Quotes About Inspiration

A business cliché commands us to "raise the bar." But that's exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over. If you want a reluctant Elephant to get moving, you need to shrink the change.

Marcus Buckingham, who says that

instill hope and optimism and excitement

That's what sticky ideas do – they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts. Not

Research tells us that brainstorming becomes more productive when it's focused. As jazz great Charles Mingus famously said, "You can't improvise on nothing, man; you've gotta improvise on something.

Top management challenged employees to be on the lookout for potential innovations—

Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at large, you'll get there by making three things happen. You'll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.

If you want to change the culture of your organization, you've got to get the reformers together. They need a free space.

you need quick wins to get fired up. And getting fired up is super-important.

The point of the Clinics is not to wow you with our creative genius, and it's fortunate for readers and authors alike that this is not the goal, because we are not creative geniuses. The point is simply to model the process of making ideas stickier. In contrast to traditional disclaimers, this is something you should try at home. Think about each message and consider how you would improve it using the principles in the book.

Finding bright spots, then, solves many different problems at once.

What if we didn't just remember the defining moments of our lives but made them?

We need to be looking for bright spots—however tiny!—and rewarding them.

to make progress on a change, you need ways to direct the Rider. Show him where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue. And that's why bright spots are so essential, because they are your best hope for directing the Rider when you're trying to bring about change.

That's what sticky ideas do—they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts.

tap more profound motivations.

SMART goals presume the emotion; they don't generate it. In looking for a goal that reaches the Elephant—that hits people in the gut—you can't bank on SMART goals.

change rarely happens unless it's motivated by feeling

In looking for a goal that reaches the Elephant—that hits people in the gut—you can't bank on SMART goals. (There are some people whose hearts are set aflutter by goals such as "improving the liquidity ratio by 30 percent over the next 18 months." They're called accountants.)

When you use analogies—when you find someone who has solved your problem—you can take your pick from the world's buffet of solutions. But when you don't bother to look, you've got to cook up the answer yourself. Every time. That may be possible, but it's not wise, and it certainly ain't speedy. DUNBAR

Small targets lead to small victories, and small victories can often trigger a positive spiral of behavior.

What should a Pegasus person do in this situation?

Character is always more caught than taught.

Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.