Henry Cloud quotes: life lessons from the spiritual author.
“You can’t prune toward anything if you don’t know what you want. You have to figure out what you are trying to be or build and then define what the pruning standards are going to be. That definition and those standards will bring you to the pruning moments, wherein you either own the vision or you don’t.”
“Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.”
“Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”
“Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better.”
“We all make mistakes, but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.”
“Diligence is not easy, but we can’t reach our goals without it.”
“Don’t use all-or-nothing thinking. Take each day as its own day, and don’t worry about it if you mess up one day. The most important thing you can do is just get back up on the horse.”
“Successful people stick to what they are good at and find ways to make that larger.”
“One of the most important types of decision making is deciding what you are not going to do, what you need to eliminate in order to make room for strategic investments.”
“You will not grow without attempting to do things you are unable to do.”
“We know from research that growth is actually contagious, so if you want to reach your goals, you’ve got to get around people that are going in the same direction you want to be going, and you will catch the success.”
“Wisdom comes from experience, either the experience of others or of oneself. And to let experience do its work, a person has to be open to receiving the lessons that it has to teach.”
“Good pain is pain in the service of a purpose. Bad pain is pain endured because we are resisting a needed growth step.”
“Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it’s not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control.”
“Even with the desire for a better life, we can be reluctant to do the work of boundaries because it will be a war. The battle falls into two categories: outside resistance we get from others and the resistance we get from ourselves.”
“Change is frightening. It may comfort you to know, that if you are afraid, you are possibly on the right road—the road to change and growth.”
“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.”
“To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.”
“Every human being must have boundaries in order to have successful relationships or a successful performance in life.”
“Boundaries are basically about providing structure, and structure is essential in building anything that thrives.”
“Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with. We must own our own thoughts and clarify distorted thinking.”
“One of the first signs that you’re beginning to develop boundaries is a sense of resentment, frustration, or anger at the subtle and not-so-subtle violations in your life. Just as radar signals the approach of a foreign missile, your anger can alert you to boundary violations in your life.”
“The twin sister to autonomy and freedom is responsibility and accountability. You cannot have one without the other. If someone is given an area of responsibility, not only must they be set free to do it, they must also be held accountable for what they do. Accountability clarifies freedom. In the teams and companies where you see boundary confusion, power struggles, control, over-reaching of one’s line of responsibility, you will also see lapses in accountability as well.”
“The people side of things should be an investment with a high rate of return, not a contestant drain on your personal and organizational resources.”
“The best way to advance in a career is to get great results while working with people.”
“A leader’s responsibility is to cause a vision and mission to have tangible results in the real world.”
“Leadership is not taken, it is given. People give leadership to those that they trust. They allow people that they trust to have influence over their lives.”
“What you create, what you allow, is what you get as a leader.”
“The personal and interpersonal sides of leadership are every bit as important as the great leadership themes as vision, execution and strategy.”
“If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.”
“Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results.”
“You have to be able to face losing some things you might want in order to be free to do the right thing.”
“In both our personal and professional lives, there are times when reality dictates that we must stand up and ‘end’ something. Either its time has passed, its season is over, or worse, continuing it would be destructive in some way.”
“Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief’s job and purpose—to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience.”
“A person who hasn’t grieved a significant loss has unfinished business inside and can cause others great grief as a result.”
“The mature person meets the demands of life, while the immature person demands that life meet her demands.”
“If you continue to blame other people for ‘making’ you feel guilty, they still have power over you, and you are saying that you will only feel good when they stop doing that. You are giving them control over your life. Stop blaming other people.”
“Just as we leave the effects of our work behind in results, we leave the effects of our interactions with people in their hearts, minds, and souls.”
“When a person travels through a few years with an organization, or with a partnership, or any other kind of working association, he leaves a ‘wake’ behind in these two areas, task and relationship: what did he accomplish and how did he deal with people?”
“That is why success and fruitfulness depend as much upon focusing on the ‘who’ you are as much as the ‘what’ of the work you do. Invest in your character, and it will give you the returns that you are looking for by only investing in the work itself. You can’t do the latter without the former.”
“Being right can never compete with doing well.”
“It is true that you get what you tolerate.”
“When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.”
“There is a big difference between hurt and harm. We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow. It can be the source of huge growth. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.”
“To grow, we need things that we do not have and cannot provide, and we need to have a source of those things who looks favorably upon us and who does things for us for our own good.”
“You aren’t alive if you aren’t in need.”
“If you want to become healthy, you have to surround yourself with a group of people that are getting healthy, and you have to be connected to a community that is doing what you want to do.”
“We need rest not just so we feel better. We need rest for actual creation of what we’re going to need the next day.”
“Values are sometimes worth living and dying for.”
“Who a person is will ultimately determine if their brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed.”
“One of the worst things you can die with is potential.”
“Whatever’s happening today, remember it is only one scene in a long movie. Don’t treat it like it’s the whole story. Keep writing the story.”
