Motivational Quotes: Change
Posted: Saturday, May 17, 2008
by Jeff Brown
Inner Projection
You are responsible for everything that happens to you.
If you accept this statement, then change, growth, happiness, and command of your life is within your grasp. For how can you be angry at situations if you are responsible for their resolution. Change the things you can and get away from those you can't.
"We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers -- you can blame anyone but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change, you're the one who has got to change. It's as simple as that, isn't it?"--Katherine Hepburn
For the universe is a tough task master. Even after you've acquired riches, even riches beyond the wildest dreams of most, if you relax, rest on your laurals, you will lose it all. For it is not about obtaining riches but constant motion, motion in the directin of change.
"Change means movement. Movement means friction."--Saul Alinsky
But if you think it's all about you, think again. For once you obtain your riches, your responsibility is to create change for the many not the few.
If you've ever uttered the words "that's just the way she is," "that's just the way he is," "that's just the way things are," then you are dead . . . at least from the neck up. For you not only limit the people you speak of but yourself. For change is why we are here. If you block this purpose, the universe will not be kind to you.
I have overcome suicidal tendencies; deep, passionate, dark walls of depression; extreme introversion; anger that if continued unabated would have resulted in my death and the intention to end the lives of others; utter, complete, dark, deep lack of hope; an inept understanding of what's needed to succeed financially, emotionally, spiritually to a one-hundred-eighty degree turn toward absolute enlightenment. On and on goes the list, but it has been my privelage to lose all my money, friends, comforts, health, to nearly die from cancer to living on the streets up and onto a life full of family, love, compassion, passion, money, prosperity, hope, peace and, most importantly, my wife--my life.
"Do not consider painful what is good for you."--Euripides
If you are sad, THANK GOD! You are fulfilling your purpose, for no man or woman has learned more by being more happy than sad. We learn more from our trials and pain in a few moments than all the trips to Disneyland combined. For through our trials we learn to forget ourselves, get out of ourselves and give to others, to hopefully save others from encountering trials and anguish in the extreme. Trials are great, but if we can save some from pain, what greater contribution can we make? And all our saving comes from change and from that which we learn.
My suggestion for change? Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. 'nough said.
"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."--Malcolm X
If that's true, imagine the joy you will find in many books.
If you want real change, a real challange, flunk out of college and then go back when you know WHY and WHAT you need to learn in this thing we call life.
"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn ... and change."--Carl Rogers
If you are not comfortable with "throwing up," then you will not succed in life. Those who seek the biggest change--potential to obtian maximum joy and then spread it to others--push themselves to the brink of fear and then . . . jump in.
I grew up never talking. A neighbor asked a friend if I was retarded because I never talked. I didn't speak to strangers or almost anyone until I was in my mid twenties. But I knew I had to overcome my debilitating shyness. So what did I do? I went into standup comedy. How was it? I became very regular. I was so scared that every time I performed I ran to the bathroom. Not to throw up but to expunge from the other end. Like I said, I was very regular the five years I performed as a standup comic.
I performed in gay bars with straight material. Biker bars with goofy white-boy humor. All black clubs with reverse discrimination. And so on. How did I fair? Not well. But I kept going, and going, and going. After comedy I went into lecturing as a college professor, speaking in church, at conferences, parties, on and on until I got so good at standing in front of people expressing my ideas that I was more comfrotable being in front of people than I was sitting on my couch watching TV at home.
People can't change. Bullshit!
It's the only reason you're here.
But keep in mind that as you improve that you are to reach out to your brothers and sisters, reach down and pull them up. One after another after another after another. And you will find your depression, lack of purpose, anger, stupidity, resentment, laziness, selfishness, self-loathing, self-indulgence, fad away . . .
Replaced by joy, happiness, purpose, hope, satisfaction, and a stride that will take you from near to far so often, so fast, so well that you'll park your car forever and get yourself wherever you need to be around the world on your feet of change.
Change: The Quotes
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."--Pablo Picasso
"Things turn out best for those that make the best of the way things turn out."--Art Linkletter
"Every successful man I have heard of has done the best he could with conditions as he found them, and not waited until next year for better."--Edgar W. Howe
"A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours."--Unknown
"People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."--Malcolm X
"We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers -- you can blame anyone but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change, you're the one who has got to change. It's as simple as that, isn't it?"--Katherine Hepburn
"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn ... and change."--Carl Rogers
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."--Heraclitus
"Do not consider painful what is good for you."--Euripides
"Change means movement. Movement means friction."--Saul Alinsky
"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction."--General Douglas MacArthur
"Truly every new idea is a violation of some older idea; as the awakening of tomorrow is a violation of today's slumber. As long as man continues to evolve, in other words, to separate himself from chaos, and to express himself in a higher form, he must always shatter something. In shattering, he disobeys: in breaking, he creates."--Jeanne de Vietinghoff
"There are ... two kinds of people: those who are changing and those who are setting themselves up to be victims of change. As the world continues to march on around us, if I am only maintaining the status quo--if I'm not growing--then I'm falling behind."--Jim Clemmer
"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living."--Gail Sheehy
"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."--Max Depree
"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."--Lao-Tzu
"The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea."--Martin Luther King Jr.
"The man who views life at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."--Muhammed Ali
"An elephant can be tethered by a thread--if he believes he is captive. If we believe we are chained by habit or anxiety, we are in bondage."--John H. Crowe
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."--Samuel Johnson
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."--W. Edward Deming
"You change your life by changing your heart."--Max Lucado
"When we are no longer able to change a situation ... we are challenged to change ourselves."--Victor Frankl
"It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow."--Ralph Ellison
"What single ability do we all have? The ability to change."--Leonard Andrews `
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