Marielle Covington

People first, culture second, strategy third…100 percent of the time.

Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.

We are the first generation bombarded with so many stories from so many authorities, none of which are our own. The parable of the postmodern mind is the person surrounded by a media center: three television screens in front of them giving three sets of stories; fax machines bringing in other stories; newspapers providing still more stories. In a sense, we are saturated with stories; we’re saturated with points of view. But the effect of being bombarded with all of these points of view is that we don’t have a point of view and we don’t have a story. We lose the continuity of our experiences; we become people who are written on from the outside.

A former president of Harvard once observed that “universities share one characteristic with compulsive gamblers and exiled royalty: there is never enough money to satisfy their desires.

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.

So I’m going out there. And I’m going to do the best I can. People are going to get in my way. Things are going to bring me down. But I’m going to keep going. I’m going to reach as far as I can, for every thing I’ve ever wanted. And I’m not giving up. Because that’s what you do when your dreams are more important than your fears. You go out there and ignore the odds. You focus on one thing- that your dreams come true.

At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and what you want.