Goals - Brian Tracy

Brief Personal Take

Brian Tracy takes goal setting to a whole new level with goals. And I’m really not that surprised considering it’s a Brian Tracy book. It doesn’t leave out a single thing on how to set goals, in fact, I picked out a lot more than I thought was necessary for setting goals. It’s probably the best goal setting guide you can ever get your hands on.

If you’re tired of setting new year’s resolutions that remain resolutions year after year, this is the book for you. If you have anything, and I do mean anything at all that you want to achieve in your life no matter how big or small, you definitely have to read this book. Don’t just take my word for it, read the notes for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.

I took out quite a lot of notes from this book, and that’s because it’s packed with so much value. It took me a lot of time to put this whole post together but I had fun while doing it anyway and I hope you have just as much fun reading it.

Enjoy! 

 

 

Chapter 1 – Unlock Your Potential

·        Success is goals.

·        The great summary statement of all religions, philosophies, metaphysics, psychology and success is this: you become what you think about most of the time.

·        Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. The most common answer given by successful people is that they think about what they want and how to get it most of the time.

·        Living without goals is like driving in a thick fog. No matter how powerful your car, you drive slowly, hesitantly, making little progress on even the smoothest road.

·        Decidedly your goal clears the fog immediately and allows you to focus and channel your energies and abilities toward what you really want.

·        Clear goals enable you to step on the accelerator of your own life and race ahead rapidly toward achieving more of what you want in life.

·        Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, or goal.

·        You feel truly happy when you are making progress step-by-step, towards something that is important to you.

·        Goals give you that sense of meaning and purpose a clear sense of direction.

·        You are happy when you are doing something that is moving you towards something you want.

·        Setting goals, working towards them day by day, and ultimately achieving them is the key to happiness in life.

·        People don’t set goals for 4 reasons:

1.    They think goals aren’t important

2.    They don’t know how

3.    They have a fear of failure

4.    Fear of rejection

 

 

Chapter 2 – Take Charge of Your Life

·        The greatest enemies of success and happiness are negative emotions of all kinds.

·        The 4 root causes of negative emotions are:

1.    Justification

2.    Rationalism (seeking a socially acceptable explanation for a socially unacceptable act)

3.    Hypersensitivity (concern over people’s opinions of you)

4.    Blaming

 

·        Responsibility is the antidote for all negative emotions of all kinds.

·        View yourself as self-employed. See yourself as in complete charge of every part of your life or career.

·        Remind yourself that you are where you are because of what you have done or failed to do. You are very much the architect of your own destiny.

·        You are your own boss. Now, choose your boss with care. Are you an exemplary hard working boss?

·        Your choice of boss decides how much you earn, how fast you get ahead, and how happy you are at work.

·        Your choice of a mate and friends will have as much or more to do with success and happiness than any other decision you make.

·        If you’re not happy with your current choices it is up to you to make new ones.

·        The starting point of goal setting for you is to realize that you have virtually unlimited potential to be, have, or do anything you really want in life if you simply want it bad enough and are willing to work long enough and hard enough to achieve it.

·        The second part of goal setting is for you to accept complete responsibility for your life, and for everything that happens to you, with no blaming and no excuses.

 

 

Chapter 3 – Clarify Your Values

·        You can tell how people think, most of the time, by looking at the conditions of their outer lie. A positive, optimistic, goal and future-oriented person on the inside will enjoy a happy, successful and prosperous life on the outside, most of the time.

·        Your goals must be congruent with your values and your values must be congruent with your goals.

·        An attempt to live on the outside in a manner that contradicts the values you hold on the inside will cause you stress, negativity, unhappiness.

·        Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building. Many people work very hard to achieve goals they think they want only to get no joy or satisfaction from their accomplishments. This happens when your values are in conflict with your accomplishments.

·        The unhappiness people in life are those who are attempting to live in conflict with what they truly value and believe.

·        Self-trust is the foundation of greatness.

·        Self-trust comes from listening to your intuition. Your still, small voice within.

·        “Tell me what gives a person his greatest feeling of importance and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life.” – Dale Carnegie

·        What makes you feel important? What raises your self-esteem?

·        What gives you satisfaction? These answers will give you good indications to your true values.

·        You should live your life as if you were already the outstanding person that you intend to be sometime in the future.

·        Remember it doesn’t really matter where you’re coming from, all that really matters is where you’re going.

 

 

Chapter 4 – Analyze Your Beliefs

·       The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and faith to believe that it’s possible.

·        The law of belief says that whatever you believe with conviction becomes your reality.

·        Proverbs 23:7 – As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

·        Personal growth comes from changing your beliefs about what you can do and what is possible for you.

·        Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.

·        The worst of all beliefs are self-limiting beliefs.

·        If you believe yourself to be limited in some way, whether or not it is true, it becomes true for you.

·        Overcoming self-limiting beliefs and self-imposed limitations is often the biggest obstacle between you and the realization of your full potential.

·        Self limiting beliefs, sometimes based on a single experience or single casual remark can hold you back for years.

·        The roots of most of our problems in life are contained in the feeling “I’m not good enough”.

·        You have competencies and capabilities that have never been tapped.

·        The good news about beliefs is that all beliefs can be learned.

·        They can, therefore, be unlearned if they are not helpful.

·        It ain’t what a man knows that hurts him; it’s what he knows that ain’t true.

·        What if you were possessed of an area where you didn’t think you were very good like selling or entrepreneurship or money-making?

·        Successful people look for the good in every situation. They now that it is always there.

·        If your beliefs are positive enough, you will seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty.

·        “Within every obstacle or difficulty there is the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit.” –Napoleon Hill

·        Act your way into feeling. The law of reversibility in psychology and metaphysics says “you’re more likely to act yourself into feeling a particular way than you are to feel yourself acting”.

·        What this means is that when you start you may not feel like the great success you desire to be, doubting your abilities, without the self-confidence, that you’re at least not yet good enough.

·        But if you act as if you are already the person you desire to be, your actions will generate the feelings that go with them.

·        This is called acting your way into feeling the way you want to feel by the law of reversibility.

·        When you start to walk, talk, dress like the top people infield, you’ll begin to feel like the top people.

·        You beliefs are always manifested in your words and actions. Make sure what you do and say is consistent with your beliefs and the person you want to become.

  

 

Chapter 5 – Create Your Future

·        There is a special quality that stands out between great leaders; It is the quality of vision. Leaders have vision. Non-Leaders do not.

·        Leaders thin about the future, and where they’re going and what they can do to get there.

·        We call this leadership quality “future orientation”.

·        Long term perspective is the ability to think several years into the future while making decisions in the present.

·        The further you look into the future, the better decisions you’ll make in the present to assure that that future becomes a reality.

·        Refuse to compromise your dreams. Don’t settle for smaller goals or half successes.

·        Dare to dream and fantasize then risk yourself.

·        “HOW?” This is the most important question and it stimulates your creativity and it triggers ideas to help you accomplish your goals.

·        Just do it! The primary difference between high achievers and low achievers is “action orientation”.

·        The clearer you can be about your long term future, the more rapidly you attract people and circumstances into your life to help make the future a reality.

·        Clarity about who you are and what you want makes you achieve more and the faster you will achieve it in every area of your life.

 

 

Chapter 6 – Determine Your Goals

·        There are 7 key to goal setting that apply to virtually every goal. When you find yourself not achieving your goals, it means you are lacking in one or more of these seven key areas.

·        The keys are:

1.    Goals have to be clear/ specific/ detailed/ Written down.

2.    Goals have to be measurable and objective.

3.    Goals have to be bounded with schedules and deadlines.

4.    Goals have to be challenging/ cause you to stretch.

5.    Goals have to be congruent or in harmony with your values and in harmony with each other.

6.    Goals have to be balanced. Career, health, family, finances, etc.

7.    Goals must have a major definite purpose for your life.

 

·        There is a 12 step goal setting methodology to help you set and achieve any goal you set for yourself.

·        If you are underachieving, one of these ingredients is missing or in short supply.

1.    Desire – What do you really want? Do you have the burning desire for the goal that you have set for yourself?

2.    Believe that your goal is achievable.

3.    Write your goal down. Remember clear/ detailed/ specific. Review and rewrite your goal daily or weekly.

4.    Determine your starting point – Where are you now?

5.    Determine why you want it – List all the ways you’d benefit from your goal. Reasons are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.

6.    Set a deadline – If big enough, set sub-deadline your goal. Daily or hourly sub-deadlines are very effective.

7.    Identify the obstacles in your way – Why aren’t you at your goal already? What’s blocking you? Ask yourself, “What is it in me that is holding me back?”

8.    Determine the additional skills and knowledge you need – Remember, to achieve what you have never achieved you need to do what you’ve never done before. You need to learn. What skills do you need to get to your goal? What information? Develop the skill, get that information.

9.    Determine the people whose help you’ll need – The more and better relationships you develop, the faster you’ll achieve your goals.

10. Make a plan: Put it all together – An organized list of tasks from where you are to where you want to go. A plan is a list of activities organized by time, sequence, and importance.

11. Visualize your goal continually – Imagine what it would look like after achieving it. Each time you visualize and emotionalize it, you program your goal deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind. Eventually, your goal becomes a powerful unconscious force motivating and inspiring you day and night.

12. Never give up – Back everything you do with persistence and determination. Resolve in advance that you’ll never give up before facing difficulties or obstacles.

 

·        This 12 step process can be shortened too. Here is what the 12 step process looks like in wording.

1.    Select a goal you really want and believe you can achieve it.

2.    Write your goal on a separate sheet of paper and set a deadline.

3.    Analyze your starting position and write out a list of why you want to achieve this goal.

4.    Identify the obstacles that stand between you and your goal.

5.    Identify the skills and information/knowledge that you need to achieve your goal.

6.    Identify the people whose cooperation and assistance you’ll require.

7.    Make a plan to achieve your goal. Take action daily towards the goal according to your plan.

8.    Visualize your goal continually as though you dad already achieved it, and resolve that you’ll never give up until you’re successful.

 

 

Chapter 7 – Decide Upon Your Major Definite Purpose

·        There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

·        Since you become what you think about most of the time, a major purpose gives you a focus for every waking moment.

·        The more you think about your major definite purpose and how to achieve it, the more you activate the law of attraction in your life. You start attracting opportunities, ideas, people and resources that will help you move more rapidly towards your goal and move your goal more rapidly towards you.

·        The key question for determining your major definite purpose is what one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? From then on the only question you should ask is how?

·        The only real limit is how badly you want it and how long you are willing to work towards it.

·        Everyone wants to be a millionaire or a multi-millionaire. The only question is are you willing to do everything necessary and invest all the years required to achieve that financial goal.

·        To find your major definite purpose, practice the 10 goal exercise. Write down ten goals you would like to accomplish in the foreseeable future. Write them in the present tense e.g. “I weigh X kgs.” From the list, look for one goal that would gave the greatest positive effect on your life if you accomplish it. In almost every case, that’s your major definite purpose.

·        Think about your goal morning, noon and night. Continually look for ways to achieve it. And the only question you should ask is “How”.

·        Whatever your major definite purpose, write it down, and begin working on it today.

  

 

Chapter 8 – Start At the Beginning

·        Your problem is to bridge the gap between where you are now and the goals you intend to reach.

·        Once you have decided upon your values, vision, mission, purpose, and goals, the next step for you is to analyze your starting point. To realize your starting point, practice the reality principle. This is intellectual honesty.

·        It’s the ability to be completely honest and objective with yourself. Brutally honest.

·        Sit down and analyze in detail exactly where you are today in each area in regards to your goal.

·        Do a skills inventory of yourself. Look at the skills required to achieve your goal in an excellent fashion. What are they?

·        You must be excellent at each one of them in order to do the whole job for which you’re paid. You must nail all the skills to reach your full earning potential.

·        You can be absolutely excellent at everything except for one key skill. That one key skill will hold you back every step of the way.

·        Go from good to great.

 

  

Chapter 9 – Set and Achieve All Your Financial Goals

·        “Money may not be the most important thing in life, but it’s up there with oxygen.” –Zig Ziglar

·        The acquisition and deployment of money is governed by specific rules, principles, laws and factors that are immutable and unchanging.

·        Don’t delude yourself into saying “I really don’t care about money.”

·        The starting point of taking charge of your finances is setting short, medium, and long term financial goals. Make plans to achieve them and discipline yourself to achieve them.

·        You can use the 12-step-process for setting and achieving your financial goals too.

 

 

Chapter 10 – Become an Expert in Your Field

·        The market pays excellent rewards for excellent performances. It pays average rewards for average performances and the same is true for below-average performances.

·        Income is determined by 3 factors:

1.    What you do

2.    How well you do it

3.    The difficulty of replacing you

·        The most successful people at some point decided to commit to excellence. To be the best at what they do.

·        Everyone who is at the top 10% of their field started at the bottom 10%. Everyone who is doing well was once doing poorly.

·        What others have done, you can do as well.

·        To have more, you must first be more.

·        Once you decide to become the best in your field you need to ask yourself, “How do I achieve it?”

·        In most areas of life, it is more hard work and dedication than natural ability and talent that leads to excellence and great success.

·        How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You move one step, one skill, one small improvement at a time.

·        Are you an appreciating or depreciating asset? Upgrade your knowledge and your skill consistently.

·        Identify the knowledge and skills you will need.

·        Grade yourself and allow yourself to be graded by others according to your skills out of 10. See if you can make improvements in each skill below 7.

·        Your weakest key skill sets the height of your income and determines how fast and how far you go in your career.

·        What one skill, if you upgraded it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on your career? When you find it improve it.

·        This skill is called your key result area and most of the highest-paid people in your field score an 8, 9, or in this area.

·        There are usually several key result areas. Find them all and work on improving each of them to score at least a 7.

·        But remember, anything worth doing well, is worth doing poorly at first. It is not practice that makes perfect, it’s imperfect practice that eventually makes perfect.

·        Practice the 3-plus-1 formula. To master any skill first read about it, second listen to educational programs about it, third attend seminars and workshops on it. Finally, practice what you learned.

·        The person who hears one idea and takes action on it is more valuable than one who hears a hundred ideas but takes no action on any. Practice, practice, practice.

·        Use the 12-step program to become the best in your field.

  

 

Chapter 13 – Measure Your Progress

·        Your subconscious mind functions best with clear goals, specific tasks, deliberate measures and firm deadlines.

·        It requires a “forcing system” composed of deadlines for task accomplishment.

·        Without such, it’s easy to procrastinate and delay and put it off until later if at all.

·        3 keys to peak performance: Commitment, completion, and closure.

·        Commitment means you’re determined against all odds and you don’t budge from your goal.

·        Completion; there is a difference between 95% and 100% of a task. Discipline yourself to resist the natural tendency of slacking off at the end and push through to completion.

·        The pain of procrastination: The longer you wait on an assignment, the closer the deadline approaches, the greater the anxiety and stress for experience.

·        Closure: Lack of closure – Unfinished business, an incomplete action of any kind – Is a major source of stress, dissatisfaction, and even failure in business.

·        Identify your most valuable task. What one thing do I do that is more valuable than anything else?

·        If your measure it, you can manage it.

·        Focus your attention on one activity and measure your progress as you seek to improve it on a daily. E.g. if you want to be successful financially, focus on the amount you earn each hour and the amount you save monthly.

·        What gets measure gets done. If you can’t measure it, you can manage it.

·        Keep an accurate record and track your performance each day. This will help you achieve your goals exactly when you have decided to or even before. 

   

 

Chapter 14 – Remove the Roadblocks

·        Successful people fail far more than unsuccessful people. They try more things, fall down, pick themselves up, and try again over and over again before they finally win. Unsuccessful people try a few things if they try at all and very soon quit and go back to what they were doing before.

·        Temporary failure always precedes success. You should expect to fail and fall short many times before achieving your goals.

·        Temporary failure and defeat are part of the journey and price you pay on the road to success.

·        Ask yourself “Why you’re not there already?” “What is holding you back?”

·        Identify obstacles between you and your goal. Write them down.

·        Think in terms of solutions: Bearing in mind that you become what you think about most of the time. Successful people think in terms of “solution orientation”.

·        Successful people think about solutions most of the time. Unsuccessful people think about problems and difficulties most of the time. Constantly look for ways to get over, around, and past obstacles that stand in your way. Ask “How do I solve this?” The take action to deal with the problem.

·        Success is the ability to solve problems.

·        Problem solving is a skill. This means it can be learned just like riding a bike or touch typing on your keyboard.

·        You get better and faster at solving problems with practice and eventually you take on problems with significant consequences for you and others.

·        Define your obstacle as a goal.

·        Identify what is holding you back and then setting a clear, written goal to remove that obstacle puts you back in control of your life.

·        Make your obstacle clear so you don’t end up applying the wrong solution. Remember the old poem, “For every problem under the sun, there is a solution or there is none. If there is a solution, go and find it. If there isn’t, never mind it.”

·        By removing your major obstacle, you will often make more progress than most other people might in several years.

 

  

Chapter 15 – Associate with the Right People

·        Your outlook upon life, your estimate for yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of people with whom you come into contact every day.

·        One person, at the right time, in the right place, can open a door for you that can change your life and save you years of hard work.

·        Identify people that will help you achieve your goals. Who are they?

·        No effort you make to expand your contact list will ever be completely lost.

·        The more you give of yourself with no expectation or return, the more that will come back to you from the most unexpected sources.

·        The people with whom you habitually associate are more important in determining your success than any other single factor.

·        If you want to fly with the eagles, you can’t continue to scratch with the turkeys.

·        Learn to associate with those you like, admire, respect, and want to be like in the future.

  

 

Chapter 16 – Make a Plan of Action

·        All successful accomplishments today are a series of steps that were taken in a particular way in order to accomplish a result of any significance. A beginning, middle, and end with clear deadlines.

·        Every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.

·        Planning will save you time, money and energy, that’s why it is said that “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

·        Without proper planning be prepared for great loses in time, money and energy and unnecessary mistakes.

·        There is a six P formula for personal and business success: “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

·        With proper planning, it’s easy to realize that it is not possible to achieve a particular goal with the time or resources available or under the existing circumstances.

·        It is always easier to get into something than to get out of it.

·        Planning is a discipline and a skill. It is a habit and a competence. This means planning can be mastered through repetition and practice.

·        In its simplest form, planning is a list of every activity you’ll have to engage in, from the beginning to the end, to accomplish a specific goal or objective.

·        Take a sheet of paper and make a list of everything you can think of that you’ll have to do to achieve your goal. As you think of new items, add them to the list. Continually revisit your list and add new items as you get more information. This list becomes your blueprint to the construction of your goal.

·        Prioritize and sequently organize your list. Priority and sequence.

·        Expect failure at first. No plan is perfect the first time it is created. Most plans fail over and over. Accept feedback and make corrections.

·        Tell yourself to go to the drawing board each time and ask yourself what’s working and what’s not working.

·        Be solution-oriented. Expect difficulties but respond to them effectively.

·        Always think on paper. Project planning style.

·        The Project Planning Model:

·        In project planning you write the days, weeks, or months you think the project will require to complete across the top of a page. Down the left-hand column, make a list of all the tasks that must be accomplished, proper sequence to achieve your goal. What you need to do first, second e.t.c. In the lower right-hand corner, write what your ideal result will look like. The greater clarity you have, the easier it will be to reach it.

 

ACTION

1.    Make a list of everything that you can think of that will have to do to achieve your goal. Leave nothing out.

2.    Organize your list by priority. What’s most important? What’s 2^nd most important?

3.    Organize your list by sequence. What must be done before something else must be done?

4.    Determine how much time and money it will take to achieve it all. Do you have the time and resources necessary for success?

5.    Revisit and revise your plan regularly, especially when you get new information when things are not going as expected. Be prepared to change if there’s a need.

 

  

Chapter 17 – Manage Your Time

·        Time slips through our hands like grains of sand, never to return again. Those who use it wisely are rewarded with rich, productive, and satisfying lives.

·        Go from confusion to clarity and from frustration to focus with proper time management. Through repetition and practice.

·        Divide all your activities into “A” or “B” activities. An “A” activity moves you toward your goal, the faster and more directly the better. A “B” activity does not move you towards your goal that’s important to you.

·        Intelligence was commonly defined as a “way of acting. “

·        Doing anything that does not move you towards your goal is acting unintelligently, or to put it bluntly, is acting in a stupid manner.

·        Around the world people are acting stupidly every day not aware of the negative effect this is having on their lives.

·        Time management begins with clarity. Sit down with a piece of paper and think through what exactly you want to accomplish.

·        Once clear about your targets, plan every minute and hour of every day so you make the most accomplishments possible with the time available.

·        The basic tool to time management is a list, organized by priority.

·        The fact is you can’t manage time, you can only manage yourself.

·        It requires self-discipline, control, and mastery. It requires the best decisions and choices necessary and following through them.

·        Plan your life with lists of long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals and projects.

·        Plan every month in advance; list the things you want in that month. List the steps to take and organize your list by priority and sequence.

·        Practice advance planning: Weekly, Monthly, Yearly. Plan your day the night before.

·        The law of excluded alternative states that doing one thing means not doing something else. Choose wisely what you choose to do 1^st, 2^nd, and what you don’t do at all since it determines your life.

·        Successful people are always killing time on tasks of low value.

·        You are always free to choose what you do more of and less of your choices ultimately determine what happens to you.

·        Practice single handling on each task (Focus until completion before moving to the next task). Don’t get distracted or diverted.

·        “My success is due more to my ability to work continuously on one thing without stopping than any other single quality.” –Thomas Edison

·        Create chunks of time. 30, 60, 90 minutes chunks of uninterrupted time.

·        Develop the habits of time management.

·        Select your most important task and work on it immediately, then stay with it until done.

 

 

Chapter 18 – Review Your Goals Daily

·        One of the important mental laws is whatever is impressed is expressed. Whatever you impress deeply into your subconscious mind will be expressed in your external world.

·        If it is powerful to write your goals once a year, it’s even more powerful to write your goals more often. Rewrite your goals every day.

·        Write down your list of goals every day without looking at your previous list (yesterdays).

·        Your life will take off! You will advance towards your goals at a faster rate and you’ll attract people and resources that will help you achieve your goals.

·        Remember all you have to do is write your goals down every day.

·        You must follow some special rules to get the most from this exercise. You must use the 3P Formula. Your goals must be written and described in positive, present, and personal tenses. E.g. Instead of “I will lose X amount of pounds” you would say, “I weigh X pounds”. Also, not “my goal is to weigh X kgs”, but “I weigh x kgs”

·        To add power to your goals, put a deadline at the end of each one. E.g. “I weigh X by 31 Dec 20...”

·        This exercise is a test on how badly you want to achieve your goals.

·        If you forget to write a goal again it’s not that important to you or you don’t believe you can achieve it.

·        The clearer you write a gal over and over, the more you want it and the more convinced you are that it’s possible for you.

·        Trust the process. The more you exercise it the deeper it sinks into your subconscious, the greater your belief and conviction that your goals are achievable.

·        When you write a new goal down, your conscious mind is skeptical about the likelihood of accomplishing it. You will not have developed the total belief that it is possible for you. It’s normal and natural but don’t let it stop you from practicing this method. DAILY!

·        All you require to make this work is to get a spiral notebook and discipline yourself each day to write up to ten goals if possible.

·        Just to add, you could take it a step further by writing under each goal, 3 action steps that you can make immediately to achieve the goal.

·        Try this in the morning when you wake up and at night before going to bed.

  

 

Chapter 19 – Visualize Your Goals Continually

·        Your ability to visualize is perhaps the most powerful faculty that you possess. All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.

·        Visualization activates the law of correspondence which says, “as within, so without”. As you change your mental pictures within, your world outside, like a mirror, begins to change.

·        You will see it when you believe it. The person you see is the person you’ll be.

·        Everything worthwhile in your life begins with a mental picture of some kind.

·        Successful people are the ones who visualize in advance the success they won’t enjoy.

·        Successful people remember successful past experiences which boost their confidence. Unsuccessful people think of past failures. As a result, they go into a new experience with their subconscious minds programmed for failure than success.

·        There are parts of visualization. You can practice all 4 of them.

1.    How often?

2.    How long?

3.    How clearly?

4.    How intensely?

·        The best times to visualize are in the evening before you sleep and when you wake up in the morning.

·        All improvement in your life starts with an improvement in your mental pictures.

·        Start today to flood your mind with pictures of the person you want to be, the life you want to live and the goals you want to achieve.

 

   

Chapter 20 – Activate Your Subconscious Mind

·        The law of super-conscious activity is this: “Any thought, plan, goal, or idea held continuously in the conscious mind must inevitably be brought into reality by the super-conscious mind.

·        It has been said that men and women begin to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices.

·        The more you relax and trust into this great power, the greater and faster it will function.

 

 

Chapter 21 – Persist Until You Succeed

·        Few things are impossible to diligence and skill; great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

·        Your ability to decide what you want, to begin, and then persist through all obstacles and difficulties until you achieve your goals is the critical determinant of your success. The flip side of persistence is courage.

·        Courage can be learned just like any other skill. To do so you need to write to conquer your fears.

·        Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.” This is the kind of attitude that leads to victory.

·        It turned out that the graduates of his entrepreneurship course who had done nothing with what they had learned were still waiting for things to be just right before they began.

·        They were unwilling to launch themselves down the corridor of uncertainty until they could somehow be assured that they would be successful – something that never happened.

·        The future belongs to risk-takers.

·        The most important question for your future now is simply, will you do what you have resolved to do?

·        Self-discipline is the single most important quality for success is self-discipline.

·        Self-discipline means the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

·        It is not what you learn that is decisive for your future. It is whether or not you can discipline yourself to pay the price, over and over, until you finally obtain your objective.

·        Persistence is self-discipline in action.

·        Perhaps the most important demonstration of self-discipline is your level of persistence when the going gets tough.

·        Your persistence, in fact, is the real measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed.

·        Press on. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful when with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

·        Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.

·        No matter how well you organize yourself and your activities, you will experience difficulties, disappointments, setbacks, obstacles, and adversity over the course of your life.

·        The higher and more challenging the goals you set for yourself, the more disappointment and adversity you’ll face.

·        We cannot reach our full potential without facing adversity. It is impossible to grow, evolve, and develop to our full potential unless we learn from it.

·        The best qualities of strength, courage, character, and persistence are brought out in you when you face your greatest challenges and you respond to them positively and constructively.

·        The difference between high achievers and low achievers is simply that high achievers utilize adversity and struggles for growth, low achievers allow difficulties and adversity to overwhelm them and leave them discouraged and dejected.

·        How you respond to disappointment is an accurate predictor of how likely you’re to achieve great success. If you respond to disappointment by learning from it and then putting it behind you and pressing forward, you are very likely to accomplish great things in the course of your life.

·        Success comes on step beyond failure. Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.

 

  

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will

When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill

When the funds are low and the debts are high

And you want to smile but you have to sigh

When care is pressing you down a bit

Rest, if you must, but don’t quit.

Life is Queer, with its twists and turns

As every one of us sometimes learns

And many a failure turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow you may succeed with another blow

Success is failure turned inside out

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt

And you never can tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit

It’s when things seem worst that you

MUST NOT QUIT!