Success and Happiness as the Management of Life Tactics
Tactical Choices and Decisions | Means towards an end | The importance of flexibility | Easy going intimacy | Power of charm | Staying connected | Applying the 80-20 law | Disciplined life patterns | Making it stick | Devil in the detail | Exploring the new | Clarity of simplicity | Managing money | Constructive conflict | Strength from adversity | Conducting a reality check | Thick skin response | Recharging the batteries
Success and happiness as making the right choices to deploy the right tactics towards life goals. Fifteen tactical areas, each with their distinctive opportunities and hazards are outlined.
Tactical choices and decisions
“Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy.”
General George S. Patton
“Don't present strategies as ironclad rules; present strategies as guidelines to be followed most of the time.”
Steve Maguire
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Sun Tzu
“He had every quality – passion, sincerity, unstinted devotion, personal charm, a power of oratory – every quality save one – the gift of knowing how to succeed.”
AJP Taylor
“People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.”
Zig Ziglar
“Success…is the ability to reach your personal objectives in the shortest time, with the least effort and with the fewest mistakes. The goals you set for yourself and the strategies you choose become your blueprint or plan. Strategies are like recipes: choose the right ingredients, mix them in the correct proportions.”
Charles J Givens
“Choices are the hinges of destiny.”
Edwin Markham
“How do I do I do the right thing when I don’t know what the right thing i.”
Guy Browning
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn”
>David Russell
“Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.”
David Lloyd George
“Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means.”
Aristotle
“What comes first, the compass or the clock? Before one can truly manage time (the clock), it is important to know where you are going, what your priorities and goals are, in which direction you are headed (the compass). Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what's urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.”
(anon)
“Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.”
La Rochefoucauld
“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”
Aristotle
“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
Susan Jeffers
“Success is best achieved when you are clear about the goal but flexible about the process of getting there.”
B Tracy
“Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.”
Jim Hightower
“Do what you can, with what you have, right where you are.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“The shoe that fits one person pinches another. There is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”
Carl Jung
“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
“It is happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”
Samuel Johnson
“No person can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of their friend until they are unhapp.”
Thomas Fuller
“You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.”
Dick Armey
“The essence of socialising is putting people at their ease. You can always get off on the right foot by saying “you’re looking tired.”Never start by saying, “you’re looking well”, as this gives people no opportunity to talk about how badly life is treating them.”
Guy Browning
“The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.”
Eric Hoffer
“The closeness of your relationships is directly proportional to the degree to which you have revealed the truth about yourself.”
(anon)
“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”
Paul Boese
“I’m not okay and you're not okay, and that's OKAY."
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
But:
“If you are willing to have people not like you, you will go far.”
Chin-Ning Chu
“A man who trusts everyone is a fool, and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools, if we live long enough.”
Robert Jordan
“A wise person gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. “ Baltasar Gracian
“Do unto others as they would do unto you, only do it first and do it conclusively.”
Nicolo Machiavelli
“Remember - if you're sitting at a poker table and you don't know who the sucker is, it's you.”
(anon)
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
Thomas Szasz
“I tried to get closer but I’m still a billion miles from you.”
Bob Dylan
“Charm is getting the answer yes before you’ve even asked the question.”
Albert Camus
“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one
who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one
who talks to you about yourself.”
Lisa Kirk
“A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
Dale Carnegie
“I learned that you actually have more power when you shut up.”
Andy Warhol
“A yawn is a silent shout.”
G K Chesterton
“Gauge how successful flattery has been by the response it gets: “Do you really think so?” means they’ve accepted it; “Thank you,” means people know they’re being flattered; “Don’t talk bollocks” means try again some other time.”
Guy Browning
“The contents of speech from boring people was found to be self-centred and trivial, while their speech style was slow and low on emotional fervour.”
Raj Persuad
But:
“There is nothing that exasperates people more than a display of superior ability or brilliance in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their envy makes them curse the conversationalist in their heart.”
Samuel Johnson
“All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.”
Cyril Connolly
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
Robert Frost
“Being charming takes time and effort and I am busy.”
Mason Cooley
“I get by with a little help from my friends.”
John Lennon
“Acquaintances represent a source of social power and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.”
Malcolm Gladwell
“I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.”
Woodrow Wilson
“A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”
Lois Wyse
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become grea.”
Mark Twain
“When you choose your friends, don’t get short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
W Somerset Maugham
“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”
Anthony Robbins
“Business is a cobweb of human relationships.”
Ross Perot
“Solitude is a good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.”
Josh Billings
But:
“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Winston Churchill
“I would never belong to a group that would accept someone like me as a member.”
Groucho Marx
“Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.”
Robert Greene
“The person who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.”
Alan Ashley-Pitt
“Better be alone than in bad company.”
Thomas Fuller
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
William James
“In the world of "everything is possible", nothing gets done.”
Eric Keighan
“Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.”
(anon)
“The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.”
(anon)
“Do the right things instead of trying to do everything right.”
Peter Drucker
“Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”
Goethe
“There is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated….In short, the first principle is: act with the utmost concentration.”
Von Clausewitz
“The great rewards never go to the merely excellent but to the outstanding.”
Richard Koch
“Without focus, the resources and energy of the organisation will be spread a mile wide and they will be an inch deep. If you are wrong, you will die. But most organisations don’t die because they are wrong; most die because they don’t commit themselves.”
Andy Grove
“There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker
But:
“The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important.”
Milo Bloom
“If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.”
Edward de Bono
“Priority: A statement of the importance of a user or a program. Often expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't care when the work is completed so long as he is treated less badly than someone else.”
(unknown programmer)
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
Jim Rohn
“Unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they’re pointless. Without execution, breakthrough thinking breaks down.”
Larry Bossidy
“Fully 95% of everything you do is determined by your habits, good and bad.”
Brian Tracy
“What’s the secret of being a great writer? “Bum glue”. Nothing beats sitting at your desk and writing until it comes out right.”
Bruce Courtenay
“Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.”
Ross Perot
“You have to be efficient if you’re going to be lazy.”
Shirley Conran
“Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognise the.”
Ann Landers
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
Jim Rohn
“If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.”
Joey Adams
“If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.”
Leon Eldred
But:
“Most problems go away if you just wait long enough. It might look like I’m standing motionless but I’m actively looking for our problems to go away. I don’t know why this works but it does.”
Dilbert
“If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on them, and pass them along. When in doubt, route.”
Malcolm Forbes
“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.”
Clement Freud,
“There are two kinds of people; those who finish what they start, and those who…..”
Robert Byrne
“Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don’t know how to quit.”
Robert Schuller
“My parents told me I’d never amount to anything because I procrastinated too much. I told them, “Just you wait.”
Judy Tenuta
“Life has a deadline; we just don’t know what it is.”
David Lieberman
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
Henry Ford
“The best way out is always throug.”
Robert Frost
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did."
Newt Gingrich
“How does a project get to be a year late? One day at the time.”
F.P. Brooks Jr.
But:
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. Then quit. No use being a damned fool about it.”
WC Fields
“How to succeed: try hard enough. How to fail: try too hard.”
Malcolm Forbes
“When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.”
Mary Kay Ash
“Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall."
Sidney J Harris
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Douglas Adams
“Most deadlines are arbitrary.”
Steve Maguire
“Success is the sum of details.”
Harvey S Firestone
“Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.”
Elbert Hubbard
“There may be some substitute for hard facts, but if there is, I have no idea what it can be.”
J Paul Getty
“Elephants don’t bite. It is the mosquitoes of life that cause the most trouble..”
David Lieberman
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored..”
Aldous Huxley
“Reasoning is simply a matter of getting your facts straight..”
B Anderson
“It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen..”
JohnWooden
But:
“I’m not into this detail stuff. I’m more concepty.”
Donald Rumsfield
“There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
“Sometimes you just have to follow your intuition.”
Bill Gates
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
Albert Einstein
“Given a thimbleful of facts we rush to make generalisations as large as a tub.”
Gordon Allport
“I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.”
Lee Iacocca
“You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.”
Alvin Toffler
“Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.”
Henry David Thoreau
“It is not likely that you are going to be able to achieve outstanding success by doing what everyone else does. You can’t be “normal.” and expect to achieve “abnormal.” returns.”
J Pfeffer
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”
Albert Einstein
“There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know."
Ambrose Pierce
“Confidence in nonsense is required."
Burt Rutan
“There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something.”
Thomas Edison
“Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.”
Tim McMahon
“Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is.”
Frank Scully
“To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.”
George Kneller
“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
Andre Gide
But:
“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.”
Warren Buffett
“What has happened before will happen again. What has been done before will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes
“Do not try to think outside the box. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no box.”
(anon)
“Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.”
Saunders Emerson
“An open mind must sometimes be closed for repair.”
Michael Tallman
“To follow the times is to lead them.”
Baltasar Gracian
“We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities.”
Norman Vincent Peale
“In critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principle and simple action.”
Winston Churchill
“The proliferation of bullshit has deep sources.”
H Frankfurt
“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.“
Edward R. Murrow
“If there’s a harder way of doing something, someone will find it.”
Ralph Ross
“The simplest things give me ideas.”
Joan Miro
”The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.”
Peter Drucker
“Things are generally other than they seem. Lies always come first….truth always comes last, limping along on the arm of time.”
Baltasar Gracian
“It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.”
G.K. Chesterton
But:
“Why struggle with complex reality when you can skate by on the PowerPoint version of life instead.”
Marcus Buckingham
“Seek simplicity, and distrust it.”
Alfred North Whitehead
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
H L Mencken
“It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“Another beautiful theory, murdered by a gang of facts.”
(anon)
“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest."
Albert Einstein
“Why is there so much month left at the end of the money.”
John Barrymore
“A person’s treatment of money is the most decisive test of their character – how they make it and how they spend it.”
James Moffat
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things
they don’t want, to
impress people they don’t like.”
Will Rogers
“If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.”
Billy Graham
“Money makes people listen.”
Earl Graves
“Money talks…but all mine ever says is goodbye.”
Richard Armour
“Money doesn't talk, it swears.”
Bob Dylan
“Give money its due. It has a major impact on your life and it deserves to be treated with respect, consideration and thought. But keep money in its place.”
Alvin Hall
“Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.”
P T Barnum
“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.”
Albert Camus
But:
“Always live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so.”
Josh Billings
“All the money you make will never buy back your soul.”
Bob Dylan
“Most of us know deep down that money doesn’t buy happiness, but we don’t want to believe it.”
EJ Zelinski
“To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.“
G K Chesterton
“The successful person has unusual skill in dealing with conflict and ensuring the best outcome for all.”
Sun Tzu
“Compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.”
Cassell
“Given the double whammy that people don’t think before they speak and that people aren’t listening anyway, it’s not surprising that communication is our number one problem.”
Guy Browning
“I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here…then I propose we postpone further discussion until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
Alfred P Sloan Jr.
“Avoid having your ego so close to a position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”
Colin Powell
“The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.”
Henry Boye
“If you're the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong -- that's healthy.”
Robert Townsend
But:
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."
George Bernard Shaw
“I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell me the truth - even if it costs him his job.”
Samuel Goldwyn
“If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you’ll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.”
Dilbert
“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant."
Horace
“Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.”
Aristotle
“FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
(anon)
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid.”
Spencer Johnson
“The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one minute to the next.”
Mignon McLaughlin
“Everything that's precious, everything that is worth having has fear attached to it. That's how we pay for the good things in life.”
G K Chesterton
“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow."
Mary Anne Radmacher
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Courage is the mastery of fear; not the absence of fear.”
Mark Twain
But:
“Courage is not a virtue but a quality shared by blackguards and great men alike.”
Voltaire
“My philosophy: No pain, no pain.”
Carol Leifer
“It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.”
George Duhame
“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets."
General George S. Patton
“To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Shakespeare
“When you know yourself you can master yourself.”
Larry Bossidy
“All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
James Thurber
“We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.”
Mark Twain
“You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.”
EthelBarrymore
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”
La Rochefoucauld
“A man needs self-acceptance or he can't live with himself; he needs self-criticism or others can't live with him.” James A. Pike
“None is so perfect that he does not need at times listen to the advice of others. He is an incorrigible ass who will never listen to anyone.”
Baltasar Gracian
“Experience is a dear teacher, and fools will learn in no other school.”
Benjamin Franklin
“There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself: an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.”
Antisthenes
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Richard Feyman
“If you don’t learn from your mistakes you’re doomed to repeat them.”
B Richardson
“No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.”
Thomas Mann
But:
“Know thyself?" If I knew myself, I'd run away.”
Goethe
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Oscar Wilde
“One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”
G.K. Chesterton
“There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed.”
Peter Seller
“A thick skin is a gift from God.”
Konrad Adenauer
“I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
Mark Twain
“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
Elbert Hubbard
“If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”
Donald Rumsfield
“The way we respond to criticism pretty much depends on the way we respond to praise. If praise humbles us, then criticism will build us up. But if praise inflates us, then criticism will crush us; and both responses lead to our defeat.”
Warren Wiersbe
“The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it's probably deserved.”
RussellLynes
“If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size.”
Sidney Harris
“There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.”
JoshBillings
“Those who are most successful often fear public failure the least.”
RajPersaud
But:
“If you can keep your head about you when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven't grasped the situation.”
Jean Kerr
“Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things I worry about don't happen.”
(anon)
“Either I am very thick skinned or just very thick.”
Piers Morgan
“The great secret of success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up.”
Albert Schweitzer
“I began to realise that for two years of my life I had been drawing on resources I did not possess.”
F Scott Fitzgerald
“The unlikely fact that doing more gives you greater energy to achieve more is a timeless success secret.”
Frank Bettger
“Stress is excitement that has gone wrong.”
R Templar
“Sleep…the harder you try, the less likely you are to get to sleep. The trick is to try really hard at what it is you do during the day. This has the double benefit of tiring you out and lessening whatever you generally worry about.”
Guy Browning
“Energy is a valuable commodity not to be wasted on futile pursuits or neurotic obsessions.”
M Flocker
“Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all.”
Dale Carnegie
“Positive moods are underpinned by a state of high energy combined with feelings of low tension or anxiety. Negative moods are an amalgamation of high anxiety or tension plus low energy.”
Raj Persuad
“Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing.”
H Stanley Judd
“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.”
William James
“Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy.”
Leo Buscaglia
But:
“If you are fully in control, then you aren’t going fast enough.”
Racing Driver, Mario Andretti
“Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.”
Jules Renard
“Worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry.”
PJ O’Rourke
“Today's greatest labour-saving device is tomorrow.”
Woodrow T. Wilson