It’s official: Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln get credit for more quotes they didn’t actually originate than any other historical figures.
I saw a funny one online the other day:
“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” — Abraham Lincoln
In Business:
Want to be happy in business? Choose your customers. Don’t let your customers choose you.
You decide the type and caliber of customer you want to attract, then tailor your offerings and your marketing to not only attract your ideal customers, but also repel the undesirable ones.
If you ever watched The Sopranos, I’m sure you remember Artie Bucco, who owned the Italian restaurant, Vesuvio.
In one episode, Artie is having trouble keeping the restaurant afloat, so he resorts to coupons.
There’s a great scene where they open the doors to the restaurant in slow motion, and all the retirees in jogging suits come flooding in, waving their coupons.
Before, it was a respectable restaurant that repelled the bottom-feeders. Now, he’ll take anybody. Any customer is a good customer, right? Wrong.
Tailor your business and your marketing to do double duty — attract the good, repel the bad — and you’ll be a happy business owner.
In Life:
For most people, happiness is like the horizon. No matter how far you’ve come, it’s always out there in the distance.
You reveal your happiness horizon whenever you start a sentence with, “I’ll be happy when…”
Now you’ve successfully attached your happiness to some future event and, as an added bonus, you have a built-in excuse for not being happy right now.
Then, what happens when your happy event actually does occur? You move that goalpost to another event in the future and the cycle starts all over again.
Gratitude is the key to all happiness. It’s only natural to want and plan and strive for better things in the future, but be grateful for what you have now, as well.
Make up your mind, and choose to be happy today.
So remember…
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
— Abraham Lincoln