Appreciation Quotes Help Forge Friendship - Make Your Gratitude Count | Simran Khurana

Appreciating someone is not that difficult. You just need to remember to express your appreciation when the opportunity arises. But how many of us remember to do so?

Voltaire rightly pointed out the merits of appreciation, "Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." When you appreciate your loved ones, you build a bond of trust and love.  Appreciation builds bridges and fosters healthy relationships. 

Appreciate Those Who Are Closest to You

Appreciation can start at home. When your mother packs you a nutritious lunch, or your dad helps you with homework, show your appreciation with a hug or a smile. When your husband helps you with household chores, or your mother-in-law offers to babysit when you had to go out, express gratitude and love.

Appreciate Others Around You

Appreciate people outside your family too. Give your neighbors credit when their dogs did not create a nuisance. Thank the local police for their effort in controlling the crime rate in the neighborhood. 

You can find many opportunities to express your appreciation.

Appreciating someone does not make you less important. This is not a war of ego. Your words of appreciation reveal your humble and generous nature. By appreciating others, your value does not depreciate! On the contrary, you look good in the eyes of others.

Is Appreciation the Same Thing as Flattery?

Renowned motivational speaker Dale Carnegie beautifully expressed the difference between appreciation and flattery.  He said, "The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned."

Sugarcoated words of flattery appear fake while discerning words of appreciation sound genuine. Appreciation makes specific mention of praise-worthy qualities. Flattery is wishy-washy, smothering the truth behind a veil of false words. You can instinctively tell if a person is expressing true appreciation or false flattery. 

How to Appreciate Someone?

Appreciation should be sincere. When you praise your mother for her cooking, talk about what you specifically liked about the food. Share your thoughts about what else you would like. And thank her profusely for making your meal so good.

Say "thanks" to your friend who threw you a surprise birthday party. If your friend has spent money for the party, offer to share the expense. Also, tell your friend what you enjoyed most about the birthday celebration.

Use these appreciation quotes to make beautiful thank you cards and messages. Your friends and family will remember you for the kind words of appreciation.

Walt Disney
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

Booker T. Washington
Any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

Sam Walton
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.

Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

John F. Kennedy
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

Oprah Winfrey
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

Albert Schweitzer
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Dalai Lama
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Leo Buscaglia
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Michael Jordan
When I was playing before I retired, I never really understood the appreciation and the respect that people gave me. People had treated me like a god or something, and that was very embarrassing.

Henry Clay
Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the gratefully and appreciating heart.

Mark Twain
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

Friedrich Nietzsche
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Mae West
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!

Steve Maraboli
Forget yesterday -- it has already forgotten you. Don't sweat tomorrow -- you haven't even met. Instead, open your eyes and your heart to a truly precious gift -- today.

William Arthur
Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I may not forget you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

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How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat.  But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. 

Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.  4.2 million views on youtube and counting...

Let me know what you think below!

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How to motivate yourself - Self motivation | Eric Falconer

Staying motivated is a struggle — our drive is constantly assaulted by negative thoughts and anxiety about the future. Everyone faces doubt and depression. What separates the highly successful is the ability to keep moving forward.

There is no simple solution for a lack of motivation. Even after beating it, the problem reappears at the first sign of failure. The key is understanding your thoughts and how they drive your emotions. By learning how to nurture motivating thoughts, neutralize negative ones, and focus on the task at hand, you can pull yourself out of a slump before it gains momentum.

Reasons We Lose Motivation

There are 3 primary reasons we lose motivation.

1. Lack of confidence – If you don’t believe you can succeed, what’s the point in trying?
2. Lack of focus – If you don’t know what you want, do you really want anything?
3. Lack of direction – If you don’t know what to do, how can you be motivated to do it?

How to Boost Confidence

The first motivation killer is a lack of confidence. When this happens to me, it’s usually because I’m focusing entirely on what I want and neglecting what I already have. When you only think about what you want, your mind creates explanations for why you aren’t getting it. This creates negative thoughts. Past failures, bad breaks, and personal weaknesses dominate your mind. You become jealous of your competitors and start making excuses for why you can’t succeed. In this state, you tend to make a bad impression, assume the worst about others, and lose self confidence.

The way to get out of this thought pattern is to focus on gratitude. Set aside time to focus on everything positive in your life. Make a mental list of your strengths, past successes, and current advantages. We tend to take our strengths for granted and dwell on our failures. By making an effort to feel grateful, you’ll realize how competent and successful you already are. This will rejuvenate your confidence and get you motivated to build on your current success.

It might sound strange that repeating things you already know can improve your mindset, but it’s amazingly effective. The mind distorts reality to confirm what it wants to believe. The more negatively you think, the more examples your mind will discover to confirm that belief. When you truly believe that you deserve success, your mind will generate ways to achieve it. The best way to bring success to yourself is to genuinely desire to create value for the rest of the world.

Developing Tangible Focus

The second motivation killer is a lack of focus. How often do you focus on what you don’t want, rather than on a concrete goal? We normally think in terms of fear. I’m afraid of being poor. I’m afraid no one will respect me. I’m afraid of being alone. The problem with this type of thinking is that fear alone isn’t actionable. Instead of doing something about our fear, it feeds on itself and drains our motivation.

If you’re caught up in fear based thinking, the first step is focusing that energy on a well defined goal. By defining a goal, you automatically define a set of actions. If you have a fear of poverty, create a plan to increase your income. It could be going back to school, obtaining a higher paying job, or developing a profitable website. The key is moving from an intangible desire to concrete, measurable steps.

By focusing your mind on a positive goal instead of an ambiguous fear, you put your brain to work. It instantly begins devising a plan for success. Instead of worrying about the future you start to do something about it. This is the first step in motivating yourself to take action. When know what you want, you become motivated to take action.

Developing Direction

The final piece in the motivational puzzle is direction. If focus means having an ultimate goal, direction is having a day-to-day strategy to achieve it. A lack of direction kills motivation because without an obvious next action we succumb to procrastination. An example of this is a person who wants to have a popular blog, but who spends more time reading posts about blogging than actually writing articles.

The key to finding direction is identifying the activities that lead to success. For every goal, there are activities that pay off and those that don’t. Make a list of all your activities and arrange them based on results. Then make a make an action plan that focuses on the activities that lead to big returns. To continue the example from above, a blogger’s list would look something like this:

1. Write content
2. Research relevant topics
3. Network with other bloggers
4. Optimize design and ad placements
5. Answer comments and email
6. Read other blogs

Keeping track of your most important tasks will direct your energy towards success. Without a constant reminder, it’s easy to waste entire days on filler activities like reading RSS feeds, email, and random web surfing.

When my motivation starts to wane, I regain direction by creating a plan that contains two positive actions. The first one should be a small task you’ve been meaning to do, while the second should be a long-term goal. I immediately do the smaller task. This creates positive momentum. After that I take the first step towards achieving the long-term goal. Doing this periodically is great for getting out of a slump, creating positive reinforcement, and getting long-term plans moving.

It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter periods of low energy, bad luck, and even the occasional failure. If you don’t discipline your mind, these minor speed bumps can turn into mental monsters. By being on guard against the top 3 motivation killers you can preserve your motivation and propel yourself to success. 

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The 30 day better feeling thought process | Abraham, Esther & Jerry Hicks

Excerpted from the DVD "Abraham's Processes of Creation" from Abraham-Hicks, which features six of Abraham's most powerful techniques to assist in "getting into The Vortex" and thus in achieving alignment with all that is wanted. This particular segment was recorded at an Abraham-Hicks Vortex of Attraction workshop in Phoenix, Arizona on 3/1/08.

Quick fixes don't work in personal development | Z Hereford

Most of us don't want to hear this, but; there are no quick fixes or short cuts to personal development (or to anything else worthwhile, for that matter). 

The road to bettering ourselves is a long continous one that requires time, commitment and self-discipline.

Of course, it's human nature to look for the quickest, easiest way to get what we want. We tend to look for the one size fits all solution to our problems. We want to find the book, the DVD, or program that will fix us and make everything all right - overnight - and we want it pronto!

Well here's the reality - apart from being improbable and unrealistic, most things just don't work that way. One of the reasons they don't, is that quick fixes are neither lasting, nor sustainable. A quick fix for any problem is only meant to hold things together until an effective long-term solution is found. It's merely the proverbial band aid.

Making positive lasting change in your life takes time and this is why:

• A new habit takes at least 21 days of consistent effort to set in - When we try to change a behavior/habit or implement a new one, it takes at least 21 days of consistent repetative behavior for it to set in. If it happens to be an addiction, it could take as long as 35 days, or more. No quick fix is designed to change habits.


• Habituation and homeostasis factors - Habituation refers to the things we do daily without having to think about doing them. Another way to put it is 'getting used to things'. Homeostasis, a term used mostly in the context of biology, is a regulatory function that keeps an organism stable. An example would be when temperatures outdoors fall or raise significantly, our body temperature remains stable. Psychological homeostasis works similarly in that it keeps you fixed in the same habits or mindsets whether they are working for you or not. That is why it's so hard to change a habit. Habituation and homeostasis, while they are necessary mechanisms so that you don't have to rethink how to do everything every single time you go to do it, they make it very difficult for quick fixes or behavior changes to take hold permanently.


• Certain endeavors rely on ongoing repetitious strategies in order to take effect - If you want to lose weight permanently, or if you intend on having successful relationships, plan to work on it for the long haul. For instance, if you want to lose 20 pounds of weight, you cannot do it by eating little and well for only one day. Instead, you would have to implement a plan whereby you consume and expend a set amount of calories consistently over a given period of time. Then the weight would come off slowly and steadily.
  Likewise, to maintain a good relationship, you couldn't be pleasant and agreeable with someone for one or two days and then expect to have an understanding or connection. It would take days, months, sometimes even years to build a trusting, mutually fulfilling relationship. It cannot happen overnight.
  Only by working on goals slowly and steadily can you achieve lasting and rewarding results. By contrast crash dieting, blitzing, cramming, or bombarding (quick fixes) will derail your efforts. 
• It takes hard work and commitment - How many times have we started a new project, exercise routine, or diet plan bursting with energy and enthusiasm only to see wane and wither away? Too many, I’m sorry to say. The truth is, it isn’t easy to stay focused and committed, which is why, once again, we look for the quick fix instead of buckling down and getting on with it. If we recognize that it will take time, hard work and continued dedication to develop and improve ourselves, we would save a lot of time and heartache.

Examples where quick fixes have backfired:

Who doesn't want to be rich?

In 1993 Suzanne Mullins won $4.2 million in the Virginia lottery. She subsequently became deeply in debt to a company that lent her money using the winnings as collateral. What she came to realize is that in our culture we tend to believe that money solves all problems and if people had more of it their troubles would be over. Unfortunately, when money is acquired quickly and suddenly it can cause more problems than it solves.

Evelyn Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice (1985, 1986) amounting to approximately $5.4 million. Today the money is gone and Adams lives in a trailer.

William Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 but now lives on his Social Security check. "I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare," says Post. 

Susan Bradley, a financial planner who wrote Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall, says "People think windfalls are about money. But it's really all about change and transition ... and people need time to adjust." (i.e. quick fixes do not last, nor do they actually fix anything).

What happens when we crash diet to lose weight quickly?

Although much has been written lately about how losing weight quickly is unhealthy and unproductive many still attempt it. Losing weight too quickly, like any sudden change to your body, is dangerous. We know that fad diets, diet pills, and fasting indeed induce rapid weight loss, however they also cause you to lose muscle mass and may injure the heart and other vital organs in the process. The answer? Instead of aiming for an overnight miracle (quick fix), opt for a sensible nutritious eating plan as well as a realistic exercise regimen.

The bottom line is that personal development, or self-improvement, is hard work! It takes time, consistent effort, focus, discipline and patience. Remember the work you do daily, monthly and yearly culminates in a rewarding, successful outcome.

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What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | Ro...

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. 

As the director of 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. 

In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.

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Driving yourself to perform: If not you, then who? | Eugene Whelan

We all want to do better. Better at work, better in life, better at everything. But how do we achieve this and do we really know what better is?

Performance at work has always been a hot topic. At worst, performance (or the lack of it) can put a company under, at best it can make it positively flourish.

It's the reason we have performance reviews, targets and KPIs – so that our boss and the management of the company can tell how we, and they, are doing by performance results.

But performance isn’t just about facts, figures and targets. It’s not just about meeting expectations to a satisfactory level within the work place.

In terms of ourselves, performance, and our understanding of it, is the key to personal and professional development and the business success.

Or to use a driving analogy: if you can't see where you are on the map, how can you work out your route, or know when you have arrived.

So it's down to you to manage your own performance at work if you want to get the results and recognition you want and get to where you really want to be.

 North, South, East or West?
Back to our map analogy. Do you know where you are in terms of performance at work?

Have you looked at your performance, analysed your strengths and weaknesses and more importantly accepted them?

Have you ever conducted your own performance review? If not, then you need to, now.
Choose a time-frame – say the last year. Brainstorm a list of your achievements (don’t be shy), your failures (do be honest!), your challenges and issues, obstacles you feel you overcame, situations you think may have got the better of you and anything else you think may affect or contribute to your performance at work. These can include factors outside of work as well.

Group the different elements together and you will have a good idea of where you are on the map performance-wise. Then you need to decide what you need to change so you can improve your performance.

 Analysis and Investment

Change is usually a good thing, but invariably very hard to do, especially when it needs to be self-motivated.

However, now you have reviewed your current position, you will have a very good indication of where you may be falling short, not only in terms of your mindset around your job and your company, but also in terms of where you may need additional learning and development to do your job better and improve your position.

Having a good awareness of the skills/abilities you lack to improve your performance and further your career is the starting point to doing something about that.

This is when communication with your superior is key. You will need to make an investment in yourself and ideally the source of the investment will come from your company. You just need to convince them why it will be commercially profitable for them to do so. Performance reviews are the perfect time to do this.

It's this simple:

1. Arrange a meeting with your supervisor to discuss your self-review and use it to point out your strengths but also the areas where you feel you are lacking. (Ask for their feedback on this.)
2. Highlight the type of training or investment you have identified you need to undertake, to improve upon those areas. (Do they agree with you?)
3. Discuss how afterwards, you would be more effective and productive in areas, and how this would impact on your contribution to the company as whole. (What's their opinion?)

Well it’s not really that simple but you have to be the “driver” in this situation, your boss won’t just stop and hand it to you.

 So. Get your Performance Sat-Nav in Gear

If you want to get better at what you do, if you want to succeed and if you want to further your career then you need to take control.

These days, the burden of self-improvement is squarely on the shoulders of employees not the managers. The thinking being that if you want to “get ahead” then you need to do something about it. And the more pro-active you are the more favourably it will be looked upon.

That means you need to know where you are headed and how you are going to get there.

Based on your own performance review and your assessment of the investment you need to improve your skill and performance levels, you need to create a road-map of actions that will help you make it happen.

Again take the time-frame of a year (or three if that’s more reasonable) and decide where you want to be at the end of that time. Then work backwards as to what you need to do to achieve that goal.

Could it be finding and paying for your own training if it is a crucial area that just can’t wait? Is it a daily strategy or ethos that will lift your performance levels and your mindset? Perhaps you need to change the way you do or approach certain tasks or projects?

Whatever it is, it’s up to you to decide. And at the crux of all of this is honesty.

You need to be truly honest with yourself about what you need to improve upon, so that you can actually make those improvements happen.

If you can’t then you will be looking at a map with no roads and you’ll be going nowhere.

So ask yourself this question: What have you done to improve your skills, abilities, and your performance in the last six months?
Author's Bio:


Eugene Whelan is a qualified business and life coach and is the owner of One To Ten Coaching.

He has over 25 years experience at senior management level in the manufacturing and distribution industries.

Eugene has worked in various senior roles including, sales, manufacturing and commercial.

During this time he has gained an invaluable insight into the day-to-day pressures that go with such leadership roles and the expectations to be met.

Eugene is a direct and enlightened business consultant, able to see the practical side of people and situations as well as the more intangible qualities and potential of both.

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