MerrinBoy > MerrinBoy's Quotes

“You get what you tolerate.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“Our work, our relationships, and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a company, a relationship, or a life, any single conversation can. Speak and listen as if this is the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It could be. Participate as if it matters. It does.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“If you are open, vulnerable, disclosing, more likely than not it will be reciprocated and walls will come down.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today

“There is something within us that responds deeply to people who level with us.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“Do you view your relationship as something to be endured for the sake of the kids, or because you don’t want to be alone, or because you don’t think you could do better?  Or do you view your relationship, even with its imperfections, as a worthwhile work in progress?  How would your view influence how you interact with your partner, what you do, what you say?  What results would those interactions produce?”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Love: Creating a Love that Lasts---One Conversation at a Time

“Principle 4: Tackle your toughest challenge today. Burnout doesn’t occur because we’re solving problems; it occurs because we’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over. The problem named is the problem solved. Identify and then confront the real obstacles in your path. Stay current with the people important to your success and happiness. Travel light, agenda-free.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“I have not yet witnessed a spontaneous recovery from incompetence.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“Accountable Authentic Collaborative Courageous Passionate Lifelong learner Welcomes feedback Biased toward action Solution oriented Change agent”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today

“Has a sense of humor. (Preferably warped.) We know who we are”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today

“The first thing the attendees saw when they walked in was a poster with the question “What are our mokitas?”—a Papua New Guinea word for that which everyone knows and no one will speak of: the elephant in the room.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

“People feel disrespected when they show up and others don't. The message received is that those who arrive late value their own time more than that of their colleagues.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today

“Once you achieve intimacy and connection, I predict that innovation, partnership, execution and success won't be far behind.”
― Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today

“Toni's Talk: When you invest in yourself, you have instant credibility with your biggest critic...you! As soon as you let doubt creep in---you lose that investment. Make a daily commitment to assess your worth with positive affirmations and watch your investment grow.”
― C.Toni Graham

“It’s hard to believe there are people that don’t read books. There’s so much magic in words and well told stories.”
― C. Toni Graham

“Remember to celebrate the small accomplishments along your journey because they will provide the support needed when the road gets rocky. ”
― C. Toni Graham

“To merge on the road you are meant to travel, means making a choice and then taking action.”
― C. Toni Graham

“You always have free will to choose your path.”
― C. Toni Graham, Crossroads and the Himalayan Crystals

“Only you can charter the course of your destiny.”
― C. Toni Graham, Crossroads and the Himalayan Crystals

“If reading makes you happy, do it. Whatever makes your heart sing and brings you joy, do that too.”
― C. Toni Graham

“Imagination is not bound by possibilities. The creative mind will always break the shackles—making the impossible, possible.”
― C. Toni Graham

“All living things are sensitive to their surroundings and convey distress and sorrow as well as joy. Trees are no exception as they are most rooted to mother earth and their limbs carry knowledge we can only aspire to obtain.”
― C. Toni Graham, Crossroads and the Himalayan Crystals

“Writers have influenced thoughts, principals, viewpoints and experiences throughout history. A talented writer’s pen is anointed with magic!”
― C. Toni Graham

“The elements of the written word can be purely magical. I read and I write...I inspire and I’m living.”
― C. Toni Graham

“It is here where education is championed and gratefully pursued as the human right which many in our world classify it to be. For although regarded as a human right, many entitled to education often dismiss its equal standing to other rights of a similar plane: water, food, shelter. Without water, many perish; with education, many complain.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Sanjit says his apartment, the same one in which he grew up, has been flooded many times by the midsummer torrents. For what has been for millennia a primarily agricultural society, rains simultaneously destroy, create, and preserve life in India, similar to the functions of the three premier Hindu gods, Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu. Every time Kolkata gets pounded by a cyclone, or when the monsoon first erupts in June (although the recent warming of the Indian Ocean increasingly disturbs a once-consistent timeline), Sanjit never fails to send along a video, his house flooded – seemingly destroyed – but the smiles on his, Bajju’s, or other house-guest’s faces signify just the opposite, having been cooled and relieved of perpetual heat. Flooded, they remain preserved.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Everyone is recharged for the second half, no bell, no forced learning, no principal’s office for tardiness or absenteeism; instead, a voluntary return to our collective pane of learning. Final conversations simmer down and the attention is refocused.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“We proceeded to make way across the mighty Hooghly River, a monstrous offshoot of the Ganges, where we contemplated for a moment, our thoughts seemingly caught in the roaring southward current; there we gazed, toward where the city transitions into mangrove jungle, and somewhere a bit further to the southwest where all the rivers split infinitely like capillaries, where those famous Bengal tigers trod among the sunderbans. Peering in that direction, Bajju gripped the vertical bars just above the horizontal pedestrian railing, breathing slowly and silently, knees locked, still, despite being on arguably the busiest and loudest bridge in the world.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“Of course, I couldn’t explain this vector calculus concept and so, slightly embarrassed in front of Rahul and the other Bengali students, I told Sanjit just that; he had cornered me, and honesty emerged as my only option. Simultaneous to my humiliating disclosure of the truth, Sanjit gradually inched toward where I was sitting. After hearing my reply, he slowly returned to his teacher stool and whiteboard, his back turned away from the class, the suspense building and his words impending, before turning around and breaking into speech, “Don’t trust your interior monologue. If you are asked something and you know it, then express or demonstrate it. Don’t just nod or say yes because then you are lying to yourself. Any ass can say yes, but not all asses can express it.” I modified my first impression: Sanjit was full of explicit aphorisms. Humbled, those words encouragingly rang between my ears for quite some time.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“As I sat dumbfounded, seemingly paralyzed in my corner, resorting to my old, reliable strategy of scribbling when unsure of how to respond to Sanjit, Sanjit appended his counsel with a dose of silence – one reminiscent to that of a few days prior. The students looked upward and downward, fans to notes to pens to toes, outward and inward, peers to souls, and of course, toward the direction of the perceived elephant in the room, Sanjit’s books. Simultaneously, Sanjit confidently and patiently searched among the students before finding my eyes; once connected, the lesson moved forward.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School

“After Bajju delivered a few beaming salutations, we walked northward up the makeshift, winding path through protruding brush, not much but a few stones placed here and there for balance and leverage upon ascending or descending. Having advanced about hundred steps from the street below, a sharp left leads to Bajju’s property, which begins with his family’s miniature garden – at the time any signs of fertility were mangled by dried roots which flailed like wheat straw, but within the day Bajju’s children vehemently delivered blows with miniature hoes in preparation for transforming such a plot into a no-longer-neglected vegetable garden. A few steps through the produce, or preferably circumventing all of it by taking a few extra steps around the perimeter, leads to the sky-blue painted home. Twisting left, hundreds of miles of rolling hills and the occasional home peeps out, bound below by demarcated farming steppes. If you’re lucky on a clear day and twist to the right, the monstrous, perpetually snow-capped Chaukhamba mountain monopolizes the distance just fifteen miles toward the direction of Tibet in the north.”
― Colin Phelan, The Local School