Take Little Steps, Make Huge Strides

Photo by Dominika Roseclay on pexels.com

“Success is not a doorway, it’s a staircase.”

DOTTIE WALTERS

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

HELEN KELLER

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make, which over time add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN

“Don’t wait for your ship to come in and feel angry and cheated when it doesn’t. Get going with something small.”

IRENE KASSORLA

“How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

ANNE FRANK

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”

MOTHER TERESA

“I’m always moving forward.” DEBBIE ALLEN

“I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.”

OPRAH WINFREY

“Strive for excellence, each and every day.” MARION CONDIT

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Sweet Successes

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on pexels.com

“Fearless women go to the top.” BEYONCÉ KNOWLES-CARTER

“For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.”

ELIZABETH BLACKWELL

“Not only have women been successful in entering fields in which men are supposed to have a more natural aptitude, but they have created entirely new businesses.”

LUCRETIA P. HUNTER

“Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.”

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN

“The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you.”

BETTE MIDLER

“The women of today are the thoughts of their mothers and grandmothers, embodied and made alive. They are active, capable, determined, and bound to win…millions of women dead and gone are speaking through us today.”

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE

“Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.”

SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER

“I don’t think any change in the world has been more significant than the change in the status of women…. A woman’s world was her home, her family, and perhaps a little community service. Today, a woman’s world is as broad as the universe.”

BELLE S. SPAFFORD

“If I had learned to type, I never would have made brigadier general.”

ELIZABETH P. HOISINGTOM

“Don’t confuse “things” with success—you are neither better nor worse for where you live, what you drive, or the size of your bank account. Remember what really matters in your life—and it is not “stuff.””

MARY JANE RYAN

“Getting to the top isn’t bad, and it’s probably best done as an afterthought.”

ANNE WILSON SCHAEF

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Believe in Yourself

Photo by Vinicius Wiesehofer on pexels.com

“To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.”

LILLIAN SMITH

“Only with a steady heart can true excellence be reached.”

MOIRA LANDON

“I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.”

GOLDA MEIR

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow talent to the dark place where it leads.”

ERICA JONG

“It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito is swatted.”

MARIE O’CONNER

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

MURIEL STRODE

“One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.” RITA MAE BROWN

“A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?”

JANE WAGNER

“Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models.”

ELIZABETH DOLE

“Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

AMELIA EARHART

“The most alluring thing a woman can have is confidence.”

BEYONCÉ KNOWLES-CARTER

“Inaction, contrary to its reputation as being a refuge, is neither safe nor comfortable.”

MADELINE KUHN

“Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.”

SOPHIA LOREN

“It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.”

URSULA K. LE GUIN

“I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.”

EMILY BRONTË

“Believe in yourself: across all ages, studies have shown that a solid belief in one’s own abilities increases life satisfaction by over 40 [percent] and makes us happier both in our work and home lives.”

MEG DESMOND

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

For the Love of It

Photo by Dominika Roseclay on pexels.com

“Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.”

COLLEEN C. BARRETT

“Career is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I have always felt privileged to be paid for what I love doing.”

BARBARA STANWYCK

“You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it.”

OPRAH WINFREY

“All the things I love is what my business is about.” MARTHA STEWART

“To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?”

KATHERINE GRAHAM

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Apply Some Elbow Grease

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on pexels.com

“The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.” FLORYNCE KENNEDY

“When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.”

COLLEEN C. BARRETT

“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.”

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

“Don’t feel entitled to anything you didn’t sweat and struggle for.”

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN

“Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.” ANN LANDERS

“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work—and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.”

LUCILLE BALL

“The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.”

SARAH BROWN

“The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.”

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

“Whatever muscles I have are the product of my own hard work and nothing else.”

EVELYN ASHFORD

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

MADELEINE L’ENGLE

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”

RITA MAE BROWN

“I didn’t have to work until I was three. But after that, I never stopped.”

MARTHA RAYE

“About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.”

GLORIA PITZER

“Nothing will work unless you do.” MAYA ANGELOU

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Work As if It’s Fulfilling

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on pexels.com

“Work itself is the reward. If I choose challenging work, it will pay me back with interest…. This attempt for excellence is what sustains the most well-lived and satisfying, successful lives.”

MERYL STREEP

“People think at the end of the day that a man is the only answer [to fulfillment]. Actually, a job is better for me.”

DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

“Nothing gratifies one more than to be admired for doing what one likes.”

DOROTHY L. SAYERS

“I’ve never been a fan of work as it’s usually defined by other people. But when I learned how to define it for myself, I realized that it actually can be as fulfilling as I’d always hoped.”

BELINDA CASSIDY

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end of it. it’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”

MARGARET THATCHER

“Work won’t always make your heart sing. But when it does, it’s one of the best feelings there is.”

AMY PORTER

“To follow without halt, one aim; there is the secret of success. And success? What is it? I do not find it in the applause of the theater; it lies rather in the satisfaction of accomplishment.”

ANNA PAVLOVA

“Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.”

ANNE FRANK

“I look back on my life like a good day’s work; it was done and I am satisfied with it.”

GRANDMA MOSES

“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

JULIA CAMERON

“You are not in business to be popular.” KIRSTIE ALLEY

“The most popular labor-saving device is still money.” PHYLLIS GEORGE

“Work is the world’s easiest escape from boredom and the only surefire road to success.”

MARABEL MORGAN

“The ability to control one’s own destiny…comes from constant hard work and courage.”

MAYA ANGELOU

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

BETTE DAVIS

“Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labor is done.”

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

“Women hold up half the sky.” CHINESE PROVERB

“Instead of thinking about where you are, think about where you want to be. It takes twenty years of hard work to become an overnight success.”

DIANA RANKIN

“What I know is, is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

OPRAH WINFREY

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

The Ingredients of a Wonderful Life

Photo by Inga Seliverstova on pexels.com

“The kind of beauty I want most is the hard- to-get kind that comes from within: strength, courage, dignity.”

RUBY DEE

“Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be.” MARY MAPES DODGE

“Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to good will and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.”

ELSA SCHIAPARELLI

“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

“The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.”

JULIA ALVAREZ

“The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.”

JOSEPHINE BAKER

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

URSULA K. LE GUIN

“I’m not happy, I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. a cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.”

BEVERLY SILLS

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” MURIEL RUKEYSER

“No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”

HELEN KELLER

“Desire, ask, believe, receive.” STELLA TERRILL MANN

“Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen.” MARGE PIERCY

“Choice is all we have. Choice is all we need.” KAREN CASEY

“Learn to trust your own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort good from bad—including your own bad.”

DORIS LESSING

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

ELLEN PARR

“Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.”

MARTHA STEWART

“Grace, growth, and gratitude: these are my highest aspirations.”

GLORIA ARLISS

“Yes” is contagious on a subliminal level. It affects everything you do.”

SARK

“Happily, love is a pleasant emotion and thrives as well in stables as in palaces.”

DIANE ACKERMAN

“Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.”

ALICE WALKER

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Don’t Wait

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on pexels.com

“Life is uncertain. Eat desserts first.”

MARGIE LAPANJA

“Our best gifts to ourselves may be few, but that doesn’t mean they have to be far between.”

DELILAH CARR

“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”

ERMA BOMBECK

“You have to treat yourself every once in a while, get to the fun stuff!”

HEIDI KLUM

“The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.” GERMAINE GREER

“While many fantasies are best left to the realm of the imagination, some must be fulfilled if we are to be healthy, growing individuals.”

AMANDA BENNET

“It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.”

MARGARET THATCHER

“Never let your senses become dulled to your life. They are your only links to the world around you.”

JUSTINE THOREAU

“This very moment is a seed from which the flowers of tomorrow’s happiness grow.”

MARGARET LINDSEY

“I believe in dreams, not just the kind we have at night. I think that if we hang on to them, they come true.”

DANIELLE STEEL

“Life is to be lived.” KATHARINE HEPBURN

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Giving

Photo by Secret Garden on pexels.com

“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.”

BARBARA DE ANGELIS

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their own sake rather than our own.”

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

“I don’t get women who pick fights with their friends. It’s not like you get to kiss and make up afterwards. Play those games with your lover if you have to, but don’t toy with a good friendship.”

MARCIA BOND

“We all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us.”

REV. MARGARET GUENTHER

“The finest kind of friendship is between two people who expect a great deal of each other, but never ask it.”

SYLVIA BREMER

“Constant use will not wear ragged the fabric of friendship.”

DOROTHY PARKER

“The best time to make friends is before you need them.”

ETHEL BARRYMORE

“It’s important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not.”

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

“Send a thank you note to a good friend, a relative, or coworker “just because” and let them know what you appreciate about them. This “attitude of gratitude” will take you far in your life and will come back to you many times over.”

MARY JANE RYAN

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

JENNIFER ANISTON

“Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it, one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.”

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

“I’ve always believed that one woman’s success can only help another woman’s success.”

GLORIA VANDERBILT

“We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.”

EVELYN WAUGH

“A good friend brings out the best in everybody!” MIMI COOKE

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Woman by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

You Are an Awesome Woman! Secrets of Highly Successful Women

Photo by Chris Murray Unsplash.com

Women inspire me. It’s as simple as that. All I have to do is look around. There are the women who run the restaurant on the corner—the place where everybody feels comfortable and taken care of. There are mothers pushing strollers, and mothers crunching numbers. There are women healing the sick. Gals cracking us up. Ladies penning the novels and singing the songs that change our lives. Chicks fixing the plumbing. Girls setting world records. Female politicians challenging the status quo from within the system, and activists battering it from the outside. There are women at the pinnacle of their fields in every corner of the world, and women finding satisfaction in their own successes, small and large. What’s their secret? (Well, I’ll give you a hint…there’s more than one.)

What kind of success are you working toward? Maybe you don’t know yet—or thought you did but aren’t sure. Or maybe you’re on the right track but need a kick in the pants.

In our own lives, success can feel elusive. We can get bogged down comparing ourselves to others or whining about what we lack. The women in this book have secrets to share, to shout to the rafters even. Their wise words will push your buttons, open your eyes, and rev up your engine.

This book is a reminder that you have what it takes to make it to the top. And the best part is, you get to decide where the top is, and you get to chart the path to reach it. This book is here for you—it’s full of quotes and thoughts from hundreds of women to encourage, motivate, and support you as you make your way. Famous and infamous, wise and wisecracking, haughty and humble. Some are names you will know well, others are everyday gals like you and me with something important to add.

I read somewhere that we’re all descended from three ancestral mothers. How amazing is that? A woman brought each and every one of us into this world, and when we look in the mirror, we can see traces of our mothers, grandmothers, even great-grandmothers. And their gifts go way beyond skin-deep. Every woman in the world is a member of this family—and you can call on their words and their life stories to inspire you at every turn. So keep this book close to you as you get organized, vamp up your personal style, and figure out how to work smarter. Sit back and let this book help you remember the importance of relaxing and indulging yourself (with girlfriends whenever possible). And don’t ever forget to go after your dreams with every ounce of yourself because after all—women can do anything!

This excerpt is from You Are an Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.