“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“No Control problems (those we can do nothing about) involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom of our face – to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them. In this way, we do not empower these problems to control us. We share in the spirit embodied in the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer, ‘Lord, give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.”
– Johannes Brahms

“It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It’s how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It’s how we view our problems and where we focus our energies.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
– Steve Jobs

“You can buy people’s hand, but you can’t by their hearts. Their hearts are where their enthusiasm, their loyalty is. You can buy their backs, but you can’t buy their brains. That’s where their creativity is, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Challenge one: Believing that the solution you’ve got (the person you want to hire, the strategy you want to implement, the decision you want to make) is the one and only way to make the problem go away or take advantage of the opportunity.

Falling in love with your solution makes it incredibly difficult to see its flaws, to negotiate with people who don’t agree with you, to find an even better solution.

And, on the other side of the table…

Challenge two: When you find someone who is pitching a solution you don’t like, it’s tempting to deny that there’s much of a problem at all. After all, if you diminish the problem, you won’t have to accept the solution that’s on the table.

But of course, the problem is real. The dissatisfaction or inefficiency or wrong direction isn’t going to go away merely because we deny it.

It’s amazing how much we can get done when agree to get something done.”

• Seth Godin

“Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around.”
– Katharine Hepburn

“Learning from history is cheap. And worth it.

What are the five best decisions your competitor or your predecessor made last year? Not only because they worked, but because they showed you a new way of thinking, something that went against your instincts or biases…

Every political candidate ought to be able to outline the five lessons learned from the men and women who came before–especially the positive things they’ve learned from those in other parties.

Those unwilling or unable to do so are either demagogues or ignorant.

Every job candidate ought to be able to outline the five lessons learned from the leaders they’ve worked with previously. Those unwilling or unable to do so are not paying attention.

The number one thing to steal from your competitors: Wisdom.”
– Seth Godin

“Beware of him who tries to poison your mind against another under the pretense of helping you. The chances are a thousand to one he is trying to help himself.”
– Napoleon Hill