Motivation is a “must-have” component to lasting success. It goes by many names:
- Spark,
- Fire,
- Passion,
- Your Why,
- Your Calling,
- Your Reason to get up in the morning,
Whatever you call it, it drives you to be more successful than you were yesterday. It helps you forget about what others are doing and focus on your goals and dreams. In so doing, your driving motivation helps activate flow state -as written by Mihaly Czikzsentmihalyi’s book Flow. Where you are so entranced by your activity, time feels different: hours become minutes, minutes feel like seconds. This flow state, in turn, allows you to spend more time on that activity, which in turn, makes it more likely that you become an expert in your field, which, in turn makes it more likely you’re a success in your field, which, again compels you to spend more time on those winning activities reinforcing the virtuous cycle higher and higher. Motivation is the lifeblood to all great success.
Can Motivational Quotes Really Change Your Life?
In a State University of New York Paper, “Five Key Ingredients for Improving Student Motivation,” Dr. Caro Williams-Pierce identifies key factors that have outsized positive impacts on performance. Among those factors is: “Efficient use of energy and focus: Students should be taught how to produce results while maintaining focus and energy. Businesses and organizations certainly focus on getting the right results with the least effort or cost. Hence, educators need to train students to “stalk” efficient and effective results… This theme of efficiency should serve the student in his or her studies as well as in their life and global citizenry.”
That’s what Legendary Quotes do. They’re real-world focused thoughts on a specific subject by an experienced and successful subject matter expert. In other words, Legendary Quotes are powerful focal points of advice from bona-fide champions within their field -distilled into the bite-sized nuggets of mental nutrition critical to your success- and Empire-building regimen.
It’s like having a subject matter leading expert give you advice when you need it. Consider the Legendary Quote: “Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.” By Napoleon Bonaparte, Legendary Commander, Statesman, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine and Emperor of the French. From being bullied by his peers for his accent, birthplace and stature to becoming one of the greatest military commanders in History, a Self-Made Emperor and one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history.
It would take decades of experience, blood, sweat, mistakes and victories before speaking those words into existence. For the ambitious, clever readers out there paying attention, we get the benefit of that world-class, world-changing knowledge in minutes or seconds -without spending the years of trials and tribulations Napoleon did. However, therein lies the challenge, the natural pitfall is to take this golden nugget of wisdom for granted because it came so easily. Don’t do it. If you get a pearl of wisdom that appeals to you from a vetted source: read it once. Then, read it a second time. And, read it and internalize it until it becomes a part of how you live your life.
Reading Legendary Quotes are like having outlier successful experts in their respective fields, giving you the best advice they can give on that subject.
3 Primary Rules for Making Legendary Quotes that Really, Positively Change Your Life
- Who: Consider the Source of the Quote before even reading or adopting it. Don’t fall for the very common pitfall of: “Don’t make my mistake advice -so I know what I’m doing.”
- The major issue with this type of advice, even if it comes from a good place, is that while it is true you often learn more from your mistakes than your successes -until that person has the requisite amount of success (after the mistake) they are NOT free of the likelihood of making the exact same mistake again.
- If a depressed, chronic alcoholic is giving you advice on how to stay sober -unless they’ve been sober for a reasonable period of time, the probability of a relapse is remarkably high -regardless of the how convincing they made their argument sound.
- A mentor once told me, “Only take advice from someone in a better position than you are currently -specific to that subject.” That means taking basketball advice from Michael Jordan-level champions. And, discarding advice from wannabes and other people who just sound good, but lack the appropriate success track record.
- The major issue with this type of advice, even if it comes from a good place, is that while it is true you often learn more from your mistakes than your successes -until that person has the requisite amount of success (after the mistake) they are NOT free of the likelihood of making the exact same mistake again.
- How: How does the quote serve you? Don’t Listen to a Quote just because it sounds good.
- There are legions of quotes out there that are pithy, clever and funny -but have no intrinsic motivational value. For example, in this demotivational quote: “Mistakes. It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.” It’s funny, witty, memorable and popular enough to have sold many, many posters. It’s even meme-worthy. However, it won’t likely serve you because no actual advice is given -except maybe don’t even try for greatness…
- According to the Harvard University psychiatrists, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, But names will never hurt me. … that often repeated children’s rhyme is wrong… The report suggests that, when verbal abuse is constant and severe, it creates a risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, the same type of psychological collapse experienced by combat troops in Iraq. The research on which the report is based points out that children who are the target of frequent verbal mistreatment exhibit higher rates of physical aggression, delinquency, and social problems than other children.”
- In order for Motivational Quotes to change your life, the quote has to be positive, drive you forward and serve you in a positive way.
- We can also reasonably, find the inverse of that theory, when qualified success advice is constant and forward-moving, it creates a virtuous cycle of success for you.
- When: Focus on one high-quality Quote by a Legend per day. Your time is the most precious resource you have. You can’t spend your day reading and watching motivation. At some point, you’ll need to deploy massive action.
- Just like physical conditioning, it doesn’t make sense to do too much all at once. If your maximum leg press weight is 200 pounds, it’s not realistic -nor safe to throw on 1,000 pounds and hope for the best. The most tried and true course is to do an appropriate amount (relative to your current level) on a regular and constant basis.
- There’s a reason High School, University and real-world career building isn’t taught in a single day, month or even a year. Each concept has to be focused on and internalized before you add more learnings, complexities and nuances.
- Why is reading one quote over and over again -better than reading 10 or more at a time?
- Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) was first developed by the Australian educational psychologist John Sweller. In a nutshell, CLT likens our minds as information processing systems. When we’re working on a problem, especially an unfamiliar one (aka learning new and multiple quotes), we depend on our “working memory”, which is very limited both in its capacity and the length of time it holds information. The less familiar you are with a task, the more you depend on your working memory to help juggle the relevant information; in contrast, when you’re an expert, most of what you need to know is stored in long-term memory and you can complete the task on auto-pilot, in some cases referred to as flow state.
- Since, every new quote is new information, you’re technically robbing yourself of the ability to do things on auto-pilot. These adaptations force you out of auto-pilot and draw on your limited working memory capacity. In the jargon of CLT, the intrinsic “cognitive load” of much of what you do has You’re spending more of your life having to think deliberately and consciously, more like a novice than expert, which can actually lead to mental and physical exhaustion.
- It is for this reason, that you’ve probably run into or know personally, many people who spend hours watching or reading several motivational sources and having very little progress to show for it.
- Like Alexander Graham Bell said, “Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” There’s a solid reason high-performers aren’t world champion chess players, crossfit champions, elite market traders and kickboxing champions in the same year… You need time to focus and grow.
That’s what a Legendary Quote is. It’s curated to give you maximum effect in a short-period of time. It’s taken us years to develop a system to find, research, curate and share these Legends and their Legendary Quotes with you. We want other ambitious people to be successful. And, what better way to do that than to learn from World-Changers who already have.
Be Legendary.
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