Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose!

Good Luck!!

Good Luck!!

 Luck Quotes …

Here are more luck quotes:

  • “Ability is of little account without opportunity.“ – Lucille Ball
  • “Bad things happen to good people.“  – Anonymous
  • “Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; This is good luck.“– Anonymous
  • “Don’t luck into success.“ – Anonymous
  • “Everything in life is luck.“ – Donald Trump
  • “Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.“ – William Shakespeare
  • Good luck beats early rising.“ – Proverb
  • “Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.“ – James Russell Lowell
  • Good things come to those who wait.“ – Anonymous
  • “I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?“ – Jean Cocteau
  • “If one does not know to which port is sailing, no wind is favorable.“ – Seneca
  • “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.“ – Thomas Jefferson
  • “If you view all the things that happen to you, both good and bad, as opportunities, then you operate out of a higher level of consciousness.“ – Les Brown
  • “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.“ – Albert Einstein
  • “It’s hard to detect good luck – it looks so much like something you’ve earned.“ – Frank A. Clark
  • “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.“ – John Lennon
  • “Luck affects everything; let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it, there will be a fish.“ – Ovid
  • “Luck has a peculiar habit of favoring those who don’t depend on it.“ – Anonymous
  • “Luck is believing you’re lucky.“ – Tennessee Williams
  • “Luck is tenacity of purpose.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Luck is the idol of the idle.” – Proverb
  • “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca
  • “Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.” – Langston Coleman
  • “Luck never gives; it only lends.“ – Proverb
  • “Luck never made a man wise.“ – Seneca
  • “Luck, bad if not good, will always be with us. But it has a way of favoring the intelligent and showing its back to the stupid.“ – John Dewey
  • “Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.“ – Lucille Ball
  • “Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.“ – Proverb
  • “Maybe I’m lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction.“ – Ashleigh Brilliant
  • “May good luck be your friend in whatever you do and may trouble be always a stranger to you.“ – Anonymous
  • “May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light. May good luck pursue you each morning and night.“ – Anonymous
  • Nature creates ability; luck provides it with opportunity.“ – François de la Rochefoucauld
  • “Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.“ – Thomas Edison
  • “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.“ – Demosthenes
  • “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “So it’s probably eighty percent luck and twenty percent skill.“ – Chris LeDoux
  • “The day you decide to do it is your lucky day.“ – Proverb
  • The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.“ – Tony Robbins
  • “The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.“ – Bret Harte
  • “Unlucky at cards, lucky in love.“ – Proverb
  • “When I work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky.“ – Dr. Armand Hammer

Personal Development Quotes.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein

Character
  • “A good criterion for measuring success in life is the number of people you have made happy.” — Robert J. Lumsden
  • “A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.”Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  • “A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.” — La Rochefoucauld
  • “Ability may take you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.” — William Blake
  • “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”Bruce Lee
  • “Be humble always and identify with the common man; even when success and achievements want to make you proud.”  — Bishop Leonard Umumna
  • “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss
  • “Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.”Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” — Reinhold H. Niebuhr
  • “I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance.  It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” – John D. Rockefeller
  • “I don’t have to be what nobody else wants me to be and I am not afraid to be what I want to be.” — Muhammad Ali
  • “I praise loudly; I blame softly.” – Queen Catherine II
  • “I studied the lives of great men and women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.” — Harry S. Truman
  • “I will speak ill of no one and speak all the good I know of everybody.” — Andrew Jackson
  • “Insist on yourself. Never imitate.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.”  — Zig Ziglar
  • “I’ve never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.” — Paul Harvey
  • “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.”Jim Rohn
  • “Let this be the criteria by which you measure all things: Is this an act of love?” – Unknown
  • “Optimists are right.  So are pessimists.  It’s up to you to choose which you will be.” — Harvey Mackay
  • “People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you’re fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
  • “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”  — Vince Lombardi
  • “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” — Jimmy Johnson
  • “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Oppenheim
  • “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”William Arthur Ward
  • “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” – Confucius
  • “The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.”Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” – Socrates
  • What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” – Confucius
  • “We are what we frequently do.” – Aristotle
  • “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” — John Dryden
  • “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” – Confucius
  • “What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.” — Bruce Lee
Effectiveness
  • “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” — Benjamin Franklin
  • “Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.” — Swedish Proverb
  • “For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be.  What is once well done, is well done forever.”Henry David Thoreau
  • “Forget yourself and start to work.”Gordon B. Hinckley
  • “Fortunate is the person who has developed the self-control to steer a straight course towards his objectives in life, without being swayed from his purpose by either commendation or condemnation.” — Napoleon Hill
  • “He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.”Bessie Anderson Stanley
  • “In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength, but through persistence.” – Buddha
  • “Life is a series of problem-solving opportunities.  The problems you face will either defeat you or develop you depending on how you respond to them.” — Rick Warren
  • “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts.  This is the secret of success.” – Swami Sivandanda
  • “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.” — David Bly
  • “Success is doing ordinary things extraordinary well.” — Jim Rohn
  • “Success is every minute you live.  It’s the process of living.  It’s stopping for the moments of beauty, of pleasure; the moments of peace.  Success is not a destination that you ever reach.  Success is the quality of the journey.” — Jennifer James
  • “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
  • “Success is not measured by what a man accomplished, but by the opposition he has encountered and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.” – Charles Lindberg
  • “Success is not so much what we have, as it is what we are.” — Jim Rohn
  • “Success is not the key to happiness.  Happiness is the key to success.  If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer
  • “Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person we become.” — Jim Rohn
  • “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
  • “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” — Booker T. Washington
  • “Success it the progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined, personal goals.” — Paul J. Meyer
  • “Success often comes to those who dare to act.  It seldom goes to the timid who are ever afraid of the consequences.” — Jawaharlal Nehru
  • “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities.  They vary in their desire to reach their potential.” — John Maxwell
  • “Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty  in every opportunity.” — Reed Markham
  • “The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one’s own opinions, and value others that deserve it.” — Sir William Temple
  • “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.” — Bruce Lee
  • “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” — Steven Covey
  • “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.” – Henry Ford
  • “The secret of success is consistency of purpose.” — Benjamin Disraeli
  • “The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise.  We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action.  It is still good advice to cross bridges when we come to them.” — David Schwartz
  • “There is only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything.” — Vince Lombardi
  • “To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.” — Bunker Hunt
  • “To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.” – Confucius
Emotional Intelligence
  • “Don’t let the negativity given to you by the world disempower you. Instead give to yourself that which empowers you.” — Les Brown
  • “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” – Benjamin Franklin
  • “Enthusiam is the steam that drives the engine.” – Napoleon Hill
  • “Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse-sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.  It moves stones, it charms brutes.  Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  • “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing … that’s why we recommend it daily.”  — Zig Ziglar
Empowerment
  • “Action is the foundational key to all success.” — Tony Robins
  • “Always bear in mind that our own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.” — Abraham Lincoln
  • Anything in life worth having is worth working for.” — Andrew Carnegie
  • “Do, or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda
  • “Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being ‘wholly’ and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” — Grace Hansen
  • “Don’t dream it. Be it!” — Richard O’Brian
  • “Follow your bliss!” — Joseph Campbell
  • “Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit.” – Plato
  • “Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.” — William Thackeray
  • “For every mountain there is a miracle.” — Robert H. Schuller
  • “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” — William Ernest Henley
  • “I don’t count the days, I make the days count!” — Muhammad Ali
  • “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thorough
  • “If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” — Bruce Lee
  • “If you are going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
  • “If you can imagine it, you can create it.  If you can dream it, you can become it.” — William Arthur Ward
  • “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it.  If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” — Nora Roberts
  • “In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard.” — Theodore Roosevelt
  • “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
  • “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Seneca
  • “It takes a strong fish to swim against the current.  Even a dead one can float with it.” — John Crowe
  • “Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.” — Winston Churchill
  • “Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.” — Henry Charles Bukowski
  • “Leap and the net will appear.” — Julia Cameron
  • “Live out your imagination, not your history.” — Stephen Covey
  • “May you live all the days of your life.” — Jonathan Swift
  • “Never be afraid to tread the path alone.  Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else’s footsteps.” — Eileen Caddy
  • “People are always blaming circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.” — George Bernard Shaw
  • “The history of the world is the history of a few people who had faith in themselves.” — Swami Vivekananda
  • “The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones.” — Chinese Proverb
  • “The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.” — Benjamin Disraeli
  • “There are two primary choices in life:  to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”  — Denis Waitley
  • “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” — Bruce Lee
  • “To move the world we must first move ourselves.” – Socrates
  • “We will either find a way or make one.” – Hannibal
  • “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.” — Paul J. Meyer
Influence and Impact
  • “Dependent people need others to get what they want.  Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts.  Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.” — Stephen Covey
  • “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” — Napoleon Hill
  • “Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.” — Mark Twain
  • “Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements.” — Walt Disney
  • “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” — Oprah Winfrey
  • “Try to forget yourself in the service of others.  For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests, we easily become despondent.  But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.” — Sidney Powell
  • “Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.” — Confucius
Learning and Growth
  • “A master lives in the world of transformation, not the world of loss and gain.” — Dr. John Demartini
  • “Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” — Chinese Proverb
  • “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.” — Chinese Proverb
  • “Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.” — Herbert Otto
  • “Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.” – Abd El-Kader
  • “Develop success from failures.  Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.” – Publilius Syrus
  • “Don’t fear failure.  Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.” — Babe Ruth
  • “Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.” — Rene Descartes
  • “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.” — Napoleon Hill
  • “Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.” — Doug Firebaugh
  • “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” — Muhammad Ali
  • “I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.” — George Patton
  • “I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.” — George Bernard Shaw
  • “If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.” — Lord Chesterfield
  • “If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.” — John Maxwell
  • “If you learn only methods, you’ll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” — Thomas Watson, Sr
  • “In order to succeed you must fail so that you know what not to do the next time.” — Anthony J.  D’Angelo
  • “It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.” — Bruce Lee
  • “It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.” — Roger Babson
  • “I’ve always tried to go one step past wherever people expected me to end up.” — Beverly Sills
  • “Never walk away from failure.  On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.” — Michael Korda
  • “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” — T.S. Eliot
  • “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.” – Confucius
  • “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” — African Proverb
  • “So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can.  Because that’s where you will find success. On the far side of failure.” — Thomas J.Watson, Sr.
  • “Success is a journey, not a destination.” — Ben Sweetland
  • “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”  — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • “The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.” — Robert Cushing
  • “The highest reward for one’s toil is not what one gets for it, but what one becomes by it.” — John Ruskin
  • “The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.” — Lloyd Jones
  • “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Proust
  • “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “There are no secrets to success.  It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
  • “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth — not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha
  • “Those at the top of the mountain didn’t fall there.” — Marcus Washling
  • “To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.” – Shakespeare
  • “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell
  • “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” — Mark Twain
  • “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” — Ronald Osborn
  • “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never makes a mistake never made a discovery.” — Samuel Smiles
  • “We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond.” — Marcel Proust
  • “We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
  • What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?” — Robert Schuller
Productivity
  • “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.” — Bruce Lee
  • “For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.  No paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.” — John Burroughs
  • “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.” — Samuel Johnson
  • “If you don’t have daily objectives, you qualify as a dreamer.”  ~ Zig Ziglar
  • “If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you.  If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you.  Whatever good things we build end up building us.” — Jim Rohn
  • “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie
  • “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Make a success of living by seeing the goal and aiming for it unswervingly.” — Cecil B. De Mille
  • “Motivation is what gets you started.  Habit is what keeps you going!” — Jim Ryun
  • “Never let your work drive you.  Master it and keep it in complete control.” — Booker T. Washington
  • “No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.” — Charles Kendall Adams
  • “Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work.” — Booker T. Washington
  • “Obstacles are those frightful things you can see when you take your eyes off your goal.” — Henry Ford
  • “One must have strategies to execute dreams.” — Azim Premji
  • “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” — Earl Nightingale
  • “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” — Colin Powell
  • “Sometimes our best is simply not enough.  We have to do what is required.” — Winston Churchill
  • “Success equals goals … all else is commentary.” — Brian Tracy
  • “Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy.  You might know how to read, but more importantly, what’s your plan to read?” — Jim Rohn
  • “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” — Michael Althsuler
  • “The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.” — Genghis Khan
  • “The path to success is to take massive determined action.” — Anthony Robbins
  • The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence, and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.” — Hamilton Wright Mabie
  • “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “The seat of freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work, and in that work, does what he wants to do.” — George Robin Collingwood
  • “Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.” — J.C. Penny
  • “We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.” — James Freeman Clarke
  • “What we hope to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.” — Samuel Johnson
Self-Awareness
  • “After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.” — Marquise du Deffand
  • “In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.” — Philip Gilbert Hamilton
  • “Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.” – Menander
  • “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
  • “Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.” — Miguel de Cervantes
  • “No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.” — Taoist Proverb
  • “Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves.” — Zig Ziglar
  • “Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic.” — Jean Sibelius
  • “The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  • “The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.” – Thales
  • “The only journey is the journey within.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
  • “To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.” — Bruce Lee
  • “To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.” – Plato
  • “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.” — Bruce Lee
  • “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” – Talmud
  • “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opponent, you will be imperiled every time.” — Sun Tzu
  • “What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” — Hecato
Strengths
  • “Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don’t think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.” — Samuel Johnson
  • “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee
  • “I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.” — George Burns
  • “I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it.  Whether you’re a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it.  If you do, you’ll win — if you don’t you won’t.” — Bruce Jenner
  • “I refer to my hands, feet and body as the tools of the trade. The hands and feet must be sharpened and improved daily to be efficient.” — Bruce Lee
  • “If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.” — Thomas Edison
  • “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein
  • “Practice all movements slow and fast, soft and hard; the effectiveness of Jeet Kune-Do depends on split-second timing and reflexive action, which can be achieved only through repetitious practice.” — Bruce Lee
  • “The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.” – Hamerton
  • “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry Van Dyke
Thinking
  • “A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  • A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness.” — Zadok Rabinwitz
  • “All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.” — Orison Swett Marden
  • “All successful men and women are big dreamers.  They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” — Brian Tracy
  • “Champions aren’t made in the gyms.  Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision.” — Muhammad Ali
  • “Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” — Bruce Lee
  • “Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.  Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weakness … on your powers, instead of your problems.” — Paul J. Meyer
  • “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” — Albert Einstein
  • “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.  Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world.” — Albert Einstein
  • “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” — Henry Ford
  • “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” — Albert Einstein
  • “Is is in the small decisions you and I make every day that create our destiny.” — Tony Robbins
  • “It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief.  And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” — Claude M. Bristol
  • It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.” — Charles F. Kettering
  • No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.” — John Stuart Mil
  • “No man is ever whipped until he quits — in his own mind.” — Napoleon Hill
  • “Nothing can stop the person with the right mental attitude from achieving his goals. Nothing on earth can help the person with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson
  • “Our greatest battles are that with our own minds.” — Jameson Fran
  • “Real difficulties can be overcome; It is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” – Theodore N.Vail
  • “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Les Brown
  • “Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” — Doug Larson
  • “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” — Abraham Lincoln
  • “The biggest temptation is to settle for too little.” — Thomas Merton
  • “The difference between success and mediocrity is all in the way you think.” — Dean Francis
  • “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” – Michelangelo
  • “The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” — Marcel Pagnol
  • “The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.” — Bruce Lee
  • The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am.  Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.” — Dennis Waitley
  • “Thoughts and ideas are the source of all wealth, success, material gain, all great discoveries, inventions and achievements.” — Mark Victor Hansen
  • ‘What is’ is more important than ‘what should be.’ Too many people are looking at ‘what is’ from a position of thinking ‘what should be’.” — Bruce Lee
  • Whatever we think about and thank about, we bring about.” — Wayne Dyer

Confidence Quotes

“As is our confidence, so is our capacity.”

Life

  1. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” – William Shedd
  2. “Knock the ‘t’ off the ‘can’t.’” — Samuel Johnson
  3. “Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.”Mignon McLaughlin
  4. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin
  5. “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
  6. “The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.”Ralph Waldo Emerson
  7. “They can do all because they think they can.” – Vergil

8. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Henry S. Haskins

  1. “When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.” — Joe Namath
  2. “Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.” — Henry Ford

Action

Here are the best confidence quotes on action:

  • “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.”Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.” — Baltasar Gracian
  • “Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan.” — Paul J. Meyer
  • “Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.” — Stan Smith
  • Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor.” — John Haggai
  • “I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.” — Wole Soyinka
  • “I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.” — Robert Downey, Jr.
  • Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.” — Lillian Hellman
  • “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” — Helen Keller
  • “To win, all you
    need to do is get up one more time than you fall down.”
    — Anonymous

Boldness

Here are the best confidence quotes on boldness:

  • “A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.” — Sydney Smith
  • “All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.” — Charles Dickens
  • “As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.” — Bruce Lee
  • Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.” – Cicero
  • “Danger breeds best on too much confidence.”Pierre Corneille
  • “Don’t let anyone steal your dream. It’s your dream, not theirs.” — Dan Zadra
  • “Fortune favors the brave.” – Virgil
  • “If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.” — Tony Robbins
  • “Nothing reduces the odds against you like ignoring them.” — Robert Brault
  • “People are slow to claim confidence in undertakings of magnitude.” – Ovid
  • “The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.” — Andrew Carnegie
  • “The usual channels of university studies or secretarial work did not appeal to me. I cherished difficult dreams through confidence in myself.” — Ella Maillart
  • “There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.” — Orison Swett Marden
  • “To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first.” — Janeane Garofalo

Character

Here are the best confidence quotes on character:

  • “Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.” — Joe Paterno
  • “Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
  • “Confidence is at the root of so many attractive qualities, a sense of humor, a sense of style, a willingness to be who you are no matter what anyone else might think or say …” — Wentworth Miller
  • “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.” — Vince Lombardi
  • “Confidence is courage at ease.” — Daniel Maher
  • “How often in life we complete a task that was beyond the capability of the person we were when we started it.” — Robert Brault
  • He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.” — B. C. Forbes
  • “I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair.” — Anaïs Nin
  • “I’ve always had confidence. It came because I have lots of initiative. I wanted to make something of myself.” — Eddie Murphy
  • “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” — Charles Darwin
  • “Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” — Lao Tzu
  • “Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.” — Tom Landry
  • “Men give their confidence at once, but never their money.” — Tristan Bernard
  • “Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.” — Sophia Loren
  • “Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.” — André Dubus
  • “The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind.”Felix Frankfurter

Competence

Here are the best confidence quotes on competence:

  • “I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.” — Tom Landry
  • “My intent is simply to know my material so well that I’m very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.” — Scott Berkun
  • “Put your future in good hands – your own.” – Anonymous
  • “Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.” — Diane Arbus
  • “Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.” — George Herbert
  • “The big gap between the ability of actors is confidence.” — Kathleen Turner
  • “There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.” — John Calvin
  • “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” — Michael Jordan
  • “You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you’ll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.” — Joe Paterno

Courage / Fear

Here are the best confidence quotes on fear and courage:

  • “Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” — Peter T. Mcintyre
  • “Confidence is key. Sometimes, you need to look like you’re confident even when you’re not.” — Vanessa Hudgens
  • “Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.” – Aristotle
  • “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” — Mark Twain
  • “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott
  • “I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.” — Allen H. Neuharth
  • “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin
  • “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” — William Shakespeare
  • “Self trust is the essence of heroism.” – Emerson
  • “The best way to gain self-confidence is to do what you are afraid to do.” – Anonymous
  • “We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Critics / Criticism

Here are the best confidence quotes on critics and criticism:

  • “It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.” — Sally Field
  • “Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.” — Gene Fowler
  • “Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.” — Les Brown
  • “Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.” — Jean Sibelius
  • “The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics – and our external ones too – the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are – as women and as mothers.” — Arianna Huffington
  • “We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.” — Olin Miller
  • “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.” — Lou Holtz and John Heisler

Limitations

Here are the best confidence quotes on limitations:

  • “A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows.” — John Powell
  • “Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.” — Mary Kay Ash
  • “All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do…. Build, therefore, your own world.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.” — Richard Bach
  • “Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.” — Francis Bacon
  • “If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” — Thomas Alva Edison
  • “If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” — Vincent Van Gogh
  • “It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.” – Epicurus
  • “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” — Edmund Hillary
  • “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” – Anonymous
  • Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  • “Never dull your shine for somebody else.” — Tyra Banks
  • “No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.” — William Ellery Channing
  • “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.” — Bruce Barton
  • “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” — Marianne Williamson
  • “The light of starry dreams can only be seen once we escape the blinding cities of disbelief.” — Shawn Purvis
  • Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.” — Mark Twain
  • “Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.” — Brian Tracy
  • “Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.” — Michelle Obama

Self-Confidence

Here are the best confidence quotes on self-confidence:

  • “Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.” — Max L. Forman
  • “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” — Truman Capote
  • “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” — Johann von Goethe
  • Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Confidence comes from hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.” — Roger Staubach
  • “Confidence is a very fragile thing.” — Joe Montana
  • Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.” — Richard Kline
  • Growing up, I started developing confidence in what I felt. My parents helped me to believe in myself. I wasn’t the best looking guy, I wasn’t the best athlete in the world, but they made me feel good about myself.” — Herschel Walker
  • He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.” — William Congreve
  • I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.” — Edgar Allan Poe
  • I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.” — Anna Freud
  • I wouldn’t describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that – the ghosts you chase you never catch.” — John Malkovich
  • “If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.” — Sigmund Freud
  • If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.” — Henrik Ibsen
  • “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.” – Cicero
  • Once you become self-conscious, there is no end to it; once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  • Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.” — Benjamin Spock
  • “Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.” — George Santayana
  • To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” — Mark Twain

Self-Talk

Here are the best confidence quotes on self-talk:

  • “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” — Mark Twain
  • “Men harm others by their deeds, themselves by their thoughts.” — Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
  • “We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.” — Roderick Thorp
  • What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.” — Henry David Thoreau
  • “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” — African Proverb

Self-Worth / Self-Esteem

Here are the best confidence quotes on self-worth:

  • “Always act like you’re wearing an invisible crown.” – Anonymous
  • “Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.” — Nicholai Velimirovic
  • “Be proud to wear you.” – Dodinsky
  • “Everybody wants to be somebody. The thing you have to do is give them confidence they can. You have to give a kid a dream.” — George Foreman
  • I am not a has-been. I am a will be.” — Lauren Bacall
  • If I am not for myself, who will be?” — Pirke Avoth
  • If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.” — Nicholas de Chamfort
  • “If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.” – Anonymous
  • “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” — W.C. Fields
  • “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.” — Michel de Montaigne
  • “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” — Marie Curie
  • “Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  • “Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.” — Michel de Montaigne
  • People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.” — Sa’Di
  • Self-love seems so often unrequited.” — Anthony Powell
  • “The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.” — Paul Tillich
  • The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” — Robert Hughes
  • The things we hate about ourselves aren’t more real than things we like about ourselves.” — Ellen Goodman
  • “The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” — Sonya Friedman
  • “They are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.” — Christian Bovee
  • Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” — Ram Dass
  • “Your value is the product of your thoughts. Do not miscalculate your self worth by multiplying your insecurities.” – Dodinsky
  • “Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.” — William J. H. Boetcker

General

Here are the best confidence quotes that are about confidence in general:

  • “A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” — David Brinkley
  • “A timid question will always receive a confident answer.”—Lord Darling
  • “Confidence … thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • “Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.” – Jack Nicklaus
  • “Discipline is based on pride, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of the goal or the fear of failure.” — Gary Ryan Blair
  • “He who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.” – Boiste
  • “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.” — Lao Tzu
  • Honor bespeaks worth. Confidence begets trust. Service brings satisfaction. Cooperation proves the quality of leadership.” — James Cash Penney
  • “In the kingdom of hope there is no winter.” — Russian proverb
  • “It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.” – Epicurus
  • “It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.” — Sally Kempton
  • “Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.” — Joseph Wood Krutch
  • “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” — Ansel Adams
  • “The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.” — James Madison
  • “We are like the little branch that quivers during a storm, doubting our strength and forgetting we are the tree – deeply rooted to withstand all of life’s upheavals.” – Dodinsky
  • “We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest.” — Lester B. Pearson
  • “When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.” — Joe Paterno
  • “Winning breeds confidence and confidence breeds winning.” — Hubert Green

Steve Jobs

 

Entrepreneur Extraordinaire

 

Everyone knows that Steve Jobs was a superlative businessman who created fabulous products that substantially changed the world. But he was much more than that. He was a businessman-philosopher, and the philosophy he embraced was the fundamental cause of his remarkable productivity, success, and happiness

Steve has received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has widely been referred to as “legendary”, a “futurist” or simply “visionary”, and has been described as the “Father of the Digital Revolution a “master of innovation”, and a “design perfectionist”.

With that said, I would like to share with you one of my fondest quotes from Steve Jobs

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living somebody else’s life, don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the result of other peoples thinking, don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice and most importantly have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become, everything else is secondary”

 

10 Financial Takeaways to Improve Your Financial Status.

Shop Wisely!

1. Live Below Your Means

Just because you can afford to buy something doesn’t mean you should, just because you make a good salary, or just got a raise, doesn’t mean you should spend it all, especially if you suddenly got a big jump in your income, keep your former standard of living and funnel the rest into paying off debts or adding to your retirement nest egg. Since you’re not lowering your existing budget or cutting expenses, you’ll be able to accomplish all this without feeling like you’ve had to cut back or make sacrifices.

Saving money!

2. Move Your Money Around

Redirect your money from one part of your financial life to another, more profitable area.

Take a couple of hours to figure out how to cut spending across your budget, making use of online apps and price-comparison sites to find cheaper alternatives on everything from electronic offers to cell phone service. Then, move those savings into an emergency or retirement fund, put them toward credit card debt or wherever else they’ll pay off.  This exercise has a big added benefit; it forces you to examine where your money is actually going and how much you’re paying for things. That in and of itself — mindfulness — will change your spending behavior simply because you’re paying attention.

Money when you most need it!

3. Grow Your Emergency Fund

If you don’t have an emergency fund, several of our experts said it’s a good idea to start one, even if you can just sock away a small amount every month. If you have an emergency fund, good for you — but chances are there’s not enough in it.

I think the single most important thing someone can do right now for their financial life is to make sure they have an adequately funded emergency fund, especially in these days of high unemployment and Global economic meltdown. Try and save a minimum of the equivalent of your six months’ pay if you think your job is in jeopardy.

The key is to be able to manage emergencies from savings, rather than having to liquidate your retirement account or leaning on a high interest credit card. Trying to resolve an emergency with a credit card can lead down a dangerous path of debt.  Keep your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account separate from the account you use for everyday expenses.

Plan your mortgage early!

4. Pay off Your Mortgage before Retiring

The term of your mortgage should not be longer than the number of years you plan to work.

After you retire, your income will probably drop, but your cost   of living won’t. Some expenses, like health care, are likely to climb — perhaps significantly. If you can eliminate the burden of a monthly mortgage payment, you’ll have more flexibility to handle any rising costs.

Monitor your spending habits!

5. Track Your Spending

It’s a basic building block of financial success, but so many people don’t do it.

Writing down every cent you spend over the course of a week will give you a very clear picture of exactly where your money is going.

It sounds like a basic idea, but it’s a step many people don’t take. Making it a habit to track your spending will reveal areas in which you need to cut back and at the same time shed light on what to buy and what is not necessary.

Valuable trash!

6. Act like You Can’t Just ‘Throw It Away’

Live as though you don’t have garbage pickup. If you act like you can’t just throw stuff away, it will make you more mindful about what you buy and consume in the first place. People no longer shop for products that stand the test of time.

We’re spending our hard-earned Dirhams on highly packaged products that are easily disposed of, our homes and landfills are cluttered with depreciated junk. The solution to saving more money is to stop wasting it on consumer items that quickly become garbage, and switching to quality items that endure.

 

Danger of credit cards!

7. Pay off Credit Card Debt

Pay off or pay down credit card debt with any existing savings. With credit card APRs averaging nearly 15%, people with credit card debt pay much more in interest than they can earn by having that money invested elsewhere.

If you don’t have any savings, there’s no way to sugarcoat it: You’ll have to make some budget decisions and give some things up.

Happy Retirement!

 

8. Put 10% of Your Income toward Retirement

Target to save and invest at least 10% of your income, no matter how little or how much you make. The sooner you start, the more wealth you’ll be able to build, Vernon says.

Even small amounts can add up over time.  Alternately, even older workers can benefit — it’s never too late to start building up your retirement nest egg, you’ll just need a more aggressive savings

Be a visionary!

9. Envision Your Future

Develop a single exciting mental picture of where you want to be in five years. Each day as you get out of your house and head for the Dubai Metro on the way to work think about that image. Maybe this sounds a little silly, but visualization is an effective motivational technique. It might feel like you’re just daydreaming, but you’re planting the seed of an idea in your brain. Even when you’re not actively thinking about it, that image is going to stay in the back of your mind.

The fastest way to move forward is not to focus on a to-do list of rational steps to move forward but instead to clarify in detail the outcome that you want. When that same outcome is kept top of mind for a sustained period of time, your attitude shifts … when you apply this consistently over time, real progress is made.

Make each day count!

10. Enjoy your hard earned wages!

To put this into context, remember money together with all the other fiscal benefits are just a means to an end and not an end in itself, hence time and again we should stop & take time to appreciate/‘smell the roses’  and enjoy our hard earned wages.

This is important because not only will you give value where it’s due, but also energize yourself to be able to conquer the next financial mountain and most importantly not to lose sight that money is not the source of Happiness but simply a means to a Happy Life.

 

One of my favorite mantras is ‘Make each day count’ and on that thoughtful note I wish you a Healthy & Happy Financial Life.

 

Jambu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Background Scenery of Life

scenery

Dear readers,this is a guest post from a friend who i also consider my mentor. Mr. Amir Anzur who is also a Webpreneur, Learnaholic and teacher

Enjoy!!!!!

Look around you.  Are you in a 5 star hotel?  Or the “ghetto” part of your town?  Are you driving inside a brand new Mercedes?  Or are you inside a beat-up old car?

Are you eating in a fancy restaurant with an expensive menu, big plates and small food?  Or are you eating at a cheap fast-food joint?  Are you on holiday in the Caribbean or are you spending time in your own neighborhood?

The world is your background scenery.  When you are eating it doesn’t really matter if you are in a fancy restaurant or a downbeat place – these are just the background scenery.  What matters is who you are with.

When you start your business, you city or office won’t matter.  You could have the best furniture or recycled old furniture.  What matters is who is sitting on the seats besides you.  Who you interact with rather than what is happening in the background.

Marketing has taught us that a Louis Vuitton handbag or a new car makes better background scenery than where you are currently in life.  That eating at a more expensive restaurant will make the food taste better than at a cheaper place.

Once you see through the clutter of marketing.  And begin to appreciate the world for what it is – background scenery.  You can start to appreciate what you have.  Marketers will try and convince you that you need to “pimp up your life”.  That you need a more expensive car, more expensive house, more expensive clothes and to stay in more expensive hotels.  But remember that this is all background to your scenery of life.

What makes a movie worth watching is not usually the background scenery.  It is the characters and the plot.

Do not focus too much on the background scenery, it is not what people watch a movie for.

Make the movie of your life worth watching.  Get better characters and create a better plot for the movie of your life.

by Amir Anzur

 

 

 

 

Lessons learnt from Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki

 

  1. Make a mantra, not a mission.  Mission statements are often too long or they don’t resonate.  You need something you can easily remember, easily say, and identify with.  Summarize your cause in 2 or 3 words.  According to Guy, some effective examples might be Nike – “authentic, athletic performance” and Wendy’s – “healthy, fast food.”  The key is to capture the essence in just a few words.  This helps remind you of your cause and reinforce it with your actions.
  2. Make meaning over money.  According to Guy, “Evangelism starts with the desire to make meaning.”  When you focus on the money, you focus on the wrong thing.  You have to first make meaning.   You need to mean something to the world and to your customers.  “The root of great companies is make meaning vs. make money.” – Guy Kawasaki.
  3. Know what you want your life to be about.  Know what you want your life to be about and live your mantra.  Guy lives his life, actualizing his mantra “empowering Entrepreneurs.”  I like this approach, and I’ve been thinking about refining mine.  It might be closer to “results by design” or “proven practices for results” or “empowering Underdogs.”  Whenever I think about my posts, I’m asking, is it helping lift people up or help them be their best in any situation.
  4. Be unique and valuable.  This is the key to effective marketing.  If you’re not unique, you’re competing on price.  Eventually, you’ll be priced out of the market.  If you are unique, but you aren’t valuable, then you have no market.  The sweet spot is valuable to the market and unique.
  5. The secret of evangelism is touch things that are gold. Don’t evangelize crap.  Evangelize great things.  “The secret of evangelism is Guy’s golden touch – whatever is gold, Guy touches.  That’s very different than saying whatever Guy touches turns gold.” – Guy Kawasaki
  6. Remember DICEE to make great things.  This is how to be great out of the gate.  According to Guy, DICEE is an acronym to help remind you how to make things that are gold.  “D” is for Deep.  It has to have lots of power.  You don’t run out of power and you’re not waiting for a more powerful version.  It anticipated what you need to do.  “I” is for Intelligent.  It’s a smart solution to a problem.  “C” is for Complete.  Great products are complete.  Complete means the totality of what the product means   This means all the stuff around the product (the OEMs, the forums, the plug-ins, service, support … etc.) “E” is for Elegant.  When you look at it, you inherently know what to do.  You can kind of figure out without a manual.  “E” is for Emotive – great products have emotion.
  7. Don’t worry, be crappy.   Ship, then test.  Don’t wait for the perfect world, or you’ll never ship.  As long as you are truly making meaning and you have a revolution, the market will accept elements of crap.  Ship something revolutionary with elements of crappiness to it.  You can then prioritize which crap to improve based on real usage and feedback.
  8. Version it.  Think in terms of versions.  Ask, “what’s good enough for now?”  It’s not about slicing and dicing value and spreading it out over time.  Instead, it’s about being complete and good enough for now so that you don’t miss the market.  It’s also about continuous improvement over time.  Each version should be a useful, relevant, and marked improvement.  Guy thinks in terms of versions all the time.  In one example, he says, “My wife was in Beta with our second child … Shipped on time and no bugs.”  He also versioned his Alltop project. (see Alltop Version 2.0: The Art of Aggregation)  and he versioned, Entrepreneurship (See Entrepreneurship 2.0.)
  9. Don’t let the Bozos grind you down.  Don’t listen to people that tell you that you’ll fail, because if you don’t try, then you definitely will fail.  According to Guy, there are two types of Bozos.  One type of bozo is a loser.  You don’t listen to them anyway, so that’s not the dangerous bozo.  The dangerous bozo is the rich, successful, well-known person.  Remember that rich, successful and well-know does not equal smart.  “Inoculate yourself from dangerous bozos.” – Guy Kawasaki.
  10. Smile, it’s contagious.  Guy wears a smile often.  It’s easy to find pictures of him flashing his pearly whites and it’s contagious.  Take yourself seriously, but not too seriously.  “Life is good.” – Guy Kawasaki
  11. Ask, “Is it defensible?” This is about evaluating startups against the following:  Proven team?  … Proven management?  … Proven technology?  … Proven business model?  These are some of the early warning flags that you don’t want to get in the way or that you have a good answer for.
  12. Follow the 10-20-30 rule for content, length, and font.  Use a maximum of 10 slides.  Your presentation should be no more than 20 minutes, even if it’s an hour presentation.  Use a 30 point font.  It forces you to put the core text.  If you need to use a smaller font it’s because you don’t know your material.  If you start reading your material, your audience will read ahead and stop listening to you.  See The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint and Video: Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30 Presentation Rule.
  13. Pitch your ideas in 10 slides.  Pitch your ideas more effectively.  Don’t be a solution looking for a problem, make meaning, and show how you’ll make money.  The idea is to communicate enough, not everything and stimulate interest, not seal the deal.  10 slides forces you to focus on the essentials and the fewer slides you need, the more compelling the idea.  According to Guy, here’s what those 10 slides should be:  1) Title and what you do slide 2) problem slide, 3) solution slide, 4) business model slide, 5) underlying magic (secret sauce) slide, 6) marketing and sales slide, 7) competitive landscape slide, 8) management team slide, 9) financial projects and key metrics slide, 10) current status slide.  See The Art of Pitching MP3.
  14. Ask, “So what? … Who gives a shiitake?” This is about asking, why does it matter, and who does it matter for.  According to Guy, you can do this by imagining a little guy on your shoulder that asks you, “so what?”  You can make this very effective by pairing up “so what?” with “for instance.”  After you answer, the “so what?” question, you can then give a real world, concrete example starting off with, “for instance …”
  15. Make it personal. Personalize over generalize.   Instead of talking about paradigm shifts, make it real and make it relevant to the person.  What does it mean to them?
  16. Success is a numbers game.  It’s a numbers game.  According to Guy, how venture capitalism really works is, that out of 20 – 30 bets, 1 or 2 succeed.  Of course, when your 1 or 2 bets succeed, you tell everybody how you knew it all along, and how it’s your partner that missed the other 18.  Guy readily admits he missed predicting the successes of Yahoo, Google, and YouTube.  See Gnomedex 2007 – Guy Kowasaki.
  17. Be a straight shooter.  Keep it human.  Guy speaks in simple terms and keeps it real.  Whether you’re talking about your mantra or benefits of your product for people, don’t speak in lofty terms.  Keep it down to Earth.  Be authentic.  Be true to you.  Don’t be a suck up.  Guy’s a perfect blend of down to Earth, politically incorrect, and authentic, that we can model from.
  18. Create very slippery slopes.  This is about creating glide paths for adoption.  Adoption shouldn’t be a pill that’s too big to swallow.  Create very slippery slopes.  This means thinking in terms of incremental buy-in and incremental adoption.
  19. It’s a beautiful time for Entrepreneurs.   Now is a perfect time to be an Entrepreneur.  Test your ventures.  Ship something.  Show an adoption curve that’s growing.  Put something out and “prove the dogs are eating the food.”   You can test your ventures without depending on VC funding to start.  For example, instead of a million dollars in development and marketing costs to test an idea, it’s $12k.  This is how much it cost for Guy to spin up Truemors.  See By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09.
  20. Align your interests.  This is about “alignment of interest” vs. “conflict of interest.”  Line up with the people, ideas, and things you believe in. See The Short Tale: Much Ado About Not Much.
  21. It’s about the experience.   Make the most of every experience and live life to the fullest.  Guy has a way of creating and sharing engaging experiences.  See 26 Hours at Sea: The Longest Posting in the History of Blogging and BlogHer Pictures for examples of experiences.
  22. Let 100 flowers blossom.   Find what works for you and your customers, then stand back and let your flowers bloom.  You can’t necessarily predict what will work and what won’t.  Instead, fan the flames of what works and get out of the way.
  23. Find a coalition of the willing.   It’s way easier to sell to an existing customer or to somebody who is not already entrenched in a competing product or idea.  Build your raving fans, by building on your existing fan base and by winning over folks that are untainted.   According to Guy, it’s more effective to preach to the choir or focus on the agnostic, than try to convert the atheist.  Another way to put it is, focus on the market you’ve got, versus the one you don’t.
  24. Know the real influencers.   Don’t spend all your energy on the CXO level.  Win over the front-lines and people in the trenches.  They’re the ones that will ultimately be your raving fans and will do your word-of-mouth marketing for you.  They will either be your resistance or your champions.  Create a tipping point with opinion leaders, such as the engineer’s engineer.
  25. Be creative and productive.  Guy is life imitating art.  Being an Entrepreneur is all about creating something bigger than yourself.  To be effective, you need to be productive.  Guy regularly shares his life hacks on his blog, and Alltop is a great example of a creativity and productivity.

 

by J.D

Positivity Quotes!

positivity

 

Top 10 Positive Quotes

  1. “A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” –  Herm Albright
  2. “Attitudes are contagious.  Are yours worth catching?” — Dennis and Wendy Mannering
  3. “Be enthusiastic.  Remember the placebo effect – 30% of medicine is showbiz.” — Ronald Spark
  4. “I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?” — Henry Moore
  5. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  6. “Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” – Voltaire
  7. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
  8. “Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.” — Arthur Christopher Benson
  9. “Wag more.  Bark less.” — Author Unknown
  10. “We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.” — Konrad Adenauer

Actions

  • “I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.” — Abraham Lincoln
  • “If the sky falls, hold up your hands.” — Author Unknown
  • “Make your optimism come true.” — Author Unknown
  • “People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong … Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?” –  Thich Nhat Hanh
  • “Some days there won’t be a song in your heart.  Sing anyway.” — Emory Austin
  • “The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.” — Eudora Welty
  • “The world is full of cactus, but we don’t have to sit on it.” — Will Foley
  • “There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.” — Frederick Faber
  • “There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.” — Publius Terentius Afer
  • “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” — Maori Proverb

Adaptability and Flexibility

  • “For every day that there is sunshine, there will be days of rain, it’s how we dance within them both that shows our love and pain.” — Joey Tolbert
  • “To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” — George Santayana
  • “We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails.” — Author Unknown
  • “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
  • “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” — Albert Einstein

Anger and Frustration

  • “Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.” — Marcus Antonius
  • “To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.” — Ken S. Keyes
  • “When you feel dog tired at night, it may be because you’ve growled all day long.” — Author Unknown

Appreciation and Gratitude

  • “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” — Robert Brault
  • “If you are not enjoying the journey, you probably won’t enjoy the destination.” — Author Unknown
  • “If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.” — Oscar Wilde
  • “If you don’t think every day is a good day, just try missing one.” — Cavett Robert
  • “It is important that you recognize your progress and take pride in your accomplishments. Share your achievements with others. Brag a little. The recognition and support of those around you is nurturing.” — Rosemarie Rossetti
  • “Leroy bet me I couldn’t find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough.” — Rita Mae Brown
  • “Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr
  • “True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.” — Charles Caleb Colton
  • “Why not learn to enjoy the little things – there are so many of them.” — Author Unknown

Attitude, Disposition, and Character

  • “A cloudy day is no match for a sunny disposition.” — William Arthur Ward
  • “A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” — Hugh Downs
  • “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” — Winston Churchill
  • “Be the light in the dark, be the calm in the storm and be at peace while at war.” — Mike Dolan
  • “Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks.  Most men think it’s looks, most women know otherwise.” — Kathleen Turner
  • “Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.” — Katherine Mansfield
  • “Excellence is not a skill.  It is an attitude.” — Ralph Marston
  • “Happiness is an attitude.  We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong.  The amount of work is the same.” — Francesca Reigler
  • “He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.” — Samuel Johnson
  • “Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.” — Henry David Thoreau
  • “I am an optimist.  It does not seem too much use being anything else.” — Winston Churchill
  • “If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.” ~David Ambrose
  • “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.” — Vince Lombardi
  • “It isn’t our position but our disposition which makes us happy.” — Author Unknown
  • “No life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it.” — Ellen Glasgow
  • “Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts.  It’s what you do with what you have left.” — Hubert Humphrey
  • “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Persons are judged to be great because of the positive qualities they possess, not because of the absence of faults.” — Author Unknown
  • “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” — William James
  • “The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.” — Dennis S. Brown
  • “There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.” — William J. Bennett
  • “There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.” — W. Clement Stone
  • “Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.” — Art Linkletter
  • “Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.” — Alex Karras
  • “Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.” — Eckhart Tolle
  • “Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.” — Anthony J. D’Angelo
  • “You must start with a positive attitude or you will surely end without one.” — Carrie Latet
  • “You’ve done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.” — Ralph Marston

Defeat, Setbacks, and Failures

  • “A car can’t operate without the mechanical systems working, but it can operate with a few dents and scratches … you are the same.” — Mike Dolan
  • “Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.” — Joe Clark
  • “If you can wear the hard times of your life as furrows on your brow, you can wear the good times as a twinkle in your eye.” — Robert Brault
  • “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” — Albert Camu
  • “Physical strength is measured by what we can carry; spiritual by what we can bear.” — Author Unknown
  • “The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.” — Thomas Carlyle
  • “The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.” — C.C. Scott
  • “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey
  • “To begin to think with purpose is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.” — James Allen
  • “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” –  Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • “Whenever you fall, pick something up.” — Oswald Avery

Expectations

  • “Expect nothing.  Live frugally on surprise.” — Alice Walker
  • “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.” — William Allen White
  • “I am sure that nothing has such a decisive influence upon a man’s course as his personal appearance, and not so much his appearance as his belief in its attractiveness or unattractiveness.” — Leo Tolstoy
  • “I don’t like that man.  I must get to know him better.” — Abraham Lincoln
  • “If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of becoming a prophet.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer
  • “If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.” –  Swami Vivekananda
  • “The best things in life are unexpected – because there were no expectations.” — Eli Khamarov
  • “The sun won’t shine until you put the umbrella away.  Be free.” — Author Unknown
  • “These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” –  William James
  • “Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.” — Maurice Setter
  • “Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.” — Edward de Bono
  • “We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.” — Elbert Hubbard
  • “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell

Focus and Perspective

  • “Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.” — Author Unknown
  • “I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.” — Anne Frank
  • “I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.” — Galileo Galilei
  • “If we shall take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” — Mary Engelbreit
  • “Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.” – Unknown
  • “It’s so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to.” — Annie Gottlier
  • “Just because you’re miserable doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your life.” — Annette Goodheart
  • “May I never miss a sunset or a rainbow because I am looking down.” — Sara June Parker
  • “Nothing is interesting if you’re not interested.” — Helen MacInness
  • “People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.” – Epictetus
  • “Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.” — Nicholas Chamfort
  • “That’s my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck’s back. If it’s not positive, I didn’t hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy.” — George Foreman
  • “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” — John Milton
  • “The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” –  Henri Matisse
  • “There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate.” — Robert Brault
  • “There are two types of people – those who come into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am!’ and those who come in and say, ‘Ah, there you are.’” — Frederick L. Collins
  • “There’s a saying among prospectors:  ‘Go out looking for one thing, and that’s all you’ll ever find.’” — Robert Flaherty
  • “Two people can have a middling day, but one rounds up and the other rounds down.” — Robert Brault
  • “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde
  • “Whatever my day may have lacked, yet I have tonight’s pearl moon.” — Dr. SunWolf
  • “Work is either fun or drudgery.  It depends on your attitude.  I like fun.” — Colleen C. Barrett

Hope and Fear

  • “A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.” — Patricia Neal
  • “Either way, things are a lot better – either a lot better than they were or a lot better than they’re going to be.” — Robert Brault
  • “Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.” — Swedish Proverb
  • “I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.” – Voltaire
  • “I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.” — Thornton Wilder
  • “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.  One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “My friends, love is better than anger.  Hope is better than fear.  Optimism is better than despair.  So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic.  And we’ll change the world.” — Jack Layton
  • “When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.” — Zig Ziglar

Humor

  • “A friend will remind you that assumptions born of malice are better dealt with by gleefully sticking your tongue out.” – Dodinsky
  • “A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.” — Robert Frost
  • “I was going to buy a copy of ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?” –  Ronnie Shakes
  • “Optimist: someone who isn’t sure whether life is a tragedy or a comedy but is tickled silly just to be in the play.” — Robert Brault
  • “Reach for the stars, even if you have to stand on a cactus.” — Susan Longacre
  • “Scratch less.  Purr more.” — Author Unknown
  • “Sometimes life’s Hell.  But hey!  Whatever gets the marshmallows toasty.” — J. Andrew Helt
  • “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” –  Oscar Wilde
  • “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” — Scott Hamilton
  • “The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders.” — Foster’s Law

Letting Things Go and Forgiveness

  • “For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.” — Adlai Stevenson
  • “The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.” — Benjamin Franklin
  • “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” — Confucius

Love and Liking

  • “A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world; everyone you meet is your mirror.” — Ken Keyes, Jr.
  • “Anywhere you go liking everyone, everyone will be likeable.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  • “I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” — Arthur Rubinstein
  • “Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don’t, you don’t.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  • “The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.” — Henry Ward Beecher

Opportunity and Possibility

  • “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill
  • “Become a possibilitarian.  No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities – always see them, for they’re always there.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • “I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.” — Wernher von Braun
  • “If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.” — Francis Rabelais
  • “Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” – Napoleon
  • “Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” — Chinese Proverb
  • “Learn to smile at every situation.  See it as an opportunity to prove your strength and ability.” — Joe Brown
  • “Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.” — John Heywood
  • “The impossible can always be broken down into possibilities.” — Author Unknown
  • “Where the loser saw barriers, the winner saw hurdles.” — Robert Brault

Positive Thinking

  • “A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.” –  Mahatma Gandhi
  • “A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.  You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” — Roald Dahl
  • “Being in a good frame of mind helps keep one in the picture of health.” — Author Unknown
  • “Care not what they say about the color of your skin let the brilliant light of your soul blind them.” — Mike Dolan
  • “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” — Rabindranath Tagore
  • “Every thought is a seed.  If you plant crab apples, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.” — Bill Meyer
  • “Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.” — Walt Whitman
  • “It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.” –  Robert H. Schuller
  • “Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.” — Betty Smith
  • “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” — Willie Nelson
  • “People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true” — Bertrand Russell
  • “Positive anything is better than negative thinking.” — Elbert Hubbard
  • “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” — Zig Ziglar
  • “So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.” — Henry David Thoreau
  • “Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
  • “The best way to dispel negative thoughts is to require that they have a purpose.” — Robert Brault
  • “The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.” — Henri Frédéric Amiel
  • “The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” — Author Unknown
  • “They can betray me, but I choose not to betray my peace of mind.” – Dodinsky
  • “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” — Albert Einstein

Enjoy and best wishes for a positive outlook and positive action for your road ahead.

Why you should be a leader!

leadership

 

Why You Are Not A Leader

Here is a thought. Out of every twenty people nineteen will follow and one will be a leader of sort and to be numero uno the odds are 1000 to 1. We might all want to be but for every General there are minimum of 25,000 troops and 300 officers in a division. So how does one get to the summit? While there is doubt that you have to be good at what you do and then better than good don’t fall for the line that luck has a lot to do with it. Sure, you get some breaks but, by and large, if you don’t  deliver you are going to be prematurely knocked off that pedestal. The truth is that getting to the top is a lot easier than staying there.

So, what is the road map, the route to the top and why do only so few make it? So often we watch others climbing past us and we find it so easy to blame other circumstances without ever recognizing the possibility that we might be the biggest brake on ourselves.

The energy exhausted in moaning and groaning and could be better channeled into positive growth but we do not do it. Instead we like to con ourselves that the other party got ahead by underhand means, by using nepotism and influence, is corrupt or simply lucky. While these elements may be short cuts in themselves and do kick a person up the ladder the rungs they stand on are the weak ones and can break any time. The ones who stand on strong rungs are the ones who work a plan.

The word ‘vision’ is often misused and put out of context. But vision is integral to doing well because if you cannot think of the next ‘x’ number of steps and also consider other options in case the first plan fails then you will be leading yourself into the proverbial rut. Who is to blame? You, ‘for getting through the day, getting through the week, getting through rather than building a career’.

The other area where we lose out in the long run is by doing a job we don’t like because we just needed the job so we took it and now it has been five years and there are no choices, we are stuck with it. If you did not fit into the job from Day One how can you get into the frontline, there is too much resentment in you to give your best, so you will settle for survival. If you are still young enough or gutsy enough get off this but and take the one going the way you want to go. It is one life; don’t travel in the wrong direction.

The third aspect that impacts on one’s career negatively is negativity. Many of us spend our lives living in the shadows, afraid to take a chance and making a pact with ourselves that we will stay mediocre. Consequently, that is all we do, keeping our noses above the water but never going into the deep end. So, we never inspire, lead, give others a benchmark or show the way, we are happy being anonymous. The cruel fact is that anonymous people do not become leaders.

Four and this is vital. You must bat for your team, take responsibility, create an atmosphere where they can trust you and believe you and know that you care for their welfare. You also must be fair, and as they say in the army shoot straighter than your staff. If they are actually better than you, why would they want you to lead them?

Finally, one line common sense. Maybe you don’t want to be a leader, maybe you are happier being one of the 999…………………. Some folks are. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of, just don’t complain, that is all.

 

How to Manage Time Effectively

Time is precious.

Managing Time

Time management is one of those skills that you don’t learn in school or university, yet it is one of the most important skills that you must master in order to be successful in today’s competitive workplace.

It doesn’t matter how many years of experience you have or how skilled you are; your inability to manage your time well enough to get your work done will definitely cause numerous difficulties and complications to both your professional and social lives. Careers are made or broken on your ability to handle multiple tasks and manage your time, no matter what type of work you do.

In that regard, I have come up with a number of time management techniques to help you achieve your career goals and maintain a balanced working life.

A)     Prioritize tasks with Pareto’s 80/20 principle

Effective time managers are aware of the fact that they cannot do everything that has to be done at once. They prioritize tasks by consciously choosing to spend their time on what is most important to them. The key to effectively time management is to apply the “80/20 Principle”, which states that 80 per cent of your results are produced from 20 per cent of your efforts. This rule will help you discover the percentage of tasks that you need to focus on so as to achieve the greatest returns on your efforts with the limited amount of time that you have.

B)      Manage time allocation with Parkinson’s law

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. It means that the time you need to complete a certain tasks depends on the time you originally give yourself to get it done with. If you give yourself a tight timeline to do something, you won’t start because you implicitly know that the time frame is unrealistic. If you allocate too much time to complete the task, you won’t start either, because you secretly know that you still have a lot of time on your hands.

C)      Get it the right the first time with Total Quality Managements

TQM is a process whereby the need to get everything right the first time and to continually improve your production is required.  Total Quality Management is not about doing more; it’s about improving the quality of important tasks at hand. This might take a little more time in the beginning but will definitely reduce rework required to fix mistakes and will save a lot of time in the long run.

Contrary to popular belief, time management is not about doing more things in less time, but it’s about doing the right things better. Keep in mind that the more you bite off, the longer you have to chew.

D)     Taking control of technology

The internet is definitely one of the top time wasters in today’s corporate world; it can actually consume a whole working day before you even notice. Your email, for example, has grown into a serious time drainer with your inbox getting out of control throughout the day. But just because someone can contact you instantly, it does not mean that you have to reply immediately. Unless you job demands that, do not respond to your emails immediately, instead, assign a few times a day to check it and respond and don’t look at it otherwise.

Whether you feel overwhelmed by your workload or you just want to find an extra few minutes in the day, one fact will always remain the same: we all have the same 24hours and you really can’t manage that time, but you can manage yourself better. If you don’t time will do a pretty good job of managing you.

 

true leader!

 

25 Lessons Learned from Bill Gates

Bill is full of lessons and insights.  Here are 25 plays we can take from the pages of his playbook:

  1. Change the world, or go home. There is a little sign on many doors at Microsoft.  It features the blue monster and it reads:  “Change the world, or go home.”  Not only does that phrase capture the spirit of thousands of Softies … it speaks to the way Bill Gates drives his life.  He lives to build a better world, whether it’s one version, one platform, one system, one idea, one cause, one innovation at a time.  The beauty is, he knows how to scale and amplify his impact in powerful ways – he’s on top of his game.
  2. Blaze the trail.  The path isn’t always there.  Sometimes you have to make it.  Sometimes people will think you’re crazy.   Sometimes you are just ahead of the curve.  it’s a dream for a reason, and sometimes making your dreams happen takes going out on a limb and giving your all for what you believe in.  Bill Gates believed that the personal computer was the future and that there should be one on every desktop and in the living room and it would change the way we work and how we live in unimaginable ways.
  3. Make an impact.   Drive from impact.  Bill Gates makes choices based on impact.  Whether it’s following his passion or investing in a cause, he drives from making impact.  He doesn’t just do things because he can.  He does things because they matter and he can make them scale.
  4. Humanities greatest advances are the ones that level the playing field.  Bill Gates has a strong belief that “All lives have equal value.” Help those that can’t help themselves.   Everybody deserves a chance at their best life.  Lift the underdogs of the world up.  In his speech at Harvard, Bill says, “Taking a look back, one big reqret is, I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world.  The appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemned millions of people to the lives of despair.  I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas and economics, and politics.  I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.  But humanities greatest advances are not in its discoveries, but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”
  5. A sense of urgency. The world changes fast.  The market changes faster.  Bill says, “In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”
  6. The market doesn’t always drive the right things.  In one of his powerful TED talks, Bill says, “There are some very important problems that don’t get worked on naturally.  That is the market does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the government to do the right things.  And only by paying attention to these things, and having brilliant people who care and draw other people in, can we make as much progress as we need to.” Watch TED – Bill Gates on Mosquitos, Malaria, and Education.
  7. Live your values.  When you let the world know what you’re about, you become a lightening rod and you attract people with the same values.  At Microsoft, Bill Gates attracted people with a passion for changing the world and joining him on a journey to help create better lives through technology and innovation.  On the philanthropy side, Gates connects with U2’s Bono beyond the music when it comes to sharing their global mission to end poverty, disease, and indifference.  In 2005, TIME named Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates, “Persons of the Year” for their humanitarian work.  On Bill Gate’s 54′th birthday, Bono had this to say before leading the crowd in Happy Birthday:  “Without him, and without his business, we just wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s his birthday today. Bill Gates is in the house.” Watch Bono Wishes Bill Gates a Happy Birthday.
  8. Your best gets better with the right people.  Don’t go it alone.   You’re better when you’ve got the right people around you.  Bill Gates built a culture of the best and brightest and was good at convincing his friends, such as Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer to join him on his adventures.  By surrounding himself with smart people, Bill was able to scale.  He also had a sounding board for ideas.  More importantly, ideas could get better from the combined smarts and perspectives.  Bill also knows how to complement his strengths by having the right people around that make up for his weaknesses.
  9. Innovation is the heart and soul of a business.   It’s about bringing ideas to market and applying research.  If you don’t innovate you die.  The world keeps changing.  To stay ahead of the game, or even to stay in the game, you have to keep innovating: innovate in your products, innovate in your process, innovate in the markets, etc.  Bill Gates uses innovation as a way to drive impact whether it’s shaping software or saving the planet.
  10. Be the platform.  Be the platform people can build on.  See the role that you play in building something that let’s other people build on what you do best.
  11. Build a better system.  Don’t just solve a one-off problem.  Make the solution systematic and make it repeatable.  Find, create, or leverage systems.  There is always a system, whether it’s at the micro-level or the macro level.  The system has inputs and outputs, cycles, and levers.  Whether you’re creating the system or leveraging the system, you’re more effective when you realize that there is a system.
  12. Build an ecosystem.  There are systems and ecosystems all around us.  Bill says, “Personal computing today is a rich ecosystem encompassing massive PC-based data centers, notebook and Tablet PCs, handheld devices, and smart cell phones. It has expanded from the desktop and the data center to wherever people need it — at their desks, in a meeting, on the road or even in the air.”  On creating partners for your ecosystem, Bill says, “Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”
  13. Know how to turn the crank.  Take action.  Execute.  The problem isn’t a shortage of ideas, it’s execution.  Lots of people have ideas.  There is an overload of ideas.  The real gap is bringing ideas to market in a way that matters.  The secret sauce is ruthless prioritization of the ideas that make the most impact.
  14. Take Care of Your People. Bill Gates says, “Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.” He set a powerful example of taking care of employees, from private offices for developers to creating a workplace of extreme empowerment, engagement, and passion.
  15. Divide and conquer the problem.   There is always a way to chunk up the problem and prioritize more effectively.  Whether it’s slicing the problem into versions over time, or simply taking the most meaningful or highest ROI (Return On Investment) pieces of the problem and tackling them first, you can make progress on the worst of problems or the best of opportunities.  No problem withstands sustained, focused effort that learns and improves over time.
  16. Improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.  One of Bill’s stories during his speech at Harvard is how he learned this lesson: “Radcliff was a great place to live.  There were more women up there and most of the guys were mad science types.  The combination offered me the best odds if you know what I mean.”
  17. You don’t have to be first to win.  Bill says, “Microsoft has had its success by doing low-cost products and constantly improving those products and we’ve really redefined the IT industry to be something that’s about a tool for individuals.”
  18. The toughest feedback to hear, is the feedback you need the most.  You get better by listening to your toughest critics.  Your greatest source of growth can come from the people that will tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear.  Bill says, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill also says, “You’ve got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you’re doing wrong.”
  19. Business and technology go hand in hand.  Bill says, “Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.” We’re truly living a knowledge worker world, where information technology is front and center.  Bill says, “It’s pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We’re finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.”
  20. Frame the problem.   Bill says, “I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.” Framing a problem is simply how you look at a problem, just like how you frame a picture.  It’s about choosing what to focus on, what’s in and what’s out.  When you frame the problem, you bound it.  Framing also helps you get a better perspective on the problem, as well as share the problem more effectively with others.  Some questions to help frame a problem include: Who’s the customer? What are their needs and priorities? What’s happening in the market? What are competitors doing? What are our options for responding?  How do we differentiate? How is technology changing and what possibilities does it offer our customers? What are the priorities for our business?
  21. Celebrate success, but learn from failure.  Don’t repeat the same mistakes and don’t wallow in your wins.  Bill says, ““It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
  22. Technology is just a tool.  Don’t lose sight of the end in mind or the difference that makes the difference.  Bill says, “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”
  23. Don’t automate inefficiency.  Make sure something actually makes sense to automate, otherwise you compound the problem.  Bill says, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
  24. Empower people.  Put the right information into the hands of the people that can make the most of it.  Bill says, ““The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.”
  25. Go digital.  Connect people, process, and technology.  Create a digital landscape or a virtual world to reduce friction and to create new possibilities.  Bill says, ““One of the wonderful things about the information highway is that virtual equity is far easier to achieve than real-world equity…We are all created equal in the virtual world and we can use this equality to help address some of the sociological problems that society has yet to solve in the physical world.”

The anatomy of millionaires

Entrepreneur

Millionaire! The term conjures a number of images in the minds of most people. Flamboyant, proud, snobbish, lazy people vacationing in glamorous locations.

Well, while one or two millionaires may be described in some of these words, the stuff the average millionaire is made of baffles. A peek into their lives reveals a different story: hard work, sacrifice, frugality, sheer devilry risk taking coupled with a steely determination to succeed.

We would like to say luck was on their side or some tall or well heeled relative put them in ‘the stead’ hence they had a head start in life unlike most of us, but yet a keener look at them reveals the stunner stuff they are made of.

In terms their outlook, they are a different breed altogether that sees the glass as half full; and never half empty, hence their resounding success.

They are persistent and focused, bold, entrepreneurial, patient, creative, disciplined among other attributes. And their stories run the gamut from inventors, celebrities, industrialists to struggling entrepreneurs who over years built enviable business empires.

And while few became millionaires from their fast lane jobs, nearly all of them rose from the low-rated jobs.

Warren Buffet, for instance, started as an itinerant supplier delivering newspapers to people using a bicycle. Today, his business empire is valued at around $47 billion.

Oprah Winfrey, one of the richest and powerful women in the world and whose net worth hovers around $2.7 billion, started off in a humble way as a grocery store clerk.

Girgio Armani, the eccentric Italian billionaire, whose net worth today stands at $5.3 billion was a photography assistant.

Even stories of our very own is a portrait of a humble beginning. The late Gerishon Kirima was a carpenter then a butcher and this confirms that there is something: a rare business acumen that propels millionaires from the bottom end of society. At the time of death this year, Kirima had built an empire worth more than Sh750 million.

And it is this rare trait coupled with ‘smart thinking’ devoid of even impressive college certificates that probably saw Njenga Karume manage to pull himself up and build a massive business empire from the unenviable lowly-rated menial job of a charcoal seller, according to his biography: Beyond Expectations; from Charcoal to Gold.

But perhaps one of the most outstanding traits of millionaires is their clenched teeth determination to pursue whatever they focus on, and do not care about the opinions of others, and without fearing any failure.

When asked about how people reacted to his intention to resign from teaching a few years ago, the late Kenyan poultry millionaire Henry Muguku said: “my principal thought I was crazy because my job was stable. But I was determined.”

It is this ‘craziness’ coupled with steely determination, traits common with all millionaires, that saw him build the biggest hatchery in the country estimated to be worth more than Sh3 billion.

Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group of companies epitomises how determination to pursue one’s passion regardless of one’s weakness (he was dyslexic can take a person far.

As a teenager school drop out, Branson started with his passion: starting his own newspaper. Today, he is a quintessential billionaire, with over 400 companies under his arm and ranked as the 254th richest person in the world by Forbes Magazine in 2011.

But as the number of self-made millionaires seems to rise even amidst the worst global financial crisis in recent times, scientists are weaving another strand in the whole question about the stuff millionaires are made of.

A June 2006 article published in The Mail Online quotes a research done in Britain and the US on entrepreneur-millionaires, which found that self-made millionaires’ success could actually lie in their genes.

This is contrary to the generally held notion that family environment and upbringing influence going it alone.

Stacy Kiruthi, an entrepreneurship consultant, argues that it’s a combination of factors such as planning, thinking big, superb management acumen, and the people one associates with, chance and fearlessness that make the millionaire tick.

“They are penny-wise. They combine frugality and always live below their means. They seem to fully ascribe to the rule ‘look after your cents and the shillings will look after themselves.”

What of education? A peek into most of their resumes, such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Richard Branson, Michael Dell (the University of Texas drop out who has built the world known, Dell, a computer company and is today a magnate estimated to be worth about $13.5 billion), Apple’s Steve Jobs, and off course some of the local millionaires shows they went through the ‘school of hard knocks’ or street school but emerged wiser than most of us in the subject of money and wealth making.

But there is never a shortage of ‘eccentrics’, even crazy few within this class, perhaps a tipping point of the genius bubbling in them.

Graham Pendrill, a British millionaire traded his £1.2 million mansion in his native town Almondsbury for a Maasai mud hut in Kenya last year having been adopted by the Maasai as an elder.

Karl Rebeder, a French millionaire who grew up in poverty decided to give out his entire fortune valued at £3 million claiming the money “did not give him happiness” as he had thought when he was poor. He opted to retreat into a small wooden hut into the mountains from a luxurious Alpine retreat.

Stacy says that this is unexpected from this ilk “as at they are first and foremost ordinary human beings like everybody else. The fact that they are millionaires is because they concentrate more and unrelentlessly on investing and the experience has made them wiser.”

Too many descriptions and conjectures as to what makes millionaires exist, yet no single word or as compelling explanation exists apart from probably the horse’s mouth.

Richard Branson says many people ask him what his secret is and what they can do to be millionaires. The reply: “I always tell them the same thing. I have no secret. There are no rules to follow in business. I just work hard and, as I always have done, believe I can do it. Most of all, through, I try to have fun.”

by ANTHONY NGATIA

Sitawa………my everyday heroine

 
 

Beacon of Hope


 
 No storm,hurricane or whirlwind

nor any tempest that nature may hurl at her

can keep her from her pursuit of excellence

for she keeps still in the midst of chaos

and conquers her adverseries not by making them smaller

but by making herself bigger

with each new sunrise she starts anew

asking not what the world needs but what she can do for the world

rising above each challenge

not following where the path may lead

but going where there isnt one and leaving a trail

predicting her future by creating it herself

depicting a incon of hope and beacon of joy

reminding us to let our hopes and not our hurts shape our future

and although we can’t go back and start a new beginning

we can start today and make a new ending

they say, in the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took

but how many moments took your breath away

i say, what a better example than thee…………………………………….

 
 
 a poem to celebrate Sitawa for who she is and what she is constantly becoming.

 

 blessings……jambu.

Shopmarkaz.com

Around the turn of the century, in the area of Texas,there was a farmer selling much of his land.

He was having to sell it simply because times were so tough he couldn’t feed his family.

One day an oil company representative came along and said “Sir,we think there might be oil on your property

Let us drill for it and if we discover any, we will pay you royalties on every barrel  that we pop out”

He had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain so he said lets do it

They drilled for the oil and found an abundance of oil underneath it was the most productive  oil well in history-Three oil companies came out of that field


The man became an instant millionaire-or did he?

 

The reality is he had been a multimillionaire ever  since he acquired the property but until they had drilled for the oil, discovered it, and brought it to the surface and took it to the marketplace it really had no value.

We at http://www.shopmarkaz.com found out that a lot of businesses around the entire globe are pretty much that  way, they have got an awful lot underneath the surface, but until they bring it out and take it to the marketplace, they will never realize even a small fraction of the financial benefits that they can bring to themselves,their family, their friends, their community and everyone else.

The Core purpose of http://www.shopmarkaz.com  is not only to help you bring to the surface  the products and services that you offer but also to take it to the worldwide marketplace where it will bring in the much needed revenue.

Visit  http://www.shopmarkaz.com/  and allow us to help you discover

 your Oil Well.


www.shopmarkaz.com

What is a dynamic person?

Cinco de Mayo parade in Saint Paul, Minnesota,...

Image via Wikipedia

Many people think they would like to be what is called dynamic but it does not appear that they always have a very clear idea of what that expression really means. Sometimes they think it means being somewhat aggressive and noisy, or even bombastic, in manner. In other cases, they seem to think it means drawing attention to themselves in some less blatant but equally effective way. In reality nothing could be farther from the truth.

A dynamic person is a person who really makes a difference in the world; who does something that changes things or people. The magnitude of the work done may not be very great, but the fact still remains that the world is a little different because that person has lived and worked. That is a dynamic person.

Dynamic people like St. Paul or Washington, or Napoleon, change the lives and destinies of millions of people, and their work is known to all; but there are many men and women up and down the country whose works are not well known or known at all, and yet on their own scale they are dynamic, because they have actually changed the world in even a small way.

If you really get something done, no matter how small a thing it may be, you are dynamic, and the world is different because you lived in t. If you are only pretending to do things or talking about them, or building up appearances, you are not dynamic; you are play acting.

by Emmet Fox

Always Be

sam and maddie

Image by The Wu's Photo Land via Flickr

Always,
Be understanding to your enemies.
Be loyal to your friends.
Be strong enough to face the world each day.
Be weak enough to know you cannot do everything alone.
Always,
Be generous to those who need your help.
Be frugal with that you need yourself.
Be wise enough to know that you do not know everything.
Be smart enough to continue learning.
Always,
Be willing to share your joys.
Be willing to share the sorrows of others.
Be a leader when you see a path others have missed.
Be a follower when you are shrouded by the mists of uncertainty.
Always,
Be first to congratulate an opponent who succeeds.
Be last to criticize a colleague who fails.
Be sure where your next step will fall, so that you will not tumble.
Be sure of your final destination, by setting your goals along the way.
Above all,
always be yourself.

 
Poet Unknown

 

Lifting and Leaning

There are two kinds of people on earth today,
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.

Not the good and the bad, for ’tis well understood
The good are half bad and the bad are half good.

Not the happy and sad, for the swift-flying years
Brings each man his laughter and each man his tears.

Not the rich and the poor, for to count a man’s wealth
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life’s busy span
He who puts on vain airs is not counted a man.

No! The two kinds of people on earth I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.

Wherever you go you will find the world’s masses
Are ever divided in just two classes.

And, strangely enough, you will find, too, I ween,
There is only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you? Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters who toil down the road?

Or are you a leaner who lets others bear
Your portion of worry and labor and care?


Poet: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Don’t Give It Up

S W E A T

Image by d ha rm e sh via Flickr

Today life gave you another slap
but don’t give it up
throwing your towel in the ring
for things gone wrong, for words that sting
‘cos there must be another way
you will see it in the light of another day
When everything seems sour, not in your favour
look around until you find better flavour
so, don’t just give but live it up
pick up the pieces, be tough
grind your teeth and turn another cheek
don’t give it up, that’s exactly what they seek
It’s too easy to walk away
quitter never wins so you should better stay
look challenges straight in the eye
don’t say yet the last good-bye
fight like an animal in a trap
but don’t give it up

 

Poet: Z. Vujcic