Morale Boosting Quotes

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I used to be so good at that kind of thing," Skulduggery said quietly. "Well, my morale is certainly boosted," Valkyrie informed him. "Really?" "god no. That was terrible
Derek Landy (Playing with Fire (Skulduggery Pleasant, #2))
Expendable was not the word I was looking to hear to boost my morale, but whatever.
Rachel Caine (Fall of Night (The Morganville Vampires, #14))
On the news that the Tsar had sent the troops icons to boost their morals, General Dragomirov quipped: 'The Japanese are beating us with machine-guns, but never mind: we'll beat them with icons.
Orlando Figes (A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924)
As you enter this place of work please choose to make today a great day. Your colleagues, customers, team members, and you yourself will be thankful. Find ways to play. We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves. Stay focused in order to be present when your customers and team mebers most need you. And should you feel your enegery lapsing, try this surefire remedy: Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear - and make their day.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish: A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
The ploy of using dark psychology to dehumanise certain ethnic and religious groups is so effective that it has been used repeatedly throughout history. Such racist psychology with discriminatory dehumanisation consists of five basic elements that include alluding to the below par intelligence or morality of the minority group to cause it to be ostracised while boosting the ego of the majority by assuring them of their own superiority; using infestation analogies to make the majority fearful that the minority is a threat to their welfare and security; comparing and referring to the minority as animals with the Nazis having frequently referred to innocent Jewish victims as rats; encouraging the use of violence by the majority who have been brainwashed into accepting that the minority are inhuman; and physically isolating or removing the minority by means of deportation, the formation of ghettos, or the use of concentration camps.
William Hanna (The Grim Reaper)
There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
the extrovert assumption is so woven into the fabric of our culture that an employee may suffer reprimands for keeping his door closed (that is, if he is one of the lucky ones who has a door), for not lunching with other staff members, or for missing the weekend golf game or any number of supposedly morale-boosting celebrations. Half. More than half of us don’t want to play. We don’t see the point. For us, an office potluck will not provide satisfying human contact—we’d much rather meet a friend for an intimate conversation (even if that friend is a coworker). For us, the gathering will not boost morale — and will probably leave us resentful that we stayed an extra hour to eat stale cookies and make small talk. For us, talking with coworkers does not benefit our work—it sidetracks us.
Laurie A. Helgoe (Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength)
Whatever boost sixty captured miles might have brought to German morale was erased by the chocolate in the BEF’s packs. War is morale. War is supply. War is chocolate.
Julie Berry
Humor is the coffee in a soldier’s cup; the darker the blend, the greater the morale boost.
Leo Jenkins (Lest We Forget: A Ranger Medic's Story)
We are missing this!" Since Faith's exploits tended to be a bit of a morale boost, if not for the squeamish, the helmet cam videos were available for public view. And the Gurkhas had decided to see who this child was who carried a kukri as if she was due and was going to "instruct" them on clearance. "I can go to war!" Lance Corporal Ombahadur Ghale shouted. "I can fight! Let us go to war!" "There will be war aplenty to come," Sergeant Jitbahadur Rai said. "We must regain our strength to fight these battles. And if this is the way of such war...A great war it shall be! Oooiya Ghorkali! Look at her go!
John Ringo (Islands of Rage & Hope (Black Tide Rising, #3))
A friend who attended a prestigious MBA program once told me about the business ethics course he took there. The professor counseled honest business practices for two reasons. First, if you lie or cheat you may be caught, and that would be bad for business. Second, if people in the company know they ae working in an honest business, that will boost morale . . . "Tell the truth--because it's to your own advantage," was the counsel. What happens, however, when you inevitable come to situations in which telling the truth would cost you dearly? What happens when telling a particular lie would be stupendously advantageous to you?
Timothy J. Keller (The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith)
When we choose to love the work we do, we can catch our limit of happiness, meaning, and fulfillment every day.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
that goes well, we will follow with discussions of Raving Fans, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Gung Ho!; and The Road Less Traveled. All of these books can help us understand
Harry Paul (Fish!: A remarkable way to boost morale and improve results)
The victory at Trenton boosted morale among the troops, the Congress, and the people to a degree possibly unwarranted by winning back a town in New Jersey, what with it being a town in New Jersey.
Sarah Vowell
Living in a community normally boosts one’s chances of surviving and thriving. We can share food and huddle against the cold; we can organize to attack prey or to defend each other against invaders.
Patricia S. Churchland (Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition)
The NPI process was deflating for morale. But figuring out how to “boost morale” is not Amazonian. Other companies have morale-boosting projects and groups with names like “Fun Club” and “Culture Committee.” They view morale as a problem to be solved by company-sponsored entertainment and social interaction. Amazon’s approach to morale was to attract world-class talent and create an environment in which they had maximum latitude to invent and build things to delight customers
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
I wanted to show how humans can have ugly feelings that they might prefer not to acknowledge; how we’re all caught up in our own problems and limited by our own life experience,” she says. “To judge somebody else, to declare them substandard, to conclude that their misfortunes are due to inherent character flaws, can be a way of boosting our own self-esteem, because it must follow that our comparative success or happiness is not mere luck or chance, but the reward for superior morals or talent.
J.K. Rowling
Today was “ananthropomorphic day”: once a month, the gods got to take a holiday from humdrum humanoid shapes and look any way they wanted. Since most gods are versatile shape-shifters and/or have god-awful taste in clothing, this meant that temporary blindness or at least a good headache was lurking around every corner. It was meant to boost morale. It usually sank his.
Gabriele Russo (Incompetent Gods)
The moral of this research to me is that temptation bundling certainly works best if you can actually restrict an indulgence to whenever you’re doing a task that requires an extra boost of motivation (such as making it possible to listen to audiobooks only at the gym, and not in your car or on the bus). But merely suggesting that people try temptation bundling is enough to produce benefits that last.
Katy Milkman (How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be)
As you enter this place of work please choose to make today a great day. Your colleagues, customers, team members, and you yourself will be thankful. Find ways to play. We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves. Stay focused in order to be there when your customers and team members most need you. And should you feel your energy lapsing, try this surefire remedy: Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear—and make their day.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
OUR WORKPLACE As you enter this place of work please choose to make today a great day. Your colleagues, customers, team members, and you yourself will be thankful. Find ways to play. We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves. Stay focused in order to be there when your customers and team members most need you. And should you feel your energy lapsing, try this surefire remedy: Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear—and make their day.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
During an hour-long conversation mid-flight, he laid out his theory of the war. First, Jones said, the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war. 'If we're not successful here,' Jones said, 'you'll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you'll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we're going to have a bigger problem.' A setback or loss for the United States would be 'a tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world' and provide 'a global infusion of morale and energy, and these people don't need much.' Jones went on, using the kind of rhetoric that Obama had shied away from, 'It's certainly a clash of civilizations. It's a clash of religions. It's a clash of almost concepts of how to live.' The conflict is that deep, he said. 'So I think if you don't succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places. 'Second, if we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.' Third, 'I say, be careful you don't over-Americanize the war. I know that we're going to do a large part of it,' but it was essential to get active, increased participation by the other 41 nations, get their buy-in and make them feel they have ownership in the outcome. Fourth, he said that there had been way too much emphasis on the military, almost an overmilitarization of the war. The key to leaving a somewhat stable Afghanistan in a reasonable time frame was improving governance and the rule of law, in order to reduce corruption. There also needed to be economic development and more participation by the Afghan security forces. It sounded like a good case, but I wondered if everyone on the American side had the same understanding of our goals. What was meant by victory? For that matter, what constituted not losing? And when might that happen? Could there be a deadline?
Bob Woodward (Obama's Wars)
Now you take dark Negroes like you, Mr. Griffin, and me," he went on. "We're old Uncle Toms to our people, no matter how much education and morals we've got. No, you have to be almost a mulatto, have your hair conked and all slicked out and look like a Valentino. Then the Negro will look up to you. You've got class. Isn't that a pitiful hero-type?" "And the white man knows that," Mr. Davis said. "Yes," the cafe owner continued. "He utilizes this knowledge to flatter some of us, tell us we're above our people, not like most Negroes. We're so stupid we fall for it and work against own own. Why, if we'd work just half as hard to boost our race as we do to please whites whose attentions flatter us, we'd really get somewhere.
John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me)
In the morning, real nurses taught us the rudiments of anatomy and instructed us in the preparation of dressings and bandages. But then in the afternoon, representatives of the Frauenschaft, the women’s auxiliary of the Nazi Party, came to instruct us in our real mission: to boost the morale of the wounded and spread the propaganda of German invincibility. “You must make sure that every single soldier in your care knows that, despite the cowardly British air attack last May, the Cologne cathedral is still standing,” said the sturdy, uniformed instructor. “You must also tell everyone that there has been no bombing in the Rhineland. Am I clear?” “Yes, ma’am,” we all said. In fact, the Rhineland was being crushed by Allied air attacks.
Edith Hahn Beer (The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust)
VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS ASSAULT ON ANOTHER PRODIGY According to numerous reports, Ro stomped on Shayda Adel’s foot to punish Shayda for attempting to trip her. 10 out of 10 Apology required. Technically, Mr. Sencen wasn’t involved in this incident. But since his bodyguard was, it’s going in his file. And for the record, I completely understand Ro’s behavior. But I can’t condone harming another prodigy. I’ve ordered Ro to apologize during orientation. —Magnate Leto LEVEL SIX VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS Update: In an effort to contain the story of the Neverseen’s recent brutal attack on Mr. Vacker and Miss Foster, I’ve asked Mr. Sencen to spread the rumor that Miss Foster and Mr. Vacker are away on a mysterious assignment. Elwin also reports having to repeatedly chase Mr. Sencen away from the Healing Center. —Magnate Leto Second Update: At Ms. Ruewen’s request, I’ve given Mr. Sencen permission to visit Miss Foster in the Healing Center. (Apparently Miss Foster’s morale needs a boost.) Keefe may have untraditional methods, but he does ease Miss Foster’s worries and generally improves her mood. —Magnate Leto
Shannon Messenger (Unlocked (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8.5))
This new surge in morale had nothing to do with Churchill’s speech and everything to do with his gift for understanding how simple gestures could generate huge effects. What had infuriated Londoners was that during these night raids the Luftwaffe seemed free to come and go as it wished, without interference from the night-blind RAF and the city’s strangely quiescent anti-aircraft guns. Gun crews were under orders to conserve ammunition and fire only when aircraft were sighted overhead and, as a consequence, did little firing at all. On Churchill’s orders, more guns were brought to the city, boosting the total to nearly two hundred, from ninety-two. More importantly, Churchill now directed their crews to fire with abandon, despite his knowing full well that guns only rarely brought down aircraft. The orders took effect that Wednesday night, September 11. The impact on civic morale was striking and immediate. Crews blasted away; one official described it as “largely wild and uncontrolled shooting.” Searchlights swept the sky. Shells burst over Trafalgar Square and Westminster like fireworks, sending a steady rain of shrapnel onto the streets below, much to the delight of London’s residents. The guns raised “a momentous sound that sent a chattering, smashing, blinding thrill through the London heart,” wrote novelist William Sansom. Churchill himself loved the sound of the guns; instead of seeking shelter, he would race to the nearest gun emplacement and watch. The new cacophony had “an immense effect on people’s morale,” wrote private secretary John Martin. “Tails are up and, after the fifth sleepless night, everyone looks quite different this morning—cheerful and confident. It was a curious bit of mass psychology—the relief of hitting back.” The next day’s Home Intelligence reports confirmed the effect. “The dominating topic of conversation today is the anti-aircraft barrage of last night. This greatly stimulated morale: in public shelters people cheered and conversation shows that the noise brought a shock of positive pleasure.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
This'll do it. Can you see Tereza and Maddy over there getting pedicures and arguing." "Mmm," Sophia mused. "They disagree about the name for the beauty products we don't even have yet. I don't know if it's Maddy or the concept, but it's boosted Nonna's morale.
Nora Roberts (The Villa)
Greece can balance its books without killing democracy Alexis Tsipras | 614 words OPINION Greece changes on January 25, the day of the election. My party, Syriza, guarantees a new social contract for political stability and economic security. We offer policies that will end austerity, enhance democracy and social cohesion and put the middle class back on its feet. This is the only way to strengthen the eurozone and make the European project attractive to citizens across the continent. We must end austerity so as not to let fear kill democracy. Unless the forces of progress and democracy change Europe, it will be Marine Le Pen and her far-right allies that change it for us. We have a duty to negotiate openly, honestly and as equals with our European partners. There is no sense in each side brandishing its weapons. Let me clear up a misperception: balancing the government’s budget does not automatically require austerity. A Syriza government will respect Greece’s obligation, as a eurozone member, to maintain a balanced budget, and will commit to quantitative targets. However, it is a fundamental matter of democracy that a newly elected government decides on its own how to achieve those goals. Austerity is not part of the European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are. If the Greek people entrust us with their votes, implementing our economic programme will not be a “unilateral” act, but a democratic obligation. Is there any logical reason to continue with a prescription that helps the disease metastasise? Austerity has failed in Greece. It crippled the economy and left a large part of the workforce unemployed. This is a humanitarian crisis. The government has promised the country’s lenders that it will cut salaries and pensions further, and increase taxes in 2015. But those commitments only bind Antonis Samaras’s government which will, for that reason, be voted out of office on January 25. We want to bring Greece to the level of a proper, democratic European country. Our manifesto, known as the Thessaloniki programme, contains a set of fiscally balanced short-term measures to mitigate the humanitarian crisis, restart the economy and get people back to work. Unlike previous governments, we will address factors within Greece that have perpetuated the crisis. We will stand up to the tax-evading economic oligarchy. We will ensure social justice and sustainable growth, in the context of a social market economy. Public debt has risen to a staggering 177 per cent of gross domestic product. This is unsustainable; meeting the payments is very hard. On existing loans, we demand repayment terms that do not cause recession and do not push the people to more despair and poverty. We are not asking for new loans; we cannot keep adding debt to the mountain. The 1953 London Conference helped Germany achieve its postwar economic miracle by relieving the country of the burden of its own past errors. (Greece was among the international creditors who participated.) Since austerity has caused overindebtedness throughout Europe, we now call for a European debt conference, which will likewise give a strong boost to growth in Europe. This is not an exercise in creating moral hazard. It is a moral duty. We expect the European Central Bank itself to launch a full-blooded programme of quantitative easing. This is long overdue. It should be on a scale great enough to heal the eurozone and to give meaning to the phrase “whatever it takes” to save the single currency. Syriza will need time to change Greece. Only we can guarantee a break with the clientelist and kleptocratic practices of the political and economic elites. We have not been in government; we are a new force that owes no allegiance to the past. We will make the reforms that Greece actually needs. The writer is leader of Syriza, the Greek oppositionparty
Anonymous
One thing we did was we had 2 titanium cups, and one large measuring jug (blue) and a then end of the day we would elect the ‘man of the day’ and they would have the jug for tea and breakfast. I know that although bigger, the jug only held the same amount of tea as the smaller cups but it always seemed to raise moral. What’s this got to do with food? Nothing, but never lose sight of the psychological boost that food and drink plays on a team, instead focusing only on the raw math of the calories.
Andy Kirkpatrick (1000+ Climbing Tips)
Human beings destroy nature, conquer other cultures, and conceive themselves kings of infinite space. And human beings also participate in religious illusions, which boost their self-esteem by providing them with a hallucinatory control over the universe, a sense of divine protectedness and importance. Death is evaded by narcissistic inflation and delusions of dominance.
Jerry S. Piven (Death and Delusion: A Freudian Analysis of Moral Terror)
But to take no action is to fail for sure. I might as well get started. My first step is to choose my attitude.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
Whether the army was capable of carrying out such an operation was a question never asked. The officer corps had been repeatedly purged, those ousted replaced by some 2,000 Ba’thist-indoctrinated ‘educators.’ “I worked as a teacher in the staff college,” remembered Ibrahim Isma’il Khahya who, in 1966, became commander of the 8th Infantry Brigade. “My officers were mostly teachers, too. They weren’t ready for war.” The head of intelligence for the Golan district, Col. Nash’at Habash, had been kicked out and replaced by a mere captain, brother of a high-ranking Ba’th official. Ahmad Suweidani, the former military attaché in Beijing, had been boosted from colonel to lieutenant general and chief of staff. Though Syria’s 250 tanks and 250 artillery pieces were generally of more recent vintage than Israel’s, their maintenance was minimal. Supply, too, could be erratic; deprived of food, front-line troops had been known to desert their posts. The air force was particularly substandard. An internal army report rated only 45 percent of Syria’s pilots as “good,” 32 percent as “average,”‘ and the remainder “below average.” Only thirty-four of the forty-two jets at the Dmair and Saiqal airfields were operational. Yet, within the ranks, morale had never been higher. Capt. Muhammad ‘Ammar, an infantry officer serving in the fortress of Tel Fakhr, recalled: “We thought we were stronger, that we could cling to our land, and that the Golan was impenetrable. We were especially heartened by the unity between Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.” Another captain, Marwan Hamdan al-Khuli, heard that “we were much stronger and would defeat the enemy easily.
Michael B. Oren (Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
I am a Durkheimian, I think Emil Durkheim got it right. I think you need to see communities as absolutely needing a sense of cohesion, trust, shared values and a sense of who we are. This is why mass immigration can be a bad thing. I'm Jewish and my grandparents came to America in 1905 fleeing pogroms, and I look at the videos and see the kids coming out of Syria and it is the same thing, so I'm sympathetic to the moral case. But you can only have mass immigration if you have mass assimilation, which my grandparents and my parents went through. If you have a society that has the moral resources to say 'This is America, welcome, adapt, learn English', then you can have mass immigration. Immigration clearly boosted America's creativity and economy, so there is plenty of good things with immigration. I'm not saying immigration is bad. But from a Durkheimian perspective, to have massive Muslim immigration into secular European societies where not only do you not have assimilation, you have a political left arguing that assimilation is genocide, which is ridiculous. With an anti-assimilation ethos, Europe is setting itself up for massive failure. Their generous redistributive welfare states can only work if people have a strong sense of social solidarity. Diversity can be divisive, as research has shown. So Europe is in huge trouble and the sociology is worrisome for what Europe is going to be like in one or two generations.
Jonathan Haidt
We call that make their day. We look for as many ways as we can to create great memories. And we create great memories whenever we make someone’s day.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
First, by accepting that you choose your attitude, you demonstrate a level of personal accountability and proactivity
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
Choose Your Attitude—The fish guys are aware that they choose their attitude each day. One of the fish guys said, “When you are doing what you are doing, who are you being? Are you being impatient and bored, or are you being world famous? You are going to act differently if you are being world famous.” Who do we want to be while we do our work?
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
find creative ways to engage our customers. That’s the key word: engage.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
It may sound a little sappy, but I believe I have an obligation to seek out and find ways to demonstrate my gratitude for this life I enjoy.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
We spent a lot of time talking about this choice, and we realized that as long as we are going to be at work, we might as well have the best day we can have.
Stephen C. Lundin (Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results)
opted to keep my activity tracker, because tracking my exercise have me a moral boost.
Gwyneth Snow (Minimalism: The Path to an Organized, Stress-free and Decluttered Life)
In addition to that, a question is sometimes raised that if Allah knows and has power over all things, then why He does not stop the evil actions before they cause suffering. In reflecting on this, it is important to understand how the faith-based worldview explains life in this world. Human life in this world is a trial in which if we remain faithful and morally conscious individuals in carrying out all normal duties of life, then we will be rewarded in life hereafter. If we do otherwise and live immoral lives, then we will not escape divine justice in the afterlife. Since the trial nature of this life requires the exercise of free will, that is why, Allah does not intervene to provide absolute justice in this world. However, faith-based teachings in Qur’an urge and compel moral and pro-social behaviour. The knowledge of perfect accountability boosts hope and aspiration and reduces despair of worldly misfortunes and temptation towards unrestrained material pleasures.
Salman Ahmed Shaikh (Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World)
The belief that ignites hope in the heart of a person to survive is the same belief that boosts the ego of the person and deters his progress by clouding his judgments.
Adhish Mazumder (Solemn Tales of Human Hearts)
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. —plato
Brett Blumenthal (52 Small Changes for the Mind: Improve Memory * Minimize Stress * Increase Productivity * Boost Happiness)
I’ve often heard it said that everything new starts with a thought. Here is yours: My social anxiety symptoms are temporary and eventually they will diminish significantly and may well disappear altogether. This sentence must become part of your daily routine. To ensure progress, you have to develop what I call PMA--Positive Mental Attitude. A positive outlook is one of the strongest and most powerful strategies of this self-help program. What you are doing is self-coaching, and a vital part of being a good coach is boosting morale. How? Through PMA, of course!
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
When you get in that flow of making decision after decision, you build momentum and boost morale. Decisions are progress.
Jason Fried (Rework)
A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt-- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig!
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
Therefore, when someone “notices” us, he pays us a big compliment. He is saying that he recognizes our importance. He gives a big boost to our morale. We become more friendly, more cooperative, and actually work harder.
Les Giblin (How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People)
Affirming character appears to have the strongest effect in the critical periods when children are beginning to formulate strong identities. In one study, for example, praising character boosted the moral actions of eight-year-olds but not five-year-olds or ten-year-olds. The ten-year-olds may already have crystallized self-concepts to the degree that a single comment didn’t affect them, and the five-year-olds may have been too young for an isolated compliment to have a real impact. Character praise leaves a lasting imprint when identities are forming.*
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
So I ended my speech that night by quoting from Teddy’s letter, hoping that his words would bolster the nation just as they had bolstered me. “What we face,” he’d written, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.” According to poll data, my address to Congress boosted public support for the healthcare bill, at least temporarily.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
His first day on the job came right as Boeing completed its merger with McDonnell Douglas. The resultant mammoth government contractor held a picnic to boost morale but ended up failing at even this simple exercise. “The head of one of the departments gave a speech about it being one company with one vision and then added that the company was very cost constrained,” Hollman said. “He asked that everyone limit themselves to one piece of chicken.
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
In the absence of social goods, ‘profit-first’ economic growth has fed a crony capitalism that serves not the common good but speculators in the ‘liquid economy.’ Collateral banking systems, offshore sites providing fiscal havens for corporate tax avoidance, extracting value from companies to boost the earnings of shareholders at the expense of stakeholders, the smoke-and-mirrors world of derivatives and credit default swaps-all these suck capital from the real economy and undermine a healthy market, creating historically unprecedented levels of inequality. There is a major disjuncture between the awareness of social rights on the one hand and the distribution of actual opportunities on the other. The stupendous rise in inequality of recent decades is not a stage of growth but a brake on it, and the root of many social ills in the twenty-first century. Barely more than one percent of the world’s population owns half of its wealth. A market detached from morality, dazzled by its own complex engineering, which privileges profit and competition above all else, means not just spectacular wealth for a few but also poverty and deprivation for many. Millions are robbed of hope.
Pope Francis (Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future)
The NPI process was deflating for morale. But figuring out how to “boost morale” is not Amazonian. Other companies have morale-boosting projects and groups with names like “Fun Club” and “Culture Committee.” They view morale as a problem to be solved by company-sponsored entertainment and social interaction. Amazon’s approach to morale was to attract world-class talent and create an environment in which they had maximum latitude to invent and build things to delight customers—and you can’t do that if every quarter some faceless process like NPI smites your best ideas. In chapter six, we discuss Amazon’s belief that focusing on controllable input metrics instead of output metrics drives meaningful growth. Morale is, in a sense, an output metric, whereas freedom to invent and build is an input metric. If you clear the impediment to building, morale takes care of itself.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson dubbed this sense of being free to speak your mind “psychological safety.” It’s hard to overstate its value. Psychological safety boosts morale, fosters improvements, and ensures that, in Andrew Wolstenholme’s words, “bad news travels fast”—so problems can be tackled quickly.
Bent Flyvbjerg (How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between)
Christmas was approaching and I asked my Ivy League employer if I could use the company funds to buy the team something for Christmas to boost their moral. They refused my request.
Steven Magee
The NPI process was deflating for morale. But figuring out how to “boost morale” is not Amazonian. Other companies have morale-boosting projects and groups with names like “Fun Club” and “Culture Committee.” They view morale as a problem to be solved by company-sponsored entertainment and social interaction. Amazon’s approach to morale was to attract world-class talent and create an environment in which they had maximum latitude to invent and build things to delight customers—and you can’t do that if every quarter some faceless process like NPI smites your best ideas.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
The villagers, like much of Europe, adored the well-respected German actress, who was known for her humanitarian efforts during the war. From housing exiles to helping Jews escape from Germany, she funded refugees with her own money and performed on the front lines to boost morale and sell war bonds. Fixated
Linda Ganzini (Lilia: a true story of love, courage, and survival in the shadow of war)
managers don’t seem to be aware of this. In a related study, Amabile asked 669 managers to rank five different factors affecting employee morale: support for making progress, recognition for good work, monetary incentives, interpersonal support, and clear goals. Only 5 percent ranked support for making progress first, and most ranked it dead last.
Robert C. Pozen (Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours)
In the United States, the story of DST is rather ridiculous, influenced by that especially American blend of wartime morality and blatant commercial interest. In the surprisingly hilarious book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, Michael Downing writes that soon after the United States adopted DST in March 1918, “the lofty humanitarian goals of Daylight Saving—to get working girls safely home before dark, to reunite dads and moms with the kids before shadows fell on the backyard garden, to safeguard the physical and mental health of industrial workers by increasing their daily opportunity for sports and recreation—also resembled an innovative strategy for boosting retail sales.
Jenny Odell (Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture)
Worthiness alone is not the key to learning and will do little to boost your morale; be prepared to enjoy yourself.
Viv Levy (The Beginner's Guide to Life Drawing (New Practical Art))
I argued again for an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. America could still stop Iran from developing atomic bombs that would endanger America, Israel and the peace of the entire world. An American action now would give an enormous boost to the standing of the US and its president. Obama’s response floored me and Itzik Molcho, who sat beside me. “Bibi,” he said, “Nobody likes Goliath. I don’t want to be an eight-hundred-pound gorilla strutting on the world stage. For too long we acted that way. We need to lead in a different way.” I was stunned. In the Middle East as I knew it, with Iran racing to nuclear weapons, and with the shifting geopolitical balance toward Asia, I would want to be a 1,200-pound gorilla, not an 800-pound one. Often when I met officials of the Obama administration they waxed lyrical about the marvels of soft power. Culture, values, even Hollywood can do wonders to change the world, they said. “Soft power is good,” I acknowledged, “but hard power is even better.” By hard power I meant the judicious use of formidable military or economic power, or both. The values of individual liberty and national freedom give meaning and strength to free societies. But they are not enough. Power has the unfortunate quality of not being limited to the morally superior and the well intentioned. If malign forces amass enough of it and have the will to use it, they will overcome the less well-armed forces of good, especially if the good lack the tenacity to fight. Being a moral people won’t save you from conquest and carnage, which was the history of the Jewish people for two thousand years. Being perfect victims who harmed no one, we were perfectly moral. Being utterly powerless, we were led to the slaughter again and again. The rise of Zionism was meant to correct this flaw by giving the Jewish people the power to defend themselves. Enhancing this capacity was the central mission of my years in office.
Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi: My Story)
One of the most remarkable things coming out of our experience in Bataan was the presence and performance of the army nurses. In retrospect I believe that they were the greatest morale boost present in that unhappy little area of jungle called Bataan. I was continually amazed that anyone living and working under such primitive conditions could remain as calm, pleasant, efficient and impeccably neat and clean as those remarkable nurses.
Elizabeth M. Norman (We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese)
The closer someone lived to someone who was lonely, the lonelier the second individual felt. The same was true for depression, but the blockbuster was about happiness. Happiness was even more contagious than loneliness or depression, and it worked across time. If person A’s happiness went up at time 1, person B’s—living next door—went up at time 2. And so did person C’s, two doors away, by somewhat less. Even person D, three doors away, enjoyed more happiness. This has significant implications for morale among groups of soldiers and for leadership. On the negative side, it suggests that a few sad or lonely or angry apples can spoil the morale of the entire unit. Commanders have known this forever. But the news is that positive morale is even more powerful and can boost the well-being and the performance of the entire unit. This makes the cultivation of happiness—a badly neglected side of leadership—important, perhaps crucial.
Martin E.P. Seligman (Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing: The practical guide to using positive psychology to make you happier and healthier)
Many nights during the war, Iranian soldiers would wake up to see a white-shrouded figure on a white horse blessing them. These apparitions of the Twelfth Imam were professional actors sent to boost morale. The common soldiers, often peasant boys raised in an atmosphere of simple piety, would then carry the tale to their relatives and friends in the villages and small towns they called home, if they lived to make it home.
Vali Nasr (The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future)
You are a Hero. Be Heroic. Always.
Vineet Raj Kapoor
clients. They’re always there. You do have to worry, and look at the practice you’ve built. Give me a rundown on today’s list.” Casey could count on Brianna to boost her morale. “Two phobias, the low self-esteem, three adjustment disorders, and one panic attack.
Barbara Delinsky (Flirting with Pete)
The reasons vary concerning why we tell ourselves we’re not ready for a given task or assignment. For some of us, the hesitance to act stems from past failures that have had a significant impact on our self-confidence. We fear a repeat of those experiences. For others, the tendency toward inaction stems from an aversion to struggle. They consider every struggle toward a desired outcome as evidence of a lack of competence or preparation (or both). In the next section, we’ll explore how the habit of telling yourself you’re not ready can have a negative impact on your productivity. How This Bad Habit Hurts Your Productivity First, you become less likely to take risks. Consequently, you’re prevented from enjoying the rewards that come with taking those risks. Instead, you’ll be inclined to stick to tasks and projects that allow you to stay within your comfort zone. They’re “safe.” They don’t require you to wonder what might happen during the course of working on them. Second, waiting until you’re 100% ready - which is to say, never taking action - prevents you from expanding your areas of competency. Because you choose to stay within your comfort zone, you confront few challenges. As such, you’re never faced with a problem that spurs you to broaden your skill set. A third way this habit affects your productivity is that it encourages you to procrastinate. By convincing yourself you’re not ready to undertake a given task, you’ll find it’s easier to rationalize postponing taking action. You’ll start to spend an inordinate amount of time planning and preparing. Fourth, staying in your comfort zone robs you of opportunities to impress influencers. After all, you’re taking fewer risks. That means you’ll rarely have a chance to stand apart from the pack. Instead, you’ll devote yourself to safe tasks and projects, which cause you to blend in with everyone else. Fifth, constantly telling yourself you’re not ready gradually erodes your self-confidence and morale. Over the long run, that diminishes your ability to work productively while increasing your stress levels. The good news is that you can break this subversive habit and start enjoying the fruits of improved productivity. Following are seven ideas for making that happen.
Damon Zahariades (The 30-Day Productivity Boost (Vol. 1): 30 Bad Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Time Management (And How To Fix Them!))
If you count our nearby wandering golems.” “Oh, that’s right. Okay, two layers, it is. That’s even better.” “Yeah, that should be plenty.” “Alright, that’s it. I’m done with my errands.” “Time to head to the southern wall and wait for our enemy?” asked Bob. I nodded. As we walked to the southern part of the city, Bob said to me, “By the way, I thought that was a great speech.” “Thanks, man. I just spoke from the heart.” “You really boosted everyone’s morale. They didn’t look too scared anymore.” “Good. That’s what I meant to do. Because we don’t need fear right now. We need hope.” We walked past the TNT cannons as a handful of guards were loading TNT blocks into them. “Looks like the troops know what they’re doing,” I said. “Come on, let’s get up on the wall.” When we got up on the wall, I saw all the captains standing there, looking off into the southern horizon. Behind and
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 36 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book) (Diary of Steve the Noob Collection))
Affirming character appears to have the strongest effect in the critical periods when children are beginning to formulate strong identities. In one study, for example, praising character boosted the moral actions of eight-year-olds but not five-year-olds or ten-year-olds.
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
High levels of activity are essential to boosting morale and driving results.
Frank Slootman (Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity)
Something you do to boost your morale is one of the greatest favors you can do for yourself!
Mehmet Murat ildan