Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
--Colin Powell

Being excellent is liberating and empowering. We are all designed and destined for excellence through all aspects of our lives. Being excellent builds on itself. Starting in the morning, be excellent at preparing for your day. Be excellent at your commute. Be excellent at how you buy your morning coffee. Be in the habit of being consciously aware of how you are performing each task. If you are in the habit of going through the motions in how you conduct the smaller mundane things, it has a way of creeping into the bigger aspects of your life. Relish every moment, and be excellent at every task.

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit
--Helen Keller

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
--Mark Twain

Surround yourself with positive influences, and avoid the negative. Your mind is to precious to allow other's negativity to invade it. Seek out opportunities to find positive people, and people who support your ambitions. Drop out of the "ain't it awful club", as Jack Canfield calls it. Spend some time each day reading or listening to inspirational material, this will help counteract the negativity you inevitably run into daily. Also look for opportunities to socialize and work with positive people. Success and failure are both contagious, make sure you catch the right one by surrounding yourself with the right people.

"No" is a word on your path to "yes." Don't give up too soon. Not even if well-meaning parents, relatives, friends, and colleagues tell you to get "a real job." Your dreams are your real job.
-- Joyce Spizer

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture...Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.
-- Norman Vincent Peale

"Your dreams are your real job", that sends a chill up my spine. How often are dreams and dreaming treated as a negative, and yet that is our real purpose. We are here in this world for a reason, and it is not to get safely through to death. Dreams are a pointer to your purpose, and your purpose is your real job. Well meaning people may try to talk you down from your dreams, but don't let them. They are like a parent watching their child climb a tree, learn to ride a bike, or drive a car. Or like a friend watching you fall in love. They may see risks and fear for you, but if they could see your dreams they would never question you. Only you can see your dreams fully, and so when well meaning people try to help talk you down from your dreams, thank them for their concern but don't ever turn back.

I teach something called The Law of Probabilities, which says the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work. The more books you read, the more likely one of them will have an answer to a question that could solve the major problems of your life.. make you wealthier, solve a health problem, whatever it might be.
-- Jack Canfield

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-- Mark Twain

We can be conditioned from the time we are children to see every choice and every question as having a right and wrong answer. For most things however, and especially for the most important things, this is not true. Combine this with most people's tendency to put more effort into avoiding the negative than seek the positive, and you have a recipe for stifled creativity and opportunity. Life does not have a right answer, only a an answer of what is right for you right now. This is just a habit though, and one that can be broken. Start making a new habit of experimenting and trying new things. For one day, make a commitment to only eat foods you have never tried before. The more you get in the habit of experimenting, the less you will be handcuffed by a right-wrong mindset.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
-- C.S. Lewis

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
-- Jesus

Children are full of dreams and curiosity. They are always learning, discovering new things, and expanding their view of the world. The amazing thing is that acting like a child by dreaming and learning can actually keep you young. Aging is inevitable, but getting old is a choice. My uncle John knew this intuitively. He learned to surf when he was in his seventies, and never passed a chance to ride a roller coaster through his eighties. He was in fact "younger" than most people in their thirties. Science is just now catching up to what Jesus, CS Lewis, and my uncle John already knew. Brain scans and health studies have shown that continued learning, goal setting, and a sense of purpose can act as a firewall against many age related illnesses. So the saying "you are never too old", should really be "you don't have to be old".

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.
--Dale Carnegie

Nearly everyone recognizes the effect our emotions have on our physical appearance. Anger forms a frown on your face, pain a grimace. What we often miss is that this works in reverse as well. Choosing to smile even when it is unnatural, can in turn create a happier mood in you. Acting joyful and enthusiastic can bring about joy and enthusiasm in you. Knowing this, it is completely in your control to bring about the emotions in yourself that you desire. You are in control.

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
-- Oprah Winfrey

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
-- Jim Rohn

Who you spend time with has a profound effect on how you grow and what you become. We humans are social creatures. We require social interaction in order to grow and fulfill our goals, our life purpose. In the same way that there are healthy foods and junk foods are going to have profoundly different effects on you physically, there are healthy social relationships and junk relationships. It is important to make a conscious effort to surround yourself with the types of people who provide healthy relationships, ones that provide mentoring or hte chance to mentor, ones that provide love and the chance to love. Just as importantly you must avoid the types of relationships that weaken you emotionally. How do you feel after you have spent time with a particular person? Are you more optimistic or less? Do you feel more confident or less? Do you feel more fearful of the future or less? The answers to these questions will tell you what kind of relationship it is, junk or healthy.

No one has ever become poor by giving.
-- Anne Frank

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
-- Maya Angelou

Contrary to conventional wisdom, giving does not leave the giver with less but with more. In fact the practice of tithing is based on this observation. When you give, you send a message to your subconscious mind that you in have more than enough. It alters your perspective of the world, and in doing so sends ripples through your entire life. The other thing that giving does is to help create a positive good will towards you, which also sends ripples through your life. This is what the Eastern concept of Karma describes. These ripples may not always be visible, but they are there and have an impact in your life as certain as gravity does. Truly, it is better to give than receive.

If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.
--Michael Jordan

Our limitations and success will be based, most often, on your own expectations for ourselves. What the mind dwells upon, the body acts upon.
--Denis Waitley

Your success depends on what you expect of yourself and the world. When you allow how others view you to influence how you view yourself, you are in effect letting them decide your level of success and your destiny. How others feel, even how they feel about you, is not your concern. You have control over how you feel about yourself, and that is more than enough. When you deliberately decide how you are going to view yourself, the world will eventually come around to your point of view.

What other people think of me is none of my business
-- Wayne Dyer

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What other people think or say about you is only relevant to you if you choose to make it relevant. Each person's thoughts and words, regardless of whether the subject is you, are their own baggage. To improve ourselves, to elevate our own consciousness, we must pay attention not to how others feel about us, but about how we feel and what we say about others. You won't get anywhere in life carrying other people's baggage around in addition to your own. Instead look at your own thoughts, your own baggage, and make a conscious effort to empty it whenever possible. Make a conscious effort to lighten your own load, and your own journey will become much more effortless.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
-- Oscar Wilde

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
-- Wayne Dyer

Every ounce of energy that you spend worrying about what other people are doing is taken from the pool of energy that should be going towards propelling you to your goals and fulfilling your life purpose. Every person is unique and comes with their own journey and life purpose. Judging what they are doing on their journey does absolutely nothing to help you on yours. Stay focused on yourself, it is one of the most selfless things you can do.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
-- Abraham Lincoln

If you're not practicing, somebody else is, somewhere, and he'll be ready to take your job.
-- Brooks Robinson

Never confuse preparation with inaction. When a new building is constructed, the builder does not start with walls. Instead the first things done are preparing the location and laying the foundation. The bigger the building, the longer these first tasks will take, and while it may not appear outwardly that much progress is being made while they are being completed, these first tasks will determine how long that building will last and how successful a project it will be. The same is true with any project we undertake and any goal we set. Preparation and practice lay the foundation that you build everything else on, and without a foundation nothing will stand for long. So take care to put the necessary effort into building your foundation.

Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
-- Marianne Williamson

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go so much further than people with vastly superior talent.
-- Sophia Loren

One of the most well known miracles told in the Bible is when Jesus came walking on water to closest followers when they were caught out in a boat during a storm. Peter in an attempt to follow Jesus, tried walking out to him on the water. The story tells of how Peter started walking, but when he became afraid he began to sink. It is at this point where Jesus questioned Peter, "Oh you of little faith, why do you doubt". Most people who learn this story in Sunday school, learn that the faith in question was a faith in Jesus. When you read the story, however, you see that it is actually Peter's confidence or faith in himself that failed him. What the story truly teaches is that we need to have more faith in ourselves, and in our own abilities. You are far more powerful and capable than you realize. It is the faith in yourself that will unlock that potential.

Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it.
-- Brian Tracy

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.
-- Lao Tzu

Towering pine trees grow to that size, not by standing rigidly against the elements, but by bending as the wind demands of it. People achieve greatness in the same way, by being willing and open to change, by bending as circumstances demand of us. This is not to say you should compromise your goals or integrity, but be flexible in your approach. The tree's essential nature is to grow from a sapling to a towering pine while your essential nature is to grow into greatness and in both cases a little flexibility will be needed along the way.

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
-- Og Mandino

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
-- Mother Teresa

One of the kindest things you can do for yourself is to be kind to everyone you come in contact with. All of life is a giant feedback loop. When you send out kindness, it gets returned to you several times over. When you take time and care in your interactions with others, you will find others taking tome and care in their interactions with you. Develop a picture in your mind of how you would like to be treated in your ideal world, and then set about making sure that is how you treat each person you come across.