p.50 You are happy when you are growing. And no growth you've ever made has ever been effortless.
[JLJ !]
p.53 When you start to see the power in mentally owning things - in taking full creative possession of them
- you'll own more and more situations and things.
p.54 Write this thought down, because it can change your life: Preoccupation is the enemy of
all achievement. In any activity, preoccupation is the enemy of achievement... Taking ownership is the highest
form of focus. It's a willingness to bring everything you've got to the situation.
p.87 There's no question anymore in my mind that Colin Wilson is the most brilliant and profound philosopher
since Aristotle... I have read more than 40 of his books, many of them three and four times. I can't help returning to them
over and over again. [JLJ - right. who is Colin Wilson?]
p.91 Happiness comes from playing
p.97 Laughing, singing, and dancing can be added to every day you live. In fact, count each day
that you don't do all three a lost day. Be strict with yourself about this. Reinvent yourself as a laugher, a singer,
and a dancer. Insist on learning to have fun.
p.105 "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career," said Michael Jordan. "I've lost more than 300 games.
Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in
my life... and that's why I succeed."
p.140 There is one word that does more damage and creates more victims than any other. It is the
word "should." And you should never use it! At least not to motivate yourself, because it has the opposite effect
of motivation.
"Should" actually reduces your motivation every time you use it. "Should"
is the most tranquilizing word in the English language. It's verbal Valium shot straight into the brain.
When I tell myself I "should" do something. I am actually reducing the chances that I'll do it.
p.173 What if it were true that I become what I think about all day long? What would I want to
think about?
p.177 Write badly if you have to, but just write. Forget about faith in your writing. It is no big deal...
it is not something you need up front...The power to do something often shows up halfway into the doing of the thing,
not up front.
"Do the thing," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "and you shall have the power."
p.179 Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino says the spiral notebook is the most high-tech invention of our lifetime
because you can take it anywhere, you don't need an electrical outlet or batteries, and you can write anything into
it.
p.185 problems are always potentially fun. They are always adventures
in disguise.
And they will be that way unless we add fear into the equation... Unless we personalize them... why
is it that we love other people's problems? ...because we love problems, period. Once we take away the fear, we can joyfully
jump into problems. That's why we like mysteries, computer games, etc.
p.185 Voltaire said that no problem could withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
And he was right. No problem can.
p.186 If there's no solution, what we're dealing with is a fact of life that we haven't yet accepted.
Every problem has a solution, whether we can see it yet or not.
p.186 The only reason consultants are so good is because they enjoy the
fact that we have a problem. Because they enjoy it, they can bring enthusiasm and sustained thinking to the problem.
And no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
p.186 I once had the pleasure of working with one of the top political consultants of all time, Joe Shumate.
He was brilliant... "The job of a consultant," he once told me, "is to borrow his client's watch
to tell him what time it is."
I found this little joke to be very profound. The reason the client can't tell what time
it is is because he's not thinking, he's feeling. He's too emotional to read his own watch.
p.199 Make a decision today to take possession of the most powerful weapon there is in the battle against
a mediocre life. That weapon is called practice.
And it is, indeed, a secret weapon to 99.9 percent of America.
Pick it up and you'll give yourself what feels like an unfair advantage over everyone else you know.
Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins overrehearses. In preparation for the movie Nixon -
his greatest challenge as an actor - he rehearsed each scene more than 100 times before shooting it.
