Quotes about Success

What are the two or three things that you and only you are responsible for? What, specifically, have you been hired to do? What is "success" for the person in your position? Now let's slice it even thinner. Of the two or three things that define success for you, which of those are in line with your giftedness? Of the tasks you have been assigned to do, which of them are you specifically gifted to do?

Vision always precedes preparation. Initially, your vision will exceed your competency.

A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don't show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). Ironically, my pastoring skills have almost nothing to do with my success as a pastor! In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time.

Careful is cerebral; fearful is emotional. Careful is fueled by information; fearful is fueled by imagination. Careful calculates risk; fearful avoids risk. Careful wants to achieve success; fearful wants to avoid failure. Careful is concerned about progress; fearful is concerned about protection.

Striving for balance forces a leader to invest time and energy in aspects of leadership where he will never succeed. It is not realistic to strive for balance within the sphere of our personal leadership abilities. …discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else.

In addition to a job description designed around your current employment, develop what you would consider to be the ultimate job description. This is for your eyes only. The goal of this exercise is to help you identify the niche in which you would feel most productive and consequently most successful. Dream a little.

An unwillingness to accept risk has swamped more leaders than anything I can think of.

The tendency in business, or in church work for that matter, is to mistake activity for progress. We think that just because people are busy and doing a lot of stuff that we are being successful. The fact of the matter is, if all that activity isn't taking you where you want to go, then it's just wasted time.

If a teenage guy tends to overreact when he fails, there is a pretty good chance he thinks his significance is based on success.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors... What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you'd come to closed door number eight and you'd think, 'Great, I got another one out of the way'... Keep moving forward.

It was a shock to everyone when I became a rapper. Huge shock to everyone. But I knew it all along. I just didn't want to tell anybody cause then it's like, What if it doesn't work?

If you spend your days doing what you love, it is impossible to fail. So I go about my days trying to bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. And then everyone gets furious about it. And then I sit back and say, 'I did that!'