"The poet Longfellow offers great leadership counsel about how to handle non-controllables in our lives when he says, 'the best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain.' Pretty solid advice!"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Accept What Can't Be Changed and Change What Can Be"

"When the doo-doo starts to pile deep, a leader doesn't just sit there and complain (usually about "them"); he or she grabs a shovel. We may not choose what happens to us, but we do choose how to respond – or not."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Accept What Can't Be Changed and Change What Can Be"

"My ability to influence has a lot to do with my choice accumulations. If I am going to improve my Influence Index, I will have to change my choices and get to work on changing me to help change them."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Assessing Our Ability to Influence Others"

"Blaming others for our difficulties is the easy way out. That's why it's so popular. A job applicant put this statement on his resume, 'The company made me a scapegoat, just like my three previous employers'."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Avoiding Pity City and the Victimitis Virus"

"The Victimitis Virus is the poor-little-me-syndrome. It's a state of hopelessness and powerlessness to do anything about my problems. It's running from personal responsibilities with excuses like 'it's not my job,' 'I was just following orders,' 'I am too old to change,' or 'the dog ate my homework' It's the most contagious and destructive infection ever seen on this earth."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Avoiding Pity City and the Victimitis Virus"

"Strong leaders don't allow themselves to be victims of a bad boss. Choosing to do that is like choosing to hang wallpaper with one arm tied behind our back."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Being a Strong Leader Despite a Bad Boss"

"We may not be able to choose our boss, but we can choose how to respond to him or her. Good leaders refuse to be a victim of their boss's weaknesses. They don't let a dumb boss make them act dumb. They know that the worst thing they can do is to sabotage their careers just to spite the boss."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Being a Strong Leader Despite a Bad Boss"

"Strong middle leaders have good entrepreneurial ideas. They are often better than executives at leveraging informal networks. The best ones stayed attuned to and meet the emotional needs of people throughout the organization during major change. Effective middle leaders also manage the ongoing tension between continuity and change."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Being a Strong Leader Despite a Bad Boss"

"Before I throw a Pity Party and complain about a bad boss, I need to take a look in the mirror. How's my leadership example? Strong leaders take the initiative to regularly plan, set priorities, and follow through with his or her boss."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Being a Strong Leader Despite a Bad Boss"

"People who aren't changing and growing aren't living. Growth is one of nature's vital signs. It shows you're alive. Once you stop changing and growing, you'd better check your pulse."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Change is Life"

"It's much easier to be a victim — to blame all their behavior on them and refuse to accept any responsibility at all. But how honest and true is that — really? I may need more feedback from them to clearly see my role in their behavior."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Changing Me to Change Them"

"We don't see the world as it is; we see the world as we are. Which is why George Bernard Shaw advised, 'Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Choice More than Chance Determines Our Circumstance"

"I am running late for an important appointment and speeding down a two-lane highway. Suddenly I come up behind a garbage truck lumbering along well below the speed limit. The highway is full of oncoming traffic, curves, and hills so I can't pass. If I start to get angry, pound the steering wheel, and really work myself into lather about this, who is in control of my emotions at this point — a garbage truck or me?"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Choosing Our Poison or Choosing to Let Go"

"An optimist believes no one ever ruined their eyesight by looking at the bright side of life. Research on Emotional Intelligence, Attribution Theory (see Martin Seligman's book outstanding book, Learned Optimism), and related fields show that optimists not only go further in life, they also have a much better time on the trip. Optimists are generally healthier, happier, and leaders in their fields."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Choosing Our Reality"

"Highly devoted pessimists take joy from proving there is no real or lasting joy. If life were a bed of roses, many pessimists wouldn't be happy until they developed an allergy. Pessimists not only expect the worst, they make the most of it when it happens."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Choosing Our Reality"

"An optimist believes no one ever ruined their eyesight by looking at the bright side of life. Research on Emotional Intelligence, Attribution Theory (see Martin Seligman's book outstanding book, Learned Optimism), and related fields show that optimists not only go further in life, they also have a much better time on the trip. Optimists are generally healthier, happier, and leaders in their fields."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Choosing Our Reality"

"I've often reflected on the truth and paradoxes found in Reinhold Niebuhr's popular "Serenity Prayer": "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." There are many circumstances we can't control (but we can control how we deal with the uncontrollable). However, we tend to easily become confused by what we can and can't control. Before the "courage to change the things I can" is of any use, we need to learn how to recognize just what we can change."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Control Your Own Destiny"

"Leaders choose to control their destiny so fate and others don't. They believe that choice more than chance determines their circumstances. Even in circumstances for which they're not responsible, they still take responsibility for their actions."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "If It's Going to Be It's Up to Me"

"If my current work isn't energizing me so I can energize and lead others, I have four choices:

1. Do nothing but wish for my "fairy job mother" to magically appear and straighten out my life,
   
2. Get out of management so I stop dragging others down to my low energy level,
   
3. Figure out what my personal vision, values, and purpose are and transform my current job into my life's work,
   
4. Figure out what my ideal job is and go find or create it."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Just a Job or a Source of Deeper Joy and Meaning?"

"Regardless of their position or role, leaders don't wait for something to happen or someone to tell them what to do. They go and do it."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Just Go and Do It"

"Don't wait – initiate! That's the deeply embedded belief system of strong leaders. An ancient Chinese proverb teaches that 'the person who waits for a roast duck to fly into their mouth must wait a very long time.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Just Go and Do It"

"Alvin Law is a Thalidomide adult who has no arms so he plays drums and piano with his feet. He speaks to kids and corporate audiences on "There's No Such Word as Can't" (a phrase he kept hearing from his parents as he grew up in Yorkton, Saskatchewan)."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Control Their Own Destiny"

"Think about someone you know well and really admire who gets things done. Someone you'd call a real leader. He or she could be a parent, grandparent, local community leader, activist, teacher, entrepreneur, manager, or coach. How often does he or she passively accept things as they are and meekly goes along with whatever life hands him or her? I'll bet rarely, if ever. Leaders don't wait for something to happen, they make it happen."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Make it Happen"

"Success isn't how far we've got, but the distance we've travelled from where we started."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Put Good Intentions into Action"

"We have to take responsibility for our choices. And we have to take responsibility for how we act in response to circumstances – even if those circumstances are not of our own making. This is the real test of our maturity and emotional intelligence. This is the "ground zero" of leadership."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Choices"

"One workshop participant wonderfully illustrated our all-too-human tendency to blame others by telling us about his four-year-old grandson's recent visit. Little Tim was the only visitor in the house that night. The next morning he came downstairs full of indignation. When asked what was wrong, he announced, 'Somebody peed in my bed!'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Choices"

"Five years ago we made choices that accumulated into today's circumstances. Time and change march on whether we're ready or not. Five years from now will arrive. Our choices accumulations over the next five years will determine whether we look back with regret or satisfaction. "

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Life Accumulates in Our Personal Choice Accounts"

"It's all too easy to point a finger upward and shake our heads in disgust. It is much harder to point a finger in the mirror and see a potential source of our leadership problems."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Many Managers Disempower Themselves"

"Regardless of where they might be in the organizational hierarchy, strong leaders don't make the mistake of behaving as though they work for someone else. You won't find them saying, 'They ought to do something about that.' Instead, they'll say, 'I will do something about that.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Many Managers Disempower Themselves"

"As CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch's leadership of that company has become a corporate legend. One of his books has one of my all-time favorite book titles. It sums up the self-determination concepts we've been talking about here and what has made Jack so successful. The book is called Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will. Exactly."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Our Fate is in Our Own Hands"

"Establishing goals and priorities, getting organized, and managing time is about balance. In A Better Way to Live, personal effectiveness author, Og Mandino, puts it all in perspective: 'Any goal that forces you to labor, day after day and year after year, so long and hard that you never have any time for yourself and those your love is not a goal but a sentence. . . a sentence to a lifetime of misery, no matter how much wealth and success you attain.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Personal Goals and Priorities Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two)"

"Discipline is as central to management as vision is to leadership. Like management and leadership, vision and discipline are interdependent. Disciplined follow-through creates the results that move us closer to our visions. Visions, in turn, provide the focus and energy that drives discipline. Without discipline, a vision is just a daydream. Without a vision, discipline is drudgery."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Personal Improvement Planning and Discipline"

"Looking right past themselves, they (less effective managers) look for ways to change everyone else. They aspire to lead but end up demoralizing their own teams and frustrating themselves by choosing to be disempowered by their bosses. They give away their power by believing that they don't have any. They unwittingly fall for the cult of heroic management -- the notion that leadership comes down from on high."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Stop Whining and Start Leading"

"It's so easy to get stuck in Pity City. Since misery loves company, Pity Parties become popular as everyone points fingers at their favourite targets on the other side of the we-they gap found in many organizations . Problems, setbacks, and disappointments are often wailed about in a rousing game of blame storming: 'They're doing it to us again.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Test Your Career Health"

"Anyone who refuses to succumb to the highly contagious Victimitis Virus and takes initiative to improve their organization, family, community, or life is a leader. Successful leaders face the same confusing and changing circumstances as everyone else. But a leader doesn't just follow the crowd that drifts down the road of discouragement and mediocrity. Leaders chose where they want to go and then blaze a trail to get there."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "The Choice is Ours"

"Warren Bennis has studied hundreds of leaders in every field of human achievement, written over twenty books, and is professor and founding chair of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. He's concluded, 'Biographies of great leaders sometimes read as if they entered the world with an extraordinary genetic endowment, as if their future leadership role was preordained. Do not believe it. The truth is that major capacities and competencies of leadership can be learned if the basic desire to learn them exists.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "The Myth of the Born Leader"

"Leaders are "unreasonable" enough to believe they can make a difference. Like thermostats, they try and set the temperature of their environment. Thermostat leaders work to define and create what could be rather than just reflecting what is. Now if the furnace or air conditioner isn't working or all the windows have been left open, a thermostat might not be able to change the room's temperature. But it still tries."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Thermometer Manager or Thermostat Leader?"

"I've been studying and trying to apply the power of positive pictures for over two decades now. These skills, habits, and techniques are often called visioning, imagery, and visualization. And they have a power for change, improvement, and energy creation that we're only beginning to understand."

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "Visioning Harnesses the Power of Our Pictures"

"In her eighth grade project "Getting to Know Me," our daughter Jenn was asked to outline her personal philosophy. Here's how she described the process of choosing our thoughts and choosing our future, 'if you believe you have a good future you probably do if you stick to your beliefs and try your best. If you believe you are going to be a failure well then you probably will be one. See it all works in a cycle...you believe, you succeed; or you bail, you fail.'"

- from Jim Clemmer's article, "When Choosing Our Thoughts We Choose Our Future"