Roy Exum
I was in the middle of my morning reading when I happened across a list of motivational quotes from a true motivational expert. I’m the world’s biggest lover of the wisdom in life and today, after both the Vols and the Mocs got mangled before our very eyes, let me share a bunch of Dr. Travis Bradberry’s favorites.
Several years ago he and Jean Greaves wrote the enormously popular book, “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” after their research found only 36 percent of us can accurately identify our emotions as they happen. While there is little doubt some of my college football friends are struggling with such a fierce test of emotions after this weekend, I am thinking that any one of Dr. Bradberry’s gems could buoy us as we begin a new week. Here is a psychologist’s list of favorites that just appeared on the Huffington Post website.
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1. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” -Mother Teresa
2. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
3. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” -Henry Ford
4. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” -Vince Lombardi
5. “Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent of how I react to it.” -Charles Swindoll
6. “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.” -Oprah Winfrey
7. “Remember -- no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
8. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” -Jimmy Dean
9. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” -Audrey Hepburn
10. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
11. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” -Les Brown
12. “Do or do not. There is no try.” -Yoda
13. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” -Napoleon Hill
14. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain
15. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” -Michael Jordan
16. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” -Albert Einstein
17. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” -Stephen Covey
18. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” -Henry Ford
19. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” -Alice Walker
20. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” -Amelia Earhart
21. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” -Aristotle Onassis
22. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” -Robert Louis Stevenson
23. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” -Ayn Rand
24. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. -Vincent Van Gogh
25. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” -Farrah Gray
26. “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” -Dalai Lama
27. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein
28. “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” -Bob Dylan
29. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” -Leonardo da Vinci
30. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” -Helen Keller
31. “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” -John Lennon
32. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
33. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” -George Addair
34. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” -Plato
35. “Nothing will work unless you do.” -Maya Angelou
36. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” -Theodore Roosevelt
37. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” -Plutarch
38. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.” - Jack Welch
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I thought you would enjoy that and, remember this: “You won’t worry about whether you fit in once you realize you were custom made.”
royexum@aol.com