Catalyst Quotes

“Look Outside Your Heart, Dream; Look Inside, Awake”

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.   Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”      (Joseph Campbell)

“Is there a human being alive who is capable of getting to an airplane who doesn’t know how to buckle his seatbelt?   Given that we have 100% seatbelt understanding among the flying population, why do flight attendants repeat the instructions literally millions of times a year?

It’s stuck.

Change gets made by people who care, who have some sort of authority and are willing to take responsibility. Often, though, finding all three is tough, particularly when faced with the immovable object of the stuck organization.

One approach to getting unstuck is the clean sheet of paper.  Dictate that the speech before flight is going to change, that the menu will be redone, that the qualifications are going to start over, from zero.

Move your team, completely rewrite (and) throw out the standard script — by creating a vacuum, you give your team permission to invent.”         (Seth Godin)

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”      (Kahlil Gibran)

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart ….  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”          (Carl Jung)

“Don’t Be Content Easily”

“…in all the woods and forests, God did not create a single leaf the same as any other …. People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different.”        (Paulo Coelho)

“Three daily reminders:   Have courage to say no.   Have the courage to face the truth.   Have the courage to do the right thing because it is right.”        (Mark Twain)

“Never doubt the capacity of the people you lead to accomplish whatever you dream for them.   It’s a principal that leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela have all embodied.  Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, ‘I have a dream – I wonder if people will be up to it?’”          (Benjamin Zander)

“Don’t be content easily.   Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being.   But there is no need! This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.”        (Osho)   

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”         (e.e. cummings)

“Trust the still, small voice that says, ‘This might work and I’ll try it.'”       (Diane Mariechild)

“You Need to Change Yourself”

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve:   the fear of failure.”     (Paulo Coehlo)

“Life is one big road with lots of signs.   So when you are riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind.   Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy.   Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality.   Wake Up and Live!”    (Bob Marley)

“To wallow is to bitterly complain “they are doing it to us again.”   To follow is to passively wait for “somebody to do something.”   To lead is to move forward with the conviction that “I am going to do something about this.”  If it is to be, it’s up to me.   Leading means taking initiative.   Leading is going and showing the way.  Leading uses persuasion rather than position of power.   Like the best navigators in the days of sailing ships, leading means figuring out how to capitalize on – or overcome – the conditions nature or life throws at us.”       (Jim Clemmer)

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves …  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you will not be able to live them.   And the point is, to live everything.   Live the questions now.   Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”        (Mainer Maria Rilke) 

“You don’t need to change the world; you need to change yourself.”      (Miguel Ruiz)

“Make a Difference in Your Life”

“When life knocks you down, try to land on your back.   Because if you can look up, you can get up.   Let your reason get you back up.”        (Les Brown )

“Nearly 100% of innovation … is inspired not by ‘market analysis’ but by people who are supremely pissed off at the way things are.   I happened to believe that only pissed-off people change the world, either in small ways or large ways.”       (Tom Peters)

“You are not here merely to make a living.   You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement.   You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”       (Woodrow T. Wilson)    

“Four Keys to Success

      1.      Show Up on Time

      2.      Do What You Say You Are Going To Do

      3.      Finish What You Start

      4.       Say Please and Thank You”      (Unknown Author)

“At some time in your life, you probably had someone believe in you when you didn’t believe in yourself.   They scripted you.   Did that make a difference in your life?   What if you were a positive scripter, an affirmer, of other people?”     (Stephen R. Covey, Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People)

“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)