Steve Pavlina Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Replace "Have to" with "Want to."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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