Just Shut Up And Do It - Brian Tracy

Brief Personal Take

You know you have found value when you find a Brian Tracy book. I absolutely loved reading this one. It’s one of those that you cannot put down once you start reading. I definitely won’t mind reading it again, but the notes below will do the trick whenever I need its practical advice.

If you’re looking for something that will give you a nudge into taking action, this book will give you more than that, it will shove you into action. Just shut up and do it is more than an instructional book, it takes a

motivational and practical approach to help you achieve more. Brian Tracy touches on how your habits, procrastination, and fear among other things affect you into inaction but also how you can leverage them into working in your favor.

If you have read the book, these notes will help jog your memory and if you haven’t, I hope they will make you want to read it because it’s worth it. 

 

Chapter 1 – The biggest Obstacle to Success

·        We make our habits and our habits make us.

·        The biggest obstacle to success is that people have negative habits.

·        The good news is that they can all be unlearned and replaced by new positive habits.

·        The worst habits are based on our self-limiting beliefs. You end up believing it’s true in those areas when it’s not true.

·        It’s easy to tell f you believe you can achieve your goals. You look at what you’re doing. If you do you’d be out there working on them all day.

·        Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with.

·        The worst disease that sabotages and undermines most of success is called excuses.

·        Fully functional people never complain, never explain. They never make excuses or justify their behavior. They either do it or they don’t do it.

 

Chapter 2 – Take Charge of Your Life

·        Accept 100% of the person you are today, for all you have achieved and that which you are yet to achieve in the coming months or weeks or years ahead.

·        You are responsible. No one is coming to the rescue. It’s all up to you.

·        Responsibility (personal) is the key divide between winners and losers, the rich and the poor.

·        The rule for happiness is to never worry or be upset or angry about something that you cannot change. All you can do from an unhappy experience is learn from it, then let it go. Take 100% responsibility.

 

Chapter 3 – Dare to Go Forward

·        Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.

·        One of the most important requirements for success is action orientation.

·        It is expressed in a sense of urgency to get the job done quickly.

·        The biggest obstacle to taking action is fear.

·        The antidote to fear is self-confidence.

·        Self confidence is built on a foundation of courage, which is the key quality to success.

·        If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate, that’s where you find success on the far side of failure.

·        Learn to be unafraid by doing it over and over again.

·        Leaders seldom use the word failure, they say, “This was a valuable learning experience” or “painful learning experience.”

·        The process to succeed today is simple:

 

1.    Decide what you want to do

2.    Take action immediately

3.    Fail and learn quickly

4.    Try again, over and over until you succeed.

 

·        Act as though it was impossible to fail, and it shall be.

·        Whatever you want wants you.

·        The faster you fail, the faster you succeed.

·        The more often you fail, the more courage and confidence you gain until you become unstoppable.

 

Chapter 4 – Decide What You Really Want

·        You become what you think about most of the time. You have to be hungry for success. Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan in which we must fervently believe and must vigorously act. There’s no other route to success.

 

Chapter 5 – Overcome Procrastination

·        All success comes from task completion. Getting started and completing a job as soon as possible.

·        Procrastination is a learned behavior usually in childhood then it grows?

·        Everyone procrastinates, just on different things. Practice creative procrastination by doing your lower value tasks until you have completed your higher-value tasks.

 

Chapter 6 – Become a Lifelong Learner

·        The antidote to doubt and fear are knowledge for doubt and skill for fear.

·        66% of 2015’s Forbes billionaires edition attribution much of their success to continuous learning.

·        Most of these wealthy people say they were just lucky but it’s not luck at all, it was a matter of probabilities. If you throw enough darts at a dartboard, you will eventually hit a bulls-eye. It’s not luck but a matter of probability.

·        Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

 

Chapter 7 – Never Give Up

·        There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

·        There are 2 parts of success: “the-get-to-itiveness” and “the-stick-to-itiveness”.

·        As hard as it is, almost anyone can get started, but to persevere through thick and thin, to continually pick yourself up over and over and to face failure and disappointment requires the best in you.

·        A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve not the desire to beat others.

·        A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills to accomplish his goal.