“Focus on what provides value to others, not what impresses others. Other people spend about as much time thinking about your lifestyle and accomplishments as you spend thinking about their lifestyle and accomplishments. Which is to say, not much time at all. The things we do to impress others rarely impress them for longer than five minutes. But the things we do to provide value for others can last a lifetime. In the long run, one of the most impressive things you can do is provide exceptional value.”
James Clear
Influence Quotes
“Good books are a good influence. Good art is a good influence. Prayer is an influence as well. But the strongest influence is the example of a good life. A good life becomes a blessing for people, not only for those who live good lives but those who can see, know, and understand such lives.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 343)
“People are drawn to those who expect a lot out of life, whereas they tend to disrespect those who are fearful and undemanding.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 242)
“When you create a difference in someone’s life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime. No act is ever too small. One by one, this is how to make an ocean rise.”
Danielle Doby, I Am Her Tribe
“People are naturally more emotional and permeable to the moods of others. Work with human nature and turn this into a positive by infecting the group with the proper set of emotions. People are more susceptible to the moods and attitudes of the leader than of anyone else.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 208)
“Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. To make yourself powerful, place yourself at the center of things, make yourself more accessible, seek out old allies and make new ones, force yourself into more and more difference circles.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 136)
“everyone is a teacher, but that does not mean everyone is correct.”
Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 183)
“Here’s the thing about your heroes: You have to know about them to look up to them. The candidate pool is 100% limited by your exposure. That’s why so many kids look up to athletes, I think. They haven’t been exposed to enough other people to look up to them. Here’s how I think about that: Who haven’t I been exposed to that would inspire me if I knew they existed or knew the details of their lives? And how could I learn about those people?”
Barrett Brooks
“The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What gets rewarded, gets repeated. What gets punished, gets avoided. Don’t reward behavior you don’t want to see repeated.”
James Clear, Blog
“We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone—our parents, teachers, analysts—hypnotizes us to ‘see’ the world and construe it in the ‘right’ way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind, and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meaning in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists.”
Sidney Jourard, via Sunbeams (Page 120)
“Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 79)