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Relational skills are the most important abilities in leadership.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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Success is not just about what you achieve, but also about how you impact others. Be a leader, inspire those around you, and leave a lasting legacy.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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When you are a person people can trust, they will call on upon you, love to be around you and work with you. A leader’s skills take him to people, but his character brings people to him.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
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The effectiveness of your work will never rise above your ability to lead and influence others. You cannot produce consistently on a level higher than your leadership. In other words, your leadership skills determine the level of your success-and the success of those who work around you.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leader Within You)
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The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.” Many
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Followers tell you what you want to hear. Leaders tell you what you need to hear.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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When leaders fail to empower others, it is usually due to three main reasons: 1. Desire for Job Security 2. Resistance to Change 3. Lack of Self-Worth
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Go a little easy on the people around you. Try to reel in judging thoughts. Think before you speak.
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John Manning (The Disciplined Leader: Keeping the Focus on What Really Matters)
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Plus, from my experience, for most problems, AI development is the easy part. The hard part? Everything else that goes around it. For example, how do you find the right problems to solve?
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Kavita Ganesan (The Business Case for AI: A Leader's Guide to AI Strategies, Best Practices & Real-World Applications)
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He who seeks one thing, and but one, May hope to achieve it before life is done. But he who seeks all things wherever he goes Must reap around him in whatever he sows A harvest of barren regret.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leader Within You)
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Self-discipline is a quality that is won through practice. Psychologist Joseph Mancusi noted, “Truly successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Real success lies in experiencing fear or aversion and acting in spite of it.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Focus on your faith and feed it. The more energy and time you give it, the stronger it becomes. And anytime you feel afraid of doing something but go ahead and do it anyway, you will be reprogramming your attitude. When you feel fear, it will mean “go” instead of “stop,” and “fight harder” instead of “give up.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Author George Matthew Adams stated, “What you think means more than anything else in your life. More than what you earn, more than where you live, more than your social position, and more than what anyone else may think about you.” Every problem introduces you to yourself. It shows you how you think and what you’re made of.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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As you work with individuals in your organization to develop their vision for the future, it is crucial that you establish specific, measurable goals. These goals will help the individuals realize their ambitions. In addition, you as a mentor have to establish that you are sincerely interested in the problems of the person you are mentoring. By taking action to support the individual, you will prove that you are indeed working in their best interest and always keeping the end in mind.
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L. David Marquet (Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders)
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#1 Build people up by encouragement. #2 Give people credit by acknowledgment. #3 Give people recognition by gratitude.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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By talking others out of their dreams, critical people excuse themselves for staying in their comfort zones.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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POINT OUT A GREAT STRENGTH OF
SOMEONE IN YOUR LIFE TODAY.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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But here’s the good news: maintaining the right attitude is easier than regaining the right attitude.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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6. Focus on Them, Not Yourself: The number one problem of inexperienced speakers and ineffective leaders is that they focus on themselves.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
TODAY GIVE YOUR TIME ONLY TO THINGS THAT PASS
THE REQUIREMENT, RETURN, REWARD TEST.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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leadership expert Max DePree says, “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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• Don’t change just enough to get away from your problems—change enough to solve them.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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COMMIT TO GIVE THIS DAY YOUR VERY BEST.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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To sharpen your talent through practice, you need to do more than just be open to change. You need to pursue change—and you need to do it a little bit more than other achievers.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
REVIEW YOUR GOALS TO BE SURE THEY ARE
ENCOURAGING YOU TO FULFILL YOUR PURPOSE
AND MAXIMIZE YOUR POTENTIAL.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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AS YOU WORK TODAY, TAKE SOMEONE WITH YOU
SO THAT HE OR SHE CAN LEARN FROM YOU.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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MAKE IT YOUR JOB TO PUT OTHER PEOPLE ON TOP TODAY.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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CHOOSE TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR
HOW YOU VIEW YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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REMIND YOURSELF THAT LEADERSHIP IS A PRIVILEGE
AND RESPONSIBILITY MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Procrastination is the fertilizer that makes difficulties grow.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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To achieve your dreams, you must embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you’re not failing, you’re probably not really moving forward.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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If you expect to fail, sure enough, you will. If you expect to succeed, sure enough, you will. You will become on the outside what you believe on the inside.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asserted, “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” Don’t let your doubts cause your expector to expire.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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A leader cannot demand of others what he does not demand of himself.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Encouragement is oxygen to the soul. Good work can never be expected from a worker without encouragement. No one can ever have lived without it.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST TODAY AND
NEGLECT THINGS THAT DON’T REALLY MATTER.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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And as novelist Robert Louis Stevenson advised, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Poet Lord Byron was right when he stated, “Adversity is the first path to truth.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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BEGIN YOUR THIRTY-DAY TRIAL OF
EXPECTING THE BEST OF EVERYTHING.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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We can’t choose whether we will get any more time, but we can choose what we do with it.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
The Norwegians have a saying that I think captures their attitude: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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wantpower. People who want something enough usually find the willpower to achieve it.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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LOOK AT YOUR OWN QUIRKS, IDIOSYNCRASIES, AND ODDITIES
AS A REMINDER TO BE MORE PATIENT WITH OTHERS.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Leaders are optimistic. When you walk with leaders, the spirit of hope will ramble around you and you will feel like “yes, I can break barriers with few blows.
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Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
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There is no future in any job. The future lies in the person who holds the job.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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Don’t settle for poor performers. Keep in mind that one great person will always out-produce and out-perform two mediocre people.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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People need clear objectives set before them if they are to achieve anything of value.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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Example is not the main thing in influencing others . . . it is the only thing.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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Above all, don’t dwell on yesterday’s victory. If your focus is on what’s behind you rather than what’s ahead, you will crash.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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POINT OUT A GREAT STRENGTH OF SOMEONE IN YOUR LIFE TODAY.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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St. Francis of Assisi said, “Start doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Discernment can be described as the ability to find the root of the matter, and it relies on intuition as well as rational thought.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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The bottom line in leadership isn’t how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Spend 80 percent of your time on the most promising 20 percent of the potential leaders around you.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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To maximize the value of momentum, leaders must: (1) develop an appreciation for it early; (2) know the key ingredients of it immediately; and (3) pour resources into it always.
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John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential)
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For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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3. We should work on changing ourselves before trying to improve others. A great danger to good leadership is the temptation to try to change others without first making changes to yourself.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
There is definitely a correlation between family success and personal success. Not only does building a strong family lay the groundwork for future success, but it also gives life deeper meaning.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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The very moment that you make the shift to finding your purpose, growing to your potential, and helping others, successful is something you are right now, not something you vaguely hope one day to be.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
William King will help you. He said, “A gossip is one who talks to you about other people. A bore is one who talks to you about himself. And a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
A leader is great, not because of his or her power, but because of his or her ability to empower others. Success without a successor is failure. A worker’s main responsibility is developing others to do the work.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
As you and I grow and improve as leaders, so will those we lead. We need to remember that when people follow us, they can only go as far as we go. If our growth stops, our ability to lead will stop along with it.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
What’s ironic is that those who don’t have the courage to take risks and those who do, experience the same amount of fear in life. The only difference is that those who don’t take chances worry about trivial things.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
And remember, it is with the attitude with which you judge others that you will also be judged. If you mine the gold of good intentions in your relationship with others, then people will more likely do the same for you.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
The only person who avoids failure altogether is the person who never leaves her driveway. So the real issue is not whether you’re going to fail. It’s whether you’re going to fail successfully (profiting from your failure).
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
perhaps the words of William King will help you. He said, “A gossip is one who talks to you about other people. A bore is one who talks to you about himself. And a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
My friend Dan Reiland says, “A genuine friend encourages and challenges us to live out our best thoughts, honor our purest motives, and achieve our most significant dreams.” That’s what we need to do with the important people in our lives.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow.
As a next generation leader, you will be called upon to go first. That will require courage. But in stepping out you will give the gift of courage to those who are watching.
What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business?
What has been done is safe. But to attempt a solution to a problem that plagues an entire industry - in my case, the local church - requires courage.
Unsolved problems are gateways to the future. To those who have the courage to ask the question and the tenacity to hang on until they discover or create an answer belongs the future.
Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. Learn to say no. There will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them.
Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be.
It is impossible to generate sustained growth or progress if your plan for the future is not rooted in reality.
Be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. If fear causes you to retreat from your dreams, you will never give the world anything new.
it is impossible to lead without a dream. When leaders are no longer willing to dream, it is only a short time before followers are unwilling to follow.
Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?
Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.
Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.
My enemy is not uncertainty. It is not even my responsibility to remove the uncertainty. It is my responsibility to bring clarity into the midst of the uncertainty.
As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction. As a leader you must develop the elusive skill of leading confidently and purposefully onto uncertain terrain.
Next generation leaders must fear a lack of clarity more than a lack of accuracy. The individual in your organization who communicates the clearest vision will often be perceived as the leader. Clarity is perceived as leadership.
Uncertainty exposes a lack of knowledge. Pretending exposes a lack of character. Express your uncertainty with confidence.
You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible.
Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach.
Great leaders are great learners. God, in His wisdom, has placed men and women around us with the experience and discernment we often lack.
Experience alone doesn’t make you better at anything. Evaluated experience is what enables you to improve your performance.
As a leader, what you don’t know can hurt you. What you don’t know about yourself can put a lid on your leadership. You owe it to yourself and to those who have chosen to follow you to open the doors to evaluation. Engage a coach.
Success doesn’t make anything of consequence easier. Success just raises the stakes. Success brings with it the unanticipated pressure of maintaining success. The more successful you are as a leader, the more difficult this becomes. There is far more pressure at the top of an organization than you might imagine.
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Andy Stanley
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You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard,” says A. L. Williams. “You beat another 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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If you desire to mine the gold of good intentions in others, then forgiveness is essential. And it’s rarely a one-time thing. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he said, “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Sydney Harris sums up the elements of a teachable mind-set: “A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others. A loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Novelist H. G. Wells held that wealth, notoriety, place, and power are no measures of success whatsoever. The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have been and what we have become. In other words, success comes as the result of growing to our potential.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Doing for others what they can’t do for themselves is really a matter of attitude. I believe that whatever I’ve been given is to be shared with others. And because I have an abundance mind-set, I never worry about running out myself. The more I give away, the more I seem to get to give away.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
look at the wisdom (and humor) found in this Chinese proverb: If you want happiness for an hour—take a nap. If you want happiness for a day—go fishing. If you want happiness for a month—get married. If you want happiness for a year—inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime—help others.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
You will be able to reach your potential and help your organization reach its loftiest goals only if you begin developing leaders instead of merely attracting followers. Leaders who develop leaders experience an incredible multiplication effect in their organizations that can be achieved in no other way.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Helen Keller, author, speaker, and advocate for disabled persons, asserted, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
instead of letting developers just run around and do whatever they want, autonomy actually has its basis in rules. Without guardrails, people won’t know how to make decisions, and leaders will tend to second-guess them constantly. By creating rules, you paradoxically set people free—in the space between guardrails.
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Jeff Lawson (Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century)
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I love the story about the shortest letter to the editor written to England’s newspaper the Daily Mail. When the editor invited readers to send in their answers to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” writer G. K. Chesterton is reputed to have sent the following: Dear Sir, I am. Yours sincerely, G. K. Chesterton
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
The day that I realized I could no longer do everything myself was a major step in my development as a person and a leader. I’ve always had vision, plenty of ideas, and vast amounts of energy. But when the vision gets bigger than you, you really only have two choices: give up on the vision or get help. I chose the latter.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Discouraged? Don’t be, for the one thing that really matters, lasts forever—your friendships. Life is too long to spend it with people who pull you in the wrong direction. And it’s too short not to invest in others. Your relationships will define you. And they will influence your talent—one way or the other. Choose wisely. —
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Management expert Tom Peters gives a perspective on this. He suggests, “Don’t rock the boat. Sink it and start over.” If you desire to be creative and do something really innovative, that’s sometimes what it takes. You must destroy the old to create something new. You cannot allow yourself to be paralyzed by the idea of change.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Thomas Macauley said, “The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he would never be found out.” Life is like a vise; at times it will squeeze us. At those moments of pressure, whatever is inside will be found out. We cannot give what we do not have. Image promises much but produces little. Integrity never disappoints.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
They are committed to excellence. John Johnson in Christian Excellence writes, “Success bases our worth on a comparison with others. Excellence gauges our value by measuring us against our own potential. Success grants its rewards to the few but is the dream of the multitudes. Excellence is available to all living beings but is accepted by the . . . few.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
The happiest people in life don’t necessarily have the best of everything. They just try to make the best of everything. They’re like the person in a remote village going to a well every day to get water who says, “Every time I come to this well, I come away with my bucket full!” instead of, “I can’t believe I have to keep coming back to this well to fill up my bucket!
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Author Napoleon Hill noted, “Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” To develop persistence over the long haul, you have to cultivate inward determination on a continual basis. And if you do, someday your story may be similar to one of these: •Admiral Peary attempted to reach the North Pole seven times before he made it on try number eight.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Other times leaders have to hold their feelings in check. When I say that leaders should delay their emotions, I’m not suggesting that they deny them or bury them. 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.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
A Chinese proverb I came across gives insight: “Assume a cheerfulness you do not feel, and shortly you feel the cheerfulness you assumed.” Or as editor and publisher Elbert Hubbard says, “Be pleasant until 10 a.m. and the rest of the day will take care of itself.” When you get up in the morning, you need to remind yourself of the decision you’ve made to have a positive attitude.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Dale Carnegie was a master at identifying potential leaders. Once asked by a reporter how he had managed to hire forty-three millionaires, Carnegie responded that the men had not been millionaires when they started working for him. They had become millionaires as a result. The reporter next wanted to know how he had developed these men to become such valuable leaders. Carnegie replied, “Men are developed the same way gold is mined. Several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold. But you don’t go into the mine looking for dirt,” he added. “You go in looking for the gold.” That’s exactly the way to develop positive, successful people. Look for the gold, not the dirt; the good, not the bad. The more positive qualities you look for, the more you are going to find.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Being a leader doesn’t mean you have people reporting to you on an organizational chart—leadership is about inspiring and motivating those around you. A good leader affects a team’s ability to deliver code, architect good systems, and apply Lean principles to how the team manages its work and develops products. All of these have a measurable impact on an organization’s profitability, productivity, and market share.
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Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
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Author and conference speaker Richard Exley explained his idea of friendship this way: “A true friend is one who hears and understands when you share your deepest feelings. He supports you when you are struggling; he corrects you, gently and with love, when you err; and he forgives you when you fail. A true friend prods you to personal growth, stretches you to your full potential. And most amazing of all, he celebrates your successes as if they were his own.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Nineteenth-century clergyman Phillips Brooks maintained, “Character is made in the small moments of our lives.” Anytime you break a moral principle, you create a small crack in the foundation of your integrity. And when times get tough, it becomes harder to act with integrity, not easier. Character isn’t created in a crisis; it only comes to light. Everything you have done in the past—and the things you have neglected to do—come to a head when you’re under pressure.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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I like to have the freedom to pursue the best course of action at any given moment. When I was in my twenties, I spent a lot of time doing things that had little return. In my thirties, I did better, but I still wasn’t as focused as I should have been. It wasn’t until I reached forty that I started to become highly selective about where I spent my time and energy. Today I filter just about everything I do through my top priority: Am I adding value to people? For me, it all comes down to that.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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More than thirty years ago I memorized a quote that has shaped the way I live: “My potential is God’s gift to me. What I do with my potential is my gift to Him.” I believe I am accountable to God, others, and myself for every gift, talent, resource, and opportunity I have in life. If I give less than my best, then I am shirking my responsibility. I believe UCLA coach John Wooden was speaking to this idea when he said, “Make every day your masterpiece.” If we give our very best all the time, we can make our lives into something special. And that will overflow into the lives of others.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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Courageous Leadership Simply Means I’ve Developed: 1. Convictions that are stronger than my fears. 2. Vision that is clearer than my doubts. 3. Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion. 4. Self-esteem that is deeper than self-protection. 5. Appreciation for discipline that is greater than my desire for leisure. 6. Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo. 7. Poise that is more unshakeable than panic. 8. Risk taking that is stronger than safety seeking. 9. Right actions that are more robust than rationalization. 10. A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased. You don’t have to be great to become a person of courage. You just need to want to reach your potential and to be willing to trade what seems good in the moment for what’s best for your potential. That’s something you can do regardless of your level of natural talent. —Talent Is Never Enough MAKE A SMALL DECISION TODAY THAT WILL INCREASE
YOUR CONFIDENCE AND LEADERSHIP COURAGE.
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John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
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Through the fall, the president’s anger seemed difficult to contain. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” then followed up with a threat to “totally destroy” the country. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them killed a protester and injured a score of others, he made a brutally offensive statement condemning violence “on many sides … on many sides”—as if there was moral equivalence between those who were fomenting racial hatred and violence and those who were opposing it. He retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda that had been posted by a convicted criminal leader of a British far-right organization. Then as now, the president’s heedless bullying and intolerance of variance—intolerance of any perception not his own—has been nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue that has been long in development, a pathology that became only more virulent when it migrated to the internet. A person such as the president can on impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of “fake news.” There are so many news outlets now, and the competition for clicks is so intense, that any sufficiently outrageous statement made online by anyone with even the faintest patina of authority, and sometimes even without it, will be talked about, shared, and reported on, regardless of whether it has a basis in fact. How do you progress as a culture if you set out to destroy any common agreement as to what constitutes a fact? You can’t have conversations. You can’t have debates. You can’t come to conclusions. At the same time, calling out the transgressor has a way of giving more oxygen to the lie. Now it’s a news story, and the lie is being mentioned not just in some website that publishes unattributable gossip but in every reputable newspaper in the country. I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.
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Andrew G. McCabe (The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump)
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PRIORITIZE BEING PRESENT Today’s challenge is to keep your focus and preserve the sanctity of mind required to create, and to ultimately make an impact in what matters most to you. This can only happen when you capitalize on the here and now. To do this, alternate periods of connectedness with periods of truly being present: Be aware of the cost of constant connection. If your focus is always on others—and quenching your appetite for information and external validation—you will miss out on the opportunity to mine the potential of your own mind. Recognize when you’re tuning in to the stream for the wrong reasons. We often look to our devices for a sense of reassurance. Become more aware of the insecurity that pulls you away from the present. You cannot imagine what will be if you are constantly concerned with what already is. Create windows of non-stimulation in your day. Make this time sacred and use it to focus on a separate list of two or three things that are important to you over the long term. Use this time to think, to digest what you’ve learned, and to plan. Listen to your gut as much as you listen to others. With all the new sources of communication and amplification, don’t let yourself be persuaded by the volume of the masses. Nothing should resonate more loudly than your own intuition. Stay open to the possibilities of serendipity. The most important connections—whether with people, ideas, or mistakes that lead to key realizations—often spring from unexpected circumstances. By being fully present where you are, you let chance (and the curious universe we live in) work its magic. You are the steward of your own potential. The resources within you—and around you—are only tapped when you recognize their value and develop ways to use them. Whatever the future of technology may hold, the greatest leaders will be those most capable of tuning in to themselves and harnessing the full power of their own minds.
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Jocelyn K. Glei (Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind)
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Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders - and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands - parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion - shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development - the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself - is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that: - the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)