One's attitude makes one's destiny ... ... and viceversa.

COMMITMENT:
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.
It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions and the actions which speak louder than words.
It is making the time when there is none. Coming through time after time.
Commitment is the stuff character is made of.
It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.

A mistake in judgement is seldom fatal, but too much anxiety about judgement is.
- Pauline Kael

To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have.
- Ken S. Keyes, Jr

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can have a positive attitude without talent and you can have talent without a positive attitude, but things really start happening when you have a positive attitude combined with talent.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
- Benjamin Disraeli

If there is no wind, row.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge

Don't sweat the small stuff.
- Kevin Gilbride, Coach, Chargers

Life doesn't require that we be the best, only that we try our best.
- H. Jackson Brown

A healthy person goes "Yes," "No," and "Whoopee!" An unhealthy person goes "Yes, but," "No, but," and "No whoopee."
- Eric Berne

The mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.
- Francis Bacon

Every so often you run into someone whose attitude seems to be "Life sucks, and I've been put here to pass on the message."
- Grant M. Bright

Hang on to your humor.
Don't ask for permission, just do it!
Make everything fun.
- Georgia Ulrich, 84 year-old fully invested in living

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
- Richard Bach

As usual, the serious me is working hard, but the real me is having fun!
- John Reed, CEO, Citicorp

I'm still a small boy inside. I only got old on the outside.
- Stan L. Zundel

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way.
- Victor Frankl

Fifteen childhood characteristics that sometimes get lost in adults:
1. Seek out things that are fun to do
2. Jump from one interest to another
3. Curious, eager to try new things
4. Smile and laugh a lot
5. Experience and express emotions freely
6. Creative and innovative
7. Physically active
8. Constantly growing mentally and physically
9. Risk often - are not afraid to keep trying something that they aren't initially good at and aren't afraid to fail
10. Rest when their body tells them to
11. Learn enthusiastically
12. Dream and imagine
13. Believe in the impossible
14. Generally don't worry about things
15. Passionate
- Ann McGee-Cooper - "You Don't Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted!"

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Change Your STATE of Mind ...
Support ... encourage personal and professional growth
Trust ... confidence that your team members have your best interests in mind
Accountability ... ability to choose how you respond and willingness to live & learn from results
Truth ... telling the truth to yourself so that you can tell the truth to others
Energy ... the outcome of living the values of STATE and Playing to Win

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

The race is not always to the swift...but to those who keep on running.

Enthusiasm is contagious. It's difficult to remain neutral or indifferent in the presence of a positive thinker.
- Dennis Waitly & Remi Witt

No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.
- Norman Cousins

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.

Attitudes are contagious! Is yours worth catching?

Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic.
- Stephen Covey

Be what you wish others to become.

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
- William Shakespeare

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgi

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle

A person is as happy as he makes up his mind to be.
- Abraham Lincoln

We tend to judge others by their behaviors and ourselves by our intentions.
- Stephen Covey

Thoughts --> Feelings --> Actions. So, if you think negative, you will feel negative and then act negative, then continue to think negative, and so on.
- Hendrie Weisinger

If you're not playing a big enough game, you'll screw up the game you're playing just to give yourself something to do.
- John Roger & Peter McWilliams

You are going to spend the rest of your life doing something. It might as well be something you want to do.
- John Roger & Peter McWilliams

The willingness to do creates the ability to do.
- John Roger & Peter McWilliams

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
- John Roger & Peter McWilliams


When written in Chinese, the word CRISIS is composed of two characters- one represents DANGER and the other represents OPPORTUNITY.

Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.
- Frederick W. Robertson

Your attitude determines your altitude.

If you do not believe in yourself ... chances are nobody else will.

Nothing in this world is impossible to a willing heart.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Logic will not change an emotion, but action will.

The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.
- Al Neuharth

Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel like it.

There are three things that exist only in your mind: worry, doubt & fear.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
- Emerson

Do you suffer from "PSYCHOSCLEROSIS" - A hardening of the attitudes?

"It's a dangerous thing to think we know everything."
- Jack Kuehler, IBM President

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

I started out with nothing. I still have most of it.
- Michael Davis

Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do.
- Yoda, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back

Are you a SNIOP? Someone who is Sensitive to the Negative Influence Of Others?

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Emerson

Some people develop a wishbone where their backbone should be.

"Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't."
- Lucille Ball

If you've made up your mind you can do something, you're absolutely right.
If you've made up your mind you can't do something, you're absolutely right.

If I am what I have
And if I lose what I have
Who then am I?
- Eric Fromm

We are what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TOO OLD?
Consider:
- At age 96, playwright George Bernard Shaw broke his leg when he fell out of a tree he was trimming in his backyard.
- Actor George Burns won his first Oscar at 80.
- Painter Grandma Moses painted her first picture when she was past 80 years old. She completed over 1,500 paintings after that; 25 percent of those were produced when she was past 100
- Michelangelo was 71 when he painted the Sistine Chapel.
- Physician and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer was still performing operations in his African hospital at 89.

Don't listen to the nay sayers:
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- (Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office 1899)
"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
- (Grover Cleveland, 1905)
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- (Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927)
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
- (Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923)
"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
- (Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895)
"Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching."
- (Tris Speaker, 1921)
"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad."
- (President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company)
"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
- (Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946)
"What use could the company make of an electric toy?"
- (Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone in 1878)

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
- John F. Kennedy

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The young sailor at sea was ordered to climb a mast to adjust a sail during a violent storm. He got halfway up, looked down, got dizzy and sick. An old sailor on deck shouted up to him "Look up, son, look up". Young sailor looked up, regained his composure, and completed his mission. Moral: Look ahead, not back.

Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is a state of mind.
- Mike Todd

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

If it is to be, it is up to me.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do you see difficulties in very opportunity or opportunities in every difficulty?

What you RESIST, PERSISTS. If you take ownership and deal with things that are bothering you, then, in the very process of dealing with them they very often will go away.

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You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
- Lucinda Basset

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.
- Groucho Marx

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company ...a church ...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
- Charles Swindoll

Don't become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
- Zig Ziglar

Start viewing the possible as probable. You'll be surprised at what you can accomplish.

There may be nothing sadder than people who spend their lives talking about what might have been.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: "Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow."

A farmer once went to the county fair with a pumpkin that was the exact size and shape of a two-gallon jug. His pumpkin won the blue ribbon. When someone asked him how he grew a pumpkin to look like that, he said, "It was easy. As soon as it started to grow, I stuck it inside a two gallon jug - and here it is!" In the same way your life situation, your view of the world around you is shaped by the container you hold it in. Such beliefs can put a lid on potential. You might be a golfer who averages 90 for 18 holes. One day you're on your way to a 70 at the 16th hole. You say to yourself, "This isn't like me!" Hearing that, your subconscious makes sure you put the next ball into the woods or the sand. At the end of 18, you have your usual 90 average. "That's more like me" you say to yourself. Your subconscious will work hard to match whatever you believe on the inside with what you see on the outside.

Remember FEAR can simply be False Evidence Appearing Real.

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

You love what you find time to do.

THINK > FEEL > SAY > DO

The trouble with self-made men is that they tend to worship their creator.

Half this game is 90% mental.
- Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies Manager

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.
- Wayne Dyer

Reality is something you rise above.
- Liza Minnelli

Commencement address by Sir Winston Churchill at a graduation ceremony: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never." - this was his entire speech.

What you THINK about reveals what you ARE. Sometimes we need to do a check-up from the neck-up.

Accept fate, and move on. Don't yield to the seductive pull of self-pity. Acting like a victim threatens your future.

Strong beliefs win strong men and then make them stronger. (Walter Bagehot) And as men become stronger, so do the organizations to which they belong. (Thomas J. Watson, Jr.)

It's what you learn AFTER you think you know it all that counts.

The greatest discovery of our generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
- William James

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
- Georg Hegel

TWO-MINUTE ATTITUDE DRILL:
TO EVERYONE:
You can trust me.
I'm committed to excellence.
I care about you as a person.
EVERY DAY:
Do good.
Do your best.
Treat others as you would be treated.
FOR TODAY:
Nothing negative will escape my lips.

The Time to be happy is now.
The Place to be happy is here.
The Way to be happy is to make others so.

Attitude Adjuster: When you smile at someone, nine times out of 10 the other person will smile back and you've made two people's days brighter and better.

Point-of-view: Traveling through New England, a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village. "What's this place called?" he asked the station attendant. "All depends," the native drawled. "Do you mean by them that has to live in this dad-blamed, moth-eaten, dust-covered, one-hoss dump, or by them that's merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms for a short spell?"

SMALL BEGINNINGS: An old man was walking along the beach with his grandson. His grandson picked up each starfish they passed and threw it back into the sea. "If I leave them up here," the boy said, "they would dry up and die. I'm saving their lives." "But," protested the old man, "the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish. What you are doing won't make any difference." The boy looked at the starfish in his hand, gently threw it into the ocean, and answered: "It makes a difference to this one."

How you look at a situation is very important, for how you think about a problem may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. When you get discouraged or depressed, try changing your attitude from negative to positive and see how life can change for you. Remember, your attitude toward a situation can help you to change it - you create the very atmosphere for defeat or victory.
- Franco Harris, NFL Fullback

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
- Aristotle

HOW TO BE A "NO-LIMIT" PERSON: (Wayne Dyer)
1. BE A NO-LIMIT PERSON STARTING NOW.
We ALL have problems we have to deal with. Remember: I CANNOT control what goes out on outside, but I CAN control what goes on inside.
2. START MAKING GOOD CHOICES.
Don't forget that you are the sum total of the choices you make. Remember: Anything inside that immobilizes me, gets in my way, keeps me from my goals, is all MINE. I can throw it away IF I CHOOSE.
3. TAKE SOME RISKS AND STOP WORRYING
Listen to those inner signals that help you make the right choices - no matter what anyone thinks. Remember: What you think of me is none of my business.
4. EXPECT TO STAY HEALTHY
Remember: You can set yourself up to be sick, or you can CHOOSE to stay well.
5. TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR FEELING AND REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE
Remember: People who panic or get depressed usually do so because they have lost control.
6. LIVE THIS DAY AS IF IT WERE YOUR LAST
Rather than the bumper sticker that says: "This is the first day of the rest of your life", think: "This is the last day of my life. And I am going to live it as if I didn't have any more." The truth is that the past is over and gone and the future is not guaranteed, so I should stop acting as if life was a rehearsal.

When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.
- Robert Browning

Two parts of empathy: Skill (tip of iceberg) and Attitude (mass of the iceberg).

In times of storm, the shallowness of the root structure is revealed.

Your attitude and behavior are a function of your paradigm. For example: It's Sunday morning, you are enjoying a quiet ride in the subway - no crowds. A man with several children gets on. The children act rowdy, shouting, disturbing others. You become irritated and finally say "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people, I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more." The reply comes slowly: "I guess I should... We just came from the hospital... Their mother just died about an hour ago and I guess... I don't know what to think.... I guess they don't know how to handle it either..." You have just experienced a paradigm shift that puts the situation in new light. We all see things differently. Similar to putting someone else's glasses on. We would see things distorted, but they don't see things that way.

Anytime you think that the problem is "out there", that thought in itself may be the problem. If it is "out there" then you have no control and you have to wait until it changes.

When bitten by a poisonous snake, what's the best thing to do? Remain quiet, suck the poison out. What's the worse thing to do? Get upset, chase the snake and kill it. When unintentionally or intentionally the victim of an unkind remark, what's the best thing to do? Forgive, move on, let go of the anger and resentment. What's the worse thing to do? Strike back, harbor resentment and anger.

Some people who think that everything is a nail, are down on themselves because they are not a hammer. They tend to deprecate their own unique talents and capacities to use a chisel or a pair of pliers.

Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it's what they bring to the world that really counts. OR "It's not what the world holds for you it's what you bring to it" (Anne of Green Gables)

Don't be so humble - you're not that great.
- N. Ghandi

It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES. The beliefs are the direct cause of what we feel and what we do next. They can spell the difference between dejection and giving up, on the one hand, and well-being and constructive action on the other. The first step is to see the connection between adversity, belief, and consequence. The second step is to see how the ABCs operate every day in your own life.
- Martin Seligman

ALL I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW:
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything, Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic up. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
- Robert Fulghum

When it is darkest, the stars come out.

Three step solution to depression:
- GIVING
- ForGIVING
- ThanksGIVING

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut

If you THINK you are beaten, you ARE.
If you THINK you dare not, you DON'T.
If you'd LIKE to win, but THINK you can't
It's almost a cinch you WON'T.
Life's battles don't ALWAYS go
To the STRONGER or FASTER man;
But soon or late the man who WINS
Is the one who THINKS he can.

Everybody has a "hot button". Who is pushing yours? While you probably cannot control that person, you CAN control the way you react to them.

We have inherited the past; we can create the future.

Eighty percent of success is related to ATTITUDE rather than competency.

Some people see more in a walk around the block than others see in a trip around the world.

When asked the secret of his winning ways, a champion weight lifter replied, "I try not to think of the weight, just the lift. Once you start thinking about the weight, you won't get it." The successful weight lifter realizes that there is something more powerful that the dead weights; there is his lifting power readily available to him. He knows that there is something far more important than the facts; there is his attitude towards the facts. The application of this principle to everyday life is clear. We can worry about the problem, or we can focus on possible solutions. We can dwell on our difficulties, or we can zero in on ways to overcome them. We can see only the lack in our lives, or we can open our eyes to the abundance and to the source of our supply. Whatever problem confronts you, whatever burden threatens to overpower you, whatever temptation seems to have domination over you, whatever crisis presently engulfs you, remember this: Get your mind off the weight, and turn your attention to the lift.

The following story is a good one for practicing EMPATHY. It also helps when you think you are in a bad situation and start developing the "poor me" attitude. After you read what happened some years ago to a man in Barbados perhaps your problems will not seems so bad at all. His letter to his employers explained what happened when he went to repair a building damaged by a hurricane: "I rigged up a beam with a pulley at the top of the building and hoisted up a couple of barrels full of bricks. When I had fixed the building, there was a lot of bricks left over. I hoisted the barrel back up again and secured the line at the bottom, and then went up and filled the barrel with extra bricks. Then I went to the bottom and cast off the line. Unfortunately, the barrel of bricks was heavier than I was and before I knew what was happening the barrel started down, jerking me off the ground. I decided to hang on and halfway up I met the barrel coming down and received a severe blow on the shoulder. I then continued to the top, banging my head against the beam and getting my finger jammed in the pulley. When the barrel hit the ground it burst its bottom; allowing all the bricks to spill out. I was now heavier than the barrel and so started down again at high speed. Halfway down, I met the barrel coming up and received severe injuries to my shins. When I hit the ground I landed on the bricks, getting several painful cuts from the sharp edges. At this point I must have lost my presence of mind, because I let go the line. The barrel then came down giving me another heavy blow on the head and putting me in the hospital. I respectfully request sick leave."

BIASES & PREJUDICES: The lives of many of us could be compared to the making of a clay vase. When the clay is soft, the potter shapes, molds and throws it. The potter then puts it into a kiln and fires it. It is then no longer possible to re-shape it. We are "shaped" by our experiences as we go through life. Unfortunately, many of us allow the fires of prejudice to harden us so that it becomes very difficult for us to re-shape our thinking or try to understand someone else's point of view.
- Grant M. Bright

A couple got married. On their wedding night, the man, who stood 6' 3" and weighed 260 lbs, removed his pants and tossed them over to his new petite bride and said "I want you to try these on." She stepped into them, pulled them up and said, "I'm way too small, there's no way I can fill your pants." The man replied, "That's right and don't you forget it!" The bride thought a moment, then removed her lacy undies, tossed them over to her rather large husband, and said "How about you trying these on". Well, he got one foot in up the bottom part of his calf and he couldn't go any farther. "I can't get into your pants," he said, exasperatedly. "That's right," his petite bride replied, "and you never will until you change your attitude!"

"EVE" the Mother of Progress: CONCEIVE -> BELIEVE -> ACHIEVE

Whether you think you CAN or think you CAN'T - You're right!
- Henry Ford

BELIEF creates the actual fact.
- William James

Those who complain about the way the ball bounces are often the ones who dropped it.

There is very little difference in people - but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is ATTITUDE. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.
- W. Clement Stone

LOW SELF-ESTEEM: Like driving through life with your hand-break on.

Ninety percent of the things we tend to WORRY about we have no control over, so why worry about them?

Anything you dream you can do - begin it. BOLDNESS has genius, power and magic in it.
- Goethe

SELF-ESTEEM controls PERFORMANCE/REALITY which stimulate SELF-TALK which reinforces SELF-ESTEEM. This cycle can work positively or negatively and is greatly influenced by the self-talk ("I knew I wasn't good at --" vs "next time I'll practice and do better at --").

End of Quotes on "Attitude"

03/14/2000

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