Career

• “…coming into work earlier, reading regularly in your field, taking courses to improve your skills, and focusing on high-value tasks in your work will all combine to have an enormous positive impact on your future.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 27
• “In your Zone of Genius, you don’t feel like you’re working. Even though the time you spend there produces great financial abundance, you do not feel that you are expending an effort to produce it. In your Zone of Genius, work doesn’t feel like work. In your Zone of Genius, time feels completely different. Time seems to expand to support your activities. You have plenty of time to do what you most want to do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks)- Page 120
• “I’ve found that it’s essential, to begin with, a commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Your commitment must come before you know how to make good on it. The image that comes to mind is from the third Indiana Jones movie, in which Indy must step out into thin air, in a gesture of commitment, before a bridge magically appears beneath his feet. The power of your commitment brings forth the means necessary for you to live in your Zone of Genius. If you will make a powerful, sincere commitment—a vow that you really want to live your life in the Zone of Genius—your journey will be blessed with uncommon good fortune at all the twists and turns of the road. Commitment has that power.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks)- Page 121
• “I spent a lot of time wondering how to distinguish my genius from my excellence. I finally realized a big key to it: my genius is connected to what I most love to do. That’s why I want you to wonder about what you most love to do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks)- Page 122
• “So, enter the outskirts of your Zone of Genius by asking yourself what you most love to do. Wonder about this until you have a clearly forming sense of it in your body. You don’t have to know it clearly or specifically yet. You just need to feel the glimmer of it in your inner world.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks)- Page 124
• “What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? (I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.) When you’re doing this certain thing (and not burdened with the pressures and irritations of running a business), you are at your very happiest. When you’re doing it, you think “This is why I do the work I do.”” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks)- Page 125
• “There is some essential aspect of the work you do that produces the greatest payoff… Whatever it is, I want you to find it, and I want you to put the highest priority on doing some of it every day.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks)- Page 127 -128
• “I think of the Zone of Genius as a continuous spiral. You go higher and higher every day as you expand your capacity for more love, abundance, and success. It’s an upward journey with no upper limit. By contrast, I think of the lower zones as boxes. For example, your Zone of Excellence is a space in which you know how to function so well that you can attain great results without stretching yourself very much. It’s a box, though, because ultimately you find yourself stymied and unsatisfied within it. You’re doing the same thing over and over, and while it feeds the people around you, it doesn’t feed you. You need to get out of any boxes you’re in so you can taste the sweet freedom of living on a continuous upward spiral. To do that, a central guiding intention comes in very handy.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks)- Page 144
• “Does it fit in your Zone of Genius?” The question took me so by surprise that I burst out laughing. “No,” I said, “except maybe the fifty thousand dollars part!” Here’s where the magic of saying an Enlightened No comes into play. I sent them an e-mail that explained why I was turning them down. In part, it said, “I’ve been really benefiting in recent years from focusing on activities that are in what I call my Zone of Genius. These are things that I’m uniquely suited to do, and which serve my highest purposes for my life. While I like the people I’ve met from your company, and while I think the devices are useful, I’m going to turn down your generous offer because it doesn’t fit in the sweet spot of my Zone of Genius.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks)- Page 153
• “Most opportunities to say an Enlightened No do not come attached to compelling amounts of cash. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s not about the cash value of the thing you’re saying no to. It’s about strengthening your commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Each time you say an Enlightened No to something that does not serve your genius, you build a stronger foundation for yourself in the zone.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks)- Page 153
• “Commitment gets you started and propels you through the early stages of any game, but it’s recommitment that ignites your reserves when you feel like you’re going to give up.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks)- Page 154
• “To keep your life in balance, you should resolve to work all the time you work. When you go to work, put your head down and work the whole time. Start a little earlier, stay a little later, and work a little harder. Don’t waste time.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 53
• “…time that you waste at work often has to be taken away from the members of your family. You have to either stay late or take work home and work in the evenings. By not working effectively and efficiently during your workday, you create unnecessary stress and deprive the members of your family of the very best person you can possibly be.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 53
• “Never lose sight of the real reasons why you work as hard as you do and why you are so determined to accomplish the very most with the time that you invest. The more time you spend face-to-face with people you love, the happier you will be.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 54
• “To accomplish a great task, you must step out in faith and have complete confidence that your next step will soon become clear to you. Remember this wonderful advice. “Leap- and the net will appear!” A great life or great career is built by performing one task at a time, quickly and well, and then going on to the next task. Financial independence is achieved by saving a little money every single month, year after year. Health and fitness are accomplished by just eating a little less and exercising a little more, day after day, and month after month.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 61
• “1^st: read in your file for at least one hour every day. 2^nd: take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you. 3^rd: listen to audio programs in your car” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 65
• “Your job is to identify your special areas of uniqueness and then to commit yourself to become very, very good in those areas.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 67
• “Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor.” John Haggai. Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 80
• “Controllers can devastate their children’s lives, dangling money like a carrot on a stick to ‘encourage children to go to the right school, get the right job, or marry the right person.” Beating the Midas Curse, by Perry L. Cochell and Rodney C. Zeeb, Page
• “Those who have the courage to discover and bring forth their genius breakthrough to unparalleled heights of productivity and life satisfaction. Discovering your Zone of Genius is your life’s Big Leap. Everything up until now has been about hops, not leaps. Hopping, though it seems safe, is actually hazardous to your health. If you confine yourself to hops, you run the risk of rusting from the inside out. I know. I caught myself, halfway through my life, in the very act of rusting. There I was, hopping along in my Zone of Excellence when suddenly I became aware of a dull and sluggish feeling deep within me. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. As I tuned in to it, I realized it had been there for months, maybe years. I had gotten to a place in my life where I could almost sleepwalk through doing all the things that kept me successful—writing books, giving speeches, coaching executives, teaching seminars. I did them and did them and did them, and the money kept pouring in. Soon there were employees, a big building, three houses, and an army of support personnel that needed to be fed. I remember well the day it all imploded on me. I got off the plane, exhausted from a grueling trip during which I’d given many talks and seminars—nineteen cities in twenty-one days. I stopped by the office on the way home, and there I encountered glum looks on the faces of my accountant and administrative director. They announced that taxes were due and that because of a cash-flow shortfall I needed to borrow $120,000 from myself to pay our taxes. I felt like a hunter-gatherer returning with a wild boar for the campfire, expecting high-fives and a hot dinner, only to be told I also owed a couple of buffalo. I slunk home, dejected and irritated, and there I found that my garage door opener had died. Leaving my car in the driveway, I trudged out to get the mail. The first thing I pulled out was a big envelope emblazoned with this headline: “Congratulations on Turning 50! Here Is Your Free AARP Card!” I paused to digest the significance of this moment, and that’s when I became aware of the sluggish, dull feeling deep within me. At first, I worried it might be a medical problem, so I started by getting a thorough workup. I discovered that I was in the best of health, except for twenty extra pounds of prosperity-induced padding, the effects of too many well-paid after-dinner speeches. Finding I was in good health meant I had to take a deeper look. When I did, I found the source of my rust, and that discovery changed my life. The source was hidden in plain sight: it was the Upper Limit Problem I knew so well. In spite of knowing a lot about it intellectually, I had gotten comfortably numb in my Zone of Excellence. So comfortably numb, in fact, that the ULP had sneaked up and gotten me. Without realizing it, I’d worn such a comfortable rut in my Zone of Excellence that I had overlooked the beckoning calls of my Zone of Genius. Fortunately, I got the message in time. I want to make sure you do, too.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 113
• “The theme was “If it weren’t for _______________, I could be doing what I really want to do.”” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 117
• “What was especially striking to me was that the professors envied the private-practice people, who in turn were envious of the professors. From the professors’ viewpoint, the private-practice people had it made, with their big salaries, plush offices, and absence of faculty meetings. To the private-practice crowd, though, the professors were the ones with the cushy jobs. They got a steady paycheck, free office space, short hours, and plenty of time to write. As the evening wore on, I listened to one tale of thwarted hopes after another. Finally, I was jolted by an insight: none of these complaints were actually caused by pigheaded bureaucrats, lack of parking spaces, ungrateful clients, or anything of the sort. In other words, none of these brilliant, well-meaning people were upset for the reasons they thought they were. Their complaints were all symptoms of not taking the Big Leap! From this perspective, every story took on a different meaning,” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 117
• “After listening to a complaint, I would ask, “If outside influences like money or insurance companies or bureaucrats were not a problem, what would you really love to be doing?” I learned a lot from what each person told me. First, almost everyone could tell me clearly what they’d love to be doing. Their answers included things like: I’d love to have time to write the book I’ve been wanting to write. I’d love to create videos so more people could get access to the techniques I use. I’d love to have more of an impact on the world. What caught my attention, though, was the emotional tone behind those statements. Every time, the person’s face took on an expression of longing tinged with hope or burdened by despair. Longing is a persistent, lingering feeling of wanting something you can’t quite get or something you’ve judged unobtainable. If you think there’s still a possibility of attaining it, your longing is flavored by hope. If you think it’s unobtainable, your longing sinks into a bog of despair. The longing was what I was hearing in every one of those conversations.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level(Gay Hendricks) Page 118
• “Most people have a carefully crafted, well-justified story about why they can’t take their Big Leap. For one person it was about the family: “I can’t possibly take the time to write [“make a video,” etc.] because my family needs me.” For another person it was about stress: “I tried getting up at 5 a.m. for a while to work on my book, but I couldn’t do that and do a good job with my 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. therapy clients.” For others it was purely about the money: “I can’t do what I really want to do because I might not make as much money doing it.” As I listened to these stories, I would sometimes hear the real fears emerge. There is a huge fear underneath every complaint: If I took the Big Leap into my Zone of Genius, I might fail. What if I really opened up to my true genius and found that my genius wasn’t good enough? Better to keep the genie in the bottle and coast along in the Zone of Excellence. That way I don’t have to risk taking a Big Leap and finding it isn’t good enough. That way I don’t have to risk discovering the ugly possibility that I don’t have a Zone of Genius.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 119
• “I’ve found that it’s essential to begin with a commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Your commitment must come before you know how to make good on it. The image that comes to mind is from the third Indiana Jones movie, in which Indy must step out into thin air, in a gesture of commitment, before a bridge magically appears beneath his feet. The power of your commitment brings forth the means necessary for you to live in your Zone of Genius. If you will make a powerful, sincere commitment—a vow that you really want to live your life in the Zone of Genius—your journey will be blessed with uncommon good fortune at all the twists and turns of the road. Commitment has that power.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 121
• “I spent a lot of time wondering how to distinguish my genius from my excellence. I finally realized a big key to it: my genius is connected to what I most love to do. That’s why I want you to wonder about what you most love to do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 122
• “What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? (I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.) When you’re doing this certain thing (and not burdened with the pressures and irritations of running a business), you are at your very happiest. When you’re doing it, you think “This is why I do the work I do.”” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 125
• “Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement (or how positive and productive people are at work), and only one-third “strongly agree” with the statement: “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.” And for those who do not get to focus on what they do best—their strengths—the costs are staggering. In a recent poll of more than 1,000 people, among those who “strongly disagreed” or “disagreed” with this “what I do best” statement, not one single person was emotionally engaged on the job. In stark contrast, our studies indicate that people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.” StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath) Kindle Location 118-26
• “Yet it’s clear from Gallup’s research that each person has greater potential for success in specific areas, and the key to human development is building on who you already are.” StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath) Kindle Location 201-2
• “Instead, we’ve discovered that the most successful people start with dominant talent—and then add skills, knowledge, and practice to the mix. When they do this, the raw talent actually serves as a multiplier.” StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath) Kindle Location 274-76
• “I have heard very fearful and even dismal opinions coming from some in your age group regarding the questions that missionary had in mind. I have heard some of you say that you wonder whether there is any purpose in going on a mission or getting an education or planning for a career if the world we live in is going to be so uncertain. I have even heard sweethearts say, “We don’t know whether we should get married in such uncertain times.” Worst of all, I have heard reports of some newlyweds questioning whether they should bring children into a terror-filled world on the brink of latter-day cataclysms. May I tell you that, in a way, those kinds of attitudes worry me more than Al-Qaeda worries me? We must never, in any age or circumstance, let fear and the father of fear (Satan himself) divert us from our faith and faithful living. There have always been questions about the future. Every young person and every young couple in every era has had to walk by faith into what has always been some uncertainty—starting with Adam and Eve in those first tremulous steps out of the Garden of Eden. But that is all right. This is the plan. It will be okay. Just be faithful. God is in charge. He knows your name and He knows your need.” Broken Things to Mend (Jeffrey R. Holland) Kindle Loc. 778-87
• “I suspect that a boy born today with the DNA of General Patton or Howard Hughes would more likely become a video game addict. He might have a job, but there’s a real risk that his drive and his energy would be directed into the video games rather than into his career.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 59
• “Today’s retirees aren’t retiring — they’re moving on to explore new options, pursue old dreams, and live life to the fullest. They’re seeing the longevity bonus as a chance to devote energy to pursuits they may not have had the time or freedom to chase during the “career” portion of their lives, to stay stimulated, and to strengthen and expand their social network.”—Merrill Lynch 2013 Retirement Study with Age Wave
• “The Rev. F. Washington Jarvis, headmaster emeritus of the Roxbury Latin School, says that true happiness in life comes from a long-term vision of our life. Jarvis writes in his book, With Love and Prayers,“Important, though, as a vision is [regarding career and lifestyle], it is nothing like as important as an overall vision for your whole life. We might call such a vision existential; it has to do with the discovery by you of some meaning and purpose to your whole existence. Inevitably such a vision must entail not only finding meaning in your life but meaning also in your inevitable death.” He goes on to say, “If you want to be happy, you must learn to love: to pay the price of caring for others, of putting the first, of inconveniencing yourself. That is the pathway to happiness.”” Wealth in Families Third Edition (Charles W. Collier) Page 10
• “I feel strongly that parents should not give their children a significant financial inheritance during their career-building years, say, ages 22 to 35. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t help them out financially with their needs around health, education, reasonable housing, philanthropy, entrepreneurial activity, and financial education. But in terms of when they are going to receive a large inheritance, it shouldn’t be during those important career-building years. I don’t think they should get it until they’re around 40. They need to make it on their own if they’re going to achieve any kind of competence. Money can derail the work they need to do during those critical years.” Wealth in Families Third Edition (Charles W. Collier) Page 47
• “Our parents were clear about the dual purpose of the wealth: to enable us to live well while pursuing diverse careers and to allow us to support causes we cared about.” Wealth in Families Third Edition(Charles W. Collier) Page 57
• “That made my last base hit that bunt single way back in L.A. My first hit in my first full year in the majors, 1973, was also a bunt single. Bookend bunt singles, sixteen years apart, with 548 homers stacked in the middle.”  Clearing the Bases (Schmidt, Mike; Waggoner, Glen) Kindle Location  970-972
• “I had scripted a small farewell speech for the press conference, one I now see was pretty pathetic. The opening line, “Twenty years ago I left Dayton, Ohio, with two bad knees…” Well, it just flat stunk. What I was trying to say was that when I departed from home twenty years ago, the odds of me standing before a national TV audience explaining why I couldn’t play another game—I was done at 2,404—were off the charts. I had no chance of doing what I did, but it happened.”  Clearing the Bases (Schmidt, Mike; Waggoner, Glen) Kindle Location  988-992
• “I say that with mixed feelings, as I always wished that I could have enjoyed being Mike Schmidt more than I did. I never really allowed myself to have fun on the field. Actually, the real joy started then, when I began to see who I was, finally understand what I meant to my teammates, the Phillies organization, and my fans. The blinders were removed. For the first time, I could see and feel everyone around me. If only I could have had that experience while in uniform…”  Clearing the Bases (Schmidt, Mike; Waggoner, Glen) Kindle Location  1002-1005
• “Controllers can devastate their children’s lives, dangling money like a carrot on a stick to ‘encourage children to go to the right school, get the right job, or marry the right person.”  Beating the Midas Curse, by Perry L. Cochell and Rodney C. Zeeb, Page 47
• “Yet it’s clear from Gallup’s research that each person has greater potential for success in specific areas, and the key to human development is building on who you already are.”  StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath)  Kindle Location 201-2
• “That made my last base hit that bunt single way back in L.A. My first hit in my first full year in the majors, 1973, was also a bunt single. Bookend bunt singles, sixteen years apart, with 548 homers stacked in the middle.”  Clearing the Bases (Schmidt, Mike; Waggoner, Glen) Kindle Location  970-972
• “Our parents were clear about the dual purpose of the wealth: to enable us to live well while pursuing diverse careers and to allow us to support causes we cared about.” Wealth in Families Third Edition (Charles W. Collier) Page 57
• “Most important, he focused intently on the nearly seven thousand patients who would submit to his scalpel. “The duty of a doctor, primarily, is to teach,” Dr. Nelson explained. “A doctor is really functioning at his highest level when he is teaching his patient what is wrong and what can be done about it” (Condie, Russell M. Nelson) Insight’s from a Prophet’ Life, Page 60
• “Nonetheless, as Russell’s career accelerated, he experienced firsthand that as he shared the insights and knowledge God gave him, God gave him more.” Insight’s from a Prophet’ Life, Russell M. Nelson, Page 58