The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power

by Brendon Burchard

The fourth practice is to always treat others with respect.

The fifth practice is to tell the truth.

The sixth practice is to always favor action.

we should all know that we can easily lose integrity when we are feeling or reacting to any of these things: impatience, disappointment, desperation, aggression, hurt, loyalty, and power.

Disappointment is just the excuse small people use to justify their urge to quit and to enjoy a life of ease over the hard work and trial necessary for real achievements.

If we are not disappointed from time to time, we are not attempting anything new or bold or significant.

Integrity is learning to feel hurt but not integrate its darkness into our soul or cast it onto another.

But when loyalty is chosen over truth, corruption is always near.

Power itself is not bad; it is the means by which some people seek or wield it that can cause harm. On the way to power, people who lack integrity and virtue lie, cheat, steal, and step on others.

The secret to seeking power with integrity is to stop imagining that when we finally have it, we will suddenly change.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

To stand emotionally open before the world and give of our hearts without fear of hurt, attachment, or demand of reciprocity—this is the ultimate act of human courage, this the ultimate experience of Personal Freedom.

It is how it goes: We measure out the giving and receiving of love, and it makes us suffer so.

Hurt has nothing to do with love, and love is unaffiliated with and unaffected by pain.

Love was never absent from our life.

We simply allowed our awareness of it to diminish.

Yet a loving fate depends on our discovering that pain has nothing to do with love and that the time for rekindling past hurts and living from the motive of fear has run out.

To transmit love to another, trust is not required. We can love a criminal or miscreant. We need not trust them, but as fellow humans and children of God, we can recognize their divinity even though they are not choosing to sense or express it, even if they are attempting to corrupt the incorruptible.

What this means is that we can have a divine intent for everyone we meet, whether or not they deserve it, have asked for it, or will reciprocate it.

We are not angels; we are humans. But let us nonetheless try to rise to a higher plane.

This popular fantasy that we must first love ourselves before loving others serves no one, for it merely gives us permission to await a good day to love others.

I wish nothing but joy and love for you.

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve. ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Our striving for a better life and a better world can leave others inspired if it comes from a genuine place of service, or diminished if it comes from a place of greed.

Without more people deciding to serve as role models and leaders, our society has become a suffering case of the silent and bland leading the silent and bland.

Good people often fail to become great people because they avoid looking honestly at personal lives. They try to lead others but do not lead themselves, and at some point that incongruence catches up with and derails them.

Once we get our homes in order, we must seek to reconnect with the world. Our aim must be to help others find their own meaningful projects and causes.

No matter the position we hold at work, at school, or in our community, we shall show the world an alternative example by always caring enough to be remarkable and unifying.

They were unfailing in their demands for action and excellence.

Demand does not mean to be pushy or commanding, though a leader should not shrink from this. Demand means setting expectations, communicating with candor, constantly holding people to high standards by incentivizing those who rise to the challenge while simultaneously calling out and coaching those who do not.

A society that lacks good people willing to speak against evil or low standards can only devolve into darkness and mediocrity.

This is what a virtuous world requires: candid people willing to hold high standards for themselves and others.

THE NINE VIRTUES OF GREATNESS

Let us demand honesty.

Let us demand responsibility.

Let us demand intelligence.

Let us demand excellence.

Let us demand courage.

Courage is often cultivated through confrontation: forcing others to face fears and injustices, teaching people to help rather than hide, asking for candor over quietness, urging others to stand up rather than back down.

Let us demand respect for others.

Let us demand vigilance.

Let us demand service.

Let us demand unity.

Not everyone needs to be a part of every initiative and not everyone can live up to the standards of excellence we need in order to achieve the remarkable.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. HENRY MILLER

We are not supposed to miss this moment.

We can add nothing to yesterday, and we should attach nothing to what we did or did not do, for all those moments are in the ether now, stranded only in the stories in our minds.

All that matters is what is here now before us, to be lived and defined and experienced as we choose.

Slowing time begins, always, with the breath. The deeper and longer we draw air in, the more oxygenated our bodies become, and the more heightened our energy and presence.

We can further slow time by absorbing more details from our surroundings.