Keeping your new year’s resolutions
We’re just a little ways into the new year, and keeping resolutions and meeting new goals gets harder with each passing day. This is not the year to quit. This is not the year to let your goals slide past you. This is the year to be strong, to push through your resistance.
There have been many who came before us that have achieved amazing things. This is your year, but you have to make it your year. Here are eighteen quotes about the sweat, blood, and tears required of you to make yourself who you want to be.
18. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
17. “Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.” – Jesse Jackson
16. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” – Winston Churchill
15. “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” – Ray Kroc
14. “Fighting always leads to winning! If you disagree, you’ve probably stopped fighting.” – Dan Waldschmidt
13. “A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.” – George S. Patton
12. “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog. “ – Dwight D. Eisenhower
11. “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” -Mahatma Gandhi
10. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life a champion.’” – Muhammad Ali
9. “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong
8. “To live like a lion for a day is far better than to live like a jackal for a hundred years.” – Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu
7. “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
6. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.” – Colin Powell
5. “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in tenacity.” – Louis Pasteur
4. “I am building a fire, and every day I train. I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.” – Mia Hamm
3. “Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work.” – Andre Agassi
2. “An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.” – Thomas Fuller
1. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
You determine your own achievement, your own greatness. When you push yourself, life will push back. But if you can continue forward with the examples of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the forefront of the mind, you’ll make progress. Don’t let your or anyone else’s fears and doubts stifle your growth. Stay strong. Put the necessary blood, tears, and sweat into your goals and you’ll get exponentially more than that out of your experiences.
