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The backbone of success is...hard work, determination, good planning, and perserverence.
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Mia Hamm
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Take a chance and risk it all or play it safe and suffer defeat.
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Pittacus Lore (I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies, #1))
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Every flower blooms at its own pace.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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Patience can be bitter but her fruit is always sweet.
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Habeeb Akande
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At the very moment when people underestimate you is when you can make a breakthrough.
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Germany Kent
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When life brings you mountains, you don’t waste your time asking why; you spend your time climbing over them.
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A.J. Darkholme (Rise of the Morningstar (The Morningstar Chronicles, #1))
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When you are willing to replace mundane excuses with hard work and your laziness with determination, nothing can prevent you from succeeding.
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Prem Jagyasi
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Every leader must decide between 1) getting rid of liked but incapable people to achieve their goals and 2) keeping the nice but incapable people and not achieving their goals. Whether or not you can make these hard decisions is the strongest determinant of your own success
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Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
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The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
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Vince Lombardi
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Inspiration may come from many places but motivation - the love of life, daily drive and the will to thrive - that must come from you from within
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
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A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between her work and her play; her labor and her leisure; her mind and her body; her education and her recreation. She hardly knows which is which. She simply pursues her vision of excellence through whatever she is doing, and leaves others to determine if she is working or playing. To herself, she always appears to be doing both.
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François-René de Chateaubriand
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When all help is stopped, when your loved ones started doubting your competence, when failure seems almost confirmed, but no matter what, if you make one more attempt, that final step will fetch you the victory.
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Amit Kalantri
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There is nothing in this world that you cannot do. Every goal is achievable. You just need to focus on your objectives, be persistent in your efforts and work hard to make it happen. There can be no hurdle uncrossable, no obstacle invincible and no stumbling block insurmountable.
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Roopleen
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There is no shortcut for hard work that leads to effectiveness. You must stay disciplined because most of the work is behind the scenes.
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Germany Kent
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In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve?
The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.
Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.
When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic.
Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.
Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.
Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.
Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?
Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem.
Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living.
Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.
Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.
The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success.
If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.
The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.
Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.
The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?
Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.
Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence.
Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might.
If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail.
The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface.
Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.
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John C. Maxwell (Failing Forward)
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People "at the top" are eager to attribute their position to their own intellect, savvy, and hard work. The reality is much more complicated. Personal connections, family environment, and what appears to be plain luck determine how successful a person is. We are the product of three things- genetics, environment, and our personal choices- but two of these three factors we have no power over. We are not nearly as responsible for our success as our popular views of God and reality lead us to think.
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Timothy J. Keller (Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters)
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Greatness is the born of ordinary men who decided to work extraordinarily hard.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
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Do all the work you while you still have strength.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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The sweetest fruits grow at the top of a tree so that only those who deserve them can reach them.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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Be confident. Be successful. Be
beautiful. Be intelligent. Be hard working. Be carefree. Be modest.
Be driven. Be forgiving. Be creative. Be relaxed. Be motivated. Be
educated. Be thoughtful. Be kind. Be determined. Be good. Just be
you!
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Russell Strand (Wonderland)
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A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. —Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
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Danielle LaPorte (The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms)
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Imagine yourself at your best. Transform yourself with hard work to become excellent.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Three golden keys that unlock the door to excellence are determination, hard work and practice.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Imagine and see yourself at your best. Change yourself with hard work, to become the excellent person you want to be.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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The individual great spirit and great efforts create a great team.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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How could we have achieved the set-goal, without endurance to the end?
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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What needs to be done must be done. With grace, it will be done.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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With persistent focus, commitment and enthusiasm, your dream will be reality.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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I sweat in tears to get what I want.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.
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Kate Bowler (Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved)
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I yearn not for the easy path, but for the right path. For 'easy' and 'right' are rarely compatible.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough
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A miracle is when you take action on your goals, and create the visible from the invisible. Transform your thoughts and dreams into the material world, from planning, hard work and determination.
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Mark LaMoure
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You build a confident: "Can Do Attitude," by practicing to be excellent. Since you earn success by being determined, higher willpower is earned. Be the best. Raise yourself to excellence, by writing your goals and working hard on them. Drive yourself to success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire.
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Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming)
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I truly believe that success is determined not on Friday nights during games but rather in practice away from the lights and glimmer where coaches and players only have each other, their sweat, their discipline and their loyalty to each other. It is at practice where the boys of America become men through hard work, dedication and perseverance.
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George M. Gilbert (Team Of One: We Believe)
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Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy.
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Isabel Molina-Guzman
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In tears, we labour for what we want.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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You tend to become like that, what you want most. It is up to you to make it happen. Expect the best and work hard. Dedicate yourself to full success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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When you step up to being excellent, use hard work and commitment as the two powerful forces they are. By being persistent, over time you will earn gleaming success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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I must endure to the end.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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When you step up to being excellent, use hard work and determination as the powerful force they are. By using these ideas, over time they will reward you with sparkling success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Success is end result of many combats.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Visualize yourself at your best. Be determined to earn the proud badge of excellence. By working hard and practicing, one day you will earn its golden title.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Visualize yourself at your best. Be determined to earn the title of being excellent. From working hard and practicing, one day you will earn its badge of honor.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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The degree of your desire determines your dedication.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Success is possible to anyone who sets his heart to it. Whatever we dream of can become reality if we put ourselves to work.
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Bidemi Mark-Mordi
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A task is only difficulty, when we not find the best strategy to get it done.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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You can achieve the set-goals with passion, persistent with perseverance.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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There is a price to be paid for any accomplishment.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Are you willing to work for what you want?
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Key to be more productive at work & business:-
Make plans for tomorrow and do it by today.
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Ritu Negi
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Believe in yourself, work hard, stay focused, and never give up. Success will come.
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hani hakkam
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Minority of people are destined for success while majority succeed because they are determined for success. Where upon, work hard in silence and let success make the noise .
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Osunsakin Adewale
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Where your hard work is Pre-Determined, Your Goals are Very Determined, Results are Undetermined and your Enjoyment is Post-Determined”. Is the Way which lead you to Height of Success.
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Kunal Shah
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When you step up to being excellent, use hard work and determination as the powerful force they are. By also being devoted and persistent, over time it will reward you with sparkling success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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It only takes one person to change your life for the better: YOU. Develop yourself to be excellent for success, by working hard and smart. Make self-improvement for success your first objective.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Often, our relationships become an unrealized quest for what is perfect, unfettered, and free of flaws. We expect our partners, spouses, and our friends to avoid missteps and to be magical mind readers. These secret expectations play a sinister part in many of the great tragedies of our lives: failed marriages, dissipated dreams, abandoned careers, outcast family, deserted children, and discarded friendships.
We readily forget what we once knew as children: our flaws are not only natural but integral to our beings. They are interwoven into our soul’s DNA and yet we continually reject the crooked, wrinkled, mushy parts of our life rather than embrace them as the very essence of our beings.
I once believed that aiming for perfection would land me in the realm of excellence. This, however, may not be the trajectory of how things happen. In fact, the pursuit of perfection may be the biggest obstacle to becoming whole.
It seems essential to value hard work and determination and yet recognize that the road to excellence is littered with mistakes and subsequent lessons. Imperfection and excellence are intertwined. There is joy in our pain, strength in weakness, courage in compassion, and power in forgiveness.
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Ann Brasco
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You get a confident: "Can Do Attitude," by practicing to be excellent. Since you earn success by being determined, higher willpower is also earned, too. Raise yourself to excellence by writing your goals and working hard on them. Drive yourself to success.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
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Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
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Success covers a movement from one station in life to another and usually involves work, determination, and belief. If you can make it in life, you will not only need to believe in your talents and worth but also have staying power and the ability to work hard.
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Akwasi O. Ofori
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Every leader must decide between 1) getting rid of liked but incapable people to achieve their goals and 2) keeping the nice but incapable people and not achieving their goals. Whether or not you can make these hard decisions is the strongest determinant of your own success or failure.
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Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
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But there always have been, and probably always will be, five ingredients for success in sport: Purpose: Know exactly what your goal is. Passion: Have a burning desire to achieve it. Planning: Determine how you’ll go about achieving it. Perspiration: Work hard, following your plan to achieve it. Perseverance: Don’t let anything get in the way of achieving it.
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Joe Friel (The Triathlete's Training Bible)
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In life, we tend to get what we expect. Start expecting the best for yourself. Since life is a do-it-to yourself project, why not also believe in miracles? You have the freedom of choice. Why not expect miracles to occur in your life? Change your thinking, to change your life. To do this write your goals, work hard, be smart and expect the best. Make miracles happen.
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Mark F. LaMoure
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Professional success is a goal that is in part a direct consequence of your personal convictions and values. Success also results from a combination of attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors. Hard work alone will not guarantee lasting success. To achieve long-term professional success, you also need to develop characteristics such as discipline, willpower, resilience, intelligence, creativity, courage, determination, and self-control.
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William Douglas (The 25 Biblical Laws of Success: Powerful Principles to Transform Your Career and Business)
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Watching him then, I simply couldn’t think of him doing anything other than winning. Loss wasn’t the norm, it couldn’t be. I didn’t have the words for it then, what it felt like to watch my cousin, whom I love and whose worries are our worries and whose pain is our pain, manage to be so good at something, to triumph so completely. More than a painful life, more than a culture or a society with the practice and perfection of violence as a virtue and a necessity, more than a meanness or a willingness to sacrifice oneself, what I felt—what I saw—were Indian men and boys doing precisely what we’ve always been taught not to do. I was seeing them plainly, desperately, expertly wanting to be seen for their talents and their hard work, whether they lost or won. That old feeling familiar to so many Indians—that we can’t change anything; can’t change Columbus or Custer, smallpox or massacres; can’t change the Gatling gun or the legislative act; can’t change the loss of our loved ones or the birth of new troubles; can’t change a thing about the shape and texture of our lives—fell away. I think the same could be said for Sam: he might not have been able to change his sister’s fate or his mother’s or even, for a while, his own. But when he stepped in the cage he was doing battle with a disease. The disease was the feeling of powerlessness that takes hold of even the most powerful Indian men. That disease is more potent than most people imagine: that feeling that we’ve lost, that we’ve always lost, that we’ve already lost—our land, our cultures, our communities, ourselves. This disease is the story told about us and the one we so often tell about ourselves. But it’s one we’ve managed to beat again and again—in our insistence on our own existence and our successful struggles to exist in our homelands on our own terms. For some it meant joining the U.S. Army. For others it meant accepting the responsibility to govern and lead. For others still, it meant stepping into a metal cage to beat or be beaten. For my cousin Sam, for three rounds of five minutes he gets to prove that through hard work and natural ability he can determine the outcome of a finite struggle, under the bright, artificial lights that make the firmament at the Northern Lights Casino on the Leech Lake Reservation.
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David Treuer (The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present)
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A thin line separates success from failure, the great companies from the ordinary ones. Below that line lies excuse making, blaming others, confusion, and an attitude of helplessness, while above that line we find a sense of reality, ownership, commitment, solutions to problems, and determined action. While losers languish Below The Line, preparing stories that explain why past efforts went awry, winners reside Above The Line, powered by commitment and hard work.
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Roger Connors (The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability)
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POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.
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Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (National Book Award Winner))
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Qualities such as honesty, determination, and a cheerful acceptance of stress, which can all be identified through probing questionnaires and interviews, may be more important to the company in the long run than one's college grade-point average or years of "related experience."
Every business is only as good as the people it brings into the organization. The corporate trainer should feel his job is the most important in the company, because it is.
Exalt seniority-publicly, shamelessly, and with enough fanfare to raise goosebumps on the flesh of the most cynical spectator. And, after the ceremony, there should be some sort of permanent display so that employees passing by are continuously reminded of their own achievements and the achievements of others.
The manager must freely share his expertise-not only about company procedures and products and services but also with regard to the supervisory skills he has worked so hard to acquire. If his attitude is, "Let them go out and get their own MBAs," the personnel under his authority will never have the full benefit of his experience. Without it, they will perform at a lower standard than is possible, jeopardizing the manager's own success.
Should a CEO proclaim that there is no higher calling than being an employee of his organization? Perhaps not-for fear of being misunderstood-but it's certainly all right to think it. In fact, a CEO who does not feel this way should look for another company to manage-one that actually does contribute toward a better life for all.
Every corporate leader should communicate to his workforce that its efforts are important and that employees should be very proud of what they do-for the company, for themselves, and, literally, for the world. If any employee is embarrassed to tell his friends what he does for a living, there has been a failure of leadership at his workplace.
Loyalty is not demanded; it is created.
Why can't a CEO put out his own suggested reading list to reinforce the corporate vision and core values? An attractive display at every employee lounge of books to be freely borrowed, or purchased, will generate interest and participation. Of course, the program has to be purely voluntary, but many employees will wish to be conversant with the material others are talking about. The books will be another point of contact between individuals, who might find themselves conversing on topics other than the weekend football games. By simply distributing the list and displaying the books prominently, the CEO will set into motion a chain of events that can greatly benefit the workplace. For a very cost-effective investment, management will have yet another way to strengthen the corporate message.
The very existence of many companies hangs not on the decisions of their visionary CEOs and energetic managers but on the behavior of its receptionists, retail clerks, delivery drivers, and service personnel.
The manager must put himself and his people through progressively challenging courage-building experiences. He must make these a mandatory group experience, and he must lead the way.
People who have confronted the fear of public speaking, and have learned to master it, find that their new confidence manifests itself in every other facet of the professional and personal lives. Managers who hold weekly meetings in which everyone takes on progressively more difficult speaking or presentation assignments will see personalities revolutionized before their eyes.
Command from a forward position, which means from the thick of it. No soldier will ever be inspired to advance into a hail of bullets by orders phoned in on the radio from the safety of a remote command post; he is inspired to follow the officer in front of him. It is much more effective to get your personnel to follow you than to push them forward from behind a desk.
The more important the mission, the more important it is to be at the front.
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Dan Carrison (Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way)
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Ottawa, Ontario
July 1, 2017
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Canada Day:
Today, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation. We come together as Canadians to celebrate the achievements of our great country, reflect on our past and present, and look boldly toward our future.
Canada’s story stretches back long before Confederation, to the first people who worked, loved, and built their lives here, and to those who came here centuries later in search of a better life for their families. In 1867, the vision of Sir George-Étienne Cartier and Sir John A. Macdonald, among others, gave rise to Confederation – an early union, and one of the moments that have come to define Canada.
In the 150 years since, we have continued to grow and define ourselves as a country. We fought valiantly in two world wars, built the infrastructure that would connect us, and enshrined our dearest values – equality, diversity, freedom of the individual, and two official languages – in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These moments, and many others, shaped Canada into the extraordinary country it is today – prosperous, generous, and proud.
At the heart of Canada’s story are millions of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They exemplify what it means to be Canadian: ambitious aspirations, leadership driven by compassion, and the courage to dream boldly. Whether we were born here or have chosen Canada as our home, this is who we are.
Ours is a land of Indigenous Peoples, settlers, and newcomers, and our diversity has always been at the core of our success. Canada’s history is built on countless instances of people uniting across their differences to work and thrive together. We express ourselves in French, English, and hundreds of other languages, we practice many faiths, we experience life through different cultures, and yet we are one country. Today, as has been the case for centuries, we are strong not in spite of our differences, but because of them.
As we mark Canada 150, we also recognize that for many, today is not an occasion for celebration. Indigenous Peoples in this country have faced oppression for centuries. As a society, we must acknowledge and apologize for past wrongs, and chart a path forward for the next 150 years – one in which we continue to build our nation-to-nation, Inuit-Crown, and government-to-government relationship with the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation.
Our efforts toward reconciliation reflect a deep Canadian tradition – the belief that better is always possible. Our job now is to ensure every Canadian has a real and fair chance at success. We must create the right conditions so that the middle class, and those working hard to join it, can build a better life for themselves and their families.
Great promise and responsibility await Canada. As we look ahead to the next 150 years, we will continue to rise to the most pressing challenges we face, climate change among the first ones. We will meet these challenges the way we always have – with hard work, determination, and hope.
On the 150th anniversary of Confederation, we celebrate the millions of Canadians who have come together to make our country the strong, prosperous, and open place it is today. On behalf of the Government of Canada, I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Canada Day.
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Justin Trudeau
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Honorable, happy, and successful marriage is surely the principal goal of every normal person. Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys. It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations.
In selecting a companion for life and for eternity, certainly the most careful planning and thinking and praying and fasting should be done to be sure that of all the decisions, this one must not be wrong. In true marriage there must be a union of minds as well as of hearts. Emotions must not wholly determine decisions, but the mind and the heart, strengthened by fasting and prayer and serious consideration, will give one a maximum chance of marital happiness. It brings with it sacrifice, sharing, and a demand for great selflessness. . . .
Some think of happiness as a glamorous life of ease, luxury, and constant thrills; but true marriage is based on a happiness which is more than that, one which comes from giving, serving, sharing, sacrificing, and selflessness. . . .
One comes to realize very soon after marriage that the spouse has weaknesses not previously revealed or discovered. The virtues which were constantly magnified during courtship now grow relatively smaller, and the weaknesses which seemed so small and insignificant during courtship now grow to sizable proportions. The hour has come for understanding hearts, for self-appraisal, and for good common sense, reasoning, and planning. . . .
“Soul mates” are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.
There is a never-failing formula which will guarantee to every couple a happy and eternal marriage; but like all formulas, the principal ingredients must not be left out, reduced, or limited. The selection before courting and then the continued courting after the marriage process are equally important, but not more important than the marriage itself, the success of which depends upon the two individuals—not upon one, but upon two. . . .
The formula is simple; the ingredients are few, though there are many amplifications of each.
First, there must be the proper approach toward marriage, which contemplates the selection of a spouse who reaches as nearly as possible the pinnacle of perfection in all the matters which are of importance to the individuals. And then those two parties must come to the altar in the temple realizing that they must work hard toward this successful joint living.
Second, there must be a great unselfishness, forgetting self and directing all of the family life and all pertaining thereunto to the good of the family, subjugating self.
Third, there must be continued courting and expressions of affection, kindness, and consideration to keep love alive and growing.
Fourth, there must be a complete living of the commandments of the Lord as defined in the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . .
Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage is not a legal coverall, but it means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all. . . .
To be really happy in marriage, one must have a continued faithful observance of the commandments of the Lord. No one, single or married, was ever sublimely happy unless he was righteous.
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Spencer W. Kimball
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For many people, money is an index of how successful one is. And so they fear competition and attach themselves to their shadows. Such path drives one towards materialism rather than spiritualism. So what’s the difference between such individuals and those that work in the hope of quitting their job? Well, the main difference is that materialist people separate the two realities in the hope they can earn money from the work they love and then quit the work they don’t like. And by creating such division they remain there, in the middle, trapped. They think that by following what they love to do, step by step, they’ll be guided towards the right direction. But if their thoughts were clear, they would know they’re diving themselves and perpetuating their fate, rather than solving it. They neglect the mental barriers stopping them from achieving their goal. And anyone is responsible for determining the result that one holds in his thoughts. In other words, if you had not made such division in the first place, and instead accepted the lack of duality, you would achieve your result much faster. That is why almost all entrepreneurs rather work hard and be poor when starting a business than waiting for the right time to quit their job. There’s not such thing as the right time, or a shift from one reality unto another, because you create both things, your fortune and your unfortunate, and you own your luck and results, all the time. Whatever you believe in present time, perpetuates that same present time.
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Robin Sacredfire
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The tactical situation seems simple enough. Thanks to Marx’s prophecy, the Communists knew for certain that misery must soon increase. They also knew that the party could not win the confidence of the workers without fighting for them, and with them, for an improvement of their lot. These two fundamental assumptions clearly determined the principles of their general tactics. Make the workers demand their share, back them up in every particular episode in their unceasing fight for bread and shelter. Fight with them tenaciously for the fulfilment of their practical demands, whether economic or political. Thus you will win their confidence. At the same time, the workers will learn that it is impossible for them to better their lot by these petty fights, and that nothing short of a wholesale revolution can bring about an improvement. For all these petty fights are bound to be unsuccessful; we know from Marx that the capitalists simply cannot continue to compromise and that, ultimately, misery must increase. Accordingly, the only result—but a valuable one—of the workers’ daily fight against their oppressors is an increase in their class consciousness; it is that feeling of unity which can be won only in battle, together with a desperate knowledge that only revolution can help them in their misery. When this stage is reached, then the hour has struck for the final show-down. This is the theory and the Communists acted accordingly. At first they support the workers in their fight to improve their lot. But, contrary to all expectations and prophecies, the fight is successful. The demands are granted. Obviously, the reason is that they had been too modest. Therefore one must demand more. But the demands are granted again44. And as misery decreases, the workers become less embittered, more ready to bargain for wages than to plot for revolution. Now the Communists find that their policy must be reversed. Something must be done to bring the law of increasing misery into operation. For instance, colonial unrest must be stirred up (even where there is no chance of a successful revolution), and with the general purpose of counteracting the bourgeoisification of the workers, a policy fomenting catastrophes of all sorts must be adopted. But this new policy destroys the confidence of the workers. The Communists lose their members, with the exception of those who are inexperienced in real political fights. They lose exactly those whom they describe as the ‘vanguard of the working class’; their tacitly implied principle: ‘The worse things are, the better they are, since misery must precipitate revolution’, makes the workers suspicious—the better the application of this principle, the worse are the suspicions entertained by the workers. For they are realists; to obtain their confidence, one must work to improve their lot. Thus the policy must be reversed again: one is forced to fight for the immediate betterment of the workers’ lot and to hope at the same time for the opposite. With this, the ‘inner contradictions’ of the theory produce the last stage of confusion. It is the stage when it is hard to know who is the traitor, since treachery may be faithfulness and faithfulness treachery. It is the stage when those who followed the party not simply because it appeared to them (rightly, I am afraid) as the only vigorous movement with humanitarian ends, but especially because it was a movement based on a scientific theory, must either leave it, or sacrifice their intellectual integrity; for they must now learn to believe blindly in some authority. Ultimately, they must become mystics—hostile to reasonable argument. It seems that it is not only capitalism which is labouring under inner contradictions that threaten to bring about its downfall …
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Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies)
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The secret to wealth is hard work and good management.
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John Patrick Hickey (All You Have Is Now: How Your Approach to the World Determines Your Destiny)
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You must work hard to fulfill your dream.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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A willing soul will keenly go the length, breadth and depth to fulfill the dream.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Reach out, with all your heart, to your divine-dreams.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he’d say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk. So forget about passion when you’re planning your path to success.
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Scott Adams (How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life)
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When He Has Lost Vision for Tomorrow Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. PROVERBS 29:18 KJV WHEN YOUR HUSBAND loses his vision for a bright tomorrow, it means he has lost sight of his purpose and his reason to get up in the morning. He has misplaced his sense of God’s calling on his life and his reason to keep fighting the good fight. (Or perhaps he never had a sense of his purpose and calling in the first place.) He may also have lost his reason to keep working and trying. He can even lose his drive to face the day. Having a husband who has lost sight of his future—or your future together—is not a good thing. The Bible says people can’t survive without a vision. That’s why the enemy of our soul comes to steal away the vision we have from God, so that he can kill our hope and destroy our sense of purpose. But your prayers for your husband to have a clear vision for his future and your future together can restore all that and make an enormous difference in his life. Lack of vision happens gradually. It creeps in a day at a time, a thought at a time, a disappointment at a time. And it can happen to anyone. We get too busy. We get discouraged or exhausted. We work too hard for too long. We try to do right, but things keep going wrong. This could be happening to your husband right now without either of you even realizing it. If you’re not certain how your husband feels about the future, ask him and then pray accordingly. If you can tell he has lost his vision, your prayer can help him find it and be able to hear from God again. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would give my husband a clear and strong vision for the future—not only his future, but also our future together as a couple. If the many challenges he has faced, or the disappointments he has experienced, have accumulated enough to take away his sense of hopeful anticipation, I pray You would help him to see that his future is in You and not in outside circumstances. Give him the understanding he needs to know that the value of his life and purpose are not determined by external situations. Enable him to see that success is not in how well things are going at the moment, but it’s in how close he walks with You in prayer and in Your Word. Help him to understand that true vision for his life and our lives together comes only from You. When my husband is feeling hopeless, I pray he would realize that his hope is found in You. Where his vision has become clouded because of futile thoughts, wrong actions, or advanced apathy, I pray You would enable him to comprehend that he is wholly dependent upon You for proper thinking and right actions. Where he has overworked or overworried, I pray You would revive him again. Even if he doesn’t know specifics about his future, help him recognize that he has a bright one. Don’t allow him to waste away in his own disappointments. Restore his spiritual sight so he can see that his future is found in You. In Jesus’ name I pray.
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Stormie Omartian (The Power of a Praying Wife Devotional)
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Researchers determined that a variety of forces affected the lack of change. First, the people in the community had been socialized not to disagree publicly, so it was hard to have a meaningful discussion. Second, in the past, any suggestions of change had been met with strong private criticism, so people were hesitant to bring creative ideas to the table. Finally, there was such a strong tradition of individualism in the community that members could not openly discuss problems, because they did not believe in collective effort as a way to solve problems. (Hibbard, 1986)
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Paul W. Mattessich (Community Building: What Makes It Work: A Review of Factors Influencing Successful Community Building)
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People with growth mindsets believe that success and achievement are the result of hard work and determination. They see their own (and others’) true potential as something to be defined through effort. As a result, they thrive on challenges and often have a passion for learning.
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Rohit Bhargava (Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict The Future)
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Any business owner or entrepreneur knows that there is no luck or good fortune about keeping a company up and running. It’s nothing but hard work, consistency, determination, courage, staying focused, accepting failure, making changes, and simply keeping on with the grind.
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Enaka Yembe (Grow to Success: A Set of Skills That Taught Me to Achieve Personal and Professional Success)
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On the road to success there are determination, real hard work, perseverance and challenges to tackle.
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Ahmet Adam Asar
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I will sacrifice today for tomorrow.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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You can attain your highest potential.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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See where the white area is at it’s fullest? That’s when things are at their best, relationships are going well, success is plentiful, and your mind is at peace. Unfortunately, as you well know, that’s when problems start, and these problems are represented by the dark spot in the center of your happiness. This is when jealousy, grudges, and complacency sneak into your life, insidiously trying to undo all of your hard work. One of the problems with success is that as it increases, so do the forces determined to suppress it. Sometimes those forces grow to the point where darkness becomes the majority of your day-to-day reality See where the darkness is at it’s fullest? That’s when things are at their worst, when loved ones seem
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Frank Stepnowski (Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy?)
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Believing that, for the most part, our actions determine our fates in life can only spur us to work harder; and when we see this hard work pay off, our belief in ourselves only grows stronger.
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Shawn Achor (The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work)
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Push, push. Push harder!
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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There is no greater fulfillment than working for what I want.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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If you want it enough, you find strength to work for its achievement.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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The enthusiasm to work hard and endless determination are the two great skills for success.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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You don’t know the sacrifice behind the success!
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Work hard to fulfill your dreams.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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The only work for success is hard work.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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Few find success without hard work and determination. Those who do have hardly gained anything for themselves that they deserve.
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Anonymous
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You can't get upset about the credit you didn't get from the work you didn't do.
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Germany Kent
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Westerners instinctively consider wealth an unlimited resource. There’s more than enough to go around, we believe. Everyone could be wealthy if they only tried hard enough. So if you don’t have all the money you want, it’s because you lack the virtues required for success—industry, frugality and determination. A nineteenth-century biographer of George Washington put the matter this way: “In a land like this, which Heaven has blessed above all lands . . . why is any man hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or in prison? why but through his unpardonable sloth?”[17] There appears to have been a trend from very early in American thought to invert Paul’s proverb “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thess 3:10 NIV 1984) to read, “If a man can’t eat, it is because he doesn’t work.” People know what they need to do to make money, we think, so if they’re poor, they must deserve it.
This understanding of wealth is the very opposite of how many non-Western cultures view it. Outside the West, wealth is often viewed as a limited resource. There is only so much money to be had, so if one person has a lot of it, then everyone else has less to divide among themselves.
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E. Randolph Richards (Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible)
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The in-house lawyer is the lawyer with the strength, determination, and courage to work shoulder to shoulder with clients, to be accountable for decisions and advice, to look a client in the eye when delivering hard or unwanted advice, and to have the strength of character and reputation to be willing to act as the moral compass for an organization. In-house lawyers are not those who couldn’t “cut it” in private practice. Quite the contrary. Rather, in-house lawyers can be viewed as the lawyers who answered a higher calling to work more closely with their clients.
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Peter Carayiannis (Corporate Counsel: Expert Advice on Becoming a Successful In-House Lawyer)
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market. I want to leave you with some key takeaways: Any product can be positioned in multiple markets. Your product is not doomed to languish in a market where nobody understands how awesome it is. Great positioning rarely comes by default. If you want to succeed, you have to determine the best way to position your product. Deliberate, try, fail, test and try again. Understanding what your best customers see as true alternatives to your solution will lead you to your differentiators. Position yourself in a market that makes your strengths obvious to the folks you want to sell to. Use trends to make your product more interesting to customers right now, but be very cautious. Don’t layer on a trend just for the sake of being trendy—it’s better to be successful and boring, rather than fashionable and bewildering. Knowing how to do something is not the same as understanding how to teach someone else how to do it. As leaders, we often become very good at doing things that we have a very hard time explaining to the teams that work with us. This book is my attempt to codify and teach one of the most complicated processes I’ve learned to do in my career. I sincerely hope it offers you a shortcut to better position your products to succeed.
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April Dunford (Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It)
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What If I Love Someone With a Serious Trauma History? This is seriously tough, isn’t it? You have someone that you care about so much that is really struggling with their trauma recovery. You want to HELP. And feeling unable to do so is the worst feeling in the world. You’re at risk of serious burnout and secondary traumatization. Because yeah, watching someone live out their trauma can be a traumatic experience in and of itself. Two things to remember, here: This is not your battle. …but people do get better in supportive relationships. This is not your battle. You don’t get to design the parameters, you don’t get to determine what makes something better, what makes something worse. No matter how well you know someone, you don’t know their inner processes. They may not even know their inner processes. If you know someone well, you may know a lot. But you aren’t the one operating that life. Telling someone what they should be doing, feeling, or thinking, won’t help. Even if you are right. Even if they do what you say…you have just taken away their power to do the work they need to do to take charge of their life. There are limits to how much better they can really be if they are continually rescued by you. …but people do get better in supportive relationships. The best thing to do is to ask your loved one how to best support them when they are struggling. This is the type of action plan you can create with a therapist (if either or both of you are seeing one) or ask them in a private conversation. Ask them. Ask if they want help grounding when they are triggered, if they need time alone, a hot bath, a mug of tea. Ask what you can do and do those things, if they are healthy things to provide. It may be helpful for them to have a formal safety plan for themselves (there are resources for sample safety plans at the end of this book), with what your specific role will be. This will help boundary your role, and keep you from setting up scenarios when you rescue or enable dangerous and/or self-sabotaging behavior. You may need to set hard limits. You may need to protect yourself. This isn’t just for your well-being, but will help you model the importance of doing so to your loved one. Love the entirety of them. Remind them that their trauma doesn’t define them. Allow them consequences of their behavior and celebrate the successes of newer, healthier ways of being. Be the relationship that helps the healing journey.
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Faith G. Harper (Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-outs, and Triggers)
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In business success, you need 3 things, working hard, patience and determination, and most importantly, serve before you sell
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Anath Lee Wales