“Once you have a sense of mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity. You have the vision and the values that direct your life. You have the basic direction from which you set your long and short-term goals. You have the power of a written constitution based on correct principles, against which every decision concerning the most effective us of your time, your talents, and your energies can be effectively measured.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Someone once observed that the reason we often fail to recognize opportunities is because they come disguised as problems. When a customer, a colleague, or your boss has a problem it may create a valuable opportunity for you. It isn’t important to the person with the problem how your company is organized or whose responsibility it is to solve the problem; he or she only wants the situation resolved.

The next time a customer, a colleague, or your boss asks for your assistance in something that falls outside your area of responsibility, instead of referring them to someone else, offer to help. Look at the situation from the other person’s point of view. How would you like the situation handled if the roles were reversed? Take the initiative to find the answer, solve the problem, or keep the project moving forward.”
– Napoleon Hill

“I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I can become my own first creator.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Movie producer Michael Todd one said, ‘Being broke is temporary; being poor is a state of mine.’ So it is with opportunity. Whether you see opportunities or limitations is entirely within your control. How you view the world is a reflection of your mental attitude. If you focus on your inadequacies, you will be plagued by fear, doubt, and failure, but when you focus on your strengths, you will find courage, confidence and success.

Self-confidence can replace self-doubt only be deliberate, planned effort. When you start to doubt your capabilities, pause to review your previous accomplishments. Identify every experience that might be helpful to you in your present situation. When you apply the knowledge and wisdom you have accumulated, there are few limitations that you cannot overcome.”
– Napoleon Hill

“It is possible to be busy – very busy – without being very effective.”

• Stephen R. Covey

“Opportunities are never just handed to you; they must be created. Opportunities abound for every individual in every walk of life. They may not be the opportunities that you prefer, but each opportunity of which you take advantage leads to bigger and better opportunities.

Those who approach their jobs and careers with enthusiasm always find plenty of opportunities, while those who complain about no one ever giving them a chance are merely observers of life. When you are determined that you will not allow others to determine your future for you, when you refuse to allow temporary setbacks to defeat you, you are destined for great success. The opportunities will always be there for you.”
– Napoleon Hill

“Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agenda, of circumstances, or of past habits.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
– George Washington Carver

“When someone handed you a calculator for the first time, it meant that long division was never going to be required of you ever again. A huge savings in time, a decrease in the cognitive load of decision making.

Now what?

You can use that surplus to play video games and hang out.

Or you can use that surplus to go learn how to do something that can’t be done by someone merely because she has a calculator.

Either way, your career as a long-divisionator was over.

Entire professions and industries are disrupted by the free work and shortcuts that are produced by the connection economy, by access to information, by robots. Significant parts of your job are almost certainly among them.

Now that we can get what you used to do really quickly and cheaply from someone else, you can either insist that you still get to do that for us at the same fee you used to charge, or you can move up the ladder and do something we can’t do without you.”

• Seth Godin

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things.  The first group is less crowded.”

• Mark Twain