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: advice wisdom mentor learning growth self-improvement

There's no better way to waste time in life than to dwell on the past. You should learn from the past with as much objectivity as possible, so that you can modify your future actions -- and then move on.
Bonnie Dunbar Unit of One, Fast Company, November 1999
Categories: regrets worry past growth self-improvement learning

Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Spirit of Loving
Categories: love energy spirituality growth change self-improvement

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: learning education model example wisdom character growth

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
Henry David Thoreau The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: change challenge growth learning education truth

Per ardua ad astra. (Through struggle to the stars.)
Motto of the Mulvaney family and the RAF The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: struggle growth difficulties success obstacles perseverance

Our lives can be powerfully shaped by what we long to
Greg Anderson The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible
Categories: vision ideal personal growth self-improvement potential

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Sir Richard Steele Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: mind education learning wisdom self-improvement growth

Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn't, until he finally finds out what it is. And when you finally do find out what one corner of your vision is, you're off and running.
Anne Lamott Bird by Bird
Categories: vision direction learning growth self-awareness purpose

All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
Samuel Johnson Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: rest relaxation leisure growth learning education

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
Karen Kaiser Clark Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: change growth transitions self-improvement choice responsibility

Most luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only indispensible, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: materialism possessions luxury comfort growth self-improvement

Continuing to cling to the patterns you know inhibits your ability to discover what you don't know.
Eric Allenbaugh Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: patterns habits learning growth change vision rut

Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: spirituality materialism growth community self-awareness selflessness

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.
St. Francis de Sales Living in Balance: A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony & Wholeness in a Chaotic World
Categories: patience self-improvement perfectionism relationships personal growth

Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We're making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
William James Soar... If You Dare
Categories: potential creativity intelligence stretch growth self-improvement

In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom, but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.
Edward Young The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: age aging wisdom self-awareness thought personal growth

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own self-esteem.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: life happiness joy self-esteem self-awareness self-confidence growth

The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors reflecting their beliefs. So relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth... if we look honestly at our relationships we can see so much about how we have created them.
Shakti Gawain Love and Relationships: Inspirations for Meditation and Spiritual Growth
Categories: relationships marriage love friendship personal growth

Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
Iris Murdoch The Spirit of Loving
Categories: education learning growth self-improvement truth creativity

I believe we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: personal responsibility growth choices actions speech

If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.
Shirley Hufstedler Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: risk courage personal growth stagnation self-improvement

...the spiritual life consists only in part in striving for the ideal. The spiritual life is also, and perhaps more profoundly, about wrestling with the real. Perhaps the dance of holiness really occurs on the narrow apron of life's stage where we find ourselves poised between what we want to be and what we are.
Wendy M. Wright "Making Things New: Thoughts on Being Stripped, Naked, and Clothed," Weavings, Jan/Feb 1996
Categories: spirituality balance choices personal growth self-improvement

As I sat there, I thought about how often we put right keys into wrong locks, and wrong keys into right locks, and right keys into right locks without knowing about the sligh twist to the left before the turn to the right. I was reminded of times when I've followed the advice of an "expert" who supposedly knows the way, only to find that the directions are garbled, or that they work for the expert but not for me, and I have to find my own path through the woods.
Eloise Ristad A Soprano on Her Head
Categories: direction vision advice expert growth learning

It is better to ask some of the questions than know all of the answers.
James Thurber Words for All Occasions
Categories: learning education growth self-improvement thirst for knowledge

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: life living meditation contemplation self-awareness growth

I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.
Winston Churchill The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: criticism teaching self-improvement growth leadership mentor

Draw from others the lesson that may profit yourself.
Terence Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: learning life growth self-knowledge models observation

...by stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence you accelerate your development of competence.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: growth stretching confidence risk daring learning

Success is an act of exploration. That means the first thing you have to find is the unknown. Learning is searching; anything else is just waiting.
Dale Dauten "Follow your dream to find a business niche" by Dale Dauten, Arizona Republic, 5/21/2001
Categories: success achievement courage exploration growth stretching

Men stumble over the truth from time to time but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
Winston Churchill The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: truth learning knowledge wisdom growth self-improvement

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth...

Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits, which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers an fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind-elements operate in shaping his character, circumstances, and destiny.
James Allen Words for All Occasions
Categories: thoughts mind education self-improvement growth character

It is often the case with finer natures, that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age, the power of the intellect is unaltered or increased. An originally educated judgment grows broader and gentler as the river of life widens out to the everlasting sea.
Margaret Gatty Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: spirit wisdom knowledge understanding age aging growth

When a noble life has prepared for old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
Mme. de Stael Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: aging grace growth self-confidence self-esteem salvation

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change.
Katherine Mansfield Simple Abundance
Categories: change growth acceptance flexible flexibility influence

Learning, understanding, or practicing spiritual disciplines will not immunize you against any of the lessons you must "grow through" in your life.
Iyanla Vanzant One Day My Soul Just Opened Up : 40 Days and 40 Nights Towards Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth
Categories: pain adversity challenges problems difficulties growth

Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: difficulties problems challenges obstacles character growth

O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.
William Penn The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: tolerance understanding learning growth acceptance listening

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden Lessons from the Art of Juggling
Categories: learning personal growth mentoring stretching excellence

The path to accelerating and enjoying the learning process requires us to see success and failure as equally instructive and valuable.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: learning life growth failure success mistakes

... watching television at the expense of reading discourages active thinking; diminishes the imagination; inhibits the ability to think abstractly and perform complex symbolic transformations; damages the ability to concentrate; and can become addictive by causing brain changes analogous to drug-induced states.
John Chaffee, Ph.D. The Thinker's Way: 8 Steps to a Richer Life
Categories: growth intelligence thinking reading education achievement

...our culture wants to turn mysteries into problems to be solved or breakdowns to be fixed, because maintaining the illusion that we can "straighten things out" makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes--and when we pretend that they do, life not only becomes more banal but more hopeless, because the fixes never works.
Parker J. Palmer "All the Way Down" by Parker J. Palmer in the September/October 1998 Weavings: Woven Together in Love
Categories: spirituality mystery acceptance growth learning self-improvement

From failure can come valuable experience; from experience -- wisdom; from wisdom -- mutual trust; from mutual trust -- cooperation; from cooperation -- united effort; from united effort -- success.
William A. Ward Words for All Occasions
Categories: failure failing mistakes growth achievement success

The cure for sorrow is to learn something.
Barbara Sher I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was
Categories: sorrow depression sadness learning growth cure

To continue learning is to embrace the process of trial and error at higher and higher levels.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: learning life growth mistakes failure success

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth change creativity imagination past future

Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgment of one's need to grow.
M. Scott Peck Categories: spirituality growth self-improvement self-awareness pride vanity

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.
Lord Chesterfield The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: advice mentoring mentorship leadership growth change

He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: life fear success growth change courage

True success comes when you hit a crisis or rough spot, and people don't revert to their old behaviors.
Lynn Mercer "Want to lead better? It's simple," Fast Company, March 2000
Categories: success growth self-improvement reaction difficulties problems

Why should we use all our creative power....? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
Brenda Ueland The Artist's Way
Categories: creativity joy generosity compassion materialism growth expression

Don't pluck the apple while it is green; when it is ripe it will fall of itself.
Russian proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: maturity waiting patience growth readiness rushing

I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the "oughtness" that forever confronts him.
Martin Luther King, Jr. The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: change growth self-improvement racism morality bigotry

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
L.P. Hartley The Go-Between
Categories: history past future change growth focus

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth change self-awareness self-knowledge learning introspection

By making choices, we learn to profit from our mistakes. Waiting for the perfect choice is to miss it all.
Alexandra Stoddard Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: choice decisions growth learning education experience

We must have a pure, honest, and warmhearted motivation, and on top of that, determination, optimism, hope, and the ability not to be discouraged. The whole of humanity depends on this motivation.
The Dalai Lama Living in Balance: A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony & Wholeness in a Chaotic World
Categories: community society mankind self-improvement growth service

People say they wish they had my patience. I tell them I wasn't born with it. I had to learn it, just like I had to learn to carve. Everybody has patience. Some of us just make better use of it than others.
Bruce Law, woodcarver "It's more than a virtue" by Sam Lowe, published in the November 10, 1998 Arizona Republic.
Categories: patience patient wait growth self-improvement character

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
Anais Nin Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: art perception understanding learning growth knowledege vision

We work to become, not to acquire.
Elbert Hubbard The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: work progress success growth possessions self-esteem

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirt of resistance to it.
Jean Nicolas Grou Light from Many Lamps
Categories: suffering adversity challenges difficulties personal growth

All things pass...Patience attains all it strives for.
St. Theresa of Avila Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: patience growth circumstances plateaus vision goals

Growth in personality occurs as a consequence of meeting conflicts and impasses head on, and reconciling them. Interpersonal conflicts and impasses constitute problems which require solutions so that a satisfying relationship may be maintained. Whenever a person encounters a problem in his everyday living, he is obliged to vary his behavior until he discovers some mode of responding which is successful in achieving a solution.
Sidney Jourard Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth conflicts relationships marriage change self-improvement

Accumulate learning by study, understand what you learn by questioning.
Mingjiao, Jiufeng Annals Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership
Categories: growth study education knowledge learning understanding wisdom

Change can either challenge or threaten us...Your beliefs pave your way to success or block you.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: change challenge growth success beliefs self-esteem confidence

A serene fortitude in the face of disappointment and chagrin should be our goal. If you have evaded all unhappiness in life your happiness is place in unstable equilibrium by the constant dread that some unavoidable disappointment is just around the corner. If you have faced pain and disappointment, you not only value your happiness more highly, but you are prepared for unpredictable exigencies. Just as we can immunize ourselves against certain bodily diseases by stimulating our reserves to overactivity
W. Beran Wolfe Light from Many Lamps
Categories: happiness adversity challenges growth character perspective pain

There is always a better way.
Thomas Edison Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: growth change progress self-improvement success opportunity creativity

One must become as humble as the dust before he can discover truth.
Mahatma Gandhi The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: humility learning growth self-improvement meditation spirituality seeking

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
Categories: focus awareness growth appreciation gratitude happiness creativity joy

When we try to avoid one fault, we are led to the opposite, unless we be very careful.
Horace The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: fault mistake habit character growth change compensation

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain 1911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Categories: reading education personal growth self-improvement knowledge literacy

When you change your patterns of thinking, you change the way you feel about yourself, about others, and about the world. And changing the way you feel enables you to deal more productively with your problems and burdens and to take actions necessary to improve your life.
Dr. Arthur Freeman The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make and How to Avoid Them
Categories: thought emotions change problems mistakes failures growth

If I can line up the people who, back through the ages, have gone at life in ways I greatly admire, then I can feel their strength supporting me, all their standards and values pointing the way in which I am to go.
Bonaro W. Overstreet Light from Many Lamps
Categories: example leadership support wisdom learning growth education knowledge

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Words for All Occasions
Categories: character vision goal potential growth judgement perception

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: obstacles challenges difficulties problems self-awareness growth wisdom

Forgiveness is the key to every aspect of spiritual growth.
Charles F. Stanley "The Victorious Pursuit: Winning Over Life's Struggles" by Charles F. Stanley, InTouch, March 1999.
Categories: forgiving forgiveness grief personal growth spirituality maturity

Whether or not we realize it each of us has a special gift inside us just waiting to surface!...We owe developing these gifts not only to ourselves, but those around us as well... The important thing here is not what your gift is as much as that you develop it so that you can share it with those around you and in the process further your own personal life!... Once we have identified our special talents it doesn't matter whether or not we find immediate success in them, what does matter is that we take a step each day towards our intended goal!
Josh Hinds Inspiration a Day! mailing list
Categories: talents goals encourage gifts growth sharing success

If you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: proactive circumstances creativity mission vision learning growth

A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.
American proverb The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: adversity trouble difficulties obstacles problems growth challenge

Our genetic heritage endows each of us with a series of emotional set-points that determines our temperament. But the brain circuitry involved is extraordinarily malleable; temperament is not destiny.
Daniel P. Goleman Emotional Intelligence
Categories: temperament personality emotions growth change responsibility choice

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: progress action hope assurance growth change self-improvement

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, but and fruit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: growth change progress self-improvement instinct opinion knowledge

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli Light from Many Lamps
Categories: self-nurture growth learning education wisdom belief hero

One can spend a lifetime assigning blame, find the cause 'out there' for all the troubles that exist. Contrast this with the 'responsible attitude' of confronting the situation, bad or good, and instead of asking, 'What caused the trouble? Who was to blame?' asking 'How can I handle this present situation to make the most of it? What can I salvage here?'
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: blame responsibility choice personal growth self-improvement change

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Words for All Occasions
Categories: knowledge learning education teaching growth self-improvement communication

The leader wonders about everything, wants to learn as much as he can, is willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. He does not worry about failure, but embraces errors, knowing he will learn from them.
Warren G. Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: curiosity leadership personal growth courage strength mistakes

Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience.
Elbert Hubbard The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: progress growth change experience learning life success

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
Faith Baldwin Simple Abundance
Categories: time change growth maturation maturing growing up learning

The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed.
Clarence Day The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: acceptance decisions adversity challenges change growth vision

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into the habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought
Categories: potential self-improvement growth adversity challenges obstacles problems

Now in my later years I can harvest the wisdom of my childhood. I treasure those precious roots knowing that I have grown wings and I must move on. I must let go.
MacRina Wiederkehr A Tree Full of Angels
Categories: aging elderly wisdom adulthood growth self-knowledge self-awareness

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
Charles Darwin Peter McWilliams
Categories: self-control morality ethics self-improvement growth maturity thoughts

Let your desire for the truth transcend all minor considerations. Ignorance is invariably confident. The man of knowledge learns to realize his own needs. Be honest and severe in your self-appraisal. Learn the art of learning and you are well on your way. True greatness is reflective, not assertive.

Categories: truth self-knowledge self-confidence self-esteem meditation growth learning

There is always hope for an individual who stops to do some serious thinking about life.
Katherine Logan Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: meditation self-awareness introspection philosopy potential change growth

...leadership is power to endure an ongoing quest for information or influence...not just actual triumphs like making profits or achieving stated objectives.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: leadership quest vision growth change success achievement

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: life perspective meaning joy purpose wisdom success growth

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: speech change honesty authenticity growth flexibility opinions

Do not be too timid and squeamish...All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: life change growth mistakes failure success fear

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do...Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: speech truth honesty integrity change flexibility growth

Character is developed one positive action at a time. Therefore nothing is actually trivial in our lives. To grow in character development, pay attention to seemingly trivial matters. Someone who grows from each minor life event will eventually reach high levels of character perfection.
Rabbi Zelig Pliskin 9/16/98 Daily Lift mailing list
Categories: character integrity growth change self-improvement actions choices

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Bernard M. Baruch The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: growth self-improvement acceptance problems troubles difficulties adversity

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: happiness life success work achievement progress growth

He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning.
Danish proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: pride vanity conceit growth learning education self-esteem

All work done mindfully rounds us out, helps complete us as persons.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: vocation work balance fulfillment life living growth

..for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid pieces of paper unfolds world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet you or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of the things that you don't get in real life--wonderful, lyrical language, for instance. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unboundec; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.
Anne Lamott Bird by Bird
Categories: books reading growth learning focus attention education

The process of succeeding can be seen as a series of trials in which your vision constantly guides you toward your target while in your actual performance you are regularly slightly off target. Success in any area requires constantly readjusting your behavior as the result of feedback from your experience.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: success vision progress performance feedback change growth

If you don't take charge of shaping your own destiny, others will apply their agenda to you.
Eric Allenbaugh Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: destiny future vision self-determination growth progress self-esteem

Happiness and misery depend not on how high up or low down you are--they depend not upond these, but on the direction in which you are tending.
Samuel Butler The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: happiness joy misery sadness attitude growth progress vision

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes and not having all the answers, so long as we are willing to admit this and strive for personal betterment. Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out that they don't.
Leo Buscaglia Born for Love: Reflections on Loving
Categories: mistakes errors failure responsibility personal growth self-improvement

A frontier is never a place; it is a time and a way of life.
Hal Borland The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: frontier discovery creation creativity time growth change

When flowing water...meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it...

Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger...emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage.
from the I Ching To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: obstacles problems difficulties challenges growth patience perseverance

The greats often became great because they continued to believe in themselves despite apparent failures.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: excellence success failure growth vision potential self-confidence

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.
Edmund Burke The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: adversity difficulties problems challenges obstacles growth wisdom

Everywhere I go, there I am again.
Pogo Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: obstacles change growth learning mistakes challenges difficulties problems

We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.
Alexander Hamilton The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: problems challenges adversity illness disability attitude growth character

One only gets to the top rung on the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly, all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you--suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, "Well, I'll have a go, too."
Margaret Thatcher Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: action goal growth ability talent achievement success perservere

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.
Thomas Watson, Sr., founder of IBM Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: failure success mistakes creativity challenges growth learning education

If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: perspective growth knowledge wisdom education learning vision mission

One way to become enthusiastic is to look for the plus sign. To make progress in any difficult situation, you have to start with what's right about it and build on that.
Norman Vincent Peale Positive Thinking Every Day
Categories: enthusiasm positive challenges difficulties problems solutions progress growth

Your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience, and understanding [and thus] to develop your capacity for compassion.
Dalai Lama "A Kinship Appeal" by Elaine M. Prevallet, S.L., Weavings , November/December 1998.
Categories: growth confrontation compromise patience tolerance compassion difficult people

As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.
James Allen As a Man Thinketh
Categories: growth self-improvement self-awareness circumstances adversity problems difficulties challenges

Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: potential synergy creativity growth learning living values principles

Now that we know we can't change the past we can realize that at this very moment we have the wonderful opportunity to begin anew! If you want something there is simply no better time than right now to pursue it!
Josh Hinds Inspiration a Day! mailing list
Categories: opportunity past future vision goal growth change success

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.
Elbert Hubbard The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: goal vision mission progress growth action priorities thought

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: courage strength growth change challenges difficulties problems learning

Problems are sent to us as gifts.
Ancient Oriental teaching Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: problems challenges obstacles difficulties learning growth progress success

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: courage risk daring action virtue success progress growth

As we become full persons, our knack for "right actions" and good judgement blossoms.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: fulfillment balance life actions judgement character growth vision

Prosperity doth best discover vice but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Francis Bacon The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: virtue challenge growth change temptation adversity character integrity

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development.
Lewis Mumford The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: potential capacity capability self-improvement continuing education growth learning

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.
Seneca The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: prosperity adversity strength character difficulty challenges obstacles growth

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No fight: No blame.

Lao Tse Amen: A Gathering of Forty Prayers and Blessings from Around the World
Categories: peace flow spirituality acceptance character integrity meditation growth

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.
King Solomon Ecclesiastes 1:7
Categories: nature cycle of life renewal growth change learning wisdom

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
King Solomon Ecclesiates 3:1, Holy Bible
Categories: nature cycle of life wisdom growth change acceptance rhythm

...if we are willing to abandon our usual coercive tactics and approach our problems sideways and kitty-corner we stand a good chance of finding our way through some interesting gates.
Eloise Ristad A Soprano on Her Head
Categories: solutions flexibility learning growth education solving vision experimentation

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.
Oliver Goldsmith The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: character growth adversity problems difficulties challenges ministry service

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: leadership adversity difficulties challenges problems turmoil growth skill

The aims and ideals that move us are generated by imagination. But they are not made out of imaginary stuff. They are made out of the hard stuff of the world of physical and social experience.
John Dewey Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: ideals morals vision mission experience personal growth self-improvement

In order to grasp the reality, we must see the possibilities. In the present, a formulation of the possibilities is the area in which I gain uncertainty concerning what I decide; without a vision of the possibilities, I act blindly; only a knowledge of the possibilities enables me to know what I am actually doing.
Karl Jaspers Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: possibilities potential personal growth dreams vision mission self-improvement

To gain confidence, we need to have a true picture of who we are and where we belong.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: self-confidence self-esteem self-image character growth self-awareness knowledge wisdom

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Simple Abundance
Categories: meditation growth self-discovery self-awareness self-acceptance journaling pain struggles

How can we remember our ingnorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?
Henry David Thoreau The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth learning change listening education mentoring leadership excellence

The main reason I seek the ideas of others is for help--the diagnosis and treatment of my own isolation and the enlargement of my understanding.
Bill Moyers A World of Ideas
Categories: ideas sharing teaching wisdom learning growth understanding isolation

When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go.
The past is over. It is time to ask what can we do right, not what did we do wrong.
Forgive yourself and move on. Have the courage to reach out for help.
Bernie S. Siegel, MD Love, Medicine & Miracles
Categories: past mistakes failures perserverance guilt learning growth change

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.
Margaret Fuller Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: progress growth achievement success goal vision mission meaning

What's vital about our creative process is that we learn to use it, to nurture it and express it in our daily lives.
C. Diane Ealy The Woman's Book of Creativity (The Business of Life)
Categories: creativity growth change self-improvement self-nurture talents abilities self-expression

Homogeneity makes for healthy milk but anemic friendships. We need relationships that cross culturally imposed lines to enlarge our hearts and expand our vistas.
Dan Schmidt "Paul & Friends" by Dan Schmidt in the July/August 1998 issue of Discipleship Journal
Categories: friendship relationships compassion diversity racism tolerance acceptance growth

We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.
Leo Buscaglia Born for Love
Categories: failure success mistakes learning determination persevere growth on the job training

O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."
Isaiah 30:19-21 Holy Bible
Categories: adversity challenges difficulties problems wisdom knowledge experience growth

Our society automatically scraps people just like old automobiles. It's the Detroit syndrome, but the latest models are not always the best.
Margaret Kuhn Words for All Occasions
Categories: age aging senior citizens elders elderly growth strength wisdom

What! Wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?
William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: mistakes habits learning education wisdom knowledge growth change

Adversity brings knowledge, and knowledge wisdom.
Welsh proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: adversity challenges difficulties problems wisdom knowledge experience growth

Commitment is the cornerstone of creative change.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: commitment goal vision mission change self-improvement growth determination persevere

Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.
William J. Bennett The Book of Virtues
Categories: challenge learning overcome problem-solving self-improvement growth goal setting

Many people assume that mental and physical abilities necessarily decline with age, that we are, after age twenty-five, losing significant brain capacity on a daily basis.
In reality, the average brain is capable of improving with age.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: age aging learning education self-improvement growth thought mental processes senility

I've never been afraid to admit when I've made a mistake. It nearly drives me nuts sometimes, making mistakes. I keep telling myself I should be perfect, but that isn't what we're here for. Perfection isn't an option for us; perfection is death, Micko. We're here to learn and change, and that means making mistakes.
spoken by William Pierce, a character in the novella Heads by Greg Bear Heads
Categories: mistakes errors failure learning growth education perfectionistic procrastination fear

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is an honest man.
Henry Fielding The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: character adversity difficulties challenges problems growth strength honesty truthfulness

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?
Henry David Thoreau Light from Many Lamps
Categories: success work effort vision goal failure self-improvement growth mission

The forces of idealism and realism tug at each other in all human activities, personal, social and national, and real progress is made possible by the proper mix of these two ingredients, so that the clay is kept in the ideal pliable, plastic condition, half moist and half dry, not hardened and unmanageable, nor dissolving into mud.
Lin Yutang The Importance of Living
Categories: idealism realism reality dream progress growth self-improvement priorities balance

Celebrate being alive every day. Live your highest aspirations; learn what you always wanted to learn. Don't wait until you get hit by a truck or acquire a terminal illness to change the things that prevent you from living your life to the full. Whatever your habits, whatever your age, you can change...you can learn.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: change growth self-improvement breaking habits joy happiness happy fulfillment meaning

Too many people are mere products of their context, lacking the will to change, to develop their potential. I also believe, however, that anyone, of any age and in any circumstances, can transform himself if he wants to.
Warren Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: will change growth victim of circumstances self-actualization self-determination learning success achievement

But sage experience only comes with years.
Samuel Coleridge, from the poem Quae Nocent Docent (In Christ's Hospital Book) The Portable Coleridge
Categories: wisdom knowledge mature maturity age aging experience learning time growth

Doing is significantly different than not doing. Dong not only "gets things done," it teaches lessons you cannot possibly learn theoretically and can loosen even the most stubbornly entrenched feelings.
Carol Lloyd Creating a Life Worth Living
Categories: work effort action success achievement learning growth emotions self-improvement

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.
Charles de Gaulle Words for All Occasions
Categories: adversity problems difficulties challenges obstacles character opportunity growth maturity

It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
Categories: self-awareness self-knowledge criticism critics judgementalism perfectionism perfectionist self-improvement growth

Do not fail
To learn from
The pure voice of an
Ever-flowing mountain stream
Splashing over the rocks.
Morihei Ueshiba The Art of Peace
Categories: obstacles challenges difficulties problems growth change learning nature education

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
Pearl S. buck Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: proactive moods self-determination action success accomplishments growth work effort

...let us own our pain and move away from guilt, fault and blame toward recovery and healing.
Bernie S. Siegel, MD Love, Medicine & Miracles
Categories: pain guilt mistakes errors failures blame excuses growth change

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how...The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille Simple Abundance
Categories: living life risk courage bravery daring strength growth stretching

From Freud we learned that the past exists now in the person. Now we must learn, from growth theory and self-actualization theory that the future also now exists in the person in the form of ideals, hopes, duties, tasks, plans, goals, unrealized potentials, mission, fate, destiny, etc. One for whom no future exists is reduced to the concrete, to hopelessness, to emptiness.
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth self-improvement potential vision dreams goals mission future

It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. I like to work out. I like to play ball. I like to spend time with my friends. I like to make myself better every day. I like to try to learn. It doesn't take money to do that.
Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns player "Stevie Wonder" by Brian Bujdos, an article in the April 1998 issue of FastBreak magazine
Categories: happiness materialism focus friendship growth learning change self-improvement priorities

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head...
William Shakespeare (As You Like It) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: pain suffering adversity challenges obstacles difficulties character growth problems

Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.
Goldwyn talent scout's assessment of Fred Astaire The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
Categories: talent ability capability judgement appearances perservere determination self-improvement growth

Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.
William Shakespeare, from Romeo and Juliet Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: adversity challenges difficulties wisdom growth adversities school of hard knocks

You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done...you are fierce with reality.
Florida Scott Maxwell "All the Way Down" by Parker J. Palmer in the September/October 1998 Weavings: Woven Together in Love
Categories: growth learning self-improvement self-acceptance past history understanding reality living

One should never count the years--one should instead count one's interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I am glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in.
Helen Keller Words for All Occasions
Categories: age aging senior citizens elders elderly growth interests curiosity discovery

A common pitfall on the path of excellence is an overemphasis on comparing our progress with others. While competition can be a tremendous tool for stretching ourselves to new heights, too often it causes a lack of perspective. This loss of perspective can often be traced to the following cycle: losing becomes associated with failure, and failure with the loss of self-esteem.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: excellence growth learning competition comparisons stretching perspective failure self-esteem

What do your conversations say about your self-beliefs? Do your words and self-descriptions enable your creative skills, let you sustain the tensions of change? Or, does your everyday language discourage you, and cause you to run from unknown?
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: words talk speech thoughts self-deprecating self-image self-confidence change growth

Freedom requires the capacity to accept, bear and live constructively with anxiety. I refer of course to the normal anxiety all of us experience at every step in our psychological growth as well as in this upset contemporary world. To be free means to face and bear anxiety; to run away from anxiety means automatically to surrender one's freedom.
Rollo May Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: freedom free will stress anxiety change fear growth courage strength

There was never a time when so much official effort was being expended to produce happiness, and probably never a time when so little attention was paid by the individual to creating the personal qualities that make for it. What one misses most today is the evidence of widespread personal determination to develop a character that will in itself, given any reasonable odds, make for happiness. Our whole emphasis is on the reform of living conditions, of increased wages, of controls on the economic structure--the government approach--and so little on man improving himself.
William Ogden, 1945 Light from Many Lamps
Categories: happiness joy meaning fulfillment character self-determination self-improvement attitude growth change

...the fact that I practice meditation doesn't mean that I am always calm or kind or gentle, or always present. There are many times when I am not. It doesn't mean that I always know what to do and never feel confused or at a loss. But even being a little more mindful helps me see things I might not have seen and take small but important, sometimes critical steps I might not otherwise have taken.
Jon Kabat-Zinn Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting
Categories: meditation attitude learning growth personality change mindfulness present decisions

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves--to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than before.
Stewart B. Johnson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: work success achievement attainment competition competitive vision self-improvement growth

Nothing is more validating and affirming than feeling understood. And the moment a person begins feeling understood, that person becomes far more open to influence and change.
Stephen Covey "Unit of One," Fast Company, April 1999
Categories: relationships teamwork team work change growth influence leadership mentoring

You have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for your soul. It is not easy. You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences...To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., from the essay "Windows of the Soul" Handbook for the Soul
Categories: self-nurture life soul work happiness balance self-esteem growth change

If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn.
Bernie Siegel, MD Handbook for the Soul
Categories: nature adversity difficulty challenges obstacles renewal change growth rebirth overcoming

Forget the resolutions. Forget control and discipline...too much work. Instead try experimenting. Go in search of something to fall in love with...something about yourself, your career, your spouse.
Dale Dauten 'Charming the brain may allow changes' by Dale Dauten (Arizona Republic 1/7/99)
Categories: love joy attitude gratitude change growth self-improvement resolutions relationships success excellence

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
Morihei Ueshiba The Art of Peace
Categories: simplicity power status peace joy happiness life success growth heaven money

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge maong the people.
John Adams Power Quotes
Categories: education knowledge freedom schooling liberty society wisdom learning growth politics

The only reason to compete is to improve yourself.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: competition winning growth learning stretching risk courage bravery testing self-improvement

Inevitably, when we try to avoid making choices or try to escape risk in our lives, when we limit our opportunities to grow, we feel more helpless, more dependent, more vulnerable - in other words, more childlike. Clearly, confidence comes from doing. And to know what we're doing when we consider the crucial challenges of our lives - to muster our courage - we need to understand now only what but how we've learned.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: courage risk stretching growth learning self-determination strength bravery self-confidence self-esteem

Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance
Categories: change difficulties obstacles challenges adversity problems gratitude attitude focus growth

It's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.
C. West Churchman Words for All Occasions
Categories: innovation imagination assumptions assume assuming wisdom growth improvement success achievement

It is by translating your fine sense of aspiration into actual lofty deeds that you grow toward your ideal. Link your lofty thoughts to earnest, active effort, and good results will inevitably follow. The great things you intend to do some time must have a beginning if they are ever to be done, so begin something worthwhile today.
Grenville Kleiser The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: intentions action success aspiration growth goal vision mission effort work

Life is a grindstone. But whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.
L. Thomas Holdcroft Body, Mind and Spirit
Categories: attitude perspective choice feelings stress anxiety emotions growth learning flexibility

Abilities wither under faultfinding, blossom with encouragement.
Donald A. Laird The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: ability talent mentorship leadership encouragement nurture blame criticism growth development

Some tension is necessary for the soul
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Handbook for the Soul
Categories: personal growth change soul love healing forgiveness service serve self-nurture

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.
Henry David Thoreau The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: journaling thought diary self-improvement growth education writing write wisdom investment

Those things that hurt, instruct.
Ben Franklin The Road Less Traveled
Categories: pain problems challenges difficulties obstacles wisdom education learning growth change

Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.
M. Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled
Categories: life problems obstacles challenges difficulties discipline will action character growth change

Adversity has ever been considered as the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being free from flatterers.
Samuel Johnson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: problems difficulties challenges obstacles self-awareness growth change progress understanding wisdom

Yes, there are times when something is legitimately not our fault. Blaming others, however, keeps us in a stuck state and is ultimately rough on our own self-esteem.
Eric Allenbaugh Wake-Up Calls : You Don't Have to Sleepwalk Through Your Life, Love, or Career!
Categories: blame responsibility accountability choice rut self-esteem mistakes failure problems growth learning

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
Dante Alighieri The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: character virtue wisdom knowledge growth integrity origin choice life responsibility

Most people don't get much praise in daily life, but we all need it very much. I think receiving praise makes us brave. Down deep we really know our worth, but we don't have easy access to that knowledge. We need to hear praise coming from outside ourselves or we won't remember that we deserve it.
Barbara Sher Live the Life You Love : In Ten Easy Step-By Step Lessons
Categories: praise growth self-confidence nurture nurturing parenting relationships marriage self-esteem leadership

Adversity is the foundation of virtue
Japanese proverb. The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: adversity character virtue growth proverb saying difficulties problems obstacles challenges change

We are all capable of change and growth; we just need to know where to begin.
Blaine Lee The Power Principle: Influence with Honor
Categories: self-improvement change growth learning character guidance potential excellence mentoring coaching planning

It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles.
James Sharp The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: adversity setbacks problems difficulty challenges obstacles growth eduction learning strength courage

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.
King Solomon Ecclesiastes 7:14
Categories: attitude learning growth self-improvement challenges problems difficulty difficulties obstacles meditation prayer

Aging is a life-spanning process of growth and development from birth to death. Old age is an integral part of the whole, bringing fulfillment and self-actualization. I regard aging as a triumph, a result of strength and survivorship.
Margaret Kuhn Words for All Occasions
Categories: aging age growing old elderly senior citizen growth change self-improvement strength courage bravery

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Henri Frederick Amiel Words for All Occasions
Categories: age aging old senior citizens elders elderly wisdom understanding development growth change self-improvement

Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart.
Myla Kabat-Zinn Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting
Categories: challenges opportunities opportunity obstacles difficulties difficulty problems adversity growth change learning

Learn how to feel joy.
Seneca The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: happiness choice attitude depression sadness happy unhappiness unhappy learning growth self-improvement

...the only true wisdom "lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone open the mind to all that is hidden to others."
Igjuarjuk, paraphrased by Joseph Campbell and quoted by Bill Moyers in the introduction. The Power of Myth
Categories: wisdom knowledge meaning secret loneliness suffering deprivation pain misery despair growth

Whenever words fly up at me from a printed page as I read, I intercept them instantly, knowing they are for me. I turn them over carefully in my mind and cling to them hard.
David Grayson Light from Many Lamps
Categories: wisdom books knowledge change growth quotations quotes memorization learning reading education

One cannot get through life without pain... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie S. Siegel, MD The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: pain disability illness adversity challenges difficulties problems growth circumstances personal responsibility

The "Inside-Out" approach to personal and self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self - with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: effectiveness relationship growth change paradigms character motives victory promises personality self-improvement

Only the strongest egos escape the trap of perfectionism. To solve problems successfully, you must believe you can, must feel capable enough to improvise. Yet too many adults have been schooled away from their ability to experiment freely.
Marsha Sinetar To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love: The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring
Categories: ego perfectionism acceptance self-confidence self-esteem abilities talents skills trust yourself growth learning by doing education

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable, precisely, the balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives and broad foundations.
George Santayana Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: aging elderly aged spirituality balance wisdom growth self-improvement perspective vision education

When we can't access our inner resources, we come to the flawed conclusion that happiness and fulfillment come only from external events. That's because external events usually bring with them some sort of change. And so we've learned to rely on circumstances outside ourselves for forward or backward momentum as we hurtle through life. But we don't have to do that any longer. We can learn to be the catalysts for our own change.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance
Categories: change self-improvement growth self-discovery self-awareness happiness emotion mood fulfillment meaning purpose

Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.
William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: change growth criticism learning wisdom bad habits imperfections sins character self-improvement self-awareness self-knowledge

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot The Thinker's Way: 8 Steps to a Richer Life
Categories: purpose goal fulfillment aging regret future choices regrets change self-improvement personal growth

Life is complex.
Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled
Categories: life learning spirituality growth self-improvement direction meaning easy answers difficulties problems challenges

When we can see past our own reflection - when we see and care beyond ourselves, when we see and learn from others - only then do we become adults.
Walter Anderson The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment
Categories: focus balance orientation community society responsibility maturity mature maturation growth service ministry

Failure is just part of the culture of innovation. Accept it and become stronger.
Albert Yu Fast Company magazine, December 1998, p. 132.
Categories: mistakes errors failure success personal growth self-improvement creativity innovate creation creative process

...even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding...
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
Categories: meaning purpose fulfillment learning education growth self-improvement creativity creative expression joy work recognition

Many of us grow up with the idea that mistakes are bad, linking our self-esteem with continued success. We become afraid of making mistakes. So in order to achieve success, we tend to steer clear of areas that may lie outside the apparent realm of our natural talent. In this perverse equation, the secret of success becomes avoiding failure, leaving much of our potential untapped.
In order to reach our full potential to learn, we must accept and then transform anxiety and fear, relentlessly seeking accurate information on our performance. What used to be perceived as criticism now becomes a gift for constructive growth.
Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan Lessons from the Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life
Categories: mistakes self-esteem success confidence talent resistance failure potential learning performance criticism growth

To nourish the soul means to become
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Handbook for the Soul
Categories: soul nurture growth kindness compassion love wisdom risk meaning fulfillment purpose life

Success is 99 percent failure.
Soichiro Honda Bits & Pieces magazine
Categories: success achievement vision goal planning mistakes failures learning growth progress change self-improvement

We grow too soon old and too late smart.
Pennsylvania Dutch saying Words for All Occasions
Categories: age aging senior citizens elders elderly wisdom knowledge common sense growth education learning understanding

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on.
Edmund Burke The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: achievement accomplishment success ability potential realism reality desires goals crying mature maturity growth

Persons and societies do not submit passively to surroundings and events. They make choices as to the places where they live and the activities in which they engage--choices based on what they want to be, to do and to become. Furthermore, persons and societies often change their goals and ways; they can even retrace their steps and start in a new direction if they believe they are on a wrong course. Thus, whereas animal life is prisoner of biological evolution which is essential irreversible, human life has the wonderful freedom of social evolution which is rapidly reversible and creative. Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.
Rene Dubos Celebration of Life
Categories: choice responsiblity direction meaning purpose fulfillment change destiny evolve personality habits self-improvement growth

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: acceptance expectations vision leadership mentorship education learning parenting growth mentoring challenge spur self-improvement

Advice to a fool goes in one ear and out the other.
Danish proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: proverb advice foolishness stupidity listening understanding advise counsel wisdom learning change growth choice

You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life.
James G. Bilkey The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: stress tension anxiety deadlines work business challenges problems obstacles schedules difficulties growth self-improvement