Category: Inspiration (Page 2 of 3)

Surround yourself with the right people

It does matter who you have around yourself.

Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.

Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.
Edmund Lee

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

I started reading Drive – The surprising thruth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink today and that brought this TED-video to my mind: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation.

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think.

There’s more to motivation than just carrots and sticks.

Video

This was originally posted at Bengt’s Notes, another blog of mine.

Coach John Wooden about success

This TED Talk has popped up several times lately but it was not until today that I took the time and watched John Wooden: Coaching for people, not points.

With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father’s wisdom.

I like this video a lot, John has a definition of success that makes a lot of sense to me:

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

John Wooden talks about success but also about patience and action. He of course talks about coaching and basketball, he has an impressive resume. At TED the profile about Speakers John Wooden: Coach says:

John Wooden, affectionately known as Coach, led UCLA to record wins that are still unmatched in the world of basketball. Today, he continues to share the values and life lessons he passed to his players, emphasizing success that’s about much more than winning.

I went chasing for some quotes:

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Read more:
Coach John Wooden’s own site

This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.

Ask more questions

I found Questionating over at ChangeThis. This manifesto pushes the concept of QuestionBanks, using sets of question as tools in meetings, projects etc.

What’s your favorite question? Over the years we’ve found that the most popular answers to this question are ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why not’ in that order. A trend we’ve also observed is that those who ask ‘why’ are typically more holistic or whole-brained thinkers, those who ask ‘how’ are typically more box thinkers, and those who ask ‘why not’ are typically the challenging thinkers. All types, of course, are equally valuable and equally required for innovation!

I love this part of the text:

Why does the typical 5-year old ask about 65 questions a day while the typical 40-something only asks about 6 questions a day?

In other words, ask like a child – be inquisitive!

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

How do you change your thinking?

I got this quote a while back:

The greatest discovery of my lifetime was that a person can change the circumstances of his life by changing his thoughts.
William James

Change is an important issue, both on a personal level and for society and our world. It brings another quote to my mind: “Change comes from within.”

Another quote, by Albert Einstein:

Clearly the problems we suffer cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

Albert said it well, to solve our problems (personal or at other levels) we have to think in a new way. The trick is to change how we think, being open minded helps a lot.

How do YOU change your thinking?

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

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