Nobody ever said the unconventional life was going to be an easy one—running a business from abroad, seeking new clients (and paying rent) in a recession, and trying to get top-of-the-line infrastructure set up in a developing country are difficult tasks that have me feeling like I’m fighting an uphill battle. Most likely, you other entrepreneurs and nomadic souls understand the struggles involved with living life on your own terms too.

Because I’ve been focused on getting my business on track, I’ve been a poor steward and haven’t added any value for you here in a while. I needed some motivation, so I’ve collected some of my favorite quotes here to check back and get my ass in gear when rough times have me frustrated or down. Hopefully you’ll find these inspiring and useful as well:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

—Mark Twain

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”

—Stephen Covey

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

—Zig Ziglar

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

—Seneca

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

—Napoleon Hill

“Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic.”

—Tim Ferriss

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

—Henry Ford

“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.”

—Tony Robbins

“Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.”

—Napoleon Hill

“A good plan vigorously executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

—George S. Patton

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

—Lao Tzu

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

—Mark Victor Hansen

“Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are ‘just right’ before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait.”

—The William Feather Magazine (thanks to Steve Pavlina for this gem)

“First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.”

—Dale Carnegie

“It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better, the credit belongs to the man of the arena who’s face is marred by dust, sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who knows the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid soles who have never known neither victory nor defeat”

—Theodore Roosevelt (props to Andrew at Personal Hack for finding this one)

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

—Winston Churchill

“Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”

—Tim Ferriss (Don’t be one of those people!)

“Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.”

—Wayne Dyer

“Reality is negotiable.”

—Tim Ferriss

“All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!”

—Napoleon Hill

“Today, I have the opportunity to change everything. My whole life hinges on today’s actions. If I do not act today, if I do not grab control of my fate today, my life will take a completely different trajectory. One path leads to greatness, and the other path leads to a life where I will look back on today as the day where I could have spoken up, today as the day where I could have reached out. I will look back realizing that today was the one chance I had to change everything. I will not let this moment pass me by. I will act decisively, today.”

—Sid Savara

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

—Ayn Rand

What are your favorite quotes? What inspires you when you’re busy, frustrated, or need a boost in motivation?

Feature photo by Diego Cupolo

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 22 Inspirational Quotes for Living the Rockstar Life

Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we will be…. What we believe to be true, what we believe is possible, becomes what’s true, becomes what’s possible…. Many people are passionate, but because of their limiting beliefs about who they are and what they can do, they never take the actions that could make their dream a reality. People who succeed know what they want and believe that they can get it.

—Tony Robbins in Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Your Beliefs Shape Your Personal Power

“If you have a really great business that makes money hand over fist, you could probably have lousy values. You know, somebody who just fell into the right place at the right time. But it really helps to have values. Like Google, today’s darlings. They didn’t have a clue how they were gonna make money for quite a long time. But what they had was a powerful set of values that made them able to attract believers in the form of venture capitalists, believers in the form of brilliant early employees.”

—Tim O’Reilly, multimillionaire founder of O’Reilly Media, in a July interview with Success Magazine

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: You Gotta Have Values

You need people that understand the power of different perspectives across cultures and domains. …I often say that the single most important leadership skill for the next couple of decades, at least for those that wish to advance new ideas, will be how to recruit, manage and leverage diversity.

—Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation [via Rebecca Thorman]

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Leveraging Diversity in a Global Economy

Now along come the 76 million members of Generation Y. For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn’t really exist. They just want to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter where they are.

—Penelope Trunk, in an article for TIME Magazine, “What Gen Y Really Wants”

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: What Generation Y Wants at Work