Quotes About Determination

Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind.

A dog in desperation will leap over a wall

Men trip not on mountains, they trip on molehills.

This is not a feel-good book. (But I am confident you will feel good after reading it.) It is not a motivational book. (But I promise you will be motivated once you are done.)

She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.

Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.

As Mark Twain said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

My father wanted us to try everything and feel free to push the envelope. His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome.

motivation comes from feeling—knowledge isn't enough to motivate change. But motivation also comes from confidence. The Elephant has to believe that it's capable of conquering the change. And there are two routes to building people's confidence so that they feel "big" relative to their challenge. You can shrink the change or grow your people (or, preferably, both).

A sense of purpose seems to spark "above and beyond" behaviors.

To make progress toward a goal, whether it's noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant. And

her successes came despite a lack of authority and resources.

It's realizing that I can do this. I'm in charge.

dogged focus

achieving success requires some failures along the way. Don't beat yourself up when those failures occur.

What separated Blakely from other women with the same idea was her persistence.

Establishing your core priorities is, unfortunately, not the same as binding yourself to them.

He inspired them to feel more determined, more ready, more motivated. And when you build people up in this way, they develop the strength to act.

new habits can clear the Path.

Why did they quit so easily? The answer may surprise you: They ran out of self-control.

So, yes, a long journey starts with a single step, but a single step doesn't guarantee the long journey. How do you keep those steps coming?

Pits need to be filled.

That sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It's easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.

Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit