Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement (37 page)

Often their whole lives pass them by while they are furnishing and reinforcing their little rut of medium performance.

You need the courage to continually move yourself in the direction of your biggest goals and ambitions. You need to be willing to face discomfort in order for you to grow.

➤
Take a Stand

The fourth type of courage you need is the courage to take a stand, especially with regard to your values, your vision, and your beliefs.

You need to stand up for what you believe to be right. You need to stand up for other people who espouse those principles.You need to have the courage to stand solidly for the highest values that you know, and then refuse to compromise yourself or your character because others may disapprove.

➤
Step Out in Faith

You need the courage to launch in faith with no guarantees of success. Someone once wrote,
“If every obstacle must first be overcome,
nothing will ever get done.”

Courageous people are those who have a dream and set a goal, make a plan and take the first step, with no assurances and no guarantees that their efforts will result in success. However, if you look upon every step forward as a learning experience and every setback as a valuable lesson that has been sent to you to make you stronger and better, you will not be afraid to launch in faith into the unknown.

➤
Risk Failure

You need the courage to risk failure. You need the courage to endure constant setbacks, disappointments, and temporary defeats.

You need to learn to deal with failure by realizing that it is an in-ccc_tracy_12_222-248.qxd 6/23/03 3:39 PM Page 244

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dispensable prerequisite for success. You need the courage to treat failure as an opportunity to more intelligently begin again. You need to overcome the fear of failure by doing the things you fear over and over again, and then by resolving to bounce rather than break when things don’t work out for you.

The bigger and more exciting the goals you set for yourself, the more times you will trip and fall. But as long as you have clear goals, you will always be failing and falling in a forward direction.

You will always be picking yourself up a little bit closer to the goal than you were before.

➤
Face Your Fears

You need the courage to turn toward danger continuously. Identify all the fear situations in your life that cause you stress or anxiety today. Decide what the worst possible outcome of each of those situations might be. Resolve to accept the worst, should it occur. And then take action to resolve each of those situations. Refuse to allow a fear situation to remain in your life, dominating your thinking and emotions and holding you back.

➤
Practice Zero-Based Thinking

You need the courage to practice zero-based thinking continuously in your life. Ask yourself, “Is there anything in my life that, knowing what I now know, I would not get into or start up again today if I had it to do over?”

There are situations in every person’s life that, knowing what they now know, they wouldn’t get into again if they had to do it over. If you decide that there is something you wouldn’t get into again, your next question is
how do you get out and how fast?

You cannot make a great life for yourself if, right in the middle of your life, if there is something that you wouldn’t even get into if you had it to do over again. And you always know when you are dealing with a zero-based thinking situation. It causes you a great deal of stress. It preoccupies you continually. It sometimes keeps you awake at night and dominates your conversation. You always know what it is.

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Admit Your Mistakes

You need the courage to admit that you might be wrong, and that you have made a mistake when you get new information on any situation. It is amazing how many people keep themselves locked into a low level of performance because they will not admit that they are not
perfect
. They will not admit that, with the passing of time, something that seemed like a good idea has proven to be a bad choice or decision.

Don’t be afraid to cut your losses. Don’t be afraid to admit that you were wrong and to bail out. Don’t be afraid to put one course of action aside and embark upon something completely different.

This is the mark of courage, personal power, and effective thinking.

➤
Be Willing to Make Mistakes

You need the courage to be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. All peak performers continually make decisions, make mistakes, learn from them, self-correct, and carry on.

Successful people are not those who necessarily make the right decisions all the time, but they make their decisions right. If they make a mistake, they accept it, learn as much as possible from it, and then continue on. Remember, you can learn to succeed only by failing and making mistakes. The more you fail and the more mistakes you make, the smarter you become and the more likely it is that you will eventually achieve your goals.

➤
Accept Complete Responsibility

You need the courage to accept complete responsibility for your life, which means to take ownership for results.You need the courage to refuse to make excuses or to defend yourself. You need the courage to say, over and over again,
“I am responsible!”
When something goes wrong, you focus on the solution rather than the problem.You ask,
“What do we do from here? What’s the next
step? What is the solution?”

You then pick yourself up and carry on, extracting the wheat from the situation and throwing away the chaff.

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Be Patient

You need what is called “courageous patience.” This is a special kind of courage that is required after you have launched toward your goal but you have not yet seen any results. It is amazing how many people break and run in that zone between when they begin and when they start to see a payoff. Their doubts and fears overwhelm them.

But this is not for you. Once you have started toward your goal, resolve to remain calm and confident until you start to get results.

Be patient and persistent, no matter what happens in the short term.

➤
Persist Longer

The final courage you need is the courage to persist longer than anyone else. Persistence is the quality that will ultimately guarantee your success. Your willingness to persist in the face of every adversity can be your greatest asset. It can be the one factor that guarantees your success.

If you refuse to quit, you must ultimately succeed. Just as in baseball, you won’t ultimately hit a home run unless you keep on swinging. In 30 years of studying successful people, I have discovered one fact over and over. No one was ever defeated until they accepted defeat as a reality. No one can ever defeat you but yourself.

When you discipline yourself to do what you should do, whether you feel like it or not, and you use this inner strength to build high levels of courage and persistence within yourself, you will become an incredibly powerful person. You will soon feel that there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. You will eventually develop yourself to the point where you feel completely
unstoppable
.

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YOU ARE ULTIMATELY SELF-MADE

Someone once said, “I’m a self-made man, but if I had to do it over, I’d bring in a little help.” You and I are all self-made. We all have a lot of areas in which we could improve. We all need to set higher standards for ourselves. We all need to work continually on the development of our characters. We all need to strive to become better people. We can never allow ourselves to be compla-ccc_tracy_12_222-248.qxd 6/23/03 3:39 PM Page 247

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cent at any level of accomplishment. We have to keep raising the bar on ourselves.

One of the marks of superior people is that they can manage themselves. If they work for a company, they might do this by imagining their boss sitting next to them, observing them and filling out their annual performance appraisal every minute of every day. Or, by seeing themselves as role models, they might set far higher standards for themselves than anyone else could set for them.

Only the top 2 percent of people in our society can supervise and manage themselves. They can conduct themselves throughout the day as though everyone is watching, even though no one is watching.

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THE REAL PAYOFF

When you set high standards for yourself, your self-esteem and self-respect increase. When you decide that you are going to live consistently with your highest values and your deepest convictions, you feel wonderful about yourself. When you become completely honest, you stop compromising yourself in your relationships with others. You speak sincerely to everyone with whom you live and work.

You practice absolute truthfulness with yourself and others.

The more honest you are with yourself, the greater courage and self-confidence you will have. You will become more positive and enthusiastic about yourself. You will develop a tremendous feeling of inner power and personal strength. The more you live consistently with the very highest values you know, the finer your character will become. Eventually, you will reach the point where you are absolutely
unstoppable
!

ACTION EXERCISES

1.
Determine your three most important values in your personal and family life. What do you believe in and care about the most?

2.
Resolve to live in truth with yourself and others, without compromise. In what area of your life are you are not being perfectly honest with another person?

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3.
“To thine own self be true.” Examine the areas of your life where you experience stress, dissatisfaction, or unhappiness and determine if you are compromising one of your values.

4.
What kind of a company would your company be if everyone in it was just like you? What could you change immediately to make your company a better place?

5.
What would you do and how would you spend your time if you learned today that you had only six months left to live? Your answers to this question will reveal your true values.

6.
“People don’t change.” Since this is one of the laws of life, what changes should you make in your life and relationships, at home and at work, to accommodate this fact.

7.
Practice truthfulness in all things. In what areas do you need to accept the world as it is, rather than the way you would like it to be? Be honest with yourself.

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Summary and

Conclusions

The world is like a great mirror. It reflects back to you
what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you
are helpful, the world will prove loving, friendly, and
helpful to you. The world is what you are.

—Thomas Dreier

The most important principle of human life is that
you become what
you think about most of the time.
This insight is the foundation of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, and all success. Your outer world is very much a reflection of your inner world. If you change your thinking, you change your life.

Your biggest challenge and your greatest responsibility are to create within yourself the
mental equivalent
of what you want to experience on the outside. By doing this, you activate all your mental powers, and put the forces of the universe to work on your behalf.

You take full control over your life.

Many thousands of people have been asked what they think about most of the time. Over and over, the most successful men and women report the same things. They think about
what they want
and
how to get it
most of the time. Unsuccessful and unhappy people, in contrast, think and talk about what they
don’t
want. They think and talk about their problems and worries, and about the people in their lives that they don’t like. But this is not for you.

When you think and talk continuously about what you want and how to get it, this way of thinking soon becomes a habit. When you think and talk about what you want, you become more positive,
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purposeful, and creative. When you stay focused on where you’re going, you become a more productive and effective person.

■
LEARNED OPTIMISM

Perhaps the most important quality you can develop to achieve greater success and happiness is the quality of
optimism
. You can learn the habit of optimism by thinking the way that optimists do most of the time. According to interviews with thousands of the happiest and most successful people in every field, optimists seem to have two special ways of dealing with life. These are attitudes of mind that you can develop with practice.

First, optimists
look for the good
in every situation, especially when they experience reversals and setbacks. They keep themselves positive by looking for the bright side, the silver lining, to every problem. And they always find something.

Second, optimists
seek the valuable lesson
in every problem or difficulty. They believe that each temporary failure or obstacle has been sent to teach them something. They continually ask, “What am I meant to learn from this situation?” And they always find something.

Your mind is structured in such a way that you cannot look for the good and seek the valuable lesson without taking full control over your conscious mind. When you do, you feel more positive and optimistic about yourself and your situation. You feel in complete control of your life.You perform at your best.

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SEVEN STEPS TO

HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIVING

In addition to looking for the good and seeking the valuable lesson, optimists have seven orientations, or generalized ways of thinking about themselves and their lives. These are the seven subjects that they think about most of the time.

➤
Think about the Future

First, positive, happy people are
future-oriented
. They think and talk about the future much of the time. They think and talk about where ccc_tracy_sum_249-255.qxd 6/23/03 3:39 PM Page 251

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they are going, rather than about what has happened in the past.

They create a clear, exciting future vision of what is possible for them. By the Law of Attraction, they find themselves attracted toward their future hopes and dreams, and their future hopes and dreams are attracted toward them.

➤
Think about Your Goals

Second, they are
goals-oriented
. They think and talk about their goals much of the time. Once they have dreamed and fantasized about their ideal future visions, they boil them down into clear, written goals and plans that they work on every day. They focus their attention and concentrate their energies. They use their goals to take control over their futures.

➤
Think about Excellence

Third, they are
excellence-oriented
. They commit to becoming excellent at what they do, to joining the top 10 percent of people in their field, whatever it is. They identify their key result areas, and set standards of excellent performance for themselves in each one. They work on themselves each day, and never stop improving.

➤
Think about the Solution

Fourth, they are
solution-oriented
. They think about the solution rather than the problem. They think about what needs to be done rather than who is to blame. They use creative thinking methods to unlock their creativity and that of the people around them. They view their goals as problems to be solved, and they believe that there is a logical solution to every difficulty just waiting to be found.

➤
Think about Results

Fifth, successful, happy people are intensely
results-oriented
. They carefully plan each day in advance. They set clear priorities on their activities. They then work on those tasks that represent the most valuable use of their time. They plow through enormous amounts of work and become known as highly productive people. Because they are so effective and efficient, they get more done, they move ahead faster, and they make a greater contribution to their work and to their worlds.

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Think about Growth

Sixth, high performers are
growth-oriented
. They are continually reading, listening to audio programs, and attending additional courses and seminars. They are determined to stay at the cutting edge of their fields. They know that the future belongs to the competent, to those few people who
know more
than their competitors.

They know that there is a race on, and that they are in it. They are determined to win.

➤
Think about Action

Seventh, and perhaps more important than any of the others, the most successful people are intensely
action-oriented
. They think about what they can do, right now, to move faster toward their goals. They are in constant motion. They work in real time. They have a sense of urgency. They cover more ground and get a lot more done than the average person. The more they get done, the better they get, the more valuable they become, and the more they earn.

■
YOUR POSSIBILITIES ARE UNLIMITED

We are living in the golden age of mankind. There have never been more opportunities and possibilities for you to become all you are capable of becoming, and to achieve more of your goals, than there are today. You can use this book as a guide to greater success and happiness for the rest of your life. Here again are the 12 core ideas:
1.
Change Your Thinking.
The way you think about yourself, your abilities, and your potential—your
self-concept
—determines everything you are today, and everything you ever will be. Fortunately, your self-concept is learned. By taking complete control over the words, pictures, and ideas you let into your mind, you take complete control of your future.

2.
Change Your Life.
You come into the world as pure potential, with unlimited abilities in countless areas. As the result of destructive criticism in childhood, you can inadvertently develop fears of failure, loss, rejection, and criticism. You can develop self-limiting beliefs that hold you back. By getting rid of these ccc_tracy_sum_249-255.qxd 6/23/03 3:39 PM Page 253

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negative emotions, you liberate your potential and change your life.

3.
Dream Big Dreams.
The true starting point of living the kind of life that is possible for you is to create an exciting future vision of what you would want your life to be, in every area, if you had no limitations at all. Imagine that you could be, have, or do anything at all in your family, finances, and personal life. Then set clear, written goals, backed by detailed plans, to make your dreams come true.

4.
Decide to Become Rich.
Resolve today to take complete control over your financial future. Begin to do the things that others have done to become financially independent, starting from where you are today. Determine exactly how much you want to earn, keep, and acquire; set these amounts as goals; and then think about them all the time. Whatever others have done, you can do as well.

5.
Take Charge of Your Life.
You are the primary creative force in your own life. Everything you are or ever will be will be the result of what you do or fail to do. Resolve today to accept 100

percent responsibility, with no blaming and no excuses, for everything that happens. Exert your personal power and take control of your thoughts, words, and actions. Become the master of your own destiny.

6.
Commit to Excellence.
The biggest rewards and the greatest satisfactions go to those who are
very good
at what they do. Resolve to join the top 10 percent of people in your field. Determine the key skills you will have to excel at what you do, set superior performance as your goal, make a plan, and then work on getting better every day.

7.
Put People First.
The quality and quantity of your relationships will have more of an impact on your success and happiness than any other factors. Organize your life around building and maintaining high-quality, high-trust relationships with the most important people in your world. Network regularly to expand your range of contacts. Mastermind with other positive, success-oriented people.

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8.
Think Like a Genius.
You are actually a mind, with a body to carry it around. You are not what you think you are; but what you
think
, you are.You have the ability to think better and more efficiently than you ever have before. When you begin to think the same way that the smartest and most successful people think, you will soon get the same results they do.

9.
Unleash Your Mental Powers.
Ideas are the primary sources of wealth today. The more ideas you develop to help you to achieve your goals, by the Law of Probabilities the more likely it is that you will come up with exactly the right idea for you, at exactly the right time. Your ability to generate new ideas is unlimited. Therefore, your future is unlimited as well.

10.
Supercharge Your Thinking.
There are several key thinking strategies and techniques practiced by top people everywhere.

Any one of these methods of analyzing and assessing your situation can give you vital insights and ideas that can change your perspective, and even change your life. The more thinking tools you have, the more wonderful the life you can build for yourself.

11.
Create Your Own Future.
The ability to look into the future and then to take the steps today that will assure the future you desire is an essential way of thinking practiced by the most successful people in history. The most effective people plan their lives carefully, and make every effort to anticipate what might go wrong, well in advance. As a result, they think better and make better decisions than the people around them.

12.
Live a Great Life.
The world around you is largely determined by the world within you. The happiest, most highly paid and respected people in every area are those who are known for the quality of their character. When you organize your life around the twin qualities of
integrity
and
courage
, every door will open for you, and you will be a genuinely happy person. You will change your thinking and change your life.

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■
JUST DO IT!

Mental fitness is very much like physical fitness. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to achieve it and maintain it. But it is worth every bit of effort you put in. The payoff can be extraordinary!

When you begin the process of working on yourself, to create on the
inside
a clear picture of what you want to enjoy on the
outside
, progress may be slow at first. But when you persist, when you keep doing and saying the right things in the right way, you will before too long get results out of all proportion to the efforts you put it.