Geoff Thompson > Quotes

“To change your mind you have to change your thought habits, and you do this by spending time each day correcting faulty internal dialogue. Every time you think negative, stop yourself and make yourself think positive and continue doing so until the negative thoughts have been starved to death and the positives have grown strong on a diet of regular use. To think bad thoughts is very easy, they float into your mind uninvited. To think good thoughts, however, takes daily practice and constant vigilance.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Before we can change the world we first have to change ourselves – we need to localise our first-aid. This often means having to mend our own faults, but before we can do this of course we have first to admit them, if only to ourselves. Many of us cannot bear to see the truth; the brightness blinds us so we look away. We hide from the truth by using unconscious defence mechanisms (as explained more precisely in my book Small Wars). We often qualify our weaknesses by rationalising them, projecting them, displacing them, suppressing or repressing them etc. This has to stop. Looking at ‘us’ without the rose-tinted spectacles of Freudian defence mechanisms is not a pretty sight at times I have to tell you. But it is only when you accept the weaknesses of ‘self ’ that you can exorcise them and build strength and integrity where weakness and frailty once reigned.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Again, no higher moral ground is being taken here, I still to this day have to check myself to make sure that I don’t end up in conversations that pull others to pieces. It can be so infectious and often you are in knee-deep before you even realise it. I make as many mistakes as the next man and what I tell you, I also constantly tell myself. As a rule of thumb always ask yourself, ‘If so-and-so were sat next to me would I be saying the things I am saying?’ If not put a gate on your mouth. Or even try this little trick – it always works for me – when you feel like saying something bad about another person, deliberately make yourself say something good instead.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“All my early life, certainly from the age of eleven, I was plagued by the fear of fighting and confrontations.”
― Geoff Thompson, Watch My Back: The Geoff Thompson Story of Thompson, Geoff New Edition on 15 September 2001

“All this bollocks about karate, about this range or that range, bridging the gap, setting up, weakening them with a kick–there’s no need, just hit the fuckers… very hard!”
― Geoff Thompson, Watch My Back: The Geoff Thompson Story

“If you don’t like the mind you’ve got, change the thoughts in it for better ones and your mind will change all by itself.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig - The Art of Positive Thinking

“Take responsibility for your own world and never project blame. If you do you lose your power.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“There has never been a greater illusion than fear. Fear exists only whilst you believe
in it - whilst you fear it. So...stop believing, stop fearing. Set up a shadow inventory,
write down all your fears and set out on your warrior path. Make this your life purpose
and gold will be smelt from your terror”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig - The Art of Positive Thinking

“We can only grow as big as our thoughts, we are defined by our thoughts, and we are the result of what we think about all day long.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“I will persist until I succeed. I am not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course through my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner. I will persist with the knowledge that each failure to sell will increase my chance for success at the very next attempt. Each ‘nay’ I hear will bring me closer to the sound of ‘yea’. Each frown I meet only prepares me for the smile to come. Each misfortune I encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck. I must have night to appreciate the day. I must fail often to succeed only once. I will persist until I succeed.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Even great men like Gandhi and Stephen Hawkins and others throughout history have had to contradict themselves because increased knowledge has shown their old and true concepts to be old and untrue. Much of the war going on throughout the world now is being fought by two sides that both believe, categorically and without question, that they are right and their opposition wrong. Their growth to a newer truth is jammed by anger and fear and many deaths and personal losses will result before they are liberated and a new paradigm is born.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Have you ever heard the story of the Elephant and the Twig? In India they train obedience in young elephants (to stop them from escaping) by tying them to a huge, immovable object, like a tree, when they are still very young. The tree is so large that no matter how hard the baby elephant pulls and tugs it cannot break free. This develops what is known as ‘learned helplessness’ in the creature. After trying so hard and for so long to break the hold, only to be thwarted time and again, it eventually believes that, no matter what it does, it cannot escape. Ultimately, as a fully-grown adult weighing several tons, they can tie it to a twig and it won’t escape, in fact it won’t even try.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Abraham Maslow called it the ‘Jonah Complex’, the fear of success. He said that we are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under the most perfect conditions, under conditions of greatest courage; we enjoy and even thrill to the god-like possibilities we see in ourselves at such peak moments and yet, simultaneously, shiver with weakness, awe and fear before the same possibilities.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Some people need a poke in the eye to show them the right direction, others simply need pointing in the right direction. It is a question of having the wisdom to know when to point and when to poke.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Art of Fighting without Fighting: Techniques in Personal Threat Evasion by Geoff Thompson (25-Sep-1998) Paperback

“We are here to serve, but the beauty is that when we serve others we also serve ourselves, what we give out is what we get back. The best way then actually to get what you want from life is to help others to get what they want. So why not help more and why give out rubbish when that is exactly what we will get back?”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig

“Giving to others is where most of our energy is generated, when we give it comes back tenfold and allows us to give more and to channel the self-perpetuating energy into our life goal. ‘The most sublime act is to set another before you.”
― Geoff Thompson, The Elephant and the Twig