Joseph Rooks

“Record all the things you like about yourself—your positive qualities, characteristics, and traits. Include the successes you have had in every area of your life: work, home, school, and so on. Keep adding to this list as you think of more things and as you accomplish more. Acknowledging yourself, your abilities, and your own unique qualities will encourage you to get moving.”
― Michael Michalko, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

“Creators are joyful and positive. Creators look at “what is” and “what can be” instead of “what is not.” Instead of excluding possibilities, creators include all possibilities, both real and imagined. They choose to interpret their own world and do not rely upon the interpretations of others. And most importantly, creators are creative because they believe they are creative.”
― Michael Michalko, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

“Instead of presenting a catalog of all known creative techniques and abandoning you to puzzle out which ones actually work, I started with the ideas (fish) and worked backwards to each creator (fisherman). Then I identified the technique that caught the idea.”
― Michael Michalko, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

“The person who believes he is a subject is frank, open-minded, sincerely going ahead, facing the situation freely, and looking for ways to make things work and get things done. The person who believes she is an object is inhibited, pushed, driven, acting by command or intimidation, has a one-track mind, and is always looking for reasons things can’t be done or why things can’t work.”
― Michael Michalko, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques