Strategy Inspirational Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Strategy Inspirational. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
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Winston S. Churchill
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You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
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Alvin Toffler
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A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.
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Elizabeth Acevedo (Clap When You Land)
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Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
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Miyamoto Musashi
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Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.
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Germany Kent
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Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on. I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise. I have full confidence in myself and my abilities. I can do all things that I commit myself to. No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me. I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily. I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past. I am moving forward daily. Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.
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Miyamoto Musashi (The Book of Five Rings)
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6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break: 1. Stop stressing 2. Stop worrying 3. Give rest to the problems weighing you down 4. Lighten up 5. Forgive yourself 6. Forgive others
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Germany Kent
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If you are on social media, and you are not learning, not laughing, not being inspired or not networking, then you are using it wrong.
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Germany Kent
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There are no shortcutsβ€”everything is reps, reps, reps.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger (Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story)
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Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move.
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
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There's only one racing strategy that matters.It's the one I run by: Get in the lead and don't let anyone pass you.
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Megan McCafferty (Sloppy Firsts (Jessica Darling, #1))
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Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped
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Alan Sheinwald (Alan Sheinwald is Building a Perfect Home)
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Advice to my younger self: 1 Start where you are with what you have 2 Try not to hurt other people 3 Take more chances 4 If you fail, keep trying
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Germany Kent
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If you're reading this, I hope God opens incredible doors for your life this year. Greatness is upon you. You must believe it though.
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Germany Kent
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No one else knows exactly what the future holds for you, no one else knows what obstacles you've overcome to be where you are, so don't expect others to feel as passionate about your dreams as you do.
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Germany Kent
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Pivoting does not mean changing your goal but rather changing your strategy to realize that goal.
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Steve Pemberton (The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World)
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The vocation of pastor(s) has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.
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Eugene H. Peterson (The Pastor: A Memoir)
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At the very moment when people underestimate you is when you can make a breakthrough.
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Germany Kent
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People can never get enough of something new and different.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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The definition of a professional is one who does a job well even when they don't like it.
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Alan Sheinwald (Alan Sheinwald is Building a Perfect Home)
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Do you know great minds enjoy excellence, average minds love mediocrity and small minds adore comfort zones?
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Onyi Anyado
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The most attractive thing about you should have less to do with your face or body and more to do with your attitude and how you treat people.
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Germany Kent
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He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.
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Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
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Strategy will compensate the talent. The talent will never compensate the strategy.
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Marco Pierre White
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Not planning enough is like preparing for failure even if you are extremely passionate about your idea.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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In business 'professionalism' is not a tactic but a moral value.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.
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Heather Schuck (The Working Mom Manifesto)
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You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.
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Richie Norton
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Winning isn’t everything, but losing isn’t anything.
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Charles M. Schulz (The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1968 (The Complete Peanuts, #9))
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Positive thinking is powerful thinking. If you want happiness, fulfillment, success and inner peace, start thinking you have the power to achieve those things. Focus on the bright side of life and expect positive results.
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Germany Kent
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Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.
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Germany Kent
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5 Ways To Build Your Brand on Social Media: 1 Post content that add value 2 Spread positivity 3 Create steady stream of info 4 Make an impact 5 Be yourself
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Germany Kent
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Take the challenge of your life. Reach out to your goals. There is no limit to what you can achieve.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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There is a difference between giving-up and strategic disengagement. Know the difference.
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Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
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Fear was the worst evil ever to plague a man, for with it came hesitation and with that, inaction, failure, death.
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Melissa McPhail (Cephrael's Hand (A Pattern of Shadow & Light, #1))
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Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.
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Germany Kent (You Are What You Tweet: Harness the Power of Twitter to Create a Happier, Healthier Life)
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Success is not just about what you achieve, but also about how you impact others. Be a leader, inspire those around you, and leave a lasting legacy.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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Be around people that make you want to be a better person, who make you feel good, make you laugh, and remind you what's important in life.
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Germany Kent
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The internet and online communication is the window into your world - but real life, in person communication / connection is the door.
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
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Don't look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.
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Paul Arden (It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be)
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Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.
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Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
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When you enter a place of stillness, you awaken the divinity within you.
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Peggy Sealfon (Escape From Anxiety--Supercharge Your Life with Powerful Strategies from A to Z)
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You don't need to work hard to earn an empire; there is an army of slaves to do it for you.
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
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An entrepreneur is a man who knows he can fail, but he does not accept to fail before he actually fails, and when he fails he learns from his errors and moves on.
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
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They copied my product, they copied my strategies yet they failed miserably in the business, because they couldn't copy my professionalism.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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Do not worry about who get the credit or praise of the work done. Continue work to give your best.Your reward may come unexpected.
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Lailah Gifty Akita
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7 keys to getting more things done: 1 start 2 dont make excuses 3 celebrate small steps 4 ignore critics 5 be consistent 6 be open 7 stay positive
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Germany Kent
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Seven Ways To Get Ahead in Business: 1. Be forward thinking 2. Be inventive, and daring 3. Do the right thing 4. Be honest and straight forward 5. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow 6. Work hard and be yourself 7. Lead by example
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Germany Kent
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Magic always happens when you direct your inner powers to the object you want to change.
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
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Without hope we fail to exist.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Your words control your life, your progress, your results, even your mental and physical health. You cannot talk like a failure and expect to be successful.
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Germany Kent
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In the modern workplace, you gotta be a jack-of-all-trades. Mastering your career is all about being adaptable, versatile, and always learning.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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You see it as me going back. I see it as me staying on track.
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Germany Kent
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Be yourself....and make the world adjust!
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Germany Kent
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I changed my strategy, set new goals, and faced my challenges with a positive mindset of courage and optimism.
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Charlena E. Jackson (No Cross No Crown)
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Though no one can backtrack and create a brand new start, Everyone is capable of taking their life in a brand new direction.
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Germany Kent
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Want to make waves in the business world? Then you gotta be bold, take risks, and always be ready to pivot.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate
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Bernard Williams
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Be creative while inventing ideas, but be disciplined while implementing them.
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Amit Kalantri
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Your thoughts, vividly imagined and repeated, charged with emotion, become your reality.
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Brian Tracy (Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed)
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Have you ever played chess, Kitty?” I eyed her. What did a board game have to do with this? β€œNot really.” β€œYou and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,” she said. β€œIt’s a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak piecesβ€”the pawnsβ€”are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play, I protect my pawns.” β€œWhy?” I said, not entirely sure where this conversation was going. β€œIf they’re weak, then what’s the point?” β€œThey may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the time, they’ll be taken by the other side and held captive until the end of the game. But if you’re carefulβ€”if you keep your eyes open and pay attention to what your opponent is doing, if you protect your pawns and they reach the other side of the board, do you know what happens then?” I shook my head, and she smiled. β€œYour pawn becomes a queen.” She touched my cheek, her fingers cold as ice. β€œBecause they kept moving forward and triumphed against impossible odds, they become the most powerful piece in the game. Never forget that, all right? Never forget the potential one solitary pawn has to change the entire game.
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Aimee Carter (Pawn (The Blackcoat Rebellion, #1))
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Smile, when you don't want to. Give, when you feel you have nothing to give. Go for a walk, when you don't have the energy. Listen, when you feel you can't listen. Play music, when you need to hear the news. Take five, when you don't have the time.
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Charles F. Glassman
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Thinking there had to be a better way was a brilliant stroke of serendipity!
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Lorii Myers
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Success sits on a mountain of mistakes
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (The Great Pearl of Wisdom)
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If you don't put anything in place, do not expect miraculous results to appear.
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Germany Kent
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hard work + smart work = eye caching success, shortcut is not ever
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Chiranjit Paul
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Sturm, Swung, Wucht
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Erwin Rommel
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Dream without fear, love without limits, and let your life sing its song.
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Dilip Bathija (The Superhero Soul: Quest for Inspiration, Happiness, Success and Greatness (The Superhero Soul, #1))
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They say that success is a journey, not a destination. But let's be real, the destination is pretty sweet - especially if it comes with a six-figure salary and a company car.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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Don't just climb the corporate ladder, master it! And if anyone tries to push you off, show them who's boss and climb even higher.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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Success is not just about hard work, it's about working smart. So, take a break from the grind and strategize like a pro.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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They say that the first step to success is setting clear goals. Well, I've got plenty of goals - like finally getting that corner office with a view, and firing my most annoying colleague.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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To be fully free to create, we must first find the courage and willingness to let go: Let go of the strategies that have worked for us in the past... Let go of our biases, the foundation of our illusions... Let go of our grievances, the root source of our victimhood... Let go of our so-often-denied fear of being found unlovable.
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Gordon MacKenzie (Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace)
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Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.
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Pat Conroy (My Losing Season: A Memoir)
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Get on top of the obstacles and they become vantage points.
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Tom Althouse
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To achieve career mastery, you must first master yourself. Take the time to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and goals, and then chart a course for success.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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If you want to achieve career mastery, then you need to be willing to put in the work. But don't worry, the view from the top is totally worth it.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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If you're not driving business growth and profitability, then you might as well be a houseplant. So get out there and make some money, honey!
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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The more you learn, the more you want to learn.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
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Professional development is important, but let's not forget about the most important kind of development - personal brand development. Because in the modern workplace, it's not what you know, it's who knows you.
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Shubham Shukla (Career's Quest: Proven Strategies for Mastering Success in Your Profession: Networking and Building Professional Relationships)
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If we all make systematic mistakes in our decisions, then why not develop new strategies, tools, and methods to help us make better decisions and improve our overall well-being? That's exactly the meaning of free lunches- the idea that there are tools, methods, and policies that can help all of us make better decisions and as a consequence achieve what we desire-pg. 241
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Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
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Motivating others leads to success whereas inspiring others leads to greatness.
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Ken Poirot
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Learn how to think a few moves ahead at once. In life, if you can anticipate the human mind, you can anticipate all possible futures.
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Lionel Suggs
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You cannot intimidate people with real bullets, but you can intimidate them with fake gun.
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Amit Kalantri
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At this crucial point, for the Roman Church to reach a compromise between this myth of Mithra and the Hellenistic Christianity of St. Paul, it was necessary to have a sudden change of events or an altered version of Jesus's life, and it was here that the Roman Church began to implement a psychological process known today as Cognitive Dissonance. In a few words, this happens when a group of people produce a false reconstruction of an event they want to continue to believe in, a literary strategy also known as the Reconstructive Hypothesis. This theological notion is equally known as Apotheosis or the glorification of a subject to divine level such as a human becoming a god. In the case of Jesus, this process was copied in its entirety from the religion of Mithra where their 'divinisations' were practically the same.
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Anton Sammut (The Secret Gospel of Jesus, AD 0-78)
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When you're a professional you do your job no matter what gets in the way. You might take a sick day, you might take a personal day, but then you show back up or you won't get paid. Everyone develops his/her own strategy for dealing with days that are not productive.
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Charlaine Harris
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There’s a great episode of The Office in which this strategy lands Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute in a lake during a sales trip, Michael shouting, β€œThe machine knows!” as he follows the GPS instructions and drives his SUV off the road into the water. I’ve watched a lot of good people drive their lives, their families, their churches, their communities, even their countries into a lake, shouting, β€œThe Bible knows!” all the way down.
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Rachel Held Evans (Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again)
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The plant people have taught me to be generous and not be shy about blossoming, that it is our nature. I think when others see us, it can inspire them to open up and blossom too and we can be a field ablaze with dignity and beauty together.” β€”Brenda Salgado
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Adrienne Maree Brown (Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds)
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The Game of Go was one of the 4 Arts of China. It spread to all over Asia and was even mentioned in the Japanese novel, Tales of Genji. More than an ancient board game, the Game of Go is an analogy of life and emphasize balance, challenge, and fun. Not only does my name Kailin Gow has the word "Go" in it, but my philosophy on life of balance, challenge, and fun is similar to the Game. Thus, Kailin Gow's Go Girl TV Series, books, and overall brand reflects this philosophy as well. - Kailin Gow in interview about Kailin Gow's Go Girl Books and TV Series.
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Kailin Gow
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There is a very real danger present when we suppress our feelings to act on inspiration in exchange for the β€œsafety” of the status quo. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to live a more fulfilling and purpose driven life. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We risk sacrificing the beautiful blessing of finding a greater sense of meaning in our own lives. In short, we run the very real risk living a life of regret.
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Richie Norton
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The new atheists show a disturbing lack of understanding of or concern about the complexity and ambiguity of modern experience, and their polemic entirely fails to mention the concern for justice and compassion that, despite their undeniable failings, has been espoused by all three of the monotheisms. Religious fundamentalists also develop an exagerrated view of their enemy as the epitome of evil. This tendency makes critique of the new atheists too easy. They never discuss the work of such theologians as Bultmann or Tillich, who offer a very different view of religion and are closer to mainstream tradition than any fundamentalist. Unlike Feurerbach, Marx and Freud, the new atheists are not theologically literate. As one of their critics has remarked, in any military strategy it is essential to confront the enemy at its strongest point; failure to do so means that their polemic remains shallow and lacks intellectual depth. It is also morally and intellectually conservative. Unlike Feurerback, Marx, Ingersoll or Mill, these new Atheists show little concern about the poverty, injustice and humiliation that has inspired many of the atrocities they deplore; they show no yearning for a better world. Nor, like Nietzsche , Sartre or Camus, do they compel their readers to face up to the pointlessness and futility that ensue when people lack the resources to create a sense of meaning. They do not appear to consider the effect of such nihilism on people who do not have privileged lives and absorbing work.
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Karen Armstrong (The Case for God)
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We have gone sick by following a path of untrammelled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behaviour, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very centre of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling. And at the centre of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation. The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honours the past, honours the planet and honours the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. Thank you very, very much.
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Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival)
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There must be a concerted effort to turn people away from fundamentalist Islam. Imagine a platform for Muslim dissidents that communicated their message through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Imagine ten reformist magazines for every one issue of IS’s β€œDibuq” or Al-Qaeda’s β€œInspire”. Such a strategy would also give us an opportunity to shift our alliances to those Muslim individuals and groups who actually share our values and practices – those who fight for a true Reformation and who find themselves maligned and marginalized by those nations and leaders and imams whom we now embrace as allies.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now)
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Over the years I have developed and employed a variety of such coping mechanisms, mostly focusing around a philosophy I call, β€œLive Because.” β€œLive Because” is in contrast to what I’ve termed β€œLive Despite,” which is the idea that people can live rich, full lives in spite of their physical or emotional barriers. β€œLive Because” takes this a step further by suggesting that in many cases, patients can live a more fulfilling life with their illness than they could ever have done without it. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome has transformed me from a frequently petty and self-absorbed person into the person I am today (still somewhat self-absorbed, but a lot less petty, and with a clearly defined purpose of alleviating whatever suffering I can). I am better because of my illness, and not just in spite of it. But this process was, and still is, a journey. Chronic illness is nearly always accompanied by depression, and the need to constantly remain one step ahead of my illness has left me fearful and exhausted. I could never go through this alone... A part of me will always be angry; such is the process of mourning the pieces of oneself that are lost to chronic disease. I have learned to accept the duality of being bitter and at peace; ignorant and enlightened... while still laying a foundation of hope for the possibility that I can still realize my personal dreams and ambitions, even if not in the exact ways I had expected.
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Michael Bihovsky
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My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: β€œIs this person in between me and what I want to do? If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece, "Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty, you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of, β€œover,” and β€œunder,” and β€œthrough” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk. If you’re lucky, your workplace will have a neutral proving ground- like the rifle range or a car sales total board of the SNL read-through. If so, focus on that. Again, don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go β€œOver! Under! Through!” and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.
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Tina Fey (Bossypants)
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Reality, at first glance, is a simple thing: the television speaking to you now is real. Your body sunk into that chair in the approach to midnight, a clock ticking at the threshold of awareness. All the endless detail of a solid and material world surrounding you. These things exist. They can be measured with a yardstick, a voltammeter, a weighing scale. These things are real. Then there’s the mind, half-focused on the TV, the settee, the clock. This ghostly knot of memory, idea and feeling that we call ourself also exists, though not within the measurable world our science may describe. Consciousness is unquantifiable, a ghost in the machine, barely considered real at all, though in a sense this flickering mosaic of awareness is the only true reality that we can ever know. The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas. Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored. Before the Age of Reason was announced, humanity had polished strategies for interacting with the world of the imaginary and invisible: complicated magic-systems; sprawling pantheons of gods and spirits, images and names with which we labelled powerful inner forces so that we might better understand them. Intellect, Emotion and Unconscious Thought were made divinities or demons so that we, like Faust, might better know them; deal with them; become them. Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably ezdst, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love’s name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred? The world of ideas is in certain senses deeper, truer than reality; this solid television less significant than the Idea of television. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.
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Alan Moore
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You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. β€œYou did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? β€œYou did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. β€œAnd you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. β€œIf all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) β€œYou saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. β€œThe Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. β€œWhen the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. β€œ β€˜Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. β€˜But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. β€œ β€˜The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ β€œAnd you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.
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John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))