When I first started out on this website, I kind of wanted to be like Steve Pavlina.
But a girl.
And not as controversial.
And not (as) into BD/SM and dominant-submissive relationships.
Point is, Steve, one of the biggest self developmental bloggers out there (even though his website looks like shit), has said many an amazing thing. I love his book and still recommend it to anyone who will listen, and I have read so much of his articles on his blog, and wrote an earlier instalment of my favorite quotes.
Here’s round two, based on an ebook I found on the iBooks store. In this ebook, Meghashyan and Krupa Chirravoori collected their favorite quotes (also linking to the original article) and I really enjoyed looking through it all.
I took THEIR favorite quotes and collected MY favorite Steve Pavlina quotes. Quote-ception.
Head’s up: LONG article.
LIFE AND WORK
- “This week, do more of what you love than you did last week. The more you enjoy your work, the easier it is to be motivated.”
- “Center your work around whatever you care about the most. Otherwise your work will become soulless, and your life will follow.”
- “Think about someone you regard as very successful. Write down your thoughts about this person, including what you like and what you don’t like. What if you’ve never even met this other person? How can you possibly know what they’re like? Where is your attitude coming from? Your own beliefs about success are filtering it.”
- “Your relationship with the most successful people in your reality represents your relationship with success itself. Those people represent your potential and how you feel about it.”
- “The more exceptional you want your results to be, the more you have to push beyond the limitations of social conditioning.”
- “Either your career is overflowing with your personal magic, or it isn’t. Recognise that if you aren’t there yet, you aren’t there yet. The wrong path is the wrong path. The wrong path doesn’t suddenly turn into the right path around the next bend.”
- “Yes, success is harder than mediocrity, but it’s not impossible. Great success is achievable if you commit yourself to it.”
- “Think of your career as an outward expression of your inner self.”
RELATIONSHIPS
- “The purpose of every relationship is to teach you how to love yourself from the inside out.”
- “Place your loyalty not with your pity posse but with your highest vision of yourself and surround yourself with people who can help you support that vision.”
- “Love works. Attachment doesn’t work. Jealousy doesn’t work. Neediness doesn’t work. Fear doesn’t work. But love works.
THE SELF
- “Don’t lie to yourself. You know the truth.”
- “Spend time cultivating your deepest desires, no matter how impractical or impossible they seem. It’s perfectly okay to want the impossible. It’s not ok to pretend that your desires don’t matter.”
- “Free people don’t have shoulds. They have choices.”
- “Sometimes in order to hear yourself, you must stop listening to others.”
- “If you don’t want everyone to like you, you don’t like yourself enough.”
CHOOSING YOUR LIFE
- “When you use silent approval on yourself, you tell your subconscious that your current standards of performance are acceptable. So don’t be surprised when you keep getting the same result year after year.”
- “When you catch yourself complaining, top and ask yourself if you want to continue to deny responsibility for your reality or to allow a bit mor responsibility back onto your plate. Do you want sympathy for creating what you don’t want, or do you want congratulations for creating what you do want?”
- “What matters is making the decision to start consciously directing your own life instead of being pushed along by external currents.”
- “The ultimate responsibility for how your life turns out rests with you and you alone.”
- “You have within you the power to make whatever changes you want to make in your life.”
- “Not deciding is still a choice.”
- “You can give up control, but you can never give up responsibility.”
- “If you want to get onto a new path, you have to be the one to initiate it. Not me. Not your boss. Not your spouse. Not some divine being. It has to come from you.”
- “It’s perfectly OK to admit you’re on the wrong path and to be uncertain and frustrated about what to do next. This is a very human situation.”
- “Love is the energy of connectedness, creation and service. It is associated with intense emotions such as joy, peace and oneness.”
- “Your inner resources are like a muscle. If you don’t build them, they’ll atrophy. A weight only seems heavy in relation to the strength of your muscles. Similarly, an obstacle seems daunting in relation to your personal resourcefulness.”
- “The truth is that nobody knows what you should do about anything. Those are your choices to make. Other people have enough of a challenge making choices for themselves.”
MONEY
- “People who say they want to become a millionaire but are unwilling to back it up with hard work are only fooling themselves. It’s not going to happen by itself. If hard work is a dirty word to you, don’t bother.”
- “Sometimes improving just one personality attribute in yourself can 10x your income. For many it’s self discipline and courage.”
PRODUCTIVITY
- “There goes another hour of your life, never to return again. Are you pleased with how you spend it? How will you invest the next one?”
- “Work from happiness, not for it.”
- “Working three hours with good purpose and focus is often much more productive than putting in 8 hours of distraction-laded half-work.”
- “I think if people adopted the simple hair of not checking email until after 5pm (assuming normal business hours), that alone would dramatically increase productivity.”
- “Realize that nothing is free if it costs you time. Every activity has an opportunity cost.”
GOALS
- “Whatever you’ve decided in the past is largely irrelevant if you would not renew that decision today.”
- “Committing to your goals doesn’t mean you slave away at work you dislike, celebrating only the destination. A real abiding commitment means that you love what you do each day.”
- “If you aren’t feeling passionate about your life, skip TV tonight and write a whole new vision for what you’d really love to experience”
- “You’ll know you’ll really living when you would live pretty much the same way even if you know you only had 18 months left.”
- “How would you intuitively like to spend the next few months? What kind of year would you want to have?”
- “You’re free to switch to something else whenever you want.”
And there you have it. A fuckton of my favorite Steve Pavlina quotes. Happy Easter!
