Do you instantly know why you wake up in the morning?

According to Dan Buettner, in America, we tend to break our adult life into two phases: Work and retirement.

In Okinawan language, there is not even a word for retirement.  In Okinawa, there is one word that encompasses everything.

That word is Ikigai (eek-y-guy).

Roughly translated, ikigai means, “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.”

Ikigai, or, your “sense of purpose”, is very personal experience – and it manifests itself in many ways.

There is great power in purpose.  For example, we know that people with a strong sense of purpose have boosted immune systems.  They also enjoy lower stress hormones, and are better able to deal with the difficulties that life throws their way.

Watch this 3 minute video on the power of ikigai, where Dan Buettner shares his insight on this cornerstone of Okinawan longevity.

My ikigai is to help you lead a better life with skill.

What’s yours?

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” – Jerome K. Jerome

Why do we procrastinate and what can we do about it?   Procrastination is a subtle and insidious thing.  It can hold you back from who you were born to be.

Procrastination can lead to painful outcomes like not preparing adequately for exams and interviews, not paying bills on time, and not finishing project tasks on time.

The good news is, the more you understand about procrastination, the better armed you are to defeat it.  Knowledge and know-how are a powerful thing.   The answer to procrastination is surprisingly simple:  Work on things for “Just a few minutes.”

In the book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman writes about the why we procrastinate and what we can do about it.

7 Reasons Why We Procrastinate

According to Wiseman, here are a few of the key reasons why we procrastinate:

1. A Tendency to see projects as a whole, rather than breaking them down into smaller parts.
2. Being prone to boredom.
3. Fear of failure.
4. Inability to estimate how long it takes to do things
5. Low levels of self-control.
6. Perfectionism.
7. The feeling that life is too short to worry about seemingly unimportant tasks

Work on Things for “Just a Few Minutes”

Is there a solution to the problem of procrastination?  The closest thing we may have to a silver bullet is to leverage the Zeigarnik Effect.    The Ziegarnik Effect says our brains hold on to unfinished tasks.  In other words, we like to finish what we start.  Here is what Wiseman has to say, about the research:

“Procrastinators frequently put off starting certain activities because they are overwhelmed by the size of the job in front of them.  However, if they can be persuaded, or can persuade themselves, to work on the activity for ‘just a few minutes,’ they often feel an urge to see it through to completion.  Research shows that the ‘just a few minutes’ rule is a highly effective way of beating procrastination and could help people finish the most arduous of tasks.  It is also a perfect application of Zeigarnik’s work – those few minutes of initial activity create an anxious brain that refuses to rest until the job is finished.”

What can you work on for “just a few minutes” that might change your life?

Best Books on Motivation and Procrastination

• 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, by Richard Wiseman
• 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever, by Steve Chandler
• Time Warrior: How to defeat procrastination, people-pleasing, self-doubt, over-commitment, broken promises and chaos, by Steve Chandler

You Might Also Like

• 101 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others
• Motivational Quotes
• Multiply Your Productivity by 10,000 Times

Photo by inkshots.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from David Straker on his best lessons learned in managing change.

If you don’t know David, he is the creator of ChangingMinds.org, the largest site in the world on all aspects of how we change what others think, believe, feel and do.  He is also author of the amazing book, Changing Minds: In Detail. As you can imagine, this is no ordinary post on the art of change.  David has a lifetime of experience as a student, teacher, and practitioner of change management. As you will soon see, David simplifies complexity and he hones in on the essential principles, patterns, and practices that work.

Without further ado, here is David with his top ten tips for managing change.

Change in business is something that affects most of us for a fair part of our working lives. We’ve all got tales of disaster and incompetence, with battle scars from perhaps both sides of the line. Sometimes, if we’re honest, we may even put ourselves in the culprit’s seat for the problems caused.

Creating a ‘top ten’ list is not magic. Just because we have ten fingers it does not mean there are ten key factors for anything. It is, however a useful limit for an article as a list of ‘things to think about in change’ could be very long. Anyway, enough talk and down to action.

Here’s my ten:

1. Take time to understand the real question

Change projects often start out with a whole set of assumptions that are based on limited data or wholesale opinion. This is often accompanied by urgency and unrealistic expectations of what can be done by when. In the contracting phase where I take on the project, I always insist on a period ‘discovery’ in which I talk to everyone involved to get a range of views of the need for the change and the likely support or opposition that may appear. Key question are ‘Who benefits? How? Who loses out?’ There may also be desk research, reading previous reports and so on. From this, I get a better picture and define the project in terms of what is wanted, what is needed and the best approach to take to achieve this.

One of the tricky issues you may well face is where the commissioning manager assumes that the problem is ‘them’ and not ‘me’. Yet with some careful listening you may conclude that the manager is a key part of the problem if not the root cause. Now you will have a nice problem – how to get them to accept this fact without kicking you off the project and getting in someone who will support their innocence.

2. Have courage and integrity

Managing change can be tough and unpopular. You may have to confront a manager who believes that they have a ‘get out of jail free’ ticket that absolves them from engaging in the change. You may also have to face an angry meeting of people who are going to personally lose out big-time.

It can be so tempting to soften the blow by backpedalling and avoiding what you know really must be done. Managing change is not a popularity contest, yet you should do it with compassion and concern.

When people see your courage, they will be less inclined to fight. When people see your integrity, they will trust you more to do the right thing.

3. Engage and impassion the people affected by the change

Deployment of the change starts on day one. It’s easy to start with offline, backroom musing and plotting and then spring it on an unexpecting audience as a fait accompli. This may work in command-and-control cultures but in most businesses you will likely hit a wall, which may feel like foam rubber, but it will still be effective at deflecting and derailing your carefully-plotted rational actions.

The best approach is almost always to get as many people involved as early as possible. Be clear about the problem and engage them in finding the best way forward. Expect integrity, monitor for defensiveness and be up-front if you see it.

4. Believe what people do, not what they say

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been involved in change where managers say they are ‘right behind it’, yet when problems appear they turn out to be right against it. Likewise people will agree to all sorts of things in meetings, yet somehow their agreed actions slip down their priority list as procrastination becomes the order of the day.

When people avoid change or engagement with it, try to understand why. Get inside their heads and identify the thinking processes. People always justify their actions to themselves. If you can understand this inner talk you can speak their language and so persuade them to better ways.

5. When things start going wrong, act quickly

Between college and business, I was a school teacher for a while. I quickly learned there the way that classes operate. The first lesson they are well behaved. The next lesson, someone puts a toe out of place. If you don’t respond, then the next toe and foot follow and before long you have chaos.

People in business are not as obvious as school children but you can see the same kind of incremental resistance. A typical example is change meetings, where they all turn up for the first one, but then a bit at a time they have ‘more important’ things until you end up chairing a mostly-empty room. One of the main activities of the change manager is chasing. Relentlessly follow up with people who miss things or have commitments. Get senior managers to help by first making clear imperative statements and then follow up with real corrective action.

6. Change the motivation system

It is pretty common for businesses to try to change how people behave without changing the underlying system by which they are motivated. A typical example is where the change seeks to make people more collaborative, yet the personal performance system compares people with one another and rewards individual performance over teamwork. In fact the simplest way to change how people behave is to go straight to these performance systems. When you do this, don’t forget to train managers in how to use the new systems.

Also watch out for the informal systems of motivation, which may be embedded in the unwritten culture and in particularly in the way that leaders behave. One of the biggest factors is what managers do when individuals act against the change. If there are no personal consequences then resistance will spread and the change will die.

7. Use positive methods

Change happens through a combination of pain and pleasure, carrot and stick, push and pull. People are more likely to buy into things that use positive pleasure, carrots and ‘pull’. This can be difficult to envisage when you have been brought up in a punishment culture, which can be common in families, schools and workplaces. With thought and innovation, a more pleasant pull can be applied remarkably well.

Positive methods, such as Cooperrider’s ‘Appreciative Inquiry’, work on the principle that people do more of what they feel good about. This is also confirmed by psychoanalysis and ‘Object Relations Theory’. If we feel bad about something we will push it away or run away from it. If we feel good about it we will ‘introject’ it, taking in as a part of our being.

Sometimes negative methods can be used, for example in shocking people out of complacency. But keep this to the absolute minimum. Sometimes you have to show the stick, but it’s the carrot that motivates the most.

8. Burn bridges

One reason people go back to former ways is because they can. It is too easy to keep the old systems going ‘just in case the new one fails’. This not only gives a path for retreat, it also says that you doubt that the change is really going to work, so encouraging people to hang back and slip back to old ways.

A courageous way forward is to ensure there is no way back. If you are implementing a new computer system, have a clear date by when the old one is turned off. If you are changing attitudes, ensure there are systems that catch and address any and all instances of old attitudes.

9. Get help

Sometimes when you are charged with managing change you feel you are responsible for it all and must carry any problems all by yourself. Doing this can weigh you down and wear you out.

Let’s face it: change is difficult! Otherwise there wouldn’t be so much written about it and perhaps you would be reading a nice novel rather than this list of tips. Reading around the subject is a good way to get help and I’d suggest chewing into psychology if you can. Otherwise get help from those who have, and from those who have done it before. Or even just from someone you respect who can step back and see things with a new pair of eyes.

External consultants specialize in change, so you might want to look here, especially if it’s a big change and you have the budget (good consultants are not cheap). Be careful! It is too easy to become dependent and some consulting firms will play on this, with ‘land and expand’ strategies that have more to do with their revenues than your success.

10. Look after yourself

Managing change can be a thankless and very stressful activity. Even if your job is not called ‘change manager’, you may still be mostly making change happen in one form or another and it can get you down. Listen to your body, which will punish you for over-stressing yourself. Take time out to refresh. Get regular exercise. Watch your sleep. And otherwise do whatever works for you to keep yourself energized and enthusiastic.

If you can make it work, I think creating real change that multiplies value is the best fun you can have!

Photo by chrisbb.

Editor’s note: Well, look who’s in the house.  It’s Jairek Robbins.  In this guest post, Jariek shares his lessons learned in personal development and how to find the passion in your every day tasks.

Jairek is a professional speaker, performance coach, and creator of the Rapid Results Formula.  And, if you’re wondering, yes, Jairek Robbins is the son of Tony Robbins.

I asked Jairek to share some of his best insights and best lessons learned with readers of Sources of Insight.  His story is a powerful one, and it’s something you can immediately put to good use.  You gotta love that.

Without further ado, here’s Jariek on turning ordinary tasks into extraordinary …

I have spent my entire life growing up in the Personal Development industry and have coached hundreds of clients from around the world in achieving Rapid Results in their life and business. Over the years I have found that one of the key ingredients of incredibly successful entrepreneurs is their ability to identify areas they must improve on in their life and constantly strengthen their weakest points to ensure they are constantly growing and expanding their ability to conquer new challenges that arise.

Being coached by my father early on in life I was given the challenge to learn a few lessons that I feel gave me an edge over many others in todays market. The story below will walk you through my experience of learning to fully apply this tool as well as give you the steps and challenge you to do the same in your life and business!

A Summer Job and a Lesson in Strength

To set the scene, it was the summer of my Junior year at the University of San Diego. Normally the goal for a college student in the summer is to get a summer job, an internship, or take additional courses to get ahead and graduate early. None of these were the options that my coach suggested for that summer. He suggested and arranged with my step-grandfather up in Canada for me to come up for the summer to learn how strong I really am as a man. I never would have imagined the impact that this summer would have on my life and the edge that it would provide for me both in life and business!

My summer job was going to be stacking lumber (hard labor) at a lumber yard just outside of Vancouver, Canada. When I arrived at grandpas house he gave me an overview of how my day to day life was going to look like for the next 3 months. He told me that I would be picked up on the side of the freeway each morning at 6 am (sharp!) by a van of workers and we would drive about an hour north to the lumber yard and begin working from 7 am – 5 pm stacking lumber.

The various stacks of lumber had boards weighing between a few pounds all the way up to four to five hundred pounds. The job consisted of taking lumber from a wet stack and “sticking” it (placing a bunch of thin sticks between each layer as we re-stacked the lumber to leave a space in-between each piece so it could go into the dryer). About a week later we would then re-stack the same lumber from a dry stack to a “tight” stack to be wrapped and shipped out to companies and people who had purchased it.

Learning to Love the Experience

Seeing that the family had bets on “how long I’d last” I made it a point to step up and over deliver (this is a trait I have kept and use daily in my business to ensure my clients are always given way more than they’d expect).  My goal was to get up at 4:30 am, work out in the gym for 30 min (lifting weights and running at least 2 miles), eat breakfast, get down to the side of the freeway to get picked up, work the entire day stacking lumber and eventually return home. Before dinner I hit the gym for another 30-40 min before having dinner and getting to bed for the next day.

What I learned in this experience, working 6 days a week for 3 months, was both how strong I really was and more importantly how to find the mental, emotional and physical strength to take a seemingly boring and repetitive task that I had absolutely NO passion for and turn it into an experience that I LOVED and actually looked forward to doing each day.

Two Principles to Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary

Many entrepreneurs, small business owners and young professionals will face activities in their day to day life that they just are not “passionate” about and/or straight up hate to do! One of the greatest gifts they can give themselves is to learn how to take the seemingly boring or mundane task and learn to LOVE IT!

There are two principles they will have to master to turn the ordinary into extraordinary. These principles are:

1. The ability to shift their perception about how they view the activity
2. The ability to shift their procedure of how they go about physically doing the activity.

Perception and Procedure

When I first arrived at the lumber with the 14 other men (non of which spoke English) and was walked through how to properly stack the lumber, it seemed to be fun. Simply pick up a piece of lumber from one stack, walk over a few feet, and place it down on the other stack. After a few hours of this repetitive activity I was not enjoying it at all. I first got bored, then started getting frustrated. After the emotion built up, I then started building a story in my mind … a story around how I had obviously undervalued myself; this was a horrible decision;  I was wondering how much I was going to get paid for all this work (one thing I had forgotten to ask before accepting the challenge); and began to find every single thing that I did not like about what I was doing.

I was 100% certain that if I kept this mindset I would not make it even a week through this 3 month challenge.

Challenging Myself to Change MY Perception

I challenged myself to answer the following questions…

1. What is great about this experience?
2. What do I (or can I) enjoy about this experience?
3. How can I grow from this experience?
4. How will this experience assist me in the rest of my life?

My first response was….

1. NOTHING!
2. NOTHING!
3. I am not going to at all!
4. It is not, simply a waste of time!

I knew I could do better than these answers so I asked again… (until I came up with a better answer):

I finally came up with this…

1. What is great about this experience is that I am outside in a beautiful part of the world, and I am basically at the “gym” (I started to identify all the different ways I could pick up a board and related it to different weight lifting exercises at the gym). I soon found myself doing bicep curls, tricep kick backs, squats, lunges, shoulder rows, back flys, dead lifts and many other exercises.
2. What I could enjoy about this experience is that I now had 3 months of toning, sculpting and strengthening my body daily!
3. How can I grow… I had an idea, I was going to get an iPod and load it with as many great audiobooks and personal development programs as I could get my hands on and everyday both expand my mind by learning everything I possibly could as well as physically growing in strength daily!
4. This experience will be one of the greatest lessons in my entire life and certainly one that has MASSIVELY impacted my business.

Through answering those questions I was able to shift my mindset from “HATING” the task that I needed to get done each day and turning it into an activity that I actually really enjoyed and actually looked forward to each day (even though at some points I wasn’t sure if I could even walk, my body was so sore!)

A Challenge for You …

My hope in sharing this simple story with you is to inspire you to sift through your life and business to identify the activities that you have been putting off or avoiding because you simply dislike having to do them. As you identify these activities I would challenge you to find a way to shift your perception and/or procedure and turn these activities into ones that you can learn to LOVE to do. The gift you will give yourself (beyond getting the necessary work done) is that you will now have the ability to turn an “ordinary” activity into an “EXTRAORDINARY” experience in your life.

Final thought… if you had the ability to take something you hate to do and through simply shifting your perception or procedure learn to LOVE it… what freedom do you feel that will provide for you in your life and business? How much more effective will you be? How would it affect your personal life?

You would never imagine the freedom this will give you, the amount of fulfillment it will add to your life and the pride in knowing you are able to take a mundane task and turn it into something you are passionate about.

To your success!

Jairek Robbins

“Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.” — General George S. Patton

Be strong all day long.  Leverage four sources of strength by drawing strength from your mind, body, emotions, and spirit.

Life can have a lot of ups and downs and your ability to bounce back is one of the keys to your success.  This is a simple model I put together as part of my 30 Day Bootcamp on Getting Results to help you multiply your ability to bounce back in any situation.  I wasn’t sure whether to call my model a 4×4 Force Multiplier Frame or Four Sources of Strength.   For now, I’m going with Four Sources of Strength.

If you know somebody who’s been knocked down and needs help getting back up, share this frame with them as a way to help them get back on their feet and find their sources of strength from the inside out.

I tried to keep the model as simple as possible and easy to remember, while giving you a variety of sources of strength and energy to draw from.  I wanted this frame to serve as an “at a glance” reminder of how you are a force of one, from the inside out, as well as from the outside in.  Change your frame to change your game.

The Four Sources of Strength Model
The Four Source of Strength is a simple grid of four boxes and each box has four items:

You can use each of the four boxes as a lens for looking at your source of strength.  For example, in terms of mind and mental strength, some of your primary sources are your beliefs, what you focus on, the mental models you use, and your self-talk.

You can draw from the Four Sources of Strength when you need to bounce back or when you want to make the most of what you’ve got.  It’s a more consistent way of helping you fire on call cylinders.

Mind
Here are some ways to bounce back with your mind:

1. Focus on what you control and let the rest go.
2. Like a rubber ball … Having the right mental model or metaphor is where it starts.  You can be like a rubber ball and bounce back from anything.
3. Set limits on things.   If you let your body go until it crashes or runs out of steam, it can be too late.  You have to set limits either in terms of buffers or boundaries or timeboxes.
4. Ask yourself, “What do you want your life to be about?”
5. Turn resistance into your sparring partner.  Resistance is the enemy.  Respect it, but don’t let it wear you down.
6. Visualize the prize.  If it works for Olympic athletes, it might just work for you.  Picture it, then make it so.
7. Improve your self-talk.
8. Change your beliefs.   Find a model or learn from others what some more empowering or useful beliefs might be.
9. Change your focus.   You can change your focus by changing the question.
10. Focus on what you control and let the rest go.
11. Change your state.
12. Know how to psyche yourself up.
13. Don’t keep solving the same problems.  Burnout isn’t caused by working hard or working long hours.  It’s caused by working on the same problems or not making progress.
14. Mentally prepare for it.   Simply resetting your own expectations can help you prepare for anything.  Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
15. Choose to act strong
16. Turn a setback into a defining moment.
17. Take breaks.   Even little breaks interspersed can help you mentally, emotionally, or physically.
18. Use your renewal patterns.   Maybe this means taking an afternoon siesta.  Find what works for you.
19. Shake things up.   Sometimes the best way to break out of a rut is to shake things up.
20. Shift to the future.
21. Ask yourself, “Who’s in your corner?”
22. Know that resistance is the enemy.
23. Brace yourself and pace yourself.  You might have to chip away at the stone.
24. Remember your heroes.
25. Remember your shining moment.
26. Play the right “head movies.”  If you keep playing the wrong scenes in your head, you wear yourself down.  Find a new scene or movie to play in your head that inspires you.

Body
Here are some ways to bounce back with your body:

1. Allow for recovery.
2. Take action.  Sometimes you have to take action first and then energy and motivation follow.  You can think of this as “fake it until you make it.”  This is especially true for me when I run.
3. Play like a kid, sleep like a baby.   I heard Deepak Chopra say in an interview that children sleep like a baby because of their dynamic activity throughout the day. To know great rest, we need to know great activity and vice-versa.  I know for myself that if I don’t get my downtime, I go into a slump. I’m a fan of giving my all while I’m driving a project, and then taking a break after I ship.
4. Avoid spiking your blood sugar.   Spiking your blood sugar is one of the worst ways to work against your body.  It creates higher highs, and lower lows.  You can reduce the roller-coaster effect by limiting your intake of things that have a high-glycemic index.  Another approach is to balance your ratios of fat, carbs, and protein, such as in the Zone Diet.
5. Swap out starchy carbs for more fibrous ones.  This seems to be a pattern that helps a lot of people find more energy in a consistent way.
6. Eat more frequent and smaller meals.   This is another way to balance your body’s needs throughout the day.   One pattern is to aim for having a small meal or snack throughout the day, such as every three hours.
7. Respect your cycles.  We all have our up times and our downtimes, even throughout the day.   If you find you need more sleep, test giving yourself more sleep.   Know your peak energy cycles throughout the day and leverage those.
8. Don’t bake bad habits in.  When Bruce Lee was “off” or he couldn’t practice a technique properly, he stopped.  The last thing he wanted to do was burn in a habit or practice that was ineffective.

Emotions
Here are some ways to better balance and bounce back with your emotions:

1. Think the thoughts that serve you.  Your thoughts create your energy.
2. Pull yourself forward by what you really want to do.
3. Grow your compassion.  Keep your heart open.  One of the worst ways to kill your lust for life is to grow callous and cold.
4. Hold yourself high.  Your physiology affects your emotions in a strong way.  Sometimes you need to smile before you feel happy.
5. Believe in yourself.  This might mean as simple as deciding that you’ll “give it all you’ve got” and “whatever happens happens.”  You don’t have to put your focus on your ability.  You can put your focus on your effort or your determination.  Where you put your focus will change how you feel.
6. Find your “why.”  This is how you light your fire from the inside out.  Don’t depend on external things to keep you going.  Root yourself firmly in your own foundation.
7. Leverage your relationships and network.  There is strength in numbers or even just somebody who wants to listen.

Spirit
Here are some ways to bounce back with your spirit:

1. Make it bigger than yourself.   Find a cause where you can put your focus on something you think is great.  Having a cause is a great way to get back on your horse or back up to bat.
2. Do what you love or do what you were born to do.  Either way, you win.  If you can’t find your calling, then look for your unique contribution.
3. Connect to your values.
4. Immerse yourself in great literature or music.
5. Find the synergy.  According to Stephen Covey, we unleash our spiritual intelligence when we combine meaning, integrity and contribution – by serving and lifting all stakeholders: customers, suppliers, employees and their families, communities, society — to make a difference in the world.

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” — Herm Albright

The little wins each day keep you going and add up over time.  The same is true of setbacks.

When things are on a roll, and you are making more progress than dealing with setbacks, you are in a virtuous cycle – a positive loop.  When you’re spending more time dealing with setbacks and not making as much progress, you are in a negative loop.  The key is to watch for and deal with the setbacks that can take you down a vicious cycle.   While you can’t avoid all the setbacks, you can respond more effectively, especially if you watch for them and nip them in the bud.

In the book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work , by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, the authors show us how to keep virtuous cycles going and abort vicious cycles early.

Keep Positive Loops Going and Abort the Negative Ones
Pay attention to the day to day, but look to the big picture to see what’s really going on in terms of progress.  Teresa and Steven write:

”Focusing on inner work life one day at a time keeps you vigilant, but people make sense of each day’s events against the backstory of the days that preceded it.  Myopic focus on a narrow timeframe can blind you to the big picture of what’s really going on with both inner work life and progress.  Because inner work life and progress exert mutual influence, the ideal is to keep positive progress loops — virtuous cycles — going as long as possible, and abort negative ones — vicious cycles — as soon as possible.”

Look at the Right Things Over Time
You have to look for key triggers and events over time to notice the true patterns.  Teresa and Steven write:

“These patterns are often hard to spot unless you keep looking at the right things over time.  In fact, we might never have recognize the progress principles had we not been carefully analyzing daily event descriptions, many of which seemed unimportant in isolation.  It was focusing on the day-to-day, and then stepping back to look for patterns that we revealed what was really happening in the teams we studied.”

Watch For and Deal with Setback Events
Recognize the virtuous cycles and stay alert to the negative signs of setbacks.  Teresa and Steven write:

”Sustaining virtuous cycles requires recognizing them to begin with.  When your private end-of-the-day review indicates a series of days with more progress events than setbacks, and no major signs of negative inner work life, the chances are good that your team is in a virtuous cycle.  If your team is fortunate to have one going, it’s important to stay alert for negative events — especially small hassles — that can sour good inner work life or halt progress.  The most fundamental step is watching for and dealing with actual setback events.”

In my experience, the old saying, “a stitch in time saves nine” tends to be true, and I like to deal with setbacks as quickly, and effectively as possible, to keep a virtuous cycle going, or get back on one.

Photo by shambhavi singh.

Inspiration – to breathe life into.  Inspirational quotes and inspiring words can breathe life into anything and everything you do.

I’ve created a collection of some of the most inspirational quotes of all time.  The gang’s all here … Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Emerson, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Twain, Franklin, Churchill and more.  That’s a powerful bunch to have in your corner.  Use their words of wisdom to lift you up and help you “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Why Inspirational Quotes

Why are inspirational quotes so powerful?  For one thing, they can express in words, what you feel in your heart.  For another, sometimes it helps to know that you’re not alone, and others have been in the same shoes.  They can keep you going when you’re down, or they can help you on your climb to the top.  Sometimes you just need to hear the right words, said in a different way, to help you rise above the noise and take a balcony view.  And sometimes, people just say the thing that spark your heart, or puts your imagination in over-drive, or simply rekindles your possibilities.

One of my favorite inspirational quotes of all time is, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” It always reminds me to stand strong when tested, and that every bad situation, is an opportunity for growth. I’ve learned that life comes with problems, and wishing them away doesn’t work.  Instead, I’ve learned to expand myself and deal with bigger challenges, and respond more effectively.  As Maxwell puts it, “You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.”

Picking “The Great Ones”

To help me figure out the top inspirational quotes of all time, I’ve asked many people what their favorite inspirational quote is.  From that set, I tried to pick both some classics and some inspirational quotes that you don’t hear every day.  I organized the rest of the collection into a set of relevant categories for inspiration so that you can easily browse or scan the full set, or just jump to the ones you need.

At the end of the day, the best inspirational quotes are the ones that work for you.  Only you know what lifts you up and which words of wisdom help you the most.   After all, you are ultimately your most important meaning maker and filter for this lifetime.  And you are the one that always holds the key to unlocking and unleashing what you’re capable of.

Please enjoy these inspirational quotes and may they help you flourish in ways you never dreamed possible.  This is a living, breathing collection of inspirational quotes, so feel free to share your best quotes, and help me make this a great collection of insight and inspiration.

The Best of the Best – Top 20 Inspirational Quotes

1. “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” — Mary Anne Radmacher
2. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. “I want to be all used up when I die.” — George Bernard Shaw
4. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
5. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” — Napoleon Hill
6. “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” — George Bernard Shaw
7. “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
8. “It is never too late to be who you might have been.” — George Eliot
9. “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” — Lao-Tzu
10. “Let him who would move the world, first move himself.” – Socrates
11. “Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.” — Danny Kaye
12. “Life is not measured by the number of breathes we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou
13. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
14. “Smile, breathe and go slowly.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
15. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
16. “The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and objectionable.” – Plato
17. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
18. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain
19. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
20. “Whatever you do, you should do it with feeling.” — Yogi Berra

Achievement

• “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.” – Plato
• “Achievement results from work realizing ambition.” — Adam Ant
• “Big thinking precedes great achievement.” — Wilferd A. Peterson
• “Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.” — Napoleon Hill
• “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.” — Charles F. Kettering
• “I’m glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.” — Mark Twain
• “It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.” — Charles F. Kettering
• “Never mistake activity for achievement.” — John Wooden
• “One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.” — Anthony Robbins
• “Success each day should be judged by the seeds sown, not the harvest reaped.” — John C. Maxwell
• “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.” — Denis Waitley
• “If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.” — Vince Lombardi
• “Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.” — Nido Qubein
• “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” — Zig Ziglar
• “You have to ‘be’’ before you can ‘do’, and do before you can ‘have’.” — Zig Ziglar
• “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” — Albert Einstein

Action

• “Action is the real measure of intelligence.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” — Mark Twain
• “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do.” — Andrew Carnegie
• “Don’t compare yourself negatively with the giants or anyone else, rather, use them as models. Then get on with whatever it is you can accomplish with your life, and give it everything you have.” — Dr. Irene Kassorla
• “Don’t think, just do.” – Horace
• “Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.” – Benjamin Disraeli
• “If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.” — Lucy Larcom
• “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” — John Quincy Adams
• “It not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.” — Anthony Robbins
• “Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.” — Danny Kaye
• “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” –  Benjamin Franklin
• “Speaking from my personal experiences, setting goals, along with a detailed action plan, has actually changed my life from one cast in frustration to one of purpose.” — Catherine Pulsifer
• “The first man gets the oyster; the second man gets the shell.” — Andrew Carnegie
• “The main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.” — Thomas Carlyle
• “The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret.” — Nido Qubein
• “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” — Mark Twain
• “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” – Confucius
• “To move the world we must first move ourselves.” – Socrates
• “Well done is better than well said.” — Benjamin Franklin

Adversity

• “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” — Duke Ellington
• “Accept challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.” — George S. Patton
• “Bad is never good until worse happens.” — Danish Proverb
• “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” — Joshua J. Marine
• “Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” — William Ellery Channing
• “Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.” — William James
• “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” — Truman Capote
• “How can something bother you if you won’t let it?” — Terri Guillemets
• “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” — Maya Angelou
• “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” — Frank A. Clark
• “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” — Maya Angelou
• “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
• “If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change.  If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.” — John A. Simone, Sr.
• “It’s not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.” — Ashleigh Brilliant
• “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” —Vince Lombardi
• “Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.” — William Shakespeare
• “Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them.  The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.” – Voltaire
• “Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.” – Henry Ward Beecher
• “Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.” — M. Kathleen Casey
• “Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” — African Proverb
• “Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.” — Zig Ziglar
• “The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” — Virginia Woolf
• “The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” – Unknown
• “The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.” — Confucius
• “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” — Harry Golden
• “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” — Norman Vincent Peale
• “This too will pass.” — Attar
• “Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.” — Henry Ward Beecher
• “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey
• “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” — Kenji Miyazawa
• “We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” — Winston Churchill
• “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.” –  Unknown
• “You can’t run away from trouble.  There ain’t no place that far.” — Uncle Remus
• “You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.” —John C. Maxwell
• “You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” — Walt Schmidt

Attitude and Gratitude

• “A person’s worth in this world is estimated according to the value he puts on himself.” — Jean de la Bruyere
• “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” — Mark Twain
• “All the advice in the world will never help you until you help yourself.” — Fred Van Amburgh
• “Count your blessings! Things can always get better and could always be worse.” — Donald Neviaser
• “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself. So always think positively.” — Norman Vincent Peale
• “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer
• “In one minute you can change your attitude and in that minute you can change your entire day.” — Spencer Johnson
• “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” — William James
• “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” — Mark Twain
• “Life must be lived as play.” – Plato
• “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged.” — Lucille Ball
• “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” — Denis Waitley
• “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.” – Plato
• “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “”There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein
• “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” –  Anais Nin
• “You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.” — Deepak Chopra
• “You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.” — Leo Aikman
• “You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to fit those situations.” — Zig Ziglar
• “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” — Zig Ziglar

Beginnings

• “A hard beginning maketh a good ending.” — John Heywood
• “A lot of people seeking new beginnings have never finished with the past.” — Byron Pulsifer
• “Beginnings are only difficult without any action.” — Byron Pulsifer
• “Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be.” — Marsha Petrie Sue
• “Every morning is a fresh beginning. Every day is the world made new. Today is a new day.” — Dan Custer
• “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings.” — Dave Weinbaum
• “This moment, this day, is as good as any moment in all eternity. I shall make of this day, each moment of this day, a heaven on earth. This is my day of opportunity.” — Dan Custer
• “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” — Joe Sabah

Belief

• “Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief in denying them.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt
• “By believing passionately in something that does not yet exist, we create it.” – Nikos Kazantzakis
• “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” — Norman Vincent Peale
• “Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.” – Edith Hamilton
• “I always try to believe the best of everybody — it saves so much trouble.” – Rudyard Kipling
• “Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “Others believing in you is nice but worthless if not matched by your own thought.” — Scott Moore
• “Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.” –Eric Butterworth
• “The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.” — Ezra Pound

Compassion and Connection

• “At the end of the day, love and compassion will win.” — Terry Waite
• “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou
• “Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.” — Mason Cooley
• “Compassion is a two way street.” — Frank Capra
• “Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.” — Henry Ward Beecher
• “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” — Lao Tzu
• “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
• “It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” – Gandhi
• “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” — Dalai Lama
• “Make no judgments where you have no compassion.” – Anne McCaffrey
• “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style” — Maya Angelou
• “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” — Albert Einstein
• “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” — Helen Keller
• “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.” — Maya Angelou
• “The dew of compassion is a tear.” — Lord Byron
• “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.” — Maya Angelou
• “The greatest good we can do for others is not just to share our riches with them, but to reveal theirs.” — Zig Ziglar
• “The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” — Deepak Chopra
• “The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” — G.K. Chesterton
• “When there’s that forgiveness present and compassion, it just helps you live so much easier.” — Craig T. Nelson
• “Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.” — Confucius

Courage

• “A man of courage is also full of faith.” – Cicero
• “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney
• “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Be bold – and mighty forces will come to your aid.” — Basil King
• “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” — Mary Anne Radmacher
• “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
• “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” – Plato
• “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” — Ambrose Redmoon
• “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” — Mark Twain
• “Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.” –  Tom Krause
• “Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” — Maya Angelou
• “Fortune favors the brave.” – Virgil
• “The hero is no braver than the ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain
• “Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can.” — Henry Drummond
• “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”– Eleanor Roosevelt

Dreams and Vision

• “A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.” — Ralph Lauren
• “A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness.” — Zadok Rabinwitz
• “A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.” — William James
• “Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.” – Anonymous
• “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.” — Dr. Dale Turner
• “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” –  Henry David Thoreau
• “I shut my eyes in order to see.” –  Paul Gauguin
• “I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.” — Walt Disney
• “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
• “If our thoughts and hopes are elsewhere, it is impossible to set our faces steadily toward the work required of us.” – Anonymous
• “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be”. – Anonymous
• “If you’re not sure where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” – Anonymous
• “Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.” — William Arthur Ward
• “Some men see things the way they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and ask ‘Why not?” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Some make it happen, some watch it happen, and some say, ‘What happened?’” – Anonymous
• “The greatest dreams are always unrealistic.” — Will Smith
• “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” — Edgar Allan Poe
• “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” — Japanese Proverb
• “We will find only what we look for, nothing more and nothing less.” – Anonymous
• “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” — John Lubbock
• “Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.” — Indian Proverb
• “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” — Richard Bach
• “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller

Failure, Setbacks, and Mistakes

• “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Acknowledge that you failed, draw your lessons from it, and use it to your advantage to make sure it never happens again.” — Michael Johnson
• “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
• “Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” — Henry Ford
• “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” — Oscar Wilde
• “Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.” — Zig Ziglar
• “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” — Maya Angelou
• “I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.” — Sam Walton
• “I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.” — George Burns
• “Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.” — Anthony Robbins
• “Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.” — Zig Ziglar
• “Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” — Al Franken
• “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” — Napoleon Hill
• “No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage.” – Epictetus
• “One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.” — Jack Penn
• “Only those who do nothing at all make no mistakes… but that would be a mistake.” – Anonymous
• “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
• “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
• “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” — Elbert Hubbard
• “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” — Dale Carnegie
• “There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.” — Robert Fripp
• “There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.” – William James
• “Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.” –  Stephen Kaggwa
• “You haven’t failed until you quit trying.” — Anonymous

Fear

• “A life lived in fear is half lived.” – Anonymous
• “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Nelson Mandela
• “Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” — David Lloyd George
• “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Fear nothing, for every renewed effort raises all former failures into lessons, all sins into experience.” – Unknown
• “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Necessity is the mother of taking chances.” — Mark Twain
• “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” — Nelson Mandela
• “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” — Paulo Coelho
• “Risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.” — Leo Buscaglia
• “You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.” — George Bernard Shaw

Goals

• “A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.” — Bo Bennett
• “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Begin with the end in mind.” — Stephen Covey
• “Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.” — Adolph Monod
• “Establishing goals is all right if you don’t let them deprive you of interesting detours.” — Doug Larson
• “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus
• “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.” — J.C. Penney
• “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” –  Vincent Van Gogh
• “I love deadlines.  I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” — Douglas Adams
• “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” — Unknown
• “Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.” — C.D. Jackson
• “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” – Anonymous
• “One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” — Sidney Howard
• “One may miss the mark by aiming too high as too low.” — Thomas Fuller
• “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” — T.S. Eliot
• “People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals – that is, goals that do not inspire them.” – Anthony Robbins
• “Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Les Brown
• “Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” — Doug Larson
• “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.” – Michelangelo
• “The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.” — Unknown
• “You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.” — Charles C. Noble

Growth

• “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
• “Avoid problems, and you’ll never be the one who overcame them.” — Richard Bach
• “Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.” — Andrew Carnegie
• “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” – Bruce Lee
• “Every artist was first an amateur.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
• “Improvement begins with I.” — Arnold H. Glasgow
• “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” — Edmund Hillary
• “Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. Learn, master, and achieve.” – Bruce Lee
• “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Nothing ever is, but is always becoming.” – Plato
• “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” — Albert Einstein
• “Seeing yourself as you want to be is the key to personal growth.” – Anonymous
• “Success is achieved by development of our strengths, not by elimination of our weakness.” — Marilyn Vos Savant
• “The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and objectionable.” – Plato
• “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are; for what we could become.” — Charles Dubois
• “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.” — Deepak Chopra
• “The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.” – Denis Waitley
• “The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.” — Anthony Robbins
• “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” — Aldous Huxley
• “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” — Maya Angelou
• “When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.” – Bruce Lee

Happiness

• “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.” — Ayn Rand
• “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” — Mark Twain
• “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” — Jim Rohn
• “If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It’s very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” — Deepak Chopra
• “If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge.” – Deepak Chopra
• “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” — Storm Jameson
• “Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing.” — Brian Tracy
• “Happiness is a state of activity.” – Aristotle
• “Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.” – Leon J. Suenes
• “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
• “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” — Mark Twain
• “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” — James Oppenheim
• “The healthiest response to life is joy.” — Deepak Chopra
• “The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.” – Plato
• “The secret to happiness is not in doing what one likes to do, but in liking what one has to do.” – Anonymous
• “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” — Mark Twain
• “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things – not the great occasions – that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.” — Bob Hope
• “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” — Mark Twain

Hope and Inspiration

• “A whole stack of memories never equal one little hope.” — Charles Schulz
• “Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.” — Chinese Proverb
• “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt
• “For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.” — Wallis Simpson
• “He who has never hoped can never despair.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Hope is a waking dream.” — Aristotle
• “If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.” — Thomas Fuller
• “He who has hope has everything.”—Arabian Proverb
• “Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it is still dark.” – Anonymous
• “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” — Emily Dickenson
• “In life you need either inspiration or desperation.” — Anthony Robbins
• “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou
• “Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.” — Bern Williams
• “Motivation is the fuel necessary to keep the human engine running.” — Zig Ziglar
• “Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.” — Maya Angelou
• “Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.” — John Heywood
• “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.” – Thornton Wilder
• “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion.  You must set yourself on fire.” — Arnold H. Glasow
• “Surround yourself with people who are going to motivate and inspire you.” — Charles M. Marcus
• “The best motivation always comes from within.” — Michael Johnson
• “The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” — Allan K. Chalmers
• “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.” — Richard Bach
• “The question should be, is it worth trying to do, not can it be done.” — Allard Lowenstein
• “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which has the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia
• “To succeed… you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” — Tony Dorsett

Limits

• “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.” — Richard Bach
• “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Hitch your wagon to a star.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “I want to be all used up when I die.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” — Isaac Newton
• “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” — Napoleon Hill
• “It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you use that makes a difference.” — Zig Ziglar
• “It is never too late to be who you might have been.” — George Eliot
• “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” — Mark Twain
• “Life is full of obstacle illusions.” — Grant Frazier
• “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Andre Gide
• “Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.” — Thomas Carlyle
• “Never tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.” – Unknown
• “Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.” — Karen Ravn
• “Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.” — Maya Angelou
• “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
• “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “When you set goals, something inside of you starts saying, “Let’s go, let’s go,” and ceilings start to move up.” — Zig Ziglar
• “You are not the drop in the ocean, but the ocean in the drop.” — Deepak Chopra

Opportunity and Choice

• “All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.” — Lao-Tzu
• “All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination; Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.” – Horace
• “Chance favors the prepared mind.” — Louis Pasteur
• “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.” — Deepak Chopra
• “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” — Zig Ziglar
• “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these ‘It might have been’” — John Greenleaf Whittie
• “He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.” — William James
• “Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.” — Mark Twain
• “No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “One hundred percent of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.” — Wayne Gretzky
• “Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.” – Horace
• “The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.” — Orison Sweet Marden
• “The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” — Benjamin Disraeli
• “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou
• “We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.” — Winston Churchill
• “What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
• “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.” — Deepak Chopra
• “Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.” — Napoleon Hill

Passion and Desire

• “Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” — Benjamin Franklin
• “Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.” —Benjamin Franklin
• “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “One of the most difficult things everyone has to learn is that for your entire life you must keep fighting and adjusting if you hope to survive. No matter who you are or what your position is you must keep fighting for whatever it is you desire to achieve.” — George Allen
• “Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” — Swami Sivananda
• “The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.” — Napoleon Hill
• “To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve.” — James Allen
• “Whatever you do, you should do it with feeling.” — Yogi Berra
• “You change your life by changing your heart.” — Max Lucado

Persistence

• “A big shot is a little shot that kept shooting.” – Anonymous
• “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao-tzu
• “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” — Mark Twain
• “Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” — Benjamin Franklin
• “Fall seven times. Stand up eight.” —Japanese Proverb
• “Get a good idea and stay with it. Do it, and work at it until it’s done right.” — Walt Disney
• “It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.” — Zig Ziglar
• “It’s not what you start in life, it’s what you finish.” – Katharine Hepburn
• “Never giving up and pushing forward will unlock all the potential we are capable of.” — Christy Borgeld
• “Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” — John Quincy Adams
• “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” — Napoleon Hill
• “Smile, breathe and go slowly.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
• “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” – Anthony Robbins
• “Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.” — Jim Rohn
• “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.” — Mark Twain
• “The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
• “The only job where you start at the top, is digging a hole.” – Anonymous
• “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” — Anatole France
• “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Purpose, Meaning, Fulfillment

• “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” — Maya Angelou
• “A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “A man is not old until regrets start taking place of dreams.” – Anonymous
• “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” — William Shedd
• “And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “Be not simply good; be good for something.”– Henry David Thoreau
• “Everyone has a purpose in life… a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” — Deepak Chopra
• “Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.” — Washington Irving
• “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.” — Brian Tracy
• “It is not length of life, but depth of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.” — Anthony Robbins
• “It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.” — Tom Brokaw
• “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “May you live all the days of your life.” — Jonathan Swift
• “More than anything else, people will always remember you for how you made them feel.” — Shadonna Richards
• “My life is my message.” — Mahatma Ghandi
• “Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfillment.” – Anthony Robbins
• “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” — Carl Rogers
• “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” — Steven Covey
• “The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced.” — Aart van der Leenw
• “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.” — Deepak Chopra
• “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.” — Kahlil Gibran
• “Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.” — Albert Einstein
• “We do not remember days; we remember moments.” — Cesare Pavese
• “Where you end up isn’t the most important thing. It’s the road you take to get there. The road you take is what you’ll look back on and call your life.” — Tim Wiley
• “You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don’t think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.” – Anthony Robbins
• “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” — Maya Angelou
• “Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.” — Bach, Richard

Strength

• “A chain is as strong as its weakest link.” — Danish Proverb
• “A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.” — Marcel Proust
• “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• All our talents increase in the using, and the every faculty, both good and bad, strengthen by exercise.” — Anne Bronte
• “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu
• “Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” — Liane Cordes
• “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.” – Plato
• “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” — Samuel Johnson
• “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo
• “He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.” — Ben Jonson
• “Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun-dial in the shade?” — Benjamin Franklin
• “If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.” — T.S. Eliot
• “Inward calm cannot be maintained unless physical strength is constantly and intelligently replenished.” – Buddha
• “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” — Lao-Tzu
• “Knowledge is power.” — Francis Bacon
• “Let him who would move the world, first move himself.” – Socrates
• “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” — Louis Pasteur
• “My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
• “Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” –  Albert Einstein
• “Rule your mind or it will rule you.” – Horace
• “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.” — Marilyn vos Savant
• “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemingway
• “There is no strength without unity.” — Irish Proverb
• “There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.” — Han Suyin
• “To keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” — Helen Keller

You know the movies.  The ones that make your heart grow ten times bigger, or the ones that give you the strength of ten warriors on your side.

These are the movies that inspire us.

They make the blood rush through our veins.  They make our soul sing.  They make us want to get up and give our best … until there’s nothing more to give … and then give some more.  They move us.

They make us laugh, they make us cry, they make us think.  But mostly, they remind us why we are alive and what’s worth living for.  They remind us that every day, is another day, to get up, venture into the world, and make a difference.  Our difference.  Whether that difference is to conquer a personal demon, or to make a difference in somebody’s life, or to make the world a better place.  It’s our story that we write each day.

Everybody, every day, has their own adventures, and their own unfolding story, but we’re all in this together.  And that’s why we identify with the movies that inspire us — to make the most of what we’ve got … to live more, learn more, laugh more, and love more … and, above all, to keep our spirit strong, and to go the distance.

Here are 25 motivational movies that inspire us to go the distance, and make the most of the journey of life along the way …

1. 300

No retreat, no surrender.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Children, gather round! No retreat, no surrender; that is Spartan law. And by Spartan law we will stand and fight… and die. A new age has begun. An age of freedom, and all will know, that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it!” – King Leonidas (Gerard Butler)

2. Braveheart

If it’s worth it, fight for it.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!” – William Wallace

Watch ta clip – Braveheart in Defiance of the English Tyranny

3. Coach Carter

The power to shine is in every one of us.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Timo Cruz (Rick Gonzalez)

4. Dead Poet Society

Carpe Diem — seize the day!

Inspirational movie quote:

“They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? – - Carpe – - hear it? – - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.” – John Keating

Watch a clip – Dead Poet’s Society – Carpe Diem

5. Don Juan DeMarco

Love conquers all.

Inspirational movie quote:

"There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same – only love." — Don Juan DeMarco (Johnny Depp)

6. Freedom Writers

No excuses!

Inspirational movie quote:

“I don’t want excuses. I know what you’re up against. We’re all of us up against something. So you better make up your mind, because until you have the balls to look me straight in the eye and tell me this is all you deserve, I am not letting you fail. Even if that means coming to your house every night until you finish the work. I see who you are. Do you understand me? I can see you. And you are not failing.” – Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank)

7. Good Will Hunting

Love something more than yourself.

Inspirational movie quote:

“They don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.” – Sean (Robin Williams)

Watch a clip – Good Will Hunting – They don’t know about real loss.

8. Hitch

Find the things that take your breath away.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away.” – Hitch (Will Smith)

9. Into the Wild

Find the beauty in all things.

Inspirational movie quote:

“I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God’s place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things.” – Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch)

10. Lord of the Rings

Step up to the plate and write your story forward.

Inspirational movie quote:

“So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” — Gandalf (Ian McKellen)

11. Marley and Me

Do you make people feel rare, pure, and extraordinary?

Inspirational movie quote:

"It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not. Sometimes it takes a dog with bad breath, worse manners, and pure intentions to help us see. Ask yourself, how many people in the world can truly make you feel rare, pure, and extraordinary?" –John Grogan (Owen Wilson)

12. Million Dollar Baby

Be relentless.

Inspirational movie quote:

“To make a fighter you gotta strip them down to bare wood: you can’t just tell ‘em to forget everything you know if you gotta make ‘em forget even their bones… make ‘em so tired they only listen to you, only hear your voice, only do what you say and nothing else… show ‘em how to keep their balance and take it away from the other guy… how to generate momentum off their right toe and how to flex your knees when you fire a jab… how to fight backin’ up so that the other guy doesn’t want to come after you. Then you gotta show ‘em all over again. Over and over and over… till they think they’re born that way.” – Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris (Morgan Freeman)

13. Mulan

Be YOUR best, despite the odds.

Inspirational movie quote:

"The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all." — The Emperor (Pat Morita)

14. Peaceful Warrior

Love what you do.

Inspirational movie quote:

“The warrior does not give up what he loves, Dan. He finds the love in what he does.” – Socrates (Nick Nolte)

“The accident is your training. Life is choice. You can choose to be a victim or anything else you’d like to be.” — Socrates (Nick Nolte)

Watch a clip – Peaceful Warrior – The warrior does not give up.

15. Rocky

Go the distance!

Inspirational movie quote:

“Ah come on, Adrian, it’s true. I was nobody. But that don’t matter either, you know? ‘Cause I was thinkin’, it really don’t matter if I lose this fight. It really don’t matter if this guy opens my head, either. ‘Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.” – Rocky (Sylvester Stallone)

Watch the clip – Rocky – Training and going the distance.

16. Rocky Balboa (Rocky 6)

Keep bouncing back, keep moving forward.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning’s done.” – Rock Balboa (Sylvester Stallone)

Watch the scene – Rocky Balboa – It Ain’t About How Hard You Hit.

17. Rudy

Every underdog has his day. Prove it to yourself, nobody else.

Inspirational movie quote:

“In this life time, you don’t have to prove nothing to nobody, except yourself. And after what you’ve gone through, if you haven’t done that by now, it ain’t gonna never happen.” – Fortune (Charles S. Dutton)

Watch the Clip – Rudy – Rudy and the Janitor.

Watch the Clip – Rudy – Rudy succeeds with sack.

18. Runaway Bride

It’s not gonna be easy, but it’s gonna be worth it.

Inspirational movie quote:

"Look, I guarantee there’ll be tough times. I guarantee that at some point, one or both of us is gonna want to get out of this thing. But I also guarantee that if I don’t ask you to be mine, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, because I know, in my heart, you’re the only one for me. " — Ike Graham (Richard Gere)

19. Stand and Deliver

Want it and work for it.

Inspirational movie quote:

“There will be no free rides, no excuses. You already have two strikes against you: your name and your complexion. Because of these two strikes, there are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do. Math is the great equalizer… When you go for a job, the person giving you that job will not want to hear your problems; ergo, neither do I. You’re going to work harder here than you’ve ever worked anywhere else. And the only thing I ask from you is ganas. ‘Desire’.” — Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos)

20. The Bucket List

Find the joy and make it contagious.

Inspirational movie quote:

“You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not. ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’” — Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman)

Watch the clip – The Bucket List – Two Questions.

21. The Empire Strikes Back

Just do it.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.” — Yoda

22. The Mighty Ducks

Stick together, win together.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Neither do hockey players. Have you guys ever seen a flock of ducks flying in perfect formation? It’s beautiful. Pretty awesome the way they all stick together. Ducks never say die. Ever seen a duck fight? No way. Why? Because the other animals are afraid. They know that if they mess with one duck, they gotta deal with the whole flock. I’m proud to be a Duck, and I’d be proud to fly with any one of you. So how about it? Who’s a Duck?” – Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez)

Watch the clip – Ducks fly Together.

23. The Notebook

Awaken your soul and reach for more.

Inspirational movie quote:

“My Dearest Allie. I couldn’t sleep last night because I know that it’s over between us. I’m not bitter anymore, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I’ll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that’s what you’ve given me. That’s what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I’ll be seeing you.” — Young Noah (Ryan Gosling)

24. The Pursuit of Happyness

Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something.

Inspirational movie quote:

“Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right? … You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period." – Christopher Gardner (Will Smith)

Watch the clip – The Pursuit of Happyness – You want something.  Go get it.  Period.

25. Vision Quest

It’s the moments that matter.

Inspirational movie quote:

“I was in the room here one day… watchin’ the Mexican channel on TV. I don’t know nothin’ about Pele. I’m watchin’ what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in – upside down and backwards… the goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pele gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around his head. Everybody’s screaming in Spanish. I’m here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying … That’s right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute… let me tell ya, kid – it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain’t the six minutes… it’s what happens in that six minutes.” – Elmo (J.C. Quinn)

What are the movies you draw from for insight and inspiration when you need it most?

My Related Posts

• Inspirational Quotes
• Sites I Follow for Insight and Inspiration
• Passion Does Not Exist in the Job, It Exists in Us

“Come on baby, light my fire.” – Light My Fire, The Doors

This is a set of strategies and tactics you can use to motivate yourself and others in any situation.

Motivation comes from the Latin word, movere, which means “to move.”  According to Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, motivation shapes three aspects of action: 1) your direction  or choice, 2) your intensity or effort, and 3) your duration  or persistence.

Motivation also shapes how much you gain and grow, as well as how much you use the skills and abilities you’ve got.   The bottom line is, motivation is powerful stuff, and it’s a skill you can use throughout your lifetime.

Before we dive into the ways to make your soul sing and your inspiration flow, there are a few things you should know about motivation.  First, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is useful for understanding some basic drivers and needs.  Second, David McClelland’s theory of needs shines the light on the need for achievement, affiliation, and power.  Third, it’s useful to distinguish between intrinsic or internal motivation, and extrinsic, or external motivation.  Masters of motivation heavily leverage their intrinsic motivation and they know how to connect to values, to make things meaningful for themselves and others.  Lastly, purpose trumps all.  If you want the ultimate source of inspiration on your side, then drive from your purpose.

101 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others
Here are the key methods the masters of motivation use to motivate themselves and others:

1. Act on your inspiration. Use your best energy for your best results. Turn your ideas into action, and find the quick wins. Quick wins quickly add up, and you’ll find your confidence and competence bloom. On the flip side, your passion can expire, if you wait too long or miss the window of opportunity. In fact, a common way to kill ideas or momentum is to spread them out over time, or keep pushing them out. If your passion does expire, one way to rekindle it is to talk to somebody about why you cared about it, and that can often light the fuse again.

   

2. Ask questions that move the ball forward. Questions are a powerful way to increase your options, and gain leverage. You can use questions to challenge your views, and to switch to more empowering mindsets. Ask yourself, “What’s a better way?”, “How can I jump that hurdle? ”, “How can I have fun while doing it?”, etc. For examples of questions that break through barriers, check out 101 Questions that Empower You.
3. Ask, “What would Tony Robbins do?” It’s a powerful thing when you look through another lens. Plug in your favorite role model, but use them to gain perspective. It’s a fast way to think out of the box, and to look at the situation through another lens. If you need more humor in the situation, ask, “What would Lucy or Bob Hope do?” If you need to be more intense, ask, “What would Bruce Lee do?” If you need to be more debonair, ask, “What would Richard Branson do?”
4. Be a coach, not a critic. You can be your best coach or your worst critic. You know yourself best, and you know how to beat yourself down, or lift yourself up. User your inner coach for constructive feedback, and give your inner-critic a break.
5. Be a force of one. People throughout time have done amazing things as one-man bands. While there is strength in numbers, and it’s a force multiplier, be the catalyst, be the change, and be the producer that makes things happen. Don’t get in your own way, and don’t hold yourself back from what’s possible.
6. Be confident and calm. Don’t run around like a chicken with your head cut off. It’s bad energy for you and others. From the best athletes, to the most successful executives, to the most brilliant poker players, it’s confident and calm that win the game, and enjoy the ride. Choose confident and calm over anxious and insecure. Gaining clarity and bringing a good mental picture into focus of what you want to accomplish is a way to be confident and calm. It’s also very motivating. Some things in life are like flipping a switch, and confidence is one of those switches. Decide to be confident and calm to start the process.
7. Be on fire. While playing foosball, if somebody was playing incredibly well, we would say, they were “en fuego”, or “on fire.” You know when you’re on fire. You know what you’re like when you’re in the zone and you’re fully engaged, and you are at you’re best. Sometimes, the easiest way to get back to this mode is to simply remember what it feels like. Here are some questions to help light you up: When you got your mojo working and you’re at the top of your game, what do you focus on? … How do you carry yourself? … How do you move? … How do you speak? …. How do you breathe? Do more of that, and feel yourself fire on all cylinders.
8. Be part of the solution. As my Mom always told me, “You’re part of the problem, or you’re part of the solution.” It’s always motivating to know you are part of the solution.
9. Be the change you want to see. You can change yourself faster than you can change other people. If you want to change the situation, change yourself and notice the ripple effect. Set the bar, and model the path for others to follow. Leading by example is a powerful way to leverage the principle of “monkey see, monkey do.”
10. Be YOUR best. Compete with yourself and make it a game. One way to motivate yourself to new heights is to give things YOUR best shot. When you reach a new personal best and breakthrough barriers, you continuously create and push your mental model further of what’s possible.
11. Bend the rules to bring out your best. If you set the rules, you win the game. If you focus on outcomes, then you gain a lot of flexibility in how you get there. Part of winning in life and feeling good is playing your cards in a way that works for you. This requires self-awareness and reflection. Challenge yourself to play your hand better and to play with a full deck of possibility.
12. Build momentum. Get some momentum going, even the small wins count (if you count them.) The trick is the more you count your wins, the more you’ll have, the more you have the better you’ll feel, the better you feel, the better you will do … it’s a cycle.
13. Build your band of merry men. Robin Hood knew the journey of life was better with his pals that watched his back. Surround yourself with the people that inspire and delight you, wherever you go.

    

14. Build your inner strength. When you hit a setback, don’t dwell. Brush it off. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue onward and upward. Hold the scenes in your mind that remind you that you’re a force to be reckoned with and you won’t go down without a fight. If you’re going down, you’re going down swinging.
15. Call it an experiment. One of my managers taught me this. If you’re going out of your comfort zone, call it an experiment. This frees you up to try new things. This also works in an organizational setting to explore and experiment new paths, while getting over the organization’s fear of trying something new … after all, it’s just an “experiment.”
16. Change the frame, to change your game. Problems aren’t problems when you reframe them as challenges. Challenges are opportunities for growth, excellence, and your personal best. One way to always win in a situation is to challenge yourself with this question: If this situation never were to change, what’s the one quality you need to make the most of it? Use your growth as a springboard to new heights and a catalyst for change.
17. Change the story you tell yourself. The stories we tell ourselves inspire us or bring us to our knees. Unleash your inner story-teller and tell yourself better stories. Tell yourself stories of hope, inspiration, and strength. Tell yourself stories of confidence, competence, and compassion. Write a new ending, write a new chapter, and write your story forward, a day at a time, a moment at a time. See Be the Hero.
18. Change your approach. If it’s not working, change your approach. Nothing burns you out like solving the same problem over and over, or not making progress on a problem.
19. Change your state. If you’ve ever had a case of the Mondays or if you’re not a morning person, or if you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, you know what it’s like to be in a less effective state. Our motivation runs strong when we’re in a better emotional state. One of the fastest ways to change your state is to play your favorite music or to lose yourself in your favorite hobby or remind yourself of a favorite story, or read inspiring words that tap your inner strengths and unleash a better version of yourself.
20. Change your thoughts to change your feelings. Choose the thoughts that serve you.
21. Chart your progress. If you want to motivate, find a way to keep the score. According to an HBR article, progress is the top motivator of performance. Even incremental progress boosts motivation. This is based on a multi-year study that tracked activities, emotions, and motivation level of hundreds of knowledge workers in a varety of settings. See The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010.
22. Choose the scenes that serve you. If the movies you play in your head show you failing or flailing, then play another scene. You’re the director, you make the cuts.
23. Choose the metaphors that light your fire. Rather than a tragedy or a chore, make it a game, make it a dance, make it an epic adventure.
24. Choose significant tasks that are meaningful for you. Don’t be your own enemy of inspiration and worst task master. Either choose better tasks, or find a way to make the tasks you choose to do more fun. You can do this by connecting them to your values. For example, if you like to learn, then make the task about the learning. If you like excellence, then challenge yourself to shine.   See Improving Job Satisfaction.
25. Choose the words that mean something to you. Do you want to call back a customer, or win a raving fan? Do you want to do that project, or go on an epic adventure? The words you use matter, and you can be your personal bard of brilliance. Strike the right chords with words that make your soul sing.
26. Conquer your fears. The Green Lantern teaches us that it’s will that conquers fear. Another way to tackle your fears is to take away the threat or figure out what the true concern is. If you tackle it head on, you take away its power over you.
27. Conquer your problems with confidence. Winning at small problems builds your confidence and your competence.  There are many ways to solve your problems with skill.  The simplest way is to start asking better questions, and to cast a wide net for potential solutions.  See Solve Problems with Skill.
28. Count the wins. Your wins only count if you count them. It’s up to you to shine the spotlight on them. A little appreciation, even for yourself, goes a long way. What goes around comes around, motivation is contagious, and, it’s the fuel of compassion that will serve you well.
29. Create a wall of inspiration. Put those pictures up that show you the greatest things in life and what’s possible. Get those hopes and dreams up on the wall that remind you what’s worth fighting for. Put those words on the wall and quotable quotes that fire you up and make you feel alive. Breathe life into your day with a living wall of the best of the best.
30. Create some space. Carve out time in your schedule to focus, recharge, and renew. Continuously find ways to make more space, turn things off, and savor your down time. Great down time, leads to great up time. Just because you’re in an “always on” world, doesn’t mean you have to play the game that way. Bend the rules to bring out your best.
31. Create the arena that serves you. Surround yourself with the people, places, and things that bring out your best.  Sometimes this means going to where the grass really is greener.

    

32. Cut the dead wood. Some things just weight you down or bog you down. If it’s holding you down, then it’s holding you back, so drop it. If it’s dead weight that doesn’t serve you, then let it go. In the words of Peaceful Warrior, “Put your bags down.”
33. Decide. Nothing builds momentum like decisive action. Similarly, nothing kills momentum like confusion and a lack of clarity. Just decide. Decide you’ll be done with it today. Decide you’ll set a new bar. Decide it’s time for a change. Decide this will not stretch out past the week. Decide this month is the month you make it happen. In the words of Randy Pausch, decide if you’re Tigger or Eeyore. Decisive action is motivating, it builds momentum, and it crowds out excuses. There’s no room for excuses when you’ve made up your mind and that’s exciting. For example, I decided I will be done with this blog post today
34. Deflect the setbacks with skill. When things go wrong, don’t make them permanent, don’t make them personal, and don’t make them pervasive. Instead, find the lesson and use the feedback to improve your effectiveness. Remember that there is no failure, only feedback, and it’s not over until you give up or stop showing up.
35. Divide and conquer your problems with skill.  Chunk it down.  Limit the quantity, or limit the size, or limit how much time you will spend on something. Find a way to chop things down to size and bite off what you can chew. As the saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. You can chop just about any problem down to size, and that’s all you need to do. Slice it down to where you can start to take action and build your momentum. You’ll quickly accelerate as you start to see your progress … and just like Who’s in Whoville, progress is progress, no matter how small.
36. Do passion work. As a friend of mine at work says, find a way to do the work you’d do for free. Do more of the stuff you’d do, whether you were paid for it or not. There’s always a way to weave that into your job, and you are the one that needs to own this (you know you best, and you know what fires you up, and gets you jazzed.)
37. Do the opposite. Do the opposite of whatever is not working. If you’re the one that brings you down, then be the one that lifts you up.  See Do the Opposite.
38. Do worst things first. Don’t let things loom over you. Once they’re out of the way, the rest is a glide-path.
39. Don’t let fear stop you. A great way to conquer fear is to put the fears on the table and find a way to take away the threat, or prepare for the worst case scenario. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?” and then to put this into perspective. Once you get to the true concern, and the source of the concern, you can start to chip away at the fear, and test yourself, while you stretch yourself. As Roosevelt said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Don’t let it paralyze you. If anything, use it to take action, and prepare.
40. Don’t let anxiety or worry get the best of you. Don’t sweat the small stuff. It wears you down and it’s the death of a 1,000 paper cuts. Nip your worries in the bud and put your worries into perspective. For example, use the 100-year rule — ask yourself, “Will t it matter in 100 years?” Another simple way to get a handle on your worries is to write things down onto one list. Thinking on paper is way more effective than swirling things in your head. The other beauty is you can pair up with a friend to help you think through the stuff that bugs you. See The Power of an Irritation List.
41. Don’t be a perfectionist. Perfection is a fallacy and it’s over-rated. A better focus is to be effective. Make it work, then make it right. Think of perfection as a process of improvement and you can version your perfection over time. Focus on “good enough for now” and “satisfice.” Taking action is a key way to stay out of analysis paralysis, and keep your motivation strong. Don’t worry about the perfect place to start, just start.

    

42. Don’t let anybody tell you can’t do something, or that you’re not good enough. Especially you. From the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness: “Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right? … You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.”
43. Don’t let other people push your buttons. That takes your power away, and you are not their puppet. Only you should push your own buttons.
44. Don’t look for excuses. You can always find them.
45. Don’t play the blame game. Don’t be a victim. Nobody wins in the blame game, and you take your power away. Nobody likes a victim mentality. “ Own” it. When you “own” it, you can change it. The choice is yours, and you empower yourself with skill.
46. Don’t play the same broken record. Find a new song. Whether it’s an excuse you tell yourself, or a story you tell yourself, or just the way you explain something that’s disempowering, change your tune.
47. Don’t take yourself too seriously. If you do, you’ll never make it out alive. The more you can laugh at yourself, the freedom and flexibility you have to play your best game in life. Being your best is a journey, and one of the best ways to deal with the tough humps is to build your sense of humor, so you can roll with the punches, and get to what’s real.
48. Eat, sleep, and exercise on a cadence. Your cadence will serve you emotionally, mentally, and physically. It’s something to look forward to. It sets up boundaries that help you unleash your best. It’s also a way to recharge without going past your boundaries, or waiting until you burn out to take a break.
49. Embrace the change. Resistance is futile, and it wears you out. Instead, take the bull by the horns, and make the change work in your favor. There’s always an angle, and there is always a play.
50. Energize your approach. Unleash your inner-Tigger and let your juices flow. Finding your passion in whatever you do brings good things to life. Energy is contagious, and you can be a fire starter.
51. Empower yourself. Who’s holding you back? You are. Don’t play the blame-game, just own it so you can do something about it. Really do something about it … Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. Cut the ties that bind you, and unleash yourself. As long as you’re taking action, you can keep correcting your course.
52. Figure out what you want. When you know what you want, that becomes your North Star, guiding light, and ultimate motivator. Clarity helps create confidence in your path, and it helps you focus and direct your action and energy.
53. Find a way. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and if you are committed to the outcome, you’ll find a way to get there. Get resourceful by leveraging all your resources, including your knowledge and your network. People will help when you ask the right way, and when you are helping yourself.
54. Find your flow. You can find your flow by having a clear goal, having actionable feedback, and working on something that challenges you, but where you have the confidence in your skills to respond to the challenge. If you can lose yourself in your work, you can find your flow and enjoy the power of full engagement.

    

55. Find your “one thing.” Do more of the one thing that matters most. Lots of things are important. But one thing matters to you most. Do more of that. That’s the thing to focus on. When you focus on your one thing that truly matters, your motivation and mojo flow in new and powerful ways. See Find Your One Thing.
56. Find your “why.” When you have a compelling “why,” it will inspire you through thick and through thin. See Discover Your Why.
57. Finish faster. The faster you finish, the more you will finish. The more you finish, the easier it gets. Finishing builds momentum and it’s highly motivating to see the impact of your effort. Crossing the finish line builds your confidence. It also shapes your mental model in a way that reinforces your persistence and perseverance.
58. Focus on one pitch at a time. Treat every task as a separate performance. See One Pitch at a Time.
59. Focus on the greater good. One of the fastest ways to lift yourself up is to take the focus off yourself, and put it on the greater good. You may find a stronger flow of inner-strength, and you may find more cause, confidence, and clarity when you direct your attention to the greater good.
60. Focus on the numbers. One summer, a friend of mine tried to do pulls up and managed to do one. This infuriated him. Within two weeks, he could do fifteen pull ups.
61. Focus on the things that empower you. There are many things you can focus on: the good, the bad, and the ugly, what’s right with the situation, what’s wrong this the situation, your wins, your losses, the journey, or the destination, etc. Focus on the things that empower you and help you take action. Action is your friend, and it’s your focus that lights the way.
62. Focus on what you want. Set your eyes on the prize and focus on the goal and the end in mind. One of the best ways to kill your motivation is to keep dwelling on what you don’t want. Instead, get a clear and compelling picture of what you do want, and focus on that. Once you set your eyes on the prize, you’ll find more ways to make it happen.
63. Focus on what’s working. Nothing’s perfect. But if you focus on what’s working it can be very motivation, especially when it seems like nothing is working. Use what’s working as kindling to inspire and motivate more of the right actions.
64. Get your game on. Make it a game. Bring what you know about games to whatever you do, including making it fun, setting goals, keeping the score, using feedback to improve, and using competition to inspire, as well as teamwork and collaboration to win the game.
65. Go for the epic win. There’s simply no win like the epic win. If you’re going to go for the win, then go for the “epic” win. See Go For the Epic Win.
66. Inspire yourself with skill. Don’t let other people push your buttons. But you should be able to push your own buttons. You do this through self-awareness and practice. Pay attention to what feels good, sounds good, smells good, tastes good. Pay attention to the words and thoughts that bring you to life. Pay attention to the people and tasks that catalyze or drain you and look for the patterns. The more you learn your personal patterns, the more buttons and levers you will have for motivating yourself whenever you need it, in whatever you do.
67. Internalize your success. If you internalize your success, then you empower yourself to give your best in any situation. You won’t depend on the applause or appreciation of others. You won’t depend on the money, the praise, or the accolades. One way to internalize your success is to hold yourself to a higher bar, or simply to “do it for a job well done.” You can also simply take pride in your work, or you can use what you do for growth and mastery.
68. Just start. Motivation will often show up, after you’ve started. The key is to take action and have a bias for action. There are many things you do, that won’t seem fun or you won’t want to do at first, but once you get going, and you’re in full swing, the motivation will follow.
69. Keep moving forward. There’s always bigger fish to fry. One way to move forward is to ask, “What’s the next best thing to do?”
70. Link it to good feelings. If there’s something you want to do for the long-haul, then link it to good feelings. Make it easy to do it, and link it to good thoughts and feelings that support you. A simple way to do this is to play your favorite music, or to find a compelling reason, such as who you are doing it for, or why it will matter to yourself or somebody you care about.

    

71. Love the mission. Some people do it “for the love of the game.” Love your mission, the way you love the game, and find a way to play at your passion, and summon your inner-strength to conquer any challenges on your path.
72. Make it a “MUST.” If you have a bunch of things you “SHOULD” do, then make them a “MUST.” We do the things we MUST, more often than we do the things we SHOULD. Hold yourself to a higher bar.
73. Model the best. Find the people that set great examples of what’s possible. Use them as shortcuts and as inspiration for possibilities.
74. Play to your strengths. Strengths are your natural thinking, feeling, and doing patterns. The more time you spend in your strengths, the more you will find and gain your motivation. It’s also a great way to recharge yourself.
75. Play your favorite music. Play the songs that rock your world. Play the songs that make your spirit soar. Use a little mood music wherever you go. Whether it’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “I Will Survive,” or the theme song to Rocky, use music to motivate you. Make it easy to make music a part of your ambiance whether it’s at home, in the car, or at work.
76. Point your camera at the things that fire you up. Throughout your day there are many scenes. You can zoom in or zoom out, and you can pan around to a variety of things. The trick is to point your camera at the things that inspire your day. Think in pictures and snapshots, and take mental pictures of the things that make you feel good.
77. Rattle your own cage. Sometimes you just have to shake things up.
78. Remind yourself how short life is. One way to give your fall is to remember that nothing lasts forever.
79. Remind yourself, that It could always be worse. Remind yourself how bad it could be. It’s always relative. It really can always be worse and you can always find examples. Change your frame of reference to motivate yourself to take action.
80. Reward your effort and your results. Don’t just focus on results. Success is a numbers game, and the best way to keep getting up at bat is to reward your effort. Whether you’ve raised your bar, done a good deed for yourself or others, or stuck with something when it counts, acknowledge and appreciate your personal victories. Here are some questions to ask to appreciate your effort: Did you show up when you should? Did you make your plan and work your plan? Did you do something a little better than you’ve done before? Did you hit a new high water mark?
81. Say “No” to the stuff that drags you down. If you don’t say No, then you’re serving no one. You’re bringing yourself down. The trick to saying No, is simply don’t make room for it. Crowd out the yuck stuff, with the stuff that brings you to life
82. Say “Yes” to the stuff that lifts you up. Spend your time on the stuff that lifts you up. This includes spending time in your values, and spending time in your strengths, as well as spending time with the people you want to spend time with. Get creative and find more ways to say “Yes,” to the stuff that lifts you up, and feel your spirit soar.

    

83. See it in your mind’s eye. “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” When you can see something in your mind’s-eye, it’s easier to make it happen.
84. See what’s possible in a way that blows your mind. Watch Bruce Lee Playing Ping Pong.
85. Set a deadline. Knowing when something is due, or setting a drop-dead date, can help you funnel and focus your action and attention. It can also be very motivating when you have a tight deadline, either because you can hit a window of opportunity, or because you know that once it’s over, it won’t be looming over your head anymore. It’s hard to get motivated for things that are due, “whenever.”
86. Set a time limit. Limits help you work in bursts … concentrated effort for a short period of time. You can use a time limit or a quantity limit. For example, see how much you can do for an hour, vs. do it until it’s done.
87. Set a quantity limit. Quantity limits are a great way to chop things down to size. Can you do one of those? … Three of those? … Five of those? A lot of things get easier when you chop them down to size.
88. Set extreme goals. Sometimes goals have to be extreme to feel worth it. Dream big. Set crazy limits or hurdles.
89. Simplify it. Complexity can kill motivation. Simplicity can unleash it. For ideas on how to simplify, see Simplicity Quotes.
90. Stick with it. Sometimes the best way to motivate yourself is to resolve to “never give up.”
91. Switch to the past, present, or future. You can use the past, the present, or the future to motivate yourself. For example, you can draw from your victories in the past, or great moments in your lifetime. You can use the future to dream up possibility and inspire hope. You can use the power of now to be in the moment and savor the experience and be fully engaged. The key is to use the past, present, or future to empower and motivate your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
92. Switch gears. Speed up or slow down. Get yourself in gear, and play with your pace to win the race. Don’t get stuck in second gear. Sometimes, “it’s slow and steady that wins the race.”
93. Team up to tackle the tough stuff.  Pair up with people that give you good energy and help you tackle any challenge.  While it’s great to be self-reliant, and you should be strong as a one-man band, many things are more rewarding, more fun, and more motivating when you team up.  You know you’re a great team when you run towards problems vs. away.

    

94. Think the thoughts that serve you. How do you lead your best life? A thought at a time. This is where it all starts. You’re the thinker of your thoughts. Each thought can help you spiral up, or it can tear you down.
95. Turn your anger into action. Your fury can be your key to fierce results.
96. Turn “have tos” into “choose tos.” Choice is powerful. If you stop saying “have to”, and start saying “choose to,” you’ll begin to feel more in control and more empowered throughout your day. Many things may not seem optional, but what you’re doing is choosing those over the consequences J
97. Use a big stick. When all else fails, sometimes you actually do need to use a stick to motivate yourself. Just remember this isn’t the best strategy for the long-haul.
98. Use pleasure and pain. In general, we move towards pleasure, and away from pain. If you’re not motivated, you either haven’t created enough potential pleasure, or you haven’t figured out a way to create enough pain. You can use pleasure and pain to help stack motivation in your favor, and gain leverage over yourself.
99. Use stress to be your best. Distinguish between anxiety and stress. Stress is your body’s response and anxiety is your cognitive response. You can use your nerves to perform better and actually make stress your friend. See Use Stress to Be Your Best.
100. Use your Prime Motivation — Direction, Decision, and Dedication. Motivation is actually a skill you can build. Jimmy Taylor, Ph.D. suggests three D’s for what he calls Prime Motivation. Direction – Consider three potential directions: stop, continue your level, or become your best. Decision – Decide on your direction (stop, continue your level, or improve.) This tells you how much time and effort to put in, based on how good you want to become. Dedication – Dedicate yourself to your direction and decision. It’s your level of dedication that will limit or enable your results. See Three D’s for Motivation.
101. Want it with a passion. Nothing beats the pursuit of a worthy and compelling objective.

You now know some of the best ways to motivate yourself and others.  With the power of motivation on your side, there are so many things you can do.  Keep in mind that knowing and doing are two different things, and that ultimately you hold the keys to unleashing what you’re capable of.

Motivation Quotes
If you need inspirational words of wisdom and quotes to draw from, be sure to explore my hand-picked Motivation Quotes.

Books that Nail Motivation

• Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated
• Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More
• Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

My Related Posts

• Find Your Drive – The Keys to Motivation
• Discipline vs. Motivation
• 13 Negative Motivation Patterns

Photo credits in order of appearance: alex_kuruz, crsan-christianholmer.com, pranav, Shandi-Lee, R’eyes, limaoscarjuliet, Todd Baker, JB London, familymwr.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greatness inspires.  Some people are great at life.

I draw from great books, great people, and great quotes to get more from life.  It’s “standing on the shoulders of giants in action.”  It’s also a great way to find the timeless ways for better days.

I know some folks that need a power up.  To help them get lift off, I’ve swept my menu bar and bubbled up Great Books, Great People, and Great Quotes.

And for folks that just want to get out of a slump or over a hump, I added How Tos to the menu too.

Photo by Nuno Duarte.