Catalyst Quotes

“A Happy Wowday / Embody It”

“Be not afraid of greatness.  Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”   (William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)

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“People rise to the challenge when it is their challenge.”   (Belasco & Stayer)

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”Happy wowday.

Halloween gives you permission to dress up.  April Fool’s, a chance to play a prank.

What if there was one day of the year where you had permission to do things that made people say, ‘wow.’

Acts of generosity or bravery or insight…

What if you focused and practiced and got your nerve up and leaned way over the edge, just one day of the year?  If you could get out of your comfort zone for a few hours in a way that benefitted and delighted people you care about, what would that look and feel like?

Today might be your wowday.

Or tomorrow.

Up to you.”   (Seth Grodin, Seth’s Blog, 3.18.14)

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“…That thing that you do, after your day job, in your free time, too early in the morning, too late at night.  That thing you read about, write about, think about, in fact fantasize about.  That thing you do when you’re all alone and there’s no one to impress, nothing to prove, no money to be made, simply a passion to pursue.  That’s it.  That’s your thing.  That’s your heart, your guide. That’s the thing you must, must do.”   (upliftedvibrations)

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“People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.”   (Norman Vincent Peale)

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“Don’t explain your philosophy.  Embody it.”   (Epictetus)

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“Believe and Achieve”

“Those who remove mountains begin by carrying away small stones.”   (Chinese Proverb)

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“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”   (Dale Carnegie)

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“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”   (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“Until you try, you do not know what you cannot do.”   (Henry James)

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“If you got it, ask yourself why and try to repeat the action.  If you failed, ask yourself why and try to learn from the experience.”   (Dale Carnegie)

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“Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you made no difference in the world.”   (Jarod Kintz, Great Listener Series Mute Women)

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“You do not write your life with words … You write it with actions.  What you think is not important.  It is only important what you do.”   (Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls)

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“Whatever mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”   (Napoleon Hill)

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“If We Don’t Change, We Don’t Grow”

“A few people are afraid of good ideas, ideas that make a difference or contribute in some way.  Good ideas bring change, that’s frightening.  But many people are petrified of bad ideas.  Ideas that make us look stupid or waste time or money or create some sort of backlash.

The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.

Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants — we all fail far more than we succeed.  We fail at closing a sale or playing a note.  We fail at an idea for a series of paintings or the theme for a trade show booth. 

But we succeed far more often than people who have no ideas at all.  Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that.  I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month.  He paused and said, “none.”

And there, you see, is the problem.”   (Seth Godin)

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“Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.”   (William Bennett)

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“Trying to implant a goal that is incongruent with the self-image is like trying to plant grain by dropping seeds on rock hard bone-dry ground.

This happens when a person tries to make a goal that they are not.

No one can consistently out perform his or her self-image.

No one can long overcome it with willpower.

No one can sneak past it and perform in an incongruent manner.

The bottom line is that you cannot ‘do’ things without ‘being’ the kind of person who does those things.

You must ‘be’ to ‘do.’”   (Dr. Maxwell Maltz)

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“The Victim curses the wind.

The Survivor waits for it to change.

The Navigator adjusts the sails.”

“You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it.”   (German Proverb)

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“If we don’t change, we don’t grow.  If we don’t grow, we aren’t actually living.”   (Gail Sheehy, Passages)

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“Magic – Believe in Yourself and Make Anything Happen”

“I cannot teach anybody anything.  I can only make them think.”   (Socrates)

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“When you’re touched by magic, nothing’s ever quite the same again.  What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch.  They’re too busy, or they just don’t hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.”   (Charles de Lint, What the Mouse Found and Other Stories)

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“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”   (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)

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“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes.  Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness.  Without misery there can be no beauty.  And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.

Adult.  You have become an adult.”   (Harlan Ellison, Paingod and Other Delusions)

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“unless it comes out of

your soul like a rocket,

unless being still would

drive you to madness or

suicide or murder,

don’t do it.

unless the sun inside you is

burning your gut,

don’t do it.

when it is truly time,

and if you have been chosen,

it will do it by

itself and it will keep on doing it

until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.”   (Charles Bukowski)

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“People want you to be happy.

Don’t keep serving them your pain!

If you could untie your wings

and free your soul of jealousy,

you and everyone around you

would fly up like doves.”   (Rumi)

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“If you understand others you are smart.

If you understand yourself you are illuminated.

If you overcome others you are powerful.

If you overcome yourself you have strength.

If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.

If you can act with vigor, you have a will.

If you don’t lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.

If you die without loss, you are eternal.”   (Laozi, Tao Te Ching)

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“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.”   (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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“Life – Stop Thinking About It and Live It”

“A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.  The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.  ‘That laundry is not very clean; she doesn’t know how to wash correctly.  Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.’ Her husband looks on, remaining silent.  Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments.

A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband:  ‘Look, she’s finally learned how to wash correctly.  I wonder who taught her this.’ The husband replies, ‘I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.’  And so it is with life …  What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look.”     (No-Exceptions.org)

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“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”     (Angela Schwindt)

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“Stop thinking about life and choose to live it.”   (Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain)

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“…and I discovered something: the meaning of my life was whatever I wanted it to be.”   (Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain)

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“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.  The way you thing about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.”     (Norman Vincent Peale)

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“The challenges in our lives are there to strengthen our convictions.  They are not there to run us over.”  (Nick Vujicic)

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“On some dimension or other, every event in life can be causing only one of two things: either it is good for you, or it is bringing up what you need to look at in order to create good for you.

Evolution is win-win … life is self-correcting.”   (Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets:  Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life)

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“Life Gives You Lemons / Rebuild Your Ladder and Climb and Climb …

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock.

people so tired mutilated either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich; the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us about the gutters or the suicides.

or the terror of one person aching in one place alone

untouched, unspoken to

watering a plant.”   (Charles Bukowski, Love is a Dog from Hell)

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“Some people are at the top of the ladder, some are in the middle, still more are at the bottom, and a whole lot more don’t even know there is a ladder.”   (Robert Schuller)

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“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and then throw it in the face of the person who gave you lemons until they give you the oranges you originally asked for.”   (Cassandra Clare)

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“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.”   (Quentin Crisp)

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“What have I learned?  Man, where to start.  I learned that I am much stronger than I thought I was.  I learned that there are parts of me that have been sleeping for a very long time, silent and secret parts that have been aching to be awakened.  I learned the fragility of life and the whisper’s breath that holds it balanced, I have learned the weight of that breath.  I found out that I need to be touched more than I ever thought, that the importance of being shown my worth in physical gestures is unbelievably large, much larger than being told.  I have learned what it feels like to not be able to stop smiling for reasons only you know; I found the places in me starting to wake up.  I have learned these things, and countless others, and I have learned that it is a scary thing to let yourself learn … it is a very frightening thing to allow yourself to wake up, those silent aching parts asleep so long.”   (Tyler Knott Gregson)

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“Life’s Ladder” 

Unto each mortal who comes to earth

A ladder is given by God at birth,

And up this ladder the soul must go,

Step by step, from the valley below;

Step by step to the center of space

On this ladder of lives to the starting place.

In time departed, which yet endures,

I shaped my ladder and you shaped yours,

Whatever they are, they are what we made,

A ladder of light or a ladder of shade;

A ladder of love or a hateful thing,

A ladder of strength or a wavering string,

A ladder of gold or a ladder of straw–

Each is the ladder of righteous law.

In useless effort, then, waste no time;

Rebuild your ladder, and climb and climb.

And climb and climb.”   (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

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“Happiness, It Lies Within You”

“Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad.  Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.” (Will Smith)

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“One cannot exist today as a person…without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s own mind what matters and what does not matter.”   (Dorothy Thompson)

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“Realize that true happiness lies within you.  Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving.  Reach out.  Share.  Smile. Hug.  Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.”  (Og Mandino)

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“Shut your eyes so the heart may become your eye, and with that vision look upon another world.  If you can step away from your need for self-approval, all that you do, top to bottom, will be approved.”  (Rumi)

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“Don’t join an easy crowd.  Go where the expectations and the demands to perform and achieve are high.”   (Jim Rohn)

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“Always pass on what you have learned.”   (Yoda)

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“Persist and Win”

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”   (Paulo Coelho)

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“Most people’s major life regrets are not about the things they’ve done, but about the things they’ve not done, the goals they never reached, the type of lover or friend or parent they wished they’d been but know they failed to be.”   (Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight)

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“Do not yearn to be popular; be exquisite.  Do not desire to be famous; be loved.  Do not take pride in being expected; be palpable, unmistakable.”   (C. JoyBell C.)

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“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.”   (Conan O’Brien)

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“As you take in a feeling of strength, see if you can let yourself truly become a little stronger. The mind (and brain) takes its shape from what it rests upon, and you’re letting it mold itself around the positive experience that you are taking in.  … what you pay attention to – what you rest your mind on – is the primary shaper of your brain.”   (Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson)

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“The opposite of ‘why’ is now.

Questions are good.  A legitimate, ‘why?’ is enough to change the world.

But stalling, stalling is the last thing you need.  And ‘why’ is often an escape hatch for people who know what they should do, but fear doing it.  It’s easier to ponder, to question the meaning of this or our role in where we go next.

The best answer for the stalling why’ is: ‘Go.’

[and of course, the best response to the impetuous, status-quo driven ‘Go’ is to ask, ‘why?’]”   (Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog 2.26.14)

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“So long as there is breath in me, that long I will persist.  For now I know one of the greatest principles on success; if I persist long enough I will win.”   (Og Mandino)

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