To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before.

Anytime we think the problem is 'out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is 'outside-in' - what's out there has to change before we can change. The proactive approach is to change from the 'inside-out': to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.

You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

If there is no gardener there is no garden.

Highly effective people tend to be proactive. They decide to find a better job or to have better health, rather than of responding to whatever curves life throws at them.