Quote of the Day: Denis Waitley on Life & Wisdom

It is January 1, and you are holding two voices in your head like dueling champagne flutes: one says, “Go get the life you want,” and the other hisses, “Who do you think you are?” The calendar flips, the resolutions line up, and suddenly ambition feels either thrilling or shameful, often both. In that tension, Denis Waitley offers a clean, bracing standard: “You must be worthy of the best, but not more worthy than the rest.”

The first half is not a permission slip for entitlement; it is a summons to preparation. Worthiness is built, through competence, consistency, and the kind of integrity that holds up when nobody is clapping. If you want the best job, the best partnership, the best health, you don’t just desire it; you become the sort of person who can sustain it. That’s success without superstition: results that have roots.

But the second clause is the antidote to a subtler poison. Many people don’t fail because they aim high; they fail because they confuse achievement with moral rank. Waitley’s line refuses the easy story that winning makes you more valuable than others. Humility here isn’t self-erasure, it’s accurate accounting. You can negotiate hard, compete fiercely, and still remember that your opponent is a person, your coworker is not your prop, and your victory does not require someone else’s diminishment. That’s leadership with a human face.

Denis Waitley, famed for The Psychology of Winning and decades of performance coaching, has long stitched ambition to ethics, visualization and goal setting, yes, but also responsibility for who you become along the way.

January 1 is a global ritual of self-reinvention, and the most practical way to honor this quote today is simple: raise your standards for your own effort, and lower your need to feel above anyone else. Let excellence be your work, and humility be your tone.