Steve Pavlina Quotes

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.

Think for yourself. Unplug yourself from follow-the-follower groupthink, and virtually ignore what everyone else in your industry is saying (except the ones everyone agrees is crazy). Do your own research, draw your own conclusions, set your own course, and stick to your guns. When you're just starting out, people will tell you you're wrong. After you've blown past them, they'll tell you you're crazy. A few years after that, they'll (privately) ask you to mentor them.

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.

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.

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

Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.

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.

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.

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.

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

Passion and purpose go hand in hand. When you discover your purpose, you will normally find it's something you're tremendously passionate about.

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

The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground.

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

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

Your beliefs about reality become your beliefs about yourself.

Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise, beware the sales pitch for something "fast and easy" that's about to come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you can potentially find.

Treat your business relationships like friendships (or potential friendships). Formality puts up walls, and walls don't foster good business relationships. No one is loyal to a wall... except the one in China.

If you dislike the answers you’re getting from life, try asking better questions.

Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward.

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

Any relationships that would reject you for being true to yourself are - by definition - abusive relationships. You'll be much better off when you let them go.

It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog - you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.

I believe the ultimate goal of living and refining your values is to identify and achieve congruence with universal principles.

The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets.

Achieving meaningful goals requires that you commit your entire ass, not just one cheek.

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.

Don't die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be.

Spiritual development requires the freedom to connect with different parts of reality in order to understand them more fully. The more you're able to explore, the more connections you can form, and the greater your spiritual growth will be. When you feel a strong desire to connect with something in your reality, listen to your intuitive guidance, and make the connection.

A man doesn't require the approval of others. He's willing to follow his heart wherever it leads him. When a man is following his heart-centered path, it's of little consequence if the entire world is against him.

Your values are your current estimations of truth. They represent your answer to the question of how to live.

Regardless of others' reactions, do your best to stay true to yourself. Make the choices that allow you to look in the mirror and feel good about the person gazing back at you.

'Someday' is the day after you die.

Network selectively. Nothing says "business newbie" like shotgun networking. "You never know when someone might say yes" is marketing for dummies. Take the time to build a profile of your ideal customers, and target your networking activities to reach them. Speak to those who are already predisposed to want what you offer. Almost any profile is better than "anyone with a pulse."

The universe cannot show you anything which you've intentionally chosen to block from your reality.

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.

Productivity = creating value and delivering it to people. All other busywork is unproductive fluff and should be minimized.

If you try to impress an alarm clock, it will simply tell you the time.

It's funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it's time to go out and get a job. But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

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

You can move beyond the ego's perspective and see reality from the perspective of a higher consciousness.

Fail your way forward. Recognize that Ready, fire, aim is superior to ready, aim, aim, aim. Straightforward trial and error produces better results than endless vacillating. If you're afraid to make decisions and act on them in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty, get a job. Failure's lessons are essential to success.

If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief - always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don't actually believe it. You're only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn't.

One of the secrets to success is recognizing that motivation follows action.

Believing that you must do something perfectly is a recipe for stress, and you'll associate that stress with the task and thus condition yourself to avoid it

I think the best friendships are those that can stand the test of time, where the friendship is based more on who you are than on what you do or what you have.

Waiting for clarity is like being a sculptor staring at a piece of marble, waiting for the statue within to cast off the unneeded pieces. Do not wait for clarity to spontaneously materialize-gra b a chisel and get busy!

Whatever happens to me during the course of my life - physically, socially, or financially - I can always choose to focus on giving. When I'm in that state, nothing else matters. I cease to exist as a separate being and merge into an expression of divine oneness.