Quote of the Day: A Practical Way to Put Your Principles into Practice

To personally grow, there is essentially a two-step process you should follow:

1. Know the right principles to follow
2. Put those principles into practice

Knowing the right principles is the easy part. You can do so by reading books and blogs, or conversing with others. The hard part is putting those principles into practice. Many people stop at the first step and do not do – or only occasionally do – the second step.

There is one way you can do to make it easier to put your principles into practice, and that is by creating your personal quote of the day.

Here are the steps to do that:

1. Create your personal list of quotes
   Whenever I get ideas and insights, either from my readings or from my own thoughts and experiences, I always write them in my journal. I’ve had this habit for years and as a result, I have quite a lot of materials in the journal. Since I usually write the ideas and insights I get in short statements, the journal actually serves as my personal list of quotes.
   I’d suggest following similar process to create your personal list of quotes. The important thing to remember is the quotes in the list should be meaningful to you. They should be something that really inspire you. It won’t be effective if you just collect random quotes from many people. How can you put those quotes into practice if they aren’t even meaningful to you?
2. Create a candidate list of quotes
   Out of your personal list of quotes, choose some quotes which resonate most with you at the time. These are the quotes you think are the most important to put into practice. They will become your candidates for quote of the day and I suggest putting them in a separate candidate list. I usually choose these candidates in my weekly review when I review my personal list of quotes.
   If your personal list of quotes is still relatively short, you may skip this step and directly use your personal list of quotes for step 3.
3. Select your quote of the day
   From your candidate list (or your personal list of quotes, if it’s still relatively short), in the morning choose one quote as your quote of the day. The quote you choose should be the one you think is the most important to put into practice today.
4. Think of practical ways to apply the quote
   Now that you have chosen your quote of the day, you should think of ways to practically apply it during the day. If it is necessary, you can also put them into your to-do list.
5. Do the things to apply the quote
   This is the main purpose of choosing quote of the day. Your goal is application. It’s useless if you choose quote of the day just to reflect on it without taking any real action.

Make this a habit, and after several months you will realize that you have put many of your principles into practice. Do this for years, and your personal growth will be significant.