Percent Motivational Quotes

And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!

remember that trying is eighty percent of doing something. So try and don't give up, because not giving up is the other twenty percent.

I've always been like that; I give 100 percent. I can't do it any other way.

Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren't motivated enough to do anything about it.

Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation. For example, being told that you share a birthday with a mathematician can improve the amount of effort you’re willing to put into difficult math tasks by 62 percent.

More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do i want social justice for the oppressed or do i jusy want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I dont have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, i only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, i am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem i had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read “I am the problem

Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I know. It's apathy.

There’s also the truth that 70 percent of serial killer victims are female. You better believe that knowing you’re prey heightens your interest in the predator. You find yourself desperate to make sense of largely random acts of serial murder, believing that if you can understand motivation and hunting patterns, you can protect yourself.

The Yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven. Such talk invariably makes people hallucinatory. Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you- these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you created.

According to a recent poll, 36 percent of British Muslims (ages sixteen to twenty-four) think apostates should be put to death for their unbelief.60 Are these people “morally motivated,” in Haidt’s sense, or just morally confused? And

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it was I’d seen. I’ve learned to doubt myself and my perceptions of the world around me. I do realize I’m different, you know, different from most. What I perceive isn’t what you perceive. Plus, people don’t always listen to me. I’m often afraid I won’t be believed, that my thoughts will be discounted. I’m just a maid, a nobody. And what I saw in that moment, it felt like a dream, but I know now that it was real. Someone with a deep motive killed Mr. Black. And that wasn’t me,” I said. I looked at Rodney then, and he looked at me. There was a look on his face that was entirely new. It was as though, for the very first time, he was seeing me for who I really am.

Criminals are motivated by self-preservation, and handguns can therefore be a deterrent. The potential defensive nature of guns is further evidenced by the different rates of so-called “hot burglaries,” where a resident is at home when a criminal strikes.16 In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries are “hot burglaries.” In contrast, the United States, with fewer restrictions, has a “hot burglary” rate of only 13 percent.

Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this.

But in dozens and dozens of studies, Latham and Locke found that setting goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent.5 That’s quite a boost. If an eight-hour day is our baseline, that’s like getting two extra hours of work simply by building a mental frame (aka a goal) around the activity. But not every goal is the same. “We found that if you want the largest increase in motivation and productivity,” says Latham, “then big goals lead to the best outcomes. Big goals significantly outperform small goals, medium-sized goals, and vague goals. It comes down to attention and persistence—which are two of the most important factors in determining performance. Big goals help focus attention, and they make us more persistent. The result is we’re much more effective when we work, and much more willing to get up and try again when we fail.

That's not a particularly useful measure of your enemies, motive. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that harm done with explicit conscious intention of doing another person harm accounts for about two percent of all harm inflicted. That descriptor pretty much only applies to dictators in banana republics, serial killers, and PE teachers.

This realization is much like Donald Miller's awakening after a day of protesting President Bush: "More than my questions about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.... I was the very problem that I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!" " I cannot plead innocent. I have contributed to the sum total of misery in the world. ...Or, as Casey incisively remarks, "I have more evidence of crime against myself than I have for any other human being. My conscience accuses me directly of so much malice, whereas I know only by hearsay of the evil done by others. To be humble before God is to know that I am blameworthy." " Such Christian humility is not the same thing as low self-esteem or poor self-image. It is simply the refusal to be deluded by the lie that I am guiltless: "Empowered by the intensity of God's unconditional love for me, I find it possible to demolish my defenses and admit to the truth of my condition. There is nothing in my constitution or personal history that would give me any confidence in my own competence to bring my life to a happy conclusion.

The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.9

in 2018, 60 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States were perpetrated against Jews (by contrast 18.6 percent targeted Muslims).

If there’s a 1 percent chance that something will happen, then have hope. Expect as much as you can, and it will happen.

The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010.

A University of Exeter study showed that people who have control over their workspace design are happier at work, more motivated, healthier, and up to 32 percent more productive.

When Provine studied 1,200 episodes of laughter overheard in public settings, his biggest surprise was finding that speakers laugh more than listeners—about 50 percent more, in fact.

It is generally believed that nearly 40 percent of your first impression will be set from the tone of your voice. Your vocal thermometer can be more impactful than the actual words you use.

Adventure should be 80 percent 'I think this is manageable,' but it's good to have that last 20 percent where you're right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.

Beginning in early adulthood, dopamine levels, which affect both physical movement and reward-motivated behavior (in addition to a bunch of other things), decline by about 10 percent every decade.

Being 100 percent in the moment and focusing on the person you’re with is one of the finest compliments you can offer. One of the most respectful and considerate things you can do for another is to truly be with them in the here and now.

Male sexual jealousy is the leading cause of the murder of adult women, accounting for between 50 and 70 percent of all such homicides.8 Police know this. When women are murdered, the prime suspects are boyfriends, husbands, ex-boyfriends, and ex-husbands. Although jealousy sometimes motivates women to murder, only 3 percent of murdered men are killed by their romantic partners or exes, and many of these female-perpetrated homicides are women defending themselves against a jealously violent man.

Um um um um um. This business of—this business about marketing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless we’re allowed to think that that’s—that that’s it. That that’s the point, that that’s the goal, you know? And that’s the reason we’re here—because that’s so empty. And you as a writer know that it’s—if you as a writer think that your job is to get as many people to like your stuff and think well of you as possible … And I could, we could both, name writers that it’s pretty obvious that’s their motivation? It kills the work. Each time. That that’s maybe 50 percent of it, but it misses all the magic. And it misses, it doesn’t let you be afraid. Or it doesn’t, like, let you like make yourself be, be vulnerable. Or … nah, see, I’m not … Anyway, anyway.

works. Individual students can expect their incomes to rise roughly 8 to 12 percent for each additional year of school they complete. Nations, however, can expect their incomes to rise by only 1 to 3 percent for each additional year of school completed by their citizens on average.13 If schooling actually works by improving individual students, then we would expect the improvements for individual students to be cumulative across a nation. But nations don’t seem to benefit as much from educating their citizens. Something, as they say, doesn’t add up.

For example, when articles previously published in a journal were resubmitted soon afterward with new obscure names and institutions, only 10 percent of them were noticed as having been published before, and of the remaining 90 percent, only 10 percent were accepted under the new names.46

When some bigoted white people heard the message of Donald Trump and others in the GOP that their concerns mattered, that the fear generated by their own biases had a target in Mexican and Muslim immigrants, many embraced the GOP to their own detriment. We talk at length about the 53 percent of white women who supported the Republican candidate for president, but we tend to skim past the reality that many white voters had been overtly or passively supporting the same problematic candidates and policies for decades. Researchers point to anger and disappointment among some whites as a result of crises like rising death rates from suicide, drugs, and alcohol; the decline in available jobs for those who lack a college degree; and the ongoing myth that white people are unfairly treated by policies designed to level the playing field for other groups—policies like affirmative action. Other studies have pointed to the appeal of authoritarianism, or plain old racism and sexism. Political scientist Diana Mutz said in an interview in Pacific Standard magazine that some voters who switched parties to vote for Trump were motivated by the possibility of a fall in social status: “In short, they feared that they were in the process of losing their previously privileged positions.

This shift in culture has changed us. In the first place, it has made us a bit more materialistic. College students now say they put more value on money and career success. Every year, researchers from UCLA survey a nationwide sample of college freshmen to gauge their values and what they want out of life. In 1966, 80 percent of freshmen said that they were strongly motivated to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. Today, less than half of them say that. In 1966, 42 percent said that becoming rich was an important life goal. By 1990, 74 percent agreed with that statement. Financial security, once seen as a middling value, is now tied as students’ top goal. In 1966, in other words, students felt it was important to at least present themselves as philosophical and meaning-driven people. By 1990, they no longer felt the need to present themselves that way. They felt it perfectly acceptable to say they were primarily interested in money.20 We live in a more individualistic society. If

I'm sure that a huge proportion of the situation you are facing, is out out of your control. There's nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can't be 100 percent. There's got to be some proportion--let's say it's even just 2 percent--that is within your control. You can work on that. Who knows what a difference that may make!

To make matters even more complicated, research has shown that we remember only 25-50 percent of what we hear. This inclination not only compromises our connection with another person, but we can fail to retain vital information. All this evidence demonstrates that it is imperative that we intentionally pay closer attention and strive to become an in-depth listener.

Jim Rohn quote: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”4 Don’t believe me? Let me drop some science. Dr. David McClelland, renowned social psychologist, Harvard professor, and author, studied human motivation for more than thirty years. As discussed in chapter 3, he found that “95 percent of your success or failure in life is determined by the people with whom you habitually associate.” Ninety-five percent, my friend.

One of the most telling statistics regarding multiples is that 97 percent of them have had a history of severe childhood trauma, often in the form of monstrous psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. This has led many researchers to conclude that becoming a multiple is the psyche's way of coping with extraordinary and soul-crushing pain. By dividing up into one or more personalities the psyche is able to parcel out the pain, in a way, and have several personalities bear what would be too much for just one personality to withstand. In this sense becoming a multiple may be the ultimate example of what Bohm means by fragmentation. It is interesting to note that when the psyche fragments itself, it does not become a collection of broken and jagged-edged shards, but a collection of smaller wholes, complete and self-sustaining with their own traits, motives, and desires. Although these wholes are not identical copies of the original personality, they are related to the dynamics of the original personality, and this in itself suggests that some kind of holographic process is involved.

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue—smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm—and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than “really good.” Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection.

great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

That is, “Yes” is nothing without “How.” Asking “How,” knowing “How,” and defining “How” are all part of the effective negotiator’s arsenal. He would be unarmed without them.         ■    Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands.         ■    Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves.         ■    Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are.         ■    Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal.         ■    Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.         ■    A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open.         ■    Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.

The Endowed Progress Effect Punch cards are often used by retailers to encourage repeat business. With each purchase, customers get closer to receiving a free product or service. These cards are typically awarded empty and in effect, customers start at zero percent complete. What would happen if retailers handed customers punch cards with punches already given? Would people be more likely to take action if they had already made some progress? An experiment sought to answer this very question.[lxvi] Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with 8 squares and the other given a punch card with 10 squares but with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase 8 car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers — those that were given two free punches — had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate. The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal. Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook utilize this heuristic to encourage people to divulge more information about themselves when completing their online profiles. On LinkedIn, every user starts with some semblance of progress (figure 19). The next step is to “Improve Your Profile Strength” by supplying additional information.

...The same folks who believe this fantasy also believe that the sole motivation for modern man's practice of science is to disprove their beliefs. How despicably arrogant of them to circumvent their burden of proof! It is plainly there for all to see that science wishes to discover and prove the answers to the very same questions that religion claims to already have answers for, whether or not they disprove former assumptions by our ancestors. The religionists should be happy that that their claims might have the chance to be proven wrong, but instead they would rather fear them disproven. I don't know about you, but I smell a guilty conscience. If they were one-hundred percent certain that their claims were of truth, they wouldn't need "faith" in them, nor would they have to dread possible invalidation.

Bollywood's economic workings are more mysterious. It still exists in what was known as the informal and high-risk sector of the Indian economy. Banks rarely invest in Bollywood, where moneylenders are rampant, demanding up to 35 percent interest. The big corporate houses seem no less keen to stay away from filmmaking. A senior executive with the Tatas, one of India's prominent business families, told me, "We went into Bollywood, made one film, lost a lot of money, and got out of it fast," adding that "the place works in ways we couldn't begin to explain to our shareholders." Since only six or seven of the two hundred films made each year earn a profit, the industry has generated little capital of its own. The great studios of the early years of the industry are now defunct. It is outsiders- regular moneylenders, small and big businessmen, real estate people, and, sometimes, mafia dons- who continue to finance new films, and their turnover, given the losses, is rapid. Their motives are mixed: sex, glamour, money laundering, and, more optimistically, profit. They rarely have much to do with the desire to make original, or even competent, films.

Interestingly, married women in their early thirties are most likely to have an affair, perhaps reflecting a motivation to switch mates while their desirability is high and they are still fertile. Additional lines of evidence support the notion that infidelity serves a mate-switching function. First, women who initiate affairs are much more likely to suffer from marital dissatisfaction than women who do not. This might seem blindingly obvious, but the same studies show that men who have affairs do not, in fact, differ from those who abstain from affairs in their levels of marital happiness. Second, women are much more likely than men to become emotionally involved with, and to fall in love with, their affair partners. Roughly 79 percent of women report doing so, in contrast to only 30 percent of men.9 Moreover, women are more likely to cite emotional involvement as a reason for the affair. Men are more likely to cite pure sexual pleasure. These critical sex differences point to dramatically different functional reasons for male and female infidelity. For women especially, they point to the mate-switching function; for men, the desire for sexual variety.

As Frances had learned to do in times of uncertainty, she created a project over which she had total control and began writing a book “Dedicated to the memory of Irving Thalberg as a tribute to his vision and genius.” How to Write and Sell Film Stories was written for “serious students of film technique.” She filled the straightforward textbook with anecdotes from her films and others’ to convey the lessons on the development of plot, motivation, and characters she had learned with Thalberg. She had come to believe that because of increased censorship and the limited number of adaptable plays and novels, “eighty percent of the motion pictures produced will be soon be stories written exclusively for the screen” and the time was right for a book on original screenplays. The audience for the book was immediate; universities ordered copies before it was published and it quickly went into several printings. The book led to her taking on an advice column on screen writing for Cinema Progress, a serious educational film magazine published by the American Institute of Cinematography based at the University of Southern California. She opened her house to roundtable discussions with students and sponsored a scenario contest with the winners serving as studio “apprentices.

Critics are also overwhelmingly male—one survey of film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes found only 22 percent of the critics afforded “top critic” status were female.14 More recently, of course, we have become accustomed to a second set of gatekeepers: our friends and family and even random strangers we’ve decided to follow on social media, as well as “peer” reviewers on sites like Goodreads and IMDb. But peer review sites are easily skewed by a motivated minority with a mission (see the Ghostbusters reboot and the handful of manbabies dedicated to its ruination) or by more stubborn and pervasive implicit biases, which most users aren’t even aware they have. (The data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com found that male peer reviewers regularly drag down aggregate review scores for TV shows aimed at women, but the reverse isn’t true.)15 As for the social networks we choose? They’re usually plagued by homophily, which is a fancy way to say that it’s human nature to want to hang out with people who make us feel comfortable, and usually those are people who remind us of us. Without active and careful intervention on our part, we can easily be left with an online life that tells us only things we already agree with and recommends media to us that doesn’t challenge our existing worldview.

Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■​Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■​Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■​Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■​Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■​A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■​Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.

Roughly 25 percent of humanity is Muslim. For every Jew, there are roughly one hundred twenty-five Muslims. Judaism is about 2500 years older than Islam, and yet it has not been able to attract nearly as many followers. If we construe religions as memeplexes (a collection of interconnected memes), to borrow Richard Dawkin's term, the Islamic memeplex has been extraordinarily more successful than its Jewish counterpart (from an epidemiological perspective, that is). Why is that? To answer this important question, we must look at the contents of the two respective memeplexes to examine why one is more "infectious" than the other. Let us explore the rules for converting into the two religions and apostatizing out of them. In Judaism, the religious process for conversion is onerous, requiring several years of commitment and an absence of ulterior motive. (For example, converting to Judaism because you are marrying a Jewish person is considered an ulterior motive). Not surprisingly, given the barriers to entry, relatively few people convert to Judaism. On the other hand, to convert to Islam simply requires that one proclaim openly the sentence, the shahada (the testimony): "There is no true god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." It does not require a sophisticated epidemiological model to predict which memeplex will spread more rapidly. Let us now suppose that one wishes to leave the religion. While the Old Testament does mention the death penalty for apostasy, it has seldom been applied throughout Jewish history, whereas to this day apostasy from Islam does lead to the death penalty in several Islamic countries. But perhaps the most important difference is that Judaism does not promote or encourage proselytizing, whereas it is a central religious obligation in Islam. According to Islam, the world is divided into dar al-hard (the house of war) and dar al-Islam (the house of Islam). Peace will arrive when the entire world is united under the flag of Allah. Hence, it is imperative to Islamize the nations within dar al-harb. There is only one Jewish country in the world, Israel, and it has a sizeable non-Jewish minority. But there are fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Robert Rosenthal found a way. He approached a California public elementary school and offered to test the school’s students with a newly developed intelligence-identification tool, called the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, which could accurately predict which children would excel academically in the coming year. The school naturally agreed, and the test was administered to the entire student body. A few weeks later, teachers were provided with the names of the children (about 20 percent of the student body) who had tested as high-potentials. These particular children, the teachers were informed, were special. Though they might not have performed well in the past, the test indicated that they possessed “unusual potential for intellectual growth.” (The students were not informed of the test results.) The following year Rosenthal returned to measure how the high-potential students had performed. Exactly as the test had predicted, the first- and second-grade high-potentials had succeeded to a remarkable degree: The first-graders gained 27 IQ points (versus 12 points for the rest of the class); and the second-graders gained 17 points (versus 7 points). In addition, the high-potentials thrived in ways that went beyond measurement. They were described by their teachers as being more curious, happier, better adjusted, and more likely to experience success as adults. What’s more, the teachers reported that they had enjoyed teaching that year more than any year in the past. Here’s the twist: the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition was complete baloney. In fact, the “high-potentials” had been selected at random. The real subject of the test was not the students but the narratives that drive the relationship between the teachers and the students. What happened, Rosenthal discovered, was replacing one story—These are average kids—with a new one—These are special kids, destined to succeed—served as a locator beacon that reoriented the teachers, creating a cascade of behaviors that guided the student toward that future. It didn’t matter that the story was false, or that the children were, in fact, randomly selected. The simple, glowing idea—This child has unusual potential for intellectual growth—aligned motivations, awareness, and behaviors.

Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.

We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process in each moment.1 Although we continually notice changes in our experience—in thought, mood, perception, behavior, etc.—we are utterly unaware of the neurophysiological events that produce them. In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself. By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are. I generally start each day with a cup of coffee or tea—sometimes two. This morning, it was coffee (two). Why not tea? I am in no position to know. I wanted coffee more than I wanted tea today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have “changed my mind” and switched to tea before the coffee drinker in me could get his bearings? Yes, but this impulse would also have been the product of unconscious causes. Why didn’t it arise this morning? Why might it arise in the future? I cannot know. The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness—rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it. The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move.2 Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.3 More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.4 These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it. The distinction between “higher” and “lower” systems in the brain offers no relief: I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat. There will always be some delay between the first neurophysiological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if there weren’t—even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states—I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced. It is instructive to understand how this worked. Typically a firm under central planning had to meet an output target set under the plan, though such plans were often renegotiated and changed. From the 1930s, workers were paid bonuses if the output levels were attained. These could be quite high—for instance, as much as 37 percent of the wage for management or senior engineers. But paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not being met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be “ratcheted up.” Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus. The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By the 1940s, the leaders of the Soviet Union, even if not their admirers in the West, were well aware of these perverse incentives. The Soviet leaders acted as if they were due to technical problems, which could be fixed. For example, they moved away from paying bonuses based on output targets to allowing firms to set aside portions of profits to pay bonuses. But a “profit motive” was no more encouraging to innovation than one based on output targets. The system of prices used to calculate profits was almost completely unconnected to the value of new innovations or technology. Unlike in a market economy, prices in the Soviet Union were set by the government, and thus bore little relation to value. To more specifically create incentives for innovation, the Soviet Union introduced explicit innovation bonuses in 1946. As early as 1918, the principle had been recognized that an innovator should receive monetary rewards for his innovation, but the rewards set were small and unrelated to the value of the new technology. This changed only in 1956, when it was stipulated that the bonus should be proportional to the productivity of the innovation. However, since productivity was calculated in terms of economic benefits measured using the existing system of prices, this was again not much of an incentive to innovate. One could fill many pages with examples of the perverse incentives these schemes generated. For example, because the size of the innovation bonus fund was limited by the wage bill of a firm, this immediately reduced the incentive to produce or adopt any innovation that might have economized on labor.

As part of an effort to prod college seniors to get tetanus shots, a group of students was given a lecture meant to educate them about the dangers of tetanus and the importance of getting inoculated against it. A large majority of those students reported that they were convinced and planned to get their shots, but in the end only 3 percent got them. Bu another group of students, who were presented with the same lecture, had a 28 percent inoculation rate. The difference? The second group was given a map of the campus and asked to plan their route to the health center and pick a date and time to go. Sometimes, you see, motivation isn't our problem. Rather, we need to identify life's everyday mental obstacles - regret, fatigue, overconfidence, fear, to name just four - and put ourselves into position to hurdle them.

In many ways, the U.S. bureaucracy has moved away from the Weberian ideal of an energetic and efficient organization staffed by people chosen for their ability and technical knowledge. The system as a whole is less merit-based: rather than coming from top schools, 45 percent of recent new hires to the federal service are veterans, as mandated by Congress. And a number of surveys of the federal work force paint a depressing picture. According to the scholar Paul Light, “Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than mission, ensnared in careers that cannot compete with business and nonprofits, troubled by the lack of resources to do their jobs, dissatisfied with the rewards for a job well done and the lack of consequences for a job done poorly, and unwilling to trust their own organizations.

Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn't need to be saved. Nature doesn't give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99 percent of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment - making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so.

You will never know what your potential is unless you give life 100 percent effort every day.

YOUR MIND WILL PLAY TRICKS ON YOU There are many days you will feel like you are riding a roller coaster. Just remember — this is normal. There is no way around it. You will have mental ups and downs in this journey of building your business. You get started in the business, and you are fired up! You have huge dreams and expectations. Then you get your first no, and your dream gets shattered. You stay with it, and go through some more rejection and finally recruit a great partner … woohoo! You are back on top of the world. Then that recruit quits the next week … you are back in the dumps. But then you recruit someone else, and you see hope again! And maybe your business starts to get traction and grows. But after a while, 90 percent of your downline has disappeared, and your mind plays tricks on you. Now you wonder if it is even worth recruiting anyone else, if most are only going to quit anyway. So now the phone weighs 300 pounds, and you just can’t get motivated to make calls.

The American Psychological Association1 discovered that many adults say they have felt the physical effects of stress in the past month: 47 percent say they lay awake at night 45 percent are irritable or angry 43 percent describe fatigue 40 percent convey lack of interest, motivation or energy 34 percent have headaches 34 percent say they feel depressed or sad 27 percent have upset stomachs or indigestion from stress

Attaching a single patient’s photo to a CT exam increased diagnostic accuracy by 46 percent. And roughly 80 percent of the key diagnostic findings came only when the radiologists saw the patient’s photo. The radiologists missed these important findings when the photo was absent—even if they caught them three months earlier. When the radiologists saw the patient’s photo, they felt more empathy. By encouraging empathy, the photos motivated the radiologists to conduct their diagnoses more carefully. Their reports were 29 percent longer when the CT exams included patient photos. When the radiologists saw a photo of a patient, they felt a stronger connection to the human impact of their work. A patient photo “makes each CT scan unique,” said one radiologist.

By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more. It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task—to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it—can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent. Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively.

I’ve never liked the term ‘actor’.” Barron spoke slowly, joining hands with the cast members to his left and right. The rest of them formed a circle, also holding hands, and he continued. “Seriously now, is anyone here ‘acting’? Is anyone here pretending? “Me, I’m a theater director. One hundred percent, all the time. I’m not pretending, or acting, or trying to fool anyone. This is what I do, and I give it my all—just like you. I look around me, and I don’t see a single phony. I see people who give their hearts, their minds, and their very lives to being serious performers on the stage. In the last weeks I’ve watched every one of you give up the easy life to come here and bust a gut to make this show a reality. “That’s why I call you performers. Not actors—performers. Because when it’s time to prepare, you work out every nuance of a role. When it’s time to step in front of the crowd, you reach out and pull them in with both hands. When it’s time to say your lines, you deliver them with skill and meaning. That’s performance. And there’s nothing phony about that. There’s nothing pretend about that. There’s no acting that will take the place of that. “And so that’s my wish for you tonight: Have a great performance. You’ve done the work, you’re ready, and now it’s time to show off. Have fun out there, gang. Perform.

Books are never finished. They are merely abandoned.” Only thirty percent of published books turn a profit, so we can rule out material motivation.

Children have widely diverse interests and aptitudes. Children are drawn to different books, different sports, different music, and different dreams about their future. What matters is that they’re as personally invested and authentically motivated as the little boy in the bookstore who was 100 percent sincere when he said he’d rather read Harry Potter than watch TV.

For example, in October 2012, Barclaycard asked the Ring community if the company should change its late-fee policy. The existing policy allowed members a three-day grace period before charging a late-payment penalty. Barclaycard proposed eliminating the three-day grace period and allowing one late payment per year. From its analysis, Barclaycard estimated it would generate 15 percent more late-fee revenue, which would result in higher profits for the community. Members voted overwhelmingly to adopt the policy. They were willing to punish those members who were habitually late payers to generate more profit for the community. This behavior may seem counterintuitive, but because most members paid their bills on time, they wouldn’t be adversely affected.

How Much Money Can We Afford To Give To Charity? Knowing how much money you can safely give to charity is challenging for everyone. Who doesn’t want to give more to make the world a better place? On the other hand, no one wants to become a charity case as a result of giving too much to charity. On average, Americans who itemize their deductions donate about three or four percent of their income to charity. About 20% give more than 10% of their income to charity. Here are some tips to help you find the right level of donations for your family: You can probably give more than you think. Focus on one, two or maybe three causes rather than scattering money here and there. Volunteer your time toward your cause, too. The money you give shouldn’t be the money you’d save for college or retirement. You can organize your personal finances to empower you to give more. Eliminating debt will enable you to give much more. The interest you may be paying is eating into every good and noble thing you’d like to do. You can cut expenses significantly over time by driving your cars for a longer period of time; buying cars—the transaction itself—is expensive. Stay in your home longer. By staying in your home for a very long time, your mortgage payment will slowly shrink (in economic terms)with inflation, allowing you more flexibility over time to donate to charity. Make your donations a priority. If you only give what is left, you won’t be giving much. Make your donations first, then contribute to savings and, finally, spend what is left. Set a goal for contributing to charity, perhaps as a percentage of your income. Measure your financial progress in all areas, including giving to charity. Leverage your contributions by motivating others to give. Get the whole family involved in your cause. Let the kids donate their time and money, too. Get your extended family involved. Get the neighbors involved. You will have setbacks. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks. Think long term. Everything counts. One can of soup donated to a food bank may feed a hungry family. Little things add up. One can of soup every week for years will feed many hungry families. Don’t be ashamed to give a little. Everyone can do something. When you can’t give money, give time. Be patient. You are making a difference. Don’t give up on feeding hungry people because there will always be hungry people; the ones you feed will be glad you didn’t give up. Set your ego aside. You can do more when you’re not worried about who gets the credit. Giving money to charity is a deeply personal thing that brings joy both to the families who give and to the families who receive. Everyone has a chance to do both in life. There Are Opportunities To Volunteer Everywhere If you and your family would like to find ways to volunteer but aren’t sure where and how, the answer is just a Google search away. There may be no better family activity than serving others together. When you can’t volunteer as a team, remember you set an example for your children whenever you serve. Leverage your skills, talents and training to do the most good. Here are some ideas to get you started either as a family or individually: Teach seniors, the disabled, or children about your favorite family hobbies.

Psychologists Joey Sprague and David Quadagno surveyed women from twenty-two to fifty-seven years of age and found that among those under thirty-five, 61 percent of the women said their primary motivation for sex was emotional, rather than physical. But among those over thirty-five, only 38 percent claimed their emotional motivations were stronger than the physical hunger for contact.

In 2019 the revolution¬ary advent of social media has now reached its full swing, and 100 percent of all deeds, thoughts, deals, and acts in our lives are public.

Relational balance: Research also shows that people prefer their relationships with others to be aligned and balanced. In other words, we prefer that all our friends be friendly with each other and that they dislike our enemies. Any imbalances between our friends and enemies results in the motivation to change friends to enemies or enemies to friends.

Adam’s research demonstrates that leaders and employees who keep both personal and prosocial interests in mind do better in the long run than those who are 100 percent selfishly motivated.

The study found that 90 percent of the subjects inexplicably ramped up their exercise when they were unwittingly eating the low-saturated-fat diet, increasing their activity levels 12–15 percent on average. The researchers concluded that a high intake of saturated fat “might dampen motivation for physical activity.

You don't think I coerced you into this dance just to watch you squirm, do you?" Abhijat glared at him. Jehan giggled. "Okay fine. But that was only sixty percent of my motivation.

Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time. More than 90 percent of white Union soldiers and more than 80 percent of Confederate soldiers were literate, and most of them wrote frequent letters to families and friends... I am convinced that [their letters and diaries] bring us closer to the real thoughts and emotions of those men than any other kind of surviving evidence.

Old people vote. You know who votes in the swing states where this election will be fought? Really old people. Instead of high-profile videos with Cardi B (no disrespect to Cardi, who famously once threatened to dog-walk the egregious Tomi Lahren), maybe focus on registering and reaching more of those old-fart voters in counties in swing states. If your celebrity and music-industry friends want to flood social media with GOTV messages, let them. It makes them feel important and it’s the cheapest outsourcing you can get. Just don’t build your models on the idea that you’re going to spike young voter turnout beyond 20 percent. The problem with chasing the youth vote is threefold: First, they’re unlikely to be registered. You have to devote a lot of work to going out, grabbing them, registering them, educating them, and motivating them to go out and vote. If they were established but less active voters, you’d have voter history and other data to work with. There are lower-effort, lower-cost ways to make this work. Second, they’re not conditioned to vote; that November morning is much more likely to involve regret at not finishing a paper than missing a vote. Third, and finally, a meaningful fraction of the national youth vote overall is located in California. Its gigantic population skews the number, and since the Golden State’s Electoral College outcome is never in doubt, it doesn’t matter. What’s our motto, kids? “The Electoral College is the only game in town.” This year, the Democrats have been racing to win the Free Shit election with young voters by promising to make college “free” (a word that makes any economic conservative lower their glasses, put down the brandy snifter, and arch an eyebrow) and to forgive $1.53 trillion gazillion dollars of student loan debt. Set aside that the rising price of college is what happens to everything subsidized or guaranteed by the government.17 Set aside that those subsidies cause college costs to wildly exceed the rate of inflation across the board, and that it sucks to have $200k in student loan debt for your degree in Intersectional Yodeling. Set aside that the college loan system is run by predatory asswipes. The big miss here is a massive policy disconnect—a student-loan jubilee would be a massive subsidy to white, upper-middle-class people in their mid-thirties to late forties. I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t try to appeal to young voters on some level, but I want them to have a realistic expectation about just how hard it is to move those numbers in sufficient volume in the key Electoral College states. When I asked one of the smartest electoral modeling brains in the business about this issue, he flooded me with an inbox of spreadsheets and data points. But the key answer he gave me was this: “The EC states in play are mostly old as fuck. If your models assume young voter magic, you’re gonna have a bad day.

In recent decades, as the economy has shifted and large companies promising lifelong employment have given way to freelance jobs and migratory careers, understanding motivation has become increasingly important. In 1980, more than 90 percent of the American workforce reported to a boss. Today more than a third of working Americans are freelancers, contractors, or in otherwise transitory positions. The workers who have succeeded in this new economy are those who know how to decide for themselves how to spend their time and allocate their energy. They understand how to set goals, prioritize tasks, and make choices about which projects to pursue. People who know how to self-motivate, according to studies, earn more money than their peers, report higher levels of happiness, and say they are more satisfied with their families, jobs, and lives.

Achievement is 60 percent determination, 40 percent action

Now only 20 percent of Norwegian prisoners are arrested in the two years after their release. In contrast, a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that 44 percent of American state prisoners were arrested at least once in the first year after their release. Høidal attributes the Norwegian turnaround directly to the change in officers’ responsibilities. Each officer is designated as the “contact officer” for three inmates. The officer is assigned responsibility for these three inmates for the duration of their incarceration. “They’re like a coach, motivator, role model,” Høidal says of the contact officers. And “like a nurse when you’re in the hospital,” they are familiar with your case; they’re the person to whom you reach out first when you need something, whether that something is help in beginning a job, or classes in the prison, or finding housing or work in the community for the future.

The civil service, which employed 70 percent of working Saudis, was filled with sinecures, nepotism, and corruption. This bureaucracy lacked both the motivation and administrative capacity to implement serious reform.

In life you will face a lot of Circuses. You will pay for your failures. But, if you persevere, if you let those failures teach you and strengthen you, then you will be prepared to handle life’s toughest moments. July 1983 was one of those tough moments. As I stood before the commanding officer, I thought my career as a Navy SEAL was over. I had just been relieved of my SEAL squadron, fired for trying to change the way my squadron was organized, trained, and conducted missions. There were some magnificent officers and enlisted men in the organization, some of the most professional warriors I had ever been around. However, much of the culture was still rooted in the Vietnam era, and I thought it was time for a change. As I was to find out, change is never easy, particularly for the person in charge. Fortunately, even though I was fired, my commanding officer allowed me to transfer to another SEAL Team, but my reputation as a SEAL officer was severely damaged. Everywhere I went, other officers and enlisted men knew I had failed, and every day there were whispers and subtle reminders that maybe I wasn’t up to the task of being a SEAL. At that point in my career I had two options: quit and move on to civilian life, which seemed like the logical choice in light of my recent Officer Fitness Report, or weather the storm and prove to others and myself that I was a good SEAL officer. I chose the latter. Soon after being fired, I was given a second chance, an opportunity to deploy overseas as the Officer in Charge of a SEAL platoon. Most of the time on that overseas deployment we were in remote locations, isolated and on our own. I took advantage of the opportunity to show that I could still lead. When you live in close quarters with twelve SEALs there isn’t anywhere to hide. They know if you are giving 100 percent on the morning workout. They see when you are first in line to jump out of the airplane and last in line to get the chow. They watch you clean your weapon, check your radio, read the intelligence, and prepare your mission briefs. They know when you have worked all night preparing for tomorrow’s training. As month after month of the overseas deployment wore on, I used my previous failure as motivation to outwork, outhustle, and outperform everyone in the platoon. I sometimes fell short of being the best, but I never fell short of giving it my best. In time, I regained the respect of my men. Several years later I was selected to command a SEAL Team of my own. Eventually I would go on to command all the SEALs on the West Coast.

Why do some of us work hard and some of us sit on our asses all day? Dan Pink, a New York Times and Wallstreet Journal bestselling author, argues that there are three main motivators―and they’re not what you think. Money doesn’t make the list. In fact, money can be a demotivator. It turns out that once you get beyond work that only requires rudimentary cognitive skill, higher monetary rewards are inversely related to performance. Instead, emotion becomes the driving force. More specifically, Pink defines the three main motivators as autonomy, mastery, and purpose.2 This has been backed up by numerous scientific studies. Here’s one: “Psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer interviewed over 600 managers and found a shocking result. 95 percent of managers misunderstood what motivates employees. They thought what motivates employees was making money, getting raises and bonuses. In fact, after analyzing over 12,000 employee diary entries, they discovered that the number one work motivator was emotion, not financial incentive: It’s the feeling of making progress every day toward a meaningful goal.”3 Consider what this means. If you aren’t hardworking, maybe it’s not because you’re lazy, but because you hate what you’re working on! I believe there’s a hustler in all of us. It isn’t about your genetic makeup. It’s about your environment and the emotional state in which you’re operating. If you’re having trouble getting up in the morning and going to work, there’s a good chance you’d be happier hustling. You just need to find the right thing to be hustling toward, and the right people to support you. If you had all the free time in the world, what would you want to master? What would give you a sense of purpose? What would make your heart beat a little louder? The hustle is somewhere inside you. You just have to find it and set it free.

Employee Engagement “Employee Engagement” has become a very hot topic in recent years. The escalating statistics for disengagement are alarming. In 2015, the Gallup Polls’ “The State of the American Workforce” survey found that only 32.5 percent of the U.S. Workforce is engaged and committed where they work, and 54 percent say they would consider leaving their companies if they could receive a 20 percent raise elsewhere. Disengagement not only lowers performance, morale, and productivity, but it’s costing employers billions of dollars a year. It's a growing problem, which has many companies baffled.

11 Ways to Be More Engaged 1. Care about others. 2. Be 100 percent in the moment. 3. Keep focus on the person you are serving. 4. Try to get involved, engaged, and interactive. 5. Show interest in what matters to other people by listening, acknowledging, and responding. 6. Arrive in the moment anticipating creating a valuable interaction for yourself and others. 7. Move towards the things that inspire you and provide a sense of joy and connection. 8. Reconnect with the essence of yourself and be grounded in that essential relationship. 9. Maintain eye contact and deliver the non-verbal cues that you are fully with the other person. 10. Limit distractions— close the door, silence your phone, hold calls, put tasks aside, etc. 11. Show up to the moment being your best and giving your best.

1. Focus on the short trip. For supermarkets around the world (the same principle applies to all classes of trade), half of all shopping trips result in the purchase of five or fewer items, with one being the most common. These short trips typically account for one-third of store sales. The new strategy is to increase the size of each of those baskets by one or two items. Quick trippers spend money very fast, and getting them to buy one or two more items is far easier than motivating stock-up shoppers to buy ten or twenty more items. This focus, focus, focus on the quick trip could deliver an easy 30 percent sales lift (and a lot more when the synergies with other types of trips become apparent).

The reason why most of our plans fail it is because when people are giving us a hand in what we do. We have our hands in our pockets or folded. 80 % is on you to make things happen. When people help you they help you with 20 %. If you don't have 80 % percent ready. Your dreams, goals or what you are trying to achieve, will fail even thou there are people helping you. Help yourself with 80 percent, before people help you with 20 percent to achieve your goals and dreams.

The will is half of success; the other half is equally divided into skills - ten percent, commitment - ten percent, courage - ten percent, hard work - ten percent, and planning/execution - ten percent. Without the will, even everything else is provided, you are still only half successful.

Consider Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, celebrated for its beautiful detail, the surreal backdrop, and of course the subject’s enigmatic smile. More visitors have seen the Mona Lisa in person—on display behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre—than any other painting on the planet. But when researchers Jesse Prinz and Angelika Seidel asked subjects to consider a hypothetical scenario in which the Mona Lisa burned to a crisp, 80 percent of them said they’d prefer to see the ashes of the original rather than an indistinguishable replica.31 This should give us pause.

80 percent of people chose to award a scholarship to a member of their favored political party, even when another applicant had better grades. In fact, this political favoritism was stronger than racial favoritism.

when articles previously published in a journal were resubmitted soon afterward with new obscure names and institutions, only 10 percent of them were noticed as having been published before, and of the remaining 90 percent, only 10 percent were accepted under the new names.

Such tensions might partly explain why the Gallup organization repeatedly finds just 13 percent of the world’s workforce likes going to work, despite the rise of popular books and research on employee engagement, organizational culture, and motivation.

One company I know took the art of using cubicles to kill motivation to a higher level. They found out that employees had all kinds of personal mementoes on their desks, so the management redid the cubicles and made them 20 percent smaller, with less space for anything personal, but more space for more people. Another company came up with an even more brilliant idea that nobody could “own” their own cubicle, designing the system such that those who showed up to work earliest in the morning could claim the ones closest the windows. None of the cubicles has anything but a desk, a place to connect a computer, and a chair. No one could establish a sense of connection to their workspace. Ultimately, by setting the atmosphere this way, the company communicated to the employees that they are valued only for their direct productivity and that they are easily replaceable.

Would anyone test the memory of human children by throwing them into a swimming pool to see if they remember where to get out? Yet the Morris Water Maze is a standard memory test used every day in hundreds of laboratories that make rats frantically swim in a water tank with high walls until they come upon a submerged platform that saves them. In subsequent trials, the rats need to remember the platform’s location. There is also the Columbia Obstruction Method, in which animals have to cross an electrified grid after varying periods of deprivation, so researchers can see if their drive to reach food or a mate (or for mother rats, their pups) exceeds the fear of a painful shock. Stress is, in fact, a major testing tool. Many labs keep their animals at 85 percent of typical body weight to ensure food motivation.

Defeat is ninety five percent the condition and attitude of the heart and not the result of the struggle. We are defeated before we even put up the fight, that's why psychological warfare works!

When asked “With respect to your job/career you would like to have, how important are the following to you?” The rating scale ranged from 1 (not important) to 7 (very important). Men exposed to young, attractive women rated “having a large income” to be 5.09, whereas men exposed to older, less attractive models rated it only 3.27—an astonishingly large effect. Similar differences occurred in rating the importance of “being financially successful.” A full 60 percent of the men exposed to young, attractive models described themselves as “ambitious,” compared to 9 percent of the men exposed to older, less-attractive models. Another study found that merely having a young woman in the same room caused men to increase the importance they attach to having material wealth (Roney, 2003). Similar effects have been found by others. Men “primed” with attractive images of women display more creativity, independence, and nonconformity, causing them to stand out from other men (Griskevicius, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006; Griskevicius, Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006). Chinese men also increase risk taking when being observed by women (Shan et al., 2012). In short, when mating motives are “primed” by exposure to young, attractive women, a cascade of psychological shifts occurs in men such that they value and display precisely what women want and hence what men need to succeed in mate competition.

I know – we all are experiencing a never ever seen global pandemic, tragic events all over, lack of governance, declining health, constant fear of loosing loved ones, loss of income & facing so many other severe challenges in our daily lives. Undoubtedly, this is a time of unprecedented struggle & upheaval for everyone. But darling, there are people who are genuinely coping up with troubling times. They are able to handle time of adversity in better way & are better at tolerating all the associated feelings of stress, anxiety & sadness. If you will notice, you will see that these people will also rebound from these setbacks much quickly & mostly will become much better than they were before these terrible days. Have you ever heard the phrase “Pressure Makes Diamonds?” That’s the secret. I want you to also hold on, become more resilient, maintain a positive outlook, feel strong, amazing & remind yourself that you too have the favor of God. So far you survived 100 percent of your worst days & you are doing reasonably okay! Remember strength does not come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t. If you can prepare & change your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs & philosophies, if you can do your best with whatever you have – for sure, you can grow as person, push the boundaries & experience a abundant & more fulfilling life. Let you reset, recharge & rewire your brain for excelling in life no matter what’s going on, reconnect to what gives you fulfilment & realign your life around your real priorities & purpose. I am praying God to strengthen you in all your tests, trials & tribulations. Let you get through these collective & personal tough times satisfyingly & most successfully. Blessings!

75 percent of the constituent alphabets in the phrase "Your personal life" establish one's right to withhold, barricade, and restrict others' access to specific exclusive information, generally referred to as: A SECRET

The truth is that highly partisan conservatives and liberals are shockingly clueless about the other side—about their motives and everything else. One 2018 study from the Journal of Politics has revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year, when in fact just 2.2 percent do.13 And Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are gay or lesbian, when just over 6 percent are.

This principle, combined with the previous one, means you should always keep track of your progress and make sure to note each accomplishment, no matter how small. Emphasize how far away from starting from 0 percent you are, and how close to 100 percent you’ve become. This is why making a checklist of the tasks you need to do for the day or the steps toward a goal works great as a motivational strategy—crossing items off the list feels satisfying in itself as it gives you a tangible proof of progress and intensifies your drive the fewer items there are left to cross out.

Your fitness program will make you physically stronger. If you are new to resistance exercise, you should be able to improve your strength level by as much as 40 percent over a 12-month period. That will not only offset natural age-related strength decline, it will provide you with the power to accomplish the tasks that many people who age struggle with. At the same time, increased levels of physical strength add to the confidence that is the hallmark of a well-adjusted healthy individual.

Nearly a century ago, French engineer Max Ringelmann (reported by Kravitz & Martin, 1986) found that the collective effort of tug-of-war teams was but half the sum of the individual efforts. Contrary to the presumption that “in unity there is strength,” this suggested that group members may actually be less motivated when performing additive tasks. Maybe, though, poor performance stemmed from poor coordination—people pulling a rope in slightly different directions at slightly different times. A group of Massachusetts researchers led by Alan Ingham (1974) cleverly eliminated that problem by making individuals think others were pulling with them, when in fact they were pulling alone. Blindfolded participants were assigned the first position in the apparatus and told, “Pull as hard as you can.” They pulled 18 percent harder when they knew they were pulling alone than when they believed that behind them two to five people were also pulling.

ANNE THORNDIKE, A primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had a crazy idea. She believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way. In fact, she didn’t plan on talking to them at all. Thorndike and her colleagues designed a six-month study to alter the “choice architecture” of the hospital cafeteria. They started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room. Originally, the refrigerators located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda. The researchers added water as an option to each one. Additionally, they placed baskets of bottled water next to the food stations throughout the room. Soda was still in the primary refrigerators, but water was now available at all drink locations. Over the next three months, the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4 percent. Meanwhile, sales of bottled water increased by 25.8 percent. They made similar adjustments—and saw similar results—with the food in the cafeteria. Nobody had said a word to anyone eating there. BEFORE AFTER FIGURE 8: Here is a representation of what the cafeteria looked like before the environment design changes were made (left) and after (right). The shaded boxes indicate areas where bottled water was available in each instance. Because the amount of water in the environment was increased, behavior shifted naturally and without additional motivation. People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. If I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, I’ll pick up half a dozen and start eating, even if I hadn’t been thinking about them beforehand and didn’t necessarily feel hungry. If the communal table at the office is always filled with doughnuts and bagels, it’s going to be hard not to grab one every now and then. Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.

These conditions were all provided for by the Boomers’ elders, who worked and saved to ensure that the fiscal house was in reasonable order when it was passed down. Doing so required older generations to tax themselves at rates that no politician today, however far Left, would dare propose. When possible, it was pay as you go, so unlike more recent wars, the Korean War was substantially financed out of current tax receipts, as were many of the great infrastructure projects, whose costs were overwhelmingly borne by earlier generations even though later generations would reap so much of their benefit. In cases where no level of tax could balance the budget, as was the case with World War II, prior generations retired the debt as quickly as possible. Motivated by fiscal probity, Americans paid extraordinary taxes for two decades, with the highest marginal rate a downright confiscatory 94 percent in 1945 (against which today’s 39.6 percent, the source of so much present angst, seems modest).17 The result of these sacrifices was that, by the 1960s, World War II debt had been reduced to a manageable size. Taxes could therefore be lowered, though the top rate remained a hefty 70 percent.

Paul J. Meyer, founder of the Success Motivation Institute, says, “Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated. They simply quit.