Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.
All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result.
We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.
Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience.
Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.
While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.
Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.
Empathy takes time, and efficiency is for things, not people.
Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn’t take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you’re already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air.
The real beginning of influence comes as others sense you are being influenced by them – when they feel understood by you – that you have listened deeply and sincerely, and that you are open.
Your power to choose your direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.
An empowering mission statement has to become a living document, part of our very nature, so that the criteria we’ve put into it are also in us, in the way we live our lives day by day.
We exhaust ourselves more from the tension and the consequences of internal disharmony than from hard, unremitting work.
Private victories precede public victories. You can’t invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it.
If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.
Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.
Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.
Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.
True greatness will be achieved through the abundant mind that works selflessly – with mutual respect, for mutual benefit.
If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.