I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.* – Stephen Covey
Sure, circumstances have an influence on what happens.
But such pales in comparison to the impact of your actions.
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And, not to second-guess Covey’s choice-of-words, while decisions are important, but you must act on those decisions. Ever hear the one about the five frogs on a log? There’s five frogs on a log. One decides to jump off. How many frogs are on the log? Five.
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.” – Dale Carnegie This quote was a bit revelatory for me. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. It makes sense though, when I work hard, at something worthwhile and authentic I am often energized (not fatigued… ). How often do…
Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit. – Conrad Hilton Success is a process. A process that includes triumphs and non-triumphs (i.e. failures). As long as we do two vital things, we will be successful: 1) Learn from everything that happens 2) Keep…
“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein The idea that our language creates our world (each of our worlds… ) is very compelling for me. I have long said that humans are meaning-seeking and meaning-creating creatures. We must not only understand our world, but make sense of it,…
Any regular reader of this blog knows I am a big Seth Godin fan. I just read another great post on his blog (you can read it here). In the post he talks about the resistance of (certain factions in) business to important changes. One example being the elimination of child labor and the complaint…
In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. – Bill Cosby Why? Because you are going to “fail” along the way . . . . But, of course, there’s nothing wrong with failure. Failure is just a concept. It’s a word that we imbue with meaning, and…
This Friday’s external resource is not a TED Talk, but instead from Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge blog. In a very interesting post Francesca Gino talks about how and why we get side-tracked. Why, despite out best efforts, we don’t follow though as we plan, or sometimes, not at all. Click here to read the post.