26 Motivational Quotes to Get Your Day Started
How do you start your day? Maybe you need your morning yoga to clear your head, or you need your morning coffee to open your eyes. No matter what, you could probably also use a little motivation to prepare yourself for the daily grind.
It’s no secret that small business owners tend to be highly ambitious individuals. When you’re running a company, whether you’re in the founding stages or have been up and running for ages, you need all the energy and motivation you can get, because there’s a lot of hard work ahead of you.
While entrepreneurs may be made of tough stuff, they’re also human – everyone could use a little inspiration to get things moving. And in order to be successful, you’ll need more than just energy, you need creativity, tenacity, courage, and strong guiding principles too.
The world is full of inspiration that can help you tackle every aspect of your workday. We’ve gathered these twenty-six quotes from successful individuals who understood how to strike up motivation and tackle challenges head-on, and hopefully, they can help you, too.
Motivational Quotes to Get the Creative Juices Flowing
No matter what field you’re working in, creativity and innovation are always key to success. The ability to really think outside the box and come up with new ideas isn’t just the work of “starving artists;” it’s a big part of what makes a company stand out and get ahead of the competition.
While this can be intimidating, you just need to learn how to get into a creative, problem-solving headspace. Fortunately, creativity is a skill you can cultivate and build like any other.
Need a little help getting the creative juices flowing? These quotes can help you dare to be a little bit different and inspire you to try new things and nurture your independent spirit.
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Aristotle
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
“You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life. – Elizabeth Gilbert
“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. – Jack London
“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.” – John Updike
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes
Motivational Quotes to Inspire Productivity
Nothing gets done without hard work and determination, and you need to be productive as a business owner. Time is money, and you don’t want to waste either. Remember that as a business owner, you do want to work smarter instead of harder, but you need to work hard, too. Here are a few quotes that can help you strike up a productive mood.
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas A. Edison
“There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” -Thomas Jefferson
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” – Oscar Wilde
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Motivational Quotes to Inspire Courage & Confidence
Hard work and creativity are both important, but business owners also need confidence in their own skills and knowledge to be successful. They also need to be confident enough to have the courage to take risks. Going out on your own can be downright terrifying, and there will be a lot of decisions you need to make that require courage. These quotes can help.
“I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
“You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” – Christopher Reeve
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Motivational Quotes to Remind You That You’re One of a Kind
Why do you do what you do? Maybe it’s tied to your passions and interests, or maybe it’s your way of making the world a better place. Whatever your guiding principles are, they’re an important part of who you are as a person and what makes your business special. These quotes help you stay true to yourself, remember who you are, and bring your best self to your business every day.
“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” – Albert Einstein
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” – Maya Angelou
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
Sometimes, staying motivated is one of the hardest things we can do when the long hours cause burnout and we’re not seeing results quite as quickly as we’d like. Stick to the grind, and keep working; the potential payoff is incredible, and you’ll be glad you stuck it out.
