Insults are like water on the oil-paper of my soul.
- Kurt Decoene (after a run-in with Hinduism and Buddhism a few years back )

Happiness is the best facelift.
- Diana Krall

How many of us go through our days parched and empty, thirsting after happiness, when we're really standing knee-deep in the river of abundance?

Learn to laugh now at the things you'll look back on and laugh at in the future.

You are always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.
- Diane von Furstenberg

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

Twenty-five years of study has convinced me that if we habitually believe, as does the pessimist, that misfortune is our fault, is enduring, and will undermine everything we do, more of it will befall us than if we believe otherwise.
- Dr. Martin Seligman

Seek out that particular mental attribute that makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes a voice that says, "This is the real me," and when you have that attitude, follow it.
- William James

In order to be big, you have to think big. If you think small, you're going to be small.
- Emeril Lagasse

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Every so often you run into someone whose attitude seems to be "Life sucks, and I've been put here to pass on the message."

It isn’t who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you are not.
- Anonymous

IT'S ALL ABOUT BELIEFS: It wasn't until 1865 that the Matterhorn was first climbed. Four men in the party died during the descent. It took 30 years and 20 deaths before Everest was first successfully climbed and it was generally considered "Impossible without oxygen." In 1975, 2 men made it. Mount Blanc used to take 3 days to climb. Last year, a climber did it in 7 hours. Now, athletes actually have a race to the top of Matterhorn, where they start at 2000 feet and run to the peak, up 35 degree inclines at a rate of 1500 meters an hour.

Nature present us with an infinite variety of Attitudes - from gloomy mist to glorious sunshine. Our own moods, whether gloomy or bright, radiate to those around us.

Pride is a personal commitment; it is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.

The currents that determine our dreams and shape our lives, flow from the attitudes we nurture every day.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Choose your words, for they become actions.
Understand your actions, for they become habits.
Study your habits, for they will become your character.
Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.
It's not what you get in life. It's what YOU do with it!
- The "Original" Mike Smith

Beware of anger and avoid grievous moods. Rest your head and keep your mind cheerful.
- Leonardo da Vinci

It’s not what you eat, it’s what eating you.
- Zig Ziglar

Without belief there can be no successful outcome.
- William James

To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have.
- Ken Keyes

Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we shall tend.

If your attitude is "When you WIN, rub it IN", you are doomed to eventually losing.

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
- Charles Swindoll

How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with fear of what those words might do to the relationship.
Instead, don't be afraid to turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you, it will only help you. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is."
Same for loneliness; you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely-but eventually be able to say. "All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world and I'm going to experience them as well."
I don't want to live life in a state of fear, loneliness, anger, depression or other negative emotions. I want to fully immerse myself in them, know they exist and then detach from them so that I can then experience the joy and peace and happiness and love that life has to offer more fully. I want to experience each happening, accept it, get to a peaceful place, and then let it go.
- Exerpt from "Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man and Life's Greatest Lesson" by Mitch Albom

The man who cannot believe in himself cannot believe in anything else.
- Roy L. Smith

How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.
- Paul Cousins

Half my job is keeping people in the right frame of mind.
- President Clinton

I always remember an epitaph in the cemetery at Tombstone, AZ. It says: "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest." I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have - when he gives everything that is in him to the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do.
- Harry S. Truman

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
- Lou Holtz

Make your vocation your vacation.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie

Chase your passion, not your pension.

Take 15 golden minutes making positive affirmations:
At the beginning of each day, take 15 minutes to think about the positive actions you intend to take that day.
At the end of each day, take 15 minutes to think about what happened good that day and what new things you learned that day.

The only real disability in life is a bad attitude.

Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.

We are what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut, JR

Change Your STATE of Mind ...
Support ... encourage personal and professional growth
Trust ... confidence that your team members have your best interests in mind
Accountability ... ability to choose how you respond and willingness to live & learn from results
Truth ... telling the truth to yourself so that you can tell the truth to others
Energy ... the outcome of living the values of STATE and Playing to Win

In life, you can't control much of what happens to you, but you can control your reaction to what happens to you.

The quality of a person's life is in direct production to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

Nothing in the world can take place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
- Confucius

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
- Henrik Ibson

U-turn if you want to. This lady's not for turning.
- Margaret Thatcher

So long as a man is angry, he can't be in the right.
- Chinese proverb

He who angers you, controls you!

I never practice; I always play.
- Wanda Landowska, harpsichord master

An uninspiring person believes according to what he achieves. An aspiring person achieves according to what he believes.
- Sri Chinmoy

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

There is a difference between dedication and commitment. The chicken is dedicated, she lays eggs; the pig is committed, he gives us bacon. Be committed. Be committed to the team, to your goals, to excellence. Be committed to knowing and doing your job better everyday. Be committed, period. Dedication is good, but it always leaves a way to bail out if things don’t go as you had hoped. Commitment is real, it is 100%, it is do or die, you go we go, it is brothers ‘til the end.
- Mike West

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
- Robert Frost

Just because you are sitting in the shade of a tree doesn't mean that the tree isn't beautiful and that the sun isn't shining.
- Jennifer DeFrance

There are three horses who have never come in win, place, or even show. Their names are Coulda, Woulda, and Shoulda.

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little.
- Edmund Burke

Sign of Our Times:
Bumper Sticker: It’s all about me.

Everything can be taken from us but one thing; the last of human freedoms – to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances – to choose our own way.
- Victor Frankl

Thirty years ago, psychologist and scholar Philip Riff introduced the concept of psychological man who is rapidly becoming the dominant character type in our society. For psychological man, life centers not on the soul, but on the self. He rejects both the idea of sin and the need for salvation, aspiring to nothing higher than feeling good about himself.
- Dr. Laura Schlessinger

Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities.
- Norman Vincent Peale