“If at First You Do Succeed, Try Something Harder”

“You are nothing unless it comes from your heart. Passion, caring, really looking to create excellence. If you perform functions only and go to work only to do processes, then you are effectively retired. And it scares me—most people I see, by age twenty-eight are retired.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“What do the people closest to you value? Make a list of the most important people in your life-from home, work, church, hobbies, and so on. After making the list, write what each person values most. Then rate yourself on a scale of 1 (poorly) to 10 (excellently) on how well you relate to that person's values. If you can't articulate what someone values or you score lower than an 8 in relating to that person, spend more time with him or her to improve.”

“I remember looking at myself in the mirror one morning and thinking, I am not a handsome guy. What am I going to do with a face like this? Then I smiled. And I thought, That helps.”

“Needless to say, you can love people without leading them, but you cannot lead people without loving them.”

“Of all the things a leader should fear, complacency should head the list. —John C. Maxwell”

“¡Es más fácil avanzar del fracaso al éxito que de las excusas al éxito!”

“Coach John Wooden would not have asked, “Why is it so difficult to realize that others are more likely to listen to us if first we listen to them?”

“Experience alone isn’t a good enough teacher – evaluated experience is.”

“It's said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others' mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others's successes.”

“The Norwegians have a saying that I think captures their attitude: "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

“If you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, then someday you can do the things you want do when you want to do them.”

“How to prepare someone for leadership: I do it. I do it and you watch. You do it and I watch. You do it. You do it and someone else watches.” 

“la persona que sabe cómo, siempre tendrá un trabajo, pero la persona que sabe por qué siempre será el jefe.”