The 12 Life Secrets

1: The Secret

"Your thoughts control your life."

"To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework." - Warren Buffett

"Our life is what our thoughts make of it." - Marcus Aurelius

2: Values

"The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations." - George Santayana, philosopher

Philosophy - "a system of values by which one lives." - dictionary

"Men suffer all their lives under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself...." - Emerson

"Food is fuel. I focus on eating foods that increase my energy and my ability to compete." When stressed "I immediately go out for some exercise, like walking or jogging. That's a great thing about exercise. It reduces stress." - woman competitive athlete

"Happiness depends on ourselves." - Aristotle

"Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response." - what someone said later

"To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads - such is the behavior of the multitude." - Meng-Tse, Chinese philosopher over two thousand years ago

3: Being Successful

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." - what someone said

"Keep the faith" - a popular expression

"What do you see yourself doing three to five years from now?"

"If you could have any job in the world, what would be the perfect job for you?"

"Our duty as men is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation." - Teilhard (tay-yar') de Chardin (d'shar-dan'), French philosopher

4: Improving Your Life

"Love not what thou art, only what thou may become." - Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha

"Never cease to be convinced that life might be better - your own and others'." -André Gide (jheed)

"When I do not practice one day, I know it. When I do not practice two days, my voice teacher knows it. When I do not practice three days, the whole world knows it." - Luciano Pavarotti

5: Becoming Financially Independent

"I don't invest in anything I don't understand." And follow these two rules: "Rule number one: Never lose money. Rule number two: Never forget rule number one." - Warren Buffett

6: Knowledge

"Education is not a product...it is a process, a never-ending one." - Bel Kaufman, American educator

"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul." - Joseph Addison, English essayist

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." - John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach

"Let no youth have the anxiety of his education...He can with perfect certainty count on waking up one morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation." - William James

"Knowledge is power." - Francis Bacon

"The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries." - René Descartes (day-kart'), French philosopher

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island...and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life." - Walt Disney

"If you know all the answers, you haven't asked the right questions." - old proverb

"Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect." - Samuel Johnson

"Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn - to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit - for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs." - Albert Einstein

7: Overcoming Problems or Challenges

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." - Edmund Burke, English statesman

"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount fear." - Emerson

"To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character anyone can give." - W. Somerset Maugham, writer

"We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible." - words of a sage

"Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve." - Benjamin Franklin

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." - Marie Curie, Polish-born French scientist, winner of two Nobel prizes

8: Integrity

"In the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame." - Andy Warhol

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself." - Thomas Paine

"Always do what you say you will do." - businessman

"Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth." - Emerson

"The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." - Anne Frank, from her diary

"[A person] has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct - though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so." - Walter Lippman, from A Preface to Morals

9: Expanding Time

Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion" - C. Northcote Parkinson, English political scientist in the 1950s

"When you are courting a nice girl - an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot stove - a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." - Albert Einstein

"There is no limit to what a [person] can do or where a [person] can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Benjamin Jowett, English educator of the 19th Century

"A place for everything, and everything in its place." - familiar saying

"What is the true picture of your life? Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time." - James Gordon Gilkey

10: The Master Law of Success

"As we sow, so shall we reap" - old adage

The Master Law of Success: "Our service determines our rewards."

"Human service is the highest form of self-interest for the person who serves." - Elbert Hubbard, writer

"Live for others if you would wish to live for yourself." - Seneca, Roman philosopher

"Satisfaction Guatanteed - or your money back!" - originated with Sears and Ward

"The customer is always right." - Field

The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - promoted by J. C. Penney

"There's no such thing as a free lunch." - a corollary truth

"We should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours and this we should do freely and generously." - Benjamin Franklin

"Find a need - or a want - and fill it."

"You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - as someone said

11: Leadership and Future Vision

"The buck stops here." - familiar saying

"Hindsight is always 20/20." - ironic saying

"We need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true, who can kindle the people with the fire from their burning souls." - Theodore Roosevelt

"If people are coming to work excited...if they're making mistakes freely and fearlessly...if they're having fun...if they're concentrating on doing things, rather than preparing reports and going to meetings - then somewhere you have a leader." - Robert Townsend

"Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life." - Russell Conwell, clergyman and founder of Temple University

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer, philosopher

"The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind...in other men the conviction and will to carry on." - Walter Lippman, late columnist and political commentator

12: Health

"A wise [person] ought to realize that health is [the] most valuable possession." - Hippocrates, ancient Greek physician and father of medicine

"You have the mind but not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body...I know you will do it!" - concerned father to his 12-year-old son Theodore Roosevelt, who later at age 42 became the 26th President of the United States, after years of practicing "the strenuous life", as he called it.

"The first wealth is health." - Emerson

"Health is better than wealth." - old proverb

"Those who think they do not have time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." - what someone said

"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: [a person] that has these two, has little more to wish for..." - John Locke, 17th century British philosopher

Reference: The 12 Life Secrets, Robert Stuberg, © 1997, Nightingale Conant audio program