I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Mark Twain
Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.
Benjamin Franklin
You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
Abraham Maslow
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
William James
We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.
Edward Gibbon
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel
The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.
Isabelle Eberhardt
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
Abraham Lincoln
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
George Eliot
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.
William Shakespeare
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
John Dewey
It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
James Gordon
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
Evenius
One of the marks of excellent people is that they never compare themselves with others. They only compare themselves with themselves and with their past accomplishments and future potential.
Brian Tracy
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
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
Saint Francis de Sales
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wealth is not in making money, but in making the man while he is making money. Production, not destruction, leads to success.
John Wicker
Cause and effect is as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as in the world of visible and material things. A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harboring of groveling thoughts.
James Allen
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Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set.
James Allen
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If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
Tony Robbins
For things to change, you've got to change. For things to get better, you've got to get better.
Jeff Olson
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Your optimal rate of growth is always served best by a step-by-step approach of constant, never-ending improvement, which lays solid foundations and builds upon them over and over.
Jeff Olson
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Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Pat Riley
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.
Henry David Thoreau
The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
Character is formed, not by laws, commands, and decrees, but by quiet influence, unconscious suggestion and personal guidance.
Marion Burton
Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Walter Anderson
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
Elizabeth Stanton
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
No man is capable of self-improvement if he sees no other model but himself.
Conrado Generoso
Ask yourself the easy questions and you’ll have a hard life. Ask yourself the hard questions and you’ll have an easier life.
Peter Thomson
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Charles du Bois
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
Plutarch
Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can´t change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing.
Jim Rohn
Those who seek a better life must first become a better person.
Jim Rohn
You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Robert Louis Stevenson
Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
Jim Rohn
When life does not go our way or we inadvertently make a mistake, it is so easy to make excuses, place blame on others, or argue that circumstances were against us. But we only progress in life to the extent that we take responsibility for our actions and attitudes, and put forth the initiative necessary to create our own circumstances.
Stephen Covey
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle
Most people are just trying to get through the day. Sophisticated people learn how to get from the day.
Jim Rohn
The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.
Whitney Young
Wealth, notoriety, place, and power are no measure of success whatever. The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the thing we have made of ourselves on the other.
H. G. Wells
Everything in your life gets better when you get better, and nothing is ever going to get better until you get better.
Larry Winget
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Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
Karen Kaiser Clark
When you love your job, you will work on yourself so you will be better for your job. You will love it enough to be good at it. If you aren't doing that, you don't love your job at all; you love going to that place where you hang out and they pay you for it.
Larry Winget
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Your future is up to you, not your employer. You have to get better in order for your circumstances to get better, and that must be done on your own time.
Larry Winget
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People change their lives when they want to, not because I want them to. No book ever changed a life and no speaker ever did, either. People have the power to change their own lives and no author or speaker should take the credit for it.
Larry Winget
It is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself.
Alexander Graham Bell
Live your life as if you were already the outstanding person that you intend to be sometime in the future.
Brian Tracy
To achieve something that you have never achieved before, you must become something that you have never been before.
Les Brown
Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.
Steve Pavlina
Every time we choose action over ease or labor over rest, we develop an increasing level of self-worth, self-respect and self-confidence. In the final analysis, it is how we feel about ourselves that provides the greatest reward from any activity. It is not what we get that makes us valuable, it is what we become in the process of doing that brings value into our lives. It is activity that converts human dreams into human reality, and that conversion from idea into actuality gives us a personal value that can come from no other source.
Jim Rohn
Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves - to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.
Stewart B. Johnson
People naturally tend toward inertia. That's why self improvement is such a struggle. But that's also why adversity lies at the heart of every success. The process of achievement comes through repeated failures and the constant struggle to climb to a higher level.
John Maxwell
To achieve your dreams, you must embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.
John Maxwell
Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
Ausonius
Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.
Brian Tracy
The greatest thing about tomorrow is I will be better than I am today. And that's how I look at my life. I will be better as a golfer, I will be better as a person, I will be better as a father, I will be a better husband, I will be better as a friend. That's the beauty of tomorrow. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better.
Tiger Woods
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Seneca
If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
Stephen Covey
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The inside out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey
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Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is "outside-in" - what's out there has to change before we can change.
Stephen Covey
The proactive approach is to change from the inside-out: to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.
Change is automatic. Progress is not.
Tony Robbins
The way you develop the courage you need is to act as if you already had the courage and behave accordingly.
Brian Tracy
Keep your mind open to change all the time. Welcome it. Court it. It is only by examining and reexamining your opinions and ideas that you can progress.
Dale Carnegie
I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience. I believe that to the degree people live by this inspired conscience, they will grow to fulfill their natures; to the degree that they do not, they will not rise above the animal plane.
Stephen Covey
Every positive change in your life begins with a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to either do something or stop doing something.
Brian Tracy
You have to be before you can do, and you have to do before you can have.
Zig Ziglar
This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.
Saint Augustine
We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any endeavor by treating it like a snack food that we munch on whenever we’re getting bored. You get good at something by doing it repeatedly. And by listening to specific criticism from people who are already good at what you do. And by a dedication to getting better, even when it’s inconvenient and may not involve a handy bulleted list.
Merlin Mann
How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavor to flee from another's which is not.
Marcus Aurelius
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Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin
You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person.
Scott Sorrell
The first step to getting good is admitting that you aren't (yet.)
Seth Godin
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We find comfort among those who agree with us — growth among those who don’t.
Frank Clark
If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
Bruce Lee
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
Epictetus
Don’t read stuff by people who got successful by telling other people how to be successful.
Brad Bollenbach
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde
We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.
James Truslow Adams
Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do.
Seneca
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It's easy to feel trapped in your own life. Circumstances can sometimes feel as if they form a jail around you. But there's almost nothing you can't learn your way out of. If you don't like who you are, you have the option of learning until you become someone else. Life is like a jail with an unlocked, heavy door. You're free the minute you realize the door will open if you simply lean into it.
Scott Adams
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The real fun of life is this perpetual testing to realize how far out you can go with any potentialities.
Richard Feynman
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How do you grade yourself? It's important to know in advance, to make sure you're staying focused on what's honestly important to you, instead of doing what others think you should.
Derek Sivers
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