Richard Nelson Bolles

“Always define WHAT you want to do with your life and WHAT you have to offer to the world, in terms of your favorite talents/gifts/skills-not in terms of a job-title.”

“I like the late Bernard Haldane's definition of an achievement. He says it is: something you yourself feel you have done well, that you also enjoyed doing and felt proud of. In other words you are looking for an accomplishment that gave you two pleasures: enjoyment while doing it, and satisfaction from the outcome. That doesn't mean you may not have sweated as you did it, or hated some parts of the process, but it does mean that basically you enjoyed most of the process. The pleasure was not simply in the outcome, but along the way as well.”

“So many times you will see people wringing their hands and saying 'I want to know what my mission in life is,' all the while they are cutting people off on the highway, refusing to give time to people, punishing their mate for having hurt their feelings or lying about what they did.”

“There is a vast world of work out there in this country, where at least 111 million people are employed in this country alone--many of whom are bored out of their minds. All day long. Not for nothing is their motto TGIF -- 'Thank God It's Friday.' They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.”

“The object is to keep busy being something...as opposed to doing something. We are all sent here to bring more gratitude, more kindness, more forgiveness and more love into this world. That is too big a job to be accomplished by just a few.”