Focus on effectiveness—what your actions will actually accomplish—and not self-actualization or other ways of trying to feel good about yourself.
~ Steven Pinker
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Fear
[F]ear is not a sign of personal weakness, but rather a natural state of discomfort that occurs whenever you’re out of your comfort zone. It’s there not to sabotage you, but to help you come alive, be more focused, and put you into the present moment and a heightened state of excitement and awareness. If you push the fear away, the only version of fear available to you will be its crazy, irrational, or contorted version. If you’re willing to feel it, and merge with it, its energy and wisdom will appear.
~ Kristen Ulmer
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Relaxed concentration
The player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills; He discovers the true basis for self-confidence; And he learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.
~ W. Timothy Gallwey
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Silence
Be the silence that listens
~ Tara Brach
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Thinking through
Ignore advice to simply follow your intuition or gut without thinking through whether the course is likely to be fruitful and rewarding.
~ Steven Pinker
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Discipline
Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. Do you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. Discipline is the only way to get it.
~ Jocko Willink
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Everything is figure-out-able
No matter what challenge or obstacle you face, whether it’s personal, professional, or global, there’s a path ahead. It’s all figure-out-able. you’ll find a way or make a way, if you’re willing to be relentless, stay nimble, and keep taking action. It’s especially useful to remember when things go wrong, because rather than wasting time or energy on the problem, you shift immediately to brainstorming solutions.
~ Marie Forleo
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Networking
In creative fields, I think networking actually hurts you in most cases. Don’t waste your time socializing with people who you think can help you. Just get better, and opportunities will naturally present themselves once you deserve them. Only focus on things within your control. And if you don’t know what those things are, find someone who can tell you. Don’t network, just work.
~ Whitney Cummings
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Deluding oneself
Find a new topic or area or concern that has a small number of people that you respect behind it, but which has not become a culture-wide fad or conventional wisdom. If it’s already common knowledge, it’s probably too late to make a major contribution. If you’re the only one excited, you may be deluding yourself.
~ Steven Pinker
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Humility
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.
~ Albert Einstein
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The island of knowledge
As the Island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance—the boundary between the known and unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination—whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyways—but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.
~ Marcelo Gleiser
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Love affairs
A speech is like a love affair. Any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.
~ Lord Mancroft
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Creative choices
There are no radical creative choices that do not carry with them an inherent risk of equally radical failure. You cannot do anything great without aggressively courting your own limits and the limits of your ideas. […] There is nothing more powerful than failure to reveal to you what you are truly capable of. Avoiding risk of failure means avoiding transcendent creative leaps forward. You can’t have one without the other.
~ Aisha Tyler
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To handle others
To handle yourself, use your head; To handle others, use your heart.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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Change of troubles
The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.
~ Epicurus
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Love
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
~ G. K. Chesterton
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Breakfast
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
~ John Gunther
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Obstacles
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
~ Henry Ford
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Far more control
We have far more control in our lives than many embrace. We create or co-create our experiences in life, and each day is a new opportunity to be fully engaged in the present moment. It’s the present moment where glimpses of our potential are revealed and expressed. A living masterpiece is not drawn on a canvas or etched in stone or inked by pen. It’s the pursuit and expresssion of applied insight and wisdom.
~ Michael Gervais
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Daring
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
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