35 inspiring quotes for January

Inspirational and motivational quotes for January 2012.

If you would rather get your daily quote via Twitter, please follow Smart Office Pro.

“Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.”
– Charles Givens

“The driver knows how much the ox can carry, and keeps the ox from being overloaded. You know your way and your state of mind. Do not carry too much.”
– Zen saying

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The phrase ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
– Maya Angelou

“In work, do what you enjoy.”
– Lao Tzu

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”
– Dale Carnegie

“The only honest measure of your success is what you are doing compared to your true potential.”
– Paul Meyer

“Less judgment, less trying, less improvement, less regret.”
– Kazuaki Tanahashi

“I am a slow walker … but I never walk backwards.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Although I showed you the means of liberation, you must know it depends on you alone.” – Buddha

“Be truly whole, and all things will come to you.” – Lao Tzu

“Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
– Peter Drucker

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action.”
– Al Batt

“To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.”
– Sister Mary Lauretta

“Real wealth equals ideas plus energy.”
– Buckminster Fuller

“The road to success runs uphill.”
– Willie Davis

“All is changeable, nothing is constant.”
– Buddhist proverb.

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”
– Goethe

“No one can ever gain strength by brooding over his weakness.”
– Paramananda

“I never waste time looking back.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.”
– Henry Kissinger

“Goals are dreams we convert to plans and take action to fulfill.”
– Zig Ziglar

“I don’t dream at night, I dream all day. I dream for a living.”
– Steven Spielberg

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
– Lao Tzu

“I would rather attempt something great and fail than attempt to do nothing and succeed.”
– Robert Schuller

“You must have long range goals to keep from being frustrated by short term failures.”
– Bob Bales

“Successful people get ahead in the time that other people waste.”
– Henry Ford

“Be concerned less with people knowing you than developing qualities worth knowing.”
– Confucius

“A problem is a chance for you to do your best.”
– Duke Ellington

“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes.”
– Washington Irving

“Do what is good and ask not what follows.”
– Kenko

“First, say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.”
– Epictetus

“Success demands singleness of purpose.”
– Vince Lombardi

 

36 inspiring quotes for December

Inspirational and motivational quotes for December 2011.

If you would rather get your daily quote via Twitter, please follow Smart Office Pro.

“It doesn’t matter how many say it cannot be done or how many people have tried it before; it’s important to realize that whatever you’re doing, it’s your first attempt at it.”
– Wally Amos

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it.”
– Margaret Thatcher

“We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.”
– Adlai Stevenson

“The ‘how’ thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ‘ifs.'”
– Norman Vincent Peale

“Success of life depends upon keeping one’s mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes.”
– Alice Foote MacDougall

“Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.”
– Faith Baldwin

“Has fortune dealt you some bad cards? Then let wisdom make you a good gamester.”
– Francis Quarles

“Success is like a ladder and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets.”
– Zig Ziglar

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
– T.S. Eliot

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin

“The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.”
– Anonymous

“If I had my life to live again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”
– Tallulah Bankhead

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
– Norman Vincent Peale

“Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.”
– Bernadette Devlin

“I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.”
– George Patton

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
– Anthony Robbins

“To move the world we must first move ourselves.”
– Socrates

“The merit in action lies in finishing it to the end.”
– Genghis Khan

“Success is the progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined, personal goals.”
– Paul Meyer

“Forget yourself and start to work.”
– Gordon Hinckley

“The history of the world is the history of a few people who had faith in themselves.”
–  Swami Vivekananda

“One must have strategies to execute dreams.”
– Azim Premji

“The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.”
– Arthur Brisbane

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
– Albert Einstein

“I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”
– Michael Jordan

“Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute greatly to success.”
– Harry Fosdick

“Make your life a mission – not an intermission.”
– Arnold Glasgow

“They can because they think they can.”
– Virgil

“It takes 20 years to become an overnight success.”
– Eddie Cantor

“Hard work is the price we must pay for success.”
– Vince Lombardi

“You can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price.”
– Vince Lombardi

“In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”
– Albert Einstein

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
– Steve Jobs

“As we look into the 21st century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
– Bill Gates

“We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.”
– Tobias Wolff

 

Motivation tips

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

A book by Steve Chandler: This is an easy-to-read book you’ll turn to again and again.  Steve Chandler offers 100 ideas to get you moving towards your goals.  A few examples are bounce your thoughts, make trouble work for you, or use the 5% solution.  Follow just a few of the powerful suggestions and you’ll be on your way to success!

The book is also available on CD.  Listen to the audio sample and decide if the author’s voice motivates you.  He reminds me of Harrison Ford.  After he woke up in the middle of the night. After the worst bender of his life.

Buy 100 Ways To Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever

The Top 5 Motivation Poisons

From PickTheBrain: “I hear it all the time from clients and people that I meet: they’re not motivated. They say they’re lazy and wish they could do this or that but…

I’m not big on excuses or labels, especially “lazy”. So, when I hear “I’m just not disciplined,” I almost always ask: Have you ever been disciplined to do anything?  What was it that helped you?  What got in the way?

Identifying obstacles helps you build a sustainable foundation for perseverance in the face of adversity.”

Read The Top 5 Motivation Poisons

What is Commitment?

From Steve Pavlina: “Put your head underwater and keep it there for a while.

You’ll soon realize that you’re 100% committed to breathing.

Notice that you don’t make excuses not to breathe. Notice that you don’t worry about motivating yourself to breathe. Notice that you don’t need to justify your desire to breathe.”

Read the rest of What is Commitment?

 

36 inspiring quotes for November

Inspirational and motivational quotes for November 2011.

If you would rather get your daily quote via Twitter, please follow Smart Office Pro.

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, affects its successful outcome.”
– William James

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
– Alan Alda

“Here is a test to find out whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn’t.”
– Richard Bach

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
– Charles Darwin

“Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse-sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”
– Dale Carnegie

“Try to forget yourself in the service of others. For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests, we easily become despondent. But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.”
– Sidney Powell

“It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will.”
– Henrik Ibsen

“The idle person gets nowhere. The perpetually busy person does not get much further.”
– Sir Heneage Ogilivie

“It is always in season for old men to learn.”
– Aeschylus

“More persons are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.”
– P.T. Barnum

“Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.”
– Luigi Pirandello

“Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.”
– Carl Sandburg

“What is now proved was once only imagined.”
– William Blake

“I figured if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”
– Muhammad Ali

“Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.”
– Lowell Thomas

“Once we know our own weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Well done is better than well said.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“To be a champion, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.”
– Sugar Ray Robinson

“No labor, however humble, is dishonoring.”
– The Talmud

“Don’t dream it. Be it!”
– Richard O’Brian

“Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”
– Jim Rohn

“Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work.”
– Booker T. Washington

“The successful person will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”
– Dale Carnegie

“I’ve always tried to go one step past wherever people expected me to end up.”
– Beverly Sills

“Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”
– Babe Ruth

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Make a success of living by seeing the goal and aiming for it unswervingly.”
– Cecil B. De Mille

“Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It’s up to you to choose which you will be.”
– Harvey Mackay

“Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?”
– Frank Scully

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
– Albert Einstein

“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”
– Anthony Robbins

“Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.”
– Rene Descartes

“Never turn down a job because you think it’s too small; you don’t know where it can lead.”
– Julia Morgan

“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
– Colin Powell

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.”
– Aristotle

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

 

39 inspiring quotes for October

Inspirational and motivational quotes for October 2011.

If you would rather get your daily quote via Twitter, please follow Smart Office Pro.

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
– Anonymous

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”
– Calvin Coolidge

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing.”
– William Butler Yeats

“When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.”
– Shakti Gawain

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”
– D. H. Lawrence

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
– Babe Ruth

“The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.”
– Dag Hammarskjold

“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
– Ralph Nader

“Move and the way will open.”
– Zen proverb

“God gives the walnuts, but He does not crack them.”
– German proverb

“Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.”
– Zig Ziglar

“Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers

“When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.”
– Dalai Lama

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.'”
– Maya Angelou

“Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.”
– Niels Bohr

“A single day is enough to make us a little larger, or another time, a little smaller.”
– Paul Klee

“Knowledge overcomes ignorance as sunlight overcomes darkness.”
– Atmabodha Prakasika

“You can tell a clever man by his answers. You can tell a wise man by his questions.”
– Naguib Mahfouz

“I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.”
– Jonas Salk

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” – Norman Schwarzkopf

“You’ve got to win in your mind before you win in your life.”
– John Addison

“To not advance is to retreat.”
– Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

“The biggest temptation is to settle for too little.”
– Thomas Merton

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”
– Guillaume Apollinaire

“What separates those who achieve from those who do not is one’s ability to ask for help.”
– Donald Keough

“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”
– Chinese proverb

“You can do it if you believe you can.”
– Napoleon Hill

“Tomorrow’s wind blows tomorrow.”
– Koji

“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.” – Earl Wilson

“The key to happiness is having dreams; the key to success is making them
come true.”
– James Allen

“We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond.”
– Marcel Proust

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
– Beverly Sills

“Your success and happiness lie in you.”
– Hellen Keller

“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
– Albert Einstein

“You don’t become enormously successful without encountering interesting problems.”
– Mark Victor Hansen

“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.”
– Napoleon Hill

“Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.”
– Henry Charles Bukowski

“Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.”
– Publilius Syrus

“When ambition ends, happiness begins”
– Hungarian proverb

 

34 inspiring quotes for September

Motivational and inspirational quotes for September 2011.

Please follow Smart Office Pro if you would rather get your daily quote via Twitter.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”
– Warren Buffet

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.
– Plutarch

“Don’t bother just to be better than others.  Try to be better than yourself.”
– William Faulkner

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”
– Mark Twain

“Live a good, honorable life. When you think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.”
– Dalai Lama

“To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.”
– Eric Hoffer

“It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one’s own gift.”
– Nadia Boulanger

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.”
– Ambrose Bierce

“The highest reward for one’s toil is not what one gets for it, but what one becomes by it.”
– John Ruskin

“A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”
– James Lowell

“Knowledge can communicated but not wisdom.”
– Hermann Hesse

“Suffering isn’t ennobling, recovery is.”
– Christiaan Barnard

“The difference between success and mediocrity is all in the way you think.”
– Dean Francis

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– Les Brown

“There is no master, no instructor, no person to tell you what you must do.”
– Krishnamurti

“It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.”
– Roger Babson

“Success is a journey, not a destination.”
– Ben Sweetland

“Great fires erupt from tiny sparks.”
– Arabic proverb

“Another sunrise, another new beginning.”
– Jonathan Huie

“To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.”
– Dorothea Brande

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”
– Chinese proverb

“Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.”
– Al Bernstein

“You can lead a fool to wisdom, but you can’t make him think. ”
– American proverb

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Dig the well before you are thirsty.”
– Chinese proverb

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of somebody else.”
– Judy Garland

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Nelson Mandela

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
– Anonymous

“As you teach, you learn.” – Jewish proverb

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
– Lao Tzu

“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
– John Wooden

 

Team building ideas

Business Team Building Activities: Photography Event

From Team Building Bonanza: “Business team building activities based around photography are for anyone keen on a creative adventure.

All it takes is:

• a bit of enthusiasm and
• at least one digital camera per team.”

Read Business Team Building Activities: Photography Event

Early bird – second mouse exercise

From Businessballs: “This is a simple exercise for groups between 8 and 30 people, and involves many different learning elements: understanding strategies, teamwork, presentations, argument, debate, analysis and group decision-making.

The activity is based on the funny one-liner (often attributed to comedian Stephen Wright), which is deeper than first seems:

‘The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.'”

Learn how to facilitate the Early bird – second mouse exercise

Another Bioteams lesson in teamwork from the ant

From The Bumble Bee: “The BBC Nature site reports on research published in the journal Naturwissenschaften which has discovered that a certain species of stinging ant may grab a fellow worker in their jaws and take them with them to help manage large food items they cannot carry by themselves.”

Read how another Bioteams lesson in teamwork from the ant applies to office teamwork

 

Time management tips

How Good is Your Time Management?

From MindTools: “We’ve put together an interactive Time Management Quiz to help you identify the aspects of time management that you need most help with. The results will point you to the specific tools you need to use to gain control of your time, and start working efficiently.”

Find out How Good is Your Time Management?

10 tips for time management in a multitasking world

From Penelope Trunk: “Time management is one of those skills no one teaches you in school but you have to learn. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t organize information well enough to take it in. And it doesn’t matter how skilled you are if procrastination keeps you from getting your work done.”

Read 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world

Time Management is really YOU Management

From Tony Richards: “The reality is there is no such thing as time savings. There are no time-saving devices. There is no actual way to save or manage time. Time is a fluid thing that keeps on going regardless of what you do. You always have less time, and your future is continually being converted into your past. Successful people and unsuccessful people have the same 24-hour period each day in which to exist and produce.”

Read the rest of Time Management is really YOU Management

 

Motivation tips

Increase Motivation

From PickTheBrain: “If you want to make things happen the ability to motivate yourself and others is a crucial skill. At work, home, and everywhere in between, people use motivation to get results. Motivation requires a delicate balance of communication, structure, and incentives. These 21 tactics will help you maximize motivation in yourself and others.”

Read how to Increase Motivation

The W, W, H of Motivation

From Motivation 123: “Motivation can be needy. It wants this and that–and a little bit of the other thing–before it will kick into gear. Understandable, I suppose, given the large return on your investment.

Though the demands may be many, they aren’t hard to satisfy. The checklist below will give you three of those requirements, among the most important. Follow their advice and you’ll be well on your way to waking up your drive both on and off the job.”

Read the rest of The W, W, H of Motivation

The surprising science of motivation

From Dan Pink at TED: In this video, “Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.”

Watch the surprising science of motivation

 

31 inspiring quotes for August

Motivational and inspirational quotes for August 2011.

Please follow Smart Office Pro if you would rather get a daily quote via Twitter.

“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”
– Don Marquis

“Opportunities are multiplied as they are seized.”
– Sun Tzu

“I’m in love with the potential of miracles. For me, the safest place is out on a limb.”
– Shirley MacLaine

“Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.”
– Henry Ford

“Make voyages!  Attempt them!  There’s nothing else.”
– Tennessee Williams

“Live with no time out.”
– Simone de Beauvoir

“With right attitude, life is very simple and very easy.”
– Paramahansa Yogananda

“What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.”
– Bertrand Russell

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”
– William James

“I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison

“Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood.  Only today does the fire burn brightly.”
– Eskimo proverb

“If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. ”
– David Brinkley

“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”
– Colin Powell

“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”
– Sophia Loren

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
– Olin Miller

“Change before you have to.”
– Jack Welch

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
– Pablo Picasso

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.”
– Mark Twain

“Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”
– Erma Bombeck

“Diligence is the mother of good fortune.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something. Then I realized I am somebody.”
– Lily Tomlin

“Failure is success if we learn from it.”
– Malcom Forbes

“You may delay, but time will not.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
– Jim Rohn

“Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.”
– J. Paul Getty

“Nothing will work unless you do.”
– Maya Angelou

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan

“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
– Eva Young

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
– Bill Cosby