Thinking For a Change

• If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business card, you don’t have a clear idea.
• Am I consistently including the heads of others to think “over my head” and achieve compounding results?
• We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.
• There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being.
• Little did I realize that my desire to add value to others would be the thing that added value to me!
• Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
• If you want to be successful tomorrow, you need to think bottom line today.
• Am I staying focused on the bottom line so that I can gain the maximum return and reap the full potential of my thinking?
• Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.
• Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results.
• One of the reasons people don’t achieve their dreams is that they desire to change their results without changing their thinking.
• Progress is often just a good idea away.
• 99 percent of employees are in the pile because they don’t think.
• Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
• More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has ever been taken from the earth.
• Only when you make the right changes to your thinking do other things begin to turn out right.
• People will never attain what they cannot see themselves doing.
• A belief is not just an idea that you possess; it is an idea that possesses you.
• Negative expectations are a quick route to dead-end thinking.
• Learning to write is learning to think. You don’t know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.
• If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people.
• Ideas have a short shelf life. Yu must act on them before the expiration date.
• There is no life as empty as the self-centered life. There is no life as centered as the self-empty life.
• Learn, earn, return- these are the three phases of life.
• One good thought does not make a life. Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continuously mine.
• You have to think anyway, so why not think big?
• The truth is that you can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once.
• You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
• Focus can bring energy and power to almost anything, whether physical or mental.
• A good idea can become a great idea when it is given focus time.
• Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts are not to bother about. Focused thinking removes distractions and mental clutter so you can think with clarity.
• The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.
• A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.
• Give your attention to areas that bear fruit.
• You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration.
• The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence. It requires clarity, not instant illumination. It demands each of us to focus on what is vital- and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions.
• Keep your mind off the things you don’t want by keeping it on the things you do want.
• Don’t do easy things first or hard things first or urgent things first. Do first things first- the activities that five you the highest return.
• Wherever you are… be there!
• To do well at a few things, give up many things.
• Originality is the art of concealing your source.
• Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
• It is the dill man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
• The person with a plan, a picture, will go after thoughts that add value to their thinking.
• Think-Collect-Create-Correct-Connect
• No matter what you are currently able to do, creativity can make you capable of more.
• You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
• The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.
• All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.
• Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment.
• Disappointment is the difference between expectations and reality.
• Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.
• The truth will set you free- but first it will piss you off.
• One of the keys to maximizing realistic thinking is aligning your resources with your objectives.
• Most people spend more time planning their summer vacation than planning their lives.
• If quitters never win, and winners never quit, then why should I quit while I’m ahead?
• When failure isn’t an option, nothing serves a person better than strategic thinking.
• The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
• The one with the plan is the one with the power.
• Yard by hard, life is hard; but inch by inch, lt’s a cinch.
• Before it can be solved, a problem must be clearly defined.
• Strategic thinking is like showering, you have to keep doing it.
• The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.
• Am I implementing strategic plans that give me direction for today and increase my potential for tomorrow?
• Big thinkers are specialist in creating positive forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others.
• One of the best ways to cultivate a possibility mind-set is to prompt yourself to dream one size bigger than you normally do.
• Am I unleashing the enthusiasm of possibility thinking to find solutions for even seemingly impossible situations?
• Reflective thinking is like the crock-pot of the mind. It encourages your thoughts to simmer until they’re done.
• When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective.
• Reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes.
• The unexamined life is not worth living.
• The value you receive from reflecting will depend on the kinds of questions you ask yourself.
• Am I regularly revisiting the past to gain a true perspective and think with understanding?
• The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
• The problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all.
• The greatest enemy to tomorrow’s success is sometimes today’s success.
• Most people are more satisfied with old problems than committed to finding new solutions.
• Am I consciously rejecting the limitations of common thinking in order to accomplish uncommon results.
• If you combine the thoughts you have and the thoughts that other have, you will come up with thoughts you’ve never had!
• To accept good advice is but to increase one’s own ability.
• Always be on the lookout for ideas. Be completely indiscriminate as to the source… It doesn’t matter who thought of an idea.
• No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, you can do it better with shared thinking.

Source: Thinking For a Change By: John C. Maxwell