There’s one box on the Facebook profile that’s always bothers me: favourite quotations. I never know what to put. Listing loads looks like I’m trying too hard but narrowing it down to one may make me look too intense – as if it’s a mantra for my every move.
Yet I do like quotations. They summarize great truths in a memorable phrase, making them far more influential than entire books written on similar subjects. If life comes down to a few moments (to quote Bud Fox in the original Wall Street), then – indeed – our beliefs come down to a few quotes, usually pithily summarized by famous or historical figures.
So what are mine? Given that I count myself as a recovering High-FF (someone overcoming fear of failure), here are four that I find myself quoting more than others.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” Eleanor Roosevelt (former U.S. first lady). I like this because it states that we are responsible for our feelings – especially with regards to our self beliefs. We must take responsibility for our inner reactions, even to insults.
We are all insulted from time-to-time but it normally says far more about the insulter than the insulted – unless we let it. Of course, this is easier said than done. Insults, or even unintentional slights, can cut us to the core because, so often, we feel they contain a grain of truth. If our self beliefs are negative we are bound to treat insults as confirmations, while ignoring or mistrusting flattery. Yet Roosevelt is simply pointing out that it is our reaction that matters here, not the insult itself (which may have even been unintentional).
“Don't regret not doing something, regret doing it,” Terry Venables (former England football coach). Terry was an Essex lad with West End tastes, and this may sometimes have led him astray. But it more often led him towards achieving his goals. The key is he took action. Sure he made mistakes but his regrets were based on his actions, not his inactions.
I can certainly empathise with this. My first book, published in 2000, contains some passages that make me cringe with embarrassment every time I’m reminded of them. Indeed, my mother, who read a proof, warned me that I’d end up regretting the book if I allowed it to be published. She was right, of course. But the other voice in my head – the one saying that what I’d really regret is turning aside the chance to fulfil my ambition of becoming a published author – was more right.
Life often comes down to decisions between action and inaction: change versus the status quo. All Venables is saying is that the worst form of regret is the “if only” retrospective. Mistakes made are far better than opportunities lost – at least if we want to make progress in our life.
In the end, even my cringe at some of the content of my previous book soon turns to a smile. What was I thinking? I say to myself, and then inwardly chuckle – having learnt the lesson that I need to be aware that what I write today will matter tomorrow. If I’d listened to my mother, however, my frustration at the lost opportunity would have been unbearable.
“KBO (keep buggering on),” Winston Churchill (former UK PM). This became his motto during what his biographers termed the wilderness years of the 1930s. From the backbenches of the House of Commons he tried to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism while the war-weary democracies ignored him, even seeing him as a warmonger (a charge that returned after the war). Yet he also used it during the bleak years of the 1940s with Britain being bombed nightly by a seemingly-invincible enemy.
In both cases it captures the mood perfectly. Emboldened by his inner beliefs and convictions, the phrase allowed Churchill to keep going despite numerous setbacks and humiliations. After each knock Churchill would pick himself up, dust himself down, learn the lesson, mutter "KBO" and move on – no less convinced of the inalienable truth of his cause.
In fact Churchill coined many memorable quotations during his extraordinary life (although modern revisionists lacking Churchill’s originality of thought like to claim he stole some of them). How about this one to enrich his KBO theme: “If you are going through hell, keep going”. As with KBO, it recognises the struggle. The pain is acknowledged, as is the difficulty. Nonetheless, the only allowable response is to, indeed, keep going.
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser,” Alan Hansen (former footballer and current TV football pundit). This is perhaps an unusual one to include because it smacks of the school “Jock” lording it over his weedier peers. The phrase is, indeed, laced with testosterone but that’s just one interpretation – and certainly the one I would have chosen in previous years. Now it tells me that I must have fight. That I cannot be a pacifist in my own endeavours.
Frustration is a key “action signal”, as "life-change" guru Anthony Robbins would say. If we feel like a loser – that life is unfair and has gone against us - that we are capable of more and better but that our luck or timing was out, then, in fact, those are good feelings because they can be converted into action. The worst response – at least for our progress – is to shrug and smile and console ourselves that the other guy was probably more deserving anyway. No he/she wasn’t. It was indeed unfair. We were cheated. The result was a travesty.
Convert that anger into energy, point that energy in the right direction, pull the trigger – and GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!
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