Editor’s note: This is a guest post by best selling author, Lisa McCourt.  Lisa is here on Sources of Insight to share with you insightful and actionable steps to be comfortable in your own skin.

If you don’t know Lisa, you’re in for a treat.  Lisa specializes on the topic of self-love and her books on unconditional love have sold more than five and a half million copies.  Lisa’s latest book, Juicy Joy –  Seven Simple Steps to Your Glorious Gutsy Self is all about leading a life that is rich, real, and powerfully satisfying, while embracing your biggest, gutsiest, and most authentic self.  It’s you, at YOUR best.

I asked Lisa to write a guest post to share her best lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin because of her personal experience.   I’m a fan of people sharing what they have learned the hard way or what they have had to work at.  It’s always deeper and more meaningful.   Most of all, it’s keeping it real.

Whether or not you are already comfortable in your own skin, I think you’ll really enjoy this post.  I’m impressed with Lisa’s ability to distill and share such pragmatic wisdom on the fine art of loving yourself, flaws and all.  This is more than a beautiful piece of prose.  It’s life wisdom that you can use to live a little better every day.

Without further ado, here’s Lisa with her top ten lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin …

Imagine being blissfully comfortable in your own skin, knowing with the utmost clarity exactly who you are and feeling eager to lovingly, proudly share that authentic you with the world. Imagine being perpetually sustained by an inner source of joy—not the smiley, fluffy kind of happiness we sometimes associate with the word “joy,” but the rich, meaty, substantial flavor of joy that comes with extraordinary self-knowledge and self-appreciation. That’s the vantage point I want for you. From that vantage point, in the words of Franz Kafka, “the world will offer itself freely to you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

In uber-consolidated nutshell fashion, here are the top 10 ways to be comfortable in your own skin:

1. Get real.

Do the work to get clear about who you are—not just who you routinely consider yourself to be, the person you habitually show the world—but who you are in the deepest recesses of your authentic heart and soul.

The word “authenticity” is misunderstood sometimes. People think of it as a virtue, like honesty . . . like you owe the world your authenticity and you should feel bad if you’re not authentic. That’s not the case. I’m not suggesting you should become more authentic because it will make you a better person—you already are a phenomenal person. I’m telling you that becoming more authentic is your golden ticket—to joy, to success, to vibrant health and energy, to easily manifesting the life of your dreams. It’s every bit that transformative. You’re not doing this to better serve the world; you’re doing it to better serve you. But—happy bonus!—it happens to be the best way to serve your loved ones and the world as well.

2. Adore YOU.

If you’ve been on a personal development path for a while, I’m probably not the first to suggest that you need to love yourself. But I’m surprised to discover how often my students don’t really seem to know why I’m so insistent on that point. Are you tired of hearing about how you need to love yourself more? Does the thought of it feel kind of like of a burden—one more thing to check off your To-Do list? Does the whole concept feel a bit worn-out and cliché? Maybe you just need to understand what’s in it for you.

Self-love is the fastest route to literally anything you want right now. Money, love, health, romance . . . it all hinges on your level of self-love. The circumstances of your life are always providing you a crystal-clear, precisely accurate measure of how much you love yourself and what you believe you deserve. All you can ever create is what you believe you’re worthy of experiencing. It’s an immutable energetic law. That’s why elevating self-love is the not-so-secret path to elevating everything else.

3. Trust your wants.

Stop trying to justify and rationalize your most heartfelt desires. Your desires are the clearest indicator of who you are. Denying them is denying you. No one needs to understand why you want what you want. You don’t even need to understand it yourself. Just trust it, and trust yourself to manifest it. The reason you don’t already have everything you want is crazy-simple. You don’t love yourself enough yet to deeply believe that you deserve everything you want. My students argue that sometimes, but they always discover it’s true. You might even believe, on a conscious level, that you do deserve a certain thing, but I promise you that if you were fully, wholly believing you deserved it—even in the cobwebby corners of your unconscious belief system—it would already be in your life.

4. Stop trying to vanquish the “bad stuff.”

And stop whining about it, too. Celebrate our unwanted circumstances because there’s so much valuable information for us in them. Get clear on why your unwanted circumstances are here and why you created them. Then use them as a springboard. Once you can start genuinely thanking “the bad stuff”, it’s pretty easy to move past it.

5. Take responsibility.

Own every last drop of everything you’ve ever created. We’re so conditioned to blame our unwanted circumstances on other people, or on the “system” or the world . . . What if it’s really all within your control? Taking full responsibility for the life you’ve created for yourself and the life you’re in the process of creating is hugely empowering. But it requires first getting uber-honest to a degree that’s terrifying for most people. Don’t be “most people.” Understanding that you alone are holding the reins on your life is the first critical step toward learning how to operate them.

6. Stop tolerating.

Tolerating is slow emotional suicide. It sucks the life out of you, drains your energy, numbs you, depletes you, and keeps you immobilized. There’s no reason for you to ever tolerate anything. We sometimes confuse tolerating with accepting—we all know it’s good to accept the things we can’t change, right? If we make very clear distinctions between what can be changed and what can’t, then it’s astounding the kinds of life-altering adjustments people are able to easily, joyfully make when they understand the underlying reasons they’ve been tolerating things.

7. Get out of the spin cycle.

Where in your life are you on autopilot, creating the same situation for yourself (in essence) over and over again? Maybe you keep dating the same romantic partner. Maybe the current model is better looking, or more successful, or slightly more open than the one before, but in essence you’re with a lover who triggers your tried-and-true insecurities, defense mechanisms, and familiar unhealthy spirals. Or maybe you find yourself in the same employment dynamic over and over again—even if you change careers completely. Maybe you’ve attracted a series of supervisors, or a series of friends, who stir up the not-good-enough feelings a parent invoked for you as a child. Escape the spin cycle by learning how to look closely at how these patterns develop and how to benefit from the opportunities they offer.

8. Permanently shift your beliefs.

Focus on the deliberate rewiring of your belief system because your beliefs are determining everything you experience as your reality. That’s not New-Age speak anymore; it’s common knowledge. It’s why researchers always have to use placebo control groups whenever they test any drug. If they don’t have a group taking a sugar pill, their findings won’t be considered valid by the agencies that govern pharmaceuticals. In pain-control experiments, when a new pain pill is tested, fully half of the sufferers who are given a placebo will report having less pain. The mind is that powerful and the scientific community knows it. Changing your mind will change your life.

Many of your limiting beliefs are not unique to you; our culture suffers from a long-standing epidemic of crappy shared beliefs. Most of us, at some level, harbor the same fears, the same tragic self-doubts, and the same profound longings to be liberated from our self-made prisons. In our outer circumstances, we may vary greatly, but at deeper levels, this is seldom the case. If you aren’t living the precisely blissful, richly textured life you crave, take the steps to discover which of your beliefs are keeping you from it and what you can do about that.

9. Dream loudly.

Stop limiting yourself according to what seems practical. Practical goals do not inspire enough passion to propel you toward their certain fruition. As John F. Kennedy wisely surmised, “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” Be those men (and women.).

10. Live passionately.

Once you’ve done the self-examination work to uncover your most delicious desires, don’t pussyfoot toward them. Hurl yourself recklessly in their direction! Trust that the Universe wildly adores you and is always orchestrating on your behalf. It’s been waiting for you to get pumped and grow a pair so that it could swoop in with divine assistance that will leave you breathless.

The author Natalie Goldberg has a cake analogy I love. When you bake a cake, you have ingredients, right? You have eggs, butter, milk, sugar, flour. The ingredients are the different parts of your life. You mix them all together in a bowl but this doesn’t make a cake. It makes goop. To turn it into a cake, you have to add the energy of intense heat. To turn your life into a life worth living, you have to add the heat and energy of your whole heart and soul. Otherwise it’s just goop.

Being comfortable in your skin and living with authenticity is knowing precisely who you are and passionately adoring who you are—with all the countless accoutrements and benefits that come along with that practice. You are spectacular. Not the elaborate representation of You that you routinely show the world, but the raw, uncensored, vulnerable You underneath all of that. Find that You and learn how to deeply love and honor that You. That’s feeling blissfully comfortable in your own skin, and it’s the secret to everything you’re longing for.

One of the big ideas that stuck with me in my Change Leadership training is — “The value is in the change.”  It’s such a simple concept, but it got me thinking.

If there’s no change, then it’s like treading water.  It’s like the hamster on the wheel.  It’s like below the line vs. above the line.  The value is in the change, and the change is about raising the bar and rising above your status quo.  It’s about changing your game.  If you invest time and energy, then you expect some sort of return.  The return is supposed to come from the change.  Some of the changes might be:

• Can I do this a little better?
• Can I do this a little faster?
• Can I do this a little cheaper?

Sometimes the change is doing what you already do, but better.  Other times the change is doing something new entirely … out with the old, in with the new.  When it comes to personal change, that means changing your thinking, feeling, and doing.   The easiest thing to notice here is a clear change in behavior.

You can use “the value is in the change” as your lens, to help remind you where the value is.  Whether it’s adopting a New Year’s Resolution, or buying a personal development program, or reading a new book, remind yourself that the value is not in the thing itself.  The value is in the change.  Knowing and doing are two different things.

The more that you actually apply the new insights, strategies, and tactics that you learn, the more value you can realize from your efforts.

With that in mind, what will you do differently, to realize more value from the time and energy you already spend?

Photo by Ian Sane.

I wanted a visual that could express one of the idea of Sources of Insight.   I think the Yin and Yang is a good model.  According to Wikipedia, the Yin and Yang expresses how seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent.

I think this is true of work and life.  I think this is also true of soft skills and hard skills.

One of the things I like to do is to inject more “life” into work.  By that, I mean using work as self-expression.  I also mean using work as an arena for personal growth.  I also mean living your values at work.  So rather than see work as a task you do, I see work as a way to grow your skills, challenge yourself to new levels, express your best, and contribute your unique value to the world.

I also like to inject more “work” into life.  I learn a lot of skills that apply well beyond the workplace arena.  We’ve learned a lot about business skills.   Those same business skills can serve you in life.  A sustainable business has a vision, mission, and values.  It creates unique value.  It plays to its strengths and limits it’s liabilities.  It knows who it serves.  It considers the economic realities and it’s contribution to the world.  A successful business is adaptable, and it knows the market.  All of these same skills apply to “life.”

I think we get better at life when we borrow skills from the world of business.  For example, executive thinking skills can help us frame problems better, or make more effective decisions, or prioritize in a more deliberate way.  Strategy skills can help us better differentiate and be our own best self, in a world of too many “Me-Too’s.”  Project management skills can help us get things done in a more predictable way, and bring order to chaos.  And basic business skills can help us fund our life styles so that we can take care of the basics as we find our way forward.

So I really do like the blend of work and life and the possibilities that creates.  But that’s not all.  I also chose the Yin and Yang because I’ve always been a fan of blending hard and soft skills.  I think in this case, what this means for me is that to thrive in the world, we need hard and soft skills for work, as well as hard and soft skills for life.  I plan to bring more hard skills to life, and more soft skills to work, and Sources of Insight is my arena for sharing what I learn.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin

It’s time to rattle the cage  People have been asking me for this, and now it’s finally here.  The Kindle version of Getting Results the Agile Way is now available.   It’s a personal results system for work and life.   Whether you want to find your mojo, or take your personal effectiveness to the next level, or simply have a better day, this book is for you, or somebody you know.

People around the world have shared with me their personal stories and wins.   I know a restaurant owner that renovated his business using Getting Results the Agile Way.  I know a teacher inspiring her peers to get their game on using Getting Results.  I know teams of consultants using Getting Results the Agile Way to achieve better, faster, simpler results and it’s contagious.  Even my Mom used it to tackle a few big projects on her house.   You can read the testimonials and success stories on Getting Results.com.

This books puts in your hand the same system I’ve used to create high-performing teams, help individuals flourish, and coach teams to unleash their best.

Make the Most of Work and Life

Getting Results in today’s landscape is tough.  Our world changes faster than we can keep up.  Worse, we don’t always have the best practices for managing focus, managing our time, managing our energy, or even basic productivity.  Agile Results is a simple system for meaningful results that combines some of the best methods for thinking, feeling, and taking action.  To put it another way, Agile Results is a way to help you make the most of work and life.

You are the author of your life.  I created this system as a way to put it all together and help you write your story forward.  By using three wins to drive your day, your week, your month, and your year, you take charge of your life and live life on your terms.  By spending your time on the right things, with the right energy, with the right approach, you unleash your best. As you learn and respond, you build momentum.  This momentum carries you forward, supporting everything you do.

This is the playbook I wish somebody gave me.  Now, I’m sharing it with you.

Key Features of the Book

The book has several compelling features for slicing and dicing the personal effectiveness body of knowledge:

• Principles, patterns, and practices.   It’s a rich collection of proven practices, smart success patterns, and timeless principles.   Because it’s a principle-based system, you have wisdom of the ages at your finger tips.  It’s wisdom in action.
• Meaningful results.   It’s not about getting more things done.  It’s about meaningful results.  By getting clarity on you want to accomplish, you
• It’s a system.   It’s more than a book.  It’s a system.  With the system on your side, you automatically build better habits and practices that bring out your best.
• It’s simple.  By simple, I do mean simple.   There is no other system like it.  If you simply write down three wins for your day, you’re doing Getting Results the Agile Way.  More importantly, if you fall off the horse, it’s easy to get back on.
• It’s flexible.   It’s incredibly flexible and it stretches to fit your needs.  Rather than hard and fast rules, it’s a platform of principles, patterns, and practices that you can easily adapt or modify to suit your personal style.  It’s YOUR personal results system.

Contents at a Glance

The full Getting Results Guide is available for free on Getting Results.com in HTML.  This is the contents of the guide at a glance:

• Forward by Michael Kropp
• A Word from the Author
• Introduction

Chapters

• Chapter 1 – Why Agile Results
• Chapter 2 – Agile Results Overview
• Chapter 3 – Values, Principles, and Practices
• Chapter 4 – Hot Spots
• Chapter 5 – Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection
• Chapter 6 – Design Your Day
• Chapter 7 – Design Your Week
• Chapter 8 – Design Your Month
• Chapter 9 – Design Your Year
• Chapter 10 – Results Frame, Personas, and Pitfalls
• Chapter 11 – 25 Keys to Results
• Chapter 12 – 25 Strategies for Results
• Chapter 13 – Motivation
• Chapter 14 – Mindsets and Metaphors

Getting Started

I’m a fan of making it easy to get started.  Like I said, if you simply write down three wins for your day, you’re doing Getting Results.  But to help you get started fast, here is the one-page guide on Getting Started with Getting Results.

The Knowledge Base

The Getting Results Knowledge Base picks up where the book leaves off.   It’s a serious collection of patterns and practices for improving your focus, motivation, time management, and more.   The knowledge base includes:

• Cheat Sheets
• Checklists
• Guidelines
• How Tos
• Templates
• Visuals

By the way, these are no ordinary guidelines in there.  For example, somebody I know is using the focus guidelines to build coping mechanisms for ADD, as an alternative to drugs.  If you get a chance to explore the focus guidelines, you’ll see why.

Watch a Short Video Story of Getting Results the Agile Way

Ed Jeziersky hops around the world helping doctors and patients deal with large-scale disasters.  What does he use to lead his teams?  … You guessed it.  Watch Ed Jezierski on Getting Results the Agile Way.

Acknowledgments

I have a lot of people to thank for helping me make this book happen.   In addition to my loyal readers of <a href=”>Sources of Insight, I’d like to thank the following people for helping me with this book:

Adam Grocholski, Alik Levin, Andrew Kazyrevich, Andy Eunson, Andrea Fox, Anutthara Bharadwaj, Brian Maslowski, Chaitanya Bijwe, Chenelle Bremont, Daniel Rubiolo Mendoza, David K. Stewart, David Wright, David Zinger, Dennis Groves, Don Willits, Donald Latumahina, Dr. Rick Kirschner, Eduardo Jezierski, Eileen Meier, Erin M. Karp, Ethan Zaghmut, Gloria Campbell, Gordon Meier, Janine de Nysschen, Jason Taylor, Jeremy Bostron, Jill Heron, Jimmy May, John Allen, John deVadoss, Julian Gonzalez, Juliet du Preez, Kevin Lam, Larry Brader, Loren Kohnfelder, Mark Curphey, Michael Kropp, Michael Stiefel, Mike de Libero, Mike Torres, Mohammad Al-Sabt, Molly Clark, Olivier Fontana, Patrick Lanfear, Paul Enfield, Per Vonge Nielsen, Peter Larsson, Phil Huang, Prashant Bansode, Praveen Rangarajan, Richard Diver, Rob Boucher Jr., Rohit Sharma, Rudolph Araujo, Samantha Sieverling, Sameer Tarey, Scott Hanselman, Scott Stabbert, Scott Young, Sean Platt, Srinath Vasireddy, Steve Kayser, Tom Draper, Vidya Vrat Agarwal, Wade Mascia.

Key Links at a Glance

Here are the key links at a glance:

• Kindle version of Getting Results the Agile Way (Amazon)
• Getting Results.com
• Getting Results Knowledge Base
• Testimonials
• Success Stories

Photo by seanmcgrath.

“He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you want respect, first look to the source.  The source is you.  Like so many things, respect flows from the inside out., and self-respect is the strongest stream.  You get what you expect.  So first, you have to expect it from yourself.  So the question becomes, do you respect yourself the way you want to be respected?

In the book, It’s Not About You: A Little Story of What Matters Most In Business, by Bob Burg and John David Mann, the authors share the secret of respect … it comes from you, not from others.

Trust Yourself

Lead by example.  If you want people to trust you, first trust yourself.

“… I’m not talking about gaining their respect.  I’m talking about your respect.  You want those people to trust you?  Trust yourself.  Listen, humility doesn’t mean self-abasement, or devaluing your own worth.  You can only be genuinely humble if you have enormous self-respect.  That’s something I learned from Pindar, even though I never met him — because it shines through the people he associates with, the people I have met.”

Respect from Others is a Reflection, Not the Source

Don’t look to others to find your respect.  Respect yourself first.  Burg and Mann write:

“Self-respect is where every other kind of respect comes from.  Respect from others is a reflection, not the source.  It’s not like, ‘Oh, if my boss respected me, if my son respected me, if the world respected me, that would be great, …’ as if having respect from those other people would somehow generate your own respect for yourself.”

My Related Posts

• Life Leaves a Mark
• Is Your Personal Belief System Working For or Against You?
• The Secret of Confident People

Photo by J Anand.

“A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.” — James Allen

We don’t get away unscathed.   As we make our way through life, life leaves its marks.  The marks we bear can make our lives deeper and more meaningful.  Or they can sour our view, and make us bitter and cold.  It’s all in how we respond.

The hurts, the scars, the wounds weave part of our story.

In the book, It’s Not About You, by Bob Burg and John David Mann, the authors share insight into how to use your pain to lead a richer life, and to avoid turning cold.

We are Not Unblemished

Life happens.  We get scraped along the way.  Life leaves a mark.  Burg and Mann write:

“‘It shows dear,’ she said gently.  ‘Life leaves a mark.  None of us passes through the experience of our days unblemished or pristine.  We all suffer tragedies and disappointments, struggles and failures.  Losses great and small, and every one of them hurts.  Life leaves a mark,’ she repeated.”

Embrace Who We Are

You can lead a richer life, or you can harden your heart and become jaded.  To lead a richer life, don’t deny your pain.  Instead, embrace it.  Burg and Mann write:

“‘We can try to cover it up, although if we do, we just tend to grow bitter on the inside.  Or we can embrace who we are — that is, who we are in the process of becoming.  Embrace the hurt and it deepens you, makes you a richer person.  Deny it, reject it, hold it at bay, fight it off, and it simply hardens you.  Either way, it engraves itself onto your soul.’”

Photo by MzPromise.

Welcome to my collection of Tony Robbins Quotes. It’s organized by action, change, communication, fear, goals, life,  questions, and success.

One thing you’ll notice about Tony Robbins’ quotes is that his phrases are measured and meaningful.  He boils down potentially complex ideas into simple, bite-sized chunk.  He also says things in a way that’s sticky.

Enjoy …

Top 10 Tony Robbins’ Quotes

Here is a short-list of some of Tony Robbins’ most popular and insightful quotes:

1. “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
2. “In life you need either inspiration or desperation.”
3. “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.”
4. “It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.”
5. “Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.”
6. “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.”
7. Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.”
8. “Personal power is the ability to take action.”
9. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”
10. “You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”

Action

Tony Robbins quotes about action:

• “I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve.”
• “If you can’t, you must. If you must, you can.”
• “In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”
• “Personal power is the ability to take action.”
• “The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.”
• “The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors.”
• “We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.”
• “You always succeed in producing a result.”
• “You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”

Change / Decisions

Tony Robbins quotes about change and making decisions:

• “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
• “All personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief.”
• “Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards.”
• “For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent.”
• “If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve.”
• “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.”
• “More than anything else, I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny.”
• “We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.”
• “Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.”

Communication

Tony Robbins quotes about communication:

• “The people who shape our lives and our cultures have the ability to communicate a vision or a quest or a joy or a mission.”
• “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”

Fear / Failure

Tony Robbins quotes about fear and failure:

• “Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.”
• “Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.”
• “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.”

Goals

Tony Robbins quotes about goals:

• “Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction.”
• “How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to?”
• “People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals – that is, goals that do not inspire them.”
• “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

Life

Tony Robbins quotes about life:

• “I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.”
• “In life you need either inspiration or desperation.”
• “Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”
• “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.”
• “Live with passion!”

Purpose / Meaning

Tony Robbins quotes about purpose and meaning:

• “Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”
• “Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves you.”
• “It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.”
• “Things do not have meaning. We assign meaning to everything.”
• “You see, it’s never the environment; it’s never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events … how we interpret them … that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow.”

Questions

Tony Robbins quotes about questions:

• “Quality questions create a quality life.”
• “Questions provide the key to unlocking our unlimited potential.”

Success

Tony Robbins quotes about success:

• “If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.”
• “Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!”
• “Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.”
• “Success is the result of good judgment, good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment!”
• “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
• “Take control of your consistent emotions and begin to consciously and deliberately reshape your daily experience of life.”
• “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

General

• “Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.“
• “The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.”
• “The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.”
• “The only people without problems are those in cemeteries.”
• “Want to learn to eat a lot? Here it is: Eat a little. That way, you will be around long enough to eat a lot.”
• “Whatever happens, take responsibility”
• “When people are like each other they tend to like each other.”

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins

Books About Tony Robbins

• Awaken the Giant Within
• Unlimited Power

Here is my collection of Bruce Lee quotes.  It’s organized by art, goals, growth, life, mistakes, positive thinking, personal development, power, self-awareness, simplicity, time, and truth.

You don’t have to be a martial artist to appreciate Bruce Lee’s quotes.  Aside from a martial artist, and actor,  Bruce Lee was a philosopher.  His words of wisdom will make you think, and you’ll find he used precision in the way he phrases his ideas.  If you’re not already a Bruce Lee fan, you just might be by the time you’ve read his quotes.  He was a leader in the personal development arena, and a true continuous learner.

Enjoy …

Top 10 Bruce Lee Quotes

Here is a short-list of some of Bruce Lee’s most popular and insightful quotes:

1. “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
2. “Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
3. “Don’t fear failure.  Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
4. “Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, 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.”
5. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
6. “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
7. “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”
8. “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
9. “What is” is more important than ‘what should be.’ Too many people are looking at ‘what is’ from a position of thinking ‘what should be’.”
10. “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.”

Art / Artistry

Bruce Lee quotes on art and artistry:

• “Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”
• “Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.”
• “The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts his pattern. As a result, his action is and , more importantly, his thinking become mechanical. His responses become automatic, according to set patterns, making him narrow and limited.”

Goals

Bruce Lee quotes on goals and goal setting:

• “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
• “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.  Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”

Growth / Learning

Bruce Lee quotes on growth and learning:

• “A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”
• “As you think, so shall you become.”
• “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
• “Don’t fear failure.  Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
• “Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, 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.”
• “Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.”
• “I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.”
• “If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”
• “If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.”
• “In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup.”
• “Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.”
• “The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.”

Life

Bruce Lee quotes on life:

• “Life is better lived than conceptualized. — This writing can be less demanding should I allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I’ve come to understand that life is best to be lived — not to be conceptualized. If you have to think, you still do not understand.”
• “Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, un-rhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.”
• “Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.”
• “Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.”
• “Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.”
• “Real living is living for others.”
• “Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. — There is “what is” only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.”
• “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”

Mistakes

Bruce Lee quotes on mistakes:

• “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”
• “The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.”

Positive Thinking

Bruce Lee quotes on positive thinking:

• “Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
• “If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible.”
• “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”

Personal Development

Bruce Lee quotes on personal development:

• “Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.”
• “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
• “I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.”
• “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
• “The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.”
• “What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.”

Power / Speed / Flexibility

 Bruce Lee quotes on power, speed, and flexibility:

• “A powerful athlete is not a strong athlete, but one who can exert his strength quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling strength of his muscles remains unchanged. Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.”
• “Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being “wholly” and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.”
• “Endurance is lost rapidly if one ceases to work at its maximum.”
• “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
• “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
• “One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way.”
• “The athlete who is building muscles though weight training should be very sure to work adequately on speed and flexibility at the same time. In combat, without the prior attributes, a strong man will be like the bull with its colossal strength futilely pursuing the matador or like a low-geared truck chasing a rabbit.”
• “The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”
• “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.”

Self-Awareness

 Bruce Lee quotes on self-awareness:

• “After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.”
• “Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opponent, you will be imperiled every time.”
• “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.”
• “The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.”
• “To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.”
• “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
• “Understanding comes about through feeling, from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship.”
• “When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.”

Simplicity

Bruce Lee quotes on simplicity:

• “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
• “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”
• “To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.”
• “When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow – you are not understanding yourself.”

Time

Bruce Lee quotes on time and time management:

• “Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
• “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
• “The moment is freedom. — I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.”
• “The timeless moment. — The “moment” has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.”

Truth

Bruce Lee quotes on truth:

• “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
• “Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.”
• “It’s not what you give, it’s the way you give it. “
• “Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. — To realize that it’s just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.“
• “Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.“
• “Obey the principles without being bound by them.”
• “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.“
• “Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against. “
• “Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.“
• “’What is’ is more important than ‘what should be.’ Too many people are looking at ‘what is’ from a position of thinking ‘what should be’.”

If you have a favorite Bruce Lee quote that I missed, please share it with me so that I can update my collection.

Books About Bruce Lee

• Bruce Lee – Artist of Life, by Bruce Lee and John Little
• Bruce Lee – Wisdom for the Way, by Bruce Lee
• Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee
• The Art of Expressing the Human Body, by Bruce Lee and John Little
• Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living, by Bruce Lee and John

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee

Rob is an author and explorer of the mind.  He inspires minds at MindAdventure.com and Rob is the author of the book, 180: Climbing the Two Ladders to Inner Strength and Outer Freedom.

I asked Rob to write a post on one of the most important lessons he learned in life.  One of Rob’s strengths is painting ideas with words in a lyrical way that makes you think, or re-think, as the case may be.

Just when you think you have your world figured out, Rob comes along and challenges you to see with new eyes, or listen with new ears, or feel with a new heart, to help you take a look from the balcony, from the inside out, and crank up your perspective to a whole new level.

Without further ado, here’s Rob on making mistakes as a way to grow and prosper …

Here is the greatest tip I can give anyone who is interested in fully realizing their potential: needed answers shine at the right and perfect time when you stop pretending you already have them.

Here is what an aspirant does with this tip: he commits to making as many miss-takes as necessary to get the answers needed to achieve his aspiration.

There is a caveat when committing to making miss-takes: don’t make the same exact miss-take – you should learn something from it, and improve on the next re-take of the miss-take.

The process of self-growth is simply a matter of re-taking a miss-take while envisioning a successful outcome. It is part of the growth and development process to miss the mark more than once, that is if your challenges are worthy ones.

• It is part of the ‘path of victory’ to go astray and then find one’s way.
• It is part of self-integrity to commit to making miss-takes in order to get answers that one needs to advance.

Life is forever moving. There are no static instances. There is never exact sameness in two consecutive moments. So, what is a person to do? Higher lessons and fabulous victories are offered to those who are willing to fail forward, are willing to place winning over protecting their vanity.

It’s a big error to commit to making no errors. This means you’re unwilling to take risks. The only way you arrive is to go astray. A right response to errors (miss-takes), is to quiet the mind and let the error tell you the answer it contains. With each answer, you come closer to the outcome you desire.

Intelligence is vulnerable to miss-takes. Intelligence is also more interested in correcting than protecting its old point of view. When you are being intelligent, you are being flexible, you are being spontaneous, you are being open minded, you are being courageous. You are also being vulnerable to looking foolish at first. What a thrill!

It is possible to turn any miss-take over to your intelligence; let it search out the answers for corrections. You cannot do this if you secretly claim you already know the answers. Choose to be open minded when you’re ignorant. Stick with that choice, and a whole world of answers will flock to your side.

For every person who sees the beauty in making miss-takes, there are 10,000 who do all they can to avoid them. This is why so few win, and so many fail in life.

What say you to this post?

What will you do with it?

In what domain of your life are you allergic to miss-takes?

In what domain do you love making miss-takes while eagerly anticipating answers?

Blessings, rob

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