Steve Pavlina Quotes

Embrace opportunities with limited downside, unlimited upside. The best deals are those where your risk of loss is predictable and fixed if things go wrong, while your potential gains are enormous if things go right. Take such deals whenever you can get them if the odds of success are halfway decent.

Courageous people are still afraid, but they don't let the fear paralyze them.

People in their early 20s are invariably weird.

Network selectively. Nothing says "business newbie" like shotgun networking. "You never know when someone might say yes" is marketing for dummies. Take the time to build a profile of your ideal customers, and target your networking activities to reach them. Speak to those who are already predisposed to want what you offer. Almost any profile is better than "anyone with a pulse."

One of the secrets to success is recognizing that motivation follows action.

In reading the biographies of very successful men and women, one theme frequently surfaces: such people have a strong bias for action. Those who achieve high levels of success in some areas of life tend to take a LOT more action than those who settle for average or below average results.

If you want to express your creativity, then don't choose a path where someone else tells you what to do and how to do it. Choose a path where creativity is rewarded, not punished.

Achieving meaningful goals requires that you commit your entire ass, not just one cheek.

Productivity = creating value and delivering it to people. All other busywork is unproductive fluff and should be minimized.

One of my core beliefs is that belief itself is a choice that can be made of our own free will.

Passion and purpose go hand in hand. When you discover your purpose, you will normally find it's something you're tremendously passionate about.

Your beliefs about reality become your beliefs about yourself.

Spend time cultivating your deepest desires, no matter how impractical or impossible they seem. It's perfectly OK to want the impossible. It's not OK to pretend that your desires don't matter.

Curiosity is more flexible and practical than belief.

Believing that you must do something perfectly is a recipe for stress, and you'll associate that stress with the task and thus condition yourself to avoid it

Are you one of those people who notices the problems of the world and says ... somebody ought to do something about that? Why not you? If you feel a strong urge to see a problem fixed, then why not act on it?

Don't die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be.

Tackling challenges that are too big for you is what makes you grow as a human being. Why do you think this problem keeps coming up in your life, staring you in the face? Do you think you're supposed to ignore it and hide from it and wait for someone else to solve it for you? If you notice it, you own it.

If you don’t take the time to get really clear about exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re forever doomed to spend your life achieving the goals of those who do.

I got screwed over in some bad business deals, but as long as I focused on those past problems, I couldn't move forward. I had to let all of that go and forgive everyone and everything first.

Your environment will eat your goals and plans for breakfast.

One of the fundamental choices you face in every encounter is the choice to approach or avoid.

The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets.

For good or ill, your habits will make or break you.

Waiting for clarity is like being a sculptor staring at a piece of marble, waiting for the statue within to cast off the unneeded pieces. Do not wait for clarity to spontaneously materialize-gra b a chisel and get busy!

Your values are your current estimations of truth. They represent your answer to the question of how to live.

Using passion as your only fuel will no more assure you of success than being in love will ensure a successful long-term relationship.

Security is worthless if you have to sacrifice growth to get it

Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be. You may go broke. You may experience failure and rejection repeatedly. You may endure multiple dysfunctional relationships. But these are all milestones along the path of a life lived courageously. They are your private victories, carving a deeper space within you to be filled with an abundance of joy, happiness, and fulfillment. So go ahead and feel the fear. Then summon the courage to follow your dreams anyway.

When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence it is.

If you dislike the answers you’re getting from life, try asking better questions.

If you experience chronic difficulties in a particular area of your life, there's a strong chance that the root of the problem is a failure to accept reality as it is.

I learned that accepting others and accepting myself are two sides of the same coin; you can't love and accept yourself without doing the same for others.

It's a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won't commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange. In fact, it's a safe bet that you'll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won't allow yourself to receive what you don't feel you've earned. To receive life's bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it.

Passion requires focused direction, and that direction must come from three other areas: your purpose, your talents, and your needs.

The momentum of continuous action fuels motivation, while procrastination kills motivation.

When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a realm of results that are denied everyone else. The willingness to do what is difficult is like having a key to a special private treasure room.

Treat your business relationships like friendships (or potential friendships). Formality puts up walls, and walls don't foster good business relationships. No one is loyal to a wall... except the one in China.

Thoughts are like seeds. If you want different results in life, you have to figure out which thoughts are capable of growing those results and which aren’t.

You are too free and untamable to be labeled.

If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief - always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don't actually believe it. You're only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn't.

It's important to note that you don't have to earn money from all of your interests. If you just dive in and pursue what you enjoy, you may be surprised to find out which interests help you generate income and which don't.

Everyone you meet in your life - even total strangers - are already intimately connected to you. The idea that we are all separate and distinct beings is nothing but an illusion. We are all parts of a larger whole, like individual cells in a body.

Understand that relationships are more important than contracts. Business deals are relationships between people. The signed piece of paper is important, but it's merely the result of the relationship, not the cause. If the relationship crumbles, the contract won't save you, although it could be very lucrative for your lawyer.