Supercharge Your Thinking

Supercharge Your Thinking

Each problem has hidden within it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.

- Joseph Sugarman


The way you think about yourself and your life determines almost everything that happens to you. Your primary responsibility is to take full control over your thinking and to keep your words and thoughts clearly focused on the things that you really want. Simultaneously, you must refuse to think about the things that you don't want. This simple formula is the real key to health, happiness, and personal prosperity.

       This chapter is about ''possibility thinking.'' This is the process of looking at everything that is going on around you in terms of possibilities and opportunities rather than as difficulties or problems. Your goal is to make this a habitual way of thinking, and, like all habits, it is learnable.You can develop it with constant repetition. Eventually, you will become a completely positive and constructive person in everything you do.


POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE

A positive mental attitude is closely associated with success in every area of life. The kind of people we like the most and want to associate with tend to be people who are generally cheerful and optimistic about their work and personal lives. No one wants to spend time with a negative, pessimistic, complaining person.

       Unfortunately, it is easy to slip into the habit of criticizing and complaining.We are bombarded continuously with negative information, from radio, television, newspapers, and magazines and in our daily interactions with others. It may not be easy to rise above the flood of negativity that engulfs you, but it is absolutely essential to do so if you want to keep your spirits up and your mind clear and positive.


RESPOND CONSTRUCTIVELY TO STRESS

A positive mental attitude can be defined as a constructive response to stress. It doesn't mean that, no matter what happens, you are happy and cheerful all the time. Having a positive mental attitude instead requires that you deal with the inevitable problems of your daily life in a more effective way than the average person.

       Stress is inevitable. Problems are never ending. Failures and disappointments happen to everyone, all the time. The only thing over which you have any control is how you respond to these stressful events. If you respond in a positive, constructive way, you will maintain a generally positive attitude.When your mind is calm and clear, you will be more creative and alert.You will be more likely to see more ways to solve your problems, and to keep moving toward accomplishing your goals.

       When you respond in a negative or angry way to a problem or difficulty, you trigger a series of nervous reactions that shut down the most creative parts of your brain. Instead of going into a ''react and respond'' way of thinking, you develop a ''fight or flight'' mentality.


FIVE STEPS TO PERSONAL POWER

There is a five-step power process that you can use to keep yourself positive and to achieve your goals faster. This five-step process brings together several of the very best techniques ever discovered for permanent mind change. It contains and illustrates all of the key principles that you need to know to become a highly effective, positive ''possibility thinker'' in your own life.

       The five steps are: first, to idealize; second, to verbalize; third, to visualize; fourth, to emotionalize; and fifth, to realize. Let me explain how they work one at a time, and then, altogether.


IMAGINE YOUR PERFECT FUTURE

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to creating a wonderful life is ''selflimiting beliefs.'' Everyone has them, and some people have so many of them that they are almost paralyzed when it comes to taking action.

       A self-limiting belief is an idea you have that you are limited in some way, in terms of time, talent, intelligence, money, ability, or opportunity. As a result of these beliefs, most of which are probably not true, you hold yourself back from taking the steps necessary to create the kind of life you really desire.

       The way you free yourself from these negative brakes on your potential is to change your thinking about who you are and what is truly possible for you.You put aside any thought of limitation and begin to idealize and imagine the kind of life that you want to have a week, a month, a year, and five years from now, as if anything was possible.

       In idealization, you consider each of the key areas of your life and imagine what each would look like if that area of your life were exactly as you would want it to be, in every respect.


SHOW ME THE MONEY

Start with your income. How much do you want to be earning one, two, three, and five years from today? Look around you and ask, ''Who else is earning the kind of money I want to earn, and what are they doing differently from me?'' If you don't know or you aren't sure, go and ask them. Do your homework.

       What knowledge, skills, and abilities would you have to have to be able to earn that amount? What kind of work would you, or could you, be doing to achieve that kind of income? What position will you have in your company? How high up will you have to be in your field or profession? If you are in sales, how much will you have to be selling, and to whom?


DESIGN YOUR PERFECT LIFE

Imagine your perfect lifestyle. If you had no limitations at all, how would you like to live, day in and day out? If you were financially independent, what kind of home would you like to live in? What kind of car would you want to drive? What kind of life would you like to provide for your family? What sort of activities would you like to engage in throughout the week, month, and year?

       How much time would you want to take off on vacation, and where would you like to go? What would you like to do? What sort of activities do you most enjoy? If you were forced to take a month off from work and you had all the money you needed, how would you spend that time?


FAMILY PLANNING

Involve your family in your design of an ideal lifestyle. Make this an ongoing part of your relationships.The more people get a chance to discuss a course of action, the more committed they will be to whatever is finally decided.

       Some time ago, a good friend of mine sat down with his wife and children to discuss the fact that he was working too much and not spending enough time with the family.They imagined how they would spend their time as a family if they had no limitations. Everyone contributed ideas, including the young children.

       As a result of this exercise, they made some decisions about both time and lifestyle. They decided to move out of the city to a larger home with a bigger yard in the country. He reorganized his workweek so that he worked four days per week in the city, 10 to 12 hours per day, and then worked only three or four hours on one day in his office at home in the country. He ended up spending much more time with his family and getting far more satisfaction out of life. The best part was that both his results and his income actually increased with this new plan.


TURN YOUR IDEAL INTO REALITY

When you sit down and design your ideal lifestyle, you can then compare it to what you are doing today and notice the differences. You can then start thinking about how you could bring your real or current lifestyle closer to your ideal.

       When you idealize your income and your lifestyle, you develop a vision for your life.You begin to practice a key quality of personal leadership.You begin projecting into the future and making plans to turn your future dreams into a current reality.


HEALTH AND FITNESS

You should idealize about your health, as well. Imagine your health was perfect in every way. How would you be different from today? Exactly how much do you want to weigh, and what level of fitness do you want to enjoy? How does that compare with where you are today? What steps will you have to take, and what changes will you have to make in your health habits in order to become the ideal person that you desire to be personally? This description then becomes your ideal future vision for yourself.


THE PERSON YOU BECOME

Create an ideal future self in terms of your personal and professional development.What kind of a person do you want to be in the future? What additional knowledge and skills do you want to acquire? In what areas would you like to become absolutely excellent? What subjects would you like to master? What do you need to learn to move to the top of your field? What is your growth plan to get from where you are to where you want to go?


YOUR MISSION STATEMENT

When you conduct personal strategic planning for yourself, you always begin with a mission statement.This is clear definition of exactly what you want to be and accomplish at some future date. To develop your mission statement, you project forward and imagine that you have been completely successful in achieving all your goals in a particular area.You then describe your life and activities in this area exactly as if they were already true today.

       For example, your personal mission statement could be something like: ''I am a happy, healthy, positive person who does excellent work, is paid extremely well, is highly respected by his customers and coworkers, and is deeply loved by his family.''

       This kind of mission statement can then serve as an organizational blueprint for your life. You can use it to make decisions by comparing what you are about to do to see if it is consistent with your mission. If it is not consistent with your mission, or with your ideal image of the very best person you could possible be, you would not do it.


A BENCHMARK FOR DECISION MAKING

I conducted a strategic planning session for a large corporation not long ago. The executives had more than 250 potential projects on their drawing boards. After we had defined the values, vision, and ideal mission of the company, they were immediately able to discard more than 200 of those potential projects. It was clear to everyone at the meeting that these projects were not consistent with who they were as a company and where they wanted to be in the future. This can work for you as well.

       One of your problems today is that you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. You have too many things to think about.You are swamped by too many problems, possibilities, and opportunities. When you idealize and become crystal clear about what your perfect life would look like sometime in the future, you will immediately start to make better choices in your day-to-day activities.You will immediately begin eliminating activities that are not consistent with where you really want to end up.


A KEY TO HAPPINESS

A clear definition of your ideal, in any area of your life that is important to you, is the starting point of making better decisions in the present that will lead to greater success and happiness in the future. As you feel yourself moving toward the achievement of a worthy ideal, you will feel happier and more confident. The more progress you make toward a clear goal or set of ideal conditions, the more energy and enthusiasm you will have.


THE DEFINITION OF INTELLIGENCE

Some years ago, the Gallup organization interviewed 1,500 very successful men and women in a search for some of the common denominators of success. But when they asked them to define ''intelligence,'' they got an unexpected answer.

       The top people in the survey defined intelligence not so much as IQ or good grades in school, but more as a way of acting. Intelligent behavior was defined as doing only those things that moved them toward their goals. They defined intelligence as the ability to systematically eliminate those time-consuming activities that did not help them to achieve their goals, or even worse, moved them away from their goals.


GET SMART

Whenever you are doing something that is moving you in the direction of your own self-professed goals and ideals, you are acting intelligently. This is true irrespective of your education or your IQ. This is why there are many people of average intelligence or who did poorly in school who are accomplishing far more than people with university degrees. These high achievers focus more and more of their time and energy on activities aimed at accomplishing only those goals that are most important to them.


PUT IT IN WORDS

The second part of this five-step process is for you to verbalize clearly the person you want to be, the things you want to do, and the goals you want to achieve.You verbalize with positive affirmations. Because you can completely reprogram your subconscious mind with affirmations, by using them repeatedly you will find that your potential is unlimited.

       The Law of Subconscious Activity says that whatever you repeat over and over to yourself in your conscious mind will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind. Once your subconscious mind accepts your conscious thoughts as commands, it passes them on to your superconscious mind, which then works 24 hours a day to bring those goals into your life.

       With positive affirmations, you can take full control over the content of your conscious and subconscious minds.You can activate all your mental powers. You can tap into a great universal mind that can help you to move more rapidly toward your goals of higher income, better health and relationships, and greater success in your field.


THE THREE Ps OF POSITIVE PROGRAMMING

A positive affirmation is phrased using the ''three Ps.'' This means that for maximum effectiveness, an affirmation should be personal, positive, and stated in the present tense.

       Your subconscious mind is like a special computer. It can be accessed and activated only with words and commands that are presented in a specific language. It accepts only positive commands that are phrased in the personal, present tense, as though the goal has already been achieved. It knows no past or future tense.

       My favorite affirmation is, ''I like myself!'' repeated over and over again in a spirit of complete confidence. When you repeat, ''I like myself!'' several times per day, you send this message deep into your subconscious mind. The more you like yourself, the higher will be your self-esteem. The higher your self-esteem, the better you will perform in every area of your life. The more you like yourself, the better you will do, and the better you do, the more you will like yourself.


BECOME YOUR OWN CHEERLEADER

To improve your performance in your work, or in any other area requiring skill or ability, continually repeat the words, ''I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best!'' By talking to yourself as if you were already the person you want to be sometime in the future, you become your own cheerleader.You will then find yourself doing better and better at whatever you attempt.

       Another powerful affirmation you can repeat every morning before you start off is, ''I love my work!'' Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you won't feel particularly excited about the coming day. But you can take control over your mind and emotions by repeating, ''I love my work!'' until it actually feels true.

       Even better, you can start every day with the words, ''I like myself and I love my work!'' This affirmation, repeated enthusiastically several times every morning, will rev you up and get you excited about getting to your job.


CONTROL YOUR SELF-TALK

Fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself. Dr. Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism says that your ''explanatory style'' is the critical factor in determining whether you are a positive or negative person.

       Your explanatory style is defined as how you explain things to yourself. If you explain or interpret things to yourself in a positive way, you will be positive. If you explain them in a negative way, you will be negative.What Seligman concluded is that optimistic people, when something goes wrong, always explain the event or experience to themselves as though it were a temporary, specific situation, rather than a long-term, general condition.

       Imagine that you make a sales call and the prospect is not interested in what you are selling. It didn't work out. It was a waste of time. If you are a positive person, you will say something like, ''Well, it's just one sales call.'' This makes it temporary. You will say, ''The customer is probably having a bad day.'' This makes it specific. You then say, ''I'll be more successful on the next call.'' This focuses you on the future. When you dismiss temporary setbacks in this way, you keep your mind positive.You remain confident and optimistic.


DON'T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY

When negative people experience problems, setbacks, or difficulties, they interpret them differently from confident, optimistic people. When they fail temporarily, which is inevitable, they immediately interpret this as a personal statement about their deficiencies. If the sales call is not successful, they say, ''I must be a terrible salesperson. The product is no good. Customers are not interested in what we have to sell. I'll never succeed in this field.''

       In other words, they overgeneralize and overdramatize a small failure rather than dismissing it as a temporary setback and going on to the next call. They interpret the experience negatively. It then has a negative effect on their self-image: ''I'm no good.'' Their work performance declines and they do even worse next time.

       The good news, however, is that how you interpret an event is under your control. It is a matter of choice.You determine how you are going to feel and react by how you choose to explain a situation to yourself. Choose to put a positive spin on it, whatever it is.You are in charge.


MAKE IT SIMPLE

When you verbalize your goals in the form of positive affirmations, you should use words that your subconscious can easily understand and go to work on. Make your statements simple and practical. For example, ''I like myself'' is personal. ''I'm the best'' is personal and positive. And ''I love my work'' is personal, positive, and in the present tense.

       These are the kinds of affirmations that are immediately accepted by your subconscious mind as commands.They have an immediate impact on how you think and feel about yourself. They instantly boost your self-esteem and self-confidence.To remain optimistic, you must be continually talking to yourself in terms of the way you want to be rather than the way things are at the moment.

       In neurolinguistic programming, the way that you talk to yourself about what is happening to you is called your ''interpretive style.'' The way you interpret things is a key part of changing your thinking. The question is always whether you interpret things that are happening around you in a positive or negative way. Remember, the optimist sees the glass as half full while the pessimist sees the glass as half empty. Choose to be an optimist.


BECOME AN INVERSE PARANOID

The multimillionaire W. Clement Stone started off selling newspapers on the streets of Chicago at the age of 12. He went on to build Combined Insurance Company of America, and died recently at the age of 100 worth more than $800 million. He was a great inspiration to thousands of people, and was famous for his habit of being an ''inverse paranoid.''

       A paranoid is someone who believes that people are conspiring against him or her. An inverse paranoid, in contrast, is a person who is convinced that the world is conspiring to make him or her successful. An inverse paranoid insists upon interpreting everything that happens as part of a great plan leading to success. W. Clement Stone used to respond to every difficulty with the emphatic statement, ''That's good!'' Then he would concentrate his attention on finding out what was good about the situation. And he always found something, even if it was just a valuable lesson.

       If you change the definition of a problem to a situation, a challenge, or an opportunity, your response to the problem will be positive and constructive, rather than negative and angry. If you look at every problem as a potential opportunity, you will almost always find within the problem an opportunity or benefit that you can take advantage of.

       Norman Vincent Peale used to say, ''When God wants to send you a gift, He wraps it up in a problem.'' The bigger the problem that you have, the bigger the gift - in the form of valuable lessons,ideas, and insights that it probably contains. Is the glass half full or is it half empty? It's up to you.


YOU WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT

The third part of the five-part process of supercharging your thinking is visualization.You already know how powerful this can be in helping you to achieve your goals. It is only when you learn to use visualization on every goal and activity that you will truly tap into its amazing power for good in your life.

       As it happens, everyone visualizes, all the time. The difference is that successful people visualize the things they want, and unsuccessful people visualize the things they don't want. Prior to every new experience, a successful person will take a few moments to recall and relive a previous successful experience in that area. Unsuccessful people, in contrast, prior to a new experience will recall and relive a previous failure experience.

       In each case, people are creating a predisposition to succeed or fail. When they visualize, they send a command to their subconscious minds. The subconscious mind then coordinates their words and actions in the upcoming situation so that they perform consistent with that picture.


IMAGINE A PERFECT OUTCOME

In visualizing, you project your mind forward and create a clear picture of your ideal future goal.You imagine what it would look like if it were already achieved.You make your picture as vivid as possible. You repeat this mental picture over and over, as often as you possibly can during the day, and for as long as you can.

       There is a direct relationship between how clearly you can see your goal or performance on the inside and how rapidly it comes into your reality on the outside.Visualization is one of the most powerful faculties available to you to become a possibility thinker, to change your thinking about your life and your future.With visualization, you can make your current dreams into future realities.You can change your thinking completely by changing your mental pictures.


PROGRAM YOUR MIND

There are three techniques combining verbalization and visualization that you can practice to achieve your goals faster. These are often referred to as ''mental programming techniques.'' They are amazingly effective in preparing yourself and your mind for an upcoming event.

       The first of these methods is what is called the quick programming technique. Here is how it works. Prior to any nonrecurring event of importance, like a sales call, a meeting, or an interview, you take a few moments to prepare mentally, like an athlete would warm up for a competition.

       First, take a few deep breaths. This relaxes you and drops your mind into the alpha state. In this state, your subconscious mind becomes highly receptive to any incoming command. Second, you visualize the ideal outcome of the upcoming situation.You imagine it as turning out perfectly for you in every respect. For example, if you are making a sales call, visualize the client responding to you in a positive, receptive way. Especially, visualize the client signing the check or sales order at the end of the conversation.

       One of my good friends has used this technique for many years to become one of the highest-paid people in his industry. He says it is absolutely amazing how many times the sales situation works out exactly as he visualized it before he went in.Try it for yourself and see.

     

Affirm and Visualize


       The third and last part of the quick programming technique is for you to verbalize or create a positive affirmation that is consistent with your mental picture. A simple affirmation would be ''This sales call goes extremely well and concludes satisfactorily for everyone involved.'' This command instructs your subconscious mind to give you the words, feelings, behaviors, and body language consistent with achieving your goal of a successful sales call.

       We teach this ''quick affirmation'' technique to applicants who are going on job interviews, speakers giving public talks, performers in the arts, and even to politicians. It is an extraordinarily effective technique, and it only takes a few seconds prior to each event.


WRITE AND REVIEW YOUR GOALS

The second method you can use to bring about rapid internal changes to your thinking and your life is called the standard affirmation technique. This technique requires that you write out your major goals in the form of present, positive, personal affirmations on three-by-five index cards, one goal per card.You can work on 10 to 15 goals at a time using this method.

       Carry these cards around with you. At the beginning of each day, take a few minutes by yourself to review each goal.

       Take the first card and read it. Perhaps the first card says, ''I earn $50,000 per year.'' Read the card and let your eyes focus on the message so that it is imprinted on your subconscious mind. Then, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat the affirmation five times. As you affirm, visualize your goal as already achieved. See it. Feel it. Then open your eyes, relax, exhale deeply, and read the next card.


PREPARE FOR THE DAY

This entire exercise, with 10 to 15 goals, takes about 10 minutes. It programs your subconscious mind at a deep level, and prepares you to perform at your very best for the rest of the day.

       If you practice this each morning before you start out and each evening before you go to bed, you will be absolutely amazed at how quickly your goals begin to materialize.

       Your subconscious mind is the sending and receiving station for the power of attraction in your life. The more you feed your subconscious mind with words and pictures consistent with what you want to accomplish, the more you magnetize your goals.You become a living magnet. You begin to attract people, opportunities, ideas, and resources into your life that make achieving your goals a possibility.


PRACTICE MENTAL REHEARSAL

The third mental programming technique that you can use to perform better and achieve your goals faster is often called mental rehearsal. It is taught and used extensively in sports of all kinds. The process is both simple and powerful.

       First, you sit or lie down, completely relaxed, with your eyes closed, and breath deeply until your whole body is calm and quiet.

       Second, you clearly visualize an upcoming event, or a goal that you desire. You allow yourself to enter into the experience and see it clearly in your mind. You imagine yourself actually doing and saying the things you would if the upcoming situation is perfect.

       One of the very best times to practice mental rehearsal is just before you go to sleep. By verbalizing and visualizing your ideal goals or activities for the coming day immediately prior to sleeping, you program your subconscious mind to work on those goals all night long. Then, when you wake up in the morning, you will often have insights and ideas that you can use to make those goals a reality. It is an amazing technique and is extremely effective.


PREPROGRAM FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE

You can use this technique to preprogram your mind for a variety of things. For example, let us say you have a problem that you are worried about. Just before you go to sleep, turn this problem over to your superconscious mind and ask for a solution. Then, forget about it and go to sleep.Very often, when you wake up in the morning the solution will occur to you. It will be crystal clear and perfect in every respect.

       You can use this method of mental programming to assure that you wake up feeling positive and energetic. The process is both simple and effective. Just before going to sleep, say to yourself, ''When I wake up in the morning, I feel terrific!'' Repeat this several times. Imagine yourself getting up the next morning feeling happy and full of energy. Especially when you go to bed late and you need to be at your best the next day, use this technique to wake up feeling refreshed. It works every time.


WAKE AT A CERTAIN TIME

You can use mental rehearsal and preprogramming to wake up at the desired time without an alarm clock. No matter where you are, or in what time zone, you can ''set your mind'' on a certain time before you go to sleep, and you will wake up at exactly that minute.

       Before you fall asleep, you say, ''I wake up tomorrow morning at seven o'clock sharp.'' You can then fall to sleep without worrying. The next morning, your heart rate will gradually speed up, waking you at your preset time.You will be unable to go back to sleep.You can even travel great distances and wake up in different time zones on schedule using this method.


GET THE FEELING OF SUCCESS

The fourth element in mental programming is emotionalization.This requires that you create the feeling that would go with successful accomplishment of your goal. This is the part that makes idealizing, verbalizing, and visualizing really work for you.Your emotions are the energy source, the jet fuel that drives you toward your goal.

       You have heard it said that humans are 10 percent logical and 90 percent emotional.The fact is, however, that you are initially 100 percent emotional.You decide emotionally, and then justify logically. Everything you do is governed and controlled by your emotions, in some way. The only question is, ''What emotion is in charge?''


MASTER OR SLAVE?

Many people are slaves to their emotions. With very little control over their feelings, they continually react and respond to other people and situations.They have no minds of their own.

       One of your chief responsibilities to yourself is to get your emotions under control. Take charge of your positive emotions rather than allowing yourself to be dominated by your negative emotions. By using your emotions deliberately and purposefully, especially by keeping them positive and focused on what you want, you can put enormous power behind your visualizations, verbalizations, and idealizations.


IMAGINE YOUR IDEAL OUTCOME

One way to unlock the energy and power contained in your emotional nature is for you to get the feeling that you would enjoy if you had already achieved your goal. See it in your mind's eye and create within you the emotions you would experience if your dream came true this very minute.

       Imagine, for example, that your goal is to earn a certain amount of money. Project mentally into the future and see yourself earning this kind of money. See the larger house, the bigger car, the better clothes, the nicer restaurants, and the more elegant lifestyle that you will enjoy when you are earning this amount of money. Imagine how you would feel if you were already enjoying all these ingredients of success. Imagine the feelings of pride, happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, joy, and gratitude that you would experience once you achieved this goal.

       Just like a person soaking in a hot bath, soak your mind in these feelings, exactly as if you were already at your destination. These emotions will then trigger thoughts, desires, and actions consistent with them. Each will reinforce the other.


THE COMBINATION IS POWERFUL

When you combine all three - a mental picture, a verbalization, and an emotion - you activate your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then passes this impression on to your superconscious mind, which works on your goals 24 hours per day. When you practice combining verbalization, visualization, and emotionalization on every goal, you will be absolutely astonished at the things that begin happening to you, and the goals that you accomplish.

       Once you activate your superconscious mind, you will receive a continuous stream of insights and ideas that you can use to solve your problems and achieve your goals.This mind will show you how to remove, get around, or climb over any obstacle that appears on your path. It will bring you the information that you need, at exactly the right time for you. It will give you intuitions and hunches that guide you to make the right decisions. Your superconscious mind will give you a steady flow of energy, enthusiasm, and motivation that will drive you toward your goals.

       The way you activate this process and unleash all your mental powers is by continually idealizing, verbalizing, visualizing, and especially emotionalizing.


DREAMS COME TRUE

The fifth element in this five-step power process is realization, to actually achieve your goals and to have your wishes come true.

       This is the most important part of the process. But you must be aware that every goal takes a certain amount of time to materialize. Some goals can be achieved quickly. Some require weeks and even months of patient, steady work. Others are long-term goals, requiring several years to bring to fruition.Your attitude toward the time required for goal attainment has a major impact on whether and when you accomplish them.

       In the realization phase, after you have practiced the first four steps, you simply relax and let go of the process.You allow your goal to appear in its own time. Exactly the things that you want and need will come to you at exactly the time that you are ready for them.

       Successful people eventually develop an attitude of calm, confident expectation. They are never rushed or hurried. They are relaxed and confident, and they absolutely believe that everything is conspiring to bring them exactly what they want, at exactly the right time for them. This must be your attitude as well.


MULTIPLY YOUR POWERS

You can get even greater benefit from this five-step process for achieving your goals by using special techniques in response to the things that happen to you each day.

       First of all, no matter what happens, look for the good in every situation. Seek the valuable lesson. Look for what you can gain from any temporary setback or obstacle.

       Napoleon Hill studied and interviewed successful men and women for 25 years. He found that they had one characteristic in common. Each of them had developed the habit of continually looking into every difficulty for the seed of an equal or greater benefit or advantage.They constantly looked for the silver lining of even their darkest cloud.

       When you are looking for something good to come out of every problem situation, you will respond to difficulties in a more positive, creative, and constructive way.You will be more optimistic and confident. If you think that you are going to benefit from everything that happens to you, you will develop the attitude of the possibility thinker. As a result, no matter what happens, you will almost always find something good that you can turn to your benefit or advantage.


THE RUDDER OF THE DAY

Just as you become what you eat, you also become what you feed into your mind. Your mind is most receptive to new ideas first thing in the morning.You can accelerate the process of changing your thinking by starting off every morning by reading for 30 to 60 minutes in something uplifting and inspirational before you start your day.

       Just as vigorous physical exercise in the morning will prepare you to be stronger and more resilient physically during the day, positive mental exercise in the form of inspirational reading will prepare you to be more mentally fit during the day.

       The first hour of the morning is called the ''rudder of the day.'' Whatever you put into your mind in this ''golden hour'' sets the tone of your thinking for the rest of the day.When you get up in the morning and, instead of reading the newspaper or watching television, you read something positive, constructive, and inspiring, you preprogram your mind for the hours ahead.

       Throughout the day, things will go better for you. You will be calmer, more creative, and more alert.You will be more resilient in the face of difficulties.You will respond more effectively when you face the inevitable ups and downs of your daily life. Your earlymorning reading will have prepared you mentally to perform at your best.


LEAVE NOTHING TO CHANCE

You can become a more optimistic person by planning each day in advance. This exercise frees your mind from the stress of trying to remember what you have to do. It gives you a sense of control over your work and your life. It puts you in charge.You become proactive rather than reactive. And all it takes is a list!

       The ideal time to plan is the night before. Make a list of everything you have to do the following day. Go over the list and organize your work by priority. Select your most important task so that you can start in on it first thing.You will be amazed at how much better you sleep and how much better you feel when you awaken if you have already preplanned your day so that you know what you are going to do and in what order.


START YOUR DAY RIGHT

Start your day with healthy, nutritious food. Eat more fruits, vegetables, and high-quality protein foods, such as eggs. Drink more fruit juice and water. Eat whole-grain breakfast cereals, muffins, and yogurt. Avoid fatty foods that are hard to digest, and which tire you out.

       The standard American breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, is one of the very worst combinations you can eat in the morning. Within an hour after eating these foods you will start to become drowsy again. All the blood in your brain will rush to your stomach to try to break down these heavy, fatty, overcooked proteins, fats, and starches.You will then compensate by drinking coffee all morning to wake up.

       But when you start each day with a light, healthy, nutritious breakfast, you will have more energy. You will be more alert and cheerful.You will be more eager to get on with the day.You will be more creative because more of your blood is available to your brain. You will be brighter and sharper.You will see more possibilities in everything that is going on around you. You will be a more optimistic person.


GET LOTS OF REST

In addition to good mental and physical nutrition, you need to get plenty of rest. Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers football coach, once said, ''Fatigue doth make cowards of us all.'' When you are not getting enough rest, you are far more likely to be negative, irritable, and lacking in self-confidence.

       But when you are fully rested and eating well, when you are feeding your mind with positive messages continually, when you are reading inspirationally and constantly visualizing your goals as a reality, you become a more positive, optimistic, and cheerful human being.

       You will wake up in the morning with the feeling that there is nothing that you cannot do if you put your mind to it. If you hold that thought long enough and hard enough, it will become true in your life.You will begin to feel unstoppable.

     

ACTION EXERCISES


Resolve today to talk to yourself positively, using affirmations phrased in the positive, personal, present tense. Be your own cheerleader.

Make a set of three-by-five index cards with each of your goals written out in the form of an affirmation. Review these cards twice a day, morning and evening.

Look for something good in every problem or difficulty. Practice being an inverse paranoid, convinced that there is a vast conspiracy to make you successful.

Create a mental picture of your most important goal, exactly as if it were already a reality. If possible, cut pictures of your goal out of magazines and study them regularly to program them into your subconscious mind.

Get the feeling that would go with the success or the goal that you desire. Imagine that you have to pretend the emotion of joy, happiness, or satisfaction in an audition for a role in a movie. Fake it until you make it!

Imagine that your life was perfect in a particular area. What would it look like? How would you feel? How would you describe it?

Before falling asleep each night, mentally rehearse the key events of the coming day.Visualize and emotionalize them turning out perfectly in every way. Then go off to sleep with a smile on your face.

Live A Great Life

Live A Great Life


The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the things we have done and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.

- H. G. Wells


The Law of Correspondence is perhaps the most important of all laws in determining your success or failure in life. As we've discussed in previous chapters, this law says that your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. It says that whatever you are on the inside, you will soon see the results of it on the outside. When you change your thinking, you change your life.

       This law applies to everything you do. Your inner world of knowledge and preparation will determine your outer world of income and career success.Your inner world of personality development will determine your outer world of friendships and relationships.Your inner attitudes toward health and fitness will determine the condition of your physical body.Your inner beliefs and expectations will determine your outer attitudes and your behaviors toward other people.Your outer world will always reflect your inner world.


HAPPINESS IS THE SUPREME GOAL

Aristotle, perhaps the greatest of the philosophers, wrote more than 2,300 years ago that the ultimate aim of all human action is happiness. He concluded that everything a person does is to achieve happiness of some kind. Sometimes they are successful, and sometimes they are unsuccessful, but happiness is always the target each person aims at.

       He concluded that every act is merely an interim step in the direction of happiness. For example, you want to get a good job.Why? So you can earn good money.Why? So you can get a comfortable home and a nice car.Why? So you can have good relationships and a nice family. Why? So that you can have a satisfying home life. Why? The final answer, the ultimate goal, is so that you can be happy. Everything that you or anyone else does is aimed at happiness, however you define it and however successful you are at achieving it.


THE ROLE OF GOODNESS

One of Aristotle's greatest insights on the subject of happiness was his conclusion that ''Only the good can be happy, and only the virtuous can be good.''

       This is one of the most important observations in the history of human thought and experience. ''Only the good can be happy, and only the virtuous can be good.''

       What I have found in my many years of research into philosophy and psychology is that only people who are genuinely good inside can be happy for any period of time. And in my years of study of the foundation qualities of self-confidence, I have found that only men and women with clear, positive values are able to develop the kind of unshakable self-confidence that makes it possible for them to deal effectively with anything that happens to them.

       The fastest way for you to build or to regain your self-confidence is to become absolutely clear about your deepest values and convictions, and then begin to live by them. The solution to almost all human problems is a return to values. In many ways, your unhappiness and stress are caused by your drifting away from doing and saying the things that you know are right.


INTEGRITY IS ESSENTIAL

The most important single quality for success is the quality of integrity. Aristotle insisted that only a life based on values such as integrity, honesty, courage, generosity, persistence, and sincerity would lead to happiness and personal fulfillment.

       I used to think of integrity as only one of the key values, equal to and separate from the others.Then one day a wise and wealthy man pointed out to me that integrity is really the value that guarantees all the others. Integrity is the foundation value on which all of your other values are based. Having true integrity means that you always live and act consistently with your values. If you lack integrity, you will compromise your other values at the slightest temptation.


CLARIFY YOUR VALUES

In our strategic planning sessions, both for corporations and for individuals, we start off by asking people to define and clarify their values.You must do the same in your own personal strategic planning. What are your values? What is it that you believe in? What do you stand for? What will you not stand for?

       Your ability to clearly define your values is the starting point of your developing the kind of character that causes people to want to be associated with you and which will lead you inevitably to enjoying a good life.When you have a fine and noble character, rooted in solid, life-affirming values, you will be a genuinely good person. As a result, you will be happy inside, no matter what is going on around you.


ORGANIZE YOUR VALUES

Once you have defined your values, you should organize them in order of priority.To start, you need only three to five key values to create a foundation for your character and personality. These are the values that you personally consider to be more important than any others. The order in which you arrange your values is terribly important as well. This ranking of values largely determines the kind of person you are, and the kind of life you live.

       Everything you do is the result of a choice.You are constantly making choices of one kind or another, to do one thing or to do something else. This ability to make choices distinguishes you from all other creatures. Each choice you make is based on your primary values at that time. Each action is based on what you consider to be the most important value at that moment of choice.


ACT ON YOUR VALUES

When you choose, your higher-order values always take precedence over your lower-order values. Every act you take, every decision you make, is based on your dominant value at that time.You can do only one thing at a time, and you always have to choose what it is going to be.You always choose what is most valuable to you at that particular moment.

       How can you tell what your values are? It's simple.Your values are only and always expressed in your actions. It is what you do rather than what you say that tells you, and others, what you value most. Especially, it is what you do under pressure, when you are forced to choose, that reveals your true values and beliefs about yourself and the world around you.


THE DETERMINANT OF PERSONALITY

Both your choice of values and the order of your values are critical in determining your personality and your life. Here is an example. Imagine that two people have each been through a values clarification exercise and settled upon the same three values. Only the order is different.

       Person A has decided that his top three values, in order of importance, are first, family; second, health; and third, career success. This person is saying that he puts his family ahead of his health and career, and his health ahead of his career. This means that if he has to choose between family and career, family comes first. If he has to choose between health and career, health comes first.

       Person B has the same three values, except that his values are in a slightly different order. His first value is career success. His second value is his family, and his third value is health.

       This means that Person B will put his career ahead of his family if he has to choose. He will put his career and his family ahead of his health if he has to choose.


THE BIG QUESTION

Now here are some questions for you. Will there be a difference between Person A and Person B? Will there be a small difference or a large difference? Would you prefer to be friends with Person A or with Person B? Would you be able to tell Person A from Person B if you met them socially or in business?

       The answer is that Person B, who chooses career success as his primary value, will be a totally different human being from Person A, who decides that his family is most important to him. The order of family, health, and career is a life-enriching organization of values. A person who lives his life consistent with these values will be a far happier person than a person who places his career ahead of his family and especially ahead of his health. This is why you must select both your values and their order of importance with care.Your values and their order determine your whole life.


INTEGRITY IS A WAY OF LIVING

Once you have determined your values, your level of integrity can be measured by how rigidly you adhere to them. A value is not something that you compromise when it is convenient. Either you have it or you do not.Your choice of values and your resolution to live by those values form your character and your personality.

       Throughout history, great men and women have been men and women of character. They have been people who lived on the basis of high and noble values.They have been honored and respected for the values they stood for and represented.

       One of the great problems in our society today is the phenomenon of ''situational values'' or ''situational ethics.'' These are the result of people changing their ideas of right and wrong depending on the situation, and often the temptation of the moment.What is even worse is when they fool themselves into believing that they are people of character when they are really only people of convenience.


WHAT YOU DO UNDER PRESSURE

Situational values are demonstrated when people say they believe in one thing, but they do another. They say that they believe in telling the truth, but then they lie when it is convenient, or excuse the lies of another. An individual is defined by what he or she does, not what he or she says.

       Some people are confused by their emotions. They believe that if their intentions are sincere, their actions don't matter. They feel that if they wish or hope something, it is the same as actually doing it. But it is only what you actually do when you are forced to choose, especially under pressure, that tells you who you really are inside.

       It is vital to your success and happiness that you are impeccably honest with everyone you know and deal with, both in your personal life and in your career. There is nothing that will earn you the support of people faster than for you to develop the reputation of being a person of character and integrity. At the same time, there is nothing that will damage your reputation and sabotage your career faster than for you to get the reputation of being the kind of person that others cannot trust or rely on.


BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

Honesty means that you are always true to the very best that is in you. As Polonius says in Shakespeare's Hamlet, ''To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.''

       Being true to yourself is the starting point of developing a great character.This begins with your always living in truth with yourself. You do not delude yourself or play games with your own mind.You don't try to believe things that are completely impossible.You don't hope and pray that things would be different than they are.You deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it were.


ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Every job bears the signature of the person who did it. Being true to yourself means that you always do your very best at whatever job or responsibility you take on. Honesty and integrity on the inside are expressed as quality and excellence in your work on the outside.You can tell what you are made of on the inside by the amount of time and attention that you put into doing the very best job possible at everything that is given to you to do. Don't take it on unless you are willing to do it in an excellent fashion.

       Integrity means that you are always truthful, straightforward, and honest with everyone in your life. Just as you are true to yourself, you are true to others as well.You live in truth with others, at home and at work.

       If you ask people whether they are honest, almost everyone will say that they are. Most people do not lie, cheat, steal, or engage in dishonest behaviors of any kind. But being truly honest means that you are honest with everyone in your life. This means that not only do you never lie; you never live a lie.You never stay in a situation that is wrong for you or in a condition that undermines your integrity or makes you unhappy.You never compromise your integrity by biting your lip and refusing to say what you truly think and feel.


YOUR HIGHEST GOAL

One of the hallmarks of the truly honest person is that they set peace of mind as their highest goal. Once you have set peace of mind as your primary aim in life, you organize your other goals and activities around it. Being truly honest means that you refuse to compromise your peace of mind for anything or anyone.You only do and say the things that you feel to be right in every situation.

       Honesty and integrity mean that you listen to yourself and that you trust your inner voice.You listen to your intuition and you let it guide you to do and say the right things at the right time.When you are disturbed or unhappy, you sit quietly by yourself in solitude, waiting and listening for the guidance that always comes.When you get an idea or insight into the right thing to do, you put it into action. You trust your higher mind. This is the key to living in truth with yourself and others.


THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR OWN MIND

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay ''Self-Reliance,'' said, ''Guard your integrity as a sacred thing.'' He went on to say, ''Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.''

       Truthfulness is the indispensable requirement for the development of character, and the development of character must be a central aim of your life. Aristotle said, ''The purpose of education is the development of the character of the young.''Today, in the United States, many young people have not been brought up with a clear sense of right and wrong. Many people have been told that values are relative. Many people have been told, for example, that if they like to shoplift, then that particular value is just as good as a person who believes that shoplifting is wrong.

       This form of value relativity leads down a blind alley. It leads to failure, frustration, and unhappiness. The fact is that values are not relative. There are values that are life-enhancing and there are values that are life-destroying. If a value is positive, living by it improves the quality of your life and your relationships with others. A negative value hurts your relationships and detracts from the quality of your life. You can easily tell the difference, because living by a positive value makes you feel happy, and practicing a negative value makes you feel unhappy.


FACE THE TRUTH

Living in truth means that you face the truth about yourself and the world around you. You face the truth about your work and your relationships. You look yourself directly in the eye and you live consistently with your innermost convictions.You do not play games with yourself or wish and hope that things could be different than they are.

       Integrity means that you accept that your world can only get better when you get better. No one is going to come along and change things for you. If you want things to change, you are going to have to make the changes yourself.

       Integrity means that you accept that your marriage gets better only when you become a better spouse. Your business gets better only when you become a better manager or executive.Your sales results and customers get better only when you become a better salesperson. Your financial life improves only when you become more intelligent and disciplined about money.


ACCEPT PEOPLE THE WAY THEY ARE

Especially, honesty means that you accept people the way they are, not demanding that they be the way you want. You do not go through life wishing, hoping, and expecting that people will change and be different so as to suit you. One of the basic principles of human life is that, with few exceptions, people don't change.

       In fact, under pressure, people not only do not change, but they become even more of what they already are inside. If a person has a difficult personality, under pressure he will become even more difficult. If someone is stubborn or inflexible, when she is put under pressure she will become even more stubborn and inflexible. If a person is slightly dishonest, when he is subjected to pressure or temptation he will become totally dishonest. People don't change.


BUSINESS AND COMPETITION

Honesty in our fast-moving world also means that you see the world of business and competition as it is, not as you wish it were, especially with regard to the explosion of information and technology. Many people think that they can make a token effort to keep up with the growth of knowledge in their field and the growth of technology in their work. But this minimum effort is not acceptable to the honest person. The truly honest person realizes that today you have to run just to stay in the same place. The truly honest person realizes that knowledge is doubling in every field every two to three years, and this means that your knowledge has to double every two to three years as well.

       Jack Welch, the past president and CEO of General Electric, once said, ''If the rate of change outside your organization is greater than the rate of change inside your organization, the end is in sight.'' This principle applies to you as a person as well. If you are not continually learning and upgrading your skills, you are in danger of becoming obsolete.


WHAT ARE YOU WORTH?

All over the country today, people are being laid off or fired by the thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, each year. In many cases, these people have allowed their levels of knowledge and skill to decline to the point where their companies could no longer afford to keep them on the payroll.

       Many of them were not completely honest with themselves. They did not continually upgrade their knowledge and skills so they could continue to add more and more value to their companies. They hoped that the dramatic changes taking place in the national and international economies would not affect them. And as a result, they got caught in the layoffs when the market for their products or services slowed down.

       It takes the average white-collar professional two to seven months to find another job, usually taking a pay cut of 14 to 40 percent. Some people get laid off from highly paid jobs and never make that kind of money again. And if they don't get busy upgrading their knowledge and skills, it can happen again.


FOCUS ON ADDING VALUE

Honesty means that you accept that your income is totally determined by your ability to contribute value to your company and, through your company, to your customers. An individual must generate three dollars of bottom-line profit for every dollar of salary or income that the person earns from the company. If you are not currently generating three dollars of profit or cost savings to the bottom line for your company, your job is a prime candidate for outsourcing, downsizing, or eliminating. Honesty means that you accept this as a fact and then do everything in your power to maintain and increase your value.

       True honesty means that you never expect to get out more than you put in.You never expect to get something for nothing.You don't gamble or buy lottery tickets, which in a way is an act of dishonesty. It is an attempt to get something that you have not earned. The truly honest person never attempts to get rewards without working, or to get rich quick or easy.

       In the United States today, millions of people are attracted to the quick fix. If they are employees or executives, they want new and better jobs, and they want them immediately. They are always looking for shortcuts, and as a result they are always frustrated and unhappy.

       They hope that problems that have taken many months and years to develop can be solved with a silver bullet of some kind.They are impatient and they want immediate results. But being an honest person requires that you resist the temptation of the quick fix in any part of your life.


TRUST IS THE GLUE

Relationships are central to a happy, healthy, satisfying life. All relationships are based on trust. Trust is the glue that holds relationships together. You can have all kinds of problems and disagreements with another person, but as long as the trust and respect are still there, the relationship can endure. But, if anything ever happens to the trust, the relationship can fall apart quickly, like a house of cards collapsing.

       All business relationships are based on trust. All relationships that involve money are dependent on the word of the borrower or the creditor. All relationships with your bankers, your suppliers, your customers, your staff, and everyone else in your financial world are based on that critical element of trust.

       Men and women of high integrity are fastidious about the levels of trust that they have built and maintained. They are careful about their credit, and about their financial commitments and arrangements. They always keep their word. They are careful about their banking relationships, their credit cards, their bills, and any money that they owe at any time.


A TALE OF TWO BANKRUPTCIES

Some years ago, two people I knew well, in two different businesses, were forced into bankruptcy because of the economic downturn. But the outcomes of their bankruptcies were completely different.

       The first of my friends had been meticulously careful about all of his bills and finances throughout his career. He had always paid at least the minimum amounts on his charge cards. If ever he had a financial problem, he went to the person affected and rearranged payments and interest.When he was finally forced into bankruptcy, by a massive and unexpected financial default over which he had no control, he had no choice but to go to court, give up all his assets, and walk away penniless.

       But within a week, people were approaching him and offering him money, loans, offices, credit cards, a place to live, and a new car. One of his previous business associates, quite wealthy, mailed him a blank check already signed, saying, ''Just fill in the amount you need and let me know for my records; I have complete faith in you.'' Aside from removing a great burden of debt from him, his bankruptcy hardly affected him at all.

       The second businessman, however, had a completely different experience. When he started to have financial problems, he continually misled and deceived his creditors, people who had trusted him. He neglected to make payments he had promised, and wrote checks that he couldn't cover. He avoided his creditors when they phoned, and he eventually changed his telephone number. He moved and didn't tell anyone his new address. He treated people who had trusted him by lending him money as if they were stupid. When he finally went bankrupt, no one wanted anything to do with him. It will take him years to recover, if he ever does. He can't even get a credit card; he now has to pay cash for everything.


THE KEY TO SALES SUCCESS

In sales, trust is the foundation of all relationships. A person will not buy from you until he or she trusts you completely. All top salespeople invest a good deal of time building high-quality, trusting relationships with their clients before they ever attempt to sell their products or services.

       An association to which I belong commissioned a $50,000 survey of customers last year. Since most of our organizations sell forms of training and consulting services that are somewhat similar, they wanted to find out what caused a purchaser to buy from one company and not another.

       One of the questions they asked the customers was what they were most concerned with in making a buying decision. More than 80 percent of the respondents to the survey said that the honesty and integrity of the salesperson was more important than any other factor.

       When they asked them what they meant by honesty and integrity in a salesperson, the customers replied that this meant that the salesperson put their interests first. They believed that the salesperson would keep his or her word. They believed the salesperson's claims about the product. They believed that the salesperson would do what he or she promised, and that the company would fulfill any commitments that the salesperson made. They had a high level of confidence in the word of the salesperson and in everything that he or she did or said in interactions with them.

       An interesting fact that came out of this survey was that the quality of the product or service was hardly mentioned. When customers were asked about their concerns over product quality, they replied that they felt that most products or services at a particular level were fairly similar and would achieve the results offered. The key to the sale was how they felt about the character of the salesperson, and through the salesperson, the company itself.


TRUTHFULNESS IS THE KEY TO CHARACTER

The real essence of character, and the most recognizable expression of honesty and integrity, is truthfulness. If you are completely truthful with yourself and others, you will almost always be viewed as a person of high character.

       In our society, men and women of character seem to attract opportunities. Doors are opened for them wherever they go. They are introduced to people who can help them. Money and other resources are made available to them. This is why the most important quality you can instill in your children is a sense of honesty and the habit of truthfulness in everything they do or say.


PARENTS AND CHILDREN

I have four children. Each of my children has been brought up having the importance of truthfulness drummed into them from an early age.Today, all four of them are adamant truth tellers.They are completely honest. I can ask them any question and they will always tell me the truth.

       When they were growing up, I made them each a promise. I said, ''You will never get into trouble with me for telling the truth.'' And I kept my word. When they did something foolish, as all children do, I would listen to their stories without judging or criticizing and then ask, ''Well, what did you learn?'' They soon learned that they could always tell the truth and never suffer criticism or disapproval. They loved it.

       Sometimes they fool around, but all I have to do is ask them for the truth and they will always give it to me, whatever it is. I'm very proud of them. It is absolutely amazing how much better relationships are between parents and children when they absolutely trust each other.


HUSBANDS AND WIVES

What is true for communications between parents and children is even more important for husbands and wives. One of the best definitions of love that I have ever heard is by Ayn Rand: ''Love is a response to values.''

       You love another person because he or she represents values that you respect and cherish. The other person embodies qualities that you admire. In short, you love another person for his or her character. All else will change or fade away over time, but character remains.

       Truthfulness and honesty between couples requires fidelity and straightforwardness between the two at all times. If a couple is ideally suited, they absolutely trust each other and are each other's best

       friends. There is no one that they would rather talk to or express themselves more honestly with than the other. Character, integrity, and honesty are the foundation qualities of a loving relationship, and are more important than anything else.


THE UNIVERSAL MAXIM

There is a wonderful test that you can give yourself on a regular basis to measure whether an act is good or bad, right or wrong. It is simple and you can use it throughout life. It is based on the Universal Maxim of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, postulated more than 200 years ago. He said that you should live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

       In other words, before you make a decision or take an action, imagine that everyone else was going to do exactly the same thing. Imagine that your decision was going to become a law for yourself and everyone else. This is the true test of whether your decision is a good one. It is the true test of a value or behavior.What kind of society would we have if everyone lived and behaved exactly the way you do?

       Many of the problems in our society would not exist if this test were applied regularly in debates over public and social policy. Governments would be slower to approve certain actions in the areas of crime, education, welfare, and business if there was a likelihood that everyone would engage in those actions.


SET HIGH STANDARDS FOR YOURSELF

Here are some questions that you can ask yourself on a regular basis: First, ask yourself, ''What kind of a world would my world be if everyone in it were just like me?'' Just imagine! If everyone in the world were just like you, would this be a better world in which to live? If everyone in the world were just like you, would this be a happier, healthier, more prosperous, and more harmonious world - or not?

       Then, ask yourself, ''What kind of a country would my country be if everyone in it were just like me?'' What would this country be like if everybody in it behaved exactly the way you do? If everyone did the things that you do in your daily life and work, would this be a better country? Or are there some things that you might do differently?

       The third question you can ask yourself is, ''What kind of a company would my company be if everyone in it were just like me?'' Look around you in your company and ask yourself if your company would be more prosperous and harmonious if everybody in it did their work exactly the way you do your work all day long.

       The final question that you can ask yourself is, ''What kind of a family would my family be if everyone in it was just like me?''

       If all the members of your family were just like you, would your family be a wonderful place to live and grow up in? Would everybody in your family thrive and be happier and more successful? Would you have the kind of family that other people would point to and admire and want to be like?

       The fact is that no one can answer ''yes'' to all of these questions. Each of us is a work in progress. Each of us has a long way go. Each of us has a lot of room for improvement.


THE QUALITY OF COURAGE

In a review of 3,300 studies of leadership conducted by James McPherson over the years, he found a common denominator. It was the quality of courage. Winston Churchill once said, ''Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.''

       You have heard it said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.The world is full of people with high and lofty goals and ambitions, but there are very few people who have the courage, the discipline, and the willpower to carry them out.

       The best part of practicing the quality of courage is that each time you behave courageously, you feel stronger and better about yourself.Your self-esteem increases and you like yourself more.You feel more confident and competent.You feel happier inside.

       In contrast, each time you compromise yourself in the area of courage your self-esteem goes down.You feel weaker and less competent. You don't like or respect yourself as much.


DO THE THING YOU FEAR

A fundamental part of becoming personally powerful requires that you live consistently with the highest values you know, in every area of your life. These virtues and values not only are self-reinforcing, they also are self-rewarding.You get an immediate payoff of inner satisfaction each time you force yourself to do what you know you should do, even when you don't feel like it.

       The fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. The antidote to the fear of failure is the courage to take action. Courage is so important as a quality that, like physical fitness, it requires a series of exercises to build it and maintain it.

       You best way to develop courage is by facing your fears. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ''Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.''

       When you do the thing that you are afraid of, you take control over both your emotions and your life.You shift your attitude from neutral or negative to positive and optimistic. ''Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.''


PRACTICE SYSTEMATIC DESENSITIZATION

Many people fear public speaking. But Toastmasters International has developed a powerful method of teaching public speaking even to people who are absolutely terrified of the idea of standing up and speaking in front of others. It is the process of ''systematic desensitization.'' You can use it in every area of your life to reduce fear and build courage.

       Systematic desensitization is a psychological term that refers to your doing something over and over again until it no longer holds any fear for you. In Toastmasters International, each member is required to stand up and speak, even if just for a few seconds, at every meeting. After several months of weekly meetings, people who were so terrified of speaking in front of others that they could not lead silent prayer in a phone booth become so confident about their ability to stand up and speak in front of peers that they compete for longer opportunities to talk.


SPEAK ON YOUR FEET

I have worked with countless executives who have taken my advice and joined Toastmasters International or taken a course from the Dale Carnegie organization. Within six months, they tell me that they are completely different people. From being shy and self-effacing at meetings and in presentations, they become calm, confident, bold, and even eloquent in expressing their points on their feet with other people. And their careers take off as well.

       When you can speak on your feet, you appear to be smarter and more competent than a person who cannot. Many executives, both men and women, have seen their careers take off, their incomes increase, and their responsibilities expand as they faced their fears by speaking over and over again and until they became very good on their feet.


TURN TOWARD DANGER

On the Serengeti Plain of Africa, zoologists have developed a simple technique to determine which one of the animals in the herd is the leader.

       When a predator - a lion or cheetah - approaches a herd of grazing animals, the members of the herd pick up the scent in the wind and begin drifting away in the opposite direction. At this time, the leader of the herd will emerge.The leader will be the animal that places himself between the predator and the herd while the herd begins to flee.The leader, risking his life facing the lion or cheetah that is moving in on the herd, will nonetheless stand his ground to buy time for the others to escape.

       The leader always ''turns toward danger.''This is as true for human beings as it is for animals.You become a leader to the degree to which you force yourself to turn toward danger as well. You identify the areas in your life that cause you fear and stress, and instead of avoiding them and hoping that they will go away, you confront them directly.


DO IT ANYWAY

The actor Glenn Ford once said, ''If you do not do the thing you fear, the fear controls your life.''

       It is almost as if the fear is the puppeteer and you are the puppet. If you don't deal with the fear,and cut the strings that hold you to the fear, the fear will cause you to dance emotionally and psychologically. If you let a fear go on for too long, it will tend to grow and grow and eventually come to dominate all of your thinking.

       Each time you think of the fearful situation or person, your heart will beat faster and your stomach will churn.You will be unable to sleep well at night. The fear will affect your health, your happiness, your relationships, and your interactions with your customers and coworkers. Over time, you will become so preoccupied with the fearinducing situation that you will not be able to think of anything else. This is no way to live.


FACE THE FEAR

The way you deal with fear is to confront the fear.You resolve to face the fear, deal with the fear, and put an end to the fear.

       When I was a young man and confronted with a fearful situation, I read a quote from Mark Twain that changed my attitude forever. It said, ''Courage is not lack of fear or absence of fear. It is mastery of fear, control of fear.''

       Those words had an enormous impact on me. I realized that we are all afraid of many things.To be afraid is normal and natural. In fact, the more intelligent you are, the greater number of possible fears you will have.You will have a greater sensitivity to your world and to the things it is logical for you to fear.


MOVE TOWARD THE FEAR

The only difference between the brave person and the coward is that the brave person confronts the fear and deals with it while the coward turns from the fear and flees from it.

       And here is a great discovery. When you confront a fear and move toward it, it diminishes and grows smaller. It loses its hold over you. But if you back away from a fear, it grows larger and soon takes control of your thoughts and feelings.

       When you habitually turn toward danger, do the thing you fear, face the fear, and move toward it bravely, it loses its power to affect you. Soon you dominate the fear rather than having it dominate you. You feel a tremendous sense of control. The quality that you need to face your fears, more than anything else, is the quality of self-discipline.

       Wonderfully enough, when you discipline yourself to face your fears, to act courageously, even when you don't feel like it, your fear situation goes away. You will feel terrific about yourself. You will have a sense of power and control over your life.


LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR

The first part of courage is the courage to launch in the direction of your goal. It is the ability and willingness for you to set a goal and then take the first step in the direction of achieving it.

       In a 12-year study at Babson College, entrepreneurial instructor Dr. Robert Ronstadt searched for the reasons for success or failure among the graduates of the business school. Some went on to build successful businesses, but most did not. He discovered that those who built successful businesses had a special quality. It was that they had the courage to launch their businesses with no guarantees of success. They were willing to risk failure in the pursuit of their dreams.

       Professor Ronstadt called this the ''corridor principle.'' He said that when you launch toward your goal, however distant, you begin to move down a corridor of time. As you move down this corridor, other doors of opportunity will open up on either side of you. But you would not have been able to see these other doors of opportunity if you were not already in motion down this psychological corridor toward your goal.

       Most people who succeed in life achieve their success in an area completely different from the field in which they started off. But because they were in motion, they saw opportunities and possibilities that they would not have been aware of if they had waited until everything was just right. And the fact is that everything will never be just right.


THE IRON QUALITY OF SUCCESS

If the first part of courage is the willingness to begin; the second part of courage is the willingness to endure. It is the courage to hang in there. It is the courage to stay the course. It is the courage to persist in the face of every setback and difficulty.

       Self-discipline is the iron quality of character. It is what enables you to endure. Self-discipline is the one quality that gives you the strength that you need to take risks and to move forward in the face of danger and uncertainty. It is self-discipline, and the courage that comes from self-discipline, that develops personal power within you that enables you to overcome any obstacle in your way.


DIFFERENT FORMS OF COURAGE

There are several forms of courage that you can develop with practice. These forms of courage will help you to achieve the great success that is possible for you. They are all learnable with practice.
Dream Big Dreams

       The first form of courage is the courage to dream big dreams and to set big goals. This is where most people are stopped. The very idea of setting big, challenging, exciting, worthwhile goals is so overwhelming that they quit before they even begin. But this is not for you. Sit down, write out your goals as if anything were possible for you, and never be afraid to dream big dreams.
Make a Commitment

       The second type of courage is the courage to make a total commitment, throwing yourself wholeheartedly into whatever it is you decide to do. All successful people of my experience are people who are living fully engaged. They are fully involved in their lives and in their goals. They don't do things by half measures. They may have no guarantees, but they are not afraid to put their whole hearts into their activities. If they fail, they fail by trying greatly, not by playing it safe, wishing and hoping that everything will work out all right.
Move out of Your Comfort Zone

       The third type of courage you need is the courage to move out of your comfort zone. It is the courage to move into your zone of discomfort, where you feel awkward, clumsy, and alone. The comfort zone is one of the greatest enemies of human potential. When people get into a comfort zone, they strive to stay in that comfort zone. 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 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.
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.
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.
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 complacent 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 themselv

Create Your Own Future

Create Your Own Future


The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave and determined spirit.

- Mark Twain

There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.

- Orison Swett Marden



Every successful person has experienced countless temporary setbacks, obstacles, and even outright defeats, in the course of his or her life. But it has been the ability to respond positively and constructively to these defeats and to bounce back that ultimately has assured success. This quality of bouncing rather than breaking will determine your success as well.

       Dr. Abraham Zaleznik of the Harvard Business School did a study some years ago on the role that disappointment plays in life. Many people had researched and written on motivation and its relationship to success. But Zaleznik was the first person who looked at the other side of the coin.


THINKING AHEAD

If you are a normal, intelligent person, you will organize each area of your life to avoid failure and disappointment as much as possible. You will think ahead and anticipate what could go wrong. You will then take the necessary precautions to guard against setbacks and problems.You will weigh and balance different options. You will select the course of action that offers the greatest likelihood of success.

       Nonetheless, no matter how well you think and plan, things will not always turn out the way you expect. Murphy's Law says: ''Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Of all the things that can go wrong, the worst possible thing will go wrong at the worst possible time and cost the most amount of money.'' Cohen's Law then adds: ''Murphy was an optimist!''

       Therefore, disappointment comes unbidden. Disappointment comes in spite of your best efforts to avoid it. Disappointment is inevitable and unavoidable. As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, you are going to experience disappointments in life. And the more goals you set and the more things you try, the more difficulties and problems you will have.


THE ONE THING YOU CAN CONTROL

What Dr. Zaleznik discovered was that successful people respond to disappointment differently from unsuccessful people. His conclusion was that the way you deal with disappointment is an extremely good predictor of whether you will achieve success in your field, or in life overall.

       Since you can't always avoid disappointment, no matter what you do, the only thing that matters is how you deal with the disappointment when it comes upon you, unwanted and unexpected. Do you let it overwhelm you? Do you blow up, become angry, and blame or attack other people? Or do you roll with the punches, and respond effectively?

       Successful people deal with disappointment by taking it in stride. Unsuccessful people allow disappointment to stop them. Successful people recover and continue forward. Unsuccessful people often quit and go back. Motivational speaker Charlie Jones says, ''It's not how far you fall but how high you bounce that counts!''


THE TRIGGER OF NEGATIVITY

Most negative emotions are triggered by frustrated expectations.You wish, hope, or plan for something to happen in a certain way, and when it doesn't, you react with impatience and anger. This is quite normal. If you care about a result, you are going to be hurt if you don't achieve it.

       The challenge is that emotions are triggered instantaneously. For this reason, you can have very little control over your emotions and reactions at the moment that something happens to you. It is too late. When the disappointment occurs, you will react instinctively and habitually, depending on your previous experiences. When things go wrong, it is too late for you to think of fine and noble thoughts.You simply react.

       Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, once wrote, ''Circumstances do not make the man; they only reveal him to himself,'' and to others, for that matter. It is not the adverse situation that builds your character so much as it reveals your character as it exists at that moment.


PREPARE IN ADVANCE

One of the best ways to change your thinking, and your life, is to prepare for disappointment in advance. Set yourself up to bounce back quickly by practicing mental prepreparation.

       Mental prepreparation enables you to prepare internally for the inevitable disappointments of life and work, even though you do not know what they are or when they will come. This is one of the most powerful of all thinking techniques that you can use to gain and keep control of your emotions, assuring that they are primarily positive and constructive, no matter what happens.

       In mental prepreparation, you begin with the premise that you are going to face all kinds of problems and difficulties when you decide to accomplish anything worthwhile in life. In fact, if you set a big, challenging goal for yourself, one that forces you out of your comfort zone, you are going to meet with countless obstacles and difficulties that you cannot now imagine.

       This trial by endurance seems to go with the territory. Every time you try to be or do something more or different, problems of all kinds will arise in your path. If you are not prepared in advance, they can discourage you and drive you back into your comfort zone.

       Instead of waiting for the inevitable problems to occur, you mentally prepare for these inevitable difficulties before they happen. You say to yourself: ''Today I will face all kinds of ups and downs, difficulties and setbacks, but I will not let them get me down. Once I start toward my goal, I will be unstoppable!''


PRACTICE CRISIS ANTICIPATION

In business consulting, we teach a way of thinking called ''crisis anticipation.'' I encourage decision makers to look six months to a year into the future and ask the question, ''What are some of the negative things that could happen that would derail our plans? Of all of them, what are the very worst things that could happen?''

       We then make a list of all the different setbacks or unexpected emergencies that could occur that would threaten the enterprise. For example: A competitor could come out with a new product or service that was better and/or cheaper than ours. Interest rates could go up. Government could place new taxes and regulations on our activities. Costs of fuel or raw materials could increase. A key person or persons within the organization could depart for some reason. A key customer or customers could leave and go to a competitor. Competitors could cut their prices below costs in order to take business away. The economy could tip into recession and the overall market could shrink dramatically.

       In each of these cases, the ability of the company to respond quickly and effectively could determine its very survival. These possible reversals and setbacks should be thought through in advance. The best rule is ''no surprises!''

       Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands has one of the most complete forward planning processes of any company in the world. It has developed over 600 scenarios to deal with problems that might occur around the world in areas where it has oil and gas operations. As a result, the company is seldom surprised by anything that happens. It is never caught off guard. It always has a backup plan ready to go. It has also become one of the most continuously profitable and successful companies in the world. Thinking ahead really pays off.


LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

What works for large and small corporations can work for you as well.You should practice crisis anticipation regularly in everything you do. Look down the road of your life, like a traveler, and imagine some of the negative things that might happen and how you could respond to them. You will be amazed at how much more positive and confident you will feel when you have already developed alternative courses of action to some of the worst things that could happen in a particular area.

       For example, what would you do if you lost your job today? The idea of losing one's job is a major fear for most people, affecting 37 percent of the working population according to one study. I received a letter recently from a gentleman who told me that his fear of losing his job, which he recognized was completely irrational, was so great that it was paralyzing him. It was actually holding him back from doing the kind of work that he had to do in order to keep his job. His fear and his lack of alternatives were actually increasing the likelihood that he would be laid off.


YOUR NEW JOB

Sometimes I ask people in my audiences, ''What is your next job going to be?'' For most people this question comes as a surprise. They have not even thought about what their next job is going to be. But we know that the world of work is changing at a rapid rate. The fact is that you have already changed jobs several times. It is virtually inevitable that you will change jobs again, and perhaps sooner than you expect.What is your next job likely to be?

       When I explain that each person must be preparing for his or her next job, it is a new idea for most people. They either have not thought about it or don't want to think about it. But the only question is this: ''What level of knowledge, skills, and ability will you require at your next job in order to continue to earn the kind of money that you want to earn in the future?''

       If you don't think about this question in advance, you may be forced to think about it when your time has run out and the question is forced upon you.


YOUR NEW CAREER

After audience members have thought about what their next job is going to be, I then ask the second question, ''What is your next career going to be?'' What entirely new field, industry, business, or line of work are you going to be in 5 to 10 years from now?

       According to employment experts, a person starting work today will have an average of 14 or 15 full-time jobs, each lasting two years or more, over the course of a working lifetime. He or she will also have as many as five different careers, in completely different fields, each of which will require new kinds of knowledge and different skills.

       Much of what you know about your current work will be obsolete within five years. Because of rapid changes taking place in every area, your existing store of knowledge, information, ideas, and skills will be of little value. These will have no relevance or application to the job market and the economy of the future.You will need new knowledge and skills if you want to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive society.

       This is why Peter Drucker said, ''The only skill that will not become obsolete in the years ahead is the ability to learn new skills.''


CONTINUALLY THINK AHEAD

You probably recall the famous comment by hockey star Wayne Gretzky. When he was asked by a reporter for the secret of his success on the ice, he replied by saying, ''Most players are pretty good, but they go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be.''

       This observation is directly relevant to you. Where is your puck going to be three to five years from now? Where is your puck going to be 10 years from now? Taking a long-term perspective on your work life enables you to make better decisions in the short term. As strategic planner Michael Kami says, ''Those who do not think about the future cannot have one.''

       Look into your future and begin to imagine and anticipate some of the twists and turns that might occur. If you lost your job today, how would you react? What would be your first thought? The great majority of people, when they think about losing their jobs, go into a form of panic.They have no idea what they would do.

       However, in my work with many thousands of successful people, I have found that they have one particular attitude in common. They all know with complete assurance that if they lost their jobs they could walk across the street and get another job tomorrow. They are so good at what they do, and so confident in their abilities, that job loss to them would be merely an inconvenience. They have lots of options.

       As I mentioned in Chapter 6, there is a way to determine how good you are in your field.What is the number of job offers you get on a regular basis? Just as a store or restaurant can measure its success by the number of customers or patrons it attracts, you can measure how valued and respected you are for what you do by counting the number of people who want to hire you and use your services. How are you doing?


EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Sometimes I ask audiences what they would do if their entire industry disappeared overnight. They shake their heads and they say that can't possibly happen. Then I point out that the defense industry in California literally collapsed in the early 1990s and over 400,000 highly competent defense engineers and executives, with many years of education and experience, were rendered obsolete. Their jobs were not only gone; they were gone forever. Each of these thousands of competent, capable men and women were forced into the position of going out into the marketplace, developing new skills, and going to work in entirely new fields.

       The collapse of the dot-com mania wiped out more than 90 percent of the Internet jobs and companies that had sprung up across the country. The collapse in the telecom sector led to layoffs of many thousands of workers. The decline in recent years of the frantic investment activity that had been seen during the 1990s triggered the layoffs and firings of tens of thousands of people in the financial services industries. It goes on and on, and will continue. Only the names of the industries will change.This rapid shift in jobs and industries is going to happen more and more often to more and more people.


YOUR FINANCIAL LIFE

The world of finance and investments is constantly changing. The markets are increasingly volatile. The old philosophy of ''buy and hold'' is no longer relevant to the world of today, and tomorrow. If you have money invested, you should be thinking continually about what might happen if your investments went bad and you lost all your money.You should always be preparing against the worst possible outcome of a particular investment.

       There is a direct relationship between how much time you invest in thinking about and planning your financial life and how likely you are to become financially independent. According to Dr. Thomas Stanley's interviews with thousands of self-made millionaires, they share a common characteristic: they spend far more time thinking about financial matters than the average person.

       The average adult, even though he or she worries about money much of the time, spends only two to three hours per month actually thinking about his or her finances, usually at bill-paying time. The average affluent American, in contrast, spends 20 to 30 hours per month thinking about his or her money. As a result, they make far better spending decisions and more intelligent investments than the majority. They become increasingly skilled in money matters, and eventually pull ahead of their peers.


THE STRATEGY OF NAPOLEON

The French general Napoleon dominated the continent of Europe for almost 20 years. He led his armies to victory in dozens of battles, and lost only three battles in his entire career. He lost almost 600,000 men when he invaded Russia, failing to anticipate the cold of the Russian winter. Greatly weakened from the Russian campaign, he subsequently lost the battle of Leipzig, which led to his being exiled to the island of Elba. And finally, he lost at the battle of Waterloo due to a series of miscommunications with his field generals.

       It is often forgotten that he won many other battles, small and large, and is considered to be one of the three greatest military geniuses of history. (Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were the other two.) Napoleon had developed a quality that helped him to achieve victory, which you also can develop. It is called extrapolatory thinking. This is the ability to think and plan several moves ahead in whatever you are doing. This way of thinking involves your considering every possible event that could occur, and then making provisions for them, well in advance.

       Napoleon personally felt that his thoroughness and depth of preparation, carefully considering every detail, were his key to victory. This quality was demonstrated by his phenomenal ability to arrive onto the field of a potential battle and then to think through every single possible twist and turn of the battle to its logical conclusion - before the first shot was fired.

       Once he had completed his preparations, he could take his position at his command center to direct the battle. No matter what news he received from any part of the battlefield, he was always ready with an immediate response. Many people thought that his quickness of response under fire was because he was a brilliant thinker, which he was, but that was not the secret of his success. His secret was that he had thought through every possible eventuality, in advance.


EXTRAPOLATE FROM THE PRESENT

This ability, to think through every major situation in your life in advance, is a way of thinking that you can learn with practice.The better you become at anticipating future events based on current facts, the better your life will be.You will be able to minimize reversals and maximize opportunities. Thinking this way will give you an edge over others who simply react and respond to whatever happens.

       If you work for a company, you should be thinking through the worst possible things that could happen in the next six months to a year that could affect your job and your security. If you own the company, you should identify the worst possible things that could affect the survival and health of your enterprise. You and your spouse should discuss possible problems and difficulties that might occur in your family life, and then make plans to guard against them.


TAKE NECESSARY FINANCIAL PRECAUTIONS

You often read about people who failed to insure properly and consequently lost their cars, their homes, and sometimes all of their possessions. They failed to look into the future and ask what the consequences to their life would be if a fire occurred in their home or if they had a traffic accident and they were not sufficiently insured.

       One of the smartest things that you can do to preserve your financial well-being is to develop a regular savings program.Your goal should be to save 10 percent and more of your income, off the top, each month, from each paycheck or income source. There are few things that will give a greater sense of confidence and control than for you to know that you have a cash reserve set aside in the event of an unexpected emergency. In contrast, there is nothing that will cause you more stress and tension than to be living on the edge of your financial resources, unable to deal with a financial emergency or a need of any kind.

       W. Clement Stone once said, ''If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.''


LIVE WITHIN YOUR INCOME

Your ability to save money and to discipline yourself to live within your income is a key measure of your ability to succeed in life. If you do not have the internal self-control to refrain from spending everything you earn, this suggests that you probably don't have the discipline necessary to succeed in other areas of your life. Although the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, it is far more likely that the lack of money is the root of all evil.

       Perhaps the greatest benefit of saving your money and building up a cash reserve is that it enables you to take advantage of opportunities when they arise, as they always do. In the movie Field of Dreams, a profound idea was expressed: ''If you build it, they will come.'' In the financial world, this means that if you accumulate money through hard work and saving, you will attract into your life opportunities to invest that money to earn even more.


LIVE WITHIN YOUR INCOME

The Law of Attraction is very powerful in monetary matters.When you save even a small amount of money and put it in a bank account or a carefully chosen mutual fund, you create a certain force field of energy around that money. This energy somehow begins to attract even more money into your life. As your savings and investments grow, the magnetic power of your money grows even stronger. The more money you accumulate, the more money that will be attracted to you, and the more opportunities you will have to accumulate even more.

       When you think about your money and the pleasure it gives you to have money in the bank, you increase the energy field around your money and you attract even more. This force field becomes even more powerful when you love your money. When you think about your growing financial reserves with intense happiness, you intensify the energy around your money and you attract even more.

       When people say that it takes money to make money, they are right in two special ways. First, your ability to save money and build up a nest egg is a measure of whether you have the ability to earn even more money and whether you can be trusted with money. Second, when you put together even a small amount of money, you will attract opportunities to accumulate an even larger amount.


A SUCCESS STORY

A participant came up to me at a seminar recently and asked if I remembered him. I told him that unfortunately I spoke to too many people each year to remember all of them. He reminded me that he had attended my two-day seminar about six years before. He was quite shy so he waited at the lunch break until everyone had left. He then told me about a most remarkable series of events that had happened to him since the seminar.

       When he came to my seminar, he was a used car salesman. He had two children and was in his early thirties. He was earning an average income and was up to his neck in debt. He was living in a rented house with his family.

       At the seminar, he decided that his biggest source of worry was the fact that he was in debt and had no money in the bank. So he set a goal to get out of debt and to save $30,000 over the next five years. This was a huge goal for him, considering his circumstances and his past. He had not been out of debt since his teens.


TAKING ACTION

Nonetheless, in faith, he wrote down his goal, made a plan, and began working on it every day.This decision activated his mental powers. Because of the Law of Correspondence, the Law of Attraction, and the Law of Subconscious Activity, among others, things began to change for him far faster than he had imagined. He actually achieved his financial goal in only three years. He was out of debt and had $30,000 in the bank.

       One day, his boss, the owner of the dealership, called him in and asked him if he was interested in a business opportunity. He was quite flattered and asked his boss to explain. His boss said that he had observed how much better he had become as a salesman, and he had also heard that he had saved up some money from his income.

       This salesman was shy and cautious, and asked his boss what he had in mind. His boss told him that he had been approached by the automobile manufacturer in Detroit and asked to recommend someone who would be interested in opening a new car dealership in the same city in a growing part of town. The boss said he was willing to recommend him, and back him in this dealership. He would go in with him as a full partner if he were willing to put in his money as well.

       The final outcome of this story was that his boss helped him set up the new dealership; he helped him with all the purchasing, inventory, parts, service department decisions, and staffing. After two years, his boss sold the half share back to him, so he ended up owning the dealership 100 percent.

       Then he said to me, ''And today, I'm a millionaire.'' He said, ''Six years ago I was a used car salesman, and today I am a millionaire.'' He was one of the happiest people I've ever met. He said if he had not taken that advice from the seminar and begun saving his money and getting out of debt, he would not have been in a position to take advantage of that opportunity when it came along. He said, ''Taking your seminar probably saved me 20 years of hard work, and maybe even a lifetime.''

       This story applies to your life as well. One of the most important actions that you can take to remain positive and optimistic is to prepare mentally, financially, and physically in advance. Think through what might possibly happen and make plans to prepare for opportunities. Make plans and put aside reserves to minimize or escape the consequences of a financial setback. This way of thinking, of planning ahead in every area, is a mark of the superior individual.


TWO MAGIC QUESTIONS

Here are two questions that you can ask to turn failure into success. I call these the magic questions because of the incredible power they have to improve your life.You can ask them and benefit from them after every experience.

       The first question is, ''What did I do right?'' No matter what you do, or how it turns out, whether it is a success or a failure, you should do an instant mental replay of the event and assess everything that you did right in that situation.

       Even if it turns out badly, or was a complete failure, there were always things that you did that were correct. If you can isolate the positive parts of your performance and write them down, you will be preprogramming your mind to repeat the things that you did right in the next similar situation.

       The second magic question is, ''What would I do differently?'' This is an excellent question because it forces you to think positively about what happened and how you could do better. Ask yourself, if you had to do it over again, how would you change or improve your performance or behavior in that situation? What would you do more of or less of?

       Be sure to write down your answers. This ensures that you capture them before you forget. Each time you try something new or different, immediately sit down with a pad of paper and answer those two questions: ''What did I do right?'' and ''What would I do differently?'' Both of these questions are positive and they both require positive responses.Your answers prepare you, consciously and unconsciously, to do even better next time. Both sets of answers keep you focused on improvement rather than regret.


POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE THINKING

Both winners and losers examine how they performed after an important event. But underachievers almost invariably rehash the mistakes they have made, the expenses they have incurred, and the failures they have experienced. High achievers, in contrast, those who think positively about themselves and their lives, are constantly reviewing the best parts of their performance and making plans to repeat those actions the next time.

       When you think about what you did right and what you could do differently next time, your mind will be completely positive.Your creativity will be stimulated.You will see all kinds of opportunities and possibilities for improvement that you would have missed completely if you allowed yourself to feel sorry for yourself after an unsuccessful event.


BUSINESS AND SALES

If you are in business, you should ask these questions regularly of yourself and your key staff: ''What did we do right?'' and ''What would we do differently next time?'' Remember, most things you try will be unsuccessful the first few times. By asking these questions, you extract the greatest value possible from the situation. Treat every experience as an opportunity to learn something that can help you next time.

       If you are in sales, use this method after every sale. Immediately after a sales call, successful or not, ask the magic questions. This quick review will dramatically increase the speed at which you learn and grow as a sales professional.

       Make this instant replay a part of your life. Use this method repeatedly so that it becomes automatic. No matter how disappointing the setback or difficulty may be, you will soon be preprogrammed to learn the most from the situation and to extract every kernel of good that you can possibly get from it.

       When you combine this method with mindstorming - forcing yourself to generate 20 answers to each question - you will be absolutely astonished at the number of great ideas and insights for growth and improvement you will come up with. These ideas will dramatically increase the speed at which you become one of the best in your field.


THE EDISON APPROACH

Thomas Edison, the greatest inventor of the modern age, was convinced that experimentation was simply a process of elimination. He therefore kept accurate records of every experiment. Once he had decided that an invention was possible, he dedicated himself to eliminating the ways that wouldn't work until the only method left standing was the one way that would work. As a result, he became the greatest inventor of the modern age and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country.You should do the same.

       From now on, each time you try and fail, shrug it off as a learning experience that just moved you one step closer to success. As Henry Ford once said, ''Failure is merely an opportunity to more intelligently begin again.''


YOUR RECOVERY RATE

When you experience a disappointment of any kind, your natural reaction is to feel stunned emotionally.You feel as though you have been punched in your emotional solar plexus. You feel hurt, let down, disappointed, and discouraged. You occasionally feel like quitting altogether and doing something completely different. These feelings are normal and natural when you experience frustration or failure of any kind. The only question is, how long do they last?

       When you go to a doctor or clinic for a complete medical exam, you will often be given a stress test. First, they will take your pulse at your resting heart rate.Then they will ask you to do some aerobic exercises to raise your heart rate. Once your heart rate is up to a particular point, they will measure it again. They will wait one, two, and five minutes after the exercise, and again take your pulse. The mark of how fit you are is how rapidly your heart returns to its resting pulse rate after exercise.


BOUNCING BACK

With your personality, it is the same. The mark of how mentally healthy you are can be measured by how quickly you recover after experiencing a disappointment. Of course, a setback or reversal will hurt. It always hurts if what you are trying to do is important to you. But that's not the main point. The main point is how quickly you bounce back.Your recovery rate is everything. If you plan in advance for setbacks and problems, and preprogram your mind the way we have described in this chapter, your recovery rate will be much faster.

       Your recovery rate is under your control. It is completely determined by the way you think about what happens to you. It is not the event itself that affects you, but rather the way that you interpret the event to yourself. And this is very much a choice you make.


YOUR INNER DIALOGUE

Here are several powerful affirmations that you can use to take immediate mental and emotional control over a negative situation. These words quickly neutralize any negative feelings you might have.

       The first thing you say when something goes wrong is the words: ''I am responsible!''

       Your natural tendency when something goes wrong will be to become angry and upset and either blame someone or something else or make excuses. But the moment you say, ''I am responsible!'' you stop blaming someone else for the problem. By accepting responsibility, even if it is only for the way you react, you short-circuit your feelings of disappointment, anger, and frustration. The instant you say, ''I am responsible!'' your mind becomes calm and clear again.You begin to think of positive, constructive things you can do to minimize the damage or to maximize the opportunity.


INTERPRET IT POSITIVELY

Here is an affirmation that has been extraordinarily helpful to me over the years. No matter what has happened, and no matter how disappointed I am, I immediately say, ''Every experience is a positive experience if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.''

       This statement enables you to assert control over your emotions. It forces you to think about how you can learn and grow from this problem. Like the statement ''I am responsible,'' these words give you a sense of control and personal power in any situation. ''Every situation is a positive situation if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.''

       You then look into the situation and ask yourself what you can possibly learn from what has just happened. How can you grow as a result of this difficulty? What has this situation been sent to teach you? If you had a divine force that was controlling your destiny, and this force was sending you specific learning experiences to help you to be successful, what lessons could you find in your current problem?


ONE THOUGHT AT A TIME

Your mind can hold only one thought at a time, positive or negative. If you are constructively looking for a solution for or a valuable lesson from every difficulty, you can't be upset or angry at the same time. If you apply the Law of Substitution and deliberately force yourself to think about the positive aspects of the situation, you will always find them.You will then be able to turn them to your advantage.

       A positive mental attitude, which means a positive and constructive response to disappointments and setbacks, is largely determined by your feeling a sense of control. Having a sense of control means that you feel you are in control of your own life.You feel that you are in charge.You feel that you are in the driver's seat.You feel that you are on top of things.


THINK ABOUT YOUR GOALS

One of the most powerful ways to bounce back from failure is to put the negative situation into its proper perspective. Remember, failure is never final. Most mistakes that you make are small relative to the great scheme of things. If you think back, you will probably not even be able to remember what it was you were worrying about a year ago, much less three, four, or five years ago.

       The key to your having a sense of control is for you to develop and maintain a clear sense of direction.This sense of direction comes from having clear, specific, written goals. One of the most powerful ways to keep your mind positive is to simply think about your goals. When something goes wrong, think about your goals.When you lose a sale, or even a job, think about your goals.When an investment fails or a business deal falls through, think about your goals.

       Your long-term goals are to be financially independent, to enjoy excellent health, to have wonderful relationships, and to do work that makes a difference in the world, among others.

       When you keep your mind on these goals, and on what you are doing to achieve each of these goals, you will find that it is almost impossible to feel upset or angry. Thinking about your goals empowers you and makes you a more positive and confident person.


THINK IN TERMS OF CYCLES AND TRENDS

Look at your life as a series of cycles and trends. Think in terms of regular ups and downs. Think in terms of summers and winters, falls and springs. When you develop this long-term perspective and you see things that happen as part of a larger pattern, you will not be too caught up in short-term fluctuations of your fortunes. You become much more capable of responding effectively to little problems and difficulties of day-to-day life. You can put things into proper perspective.

       The sigmoid curve, which looks like an ''S'' lying on its side, explains much of human life. It has three phases. In the first phase, you are struggling and working hard to figure things out and get established. This is true for a job, a relationship, a new business startup, or the introduction of a new product or service.

       The second phase comes after you have learned the critical lessons of phase one. This is the growth phase, where you make great progress and get excellent results.Your business expands, your products and services sell well, your career takes off, and your relationships are at their best.

       Then comes phase three, the decline phase, which follows phase two just as the winter follows the harvest season. In this phase, it becomes harder and harder to get the same results and satisfactions as in phase two. Sales and profitability are harder to achieve.Your job or relationship is no longer as enjoyable.Your company struggles to survive or thrive.

       Which phase are you in today, in each of the important areas of your life and work? What could you do to get into or back into phase two, the growth phase? What are the cycles and trends in your life and business?


''DENIAL'' IS NOT A RIVER IN EGYPT

Many of our problems in dealing with setbacks and disappointments come from our resisting reality.We engage in denial.We become angry and insist that this should not have happened to us or should not have happened at all.We reject it and wish that it hadn't occurred in the first place.

       It is this resistance and denial that causes most of our stress. When you say, ''What can't be cured must be endured,'' you lower your flash point.You become more relaxed.You become calmer and you develop a more detached perspective.You stand back and you look at the situation as though it were happening to someone else. As a result you become more constructive about how the situation can best be resolved.You don't allow yourself to become emotionally involved in every little thing that happens to you.

       Abraham Lincoln wrote, ''Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.'' In the Foundation for Inner Peace's Course in Miracles, it says, ''You give meaning to everything you see.'' Without the meaning or emotion that you attach to an event or circumstance, it has no emotional significance for you. And you can change the meaning by controlling your thinking. You can even eliminate its negative effect on you altogether by refusing to become emotionally involved in a short-term setback. It is up to you.


THE DECIDING FACTOR

Your ability to deal with disappointment in a positive, constructive way will do more to enable you to succeed and say more about you to other people than any other single factor. This is a learned ability, acquired by practice. Effective men and women are invariably those who have developed the ability to respond constructively to the large and small crises that occur unbidden, unexpectedly, and unavoidably. You must do the same.

       Decide in advance that, no matter what happens, nothing will ever stop you. Decide in advance that, although you will have countless ups and downs in the course of your life, you will keep on persisting until you win through to your goals. When you make this decision in advance, you will be ready.When you engage in mental prepreparation, you will be fast on your feet when the inevitable problems appear, and be ready to bounce instead of break.You will be virtually unstoppable.

       ACTION EXERCISES



Resolve that you will bounce rather than break. Examine your biggest disappointment in life right now and determine how you can learn or benefit from it.

Identify the three worst things that could happen to you in the months ahead.What is your plan to avoid or minimize their possible negative effects?

Select your biggest worry or problem right now and determine how you can learn and grow from this difficulty. What is the most important lesson that it contains?

Practice the Edison approach to life. Calmly accept that every temporary setback is merely a way of identifying a way that does not work. Therefore, it is a success.

No matter what happens, think about your goals and what you can do right now to achieve them. Get busy.

Identify the trends in your business.Which way is the market going? If things continue the way they are today, what decisions or changes will you have to make?

Ask two questions about your most recent important experience: What did you do right? And what would you do differently next time? Resolve to learn every possible lesson from every setback or difficulty.