One of the most powerful lessons in life is to recognize that no one can give you power, and many people don’t want you to have it. You have to find the courage to seize it, own it and hold on!

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.

Today I will work when others procrastinate, I will confront my fears when others hide from theirs, and I will create solutions when others find excuses; today I refuse to allow my enemies to out work me.

He was working that charm right now on the trainer who kneeled before him and touched his thigh as though it were the thigh of David, Michelangelo’s glorious statue come to life right here on court.

The valid point or a valuable contribution of a deserving person has not been truly appreciated if he is respected equally with those people who only desire but don’t actually deserve to be applauded.

If you learn to develop an abundant mentality you will not be envious of others, you will celebrate their successes, you share in their joys and pains; don't see life as a competition but a complimentary.

I won't compete with anybody. I love to compete with my own body. When God closes a door against me, I should not attempt to bang on it. And if God gives me a key to open a door, I should not misuse that key!

Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.

My entire life, I’ve never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp.

Winning the lottery is all skill, and that’s why I don’t play—because it would be unfair to all the other competitors. I’m like that as a lover too, always thinking about the other competitors.

I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition.

We all judge. But when I realize that judgmental thoughts and actions are merely my primitive nature trying to "protect" me from being one-upped or making sure I am not one-upped, it makes it easier to laugh at my silliness. �

Personally I think that competition should be encouraged in war and sport and business, but that it makes no sense in the arts. If an artist is good, nobody else can do what he or she does and therefore all comparisons are incoherent.

Confident people do not compete with others nor race for recognition to appraise themselves. They do not worry what others think of them. They do not struggle for affirmation. They know themselves well to be shaken up from the outside.

Putting down the power right from the whistle would be ugly and brutal, but it would get the job done. He wanted to tell her that, but this was the thing with coaching: you had to step back at exactly the moment you ached to step forward.