Motivational Quotes for Emotional & Mental Happiness

Inspirational Quotes to Improve Emotional and Mental Health 

What you are and who you are today is not necessarily what you ought to become.

In fact, it is almost assuredly not so. Otherwise, you would have no room for further growth and development, nor any need for further human experiences. 

Success in Living A Determined Life comes mostly through developing a deeper self-understanding and honing your "inner talk" skills and the conversations you hold with yourself. This also requires you to know, understand, and accept the reality of the way you are at any given point in time, starting with now. 

Once you fully know yourself, you are better able to be true to who you truly are by striving to become what your soul wants you to be across all elements of your. This is the path to emotional and mental happiness. 

We all occasionally struggle with controlling our emotions and dealing with down periods in our lives. It is not possible to always be emotionally up and mentally strong. And we all need motivational pointers to help us overcome our emotional weights and negative thoughts. That's why we wrote 365 Motivational Quotes for Emotional & Mental Happiness. 

Here are some of our favorite quotations you'll find in the book:

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.

Swedish Proverb

Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.

Peter McWilliams

Loving people live in loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

Wayne Dyer

He who angers you conquers you.

Elizabeth Kenny

Life reflects your own thoughts back to you.

Napoleon Hill

We can always choose to perceive things differently. You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right.

Marianne Williamson

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; they can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by them.

Epictetus

Make it a rule of life never to regret. Regret is an appalling waste of energy — you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield 

The motivational quotations in this book will provide you with a wealth of beliefs and ideas for overcoming emotional and mental challenges, enabling you to live a life framed through self-awareness, mindfulness, authentic happiness, being present, peace and peacefulness, love, attaining goals, and being connected with your spiritual self. 

Project You: 365 Motivational Quotes for Emotional & Mental Happiness is available on Amazon in paperback ($4.88) and Kindle ($2.99) formats. 

Motivational Quotes for Health & Wellness

Inspiration and Motivation for Living a Healthy Life 

As obesity levels continue to climb, and stress levels continue to escalate across the globe, there is an old Irish saying that is very apt for today's world:  "No time for your health today, no health for your time tomorrow." 

Without a healthy body you will simply not be able to achieve all that you want to achieve. Your mind may be willing, but if your body is not fit or if you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, then achieving what you want to accomplish in life becomes a much harder struggle. 

We all need continuous motivation when it comes to our health and wellness. That's why we have published our new book 365 Motivational Quotes for Health & Wellness. 

Here are some of our favorite health and wellness quotations that you'll find in the book: 

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

Thomas Carlyle

So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.

A. J. Reb Materi 

Fitness — if it came in a bottle, everybody would have a great body.

Cher

If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.

Elbert Hubbard 

Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.

Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby  

As I see it every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease in yourself. 
Adelle Davis 

We do not stop exercising because we grow old ─ we grow old because we stop exercising.

Kenneth H. Cooper

I concentrate on exercises from the waist down since that is the laziest part of a woman's body.

Tina Louise 

Almost all of us have difficulty staying motivated when it comes to healthy eating, proper exercise, and stress-relieving techniques. This book is written to spark inspiration in readers that motivates positive personal change throughout the year. 

Project You: 365 Motivational Quotes for Health & Wellness is available at Amazon in both paperback ($4.88) and Kindle ($2.99) formats. Get your copy today and make 2018 your healthiest year yet. 

7 Key Success Factors For Personal Improvement

Mid-Year Resolutions. Make Yours Now. 

Living A Determined Life is an opportunity to continuously examine your life in an on-going manner that helps you build and journey on a path that mentally, emotionally and spiritually aligns with your life's purpose. 

It also means making continuous personal improvements, or what the Japanese call kaizen. For many, this means thinking of personal development as an on-going self-improvement project, or what we call Project You. 

Since personal development should be an ongoing process, we have launched the Mid-Year Resolutions initiative. Research shows that over 80% of all New Year’s Resolutions fail to be achieved, and over 50% have been dropped by the middle of the year, so this is an opportune time to reflect; take account of your personal goals, dreams and hopes; and re-ignite your Determined Life Journey. 

As we wrote in yesterday’s blog post, there are many reasons why we fail at personal change. For one thing, scientific research shows it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become a new habit. So if you start today, any personal improvement change will become a new habit around early September (just after Labor Day in the U.S.).

Here are 7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Improvement Change: 

1. Put time aside daily / weekly to review the actions you are taking and monitoring progress. 
2. Give priority to your personal improvement initiative over other daily tasks. 
3. Write your personal goals in a SMART format (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). 
4. Share your goals with others and allow them to hold you accountable. (It's not as scary as it sounds!) 
5. Focus on only 1-3 change initiatives at a time. 
6. Track progress and course correct as necessary. 
7. Recognize your effort and rewards you success. 

Details on these key success factors can be found in our article 7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Change.

Who says personal resolutions can only be made at the start of the year? Don’t fall into this trap. We are at the mid-point of 2017, which makes this an ideal time for re-assessing your personal goals and re-igniting your motivation with some Mid-Year Resolutions.

Please share these thoughts and the article on the 7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Change with your family and friends, and in social media using #MidYearResolutions. Thank you.

Me Time

The Importance of Putting "Me Time" on Your Personal Calendars

What is at the top of your personal To Do list right now? Do you spend the majority of each weekend running errands and handling personal and family chores? When was the last time you scheduled Me Time?

We are not machines, though we often push ourselves like mechanical beasts. We all need to take breaks and relax. We all need time alone to ourselves, even when it seems like there's no spare time to do so (which, in fact, is the exact time when we most desperately need a break from the world, other people, and all the commitments and tasks facing us).

Me Time should be exactly that. Time for just you, or just you and someone you don't see very often that you want to share some special time with. Me Time is not a time for running personal errands. It is a time to be alone with yourself, catch your breath, and regain your internal harmony.

If you will block off a couple of hours once or twice a month for Me Time, you will feel rejuvenated and reinvigorated. 

Here are some wonderful activities and pursuits to consider for your periodic Me Time blocks:

·         Commune with nature. Walk on a beach. Hike in the woods or forest. Stroll through a public park, feed the birds and enjoy your own tasty snack.

·         Treat yourself to a spa treatment, massage or Reiki session.

·         Go to a game, concert, play, or movie by yourself, or with a friend or family member you haven't seen in awhile.

·         Eat outside. Tip: many hotels have snack bars and cafes at their outdoor pools. Or, if you live near the ocean, try one of the outdoor restaurants at any of the resorts overlooking the water. Breakfast overlooking the beach can be quite the personal treat!

·         Visit a museum, science center or historical building. This can be an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, especially if you are traveling alone on business. And it certainly beats sitting in your hotel room reading email.

·         Plan your next vacation by visiting travel agencies and tourism promotion offices. Grab a few brochures, find an enjoyable spot for a relaxing cup of coffee, and draft out your own itinerary.

How can you find the time to do these things? Well, for one, eliminate as many of these time wasters and energy destroyers as you can:

·         Watching the news or ESPN Sports Center every night (with the constant repetition of major stories you won't miss much information if you skip these shows twice a week).

·         Reading the daily newspaper or watching the morning news each and every day (again you won't miss any major stories if you skip this activity twice a week).

·         Mindlessly watching television in the hopes that doing so will re-energize your tired body (it won't, but a brisk 15-20 minute walk will).

·         Likewise mindlessly surfing the Internet in the hopes of finding something interesting to occupy your already overloaded mind.

·         Worrying about possible negative consequences of something that has not occurred and may not actually happen.

·         Spending time consciously regretting the past or worrying about the future.

·         Over-analyzing data and options before making a decision.

·         Gossiping about others.

·         Spending time with negative people who drain your own energy reserves.

·         Playing electronic games on your smart phone, tablet or computer.

Just putting an end to a few of these activities will easily reward you with four to five hours of extra time a month that you think you do not currently have.

Lastly, a tip of huge importance. You must put Me Time onto your calendar and do your best not to let anything cause you to cancel this commitment to yourself. It is best to schedule these sessions 4-5 days ahead of time. The anticipation will build inside you as your appointment with yourself nears. 

Also, to help get you motivated, we have hundreds of motivational quotes in our book Project You: Words of Wisdom. It is available at Amazon in paperback ($6.45) and Kindle ($3.88) formats.

Please give Me Time a try. We would love to hear about your experiences with Me Time. Let us know in the comment box below. 

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is also available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon. 

Passion Leads to Authentic Happiness and Greater Self Satisfaction

Keep Rekindling Your Passion

There will be times when your inner fire goes out. 

At such times you will need to reflect and resolve whether it is the passion for a particular project, event, person, or thing that has gone out, or if it is something on a larger scale. It may, in fact, be an overall cloud impacting numerous aspects of your life. This happens.

Whatever the cause, reflection, reading inspirational and thought-provoking authors, and increasing your health and fitness will combine to supply you with the spiritual, emotional and physical energy needed to help you through such periods of waning passion. The most important thing is for you to know how to rekindle your flames of passion, as the method for each of us differs.

Passion will help you through good times and bad. When there is no passion the deep-down desire to do a thing is lacking. When there is passion, the desire to do something often becomes the power to do it.

As Anthony Robbins says, "There is no greatness without a passion to be great, whether it's the aspiration of an athlete or artist, a scientist, a parent or a business person."

Here is one of the beauties of life. Greatness does not require performing on a world stage, or even a national one. Greatness is equal whether found in a superior athlete like Michael Jordan, in a scientist like Albert Einstein, in a chef in a local restaurant, or in a school teacher who unearths or triggers the imagination and creativity of her students.

The key to all such greatness is the passion found in the inner core of these people. Their greatness results from their passions. 

As the great 19th century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Nothing great has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm." 

What are you passionate about? Which of your passions needs rekindling at this moment? 

Today is a great time to stop and reflect on your passions, and how to spend more time on the things for which you are most passionate. 

Doing so will help keep you on the path of Living A Determined Life. 

This article is partially excerpted from our top-selling personal and professional development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback ($7.90) and Kindle ($6.88) formats.  

Be Passionate. Be Enthusiastic. About Your Life.

Ask Yourself What Makes You Come Alive 

Nido Qubein, a noted motivational speaker, often tells his audiences, "Enthusiastic people experience life from the inside out." 

When you bring your passion to life you impact your own world, rather than letting outside influences impact you.

Almost all of us have greater passion as children, or young adults, than during our later years. Fortunately it is not difficult to rekindle that youthful passion. It simply takes knowing what burns inside you and concentrating on methods for bringing your passion to the surface and into the world. 

One key to success comes from the writer John Eldredge: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive."

Your passions are your inner truths. Understand this and rely on this knowledge. 

Also, as Benjamin Disraeli wrote, "Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth."

Passion is at the opposite extreme of indifference. Here is a great anonymous quote on indifference that may help you cast off the shackles of lethargy and use your inner passion to help you strive for authentic satisfaction and happiness:

Indifference never wrote great works, nor thought out striking inventions, nor reared the solemn architecture that awes the soul, nor breathed sublime music, nor painted glorious pictures, nor undertook heroic philanthropies. All these grandeurs are born of enthusiasm, and are done heartily.

Life is not a spectator sport, but a participatory one. This is what Living A Determined Life is all about. 

It matters not if you are involved in something big or small, globally grandiose or locally rooted. As long as you have a passion for it, and this passion drives you to be fully engaged and involved, you will be closer to achieving authentic satisfaction and happiness.

As Denis Waitley wrote, "Get excited and enthusiastic about your own dream. This excitement is like a forest fire ─ you can smell it, taste it, and see it from a mile away." He also wrote, "Chase your passion, not your pension." 

That is very good advice indeed.

This article is partially excerpted from our top-selling personal and professional development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback ($7.89) and Kindle ($6.88) formats. 

Striving For Authentic Happiness and Personal Satisfaction

Passion Will Help You Through the Good Times and Bad

A Project You Life is a self-driven journey for the creation of Living A Determined Life.

One of the vital ingredients of Living A Determined Life is satisfaction determined by the self, with authentic personal satisfaction resulting from living up to your personal values and being involved with something bigger and larger than yourself.

The Project You Life Journey focuses on developing a deep-seated comprehension of your principles, passions and life's purpose. Those who fully understand and acknowledge their principles and passions are more likely to determine their life's purpose. When your principles and life's purpose are aligned, passion becomes the multiplier effect that increases the probability of desired outcomes and leads to the living of Living A Determined Life.

Passion

I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results.

Michael Jordan

This is what passion is all about ── putting your heart and soul into something.

With passion you will get as much pleasure ─ sometimes more ─ from doing something as you will get in achieving it. For example, a passionate artist can get as much pleasure while painting as he does from seeing his completed work.

When you put passion into your efforts to strive forward, in anything you do, you have a much greater chance of attaining authentic satisfaction and happiness, both from your actual endeavors and from whatever results occur.

Richard J. Leider, a Life Coach tells his clients, "Our world is incomplete until each one of us discovers what moves us ── our passions. No other person can hear our calling. We must listen and act on it for ourselves."

Passion and enthusiasm are nearly interchangeable words. Nearly, but not completely. Inherent within passion, though not within enthusiasm, is a deeply burning fire inside a person that provides greater self motivation and commitment. One will not easily give up that for which he or she has a passion.

When you can bring passion into a symbiotic relationship with your desires, you are well on your way to achieving your desires and dreams (assuming you put in the hard work, remain committed and do not allow setbacks to deter you).

Here's what two of the early founders of the self-development industry had to say about passion and enthusiasm:

The starting point for all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. Napoleon Hill

The key that unlocks energy is desire. It's also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited.  Earl Nightingale

Passion will help you through good times and bad. When there is no passion the deep-down desire to do a thing is lacking. When there is passion, the desire to do something often becomes the power to do it.

We'll have more thoughts on passion in the next Project You Life Blog post. 

In the meantime, take 15 minutes with pen and paper and start a list of the things you are passionate about. Then, later today, spend another 30 minutes adding to this list and thinking of ways you can spend more time on these things.

This article is partially excerpted from our top-selling personal and professional development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback ($7.89) and Kindle ($6.88) formats. 

Last Day for Free Project You: Words of Wisdom Motivational eBook

Get Motivated to Make Your Mid-Year Resolutions

In celebration of our Mid-Year Resolutions launch last week, we have been giving away our motivational book Project You: Words of Wisdom for free.

But this free book promotion offer ends today at midnight EDT.

Project You: Words of Wisdom is one of the top-selling motivational and self-help ebooks on Amazon and is currently ranked: 

#6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Personal Growth > Motivational 

#22 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Personal Growth > Self-Help

Packed with hundreds of motivational quotes, Project You: Words of Wisdom provides an overview of the Project You Life Journey and how you can positively impact and grow the seven key elements of your life:  personal life, professional life, family life, health and fitness life, emotional and mental life, spiritual life, and your interconnected life. 

Get your free personal Kindle copy of Project You: Words of Wisdom now at this link: http://amzn.to/1JnH71Q

We have also lowered the paperback price to $6.45. 

Act now as these offers end tonight. 

Project You: Words of Wisdom (Free on Kindle)

Motivational Quotes for Living A Determined Life

As part of our Mid-Year Resolutions launch celebrations, we are making our book Project You: Words of Wisdom free this weekend at Amazon.

In Project You: Words of Wisdom you will find a wide range of quotations selected to help you examine your life experiences and to aid in charting a future path that will bring your life's purpose into clearer focus and attainment. 

We have also discounted the paperback version of the book to $6.45, the lowest price ever.

Project You: Words of Wisdom is one of the top-selling motivational books on Amazon:

• #3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Personal Growth > Motivational 
• 
  
• #7 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Personal Growth > Self-Help 
• 
  
• #33 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Occult

We hope you enjoy the book and the hundreds of motivational quotes it includes. Hurry, the free offer on Kindle is good only through Tuesday, July 5th. 

Here's the link: http://amzn.to/1JnH71Q

And, if it's not too much to ask, please leave a reader review at Amazon after you've had a read.

Many thanks.

Deeper Self Understanding -- Part One

The key to self understanding is to be open and honest with yourself. 

In the previous Project You Life Blog post on Self Understanding (Part Two), we shared with you that self understanding will help you become and remain authentic. And, of course, you want to be authentic. 

Of course, you cannot be authentic if you do not know who you truly are. That is where self understanding comes in. Self reflection is the best school you will ever attend, and it is best that you become a lifetime student enrolled in this school.

Howard Gardner, a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education, differentiated between two types of personal intelligence:

interpersonal intelligence ── being the ability to understand other people and what motivates them, and

intrapersonal intelligence ── being an inward capacity to form an accurate, genuine and truthful model of one's self.

Gardner described the core interpersonal intelligence as the "capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people." He depicted intrapersonal intelligence as the key to self-knowledge with "access to one's own feelings and the ability to discriminate among them and draw upon them to guide behavior."

The key to true self understanding is to be open and honest during your reflective dialogues with yourself.

It is also important to tune out what others say about you. As the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton wrote in his book No Man Is an Island, "Others can give you a name or number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within."

Also, do not get caught up in thinking your job title, your possessions or anything else you associate with are the real you. In the words of Eckhart Tolle:

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often political, nationalistic, racial, religious and other collective identifications.

None of these are you.

Understanding the true motivations behind your thoughts and actions will place you in a better position to do what is right (for yourself as well as for others) when confronted with options and alternatives.

Likewise, realize that material wealth and creature comforts will not define who you truly are. Nor will they determine who your children truly are. Yes, a comfortable childhood usually leads to a more comfortable life as an adult. No one is arguing that there is a need to live in abject poverty to "find one's true self." On the other hand, as Andrew Carnegie said, "He who dies with wealth dies with shame."

To determine if what you are doing is in line with your values, ask yourself "why" are you doing it? Why are you starting that new business venture or creating that new product? To make money? Fine. But is that what you truly value? Or is it to make a difference in people's lives? The latter resonates much more strongly for most, as it is in line with their true values. 

This article is excerpted from the Amazon top-selling personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in Kindle and paperback formats. 

Your Attitude Is Up To You (And No One Else)

You Are Responsible for the Attitude You Bring To Each Day

Attitude makes all the difference in how you approach life and what you take from your experiences in this world.

Sports coaches and leading athletes all know the right attitude makes a difference in athletic performance, and their knowledge applies directly to the game of life.

It has been said that "success is 99% attitude." While you can argue the exact percentage, there is no denying the fact that attitude does play a major role in any significant personal success. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

There are numerous aspects of attitude of which you should become aware: the motivational aspect of attitude, how attitude helps recover from failures, the impact of a negative attitude, how your attitude helps set your expectations about the future, and how the right attitude prepares you to handle challenges and tap into opportunities.

Having a strong, uplifting and reinforcing attitude is vital to keep you going through good times and bad. As Albert Einstein said, "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character." Or, in the words of Brian Tracy, "An attitude of positive expectation is the mark of the superior personality."

Almost all of the self-development and motivational writers will tell you that it is not what happens to you in life that matters, but rather how you deal with your experiences and what you make of the experiences you encounter. They will also tell you that how you deal with such experiences will be primarily based on your attitude.

Think about it….for every experience you encounter your attitude will make a difference.

It is your choice what kind of attitude you bring to these encounters. But since you are going to have an attitude anyway, you might as well have a positive, uplifting and reinforcing one, no matter what the encounter or circumstances.

Your daily attitude and level of gratitude for this opportunity of life will determine the progress you make on your journey each day. A positive attitude and a high level of gratitude will help you move forward. Likewise, a negative attitude or poor gratitude level will result in setbacks, backward steps or deviation from your intended path.

So which attitude will you take into today? Into tomorrow? Into every day? 

This article is partially excerpted from the best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in Kindle and Paperback formats. 

Motivation Creates Compelling Images For Success

Real Motivation Is That Drive From Within

According to motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily."

His pithy saying on motivation is at the heart of why some people get motivated and others do not. Everybody has their moments of motivation; a time when sparks go off internally and they tell themselves (or others) "I am going to do this or that."

"Real motivation is that drive from within," believes motivational speaker Denis Waitley. "You know where you are going because you have a compelling image inside, not a travel poster on the wall."

Adds his fellow motivational speaker Brian Tracy, "The clearer you are about the consequences of your actions and the more intensely you desire to enjoy the consequences that your behaviors may lead to, the more motivated you will be."

The closer you are to self actualization on Maslow's scale, the greater will self satisfaction be as a motivating factor. Naturally, there are few greater reasons for doing anything than taking action because it fits in with your own self image or because it has importance and relevance to you.

When you combine this kind of motivation with determination and commitment, you are nearly unstoppable. You may never achieve the exact, glorious outcome you envision for yourself, but whatever you achieve through motivated action will be far greater than living a passive existence where life simply passes you by.

As Abraham Lincoln noted, "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

Let your personal resolution to achieve your ProjectYou Life Journey goals be your fundamental motivating factor and A Determined Life will be yours. 

This article is excerpted from Project You: Living A Determined Life, a best-selling book at Amazon available in Kindle and paperback formats.