The great apparent dichotomy is that the more we give, the more we get.

The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

Every exaggeration of the truth once detected by others destroys our credibility and makes all that we do and say suspect.

Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.

Compliance does not foster innovation, trust does. You can't sustain long-term innovation, for example, in a climate of distrust.

Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal "comfort zone". Then, when you get into the situation, it isn't foreign. It doesn't scare you.

Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce - to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independence. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth.