“The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what’s important and what’s not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. As the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what’s going on outside.”
– Robert Stuberg
“First, all relationships are with yourself — and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life — the one you have, like it or not, until the day you die — is with yourself.”
– Peter McWilliams
“In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment, independent will, that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.”
– Stephen Covey
“Motivation,” the author of The Psychology Of Winning Dr. Dennis Waitley wrote, “comes from within and not from without; all motivation is self-motivation.” You can not find motivation outside of you but can develop motivation inside of you. Oftentimes, it is sleeping within you. People can get pepped up, enthused, encouraged, or even inspired by others, but they can never get motivated by them.
“Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your character.”
–Vince Gill
Today, when one is considered “successful,” that person is usually labeled as such according to some external criterion. This is only natural, for along with the majority of the human race you have the tendency to judge a book by its cover. What you perceive or observe through any of your five senses is oftentimes interpreted as reality or truth. And the problem, however, is that when you distinguish that which is success to you, you are only scratching the surface.
Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins is a timeless classic written many years ago but a book whose powerful principles still ring true to this day.
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The competent advertising man must understand psychology. The more he knows about it the better. He must learn that certain effects lead to certain reactions, and use that knowledge to increase results and avoid mistakes.
Human nature is perpetual. In most respects it is the same today as in the time of Caesar. So the principles of psychology are fixed and enduring. You will never need to unlearn what you learn about them.
The difference between advertising and personal salesmanship lies largely in personal contact. The salesman is there to demand attention. He cannot be ignored. The advertisement can be ignored. But the salesman wastes much of his time on prospects whom he can never hope to interest. He cannot pick them out. The advertisement is read only by interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say.
The purpose of a headline is to pick out people you can interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So the first thing you say is, “Hey there, Bill Jones” to get the right persons attention. So it is in an advertisement. What you have will interest certain people only, and for certain reasons. You care only for those people. Then create a headline which will hail those people only.
Michel Fortin: Well, let’s just do a little quick check here. Um, Gary, are you on the line?
Gary Halbert: Listen, if you people would stop slurring my reputation.
Michel: Oh, there we go. Let me just mute this phone right now. We are in presentation mode and…
Gary: Just one second.