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Steven B. Wiley, The Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg

COLUMN = LEADERSHIP

Steve Wiley is the founder and president of The Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg. He is also an entrepreneur, author, and highly acclaimed speaker who has influenced and entertained tens of thousands of top executives from around the world. Without exception, he receives the highest ratings possible from his audiences.

His business experience includes the founding of three companies: two international franchise organizations and a national chain of fleet-management centers. He has successfully negotiated multimillion dollar funding agreements for his own companies with some of the top venture-capital organizations in the world. His strong leadership ability has earned him recognition in top publications, including Venture magazine, USA Today, and Entrepreneur magazine.

Steve’s speaking experience includes three years as national spokesperson for the Quaker Oats/Pritikin Longevity Centers, for whom he has been featured in television commercials and advertisements in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Over the past 10 years he has conducted thousands of seminars on negotiation, sales leadership, and wellness for numerous public- and private-sector organizations.

Currently, he is president of The Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg and the founder of the Institute’s Communicating with Executive Presence program as well as its Transformational Journey from Gettysburg leadership development experience.

For more information, visit www.lincolnleadershipinstitute.com.

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”

– Jim Butcher, White Night

We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

– Douglas Coupland

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

– Mary Oliver

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff

Speaking more than one language is no longer just an asset in today’s job market; it is a requirement.”

– Tom Adams, CEO, Rosetta Stone

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

– Robert H. Schuller

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. 
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.”

– Mary Jean Irion

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.”

– Noela Evans

Confidence is the most important thing you can teach someone… if you can teach them confidence, you don’t have to teach them anything else.”

– Vin Diesel

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
 A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

– Erica Jong

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

– Goldie Hawn

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

Almost anyone can start a community, but it takes real talent and commitment to get people to show up and keep coming back.”

– Andy Sernovitz

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom