Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Pavlina

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

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.

Do what you love, but be damned sure it's profitable. If you do work you love, but it doesn't generate income, your business will fail. If you do work you hate, but it generates income, your health will fail... and your business along with it. If you can't do what you love and make it profitable, you've either got a hobby or a headache, not a sustainable business. Don't settle for anything less than passion and profit.

'Someday' is the day after you die.

When you reach the point of becoming independent of external events, you’re truly free.

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.

Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward.

Saying no isn't easy, but it's a required skill if you wish to have any degree of focus in your life. If you say yes too often, you'll likely fall into the common trap of saying yes to the good while simultaneously saying no to the best.

By all means listen to other people's advice, but when in doubt go with your gut instinct.

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

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

Pour the bulk of your time into action, not deciding. The state of indecision is a major time waster. Don't spend more than 60 seconds in that state if you can avoid it. Make a firm, immediate decision, and move from uncertainty to certainty to action. Let the world tell you when you're wrong, and you'll soon build enough experience to make accurate, intelligent decisions.

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.

The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets.

I realized that my bliss and my heartbreak both point in the same direction. I follow my joy and my heartbreak simultaneously because they’re two sides of the same coin.

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.

To work effectively you need uninterrupted blocks of time in which you can complete meaningful work... I've found that a minimum of 90 minutes is ideal for a single block.

The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground.

Fuzzy thinking leads to hesitancy in acting. Clear thinking makes it easier to act boldly and consistently.

The most intelligent thing you can possibly do with your life is to grow.

If you don't make a conscious choice... someone else will decide for you. It may be your boss, a family member, an advertiser, a collective social influence, or someone or something else, but it won't be something of your deliberate choosing.

No one on earth has lived through the exact same experiences you have, and no one thinks the exact same thoughts you do.

If you aren't working on your goals, you aren't working. You're just wasting time.

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.

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.

When you live for a strong purpose, then hard work isn't an option. It's a necessity.

A man doesn't require the approval of others. He's willing to follow his heart wherever it leads him. When a man is following his heart-centered path, it's of little consequence if the entire world is against him.

If you want to achieve some really big and interesting goals, you have to learn to fall in love with hard work.

I want my life to have had more value than just acquiring stuff and living comfortably. I may die rich, or I may die broke. But I won't die with my music still in me.

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.

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

Your environment will eat your goals and plans for breakfast.

Negative feelings mean you`re going the wrong way

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.

You must assume 100% responsibility for your financial life. If you're going to improve your situation, you have to put the full burden of doing so squarely on your own shoulders. First and foremost, you must hold yourself responsible.

Our beliefs act as lenses. These lenses can help us see things we can't otherwise see, but they can also block us from seeing parts of reality.

Regardless of others' reactions, do your best to stay true to yourself. Make the choices that allow you to look in the mirror and feel good about the person gazing back at you.

The universe cannot show you anything which you've intentionally chosen to block from your reality.

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

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

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

Our brains are fairly powerful, but our conscious minds are still extremely limited in their ability to hold onto multiple simultaneous thoughts

You can move beyond the ego's perspective and see reality from the perspective of a higher consciousness.

Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.

Hard work is painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love.

If someone offers you a gift, and you decline to accept it, the other person still owns that gift. The same is true of insults and verbal attacks.

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

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.

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.

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.

"Stop asking "What should I do now?" That question only brings up what others expect of you. Free people don't have shoulds. They have choices."

Realize that you earn income by providing value - not time - so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it.

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!

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

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

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.

The only thing stopping you is fear, and the only thing that will get you past it is courage. What you do with your life isn't up to your parents, your boss, or your spouse. It's up to you and you alone.

Any relationships that would reject you for being true to yourself are - by definition - abusive relationships. You'll be much better off when you let them go.

Planning allows you to mentally create a model of your future.

I think the best friendships are those that can stand the test of time, where the friendship is based more on who you are than on what you do or what you have.