Catalyst Quotes

“20 Seconds of Courage”

“Courage is overrated. 

At least, overestimated.

You don’t have to live courageously.

In fact, you can be a coward 99.9305556% of the time (to be exact).

You only need to be courageous for 20 seconds at a time.

Those 20 seconds when…

    …you pick up the phone to call that “big kahuna” prospect.

    …you see your dream client enter the networking meeting.

    …you walk up to a circle of strangers and introduce yourself.

    …you volunteer to come up on stage.

    …you contemplate jumping into the icy cold water.

    …you are arguing with your spouse and choose to relent.

    …you are slighted and decide to let it go and forgive.

    …you know you need to have a tough conversation with a friend.

    …you know it’s time to let someone go.

    …you need to say “no” even though it will make you unpopular.

Each one of those defining moments only requires 20 seconds of real courage at the most.  Once the 20 seconds are over, it’s easy breezy from there.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” — C.S. Lewis

Fear is an illusion.
An illusion can only exist in the absence of reality.
Once reality takes over the illusion dissipates.
Fear mostly comes in anticipation of an experience, not in the experience itself.

So what do you do when you hit the wall of fear?

You do this:  You shut off your brain, close your eyes, hold your breath (if you need to) and do what every corpuscle of your body insists you don’t—RUN RIGHT AT IT!  You’ll break through the wall of fear in less than 20 seconds.

What if you did something you fear three times a day, every day?
Imagine how doing so would multiply your success, lifestyle and prominence in the marketplace.
Think of the breakthroughs you could create.
You could still be a coward 99.9305556% of the time—a really rich and successful coward!

The math: 20 seconds of courage X 3 times a day = 60 seconds. 60 seconds divided by 86,400 seconds in a day = 99.9305556%.

 What will you do with your 20 seconds of courage today?”    (Darren Hardy, Seeds of Success Weekly Newsletter, June 11, 2013 – Vol. 6 Issue 13)

“Live Your Life”

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”    (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.”    (St. Augustine)

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“Keep these concepts in mind:  You’ve failed many times, although you don’t remember.  You fell down the first time you tried to walk.  You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim.  Don’t worry about failure.  My suggestion to each of you:  Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”  (Sherman Finesilver)

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“Obstacles don’t have to stop you.  If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”      (Michael Jordon)

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“If I can dream, I can act.  And if I can act, I can become”    (Poh Yu Khing)

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“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.

Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”    (Cherokee Expression)

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“Be Better Than Yourself”

“One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic — something or other which we do not possess.  Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go.  You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically.  Will it be success or failure?  It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word ‘decide’ contains.  The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success.  Remember the Chinese proverb, ‘With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.’”    (Maltbie Davenport Babcock)

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“All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up.  Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up; that growing is an ever ongoing process.”  (M. Scott Peck)

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“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.”    (Chinese inscription cited by Thoreau in Walden)  

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“Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul.  Always be courteous, never be discouraged. Beware of him who promises something for nothing.  Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best.”   (Bernard Baruch)

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“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.  Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.”    (William Faulkner)

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“Why settle for being effective when you could be insanely awesome?”    (Zenith Data Systems)

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“Until You Try”

“What the future holds for us depends on what we hold for the future.   Hardworking ‘todays’ make high-winning tomorrows.”     (William E. Haller)

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“We cannot control life’s difficult moments but we can choose to make life less difficult.  We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds.  Too often we try to choose and control things we cannot.  Too seldom we choose to control what we can – our attitude.”    (John Maxwell)

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“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them.  Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.”    (Og Mandino)

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“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”      (Doug Larson)

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“Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.”    (Robert H. Schuller)

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

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“Don’t Quit – Allow Yourself to Be Inspired”

‘Don’t Quit’

“When things go wrong as they sometimes will;

When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill;

When the funds are low, and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but have to sigh;

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but do not quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;

And you can never tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit-

It’s when things go wrong that you must not quit.”    (Author Unknown)

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“Our self-vision or picture of ourselves is a major factor in our self image.  Years ago I heard the radio commentator and personal effectiveness speaker, Earl Nightingale, say, ‘We become what we think about most.’  Luckily I didn’t hear this earlier in my life or I would have been a girl by the time I was 17!”    (Jim Clemmer, ‘What We Get is What We See’)

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“Direction determines destination.  So here is a question you must ask yourself, ‘Are all the disciplines that I’m currently engaged in taking me where I want to go?’  What an important question to ask yourself at the beginning of the month, the beginning of the week, the beginning of the day.  Because here is what you don’t ever want to do — kid yourself.  Kid your neighbor, kid me and kid the marketplace, but don’t kid yourself — fingers crossed — hoping you will arrive at a good destination when you’re not even headed that way.”    (Jim Rohn)

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“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”    (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“Allow yourself to be inspired to your highest potential.”    (Jamie Walters)

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“Take Fate By the Throat and Shake a Living Out of Her”

“Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?  Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you and disputed passage with you?”    (Walt Whitman)

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“I know how hard it is in these times to have faith.

But maybe if you could have the faith to start with, maybe the times would change.

You could change them.  Think about it.  Try.  And try not to hurt each other.”    (‘Oh, God!’ the movie)

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“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats.  No one can avoid them.  But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.”    (Paulo Coelo)

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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”  (George Bernard Shaw)

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“At bottom, every man knows perfectly well that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”    (Nietzsche)

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“Resolve to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.”    (Louisa May Alcott)

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“Failures – Dream and Awaken”

“When the morning’s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish – it is then that you must not hesitate.”      (Dag Hammarskjöld)

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“I believe in the power of important quotations.  I always keep a few in my mind to think about.…  I can always join the best minds of the centuries.  In their great thoughts I can find the courage to believe in the best that I can find in myself.”     (Elmer G. Letterman)

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“Teacher, student, factory worker, salesperson, executive, parent, coach, athlete, doctor, lawyer – whatever challenges you accept in this life, whatever task you must perform for your daily bread … never, never neglect the little things.

You are a special creation of God.  Never allow anything that originates with you, in deeds or materials or effort or kindness, to be less than your best.  Only the failures and the mediocrities neglect the little things.”      (Og Mandino)

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“You build on failure.  You use it as a stepping stone.  Close the door on the past.  You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it.  You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”  (Johnny Cash)

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“Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”   (Helen Keller)

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“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.”    (Carl Jung)

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“Life – Living, Dreaming and Dying”

“Dalai Llama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, said:  “Man.  Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.  Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.  And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”    (Unknown Author)

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“If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?  And why are you waiting?”    (Stephen Levine)

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“Life is like a game of chess.  To win you have to make a move.  Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are accumulated along the way.  We become each and every piece within the game called life!”    (Allan Rufus, The Master’s Sacred Knowledge)

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“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or a curse.”    (Don Juan)

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“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential – for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.  Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.”    (Soren Kierkegaard)

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“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”     (Eleanor Roosevelt)

“It’s Not Your Aptitude, It’s Your Attitude”

“Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning.   Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves.”    (Peter Koestenbaum)

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“Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities.  Seize common occasions and make them great.”    (Orison Swett Marden)

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“The most successful people are those who don’t have any illusions about who they are.  They know themselves well and they can move in the direction of their best talents.  They know the kind of culture they thrive in and how they can benefit from that culture. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand themselves.  Most people don’t want to lose their illusions about themselves, although they say they want to take charge of their career.”   (Bud Bray, quoted in Is It Too Late to Run Away and Join the Circus?)

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“It is not your aptitude, but your attitude, that determines your altitude.”    (Zig Ziglar)

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“We all have ability.  The difference is how we use it.”    (Stevie Wonder)

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“It isn’t bragging if you can do it.”    (Dizzy Dean)

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