LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

You will never be happy if you continue to search for
what happiness consists of. You will never live if
you are looking for the meaning of life.
--Albert Camus
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of
preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
--Colin Powell
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
--Colin Powell

"There will always be tension between your enthusiasm for your goal and the fear of failing to achieve it. Quite frankly, you want it that way. The trick is learning how not to surrender to fear but to thrive on its tension."

~Gary Ryan Blair
Goals: The 10 Rules for Achieving Success

LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow,
but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.
--Author Unknown
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Never make a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Tomorrow never comes and yesterday never comes back, so live today
to it's fullest so that your yesterdays will be remembered with
happiness and your tomorrows will be full of brightness and hope.
--Nick Smith
LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

Nothing but heaven itself is better than
a friend who is really a friend.
--Plautus
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
--Auguste Rodin
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

To me faith means not worrying.
--John Dewey
"Life without dreams is no life at all. When our existence gets reduced to a list of problems to solve or things to check off, passion dries up. Imagine a different list, one comprised of projects and activities that are the expression of your heart and soul. Reconnect to what makes you happy. Do you know what that is?"

~Marcia Wieder
Dreams are Whispers from the Soul

Excerpt from:
Goals...The 10 Rules for Achieving Success,
by Gary Ryan Blair

On everyone's short list of things to do during their lifetime are the accomplishment of worthy goals and the fulfillment of one's purpose.

Achieving a goal is like opening a combination lock. You need the correct numbers in the correct right, left, right sequence. There are thousands of possible combinations; and if you are aware of the settings but not the sequence, your efforts will prove futile.

The Ten Rules of Goal Setting is the combination that opens the lock of success. Each rule is one piece of the combination; each seamlessly integrates with the other nine; each one counts!

This book provides the goal setting information you need in a straightforward and systematic manner. You will be hard pressed to find a goal that does not require each of these ten rules.

Not all goals are equal, but all goals contain the same foundational elements. When it comes to setting goals, we often don't know what we don't know. And, what you don't know can - and most likely will - hurt you by limiting or compromising your success. Each rule calls for and requires know-how of multiple disciplines. No one is born with all the talents to achieve a goal - you learn as you go on the fly!

If I could carve ten rules for achieving a goal into the walls of your mind, they would be the ones contained in this book. The ten rules work because they are simple, and they are simple because they work.

Success, of course, is individual. Your definition of "the good life" may be very different from mine. Yet the underlying steps toward that end are the same. That similarity helps you to understand what success really is.

Success is the ability, first, to recognize opportunity; second, to form plans and strategies that leverage opportunity; and, third, to develop the necessary skills needed to execute those strategies. The ten rules, like anything else in life, operate best if they are self-enforced!

Success is beautiful because of how it looks to you, how it works, how it feels and how it represents the fulfillment of goals pursued. Grow accustomed to prosperity and confident in the process of achieving a goal. Embrace these ten rules of goal setting and give witness to a powerful transition in your life.

And finally, my goal for this book is to simply...help you reach yours.
(Gary Ryan Blair)
LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within.
--James A. Baldwin
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing
in life is to keep your mind young.
--Henry Ford
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable,
and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
--Christopher Reeve

Sometimes when life is not giving you what you think you want, it is helping you to not settle for less than what you really want.

-- Alan Cohen
LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.
--Audrey Hepburn
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which
a busy person has no time to form.
--Andre Maurois
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
--Carl Jung
I have a rabbit's foot, a four leaf clover, and a lucky charm -- only problem is, none of them become effective until I do.

-- Ziggy
Shake it off and take a step up
author unknown

One day a farmer's donkey fell into an abandoned well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway; so it just wasn't worth it to him to try to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They each grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. Realising what was happening, the donkey at first cried and wailed horribly. Then, a few shovelfuls later, he quieted down completely.

The farmer peered down into the well, and was astounded by what he saw. With every shovelful of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing some thing amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up on the new layer of dirt. As the farmer's neighbours continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off, to the shock and astonishment of all the neighbours. Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to not let it bury you, but to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping stone.

We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up!

++++++++++++++++++

The moral to the story is very simple. Life is going to shovel dirt at you. You have two choices:

You can be buried alive by the dirt life throws at you

or

You can shake it off and step up

+++++++++++++++++++

What seemed like it would bury him, actually blessed him… All because of the manner in which he handled his adversity.

If we face our problems and respond to them positively and refuse to give in to panic, bitterness, or self-pity… the adversities that come along in life usually have within them the potential to benefit and bless us!
Introduction from:
Secrets of the World Class,
by Steve Siebold

I have had the privilege of competing against, coaching, being coached by and observing world-class performers since I was six years old. As a junior tennis player competing throughout the United States from ages 7 - 18, I became fascinated with what it takes to become a champion. My dream was to be ranked among the Top 10 players in the world, but I fell short. At my best, I hovered around the Top 500 in the world, and that's as high as I could seem to reach. Deep down, I knew I had the talent to make my dream a reality, and I knew the missing link was mental. After I hung up my racquet for the last time, I became obsessed with uncovering the mental toughness secrets of champions.

Starting in 1984, I spent every free moment conducting interviews with champions, reading their books and studying everything I could get my hands on about the psychology of peak performance. My friends said I was obsessed. They were right. This book is the result of my 20-year obsession.

When I started to implement the ideas in this book, my whole life changed. It wasn't overnight, but sometimes it seemed like it. There's no magic here, just practical thought processes, habits and philosophies drawn from the greatest performers in the world.

This book contains no theories. Every secret comes straight from the street of experience, either my own or that of our clients. This book is loaded with ideas you can implement immediately. Some will be familiar and some new. All of them have the power to catapult your results, no matter how high you're flying. It's been said that speakers and writers espouse wisdom on the very topic they need most. Now that you know my story, you know this is true for me. After 20 years of studying and teaching mental toughness to people throughout the United States, Canada and 10 other countries, I can honestly tell you that many times I still think like a complete amateur, operating out of the same middle-class consciousness that I ridicule in this book. After all these years, my mental toughness growth is still a work in progress. The good news is that mental toughness is a skill that can be learned, and the tougher you get, the bigger you'll dream and the more fun you'll have.

LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.
--Antoine De Saint-Exupery
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities.
In the expert's mind there are few.
--Shunryu Suzuki
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts
into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and
make his dreams come true.
--Napoleon Hill

LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

Energy, mental clarity, and positive regard for others are the
three most important benchmarks of well-being.
--Jeanne Segal Ph.D
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and
paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
--Robert Fulghum
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is
all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
--Marcus Aurelius
LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

I've always thought that people need to feel good about themselves and I see
my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way.
--Leo Buscaglia
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Everything Counts!
--Gary Ryan Blair
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

We sometimes feel that what we do is just a drop in the ocean,
but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
--Mother Teresa
An Excerpt from
Good to the Core
by John Blumberg
I was in Honolulu to speak at a large national conference. I scheduled an extra day onto the trip since I had never been to Honolulu and because a few great friends were also at the conference. The day after the conference, we awoke at the crack of dawn to visit Pearl Harbor. As we stood above and looked down upon the sunken USS Arizona, the depth of our experience came to life. It was moving and humbling.

Upon our return to the hotel, I had some time to spare before departing to the airport. A couple of my friends and I decided to rent a raft large enough to hold three adults. We targeted the white-capped waves, out in the distance, as our destination. With the incoming waves, we had a hard time getting away from the shore. At first, there seemed to be enormous momentum keeping us "grounded." Slowly, but surely, we began to make progress. It seemed to get easier. We eventually got within a few feet of the whitecaps and decided to board our raft and relax as a celebration of our efforts. It was in our moment of pause that we felt the reality of our situation. Drifting two feet out and one foot in. Again, two feet out and one foot in. We all felt the unsettling formula of our ever-so-gentle drift out to sea. We immediately abandoned the raft and grasped for safety, with one arm holding the raft and the other arm aggressively swimming. I have never scissor-kicked so hard in my life.

Twenty minutes later we had made minimal progress. Out of nowhere, a lifeguard on a kayak appeared on the scene asking why we were so far out. Feeling the comfort of his presence, we laughed for a moment, lightly commenting about our distance from the shore. He wasn't laughing.

The orange balls had warned us, and we unknowingly ignored them. Infrequently placed across the ocean's surface, they created an invisible line on the ocean's floor. They silently warned us not to drift beyond them regardless of our vision or mission. "You see those big orange balls on top of the water?" the lifeguard inquired. We could see them, but they didn't look very big from where we were still struggling in the water. They did, however, give us the insight that we were basically five times farther out than we should be. I think the lifeguard was trying to teach us a lesson. He didn't leave us, but he didn't assist us either. Forty-five minutes later we walked up on the shore. I was shaking from exhaustion. I began, for the first time, to feel the numerous cuts on my legs and feet from the sharp coral rocks lining the ocean floor.

We had briefly noticed the orange balls on our way out. We had paid little attention to them and certainly had not given any thought to their significance. We had been too focused on our mission to get to the white-capped waves in the distance!

We don't go running away from our values. We go drifting away, and one day wake up in a place we never meant to be, drifting in a direction we would have never chosen.
LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS

There can be no friendship when there is no freedom.
Friendship loves the free air, and will not be
fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.
--William Penn
LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

I don't know the key to success, but the key
to failure is trying to please everybody.
--Bill Cosby
INSPIRATION & MOTIVATION

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.
Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
--Helen Keller