Category Archives: Business

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Branson Quotes

A Phenomenal Leader.

Adventure and Fun

  • “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
  • “Customers shouldn’t just think of your business as a place to buy a product or use a service — it should be a fun place to be.”
  • “First and foremost, any business proposal I like must sound fun.”
  • “I am prepared to try anything once.”
  • “I prefer to have a great time and to keep my wits about me.”
  • “I think the most important thing is that in the last seven days we’ve just had the greatest adventure of our lifetimes.”
  • “I’m inquisitive … and I love a new challenge… and if I feel that we can do it better than it’s been done by other people, we’ll have a go.”
  • “Some 80% of your life is spent working. You want to have fun at home; why shouldn’t you have fun at work?”
  • “Throwing yourself into a job you enjoy is one of the life’s greatest pleasures!”
  • “We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.”
  • “We’re going where no one has gone before. There’s no model to follow, nothing to copy. That is what makes this so exciting.”

Brand

  • “All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you’ll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don’t trust you. I had never really focused on what a good name meant before, but that night in prison made me understand.”
  • “Branding is everything. A young girl once came up to me and told me I could be famous because I looked just like Richard Branson!”
  • “First of all, if you’re setting up a new company, you want to try to find a brand that can work on a global basis.”
  • “Good brands reflect the histories of the time and the group of people that made them. They can not be copied. They can not be recycled.”
  • “If you get your face and your name out there enough, people will start to recognize you.”
  • “In the beginning it was just about the business – now it’s about the brand.”
  • “Protect your reputation.  Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.”
  • “Quality brands never go bankrupt.”
  • “What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.”

Business

  • “Above all, you want to create something you’re proud of. This has always been my philosophy of business.”
  • “I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off not doing it.”
  • “Because I don’t see Virgin as a company but as a way of life and I fully enjoy it, I don’t think I’ll ever retire.”
  • “Business opportunities are like buses, there`s always another one coming.”
  • “Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once.”
  • “I love stirring the pot.  I love giving big companies a run for their money — especially if they’re offering expensive, poor-quality products.”
  • “I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.”
  • “Most “necessary evils” are far more evil than necessary.”
  • “Our model is to develop each business separately with its own shareholder and management – this way we can concentrate on the job in hand, rather than be part of some enormous and faceless conglomerate.”
  • “Perhaps my early problems with dyslexia made me more intuitive: when someone sends me a written proposal, rather than dwelling on detailed facts and figures I find that my imagination grasps and expands on what I read.”
  • “We’ve got an engaging, edgy, vibrant, fun product, … It may or may not work, but we’re going to give it our best shot.”
  • “When we start a new venture, we base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, we review the industry and put ourselves in our customer’s shoes to see what we could do better.”

Challenges

  • “Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.”
  • “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.”
  • “However tight things are, you still need to have the big picture at the forefront of your mind.”
  • “I just like to enjoy life and push myself. Of course, there is method to my madness. When you are entering into a new industry, for example, it helps to do something to get your name on the front pages.”
  • “My biggest motivation?  Just to keep challenging myself.  I see life almost like one long university education that I never had.”
  • “”My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.”
  • “My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.”
  • “Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.”

Entrepreneurism

  • “I believe that drudgery and clock-watching are a terrible betrayal of that universal, inborn entrepreneurial spirit.”
  • “I think a lot of becoming an entrepreneur is something which people have to learn just from getting out there and giving it a go, and having to learn the art of survival.”
  • “I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t` really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.”
  • “I was never, ever interested in becoming a businessman or an entrepreneur.  If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.”
  • “The quickest way to become a millionaire in the airline business is to start out as a billionaire.”
  • “There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It’s the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.”
  • “To be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running, and if you have a good team around you and more than a fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can’t guarantee it just by following someone else’s formula.”
  • “What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Borrow fivers off everyone you meet.”
  • “You never know with these things when you`re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.”

Leadership

  • “As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”
  • “I may be a businessman  in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I’m an idealist.”
  • “Once again, I was the captain of my ship and master of my fate.  I believe in myself. I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love.”
  • “You shouldn’t blindly accept a leader’s advice.  You’ve got to question leaders on occasions.”

Life

  • “I am impressed with just the enthusiasm for life and the fact that some of these people are in their 80’s, even 90’s, and they’re absolutely determined to get out there and make a difference.”
  • “As we drifted to earth I sat up on the glass roof of the capsule, watching the beauty of the golden dawn as it broke over the desert. This was a day I never thought I’d see and the rising sun and growing warmth of the day seemed very precious. It made me aware that hard-won things are more valuable than those that come too easily. It reminded me to always enjoy the moment. “
  • “I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”
  • “I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.”
  • “Life can seem rather unreal at times.  Alive and well and loving one day.  No longer there the next.”
  • “Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no.”
  • “Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.”
  • “You only live once, and I just don’t want to waste a minute of my life.”

People First

  • “A company is people … employees want to know … am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really need to feel wanted.”
  • “Having a personality of caring about people is important. You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.”
  • “I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.”
  • “I know enough to know that no man is an island.”
  • “Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.”
  • “The companies that look after their people are the companies that do really well. I’m sure we’d like a few other attributes, but that would be the most important one.”

Purpose

  • “For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.”
  • “I’ve had to create companies that I believe in 100%. These are companies I feel will make a genuine difference. Then I have to be willing to find the time myself to talk about them, promote them and market them. I don’t want to spend my life doing something that I’m not proud of.”
  • “Look, if you can indulge in your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working.  You’ll work harder at it, and you’ll know more about it. But first you must go out and educate yourself on whatever it is that you’ve decided to do – know more about kite-surfing than anyone else. That’s where the work comes in. But if you’re doing things you’re passionate about, that will come naturally.”
  • “People have to decide on priorities if they want to get anywhere.  The best lessons I learned was to just do it.”
  • “The important thing is that you’ve got a strong foundation before you start to try to save the world or help other people.”
  • “Well, I’m somebody who is just living …living life, and if I get frustrated by something, then I like to try to put it right.”

 

Inspiring Shipments by Ivana

this is a post from a special person i hold dear for the depth of knowledge that she has shared to the masses and on a personal level because she inspired me to start blogging some two years ago.
thanks Ivana.

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, actualising 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 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  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.
  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.  Align your interests.  This is about “alignment of interest” vs. “conflict of interest.”  Line up with the people, ideas, and things you believe in.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.

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.

`10 takeaways from the desert safari!

1) the journey is more important than the destination

2)be remarkable/different/unique/peculiar

3)be missed/connect/create a meaning/matter

4)don’t burn bridges/change is a constant

5)don’t wait for perfect/life is short/maximize every opportunity

6)be in it for the long haul/make the journey worth it

7)change the frame to change your game/re-frame things to change your perspective

8)live with passion/follow your heart/make your work play and play at your work

9)smile, it’s contagious/don’t take yourself too seriously

10)make meaning over money/there are some things money just can’t buy

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 front line, 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.

The Feminine Gender!

A Mother loves right from the start.
She holds her baby close to her heart.
The bond that grows will never falter.
Her love is so strong it will never alter.
A Mother gives never ending Love.
She never feels that she has given enough.
For you she will always do her best.
Constantly working, there’s no time to rest.
A Mother is there when things go wrong.
A hug and a kiss to help us along.
Always there when we need her near.
Gently wipes our eyes when we shed a tear.
So on this day shower your Mother with Love.
Gifts and presents are nice but that is not enough.
Give your Mother a day to have some peace of mind.
Be gentle, be good, be helpful, be kind.
Happy Mothers Day.

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.

 

25 Lessons Learned from Bill Gates

true leader!

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 realise 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.”
  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.”
  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.”

How To Think Like Bill Gates

bill gates

10 Ways to Think Like Bill Gates
While I don’t think Bill will lend you his brain, you can do the next best thing. You can take some of this thought patterns and practices for a test-drive. Here are ten patterns to get you started:

  1. Prioritize. “What’s the next best thing you should be thinking about?” It starts here. Time is your most limited and precious resource. This is about asking whether the problem is even worth your time. Before you throw cycles at it, figure out whether it’s worth it. Is it significant? How much time should you spend on it? For an example of how Bill Gates figures out how to prioritize.
  2. Ask smarter questions. If you want better answers, ask better questions. Rather than getting stuck in one line of questioning, such as “what’s wrong with this?” or “what’s right with this?”, you can explore your thinking more deeply, by asking a range of questions. One of the skills we learn at Microsoft is Precision Questions / Precision Answers. In this approach, there are 7 categories of precise questions: 1) Go / NoGo – Do we need to talk about this? 2) Clarification – What do you mean? 3) Assumptions – What are we assuming? 4) Basic Critical Question – How do we know this is true? 5) Causes – What’s causing this? 6) Effects – What will be the effects? 7) Action – What should be done?
  3. Make data-driven decisions. This is one of the toughest switches to make. By default, most people make emotional decisions and then find data to support the decision. This means asking questions like, “what’s the data say?” This means getting informed, before you make your decision. This means evaluating the sources of data. It’s an extreme exercise in emotional intelligence to pause your emotional response, while you check your logic and critical thinking.
  4. Divorce your ego. This is where you separate yourself from the problem. This is also about separating yourself from the solution. Instead, you hold the problem or solution out in your hands and inspect it from different angles. Rather than focus on whether you’re right, it’s about whether the solution is right. It’s about being able to beat up the thinking, without taking it personally.
  5. Frame the problem. 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?
  6. Get perspectives on the problem. This means being able to switch your perspectives. Rather than see the glass half-full or the glass half-empty, you should see both. Challenge yourself to switch back and forth from finding flaws to finding opportunities. If you only know how to play the Devil’s advocate, you have a limited view. Like a mulch-faceted diamond, you should be able to look at the problem from different angles. This also means being able to broker in experts and get other people’s perspective on the problem. Problem solving is a team sport. It’s also about leveraging smart people without domain expertise. For example, you can take a dev manager in consumer devices and have him/her move into the enterprise or business applications.
  7. Model the problem. By abstracting the problem into a model, you can think about it in simpler ways, without being bogged down by the implementation details. One of Bill Gate’s favorite tools is his whiteboard. A whiteboard makes it easy to sketch out ideas and visualize them. A whiteboard can help whether you’re trying to map out the problem or draw a solution. Keep in mind that George Box taught us that, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
  8. Think of the system and the ecosystem. Bill Gates has an engineering mind. He can see the problem as a system. You can map out the system by asking yourself questions along the line of, what are the bits and pieces? … How does it work? … How do the bits and pieces work together? … what’s the flow through the system? … what are the inputs and outputs? After you have a handle on the system, you can ask yourself about the ecosystem or the system of systems.
  9. Think of the problem over time. It’s easy to look at the problem and just see it as a static snapshot. The challenge is playing out the problem or your solution over time. Time can dramatically change what it looks like. Consider the impact of trends. Consider sustainability. Some things that look good only temporary, and really break down when you apply time to them. Sometimes time is on your side. You might find that there may be better windows of opportunity.
  10. Think strategically. Strategy guides your actions. You can think strategically along different lines. Consider the core of what you do (mission, vision, values, and goals.) Consider internal analysis (strengths and weaknesses, resources and capabilities, and benchmarking.) Consider external analysis (competitive analysis, opportunities and threats, and industry conditions.) Consider the organization design (structure, controls and incentives, culture and people.) Consider execution (roles, responsibilities, resources, action plans, measurement, and accountability.) Consider functional strategies (marketing and sales, operations, human resources, and R&D.) Consider strategic choices (corporate strategy and business strategy.)

Friendship Quotes

Top 10 Friendship Quotes

  1. “A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  2. “A friend to all is a friend to none.” – Aristotle
  3. “A stranger stabs you in the front, a friend stabs you in the back, a boyfriend stabs you in the heart, but best friends only poke each other with straws.” – Unknown
  4. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” — Arnold H. Glasow
  5. “Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don’t say.” — Unknown
  6. “Friendship isn’t about whom you have known the longest …It’s about who came, and never left your side.” – Unknown
  7. “Hold a true friend with both your hands.” – Proverb
  8. “My best friend is the one who brings out the best of me.” — Henry Ford
  9. “Never explain yourself. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it.” — Belgicia Howell
  10. “There comes a point in your life when you realise who really matters, who never did, and who always will.” — Unknown

Friendship Quotes

  1. “A friend can tell you things you don’t want to tell yourself.” ~Frances Ward Weller
  2. ”A friend in need is a friend indeed.” – Proverb
  3. “A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.” — Douglas Pagels
  4. “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” — Elbert Hubbard
  5. “A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.” — Grace Pulpit
  6. “A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” — Donna Roberts
  7. “A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.” — John D. Rockefeller
  8. “A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” — Lois Wyse
  9. “A hug is like a boomerang – you get it back right away.” — Bil Keane
  10. “A joy shared is a joy doubled.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  11. “A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.” — Arnold H. Glasgow
  12. “A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  13. “A single rose can be my garden … a single friend, my world.” — Leo Buscaglia
  14. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked” – Bernard Meltzer
  15. “A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart.” — Heather Pryor
  16. “A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.” — William Penn
  17. “Ah, how good it feels!  The hand of an old friend.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  18. “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” — Abraham Lincoln
  19. “An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.” – Buddha
  20. “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.” — George Washington
  21. “But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.” — Thomas Jefferson
  22. “But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
  23. “Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie.” — Robert Brault
  24. “Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship.” — Dorothy Parker
  25. “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”– C.S. Lewis
  26. “Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” — Albert Camus
  27. “Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.” — Shirley MacLaine
  28. “Friends and good manners will carry you where money won’t go.” — Margaret Walker
  29. “Friends are born, not made.” — Henry B. Adams
  30. “Friends are relatives you make for yourself.” — Eustache Deschamps
  31. “Friends can be said to “fall in like” with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.” — Letty Cottin Pogrebin
  32. “Friendship and money: oil and water.” — Mario Puzo
  33. “Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.” — Joseph Addison
  34. “Friendship is a sheltering tree.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  35. “Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” – Aristotle
  36. “Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins.” — Charles Alexander Eastman
  37. “Friendship is one mind in two bodies.” – Mencius
  38. “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” — C. S. Lewis
  39. “Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.” — Dag Hammarskjold
  40. “Friendship is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” — Muhammad Ali
  41. “Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it”. – Cicero
  42. “Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
  43. “Friendship’s the wine of life.” — Edward Young
  44. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” — Oscar Wilde
  45. “He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  46. “How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.” — Henry David Thoreau
  47. “I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.” — Katherine Mansfield
  48. “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” – Plutarch
  49. “I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.” — Thomas A. Edison
  50. “I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.” — Robert Brault
  51. “If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone.  A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.” — Samuel Johnson
  52. “If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. i’ll always be with you.” — Winnie the Pooh
  53. “If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.” — George MacDonald
  54. “If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.” — Alice Duer Miller
  55. “If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  56. “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” — Albert Schweitzer
  57. “In my friend, I find a second self.” — Isabel Norton
  58. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
  59. “It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  60. “It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  61. “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” — William Blake
  62. “It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.” – Epicurus
  63. “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  64. “It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” — Marlene Dietrich
  65. “It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.” – Cicero
  66. “It takes a long time to grow an old friend.” — John Leonard
  67. “Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.” — Mark Twain
  68. “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
  69. “Life is nothing without friendship.” – Cicero
  70. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” — Tennessee Williams
  71. “Life is slippery. Here, take my hand.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  72. “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” — Karl Menninge
  73. “Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.” — Anthony Robbins
  74. “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” — Oprah Winfrey
  75. “Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.” — Emil Ludwig
  76. “Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn’t seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  77. “Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.” — Samuel Pepys
  78. “Most of us don’t need a psychiatric therapist as much as a friend to be silly with.” — Robert Brault
  79. “Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.” — Elbert Hubbard
  80. “Never have a companion that casts you in the shade.” — Baltasar Gracian
  81. “Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.” – Plautus
  82. “Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other”. — Honore de Balzac
  83. “One doesn’t know, till one is a bit at odds with the world, how much one’s friends who believe in one rather generously, mean to one.” — D.H. Lawrence
  84. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.” — Margaret Mead
  85. “One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.” – Clifton Fadiman
  86. “One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.” — E. M. Forster
  87. “One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.” — George Santayana
  88. “Only a life lived for others is worth living.” — Albert Einstein
  89. “Our most difficult task as a friend is to offer understanding when we don’t understand.” — Robert Brault
  90. “Say what you want about aging, it’s still the only way to have old friends.” — Robert Brault
  91. “She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” — Toni Morrison
  92. “Silence is the true friend that never betrays.” – Confucius
  93. “Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.” — Margaret Lee Runbeck
  94. “Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.” — Francesco Guicciardini
  95. “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.” — Virginia Woolf
  96. “Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.” — Rod McKuen
  97. “The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.” – Aristotle
  98. “The best mirror in the world is an old friend.” — Unknown
  99. “The best time to make friends is before you need them.” — Ethel Barrymore
  100. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” — William Blake
  101. “The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other.” — Ashleigh Brilliant
  102. “The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another’s little lapses.” — David Storey
  103. The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.” — Elbert Hubbard
  104. “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” — Henry David Thoreau
  105. “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, ‘What are you going through?’” — Simone Weil
  106. “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” — Elisabeth Foley
  107. “The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.” — Henry David Thoreau
  108. “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  109. “The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  110. “The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?” — Eugene Kennedy
  111. “The sincere friends of this world are as ship lights in the stormiest of nights.” — Giotto di Bondone
  112. “The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  113. “The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.” — Francis Bacon
  114. “There’s nothing more precious in this world than the feeling of being wanted.” — Diana Dors
  115. “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.” — Thomas Aquinas
  116. “Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.” — William Butler Yeats
  117. “Those truly linked don’t need correspondence. When they meet again after many years apart, Their friendship is as true as ever.” — Deng Ming-Dao
  118. “’Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.” — Benjamin Franklin
  119. “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.” — Brandi Snyder
  120. “True friends stab you in the front.” — Oscar Wilde
  121. “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” — David Tyson Gentry
  122. “True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.” –
    Charles Caleb Colton
  123. “True friendship isn’t about being there when it’s convenient; it’s about being there when it’s not.” – Anonymous
  124. “Truth springs from argument amongst friends.” — David Hume
  125. “We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
  126. “We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.” — Jeanette Winterson
  127. “We are keenly aware of the faults of our friends, but if they like us enough it doesn’t matter.” — Mignon McLaughlin
  128. “We are the captains of our own ships sailing the sea of life, but in times of a stormy weather, you will discover true friends when they don’t hesitate to be a lighthouse.” — Dodinsky
  129. “We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.” — Joseph Roux
  130. “We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.” – Letty Cottin Pogrebin
  131. “What do we ask of friendship except to be taken for what we pretend to be – and without having to pretend.” — Robert Brault
  132. “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” — George Eliot
  133. “What is a friend?  A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” – Aristotle
  134. “What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  135. “When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.” — Edward W. Howe
  136. “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” — Henri Nouwen
  137. “When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.” — W. Somerset Maugham
  138. “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.” – Aristotle
  139. “Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
  140. “You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.” — Laurence J. Peter

Happy New Year Wish

My Happy New Year wish for you
Is for your best year yet,
A year where life is peaceful,
And what you want, you get.

A year in which you cherish
The past year’s memories,
And live your life each new day,
Full of bright expediencies.

I wish for you a holiday
With happiness galore;
And when it’s done, I wish you
Happy New Year, and many more.

Nuggets Of Wisdom

Favourites

  1. “Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
  2. “Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are in essence ignoring the owner’s manual your creator gave you and destroying your design.”
  3. “I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.”
  4. “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
  5. “The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”
  6. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
  7. “We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.”
  8. “What I know is, is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”
  9. “What I know for sure is that if you want success, you can’t make success your goal.  The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant, and the success will naturally follow.”
  10. “You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.”

Choice

  • “Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.”
  • “Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.”
  • “I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”
  • “I believe that uncertainty is really my spirit’s way of whispering, “I’m in flux. I can’t decide for you. Something is off-balance here.”
  • “I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”
  • “It’s much easier for me to make major life, multi-million dollar decisions, than it is to decide on a carpet for my front porch. That’s the truth.”
  • “My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”
  • “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”
  • “Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.”
  • “With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.”

Dreams / Destiny / Purpose

  • “Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.”
  • “Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.”
  • “I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.”
  • “I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.”
  • “I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.”
  • “I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.”
  • “I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
  • “It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.”
  • “Often we don’t even realize who we’re meant to be because we’re so busy trying to live out someone else’s ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.”
  • “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”
  • “The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”
  • “Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.”
  • “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.”

Giving / Gratitude

  • “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
  • “I don’t think you ever stop giving. I really don’t. I think it’s an on-going process. And it’s not just about being able to write a check. It’s being able to touch somebody’s life.”
  • “I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.”
  • “Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.”
  • “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
  • “What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.”

Growth

  • “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand.”
  • “I am a woman in process. I’m just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”
  • “Getting my lifelong weight struggle under control has come from a process of treating myself as well as I treat others in every way.”
  • “The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.”
  • “You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.”

Fear / Failure

  • “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”
  • “Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.”
  • “I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.”
  • “I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.”
  • “I have a lot of things to prove to myself. One is that I can live my life fearlessly.”
  • “It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about.”
  • “So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.”
  • “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”
  • “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.”
  • “You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.”

Identity / Individuality

  • “All these years I’ve been feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown.”
  • “As you become more clear about who you really are, you’ll be better able to decide what is best for you … the first time around.”
  • “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.”
  • “I always knew I was destined for greatness.”
  • “I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.”
  • “I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.”
  • “I’m black, I don’t feel burdened by it and I don’t think it’s a huge responsibility. It’s part of who I am. It does not define me.”
  • “If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.”
  • “In every aspect of our lives, we are always asking ourselves, How am I of value? What is my worth? Yet I believe that worthiness is our birthright.”
  • “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.”
  • “Partake of some of life’s sweet pleasures. And yes, get comfortable with yourself.”
  • “Though I am grateful for the blessings of wealth, it hasn’t changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I’m just wearing better shoes.”
  • “What we’re all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection.”

Opportunity / Possibility

  • “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
  • “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”
  • “Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.”
  • “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
  • “If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”
  • “When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes.”

Passion / Energy

  • “Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.”
  • “I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.”
  • “If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.”
  • “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.”

Relationships

  • “I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.”
  • “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
  • “My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.”
  • “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”
  • “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Success

  • “For every one of us that succeeds, it’s because there’s somebody there to show you the way out.”
  • “I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.”
  • “If you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with the spirit.”
  • “I’ve learned that you can’t have everything and do everything at the same time.”
  • “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.”
  • “There’s no easy way out. If there were, I would have bought it. And believe me, it would be one of my favorite things!”
  • “Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.”
  • “What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people’s lives.”

Positive Mantras

There is an popular expression in the world of startups “fake it till you make it”.  You might not be there yet, but you have to believe first in order to get there.

One “trick” I learned from the world of personal development is that of having positive “mantras” or “affirmations”.  You see we all live in our own reality, and if your version of reality is positive and productive than you will also be positive and productive in the “real world”.

The Sanskrit word mantra is made up of the root man “to think” and the suffix -tra meaning instruments, so a literal translation would be “instrument of thought”.  Mantras have been used for many centuries to help people develop more positive mindsets in most religions through prayer for instance.

Having positive mantras enables you to live life the way you want and once in a while when you forget, you can repeat your chosen mantras.  You will feel and have a positive impact by having these.

Here is a list of my own “mantra” that I have written out.  I have these stored on my cell phone so that I can repeat them once in a while – ideally everyday and especially when things seem “challenging”:

  • I can achieve anything I put my mind to.
  • I can make anything happen.
  • I am an awesome person that people love to be around.
  • I have a great ability to speak, write and teach.
  • I add value to my friends, family, employees and people that know me.
  • Opportunities, wealth and people come naturally and easily to me.
  • I am a naturally lucky person.
  • I travel the world and have amazing experiences that continuously help me grow as a person.
  • I am attractive to all women.
  • I learn things easily.
  • I make friends easily.
  • I eat well naturally and exercise is a natural part of my routine.
  • I am satisfied spiritually.
  • I have a profitable corporation that has a huge impact on the community.
  • My words change the world in a positive way.
  • I am a global leader in terms of education, internet and wealth creation.
  • I motivate people globally and help them find their purpose.
  • I am a positive role model.
  • My life is peaceful and enjoyable.
  • I am with the woman of my dreams and love to be around her.
  • I love my life.
  • Everything happens for a positive reason.
  • I create educational products, software and businesses that people love to use.
  • I live a life of luxury.
  • I am creative and am proactive in getting things done.
  • I am organized and relaxed.
  • I have a company that runs itself and continues to grow in profit and impact.
  • I am in perfect heath.
  • I have positive and healthy habits.
  • I have a positive peer group.
  • I am internally motivated constantly and consistently.
  • The world is a better place because of me.
  • People in my life are positive and successful.
  • I am surrounded by family/friends/employees/partners that are positive role models for myself and others.
  • I am happy and fulfilled.

Tips for writing mantras

1.  Write out in the positive rather than negative.  So instead of writing “I am not stressed”, I have written out “I am organized and relaxed”.  This is because the mind does not work in negatives.  So if I tell you “don’t think of a pink elephant” chances are that you are thinking of a pink elephant.  So if you write “I am not a smoker”, chances are you are thinking about “smoking”.  Write “I have healthy habits” or something else positive instead.

2.  Write in the present.  Instead of “I will someday be happy and fulfilled.”, I wrote “I am happy and fulfilled.”.  If you are always thinking in the future, than it will always remain in the future.

3.  Do it now.  They say that the longer you wait before learning something and actually doing it, the less likely it is to happen.  So if you take out a pen or use the “notes” of your cell phone to write out your mantras now, it is more likely to happen.

In an ideal world what would be true?

Let me know when this works for you, and if you got any others that I have missed write them in the comment below or let me so I can add them to my own list!

Six Keys to Being Excellent

If you want to be really good at something, it’s going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, as well as frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures. That’s true as long as you want to continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The reward is that being really good at something you’ve earned through your own hard work can be immensely satisfying.

Here, then, are the six keys to achieving excellence we’ve found are most effective for our clients:

  1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.

  2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.

  3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.

  4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.

  5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

  6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail.  The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle.  In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. “Lose 5 pounds” is a better goal than “lose some weight,” because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you’ll “eat less” or “sleep  more” is too vague — be clear and precise. “I’ll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights” leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you’ve actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals.
Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it’s not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., “If it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I’ll work out for 30 minutes before work.”) Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don’t know how well you are doing, you can’t adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist.
When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won’t improve.  As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential.  People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit.
Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty.  Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs.  Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point.  In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it.  People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities successful people have.  If that describes your own thinking …. well, there’s no way to put this nicely: you are wrong.   As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed.  Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control “muscle” is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don’t. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur (“If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.”) It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that’s the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don’t tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it’s important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don’t try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don’t put yourself in harm’s way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., “Don’t think about white bears!”) has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like “If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down.” By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

Remember, you don’t need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It’s never what you are, but what you do.

Dietrich Mateschitz

Red Bull

Mateschitz was born in  Austria to a family of Croatian ancestry. His parents were both primary school teachers and separated when he was very young. Although never married, he reportedly has a son.

After taking ten years to graduate from the Hochschule für Welthandel with a marketing degree, Mateschitz’s first employer was Unilever, where he worked marketing detergents. He subsequently moved to Blendax, the German cosmetics company since bought by Procter & Gamble, where he worked, among other things, in the marketing of Blendax tooth paste. It was as part of his travels for Blendax that he discovered Krating Daeng, the drink that would later become Red Bull. In 1984, he founded Red Bull GmbH with his Thai partners Chaleo and Chalerm Yoovidhya with the launch in Austria in 1987.Subsequently, he turned the Red Bull drink into a world market leader among energy drinks.

It all began in 1982, when Mateschitz, then the marketing director of the German cosmetics company Blendax, was sitting at the bar of the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong. Musing on the popularity of “tonic drinks” in the Far East, the idea came to him of selling something similar in the West. He formed a partnership with a local colleague who was already producing a drink called “Krating Daeng”, or Thai water buffalo, and Red Bull was born. From the start, Mateschitz had an enormous amount of confidence both in his product and his ability to sell it to the world. “There exists no market for Red Bull,” he said at the time, “but we will create one.”

Red Bull launched in Austria in 1987 and the rest is history.

Dietrich Mateschitz has since became one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of more than $4billion.

The reality is he had been a billionaire ever  since he came up with the energy drink idea but until he had formed the right partnerships, marketed/promoted Redbull and brought it to the marketplace it really had no value.

We at http://www.shopmarkaz.com found out that a lot of businesses around the 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 Shopmarkaz.com and allow us to help you discover your RedBull!!
www.shopmarkaz.com