The Greatness Guide: One of the World's Most Successful Coaches Shares His Secrets for Personal and Business Mastery

by Robin Sharma

“Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm.”

“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

Play hard or don’t play at all.

Be outrageously energetic and madly alive.

A primary sign of maturity is the ability to give up instant gratification for a much more spectacular pleasure down the road.

It’s amazing how far you will get by just staying with something long enough. Most people give up too early. Their fears are bigger than their faith.

The paradox of our wired world is that as we become more connected electronically, we become less connected emotionally.

I’d rather work to build the bonds of humanity with those already around me by being loving to my kids and other family, kind to my friends and supportive of my teammates and clients.

Some people laugh at the notion of being nice and decent and noble. “That’s a sign of weakness,” I hear. Nope. It’s a sign of strength. Soft is hard. It’s easy to put yourself first. It’s easy to get angry when someone disagrees with you. It’s easy to complain or condemn or take the path of least resistance. What takes guts is to stand for something higher, to behave greater and to be of service to others.

I’m not saying that treating people with respect means you don’t hold them to high standards and expect excellence from them. It doesn’t mean you don’t set boundaries and get tough when you have to. Showing leadership isn’t about being liked by all. It’s about doing what’s right. And what’s good.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said in a speech: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

What distinguishes people with an extraordinary character from the rest of us is how they respond when life sends one of its inevitable curves.

Grace under pressure. That’s what separates leaders from followers.

I get my best ideas—the thoughts that have really elevated my business and revolutionized my life—when I’m relaxed and having fun.

if you do something good for someone with the expectation of a reward it’s not a gift—it’s a trade.

I have no desire to be the richest person in the graveyard. To me, a life well lived is mostly about being surrounded by people I love, staying healthy and happy (no one’s happy all the time, except in the movies, by the way), stepping toward my highest potential each day, doing work I love and having an impact on the world around me.

Connecting to the fact that life is short and no one knows when it will end is a great personal habit to stay centered on your highest priorities.

Waking up each morning and asking yourself, “How would I show up today if this day was my last?” is not some cheesy motivational exercise. It’s a profound way to bring some urgency and commitment into your days.

Nothing fails like success.

it’s available to each one of us. No matter what you do within an organization. Robert Joss, dean of Stanford

“By leadership I mean taking complete responsibility for an organization’s well-being and growth, and changing it for the better. Real leadership is not about prestige, power or status. It is about responsibility.”

“Real leadership is not about prestige, power or status. It is about responsibility.”

“If each of us would only sweep our own doorstep, the whole world would be clean.”

Telling yourself that you—as an army of one—cannot have an impact is giving away your power.

“If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

We say we’ll be better parents, more effective leaders and wiser human beings. Two days later, it’s back to business as usual—seeing the negative, playing the victim and being cranky.

FEAR. People fear leaving their safe harbor of the known and venturing off into the unknown.

Most of us don’t like trying something new—it brings up our discomfort. The key here is to manage your fear by doing the very thing that frightens you.

FAILURE . No one wants to fail. So most of us don’t even try.

FORGETTING. Sure we leave the seminar room after an inspirational workshop ready to change the world. But then we get to the office the next day and reality sets in. Difficult teammates to deal with. Unhappy customers to satisfy. Demanding bosses to appease. Uncooperative suppliers. No time to act on the commitments we made for personal and professional leadership. So we forget them.

Here’s a key to success: Keep your commitments top of mind.

FAITH. Too many people have no faith.

Cynicism stems from disappointment. Cynical and faithless people were not always like that.

Every challenge is nothing more than a chance to make things better.

An unhappy customer yelling at you might seem like a problem. But to a person thinking like a leader, that scenario is also a giant opportunity to improve the organization’s processes to ensure that doesn’t happen again and to get some feedback that may be used to enhance products and services.

The only people with no problems are dead.

The people or circumstances that take you out of your power have extraordinary value: They reveal your limiting beliefs, fears and false assumptions.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am grateful to those teachers.”

They wouldn’t dream of calling a setback a “problem”— they’d call it an “opportunity to create something even greater.”

Pull out your journal or a clean white sheet of paper and record an inventory of the words you most frequently speak. The more aware you can become of the quality of your language, the more choice you will give yourself. And writing things down dramatically raises your self-awareness.

Articulate a series of spectacularly positive words that will serve you—words that you imagine a superstar in your field using. Bring them into your daily vocabulary. You will discover that speaking these words will make you feel better.

Aging only happens to people who lose their lust for getting better and disconnect from their natural base of curiosity.

“Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. So for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time,”

Top performers in business make it a priority to build relationships with their teammates and their customers.

When people feel appreciated, they shine.

One of the deepest needs of a human being is the need to belong.

Musicians are artists, no different from painters or poets. They document our culture, cause us to think, provoke us (sometimes) and introduce us to new ideas. And the good ones are philosophers.

“The enemy of the best is the good.”

Just keep innovating. Innovate at work. Innovate at home. Innovate in your relationships. Innovate in the way you run your life. Innovate in terms of the way you see the world. To become stagnant is to begin to die.