To grow and evolve is part of our nature…

• All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being… that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth. Abraham Maslow
• Every organism has one and only one central need in life, to fulfil its own potentialities. Rollo May
• Every living thing must continually seek for the enlargement of its life, because life, in the mere act of living, must increase itself. Wallace D. Wattles
• I want to grow. I want to be better. You Grow. We all grow. We’re made to grow. You either evolve or you disappear. Tupac Shakur
• Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. Doris Lessing
• Man is not born perfect. He is born as a process. He has to seek and search and explore. He has to become, because his being arises only through becoming. Becoming is his being. He can only be if he is on the move. Evolution is intrinsic to man’s nature, evolution is his very soul. And those who take themselves for granted remain unfulfilled. Those who think they are born complete remain unevolved. Then the seed remains the seed. It never becomes a tree and never knows the joys of spring and the sunshine and the rain, and the ecstasy of bursting into millions of flowers. That explosion is the fulfilment, that explosion is what existence is all about—exploding into millions of flowers. When the potential becomes the actual, only then is man fulfilled. Osho
• The human way of growing is unique; it has no rules, and can occur in many ways. Marsha Sinetar
• We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. Anaïs Nin
• Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of. Markus Zusak
• Growth is the only evidence of life. John Henry
• There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer
• Growth,  Evolution,  Evolution,  Improvement

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… for what we can be, we must be

• What a man can be, he must be. Abraham Maslow
• The human goal: to actualize oneself. Bruce Lee
• To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life. Robert Louis Stevenson
• When the potential becomes the actual, only then is man fulfilled. Osho
• To want to be what one can be is purpose in life. Cynthia Ozick
• A good life is one where you develop your strengths, realize your potential, and become what it is in your nature to become. Jonathan Haidt
• To fail to live up to this challenge, my spiritual teacher used to say, is simply being irresponsible. This is not asking for perfection but merely expecting us to do our best to grow. If we do not do this much, we are depriving life of a contribution that only we can make. Eknath Easwaran
• Let each become all that he was created capable of being. Thomas Carlyle
• Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfil his destiny. Paul Tillich
• Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self- actualization. It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfilment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything one is capable of becoming. Abraham Maslow
• You know deep inside you that you will never be fully satisfied until you have anchored yourself in your Zone of Genius. To do less would be to hold back, and long ago you made a handshake deal with the universe that you wouldn’t do that. The seductive comforts of success, though, can lull us into accepting the status quo. In that state of comfort, it’s easy to forget the deal you made with the universe to use yourself fully. Gay Hendricks
• How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become – to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being. Antoine de Saint- Exupery
• We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are. Oprah Winfrey
• The real point of being alive is to evolve into the whole person you were intended to be. Oprah Winfrey
• Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. Erich Fromm
• Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• You may be better than the rest, but you are not a success until you have made the effort to become the best you can be. John Wooden
• My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be. Rajneesh
• You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more. Oprah Winfrey
• I am not myself; I am the potential of myself. Anna Deavere Smith
• It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. C. S. Lewis
• Make the most of yourself, because that’s all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves. Mahatma Gandhi
• Arise, transcend Thyself, Thou art man and the whole nature of man Is to become more than himself. Sri Aurobindo
• What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less, but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up.  Oprah Winfrey
• Potential

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Grow to experience greater happiness and joy, not to become perfect

• I grow to experience greater happiness, not to improve or because I feel incomplete. Wayne Dyer
• Self-development is a glorious quest. It’s the desire to find your own freedom. To connect with your own sense of worth, and integrity, and happiness. To enjoy abundance. Karl Moore
• Joy comes from using your potential. Will Schultz
• Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self- satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. John Wooden
• Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. Pearl S. Buck
• Happiness, to me, lies in stretching, to the farthest boundaries of which we are capable, the resources of the mind and heart. Leo Calvin Rosten
• Happiness doesn’t come from living a lukewarm life, always wondering what could have been. Happiness comes as a result of being in our natural state of growth and living up to our fullest potential. T. Harv Eker
• Happiness and self-confidence come naturally when you feel yourself moving and progressing toward becoming the very best person you can possibly be. Brian Tracy
• Our goal is to enjoy, not to achieve perfection. Susan Jeffers
• Joy comes from using your potential. Will Schultz
• Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It’s growth– mental, financial, you name it. Harold S. Geneen
• Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing. William Butler Yeats
• The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit. Jim Rohn
• Self-improvement is a grand outcome, yet it will serve you to participate with the intention to move from good to great, not unworthy to worthy. You are already worthy.  Begin there.  Michael Nitti
• Happiness, Joy,  Perfectionism

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Your growth is a gift to God and the world

• You can render to God and humanity no greater service than to make the most of yourself. Wallace D. Wattles
• The only service you can render to God is to give expression to what he is trying to give the world, through you. The only service you can render God is to make the very most of yourself in order that God may live in you to the utmost of your possibilities. Wallace D. Wattles
• With the realization of one’s own potential and self confidence in one’s own ability, one can build a better world. The Dalai Lama
• The greatest crime is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world. Roger Williams
• What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There’s nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. Joseph Campbell
• Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. Leo Bascaglia
• What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. Hans Urs von Balthasar
• In nature we see where God has been. In our fellow man, we see where He is still at work.  Robert Brault
• God

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Here are yet more reasons to grow

• If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill – take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edges of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. Tom Robbins
• There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged, to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. Nelson Mandela
• No matter how good you get you can always get better, and that’s the exciting part. Tiger Woods
• In the end, it is the person you become, not the things you have achieved, that is the most important. Les Brown
• The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place. Barbara DeAngelis
• A feeling of continuous growth is a wonderful source of motivation and self-confidence. Brian Tracy
• Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth; nothing is wasted on one who is always preparing for his work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, men, books, experience. Such a man finds ministries to his education on all sides; everything cooperates with his passion for growth. Hamilton Mabie
• Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. Ann Morrow Lindbergh
• People don’t grow old. When they stop growing, they become old.
• When you see the value of continued growth, the circumstances around you become stepping stones. Clyde M. Narrimore
• The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life – mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. Julius Erving
• Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be. Heath L. Buckmaster
• There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self- control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• The whole nature of the game is to see how far we can go–and to express our potential so we create the lives of our dreams. And elevate the world in the process. Robin Sharma
• Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.  Charles Schulz
• If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.  Henry Ford
• To freely bloom – that is my definition of success. Gerry Spence

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If we don’t grow, we pay a price

• Every moment of one’s existence, one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. Norman Mailer
• Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead. Morihei Ueshiba
• If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Gail Sheehy
• If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life. Abraham Maslow
• To accept life anywhere below our fullest potential is to be living in the gap, blindly accepting ‘what is’ without ever deeply considering ‘what could be.’ Shawn Phillips
• Comfort kills! If your goal in life is to be comfortable, I guarantee two things. First, you will never be rich. Second, you will never be happy. Happiness doesn’t come from living a lukewarm life, always wondering what could have been. Happiness comes as a result of being in our natural state of growth and living up to our fullest potential. T. Harv Eker
• If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security: we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us. Nena O’Neil
• If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. Lucas Remmerswaal
• If we are the same as we were last year, we are worse, for the spiritual life was meant to grow. Thomas G. Morrow
• We were meant to grow. When we don’t grow, we seek diversions- – some harmless (if unproductive), others destructive–     to fill the emptiness.  Jim Clemmer
• Pain is the result of potential denied. Robin Sharma
• My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be.  Rajneesh
• To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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