90 Days...

Almost there...

:-)

Here's the rundown of the past 10 days...

1. PhilosophersNotes: Here are the books I covered this week:

"The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" - Nathaniel Brandon
"Spiritual Economics" - Eric Butterworth
"Spiritual Liberation" - Michael Bernard Beckwith
"The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire" - Deepak Chopra
"Strength for Life" - Shawn Phillips
"The Success Principles" - Jack Canfield
"Take Off from Within" - Ervin Seale
"The Tao Te Ching" - Lao Tzu
"Think and Grow Rich" - Napoleon Hill
"Think on These Things" - Krishnamurti

Here are my favorite 8 quotes from the past 10 days:

“When you pray, move your feet.” - Proverb

“Nature obeys us in proportion as we first obey nature.” - Ervin Seale

"Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.” – Eric Butterworth

“You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.” – Seneca

“Your body, the only one you will ever have, is the foundation of your life. And it’s either an anchor limiting your freedom and potential or a source of radiant energy, vitality and joy, elevating your life and the lives of those around you. It’s your choice… will yours be a source of strength, from which you will impact the world, or an obstacle, preventing you from your dreams and desires? – Shawn Phillips

“Think of it this way. If you are clear where you are going (goals) and you take several steps in that direction every day, you eventually have to get there. If I head north out of Santa Barbara and take five steps a day, eventually I have to end up in San Francisco. So decide what you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals.” – Jack Canfield

“The gift of self-discipline is that it has the power to take you beyond the reasoning of temporary emotion to freedom. Think of how empowered you’ve felt on occasions when you haven’t given in to the ‘I don’t feel like it’ syndrome and honored your commitment to yourself. What does not feeling like it have to do with it? The combination of love for something with the willingness to do what it takes to practice it—discipline—results in freedom.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“That which transforms your life is what you practice. And what you practice constitutes your personal laws of life—not what you merely believe in, but what you practice. It’s all well and good to read books, and to attend seminars, lectures, and workshops, and to say, ‘Oh, that really resonates with me! It’s now part of my life’s philosophy.’ Your philosophy may give you a temporary state of euphoria, but if you want to be anchored in reality, it takes practice, practice, practice. We are not here to be euphoric but to get free. Rudimentary spirituality is theory; advanced spirituality is practice.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith


2. Jump Attack: Weights got heavier, reps went down. This phase has been more challenging in a power sense, as opposed to endurance. It is very liberating pushing beyond your comfort zone. These workouts have been my favorite yet.


3. Nutrition, Eating Well and my other Commitments: I have stayed on the path, not deviating the slightest. It'd be pretty dumb to cheat now. :-)


I look forward to finishing up these last 10 days.

See you in 10.

:-)


***Here are the rest of the Quotes from the past 10 days...

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with license of a higher order of beings.” - Henry David Thoreau

“Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life.” - Eric Butterworth

“Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible.” – Eric Butterworth

“When you believe you can do it, the ‘how-to-do-it’ develops.” - Eric Butterworth

“There is a great idea that you will encounter again and again on your quest: you are a living magnet, constantly drawing to you the things, the people, and the circumstances which are in accord with your thoughts. In other words, you are where you are in experience, in relationships, even in financial conditions, because of what you are (which is where you are in consciousness).” – Eric Butterworth

“Faith is really your consent to let your own uniqueness unfold and to let that which is attracted by your uniqueness manifest in your life. Thus when Jesus said, ‘All things are possible to those who believe,’ he did not say that a swan can become a duck or that a nonmusical person can become a concert pianist. You cannot become something that is not the outforming of your own inner potential. You can only be you. However you can unfold more of the you that may have been long frustrated.” - Eric Butterworth

“When you pray, move your feet.” - Proverb

“Ask the great athlete or the concert pianist or the successful actor if they arrived at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice.” – Eric Butterworth

“The great piano virtuoso Paderewski was once playing before an audience of the rich and the royal. After a brilliant performance, an elegant lady waxed ecstatic over the great artist. She said, ‘Ah Maestro, you are a genius!’ Paderewski tartly replied, ‘Ah yes, madam, but before I was a genius I was a clod!’ What he was saying was that his present acclaim was not handed to him on a silver platter. He, too, was once a little boy laboriously practicing his scales. And even at his peak, behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.” – Eric Butterworth

“Faith is expectancy. You do not receive what you want; you do not receive what you pray for, not even what you say you have faith in. You will always receive what you actually expect.” – Eric Butterworth

“A true desire is not to have but to be. We are whole creatures in potential, and the true purpose of desire is to unfold that wholeness, to become what we can be. As Goethe says, ‘Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.’” – Eric Butterworth

“The mystic ideal, so often missed, is really simple: build on the awareness of ever-present substance and expand your faith in the stability of your own inner wholeness. The things will come too, and in abundance. But they will come out of expanse of your wholeness, not at its expense.” – Eric Butterworth

“The takers are the people who believe that their lives will always be the total of what they can get from the world. They are always thinking get, get, get. They plan and scheme ways to get what they want in money, in love, in happiness, and in all kinds of good. No matter that they may be applying metaphysical techniques, they still may very well be takers. But whatever may be their spiritual ideals or lack of any, no matter what they take, they can never know peace or security or fulfillment.

The givers, on the other hand, are convinced life is a giving process. Thus their subtle motivation in all their ways is to give themselves away, in love, in service, and in all the many helpful ways they can invest themselves. They are always secure, for they intuitively know that their good flows from within.” – Eric Butterworth

“Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.” – Eric Butterworth

“We’ve all experienced how discipline sometimes causes an automatic rebellion or resistance within us. We don’t like the energy around the word discipline, perhaps because of the place it has occupied in our upbringing, education or religion. However, a healthy view of discipline keeps us on track in areas of our life where we’ve determined to make a change. Discipline is a practice of self-love, self-respect, and surrender that results in freedom.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“Don’t think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania. Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.” – Lao Tzu

“You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.” – Seneca

“The gift of self-discipline is that it has the power to take you beyond the reasoning of temporary emotion to freedom. Think of how empowered you’ve felt on occasions when you haven’t given in to the ‘I don’t feel like it’ syndrome and honored your commitment to yourself. What does not feeling like it have to do with it? The combination of love for something with the willingness to do what it takes to practice it—discipline—results in freedom.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“One of the ways we hijack our capacity to experience a state of beholding is that we become swept up in what I call the ‘tyranny of trends.’ The tyranny of trends allows for the lowest common denominator to set the standard of success, and of course, ‘coolness.’ Very often, trends convince individuals what their life’s purpose should be. The tyranny of trends is blasted out at us from television, radio, newspapers, tabloids, computers, and even our dentist’s waiting room, attempting to convince us that we must smell a certain way, wear a certain label, weigh a specific weight, have whiter teeth, drive a certain car, make a certain income, and so on, before we can consider that we’ve made it.”

“Begin to consciously break your agreement with the mediocrity present in the tyranny of trends. No longer consider trendsetters as people who are to be admired or imitated. Break free from the hold of what society tells us we should be like. Be drawn into the presence of those who exemplify the next level of human evolution—a spiritual teacher or spiritual community. Each of us has arrived on planet Earth to behold, to participate in the adventure of exploring the truth that we are enlightened beings having a human incarnation.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“Not all pain is negative, even though we label all forms of pain as such and resist them. Positive-negativity is a circumstance that causes us to go deeper, to search ourselves, to stop placing blame on the causes of suffering outside ourselves, and take self-responsibility.

Circumstances arise and hard times come so that we may grow through them, so that we may evolve. I like to say that a bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul. When we look back on some of our most challenging experiences, we admit that we wouldn’t trade what we gained from them for remaining the same as we were. Something within acknowledges that during those times when we are pressed against the ropes of life, we learn to become more generous, to forgive, to never give up on ourselves or others. We learn to regenerate, to rejuvenate, to surrender.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“What keeps nagging at you to take action that you keep holding back on, postponing? Don’t wait. Participate, risk, and grow now. The longer you hide out in the attempt to remain safe, the more you become fearful, nervous, hesitant. You will not be present as a participant in birthing a new world, a world that very much wants and needs the contribution of your consciousness.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“A conscious realization of our innate oneness with the Ineffable does not mean that we will never make a mistake again. Even enlightened beings burn their bagels once in a while. It’s important to maintain a sense of humor because this is how you will stop being afraid of making a mistake. You’ll make some, but so what? That’s why they’re called mis-takes. Humor relaxes the uptight ego. You get a new cue from your inner Self and simply say, ‘I missed my cue, so let’s do a second take.’ Your willingness to take the risk of making a mistake is actually an expression of courage and a willingness to grow from them. Mistakes are about getting the blessing in the lesson and the lesson in the blessing.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“That which transforms your life is what you practice. And what you practice constitutes your personal laws of life—not what you merely believe in, but what you practice. It’s all well and good to read books, and to attend seminars, lectures, and workshops, and to say, ‘Oh, that really resonates with me! It’s now part of my life’s philosophy.’ Your philosophy may give you a temporary state of euphoria, but if you want to be anchored in reality, it takes practice, practice, practice. We are not here to be euphoric but to get free. Rudimentary spirituality is theory; advanced spirituality is practice.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“To agree with the keys described here is one thing, to practice them is another. To read and study and have conversations about spiritual practices is good, but unless you incorporate them into your life, you won’t embody or integrate them—which means you aren’t receiving their benefits. Ask yourself, ‘How can I now move from theory into practice?’ If you merely collect spiritual information without practicing it, all you will develop is a case of spiritual indigestion and constipation.” - Michael Bernard Beckwith

“Understand that to be creatively maladjusted is to know the vital distinction between personality and character. The word character is from the Old French ‘caractere’ and means ‘imprint on the soul.’ The etymology of personality suggests veneer and is connected with the Latin word persona, which was a mask worn by actors. Character is revealed when our mask is removed.

It’s easy to tell if you are living from character or personality: If things aren’t going your way, personality pouts while character remains unruffled and learns from the experience. When you are not in psychologically or emotionally safe territory, personality panics. Character, on the other hand, rides the vicissitudes of life with even-mindedness. Personality endeavors to extract happiness from its experiences, whereas character realizes that happiness is an inherent quality of being that infuses experiences with happiness.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“Ground yourself in the intention to be radically alive. I like these words of Dr. Howard Thurman: ‘Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.’ This means that, as long as you are on the planet, you are here to deliver your gifts, your talents, and your skills with confidence and inner authority, withholding nothing. This is when you are living full out, moving in the reality of love, affluence, and artistry of being. Your radical aliveness not only affects your individual life but life on the planet as we know it.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

“The universe has much bigger plans for you than you ever dreamed of for yourself. - Deepak Chopra

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” - Shakespeare

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” – Hafez

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

“Your body, the only one you will ever have, is the foundation of your life. And it’s either an anchor limiting your freedom and potential or a source of radiant energy, vitality and joy, elevating your life and the lives of those around you. It’s your choice… will yours be a source of strength, from which you will impact the world, or an obstacle, preventing you from your dreams and desires? – Shawn Phillips

“Bruce Lee said it well in these words: ‘Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.’ You can count on me to reach in and help fire you up, to keep you moving and inspired for greatness, but ultimately it’s up to you.” - Shawn Phillips

“Recently we crossed a tipping point where, for the first time in recorded history, the youngest generation of children are now expected to live shorter lives than their parents, even though medical technology continues to advance and we know far more about the impact of poor diet and inactivity than ever before.” - Shawn Phillips

“Whether you face reality head on and make a life change, or deny your responsibility, you’ve made a choice. The way I see it you choose either a life of abundant strength and energy, or you’re living in the gap, far beneath the quality of life you could be enjoying.” – Shawn Phillips

“The numbers are startling. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 30% of U.S. adults 20 and older are obese and 65 percent are either overweight or obese… One out of five kids ages 12 to 19 is now considered obese.” – Shawn Phillips

“Most people are settling for less than their potential, for less strength, energy and vitality than they both can have and deserve. To accept life anywhere below our fullest potential is to be living in the gap, blindly accepting ‘what is’ without ever deeply considering ‘what could be.’” - Shawn Phillips

“You’re never too old to gain strength. The Noll Laboratory for Human Performance compared young men with men between ages 45 and 60 and found that percentage of body fat, along with aerobic capacity, was not related to age but rather to the amount of time spent training their body. The Human Nutrition Center on Aging found muscle growth in people ranging from 60to 96 years old was statistically equivalent to younger people doing the same amount of training with their bodies.” – Shawn Phillips

“The evidence is strong and science validates what millions of Transformation success stories have revealed: ‘typical signs of aging’ are more the result of how you live than how long you’ve lived.” - Shawn Phillips

“Perhaps more than any other factor, it is the mastery of your focus—which precedes mastery of your energy—that separates the average performers from the peak performers in life. The freedom to place your focused attention where you want it, when you want it, offers a competitive advantage in a world where the average attention span is measured in seconds, not minutes. It’s precisely the skill that has so many high profile leaders adopting meditation practices. Steve Jobs of Apple, music icons Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, Oprah, Bill Ford of Ford Motor Co., and the Clintons are a few of the prominent names that belong to the rapidly growing population of Americans—currently reported to be more than 20 million—who have embraced the practice of meditation.” – Shawn Phillips

“Training stimulates endorphins, neurotransmitters, and neurotrophic growth factors your brain thrives on, making you feel good during and immediately following training. Scientists are now discovering long-term positive effects of regular strength training: it makes your neurons more robust while improving blood flow, oxygen and nutrients to your brain.” – Shawn Phillips

“Michael Craig Miller, M.D., editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter, summarizes what scientists have been uncovering for several decades, regular training ‘improves your mood, decreases anxiety, improves sleep and resilience in the face of stress and raises self-esteem.’ He adds that exercise itself makes for a ‘pretty good anti-depressant too, equal to drugs or psychotherapy in some studies.’” – Shawn Phillips

“Here’s the irony: strength training actually makes you smaller. That’s because a pound of muscle is much smaller and takes up less space than a pound of fat. A pound of fat is about the size of a cantaloupe. In contrast a pound of lean muscle is about the size of a baseball. Using this analogy imagine how amazing you would look and feel if you swap 20 pounds of fat (think 20 cantaloupes) for five pounds of lean shape-defining muscle (think 5 baseballs).” – Shawn Phillips

“Drink at least ten 8-ounce glasses of water daily to stay properly hydrated. For an athlete, a 1% drop in hydration can reduce performance output by as much as 20%. For the average person dehydration increases the accumulation of toxins in the body, stunts metabolism, increases risk of cancer and accelerates the aging process. In a dehydrated state the mind and body do not operate at optimal levels.” – Shawn Phillips

“If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.” - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“As you’ll come to know, the closer you get to your goal, the more it draws you in; success feeds on success. It’s like a gravitational pull. Once you get into a rhythm, it’s hard to stop. You achieve big visions by doing the little things every day and looking at them in a positive focus.” - Shawn Phillips

“Your body is an amazingly adaptive machine. Ask it to be stronger and stronger you will be. Challenge it to go further and further you will go. Coax it to be more limber and more limber it will be. Allow it to mold into the seat of a recliner and, you got it, a recliner seat it will become. Stretch it, push it, pull it; your body is like cellular Play-Doh waiting for you to be the sculptor.” – Shawn Phillips

“How strong are you? How will you lift the world? How will you be a beacon of strength for others? These are the questions of utmost importance… Every one of us has a time limit to fulfill our destiny. Don’t be one who waits for the final buzzer to start to really live. Yesterday is a memory and tomorrow is a dream. Today is the day to make your mark—to make a difference.” – Shawn Phillips

“The formula is simple—do more of what is working, do less of what isn’t, and try on new behaviors to see if they produce better results.” - Jack Canfield

“As motivational philosopher Jim Rohn has so aptly put it, ‘You can’t hire someone else to do your push-ups for you.’ You must do them yourself if you are to get any value out of them. Whether it is exercising, stretching, meditating, reading, studying, learning a new language, creating a mastermind group, setting measurable goals, visualizing success, repeating affirmations, or practicing a new skill, you are going to have to do it. No one else can do these things for you. I will give you the road map, but you will have to drive the car. I will teach you the principles, but you will have to apply them. If you choose to put in the effort, I promise you the rewards will be well worth it.” – Jack Canfield

“It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers to why you haven’t created the life and results you want, for it is you who creates the quality of the life you lead and the results you produce. You—no one else! To achieve major success in life—to achieve those things that are most important to you—you must assume 100% responsibility for your life. Nothing less will do.” – Jack Canfield

“You see, without a purpose in life, it’s easy to get sidetracked on your life’s journey. It’s easy to wander and drift, accomplishing little. But with a purpose, everything in life seems to fall into place. To be ‘on purpose’ means you’re doing what you love to do, doing what you’re good at and accomplishing what’s important to you. When you truly are on purpose, the people, resources, and opportunities you need naturally gravitate toward you. The world benefits, too, because when you act in alignment with your true life purpose, all of your actions automatically serve others.” - Jack Canfield

“If you assume in favor of yourself and act as if it is possible, then you will do the things that are necessary to bring about the result. If you believe it is impossible, you will not do what is necessary, and you will not produce the result. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” - Jack Canfield

“One of the easiest ways to begin clarifying what you truly want is to make a list of 30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to have, and 30 things you want to be before you die. This is a great way to get the ball rolling.” – Jack Canfield

“Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” - Napoleon Hill

“It’s amazing what happens to your self-confidence when you get eyeball to eyeball with yourself and you forcefully tell yourself what you’re going to do. Whatever your dream is, look at yourself in the mirror and declare that you are indeed going to achieve it—no matter what the price.” - Jack Canfield

“I like Dr. Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 Rule: When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.
Surprise, surprise! Most of the time, nobody’s thinking about you at all! They are too busy worrying about their own lives, and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them. People think about themselves, not you. Think about it—all the time you are wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could all be better spent on thinking about and doing the things that will achieve your goals.” – Jack Canfield

“There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” - Ken Blanchard

“I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.” – Dale Carnegie

“My earliest mentor, W. Clement Stone, was once described as an inverse paranoid. Instead of believing the world was plotting to do him harm, he chose to believe the world was plotting to do him good. Instead of seeing every difficult or challenging event as a negative, he saw it for what it could be—something that was meant to enrich him, empower him, or advance his causes.

What an incredibly positive belief! Imagine how much easier it would be to succeed in life if you were constantly expecting the world to support you and bring you opportunity.
Successful people do just that.” – Jack Canfield

“Think of it this way. If you are clear where you are going (goals) and you take several steps in that direction every day, you eventually have to get there. If I head north out of Santa Barbara and take five steps a day, eventually I have to end up in San Francisco. So decide what you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals.” – Jack Canfield

“Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.” - Richard Paul Evans

“You can’t do everything at once. But if you keep adding a little progress every day, over time you will have built a whole new set of habits and self-disciplines. Remember, anything valuable takes time. There are no overnight successes. It took me years to learn and implement all of the principles in this book. I have mastered some and am still working on mastering others.” – Jack Canfield

“It is what you think of this situation that governs you and not the situation itself. Causation is always in mind and not in things.” - Ervin Seale

“Keep any description of trouble or sickness or error minimal, for there is something inside which is listening, and it says, ‘Oh! You like this! I will make you a lot more of it.’” – Ervin Seale

“There is one recurring, persistent, perennial, and dogging personal problem which, more than any other, steals the force and peace of people and ruins projects and enterprises and careers. It is the habit of feeling hurt because of what others do or do not do and what they say or do not say.” – Ervin Seale

“One can never love himself as he ought until he esteems himself in terms of his spiritual heritage—a divinely generated being, destined to win, to achieve, and to express the nature of his source. As water rises no higher than the level of its source, so a man can rise no higher than his personal estimate of his source.” – Ervin Seale

“As Gandhi once said, ‘Renounce the world, then take it back again on other terms.’” - Ervin Seale

“Overconcern for a suffering world is often a projection of one’s own need. And many a needy one has helped himself by helping others. Some have become ineffectual nuisances because they did not realize that the main business of living is individual growth, the seeking of the kingdom of heaven which is within. Let one take care of what has been given him—his thoughts, sensations, faculties, and he will be the best of all help to his fellow men. Of all the people I know who are serving society, those who are making the greatest contributions in alleviating human ills and wants are those who have themselves in hand.” – Ervin Seale

“Nature obeys us in proportion as we first obey nature.” - Ervin Seale

“It is not what is happening to you but rather what is happening in you that determines whether you succeed or fail.” - Ervin Seale

“When we are not Self-conscious, we are self conscious.” - Ervin Seale

“The event has happened. Be willing to have it so. There are an awful lot of folk who resent the event after it has happened, and that means they are keeping it alive. To resent means ‘to feel again.’” - Ervin Seale

“It has happened! Let it be! So you made a mistake, you failed, you came short of your goal, you are chagrined, put out, embarrassed, or cast down. Beware of resenting any of those facts. There is an immediate release of tension when one admits that we all make mistakes and fail. But one should quickly match this admission with the knowledge that failure is not defeat. Our failures only indicate that we are trying for new summits of achievement, and if we are not failing we are not trying. It is not the individual failure that matters, but rather the overall progress. As the Chinese put it, ‘The fault is not in falling down, it is in lying there.’ There are none so tense as those who try to be outwardly perfect. There is great release in acknowledging your foibles and laughing at your mistakes.” - Ervin Seale

“To walk after the spirit means to listen and to believe that God does not mock when he sends us the heart’s true desire. To walk after the spirit means to accept the desire as the promise of God, to believe that that which sends the desire will also send the fulfillment. Then, just as one was formerly compelled into anxiety and trouble, so he will now be compelled into peace and good fortune.” – Ervin Seale

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” – Lao Tzu

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” - Lao Tzu

“Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

“Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.” - Lao Tzu

“Prevent trouble before it arises. Put things in order before they exist. The giant pine tree grows from a tiny sprout. The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath your feet.” – Lao Tzu

“Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” – Lao Tzu

“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.” – Lao Tzu

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

“I had learned, from years of experience with men, that when a man really desires a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win.” – Napoleon Hill

“Truly, ‘thoughts are things,’ and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.” - Napoleon Hill

“A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing the men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores unless we win! We now have no choice—we win—or we perish!’

They won.

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.” – Napoleon Hill

“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step *beyond* the point at which defeat had overtaken them.” - Napoleon Hill

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

“There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be belief, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage and belief.” - Napoleon Hill

“There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.” - Napoleon Hill

“Somewhere in your make-up there lies sleeping, the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights, such as you may never have hoped to attain.” - Napoleon Hill

“Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind.” – Napoleon Hill

“First: I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life; therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action.

Second: I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward, physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore, I will concentrate my thoughts for thirty minutes daily, upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture.” – Napoeon Hill

“Temporary defeat should mean only one thing, the certain knowledge that there is something wrong with your plan. Millions of men go through life in misery and poverty, because they lack a sound plan through which to accumulate a fortune.” - Napoleon Hill

“We see men who have accumulated great fortunes, but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before ‘arriving.’” - Napoleon Hill

“If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan; if this new plan fails to work, replace it in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” – Napoleon Hill

”One thing we all know, if one does not possess persistence, one does not achieve noteworthy success in any calling.” - Napoleon Hill

“Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people.” – Napoleon Hill

“The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.” - Napoleon Hill

“The majority of people are ready to throw their aims and purposes overboard, and give up at the first sign of opposition or misfortune. A few carry on despite all opposition, until they attain their goal. There may be no heroic connotation to the word ‘persistence,’ but the quality is to the character of man what carbon is to steel.” – Napoleon Hill

“Anybody can wish for riches, and most people do, but only a few know that a definite plan, plus a burning desire for wealth, are the only dependable means of accumulating wealth.” - Napoleon Hill

“Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it.” – Napoleon Hill

“Deeds, and not words, are what count most.” – Napoleon Hill

“As long as you are afraid of anyone or anything, there can be no happiness. There can be no happiness as long as you are afraid of your parents, your teachers, afraid of not passing examinations, afraid of not making progress, of not getting nearer to the Master, nearer to truth, or of not being approved of, patted on the back. But if you are really not afraid of anything, then you will find—when you wake up of a morning, or when you are walking alone—that suddenly a strange thing happens: uninvited, unsolicited, unlooked for, that which may be called love, truth, happiness, is suddenly there.” – Krishnamurti

“To go far you must begin near, and the nearest step is the most important one.” – Krishnamurti

“An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind, a mind that is watching, learning, studying.” - Krishnamurti

“Can you and I, who are simple, ordinary people, live creatively in this world without the drive of ambition which shows itself in various ways as the desire for power, position? You will find the right answer when you love what you are doing. If you are an engineer merely because you must earn a livelihood, or because your father or society expects it of you, that is another form of compulsion; and compulsion in any form creates a contradiction, a conflict. Whereas, if you really love to be an engineer, or a scientist, or if you can plant a tree, or paint a picture, or write a poem, not to gain recognition but just because you love to do it, then you will find that you never need to compete with another. I think this is the real key: to love what you do.” – Krishnamurti

“Real life is doing something which you love to do with your whole being so that there is no inner contradiction, no war between what you are doing and what you think you should do. Life is then a completely integrated process in which there is tremendous joy.” – Krishnamurti

“Suppose you want to study painting because to paint is the joy of your life, and your father says that you must become a lawyer or a business man, otherwise he will cut you off and not pay for your education; there is then a contradiction in you, is there not? Now, how are you going to remove that inner contradiction, to be free of the struggle and the pain of it? As long as you are caught in self-contradiction you cannot think; so you must remove the contradiction, you must do one thing or the other. Which will it be? Will you yield to your father? If you do, it means that you have put away your joy, you have wed something which you do not love; and will that resolve the contradiction? Whereas, if you withstand your father, if you say, ‘Sorry, I don’t care if I have to beg, starve, I am going to paint,’ then there is no contradiction; then being and doing are simultaneous, because you know what you want to do and you do it with your whole heart. But if you become a lawyer or a business man while inside you are burning to be a painter, then for the rest of your life you will be a dull, weary human being living in torment, in frustration, in misery, being destroyed and destroying others.” – Krishnamurti

“Your mind is like rich soil, and if given sufficient time any problem that comes along takes root like a weed, and then you have the trouble of pulling it out; but if you do not give the problem sufficient time to take root, then it has no place to grow and it will whither away.” – Krishnamurti

“That is why you should have strong feelings—feelings of passion, anger—and watch them, play with them, find out the truth of them; for if you merely suppress them, if you say, ‘I must not get angry, I must not feel passionate, because it is wrong,’ you will find that your mind is gradually being encased in an idea and thereby becomes very shallow. You may be immensely clever, you may have encyclopaedic knowledge, but, if there is not the vitality of strong and deep feeling, your comprehension is like a flower that has no perfume.” – Krishnamurti

“Do you know what it means to learn? When you are really learning you are learning throughout your life and there is no one special teacher to learn from. Then everything teaches you—a deaf leaf, a bird in flight, a smell, a tear, the rich and the poor, those who are crying, the smile of a woman, the haughtiness of a man. You learn from everything, therefore there is no guide, no philosopher, no guru. Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.” – Krishnamurti

“To be a real student is to learn all the time.” – Krishnamurti

Those who do not study are only cattle dressed up in men’s clothes.” – Confucius

“Sir, life is very strange. The moment you are very clear about what you want to do, things happen. Life comes to your aid—a friend, a relation, a teacher, a grandmother, somebody helps you. But if you are afraid to try because your father may turn you out, then you are lost. Life never comes to the aid of those who merely yield to some demand out of fear. But if you say, ‘This is what I really want to do and I am going to pursue it,’ then you will find that something miraculous takes place. You may have to go hungry, struggle to get through, but you will be a worthwhile human being, not a mere copy, and that is the miracle of it.” – Krishnamurti

“If you can look at yourself without condemning what you see, without comparing yourself with somebody else, without wishing to be more beautiful or more virtuous; or you can just observe what you are and move with it, then you will find that it is possible to go infinitely far. Then there is no end to the journey, and that is the mystery, the beauty of it.” – Krishnamurti