We don't think ourselves into a new way of acting, we act ourselves into a new way of thinking.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 89. See also It’s Easier To Act Your Way Into a New Way of Thinking Than To Think Your Way Into a New Way of Acting – Quote Investigator®
If love is missing? Be that. If connection is absent? Be that. If it's understanding, friendship, or acceptance that's needed, it's time for you to show up big.
Responsibility begins with, "This happened. Now what?" If the answer to that question leaves you hanging, keep looking until you can see yourself not only at the source of your issue but also with a pathway as to how you're going to get out of it.
Unfu*k Yourself 2023 Day-to-Day Calendar: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. July 3
Everything great that has ever happened in this world began with a small action. It was followed by another and then another and then another. For the most part, that's just how we get things done as human beings.
Unfu*k Yourself 2023 Day-to-Day Calendar: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. February 8
I’ve given you seven personal assertions.
Each of them plays into a theme. You may not immediately see it, but it’s there.
If you want your life to be different, you have to make it happen. All of the thinking or meditating or planning or anti-anxiety medication in the world isn’t going to improve your life if you’re not willing to go out and take action and make changes. You can’t sit around waiting for the right mood to strike or for life to play out the way you want it to. Nor can you rely on positive thinking alone to transform things for the better. You have to go out and do.
Gary John Bishop
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.191, 192
The world revolves around change. Birth and death, growth and destruction, rise and fall, summer and winter. It’s never the same from one day to another no matter how much it might seem that it is.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice…” – Heraclitus
Our minds would love to predict and plan for everything that’s going to happen. But it’s simply not possible. And these expectations not only have a negative effect on our emotional state, they actually leave us less powerful than we really could be.
It’s so much more effective to simply take things as they present themselves, to live in the moment (like there’s another moment you could live in), and solve issues and items as they arise, than to constantly expect.
It’s not that I’m anti-planning (I most certainly am not), but the stone-cold attachment to the plan (and all the expectation therein) is a little like falling out of a rowboat and continuing to row even through you have no oars and no boat under you anymore. Your plan (and image) of how this should have gone is no longer relevant but you still struggle to reconcile the space between your expectations and reality.
Life can be like that at times. On some occasions you have to realize that the game has changed (sometimes dramatically so) and you need to pivot. Deal with your reality.
Wake up, you’re in the water. Stop waving your arms about and paddle to shore, dammit!
Gary John Bishop
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.175. 176
It’s all about action. Going out there, doing it, and taking all your negative bullshit along for the ride. It’s never going to get any better, any easier, or any more understandable. This is it, life is now and you’re never going to have a better moment than this.
Don’t know what to do or where to start? Good, that’s your first action. Find out, understand. Trawl the internet, read books, ask questions, take courses, seek advice, do whatever you need to do to unfu*k yourself and get into your life…
“Action may not bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Gary John Bishop
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.135
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.131
“I got this…”
You can handle this. It’s not going to kill you. Your life isn’t over. You’ve got plenty more left in the tank. Plenty.
“I got this” doesn’t mean you have the perfect solution. It just means you have your hands on the wheel, you have a say in this just like you’ve had a say all along. I mean come on, you live for this shit!
It’s not always pretty. It’s not always fun but you’ve got this. We’re not just saying this to paper over the cracks or to make you feel a little better for a split second. Look at your track record; you’ve really got this! You’ll make it work, just like you always have. You had it then and you got it now…
I got this. I got this. I got this.
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.91
Think about it. What are the problems, those heinous, dark shadows currently spoiling the warmth and happiness of your otherwise blissful life?
Do you hate your job? Are you in a bad relationship? Is there something wrong with your health? Fine, get a new job. End the relationship. Change your diet and exercise or locate the kind of help you need. Seems simple doesn’t it? Even when it comes to the things you seemingly had no say in, like the death of a loved one or losing your business, you have a MASSIVE say in the ways you live your life in the aftermath of those events.
If you’re not willing to take the actions to change your situation – in other words, if you’re willing to put up with your situation – then whether you like it or not, that is the life you have chosen.
Before you think “but…” or start to get your knickers in a twist… let me say one more thing: By defending your circumstances as they are right now, you are actually making a case for being where you are. Give it up.
Gary John Bishop
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.29,30
If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one’s feelings by controlling one’s thoughts – or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.
Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.9,10
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
"Barack Obama’s Feb. 5 Speech," New York Times. Feb. 5, 2008. As found in 2022 Great Quotes from Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes from Leaders Who Shaped the World.
A Nonessentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, "How can I do both?" Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, "Which problem do I want?" An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. She acts for herself rather than waiting to be acted upon. As economist Tomas Sowell wrote: "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.55
The essence of digital transformation is to become a data-driven organization, ensuring that key decisions, actions, and processes are strongly influenced by data-driven insights, rather than by human intuition. In other words, you will only transform when you have managed to change how people behave, and how things are done in your organization.
The Essential Components of Digital Transformation by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Harvard Business Review. November 23, 2021
Growing up in Athens, I was brought up on the classics and the Greek myths. They were taught to me not as ancient history, as my children learned them in their American classrooms, but as my personal roots and the source of my identity. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, and, for me, the idea of wisdom is forever identified with her — weaving together strength and vulnerability, creativity and nurturing, passion and discipline, pragmatism and intuition, intellect and imagination, claiming them all, the masculine and the feminine, as part of our essence and expression.
Today we need Athena’s wisdom more than ever. She breathes soul and compassion — exactly what has been missing — into the traditionally masculine world of work and success. Her emergence, fully armed and independent, from Zeus’s head, and her total ease in the practical world of men, whether on the battlefield or in the affairs of the city; her inventive creativity; her passion for law, justice, and politics — they all serve as a reminder that creation and action are as inherently natural to women as they are to men. Women don’t need to leave behind the deeper parts of themselves in order to thrive in a male- dominated world. In fact, women — and men, too — need to reclaim these instinctual strengths if they are to tap into their inner wisdom and redefine success.
Wisdom is precisely what is missing when — like rats in the famous experiment conducted by B. F. Skinner more than fifty years ago — we press the same levers again and again even though there is no longer any real reward. By bringing deeper awareness into our everyday lives, wisdom frees us from the narrow reality we’re trapped in — a reality consumed by the first two metrics of success, money and power, long after they have ceased to fulfill us. Indeed, we continue to pull the levers not only after their diminishing returns have been exhausted, but even after it’s clear they’re actually causing us harm in terms of our health, our peace of mind, and our relationships. Wisdom is about recognizing what we’re really seeking: connection and love. But in order to find them, we need to drop our relentless pursuit of success as society defines it for something more genuine, more meaningful, and more fulfilling.
"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.
I know the soul's struggle of two people: Am I a painter or not? Of Rappard and of myself - a struggle, hard sometimes, a struggle which accurately marks the difference between us and certain other people who take things less seriously; as for us, we feel wretched at times; but each bit of melancholy brings a little light, a little progress; certain other people have less trouble, work more easily perhaps, but then their personal character develops less. You, too, would have that struggle, and I tell you, don't forget that you are in danger of being upset by people who undoubtedly have the very best intentions.
If you hear a voice within you saying, “You are not a painter,” then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working. He who goes to trends and tells his troubles when he feels like that loses part of his manliness, part of the best that's in him; your friends can only be those who themselves struggle against it, who raise your activity by their own example of action. One must undertake it with confidence, with a certain assurance that one is doing a reasonable thing, like the farmer drives his plough, or like our friend in the scratch below, who is harrowing, and even drags the harrow himself. If one hasn't a horse, one is one's own horse - many people do so here.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh. Drenthe, 28 October 1883. Van Gogh's Letters: Unabridged & Annotated. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.
The sign of a great meeting isn’t the meeting itself. It’s what happens after that meeting. Save at least the last five minutes to summarize what you learned, articulate what was valuable, commit to what you are going to do as a result of the meeting, and clarify how you will assess the success of your next steps.
“The Magic of 30-Minute Meetings,” Harvard Business Review. February 22, 2016 as quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.
If you watched Williams’s media appearances throughout the playoffs, you found that he has no problem saying “I don’t know” in response to a difficult question; he said it 17 times during the Finals alone. You also saw that when Williams is asked something that requires perspective, he will make sure to mention how “grateful” he is or how much “gratitude” he has to be in this position—he used those words in answers 18 times during the series, including when talking about how he still gets excited when he gets fresh gear.
Six of those 18 mentions came on Tuesday night, mere minutes after Williams’s Suns had lost Game 6 of the Finals—and an NBA championship—to the Milwaukee Bucks.
“It’s a blur for me right now,” Williams said, talking about the game’s fourth quarter. “I’m just thankful that God allowed me to be in this position to be the head coach in the Finals. It hurts badly, but I’m also grateful that we had this chance to play for a championship. I’m just grateful for that part.”
"The Suns’ Future Is Bright, As Long As They Have Monty Williams" The Ringer. July 22, 2021
"I ask the managers to judge every action they take -- not just by legal standards, though obviously, that's the first test -- but also by what I call the 'newspaper test,'" explained Buffett.
Basically, if an article "written by a smart but pretty unfriendly reporter" appeared in a local newspaper about a decision or action you made, and your family, friends, and neighbors read it, how would you feel about it?
"It's pretty simple," says Buffett. "If [your decision or action] passes that test, it's okay. If anything is too close to the lines, it's out."
Buffett's newspaper test, if you pass it, can take you far because in business, if your reputation fails, game over.
"We have all the money we need," the billionaire said. "We'd like to have more, but we can afford to lose money. But we can't afford to lose reputation."
Buffett's reputation line was not a fleeting one-time remark to pass off to a student. It's a life lesson he's lived by as the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you'll do things differently."
"20 Years Ago, Warren Buffett Shared a Brutal Truth That Most People Have Yet to Learn," Inc. May 5, 2021.
