Thoughts become things, and as entrepreneurs and leaders, it is especially important that we remember to pay attention to our thoughts every day and motivational quotes are a great way of doing this. Your ability to stay motivated isn’t just for your personal benefit; it affects those around you as well: your team, your investors, your families and friends. When you can stay motivated, everyone around you is improved.
As you start each day, let these motivational quotes from some of the best minds on the planet, past and present, inspire you think positive, inspirational thoughts habitually throughout your days.
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” — Mother Teresa
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” — Leonardo da Vinci
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” — Vincent van Gogh
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” — Farrah Gray
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart
“Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” — Chris Grosser
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” — Oscar Wilde
“Being motivated costs you nothing, but can get you everything.” — Murray Newlands
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale
“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” — W. Clement Stone
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” — Woody Allen
“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible battles inside all of us — that’s where it’s at.” — Jesse Owens
“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.” — Beverly Sills
“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Christopher Columbus
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’” — Audrey Hepburn
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” –Thomas Jefferson
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” — Robert Collier
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.” — Mark Twain
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Vidal Sassoon
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” — Audre Lorde
Hilary Hinton or better known as “Zig Ziglar” was an American author, salesman, and motivational speaker.
Zig Ziglar is the author of 33 books, including his top selling book “See You At The Top” which sold over 1.7 million copies.
Here are 56 Classic Zig Ziglar Quotes:
1. “Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember ~ the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.” – Zig Ziglar
2. “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” – Zig Ziglar
3. “I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.” – Zig Ziglar
4. “Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.” – Zig Ziglar
5. “There is little you can learn from doing nothing.” – Zig Ziglar
6. “Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.” – Zig Ziglar
7. “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
8. “The way you see people is the way you treat them.” – Zig Ziglar
9. “Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.” – Zig Ziglar
10. “Do it, and then you will feel motivated to do it.” – Zig Ziglar
11. “Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission” – Zig Ziglar
12. “If you can dream it, then you can achieve it.” – Zig Ziglar
13. “You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm.” – Zig Ziglar
14. “Ask yourself a question: Is my attitude worth catching?” – Zig Ziglar
15. “The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.” – Zig Ziglar
16. “There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.” – Zig Ziglar
17. “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” – Zig Ziglar
18. “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” – Zig Ziglar
19. “You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.” – Zig Ziglar
20th Zig Ziglar Quote – “You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.” – Zig Ziglar
21. “People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar
22. “The more you are grateful for what you have the more you will have to be grateful for” – Zig Ziglar
23. “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar
24. “If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.” – Zig Ziglar
25. “Failure is an event not a person” – Zig Ziglar
26. “Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.” – Zig Ziglar
27. “Make today worth remembering.” – Zig Ziglar
28. “Every choice you make has an end result.” – Zig Ziglar
29. “Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don’t hang around long enough for his or her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people.” – Zig Ziglar
30. “The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now” – Zig Ziglar
31. “Success is not a destination, it’s a journey.” – Zig Ziglar
32. “It’s not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you.” – Zig Ziglar
33. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar
34. “Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.” – Zig Ziglar
35. “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.” – Zig Ziglar
36. “Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give them yours.” – Zig Ziglar
37. “Happiness is not pleasure, it is victory.” – Zig Ziglar
38. “If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.” – Zig Ziglar
39. “If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” – Zig Ziglar
40th Zig Ziglar Quote – “If you’re sincere, praise is effective. If you’re insincere, it’s manipulative.” – Zig Ziglar
41. “You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.” – Zig Ziglar
42. “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” – Zig Ziglar
43. “When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you.” – Zig Ziglar
44. “Everybody says they want to be free. Take the train off the tracks and it’s free-but it can’t go anywhere.” – Zig Ziglar
45. “Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.” – Zig Ziglar
46. “Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.” – Zig Ziglar
47. “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” – Zig Ziglar
48. “Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.” – Zig Ziglar
49. “Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.” – Zig Ziglar
50. “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Zig Ziglar
51. “If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.” – Zig Ziglar
52. “Your business is never really good or bad ‘out there.’ Your business is either good or bad right between your own two ears.” – Zig Ziglar
53. “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar
54. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” – Zig Ziglar
55. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar
56. “When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.” – Zig Ziglar
He is one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in the “holistic-health” movement and has published more than 80 books including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Here are 116 profound Deepak Chopra quotes:
1. “If you want to do really important things in life and big things in life, you can’t do anything by yourself. And your best teams are your friends and your siblings.” – Deepak Chopra
2. “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.” – Deepak Chopra
3. “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” – Deepak Chopra
4. “The greatest mystery of existence is existence itself.” – Deepak Chopra
5. “The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective – people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.” – Deepak Chopra
6. “Meditation makes the entire nervous system go into a field of coherence.” – Deepak Chopra
7. “So the universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning.” – Deepak Chopra
8. “To think is to practice brain chemistry.” – Deepak Chopra
9. “So many things happen for every event, and if you try to manipulate it, it means you are struggling against the whole universe, and that’s just silly.” – Deepak Chopra
10. “Traditional science assumes, for the most part, that an objective observer independent reality exists; the universe, stars, galaxies, sun, moon and earth would still be there if no one was looking.” – Deepak Chopra
11. “We all feel the urge to condemn ourselves out of guilt, to blame others for our misfortunes and to fantasize about total disaster.” – Deepak Chopra
12. “The masculine energy was about survival. The male was the hunter who risked his life and had to be in the fight-flight mode.” – Deepak Chopra
13. “I’ve worked all my life on the subject of awareness, whether it’s awareness of the body, awareness of the mind, awareness of your emotions, awareness of your relationships, or awareness of your environment. I think the key to transforming your life is to be aware of who you are.” – Deepak Chopra
14. “But the real secret to lifelong good health is actually the opposite: Let your body take care of you.” – Deepak Chopra
15. “You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox.” – Deepak Chopra
16. “Karma, when properly understood, is just the mechanics through which consciousness manifests.”- – Deepak Chopra
17. “Karma is experience, and experience creates memory, and memory creates imagination and desire, and desire creates karma again. If I buy a cup of coffee, that’s karma. I now have that memory that might give me the potential desire for having cappuccino, and I walk into Starbucks, and there’s karma all over again.” – Deepak Chopra
18. “In every conversation I’ve had – with housewives in Mumbai, with middle-class people, upper-class, in the slums – everyone says there is an underlying consciousness of karma. That people believe in karma – that what you’re putting out is going to come back. If I do something to you, the energy of it is going to come back to me in the future.” – Deepak Chopra
19. “No matter how closely you examine the water, glucose, and electrolyte salts in the human brain, you can’t find the point where these molecules became conscious.” – Deepak Chopra
20th Deepak Chopra Quote – “Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it’s realistic or not.” – Deepak Chopra
21. “The intention to live as long as possible isn’t one of the mind’s best intentions, because quantity isn’t the same as quality.” – Deepak Chopra
22. “There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.” – Deepak Chopra
23. “Karma, memory, and desire are just the software of the soul. It’s conditioning that the soul undergoes in order to create experience. And it’s a cycle. In most people, the cycle is a conditioned response. They do the same things over and over again.” – Deepak Chopra
24. “We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.” – Deepak Chopra
25. “Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it’s a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.” – Deepak Chopra
26. “You can’t make positive choices for the rest of your life without an environment that makes those choices easy, natural, and enjoyable.” – Deepak Chopra
27. “Your conscious brain cannot multitask. If I’m speaking to you and checking my I-Phone at the same time, I’m doing neither. This is why our society is frazzled; this misconception that we can consciously do more than one thing at a time effectively.” – Deepak Chopra
28. “Our minds influence the key activity of the brain, which then influences everything; perception, cognition, thoughts and feelings, personal relationships; they’re all a projection of you.” – Deepak Chopra
29. “Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.” – Deepak Chopra
30. “New Age values are conscious evolution, a non-sectarian society, a non-military culture, global sharing, healing the environment, sustainable economies, self-determination, social justice, economic empowerment of the poor, love, compassion in action, going beyond religious fundamentalism, going beyond nationalism-extreme nationalism, culture.” – Deepak Chopra
31. “There are receptors to these molecules in your immune system, in your gut and in your heart. So when you say, ‘I have a gut feeling’ or ‘my heart is sad’ or ‘I am bursting with joy,’ you’re not speaking metaphorically. You’re speaking literally.” – Deepak Chopra
32. “The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” – Deepak Chopra
33. “The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.” – Deepak Chopra
34. “You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.” – Deepak Chopra
35. “The real key is to live in an environment where the mind feels free to choose the right thing instead of being compelled by habit and inertia to choose the wrong thing.” – Deepak Chopra
36. “A child in India grows up with the idea that you have to make choices that will create a better future. In fact, your whole life is a continuum of choices, so the more conscious you are, the greater your life will be.” – Deepak Chopra
37. “Self-awareness is value-free. It isn’t scary. It doesn’t imply that you will subject yourself to needless pain.” – Deepak Chopra
38. “People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships – not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem.” – Deepak Chopra
39. “Although we take it for granted, sanitation is a physical measure that has probably done more to increase human life span than any kind of drug or surgery.” – Deepak Chopra
40th Deepak Chopra Quote – “Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you’re flexible, when you’re spontaneous, when you’re detached, when you’re easy on yourself and easy on others.” – Deepak Chopra
41. “Mature workers are less impulsive, less reactive, more creative and more centered.” – Deepak Chopra
42. “Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal.” – Deepak Chopra
43. “The world sometimes feels like an insane asylum. You can decide whether you want to be an inmate or pick up your visitor’s badge. You can be in the world but not engage in the melodrama of it; you can become a spiritual being having a human experience thoroughly and fully.” – Deepak Chopra
44. “Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.” – Deepak Chopra
45. “For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it’s a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.” – Deepak Chopra
46. “We must go beyond the constant clamor of ego, beyond the tools of logic and reason, to the still, calm place within us: the realm of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra
47. “There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one’s nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence.” – Deepak Chopra
48. “We have to really educate ourselves in a way about who we are, what our real identity is.” – Deepak Chopra
49. “Before a brain can register a thought, a mind must think it… every step of the way is mind over matter… We override our brains all the time.” – Deepak Chopra
50. “Globalism began as a vision of a world with free trade, shared prosperity, and open borders. These are good, even noble things to aim for.” – Deepak Chopra
51. “Well-being changes as we move through life, which is why a child’s version of it cannot be the same as an old person’s.” – Deepak Chopra
52. “Dynamic activity and deep rest of the mind are complementary to each other.” – Deepak Chopra
53. “Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone.” – Deepak Chopra
54. “Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.” – Deepak Chopra
55. “Self-awareness is not just relaxation and not just meditation. It must combine relaxation with activity and dynamism. Technology can aid that.” – Deepak Chopra
56. “What happens is consciousness operates in mysterious ways. One of those ways is that the old paradigm suddenly starts to die.” – Deepak Chopra
57. “Perceptual reality is different for different species. In certain species it is a mode of observation, so what we call scientific fact is actually not ultimate truth, it is perceptual experience, and it’s a mode of observation.” – Deepak Chopra
58. “The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.” – Deepak Chopra
59. “Science stands for rational thought, faith for superstition and unreason.” – Deepak Chopra
60. “Consciousness, rather than being an epiphenomenon of matter, is actually the source of matter. It differentiates into space, time, energy, information, and matter. Even though this view is an ancient view, an ancient world view, it is now finding some resonance amongst a few scientists.” – Deepak Chopra
61. “Wall Street is broken for sure because it succumbed to greed and corruption and pure speculation with no values.” – Deepak Chopra
62. “Seeking can become stressful when you apply the same laws that you apply in the material world – hard work, exacting plans, driving ambition, and attachment to outcome.” – Deepak Chopra
63. “If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.” – Deepak Chopra
64. “Human beings place their desires ahead of the collective good.” – Deepak Chopra
65. “In societies where mature workers are respected and where their wisdom is respected, everybody benefits. Workers are more engaged and productive. Their health is better. They live longer.” – Deepak Chopra
66. “I have all the time in the world. I am in touch with the timeless. I am surrounded by infinity. When I think like that, it doesn’t mean I’m going to miss my train, it just means that I’m not thinking about it right now because I’m speaking to you.” – Deepak Chopra
67. “No solution can ever be found by running in three different directions.” – Deepak Chopra
68. “I, of course, meditate for two hours every morning. It’s part of my schedule; I wake up at 4 a.m. every day and I love it.” – Deepak Chopra
69. “We can actually accelerate the process through meditation, through the ability to find stillness through loving actions, through compassion and sharing, through understanding the nature of the creative process in the universe and having a sense of connection to it. So, that’s conscious evolution.” – Deepak Chopra
70. “As long as you think of your real self as the person you are, then of course you’re going to be fearful of death. But what is a person? A person is a pattern of behavior, of a larger awareness. You know, the two-year-old dies before the three-year-old shows up, the three-year-old dies before the teenager shows up.” – Deepak Chopra
71. “I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can’t explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people.” – Deepak Chopra
72. “The symbolic language of the crucifixion is the death of the old paradigm; resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking.” – Deepak Chopra
73. “It takes a little bit of mindfulness and a little bit of attention to others to be a good listener, which helps cultivate emotional nurturing and engagement.” – Deepak Chopra
74. “In a person’s career, well, if you’re process-oriented and not totally outcome-oriented, then you’re more likely to be success. I often say ‘pursue excellence, ignore success.’ Success is a by-product of excellence.” – Deepak Chopra
75. “In moments of transcendence, when time stands still, your biological clock will stop. The spirit is that domain of our awareness where there is no time.” – Deepak Chopra
76. “Your immune cells are like a circulating nervous system. Your nervous system in fact is a circulating nervous system. It thinks. It’s conscious.” – Deepak Chopra
77. “We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.” – Deepak Chopra
78. “Research has shown that the best way to be happy is to make each day happy.” – Deepak Chopra
79. “I think we need the feminine qualities of leadership, which include attention to aesthetics and the environment, nurturing, affection, intuition and the qualities that make people feel safe and cared for.” – Deepak Chopra
80th Deepak Chopra Quote – “Passivity is the same as defending injustice.” – Deepak Chopra
81. “It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.” – Deepak Chopra
82. “Once the fabric of a just society is undone, it takes generations to weave it back together.” – Deepak Chopra
83. “Spiritual people should not be ashamed of being wealthy.” – Deepak Chopra
84. “I teach people that no matter what the situation is, no matter how chaotic, no matter how much drama is around you, you can heal by your presence if you just stay within your center.” – Deepak Chopra
85. “Wealth is the progressive realization of worthy goals, the ability to love and have compassion, meaningful and caring relationships.” – Deepak Chopra
86. “You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology.” – Deepak Chopra
87. “People think meditation is a huge undertaking. Don’t think of it like that.” – Deepak Chopra
88. “Our thinking and our behavior are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based.” – Deepak Chopra
89. “And for me anyway, consciousness is three components: a personal component which, for lack of a better word, we can call the soul. A collective component, which is more archetypal, and a deeper level, and then a universal domain of consciousness.” – Deepak Chopra
90. “In my definition of consciousness, consciousness is the same thing as life. What wisdom traditions also call spirit.” – Deepak Chopra
91. “There is just no getting around that turning bad things into good things is up to you.” – Deepak Chopra
92. “Modern medicine, for all its advances, knows less than 10 percent of what your body knows instinctively.” – Deepak Chopra
93. “Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.” – Deepak Chopra
94. “Every person is a god in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.” – Deepak Chopra
95. “A person is a pattern of behavior, of a larger awareness.” – Deepak Chopra
96. “All religions develop, become exclusive, become divisive, and quarrelsome.” – Deepak Chopra
97. “A risk-free life is far from being a healthy life.” – Deepak Chopra
98. “Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.” – Deepak Chopra
99. “We’re living in a time when the world has suddenly discovered India because it’s run out of raw material for its imagination. The raw materials for imagination are inexhaustible here.” – Deepak Chopra
100. “Karma is only in space, time, and causality. Your real self resides non-locally.” – Deepak Chopra
101. “I’ve always felt that technology can be used to our benefit and should be used to our benefit.” – Deepak Chopra
102. “The world in general has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals.” – Deepak Chopra
103. “There are very few good examples of effective, nurturing leadership that unlocks people’s potential or even enthusiasm.” – Deepak Chopra
104. “I dislike the word ‘self-help.’ Self-awareness, yes, but not self-help.” – Deepak Chopra
105. “In India, you’re taught that there are certain qualities that make you a divine human being.” – Deepak Chopra
106. “There is no separation between mind and body… Self and other co-arise and fall away all the time.” – Deepak Chopra
107. “All of us are living with dogmas that we accept as truths. When one of these is overturned, there’s an initial gasp, soon followed by a rush of exhilaration.” – Deepak Chopra
108. “We need to build websites with celebrity speakers who talk about the ideals of fairness, sharing, democratic cooperation, and altruism in public life.” – Deepak Chopra
109. “When resources become skimpy, human beings don’t suddenly cooperate to conserve what’s left. They fight to the last scrap for possession of a diminishing resource.” – Deepak Chopra
110. “If insurance companies paid for lifestyle-management classes, they would save huge sums of money. We need to see that alternative medicine is now mainstream.” – Deepak Chopra
111. “When I looked at the addictive qualities of video games and how they captivate people’s attention, I decided to try the same technology for enhancing well-being.” – Deepak Chopra
112. “Consciousness conceives, governs, constructs, and becomes the activity of the body.” – Deepak Chopra
113. “I was always interested in going deeply into the life of the prophet.” – Deepak Chopra
114. “Once you’re more aware of people’s needs, you can create action plans for others to follow. That way, you’re responsible for your own well-being, too.” – Deepak Chopra
115. “The fear of death comes from limited awareness.” – Deepak Chopra
116. “From a scientist’s perspective, to understand everything that you need to know about human beings, you only have to tinker with all the mechanical parts of genes and the brain until there are no more secrets left.” – Deepak Chopra
People love crossing finish lines. Many endurance events, such as 5K’s, triathalons and marathons, continue to gain popularity. And for many people, the thought of crossing a finish line is their sole purpose for signing up for the event. Finish lines, however, provide so much more than the achievement of crossing it. In the bigger picture, they can propell us toward additional and larger goals we might never have aspired to without the affirmation of what I call the finishing line effect!
Truth #1: They are great motivators.
Once you commit to an event, you can start planning your finish. This gives you the opportunity to implement a plan on how you are going to finish. If you are running a 5K, you might plan for shorter route distances to achieve each week until the event. Alternatively, if you’re entering a weight loss competition, you might start cleaning out your fridge or changing your environment to make your goal more achievable. Whatever the scenario, knowing a finish line is in your future will motivate you to start making changes now so you can cross that line. You learn to set goals, action steps, and an overall structure that will allow you to achieve an objective you’ve set.
Truth #2: They provide a sense of achievement.
Once you cross that line, a rush of pure satisfaction will go through your head. All of your planning and hard work got you to that point, and there is no better feeling than achieving something you set out to do. Crossing that line can provide a rush of feel-good endorphins and wave of positive emotions. Most of us need to be told we are doing a good job from time to time, and the finish line can be that ultimate, concrete source of positive feedback after all of your dedication and work towards it.
Truth #3: They cultivate a can-do mindset.
Many of our members have weight loss goals. Yet, sometimes they may not begin with a real focus or even exact objectives around how much weight they want to lose or how they want to lose it. When signing up for an event, it puts them into goal setting or planning mode. They have an end in sight and know they have to make changes in order to achieve it. This can be a very positive experience for many people. If they can make a goal, complete a plan and set out to execute that plan and finish, it creates a positive mindset they can tap into to achieve other fitness goals and results.
Truth #4: There is no real end.
Although it’s called a finish line, be prepared to ask yourself “what’s my next finish line?” as soon as you cross it. Finish lines create a sense of urgency for wanting to feel that powerful rush of achievement again. In fact, many people specifically create a year of goals with concrete finish lines to continually move forward and enjoy a regular sense of accomplishment. Incorporating a continuing stream of “finish lines” in the year ahead can create a powerful and positive momentum in your life and can push you to embrace bigger and bolder goals.
So, what is your next finish line? For thousands of Life Time members, it will be this February’s 90-Day Challenge. They’ll be competing against themselves and others to be the weight loss or transformation challenge winner at their local club. And although the 90-Day brings out the competitiveness in most, many members join it for the accountability and motivation throughout the 12 weeks and to ultimately cross that finish line. If you aren’t competing in the 90-Day Challenge, spend some time planning out your next (or your first!) finish line. Whether it’s an endurance event or a weight loss competition, be prepared for the other positive experiences that come along with crossing that line.
