Test: the “Tic tac toe” game of life

Pat Riley - American professional basketball executive and a former coach and player in the National Basketball Association

A champion needs a motivation above and beyond winning.

John Maxwell - American author, speaker, and pastor

Winning is an inside job.

Grantland Rice - American sportswriter

It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.

Carl Jung - Swiss psychiatrist

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Anders Ericsson - Psychologist

The best way to get past any barrier is to come at it from a different direction, which is one reason it is useful to work with a teacher or coach.

Steve Chandler - Author  

Then I learned about something called action. I learned I can solve all this worry and decision-making anxiety by taking action. By admiring action. By having action plans, by asking, whenever stuck, WHAT’S MY NEXT ACTION? And then, doing that action NOW. Action. Movement. Decisive energy. Solves most everything!

Steve Chandler - Author  

Take that decisive action enough times and your fear won't exist any more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

Always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. 

Steve Chandler - Author and public speaker.

Do it badly; do it slowly; do it fearfully; do it any way you have to, but do it.

Jocelyn K. Glei - Writer who's obsessed with work, careers & creativity

Every great leader must face his or her demons in order to overcome them. I’ve always known this, but I wasn’t aware of any immediate problems. But these days the demons are more insidious; they’re the everyday annoyances, the little things that suck away our potential to do big things.

Eric Butterworth - Best-selling author of 16 books and a prominent leader in the Unity and New Thought movements

Don't go through life, grow through life.

Neil A. Fiore - Renowned psychologist, lecturer, trainer, and bestselling author

The choice is not working or not working, but which type of work; even feeling guilty because of procrastinating takes some effort. When you commit to a goal, you're committing to a form of work that brings ongoing rewards. When you procrastinate, you're choosing a self-punishing form of work.

Russ Harris - Internationally acclaimed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) trainer and author of the best-selling ACT-based self-help book The Happiness Trap

TEN RULES FOR WINNING THE GAME OF CONFIDENCE
1. The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later.
2. Genuine confidence is not the absence of fear; it is a transformed relationship with fear.
3. Negative thoughts are normal. Don’t fight them; defuse them.
4. Self-acceptance trumps self-esteem.
5. True success is living by your values.
6. Hold your values lightly, but pursue them vigorously.
7. Don’t obsess about the outcome; get passionate about the process.
8. Don’t fight your fear: allow it, befriend it, and channel it.
9. Failure hurts—but if we’re willing to learn, it’s a wonderful teacher.
10. The key to peak performance is total engagement in the task.

Russ Harris - Internationally acclaimed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) trainer and author of the best-selling ACT-based self-help book The Happiness Trap

A = Accept your thoughts and feelings and be present.
C = Connect with your values.
T = Take effective action.

George Burr Leonard - American writer, editor, and educator who wrote extensively about education and human potential

Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.

John Eliot - Decorated professor of management and performance psychology

The best players in any high-stakes field - business, entertainment, law, surgery, as well as sport - recognize that pressure occurs at the moments when meaningful accomplishment is possible. In fact, that is the reason why performers perform: for the opportunity to tackle challenges head on, to do something significant, to demonstrate what their hard work and talent can produce.

Brian Tracy - Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author

The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century

Don’t be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Stephen Covey - American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

James Clear - Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, which has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide

Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.

Peter Drucker - Austrian management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Og Mandino - American author. He wrote the bestselling book The Greatest Salesman in the World. His books have sold over 50 million copies and have been translated into over 25 languages

My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. All are of no value unless they are followed by action.

Raymond Charles Barker - Leader and author in the New Thought spiritual movement and, specifically, in Religious Science

Your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be.

Jocelyn K. Glei - Obsessed with how we can find more creativity and meaning in our daily work. She created the online course RESET, a cosmic tune-up for your workday, and hosts Hurry Slowly, a podcast about how you can be more productive, creative, and resilient by slowing down

Studies consistently show that when we look back on our lives the most common regrets are not the risks we took, but the ones we didn’t. Of the many regrets people describe, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. Some of the most common include not pursuing more education, not being more assertive, and failing to seize the moment. When people reflect later in life, it is the things they did not do that generate the greatest despair.

Brian Tracy - Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over eighty books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His popular books are Earn What You're Really Worth, Eat That Frog!, No Excuses!

The Key to Success is Action

Todd Henry - Author, international speaker, consultant, and advisor. He is the author of four books, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages

Intellectual growth results not from the accumulation of tidbits of information, but from considering and integrating it.

Tony Robbins - American author, coach, speaker, and philanthropist. Robbins is known for his infomercials, seminars, and self-help books including the books Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within

People love to say that knowledge is power. But the truth is that knowledge is only potential power.

Isaiah Hankel - Fortune 500 consultant, international speaker, and author. His expertise, presentations, and writing focus on helping individuals, teams, and organizations accelerate into the fast-paced, entrepreneurship-driven market

A decision is only as strong as the belief standing behind it.

Roy F. Baumeister - Social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, self-esteem, self-defeating behaviors, motivation, aggression, consciousness, and free will

What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions.

Bernard Roth - Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. A longtime veteran of the Stanford design scene, he first came to the Stanford Design Division faculty in 1962

Part of working well in any group is the ability to have hard conversations.

Earl Nightingale - American radio speaker and author, dealing mostly with the subjects of human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence

Everything begins with an idea.

American and Israeli teacher, and writer in the areas of positive psychology and leadership. As a lecturer at Harvard University, Ben-Shahar created the most popular course in Harvard's history

Do you choose to choose and actively create the kind of life that you want for yourself?

Steven Kotler - American author, journalist, and entrepreneur. His articles have appeared in over 70 publications, including The New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Wired, Time magazine, GQ, Discover, Popular Science, Outside, Men’s Journal, Details and National Geographic Adventure

Since flow is a fluid action state, making better decisions isn’t enough: we also have to act on those decisions. The problem is fear, which stands between us and all actions. Yet our fears are grounded in self, time, and space. With our sense of self out of the way we are liberated from doubt and insecurity. With time gone, there is no yesterday to regret or tomorrow to worry about. And when our sense of space disappears, so do physical consequences. But when all three vanish at once, something far more incredible occurs: our fear of death—that most fundamental of all fears—can no longer exist. Simply put: if you’re infinite and atemporal, you cannot die. 

Barry Michels - Psychotherapist, he has a BA from Harvard, a law degree from University of California, Berkeley and an MSW from the University of Southern California

It’s your actions, more than your thoughts, that dictates who wins.

Barry Schwartz - American psychologist. Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College and since 2016 has been visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on the intersection of psychology and economics 

When asked about what they regret most in the last six months, people tend to identify actions that didn’t meet expectations. But when asked about what they regret most when they look back on their lives as a whole, people tend to identify failures to act. 

Wallace D. Wattles - American New Thought writer. He remains personally somewhat obscure, but his writing has been widely quoted and remains in print in the New Thought and self-help movements

By thought, the thing you want is brought to you. By action, you receive it

Fred Rogers - American television host, author, producer, and Presbyterian minister. He was the creator, showrunner, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which ran from 1968 to 2001

Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you're thinking or feeling unless you share it.

Grant Cardone - Businessman and writer, the author of the bestsellers and influential expert in the sphere of SEO international company. He founded the first online university for the sellers, where they are taught how to sell goods and services effectively, how to promote them, and achieve success in this as well

Never take the position that things just happen to you; rather, they happen because of something you did or did not do.

David Allen - American productivity consultant best known for the creation of a time management method called "Getting Things Done"

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.

Joseph Campbell - American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Aristotle - Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Robert Fritz - American author, management consultant, composer, and filmmaker. He is known for his development of structural dynamics, the study of how structural relationships impact behavior from individuals to organizations

The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped.

Robert Fritz - American author, management consultant, composer, and filmmaker. He is known for his development of structural dynamics, the study of how structural relationships impact behavior from individuals to organizations

The best way to experience the power of fundamental choices is to make them.