I think there are three reasons why you and I should embrace discomfort, whether we deliberately choose it, or it simply happens to us.

1. Comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It makes us lazy—and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent.
2. Discomfort can be a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt.
3. Discomfort is often a sign we’re making progress. You’ve heard the expression, “no pain, no gain.” It’s true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort.

What would you add to his list?

The highest form of success… comes… to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
– Theodore Roosevelt

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
– Marie Curie

It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours, and you’ll drift in that direction.
– Warren Buffett

There is only one way to make a great deal of money, and that is in a business of your own.
– J. Paul Getty

Freedom lies in being bold.
– Robert Frost

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds. It is something one creates.
– Thomas Szasz

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
– Leon Suenens

No great performance ever came from holding back.
– Don Greene

A bold, vigorous assault has won many a faltering cause.
– Ira Eaker

Nothing great has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.
– Bruce Barton

In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
– John Churton Collins

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
– Maya Angelou

If anything terrifies me, I must try to conquer it.
– Francis Chichester

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RELATED CONTENT

• Index To Great Quotes

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Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.
– Napolean Hill

The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.”
– Amelia Earhart

An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
–Robert A. Humphrey

To try and fail is at least to learn. To fail to try is to suffer the loss of what might have been.
– Benjamin Franklin

Success comes to the man who grits his teeth, squares his jaw and says, “There is a way for me and, by jingo, I’ll find it.”
– Clifford Sloan

Every artist was first an amateur.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.
– George Patton

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
– Alexander Graham Bell

It isn’t where you came from; it’s where you’re going that counts.
– Ella Fitzgerald

Small differences in your performance can lead to large differences in your results.
– Brian Tracy

I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.
– Marie Curie

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, ‘there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.’ A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.
– Tom Blair

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
– Oscar Wilde

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
– Oscar Wilde

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
– John Kenneth Galbraith

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
– Terry Pratchett

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
– Mark Twain

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
– Mark Twain

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.
– Fred Thompson

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
– Max Beerbohm

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
– Russell Baker

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
– Albert Camus

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
– Edward Roscoe Murrow

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”
– Hubert Horathio Humphrey

When things go wrong they like to blame the President, and that’s one of the things that Presidents are paid for.”
– John F. Kennedy

Humor is just another defense against the universe.
– Mel Brooks

If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
– Bill Lyon

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
– Bill Cosby

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
– Abba Eban

The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.
– Dudley Moore

“People will not bear it when advice is violently given, even if it is well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.”
– John Paul Richter

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell and a hell of a heav’n.”
– John Milton, poet

“It’s the little things that make the big things possible. Only close attention to the fine details of any operation makes the operation first class.”
– J. Willard Marriot

“Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.”
– Mary Bethune, educator

“The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.”
– Henry Ford, carmaker

“It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit that we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.”
– George Marshall, general

“The most important thing about goals is… having one.”
– Geoffry F. Abert

“Without ambition, one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet

“The majority of men meet with failure because (they don’t create) new plans to take the place of those that fail.”
– Napoleon Hill, motivational expert

“The barrier (to) success is not something which exists in the real world; it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.”
– Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. President

“As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.”
– Donald Trump, Real Estate Magnate

“When you find yourself stressed, ask yourself one question: Will this matter five years from now? If yes, then do something about the situation. If no, then let it go.”
– Catherine Pulsifer, writer

“Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery, aviator

“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”
– Plutarch, historian

“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it with use.”
– Ruth Gordon, actress

“To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.”
– Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
– Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, CEO

“When a man dies, if he can pass enthusiasm along to his children, he has left them an estate of incalculable value.”
– Thomas Edison, inventor

“It’s the little things that make the big things possible. Only close attention to the fine details of any operation makes the operation first class.”
– J. Willard Marriot

“If you don’t like the situation you’re in, you don’t have to settle for it. ”
– Macy Gray, Singer

“The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.”
– Jim Loehr, psychologist

“Being miserable is a habit. Being happy is a habit. The choice is yours.”
– Tom Hopkins, sales trainer

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. president

“All glory comes from daring to begin.”
– Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor

“Believe you will be successful and you will.”
– Dale Carnegie, motivational speaker

“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”
– Malcolm Forbes, Publisher

“I’ve felt that dissatisfaction is the basis of progress. When we become satisfied in business, we become obsolete.”
– J. Willard Marriott Sr., hotel executive

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”
– Erica Jong, Author

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet

“Seek to do good and you will find that happiness will run after you.”
– James Freeman Clarke

“Long-range goals keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures.”
– J.C. Penney, Retailer

“Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.”
– Douglas MacArthur, General

“The making of friends who are real friends is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.”
– Edward Hale, theologian

“In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: being prepared to seize the moment and having the courage to take your best swing.”
– Hank Aaron, Baseball Player

“I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.”
– Sam Walton, Wal-Mart founder

“The majority of men meet with failure because (they don’t create) new plans to take the place of those that fail.”
– Napoleon Hill, motivational expert

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
– William Faulkner, Author

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Related Content

• Index to Great Quotes
• Trivia Index

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By: Brian Tracy

The most common form of stress that we experience is the feeling of being overwhelmed with far too much to do and having too little time to do it in. In fact, “time poverty” is the biggest single problem facing most managers in America today. We simply do not have enough time to fulfill all our responsibilities. Because of budget limitations, staff cutbacks, downsizing, and competitive pressures, individual managers are forced to take on more and more work, all of which appears to be indispensable to the smooth functioning of our company or department.

Become an Expert
The solution to this problem of work overload is for you to become an expert on time management. There is probably no other skill that you can learn that will give you a “bigger bang for the buck” than to become extremely knowledgeable and experienced in using time management practices.

Be Open to New Ideas
The most foolish manager of all is either the manager who feels that he has no time to learn about time management or, even worse, the manager who, while being overwhelmed with work, feels that he already knows all that he needs to know about the subject.

Never Stop Learning
The fact is that you can study time management and take time management courses for your entire business life and you will still never learn everything you need to know to get the most out of yourself while doing your job in the most efficient way.

The Keys to Time Management
The two indispensable keys to time management are:1) the ability to set priorities; and 2) the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time. Since there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done, you must be continually setting priorities on your activities. Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?”

The Best Question of All
This question, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?” will do more to keep you on track, hour by hour, than any other single question in the list of time management strategies.

The natural tendency for all of us is to major in minors and to give in to the temptation to clear up small things first. After all, small things are easier and they are often more fun than the big, important things that represent the most valuable use of your time.

Start With Your Top Tasks
However, the self-discipline of organizing your work and focusing on your highest value tasks is the starting point of getting your time under control and lowering your stress levels.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to get your time under control.

First, make a decision today to become an expert on time management. Read the books, listen to the audio programs, and take a time management course. Then, practice, practice, practice every day until you master time management skills.

Second, set clear priorities on your work each day, before you begin. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and stay at that until it is complete. This will relieve much of your stress immediately.

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RELATED CONTENT

• The Busy Man
• Practice the A-B-C Method of Time Management
• Success – Select Quotes
• Make Today Count: The Secret of Your Success Is Determined by Your Daily Agenda

Dear Kevin,

Warren Buffett, one of the smartest and most successful businessmen of our time, was recently asked what he thought was the best investment anyone could make in these difficult times.

His answer was fast and simple …

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”

That could very well be the best advice Mr. Buffett has ever offered. If ever there was a time to take control of your future, it’s now.

Never before have we faced such perilous times.

A free-falling stock market is jeopardizing the comfortable retirement of millions. Once rock-solid, mainstay companies are struggling to survive. Millions of blue and white-collar jobs are on the line. In fact, a just-released government report talks about 533,000 jobs lost in November alone — the most in a single month in 34 years.

And a lot of experts agree — the worst is yet to come.

I don’t know what the future holds, but regardless of what lies ahead the advice offered by Warren Buffet is sterling. The best investment that you can ever make is in yourself.

What does that mean for you?

We all have have different skill sets, different personalities, different hopes and dreams. It is for that reason that you are be best person to decide how to invest in yourself. It would be nice if you could simply read a book, or listen to a CD and come up with the answer. However, you must search your heart and do serious self-reflection to put together the best self-development plan for yourself.

No one can help you with the answer, but there is help to walk you through the process. If you find yourself in this situation I suggest that you start with
Strengthsfinder 2.0. It comes complete with an online assessment to help you discover your strengths and leverage them for success.

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DO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST EVERY DAY?

Chances are, you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while StrengthsFinder helped millions to discover their top five talents.

In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades.

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself — and the world around you — forever.

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE NEW & UPGRADED EDITION OF STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0
(using the unique access code included with each book)

* A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment

* A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

* A more customized version of your top five theme report

* 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)

* The more user-friendly StrengthsFinder 2.0 companion website, with a strengths community area, library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver, and a program for creating display cards of your top five themes

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STRENGTHS: THE NEXT GENERATION

Q&A with author Tom Rath

(From the Gallup Management Journal; interviewed by Jennifer Robison)

Last month, StrengthsFinder 2.0 hit the bookstores. Book browsers, no doubt, had many questions, and among them was probably “Didn’t I already read a book about this?”

Well, actually, yes. But the topic was worth revisiting for two reasons. In the six years since the release of Now, Discover Your Strengths, more than 2 million people have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, which means billions of people have not yet had the opportunity. The second reason is that Gallup researchers just haven’t been able to let the topic rest. Over the past decade, they’ve done more surveys, more interviews, and more studies; they’ve prodded and poked and analyzed. And they realized that there’s a lot more to understanding human talent than most people know. Those who are familiar with the StrengthsFinder assessment know that it is designed to uncover certain key talents — patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be productively applied. These patterns are categorized into 34 broad themes — such as Achiever, Ideation, and Relator — and those themes indicate and predict one’s innate and unique talents. Those talents, when multiplied by the investment of time spent practicing, developing skills, and building knowledge, can become strengths. Some of this is just common sense; it seems intuitive that your performance will be better if you’re doing what you naturally do well. But some of it seems counterintuitive and runs directly against conventional wisdom: No amount of training will help you excel in your areas of weakness. You can’t do anything you want to do — or be anything you want to be — because you’re just not going to be good at everything. But if you work with your talents, you can be extraordinary. StrengthsFinder has resonated with the business community because there’s a direct link between talent development and performance. In this interview, Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, discusses what Gallup scientists have learned since the publication of the first book, what more there is to discover about your talents, and why it’s bad to focus on your employees’ weaknesses, but simply cruel to ignore them completely.

GMJ: Why the new book?

Tom Rath: StrengthsFinder 2.0 is an effort to get the core message and language out to a much broader audience. We had no idea how well received the first strengths book would be by general readers — it was oriented more toward managers — or that the energy and excitement would continue to grow. More than two million people have taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, and each month, the number of people learning about their talents goes up. But readers keep asking us: “Now that I know about my strengths, what do I do next?” So we went back and surveyed hundreds of them and asked them how they apply their talents. Then we whittled their suggestions down to the ten best ideas for each theme. We also added more than five thousand Strengths Insights to version 2.0 that allow us to offer more individualized theme descriptions than we could before. So, instead of general descriptions of your top five talent themes, in 2.0, you get a talent profile so unique that you’re unlikely to share even a sentence with someone else. And as I said, the first book was really written for a business audience. People have had trouble retrofitting the theme descriptions if they are in non-management roles, but they’ve tried. This book helps readers apply strengths theory to any type of role and gives them ideas to help them apply their talents in their daily life.

GMJ: It’s been six years since the first book was published, and Gallup has done hundreds of thousands more interviews. Have you discovered anything new about talents and strengths? Have you altered your original premise?

Rath: No, but we’ve seen more and more evidence that demonstrates that focusing on your talents is important. We did a survey in 2004 that examined what happens when your manager ignores you, focuses on your strengths, or focuses on your weaknesses. We found that if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged go down to one in one hundred. However, if your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses, your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%, and if your manager ignores you, that percentage rises to 40%.

GMJ: Why such a high rate of disengagement among those who are ignored?

Rath: It basically mirrors the psychology of raising kids — being completely ignored is the worst possible psychological state. You would actually feel better if your manager went from ignoring you to focusing on what you do wrong all the time, because then at least she’s paying attention to you.

GMJ: Did your new research turn up anything that surprised you?

Rath: We’ve talked a lot about how strengths can help you be more of who you are, and you get more out of your best players, and all of that. But in the last ten years, we’ve also found that it’s a good strategy just to wipe out the extreme negativity in the workplace. I get this question almost every time I talk to a group: “What do I do about that one person who just drags everyone down every day?” My glib answer was to get rid of the person. I always thought there were some people who were just destined to be disengaged in their jobs because that was their personality, and no matter how hard managers tried, there wasn’t much they could do with some of those people. But the data from the last five years would suggest that much of that epidemic of disengagement is fixable. More than I ever would have guessed, it helps tremendously if a manager starts by focusing on someone’s strengths. You may not take someone who’s actively disengaged and make him into your most engaged employee, but it will help get him out of that mindset where he’s scaring off colleagues and customers.

GMJ: So is that the business case to be made for putting people in roles that play to their strengths? Rath: I think it’s the secondary business case. The main business case is that people have a lot more fun and get a lot more done if they’re able to spend time in areas where they have some natural talent. I think that’s a fundamental principle that hasn’t changed much at all. The one thing that we were clear about in StrengthsFinder 2.0 is that the American dream ideal that “You can be anything you want if you just try hard enough” is detrimental. This is especially true when people buy into it hook, line, and sinker. You may not be able to be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are. [Taking] StrengthsFinder is just a starting point; it’s step one of a hundred in figuring out the areas where you have the most potential for growth. GMJ: What is the most challenging aspect of your ongoing strengths research?

Rath: While hundreds of people in our organization continue to research this topic each year, our greatest challenge might be incorporating the new research while making the message even more succinct and applicable to a wider audience. So while we have hundreds of new case studies and meta-analyses about strengths — and about employee engagement and business outcomes — we tried to stay as close as we could to the basics.

GMJ: The Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment has always categorized talents into thirty-four themes. Have you ever considered adding or subtracting any, or refining them further?

Rath: Yes, we looked at that extensively as we started to review our plan for the updated version of the assessment. We found that so far, the thirty-four themes have done a good job of describing much of what we’ve learned since releasing the first version of the assessment. If enough people had made a case about a specific theme that didn’t exist, we were open to adding that theme. I think we probably will continue to investigate whether there are themes that emerge that we haven’t yet picked up on. But there wasn’t a real strong case for any additions at this time.

GMJ: What would you most like to accomplish with StrengthsFinder 2.0?

Rath: Our big goal and mission as a company is to help people do more of what they do well. We’ve topped two million completed StrengthsFinder assessments, and it’s not too hard to imagine that number getting to twenty million soon. An organization that exists to help people has a responsibility to get better and better. By reaching beyond our initial audience, we help people get the latest and greatest research. But we also hope it helps people live better lives.

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