Russ Motivational Quotes

An as-yet-unpublished poet in Boulder, Colorado, once said to me that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. I may seem, in the foregoing sketchy pages, to have followed her advice rather too well.

A rich and meaningful life is created through taking action. But not just any action. It happens through effective action, guided by and motivated by your values. And in particular, it happens through committed action: action that you take again and again, no matter how many times you fail or go off track.

If you know a person’s history, you can use it to help predict what that person might do. A person’s history can be the key to understanding his motivation for committing a crime.

Your reality is not affecting you, it's reflecting you.

The process of manifestation is a dance between being and becoming.

Our thoughts, imbued with intention and emotion, act as magnets, drawing to us the people, situations, and experiences that resonate with our inner state.

The universe responds to our vibrational signals, but the clarity of those signals determines the precision of the response.

Living as a channel for giving and receiving invites us to view our lives from a broader perspective, seeing ourselves as integral parts of a vast, interconnected system.

Your values are reflections of what is most important in your heart: what sort of person you want to be, what is significant and meaningful to you, and what you want to stand for in this life. Your values provide direction for your life and motivate you to make important changes.

Donna learned quickly that there’s no point in beating yourself up when you screw up or fail to follow through. Guilt trips and self-criticism don’t motivate you to make meaningful changes; they just keep you stuck, dwelling on the past. So after each relapse, Donna came back to the basic ACT formula: A = Accept your thoughts and feelings and be present. C = Connect with your values. T = Take effective action.

Actions are important because, unlike your thoughts and feelings, you can have direct control over them. Values are important because they can guide you and motivate you through situations where your feelings might lead you off course.

As to Woodward’s initial introduction to the newspaper, nobody seems to have questioned whether a recommendation from someone in the White House would be an appropriate reason for the Post to hire a reporter. Nor does anyone from the Post appear to have put a rather obvious two and two together, and noted that Woodward made quick work of bringing down the president, and therefore wondered who at the White House recommended Woodward in the first place—and with what motivation.

The White Russian émigrés in the United States were motivated by both ideology and economics to serve as shock troops in the growing cold war conflict being managed by Prescott’s friends and associates. No one understood this better than Allen Dulles, the Wall Street lawyer, diplomat, and spymaster-in-ascension. Even in the period between the two world wars, Dulles was already molding Russian émigrés into intelligence operatives.

The importance of controlling natural resources is not something most of us discuss on a regular basis. But it is a principal motivation—and often the principal motivation—behind foreign policy decisions, wars, and coups.

Often when we connect with our values, we realise that we’ve been neglecting them for a long time and this can be very painful. But remember, this is not an excuse to beat yourself up! (‘What a hypocrite I am! I say I value doing all these different things, yet I’m not doing any of them! I’m pathetic!’) All of us lose touch with our values from time to time. Dwelling on those times is pointless because there’s nothing we can do to change the past. What’s important is to connect with our values here and now and to use them to guide and motivate our current actions. So if your mind does start beating up on you, simply thank it.

Four years of college is a long time to stay focused and connected to a single goal. With this amount of time, it's easy to drift or become distracted. This is why it's important to do everything you can to remain motivated and on track. You can do this by staying connected to the 'why.' The 'why' is the purpose behind your vision. The 'why' is the rudder that keeps your life, actions, and energy focused and on track. Without a real connection to the 'why,' you can become easily distracted and led into directions that don't fully support your stated goals.

Your values provide direction for your life and motivate you to make important changes.