Your Achievement Quotes

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

“It’s not what happens to you in life that counts; it’s how you take it, and what you make of it.”—Denis Waitley

“An optimist is the human personification of spring.”—Susan J. Bissonette

“A character is a completely fashioned will.”—Novalis

“Take your job seriously, but don’t take their complaints personally. If you take it personally, you’ll get upset and lose your edge. If you take it too personally, you’ll lose your edge and your job. If you take it seriously, it’s you with them. If you take it personally, it’s you against them. What steps can you take to ensure keeping your cool?”—Jeffrey Gitomer

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

“Adulthood is defined by the willingness to accept full responsibility for where you are at in life, no longer blaming others or circumstances.”—Joe Westbrook

“If you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective-expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.”—Stephen R. Covey

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.”—Mark Twain

“99 percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”—George Washington Carver

PLANNING

“When plans are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.”—Sir William Osler

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are, you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they may have planned for you? Not much.”—Jim Rohn

“Don’t just do something—sit there! Sit there long enough each morning to decide what is really important during the day ahead.”—Richard Eyre

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”—William Wadsworth

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"You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." —Abraham Lincoln

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The Law of Quality

By Brian Tracy

The customer demands the very highest quality for the very lowest price. This seems simple except that many companies try to violate this law on their way to the bankruptcy courts. The customer is very smart. The customer will always act to satisfy the greatest possible number of his or her needs in making any particular buying decision. Only companies that cater to the customer's relentless insistence on even higher levels of quality at even lower prices are successful in the marketplace.

Quality is What the Customer Says it is

Only the customer can define quality. Sometimes even the customer cannot define it clearly, but the customer will vote for quality by the way she spends her dollars. And more than 80 percent of buying decisions today are either made or strongly influenced by women.

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Quality Includes Both the Product and Service

Quality also includes the way that it is sold, delivered, and maintained. The customer's definition of quality includes all of the activities associated with the purchase, ownership, and use of the item. Prices in a quality restaurant are not based only on the fact that good food is served on a plate. A first-class restaurant, one that commands above-average prices and can earn above-average profits, also services the food in an atmosphere of comfort and enjoyment that people are willing to pay more for. Can you imagine a waiter in a nice restaurant slapping the plate down on the table and just walking away? Even a simple product can be sold and served with a cheerfulness and courtesy, thereby increasing its perceived value.

Profitability in Direct Proportion to Quality Ranking

What this means is that if a research firm was to go into your marketplace and conduct an honest, objective survey amongst the customers for what you sell, it could develop a quality ranking for your company in terms of how it compares to your competitors. A major reason that companies that are seen as high-quality companies are more profitable is because of the deep need that customers have for security or safety in their purchase decision. Better quality is associated in the customers' minds with greater safety and predictability. The perception of better quality reduces the feeling of uncertainty or risk in making the buying decision. It makes it easier to buy.

Action Exercise

Determine your quality ranking in your industry. Use objective polling if you can. Use your intuition if you must. But be absolutely honest with yourself. Ask your staff and colleagues where they would rank your company on a scale from one to ten among your competitors, as well.

Chart a Course to Your Dreams

Most people start life traveling aimlessly through an unchartered world, says goals expert Brian Tracy. "They simply figure things out as they go along. Often, 10 or 20 years of work will go past and they will still be broke, unhappy in their jobs, dissatisfied in their marriages and making little progress. And still, they will go home every night and watch television, wishing and hoping things will get better. But they seldom do," Tracy says.
The key to not letting life just happen to you is to set goals. Working toward goals will also make you happier. "Goals fulfill the greatest need of human beings—a sense of meaning and purpose in life," says Tracy.

To get yourself going, follow Tracy’s goal-setting tips:

1. Write your goals down on a set of 3-by-5 cards to carry with you wherever you go.
2. Always thinking of the next specific action step you can take toward your goals.
3. Review your goal list frequently.
4. Visualize your goals achieved continuously.
5. Do something every day toward your goals. The most essential factor is persistence.

Realize you have unlimited potential, Tracy says. "You are completely responsible for everything you are today, for everything you think, say and do, and for everything you become from this moment forward."

Read here for more insights on goal setting...

The Great Leadership Challenge by Jim Rohn

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills and opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a parent. What’s important in leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective. Here are some specifics:

Learn to be strong but not impolite. It is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good substitute.

Next, learn to be kind but not weak. We must not mistake weakness for kindness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell someone the truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.

Next, learn to be bold but not a bully. It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble. Like the farmer, if you want any rewards at harvest time, you have got to be bold and face the weeds and the rain and the bugs straight on. You’ve got to seize the moment.

Here’s the next step. You’ve got to learn to be humble but not timid. You can’t get to the high life by being timid. Some people mistake timidity for humility. But humility is a virtue; timidity is a disease. It’s an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.

Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re part of the stars.

Here’s a good tip: Learn to be proud but not arrogant. It takes pride to build your ambitions. It takes pride in your community. It takes pride in a cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a good leader is to be proud without being arrogant.

Do you know the worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. It’s intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that’s just too much to take.

The next step is learning to develop humor without folly. In leadership, we learn that it’s okay to be witty but not silly; fun but not foolish.

Next, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony of delusion. Just accept life as it is. Life is unique. The whole drama of life is unique. It’s fascinating.

Life is unique. Leadership is unique. The skills that work well for one leader may not work at all for another. However, the fundamental skills of leadership can be adopted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the community and at home.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Chunk-Down that Goal and Get Out of Overwhelm

by Jack Canfield

Sometimes our biggest life goals seem so overwhelming.

We rarely see them as a series of small, achievable tasks, but in reality, breaking down a large goal into smaller tasks—and accomplishing them one at a time—is exactly how any big goal gets achieved.

After you have decided what you really want, with specific deadlines, the next step is to determine all of the individual action steps you will need to take to accomplish your goal.

How to Chunk It Down

There are several ways to figure out the action steps you will need to take to accomplish any goal. One is to consult with people who have already done what you want to do and ask what steps they took. From their experience, they can give you all of the necessary steps as well as advice on what pitfalls to avoid.

Another way is to purchase a book or manual that outlines the process.

Yet another way is to start from the end and look backward. You simply close your eyes and imagine that it is now the future and you have already achieved your goal. Then just look back and see what you had to do to get to where you now are. What was the last thing you did? And then the thing before that, and then the thing before that, until you arrive at the first action you had to start with.

Remember that it is okay not to know how to do something.

It’s okay to ask for guidance and advice from those who do know. Sometimes you can get it free, and sometimes you have to pay for it. Get used to asking, “Can you tell me how to go about...?” and “What would I have to do to...?” and “How did you...?”

Keep researching and asking until you can create a realistic action plan that will get you from where you are to where you want to go.

What will you need to do? How much money will you need to save or raise? What new skills will you need to learn? What resources will you need to mobilize? Who will you need to enroll in your vision? Who will you need to ask for assistance? What new disciplines or habits will you need to build into your life?

Another valuable technique for creating an action plan for your goals is called mind mapping.

How to Use Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a simple but powerful process for creating a detailed to-do list for achieving your goal. It lets you determine what information you’ll need to gather, who you’ll need to talk to, what small steps you’ll need to take, how much money you’ll need to earn or raise, which deadlines you’ll need to meet, and so on—for each and every goal.

When I began creating my first educational audio program—a breakthrough goal that led to extraordinary gains for me and my business—I used mind mapping to help me “chunk down” that very large goal into all the individual tasks I would need to complete to produce a finished product.

To mind-map your own goals, follow these steps as illustrated in the example:

1.) Center circle: In the center circle, jot down the name of your stated goal—in this case, Create an Audio Educational Program.

2.) Outside circles: Next, divide the goal into the major categories of tasks you’ll need to accomplish to achieve the greater goal—in this case, Title, Studio, Topics, Audience, and so on.

3.) Spokes: Then, draw spokes radiating outward from each mini-circle and label each one (such as Write Copy, Color Picture for Back Cover, and Arrange Lunch.)

On a separate line connected to the minicircle, write every single step you’ll need to take. Break down each one of the more detailed task spokes with action items to help you create your master to-do list.

Next, Make a Daily To-Do List

Once you’ve completed a mind map for your goal, convert all of the to-do items into daily action items by listing each one on your daily to-do lists and committing to a completion date for each one. Then schedule them in the appropriate order into your calendar and do whatever it takes to stay on schedule.

Do First Things First

The goal is to stay on schedule and complete the most important item first. In his excellent book, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, Brian Tracy reveals not just how to conquer procrastination but also how to prioritize and complete all of your action items.

In his unique system, Brian advises goal-setters to identify the one to five things you must accomplish on any given day, and then pick the one you absolutely must do first. This becomes your biggest and ugliest frog.

He then suggests you accomplish that task first—in essence, eat that frog first—and, by so doing; make the rest of your day much, much easier. It’s a great strategy. But unfortunately, most of us leave the biggest and ugliest frog for last, hoping it will go away or somehow become easier. It never does. However, when you accomplish your toughest task early in the day, it sets the tone for the rest of your day.

By chunking down your goals, and then taking daily action on them, you create momentum and build your confidence, both of which move you farther and faster toward the achievement of your goals.

Now go take some action!

© 2009 Jack Canfield

Take Control of Your Dreams Charting a Course to Reach Them

Brian Tracy August 31, 2009

Imagine arriving on the outskirts of a large city and being told to drive to a particular home or office there. But there are no road signs and you have no map. In fact, all you have is a very general description of the home or office, so finding it would be very much a matter of luck. Sadly, this is the way most people live their lives.

Most people start life traveling aimlessly through an unmapped and uncharted world. This is the equivalent of starting off in life with no goals and plans. They simply figure things out as they go along. Often, 10 or 20 years of work will go past and they will still be broke, unhappy in their jobs, dissatisfied with their marriages and making little progress. And still, they will go home every night and watch television, wishing and hoping things will get better. But they seldom do. Not by themselves.

Earl Nightingale wrote, “Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal.” Goals fulfi ll the greatest need of human beings—a sense of meaning and purpose in life. One of the great benefits of goal-setting is that you control the direction of change in your life. Setting goals, working toward them day by day, and ultimately achieving them is the key to happiness in life.

"You are completely responsible for everything you are today, for everything you think, say and do, and for everything you become from this moment forward."

In more than 50 years of research, psychologists have determined that your locus of control is the determining factor of your happiness or unhappiness in life. People with an external locus of control—those who typically don’t set goals—feel controlled by external factors, by their boss, their bills, their marriage, their childhood problems and their current situation. They feel out of control, and as a result, they feel weak, angry, fearful, negative, hostile and disempowered. People who do set goals often operate with an internal locus of control—they feel in complete control of their lives. They feel strong, confident and powerful. They are generally optimistic and positive. They feel terrific about themselves and very much in charge of their direction in life.

The starting point of goal-setting is to realize you have virtually unlimited potential to be, have or do anything you really want in life if you simply want it badly enough and are willing to work long enough and hard enough to achieve it. So, what do you really want to do with your life? What do you want to be or to have in life? You should return to this question over and over again in the months and years ahead. Remember, you can’t hit a target you can’t see.

Brian Tracy is a top management consultant to more than 500 corporations, including IBM, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard. He is the author of dozens of books, including the best-selling Goals! How to Get Everything You Want, Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Change Begins with Choice by Jim Rohn

Any day we wish, we can discipline ourselves to change it all. Any day we wish, we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we wish, we can start a new activity. Any day we wish, we can start the process of life change. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare observed, “The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.” We created our circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions. They need the truth. They need the whole truth. And they need nothing but the truth.

We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.

And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life, if you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life—and it all begins with your very own power of choice.

—Jim Rohn