You declutter your home and your office, but head and heart space needs to be cleaned, cleared and organized on a regular basis too.  

  What you carry and keep in your head and heart can stop you from being all that you can be (or just plain happy.) If you are miserable and can’t figure out why, it may to be time to declutter your mental space.

1. Learn to let go of old grudges. Life’s too short and uncertain to take grudges to the grave.

2. Unload or step away from your burdensome friends. Take an honest look at the people in your life. Break ties or change the friendship rules with those who don’t support you, or who are incompatible with your values and goals.

3. Take a break and stop being judgmental.Being judgmental can close you off from learning something from others. Don’t judge so quickly; listen to the whole story first.

4. It is OK to be wrong. You have to be willing to be wrong. Don’t be afraid to make the occasional mistake. When you do, acknowledge it. You can waste a lot of energy trying to be perfect or alway right.

5. Be willling to say I’m sorry.  Loosen up on stuborness. Don’t let a misunderstanding cost a  a relationship with a family member, friend or customer because you can’t say I am sorry.

Positive thinking alone does not ensure success, but it’s a good and important start.

Those who know me, know that I follow the teachings of a former co-worker who unwittingly became my mentor. She once told me, “Every morning I look in the mirror and say to myself, ‘You are beautiful.’” I don’t recall how I felt or what I said to her at the time. I was a 20-something and had other things on my mind. For some reason, that conversation has stayed with me. At some point I began to realize how powerful that statement is. Beauty is not just about the physical and if you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll have a hard time persevering against the obstacles, setbacks and naysayers, you’re likely to encounter.  When someone says  you will never be able to do that,  or you are ugly, fat, skinny, etc., ignore them and their negativity, just look in the mirror and say, “You are beautiful.” 

Maintaining the right attitude in the face of adversity:

Use positive language. Use words that emphasize happiness, strength and success.

Create the right mind-environment. Don’t spend too much time on downbeat things or negative people. 

Appreciate your life. Focusing on what you don’t have can crowd out appreciation for what you already possess.

Let go of mistakes. Just about everyone fails at some things; don’t obsess over them. Learn what you can and move on instead of beating yourself up time and again.

Know that success at life is just as important as success in business.

I love quotes. I search them out. I save them. Sometimes, I find little scrapes of paper in my purse with a quote or a person’s name to be searched online when I get home. Many times it is the other way around, a good quote, but who said it?  A dear friend once said, “Good sax is better than sex”; if you have heard the saxophone played right, you know what she meant.  Is it original? Who knows, but I love it.

If you find a quote here that you like, take it, use it, enjoy it.

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Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. — Carol Burnett

Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was. — Dag Hammarskjöld

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
— Ernest Hemingway

Safeguards are often irksome, but sometimes convenient, and if one needs them at all, one is apt to need them badly. — Henry Adams

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. — David Rockefeller

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. — George Washington Carver

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. — Frank Zappa

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre. — Chet Atkins

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings. — Margaret Mead

I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot. — Abraham Lincoln

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.
—Walter Cronkite

To err is nature, to rectify error is glory. — George Washington

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less. — Eldridge Cleaver

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. — Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled. — Barack Obama

Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent it is gone forever. — Zig Ziglar

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we can never give enough of is love. — Henry Miller

I never loved another person the way I loved myself. — Mae West