Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People naturally tend toward inertia. That's why self improvement is such a struggle. But that's also why adversity lies at the heart of every success. The process of achievement comes through repeated failures and the constant struggle to climb to a higher level.
Everything is a tradeoff. Everywhere you leave, you leave some good things. The more successful you are, the harder it is to make tradeoffs. That's why some people become successful and then become flat. Be willing to give up income for potential, for opportunity.
Why would God send people to our church if we don't have a great dream? Why would God give a multigifted, multitalented, and multifinancially wealthy person to a church if the biggest thing you are going to do is paint the restrooms next year? That's bad stewardship.
Connecting is vital for any person who wants to achieve success. It is essential for anyone who wants to build great relationships. You will only be able to reach your potential-regar dless of your profession or chosen path-when you learn to connect with other people.
What am I doing with the gifts that have been given and the opportunities that are mine to make things better for others? I think it's always - success has to be beyond the person who is themselves working for personal success. It's also got to be helping someone else.
Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated; they simply quit. ... As you face bad experiences, it's important for you to remember that you can rarely see the benefits while you're in the midst of them. You usually gain perspective on the other side of it.
People who blame others for their failures never overcome them. They simply move from problem to problem. To reach your potential, you must continually improve yourself, and you can't do that if you don't take responsibility for your actions and learn from your mistakes.
The purpose of leadership is to take others to the top. And when you take others who might not make it to the top otherwise, there's no other feeling like it in the world. To those who have never had the experience, you can't explain it. To those who have, you don't need to.
Transmit your vision emotionally by gaining credibility, demonstrating passion, establishing relationships and communicating a felt need. Transmit it logically by confronting reality, formulating strategy, accepting responsibility, celebrating victory and learning from defeat.
I am the recipient of many benefits that I do not deserve and did not earn. Someone else paid for them. I am grateful! How do I show my gratitude? By daily pouring into others and passing on to them the things that will allow them to run far and achieve beyond what I have done.
People rise and fall to meet your level of expectations for them. If you express skepticism and doubt in others, they will return your lack of confidence with mediocrity. But if you believe in them and expect them to do well, they will go the extra mile trying to do their best.
If churches would take ownership of a vision, the next pastor who is thinking about coming to that church can see what their vision is and then determine if their vision fits with his or her ministry. If it doesn't, then it would be wrong for that pastor to come to that church.
As a leader, you have to take responsibility for your own failures as well as successes. That's the only way you'll learn. If you keep learning, you'll improve. If you improve, your leadership will get better. And in time, you will earn the right to lead on the level you deserve.
Team leaders have to connect with their team and themselves. If they don't know their team's strengths and weaknesses, they cannot hand off responsibilities to the team. And if they don't know their own strengths and weaknesses, they will not hand off responsibilities to the team.
We tend to become what the most important person in our life thinks we will become. Think the best, believe the best, and express the best in others. Your affirmation will not only make you more attractive to them, but you will help play an important part in their personal development.
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. Success doesn't just suddenly occur one day in someone's life. Neither does failure. Each is a process. Every day of your life is merely preparation for the next. What you become is the result of what you do today.
The law of the [Cub Scout] pack guides the boys to move in the direction of being helpful, friendly, courteous, trustworthy and promote qualities which parents and the community are looking for. The whole purpose of scouting is to help the children grow up making good decisions in life.
The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that's when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.
Dreams require down payments. Dreams are free, but the journey isn't. There is a price to pay. When you find your why you'll find your way. When you develop your will you will embark on your way. Many people start; few people finish. Many people have a dream; few people achieve their dreams.
Good leaders understand that they are stewards. They must find the best people they can, giving them the opportunity to join in the journey developing them, and encouraging them to reach their potential. But they must hold on to people lightly. Those who start with you seldom finish with you.
All visions begin with relationships. My relationship with God is where I receive the vision; my relationship with my people is where I give the vision. If those relationships aren't what they could be or should be, on either side, the receiving or the giving out, the vision is going to be aborted.
I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn't. In fact, I didn't even know you were supposed to have one.
The bottom line in managing your emotions is that you should put others – not yourself – first in how you handle and process them. Whether you delay or display your emotions should not be for your own gratification. You should ask yourself, What does the team need? Not, What will make me feel better?
When I made that statement that the person discovers the secret of their success by their daily agenda, all of a sudden it hit me that if I could teach people to make today count; if I could really teach them what they need to do today to have a good day, that tomorrow would really take care of itself.
Dont ever be impressed with goal setting; be impressed with goal getting. Reaching new goals and moving to a higher level of performance always requires change, and change feels awkward. But take comfort in the knowledge that if a change doesn't feel uncomfortable, then it's propably not really a change.
I wish I could say I coined the phrase "failing forward." I do it all the time. I find as I've embraced this approach to business, life, cycling and generally any new endeavor I take on, I've grown more and more comfortable with the possibility that I am not likely to succeed on my first try. And that's ok.
Successful people don't make a daily decision to grow. The decision has already been made and just needs to be fed. To feed success you must ... know your purpose in life, grow daily to reach your maximum potential, and sow seeds that benefit others. Remember, success is not a destination; it's a daily thing.
There is a real hunger for spiritual things in today's culture; people are seeking something spiritual, something beyond themselves. That's the good news. The bad news is people are not getting it at church because the church is singing songs, preaching messages, doing programs, and taking offerings for itself.
The key to your success, to my success, to everyone's success is determined by our daily agenda. What you and I do every day is either making us or breaking us, we're either preparing or repairing. So when somebody says, 'John, I want to be a success. Where do I start?' I say, It's very simple. Start with today.
God has put a dream inside you. It's yours, and no one else's. It declares your uniqueness. It holds your potential. Only you can birth it. Only you can live it. Not to discover it, take responsibility for it, and act upon it is to negatively affect yourself as well as all those who would benefit from your dream.
Cats do what cats do, ducks do what ducks do, and eagles do what eagles, do. If you take a duck and ask it to do an eagles' job, shame on you. As a leader, your job is to help your ducks to become better ducks and your eagles better eagles - to put individuals in the right places and help them reach their potential.
I literally wrote a book on it called Your Roadmap For Success. And in it I said success is three things: knowing my purpose in life, I think it's impossible for anybody to be successful until they really discover why they're here on earth and what God has planned for them; secondly, growing to my maximum potential.
I've worked very hard at giving excellent training and good materials, resources, books, and then the corporate community gives me respect. And I'm finding now that they really want a relationship with me, they're letting me in their lives, and of course, when you get in their lives you find a tremendous need for God.
God wants to be our partner throughout life. Too often we are tempted to either carry the entire load ourselves or give everything to God and do nothing. God doesn't like either strategy. Sometimes He moves before us and sometimes after us - but He doesn't move without us. Without God... we cannot. Without us... God will not.
Openness by the leader paves the way for ownership by the people. Without ownership, changes will be short term. Changing people's habits and ways of thinking is like writing instructions in the snow during a snowstorm. Every twenty minutes the instructions must be rewritten, unless ownership is given along with instructions.
No matter your title, people will not follow you if they don’t trust you. Whether you are just taking over a team or working to implement large-scale change within one, you are guaranteed to run into resistance if you haven’t taken time to establish a foundation with the people you oversee before turning their worlds upside down.
Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him. Significance comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without him.
I've known people who thought that reaching their potential would come from shoring up their weaknesses. But do you know what happens when you spend all your time working on your weaknesses and never developing your strengths? If you work really hard, you might claw your way all the way to mediocrity! But you'll never get beyond it.
To gain credibility, you must consistently demonstrate three things: Initiative: You have to get up to go up. Sacrifice: You have to give up to go up. Maturity: You have to grow up to go up. If you show the way, people will want to follow you. The higher you go, the greater the number of people who will be willing to travel with you.
Talent is a gift, but our character is a choice. Talent is natural ability, our gift from God, but we have the power to determine our character. That power rests on a foundation consisting of the choices we make in life. And those choices almost always dictate the amount of trust others have in us, and to what level of leadership we rise.
Why did the achievers overcome problems while thousands are overwhelmed by theirs? They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure. They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They realized that they couldn't determine every circumstance in life but they could determine their choice of attitude towards every circumstance.
I hold conferences, and the result of that was that the secular community also started picking up my stuff, and pretty soon they wanted more. So I realized I could not only minister to the Christian community, but I could also minister to the corporate community. So my books started crossing over, and then I began to intentionally have them cross over.
I am convinced more than ever that good communication and leadership are all about connecting. If you can connect with others at every level -one-on-one, in groups, and with an audience-your relationships are stronger, your sense of community improves, your ability to create teamwork increases, your influence increases, and your productivity skyrockets.
It is hard to feel bad about yourself when you are doing something good for someone else. There are a lot of ways to lift your self-esteem, but making a positive difference in another's life has got to be my best leadership guidance. Serving others and working to add value to them will lift your spirits in a way that nothing else will. Trust me on this one.
The highest reward for our toil is not what we get for it but what we become by it. ... Mistakes are not failures. They are proof that we are making an effort. When we understand that, we can more easily move out of our comfort zone, try something new, and improve. ... Improvement demands a commitment to grow long after the mood in which it was made has passed.
Leaders need to remember that the point of leading is not to cross the finish line first. It's to take people across the finish line with you. For that reason, leaders must deliberately slow their pace, stay connected to their people, enlist others to help fulfill the vision, and keep people going. You can't do that if you're running too far ahead of your people.
If you're not doing something with your life, then it doesn’t matter how long you live. If you're doing something with your life, then it doesn't matter how short your life may be. A life is not measured by years lived, but by its usefulness. If you are giving, loving, serving, helping, encouraging, and adding value to others, then you're living a life that counts!
Think back to the most important experiences of your life, the highest highs, the greatest victories, the most daunting obstacles overcome. How many happened to you alone? I bet there are very few. When you understand that being connected to others is one of life's greatest joys, you realize that life's best comes when you initiate and invest in solid relationships.
Those who profit from adversity possess a spirit of humility and are therefore inclined to make the necessary changes needed to learn from their mistakes, failures, and losses. ... When we are focused too much on ourselves, we lose perspective. Humility allows us to regain perspective and see the big picture. ... Humility allows us to let go of perfection and keep trying.
I define self-control, in the beginning of life, as the choice of achieving what I really want by doing things I really don't want to do. Once this becomes a habit, discipline becomes the choice of achieving what I really want by doing the very things I now want to do! I really believe that a disciplined life becomes a joy--but only after we have worked hard to practice it.