The 20 Greatest Motivational Quotes Of All Time

1. “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” -George Bernard Shaw

Apparently it’s statesmanlike to stand firm and not change your mind. It’s also idiotic if you ignore new evidence and refuse to admit you may have been wrong.

I remember when John Kerry ran against George Bush and it was discovered he’d changed his stance on the war in Iraq. He was pilloried by the Republicans for being a flip-flopper rather than commended for being honest enough to accept he was wrong.

2. “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” – William H Murray

This is often mistakenly attributed to Goethe when it really just came from a Goethe couplet and is presumed to have been said in full my Scottish Mountaineer, W H Murray.

Is there are greater quote on the importance of commitment? I doubt it.

3. “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing” – Elbert Hubbard

Many people are terrified of criticism and will often keep their head down and go with the flow for fear of being on the receiving end of it. The world doesn’t need that, speak your mind

4. “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” – Margaret Mead

Another oft cited quote and one that inspires people (or at least should do) to believe they really do have more power than they could ever imagine. Don’t ever think you are powerless.

5. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” – Winston Churchill

There are so many quotes regarding the importance of failure in being successful, but imho, this is the best.

6. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi

I almost left this out because it’s tweeted to death and it possibly the most well-known quote in the universe. But there’s a good reason for that, and that’s because it’s stunningly brilliant.

You cannot ever change anybody else, you can only change yourself and hope you inspire other people to do the same.

7. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” – Thomas Edison.

Three years ago I had a client that I knew was really close to making a huge breakthrough when she lost her nerve. The fact that I’m telling you about it know demonstrates how frustrated as a Life Coach I was. There is a time for giving up and a time for pushing through, even though the latter can sometimes be scary.

8. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing” - George Bernard Shaw

I hit 50 next year and it seems incomprehensible to me. I still get hyper excited about work, I still laugh my ass off at juvenile humor and as I type this I have loud dance music playing in the background.

Don’t stop being young because your birth certificate tells you too.

9. “You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger” - Buddha

Is there any need to explain this? Probably not because we all know how shit we feel when we’re angry, so let it go and don’t feel shit.

10. “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans” – John Lennon

Doesn’t that sum up many people you know, maybe even yourself? Are you so busy planning what’s next, that you forget that now is already here. Planning is crucial of course, but so is enjoying the only time you ever have, now.

11. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” - Eleanor Roosevelt

Every feeling you have is generated internally as a reaction (usually) to external events. It is your interpretation of events that gives them meaning, not the events themselves. How liberating is that? To know that people can only hurt you if you allow them to.

Of course, you have to believe it first.

12. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what a ship was built for” – William H Shedd

Another quote that may not be attributed to the right person, but who cares who said it, it’s still brilliant.

You can hide yourself away from the world, you can avoid doing anything risky or out there, but that’s not what you were put on this earth to do. You were put here to be the best person you can be and that means taking risks by hauling anchor and sailing out into the uncharted open sea from time to time.

13. “Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny” – Author unknown although sometimes attributed to Frank Outlaw.

I don’t think this needs any explanation other than you become what you think about, so be careful what you think about.

14. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” —Aristotle

Most people I know like to think they are open-minded. Yet if you cannot entertain thoughts that contradict your belief system, how open-minded can you truly claim to be?

15. “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves” - Robert Anton Wilson

Taken from the absolutely brilliant book ‘Prometheus Rising’ Wilson sums up in a sentence something we all do, which is to look for evidence to support the beliefs we already hold rather than questioning them.

16. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily” — Zig Ziglar

Zig nails it with this one. Self development is like going to the gym. Nobody gets fit by going to the gym once, it’s a daily or weekly ritual. Self development is the same, you have to work on it, if that is, you really want to master it.

17. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” – Wayne Gretzky

Guess what? If you don’t launch that ebook you have been thinking of, you have failed. If you don’t start that new business you have dreamed of, you have failed. And if you don’t ask for that date for fear of rejection, you have failed.

Failure isn’t missing, failure is never trying.

18 “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Belief in yourself is so important and often the determiner in how successful you are in life.

Believe in yourself because you’re absolutely brilliant!

19. “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” - Albert Einstein

Look if the great man himself says reality isn’t real, who are you to argue?

Go and set your own reality and don’t allow other people to impose theirs upon you.

20. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

The quotes were in no particular order, but I think I’ve saved the best till last because the passage from Marianne Williamson’s ‘A Return To Love‘ captures the essence of almost all of the preceding quotes and if you can live your life by that one passage you will die a happy person.

So come on, don’t just sit there, leave me your favorite quote in the comments!

Update: I will be running the interview and belief busting session I did with Morty Lefkoe later this week, so watch this space.

TIPS for English Learners

Many people think you need to live in a foreign country, have a close foreign friend, or spend long nights with your head buried in a boring grammar book, to master English…In fact, you can become a very successful learner of English if you follow some basic rules.

1. Relax and enjoy speaking

When you use English, don’t worry about making mistakes. The chances are you will always make small mistakes when speaking a foreign language. The important thing is to learn from the errors you make. Babies don’t learn to walk without falling over a lot!

2. Learn about how you learn

Recent research has shown that many of us have a preferred way of learning. If you are a visual learner, you can link language to pictures and images. Watch films with subtitles, try to visualise yourself in imaginary situations speaking English, fix words with pictures in your mind  If you have an auditory style, you have a ‘good ear’ for language and should listen to as much music as possible and watch movies in English. If you have an analytic style, then spend time studying grammar and comparing Vietnamese with English. A learner with an interactive style needs to spend as much time as possible speaking with others, discussing language and generally working in a team. A really good learner spends time on all these styles. Yet it is a sad fact that all over the world, many people are still taught in a traditional style that favours analytic and auditory learners.

3. Learn memory techniques

There are plenty of books on how to improve your memory. It is a skill that the successful learners I know take very seriously.

4. Immerse yourself

I once visited the home of a Spanish student who was actually quite a successful businessman. His house was littered with those small pieces of yellow paper called post-it notes! Every time he went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, to the bathroom to shave or used the remote control to change channel, he looked at those words. Again and again and again. Once the word was fixed in his mind, he put the paper into a file that he looked through at the end of the week. This way, he learnt 10 words a day, seven days a week. Read, listen and speak English at every opportunity! The best musicians and football players practise their skill over and over. The skill of communicating in a foreign language is the same.

5. Get Connected

I recently met someone who three times a week leaves her small village outside Hanoi, travels 1 hour on a motorbike and when she arrives at her destination, speaks in English for two hours to her friends in Britain, Australia and the US.  Her destination?  An Internet Café with voice chat facilities in the nearest small town. When I met her, she had never spoken to a foreigner face to face before, but after only two months of practising, she could hold a conversation with me in English.

The Internet has brought so many benefits to language learners. You can find great sites for practising grammar, vocabulary, listening, pronunciation and now, most importantly of all, speaking.

6. Learn Vocabulary systematically

Remember that learning English is not just about learning grammar. When we speak, we express most of our ideas through our choice of vocabulary, through collocations and fixed expressions. Think carefully about how you organise your notebook, don’t just write a long list of new words! Try to divide your notebook into sections. Here are some ideas…

subject pages; shopping, holidays, money verbs and nouns that go together; do your homework; make a cake expressions which use common words; overweight, to get over something, over the moon phrasal verbs; to grow up, to tell off, to look after fixed expressions; on the other hand, in my opinion, by the way idioms; once in a blue moon, to be over the moon, out of the blue expressions with prepositions; at night, at the weekend, in March, in 1988

Finally….

7. Get motivated: don’t put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.

In London, I had a Thai friend who was attending university there, studying fashion design. Her English was excellent. She told me that when she was fifteen she decided that it was her dream to study fashion in the UK. She found out what IELTS score she needed and started studying right away. When she was nineteen and old enough to go, she was ready. Her early start was a smart move: when she returned to Thailand after a year, some of her friends were still studying English, waiting to go abroad to study. She is now fluent, well qualified and walked into a great job!

(By Tim Hood – British Council)

Study Tip – How to Practice Listening!

by Melanie on August 21, 2010

You have been studying English for a long time. You have a good knowledge of English grammar and you know lots of words. You can read things in English and you can communicate well in writing. You have trouble understanding what people are saying, however, and it’s impossible for you to watch English movies or TV shows without subtitles. Does that describe you?

You are not alone. Listening is usually the slowest skill to improve. For most language learners, listening is their weakest skill. There are two reasons for this:

• You may be pronouncing a word incorrectly, and therefore you can’t understand the word when it’s pronounced correctly.
• You are listening for the wrong words and sounds. Natural spoken English is a mixture of stressed & unstressed words, linked words, contracted words, and reduced words. Many words are not fully pronounced.

Here’s an activity that you can do to improve your listening skills and get used to the sounds of natural spoken English. I learned this activity fromCarl Kwan, and I’ve expanded on his method.

Choose a short audio clip at your level.

If you are a beginner or low intermediate, choose something that is about 1-2 minutes; more advanced learners should choose longer clips that are about 3-5 minutes. Make sure you also have the words to the audio clip. You need to be able to check your work!

Here are some suggestions:

Beginners
Read Theory
Super Easy Reading
(These are reading websites, but there are listening clips for each passage.)

Intermediate & Advanced
The English Teacher Melanie Podcast (American accent)
BBC 6-Minute English (British accent)
BBC Words in the News (British accent)
ESLPod (American accent)

Activity

1. Listen to the whole audio clip once without looking at the words. Relax. Take a deep breath. Don’t panic.

2. Listen to the entire clip again. It’s easier to hear and understand what you’re listening to when you’re relaxed and not panicking.

3. Listen to the clip, but pause the clip every 5 seconds.

• After you pause the audio, write down a word, phrase or anything you can remember from the clip.
• When you have finished and listened to the entire clip, read through your notes completely.
• It’s OK if you don’t understand every word, but can you understand the general theme of what the speaker is saying?

4. Repeat step 4. Check your work. Correct your work. Add any new words you heard.

5. Read through your notes completely again. Try to finish the sentences. If you wrote down one or two words, can you figure out the sentence from those words? Use your knowledge of grammar to try to complete the sentences.

6. Hide your notes. Listen to the clip again, but this time stop after 10 seconds. Again, write down the main words you hear. Check your work compared to what you wrote down in step 5.

7. Listen to the clip completely one last time while reading your notes.

8. Compare your notes to the actual words.

• What words did you get right?
• Did you have trouble hearing certain words?
• Are there any words that you should have heard [words that you already know] but did not? Why? Is your pronunciation wrong? Was the word unstressed in the sentence? Was it linked to a word before or after it?
• Look up any new words that you don’t know.

9. Listen to the clip while reading the words. Check your pronunciation of words you know but didn’t hear or understand when you were listening.

10. Hide all your notes and the words. Listen one final time to the clip. It should be easier now to understand what the speaker is saying.

11. After about a week, come back and listen to the clip again to refresh your memory.

NOTE: Your listening skills will not improve overnight. Like anything in life, it takes a lot of practice! If you practice consistently 3-4 times a week, soon you will start to see an improvement in your listening skills.

Good luck and happy studying!

34 Writing Tips That Will Make You a Better Writer

by Daniel Scocco

A couple of weeks ago we asked our readers to share their writing tips. The response was far beyond the initial expectations, and the quality of the tips included was amazing. Thanks for everyone who contributed.

Now, without further delay, the 34 writing tips that will make you a better writer!

1. Daniel

Pay attention to punctuation, especially to the correct use of commas and periods. These two punctuation marks regulate the flow of your thoughts, and they can make your text confusing even if the words are clear.

2. Thomas
Participate in NaNoWriMo, which challenges you to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I noticed that my writing has definitely improved over the course of the book — and it’s not even finished yet.

3. Bill Harper
Try not to edit while you’re creating your first draft. Creating and editing are two separate processes using different sides of the brain, and if you try doing both at once you’ll lose. Make a deal with your internal editor that it will get the chance to rip your piece to shreds; it will just need to wait some time.

A really nice trick is to switch off your monitor when you’re typing. You can’t edit what you can’t see.

4. Jacinta
In a sentence: write daily for 30 minutes minimum! It’s easy to notice the difference in a short time. Suddenly, ideas come to you and you think of other things to write. You experiment with styles and voices and words and the language becomes more familiar…

5. Ane Mulligan
Learn the rules of good writing… then learn when and how to break them.

6. Pete Bollini
I sometimes write out 8 to 10 pages from the book of my favorite writer… in longhand. This helps me to get started and swing into the style I wish to write in.

7. Nilima Bhadbhade
Be a good reader first.

8. Douglas Davis
While spell-checking programs serve as a good tool, they should not be relied
upon to detect all mistakes. Regardless of the length of the article, always read and review what you have written.

9. Kukusha
Learn to take criticism and seek it out at every opportunity. Don’t get upset even if you think the criticism is harsh, don’t be offended even if you think it’s wrong, and always thank those who take the time to offer it.

10. John England
Right click on a word to use the thesaurus. Do it again on the new word and make the best use of your vocabulary.

11. Lillie Ammann
After editing the work on screen or in print, I like to read the text aloud. Awkward sentences and errors that slipped through earlier edits show up readily when reading out loud.

12. H Devaraja Rao
Avoid wordiness. Professor Strunk put it well: “a sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

13. David
Write as if you’re on deadline and have 500 words to make your point. Then do it again. And again.

14. Yvette
Sometimes I type in a large font to have the words and sentences bold before me.

Sometimes, in the middle of a document I will start a new topic on a fresh sheet to have that clean feeling. Then, I’ll cut and insert it into the larger document.

I wait until my paper is done before I examine my word usage and vocabulary choices. (And reading this column it has reminded me that no two words are ever exactly alike.) So at the end, I take time to examine my choice of words. I have a lot of fun selecting the exact words to pinpoint my thoughts or points.

15. Amit Goyal
To be a good writer is to start writing everyday. As Mark Twain said, “the secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Try using new words. i.e avoid repeating words. this way we learn the usage of different words.
Do edit your previous articles.

Start with small paragraphs like writing an article for a Newspaper, and proceed from there.

16. John Dodds
Remove as many adjectives as possible. Read Jack Finney’s tale, Cousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective Cellar for a fantastical tale about how a hack becomes a successful author with the help of a magical salt cellar that removes adjectives from his work.

17. John Ireland
I set my writing aside and edit a day or two later with the aim of making it terse. It has trained me to be more conscious of brevity when writing for immediate distribution.

18. Jai
Try to write in simple way. Express your views with most appropriate words.

19. Mark
Read great writers for inspiration. If you read them enough, their excellent writing style will rub off onto your dazzling blog.

YOU ARE what you read (and write!).

20. Caroline
I watch my action tense and wordiness in sentences when I am writing my technical diddley.

For example, in a sentence where you say …”you will have to…” I replace it with “…you must…”, or “Click on the Go button to…” can be replaced with “Click Go to…”.

Think of words such as “enables”, instead of “allows you to” or “helps you to”.

If one word will work where three are, replace it! I always find these, where I slip into conversational as I am writing quickly, then go back and purge, purge, purge.

21. Akhil Tandulwadikar
Don’t shy away from adopting the good habits that other writers use.

Do not worry about the length of the article as long as it conveys the point. Of course, the fewer words you use, the better.

Start the article with a short sentence, not more than 8 words.

22. Julie Martinenza
Instead of adding tags (he said/she said) to every bit of dialogue, learn to identify the speaker by showing him/her in action. Example: “Pass that sweet-smelling turkey this way.” With knife in one hand and fork in the other, Sam looked eager to pounce.

23. Aaron Stroud
Write often and to completion by following a realistic writing schedule.

24. Joanna Young
One that works for me every time is to focus on the positive intention behind my writing. What is it that I want to communicate, express, convey? By focusing on that, by getting into the state that I’m trying to express, I find that I stop worrying about the words – just let them tumble out of their own accord.

It’s a great strategy for beating writer’s block, or overcoming anxiety about a particular piece of writing, whether that’s composing a formal business letter, writing a piece from the heart, or guest blogging somewhere ‘big’…

25. Shelley Rodrigo
Use others writer’s sentences and paragraphs as models and then emulate the syntactic structure with your own content. I’ve learned more about grammar and punctuation that way.

26. Sylvia
Avoid long sentences.

27. Mike Feeney
Learn the difference between me, myself and I. For example: “Contact Bob or myself if you have any questions.” I hear this very often!

28. Richard Scott
When doing a long project, a novel, for instance, shut off your internal editor and just write.

Think of your first draft as a complex outline waiting to be expanded upon, and let the words flow.

29. David
Careful with unnecessary expressions. “At this point in time” came along during the Nixon congressional hearings. Too bad it didn’t go out with him. What about “on a daily basis?”

30. E. I. Sanchez
For large documents, I use Word’s Speech feature to have the computer read the article back. This allows me to catch errors I have missed – especially missing words or words that ’sort of sound the same’ but are spelled differently (e.g. Front me instead of ‘From me’).

31. Cat
Either read the book “Writing Tools 50 Strategies for Every Writer”, by Roy Peter Clark, or read the Fifty Writing Tools: Quick List on his blog. Then join a writing group, or hire a writing coach.

32. Suemagoo
Write the first draft spontaneously. Switch off your internal editor until it is time to review your first draft.

33. Lydia
If you’re writing fiction, it’s a great idea to have a plot. It will coordinate your thoughts and add consistency to the text.

34. Pedro
Edit your older articles and pieces. You will notice that great part of it will be crap, and it will allow you to refine your style and avoid mistakes that you used to make.

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