A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.
Harvey MackayRead
Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
Interpretation
Pessimism hinders progress and creates challenges in the workplace.
In this quote, Harvey Mackay emphasizes the detrimental effects of pessimism in a business environment. He suggests that having a negative outlook can not only stunt growth but also complicate tasks, as pessimists tend to focus on problems rather than opportunities, ultimately affecting everyone in the organization.
In practice
In a team meeting, to encourage positive thinking, you could say, 'Remember, pessimism doesn't grow our business; let's focus on opportunities.'
A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.
Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions.
Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
It's only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.
When I was 15, I started playing first class cricket and always dreamt of being a Test cricketer, wanted to do something for the country, married in 1995, have 2 kids it's been great.
There is no easy way out. If there were, I would have bought it. And believe me, it would be one of my favorite things!
I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I'm so mean I make medicine sick.
But if it's tolerable mediocrity, and you're like, 'Well, you know it could be worse. At least I'm getting paid.' Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you're allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing.
If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity. Wasting the opportunity both degrades your own ability to contribute and, more urgently, takes something away from the rest of us.
Don't talk age! Age has nothing to do with it. One of my guys who started out at my gym is 87 now, and he still does ten bench-press reps with a hundred-pound dumbbell in each hand. He's training to set a leg-pressing record. I put things in the guy's brain way back when, and now he'll never get away from it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.