Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Rita Grohowski. Rita is a writer, mentor, and angel investor. In addition to financial assistance, she also helps people find deeper meaning, and discover the “romance” in their careers, professional life, and businesses. When analyzing businesses, Rita asks people what they want to create, and contribute first, and then asks how they plan to make money because she believes hard work can’t be sustainable unless there’s passion. Here’s Rita on working towards self-acceptance…

“I learn teaching from teachers. I learn golf from golfers. I learn winning from coaches.” — Harvey Penick

What you get from coaching is largely up to you. Whether it’s a teacher, a mentor, a sports coach, or a coach at work, making the most of a coach is a skill that you get better at with practice. If you can master your ability to leverage the coaches in your life, you can accelerate your success, drop bad habits like a hot potato, grow new skills and abilities, and make the most of what you’ve got.

“Kid, you’ll move mountains! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!” – Dr. Seuss

When I was a kid, Dr. Seuss was a constant source of inspiration for me. His stories filled my head with endless possibilities.

“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

Motivation is your drive and it’s a skill you can build. When it comes to your performance, motivation is one of the most important things you control. One of my favorite places to look for motivation practices is sports. After all, athletes depend on motivation to perform their best.

“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” — Confucius

I’m testing my new tag line and taking it for a test drive. It’s Insight and Action for Getting Results. I’ll share my story and what I’ve learned since it might help others whether you’re branding you, your blog, or your business.

“Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.” — Rudy Giuliani

You can hope for the best, or you can focus on effective strategies to improve your business or your life. A Strategy Diamond is a crisp way to analyze, visualize, summarize, and share your strategy for your product or your business.

“Life is a big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can.” — Danny Kaye

The Web is a fountain of knowledge, especially if you know where to drink from. This post is a quick tour of some of the main sites I use that make me think.

I collect success. From stories of heroes to gems of insight, I gather and organize principles, patterns, and practices for success. It’s like a living playbook for life with short-cuts, success patterns, and proven practices. It supplies me with insight and action that I can use for just about every situation. Whether it’s motivation or strategies or tactics, it’s my unfair advantage and how I get the edge in life. It’s truly how I “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Editor’s note: Meet Dan Schawbel. Dan’s super skill is personal branding and he has an impressive set of credentials.

Dan is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, the publisher of Personal Branding Magazine, a national speaker and consultant on branding, and a BusinessWeek columnist. He’s been called a “Personal Branding Guru” by The New York Times and has been featured in over 150 media outlets.

“If I tell you I love you, can I keep you forever?” – Casper

When you’re in love the birds sing, the sun shines, and the flowers bloom. When you’re broken hearted, the world turns cold and black.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I decided to put together a collection of love quotes for your browsing pleasure. I reached far and wide across songs, movies, and famous people to find some of the best quotable quotes.

One of our greatest sources of pain in life is when our expectations aren’t met. Surprisingly, we can control this if we know how to figure out our expectations and the expectations of others.

We all have rules for things, whether we know them or not. If you know your rules, you can find ways to speed up your success or change what’s not working for you. When you don’t know your rules, you might be doing all the right things, but then feel unsuccessful inside because you have unrealistic expectations. When you don’t know other people’s rules you might create conflict because you violate their rules.

What if you could be 10,000 times more productive? Imagine what you could accomplish. Imagine how you can compete in today’s world. Imagine the personal mountains you could move like molehills.

“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” — Voltaire

I see good people go from good to great all the time. It’s not magic. It’s passion, purpose, and action. They find their path, they have a purpose, and if they get knocked down, they get up again. They keep asking better and better questions that get them closer to their goals and they continue to find the people and resources that support them on their journey. They turn resistance into growth and they fully immerse themselves in the experience. I’ve boiled down the pattern I see into 10 keys.

Editor’s note: Meet Nadia Ballas-Ruta. Nadia is author of the bountiful blog, Happy Lotus, and her super skill is spirituality. She was trained by a Buddhist master and this turned out to be one of her most powerful, life changing events. Nadia fondly recalls this as meeting her Master Yoda, the way Luke Skywalker did in Star Wars.