“We can change our whole life and the attitude of people around us simply by changing ourselves. —RUDOLF DREIKURS”

“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!”

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

“Have to sow excellent seeds to have an excellent life. Must start with sowing excellent thoughts.”

“Opportunity is in the eye of the beholder.”

“We cannot choose how many years we will live, but we can choose how much life those years will have. We cannot control the beauty of our face, but we can control the expression on it. We cannot control life’s difficult moments, but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds.”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough.”

“The way President Abraham Lincoln is said to have handled a person who had a know-it-all attitude. Lincoln asked, “How many legs will a sheep have if you call a tail a leg?”  “Five,” the man answered. “No,” replied Lincoln, “he’ll still have four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” 

“There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn’t.”

“Achievement comes from the habit of good thinking.”

“Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business.”

“REAL: relationships, equipping, attitude, and leadership.”

“The way I like to measure greatness is . . . How many people can you make want to be better?” —WILL SMITH” 

“A sign of a great team leader is the proper placement of people.”

“Nobody is a whole team . . . We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands we’re not. To make this thing called life work, we gotta lean and support. And relate and respond. And give and take. And confess and forgive. And reach out and embrace and rely . . . Since none of us is a whole, independent, self-sufficient, super-capable, all-powerful hotshot, let’s quit acting like we are. Life’s lonely enough without our playing that silly role. The game is over. Let’s link up.”