Quotes About Growth

the First Law of Organizational Development is evident: those who were most at home with the necessary activities and arrangements of one phase are the ones who are the most likely to experience the subsequent phase as a severe personal setback. They will talk about it as a "strategic mistake," as "dumb," "unnecessary," and "too expensive.

the outlook, attitudes, values, self-images, and ways of thinking that were functional in the past have to "die" before people can be ready for life in the present.

it is natural to feel somewhat nervous and confused at such a time. As the old patterns disappear from people's minds and the new ones begin to replace them, people can be full of self-doubts and misgivings about themselves and their leaders. As their ambivalence increases, so does their longing for answers.

every previous level of change comes to be called "stability." Seen in this light, what people today call "nonstop change" is simply a new level of what has always existed. It isn't pure chaos—simply a new experience. When people adjust to it, they will look back upon it as "the stability that we used to enjoy.

The transition's of life's second half offer a special kind of opportunity to break with the social conditioning and do something really new and different.

In fact, many endings represent the only way to protect the continuity of something bigger.

Os verdadeiros começos começam dentro de nós, mesmo que suscitados por oportunidades externas.

Yesterday's ending launched today's success, and today will have to end if tomorrow's changes are to take place.

Author says change emphasizes what is happening TO us while transition emphasizes opportunity for growth within.

Yet beginnings are also scary, for they require a new commitment.

Capitalize on the break in normal routines that the neutral zone provides to do things differently and better. In the neutral zone the restraints on innovation are weakened. With everything up in the air anyway, people are more willing than usual to try new things, and should be encouraged to do so.

Old weaknesses, previously patched over or compensated for, reemerge in full flower.

A corollary to this idea is that the past, which people are likely to idealize during an ending

But immune systems carry a price tag: even good germs get filtered out or killed off. The pre-transition immune system choked off creativity in its own manner, and no matter how loose and free the post-transition way of doing things is, its immune system will also make creativity difficult in some different way. It is during the gap between the old and the new that the organization's immune system is weak enough to let a seedbed for novelty form.

I have often wondered how anyone who does not read, by which I mean daily, having some book going all the time, can make it through life.

I began to trust in the power of sprouting, and the more I learned, the more I came to believe that trees are more perceptive, more intelligent, more generous, and more persistent than we are.

assertion of Jesus that he was the vine through whom the branches lived.

This is what the sprouts teach: immortality is not a matter of holding on, but of letting go.

transformation of your mind

but the man had never learned to wait, he was permanently in a hurry. when, in april, he planted heads of mignonette or morning glory in the china pots in his living room, he would go and pull their leaves each morning to make them grow faster. with such an eccentric, the only thing to do was to obey.

That toil of growing up;The ignominy of boyhood; the distressOf boyhood changing into man;The unfinished man and his pain.

Heaven blazing into the head:Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,And all the drop-scenes drop at onceUpon a hundred thousand stages,It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.