Change your thinking, change your life - Brian Tracy

CHANGE YOUR THINKING,CHANGE YOUR LIFE

How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

B R I A N T R AC Y

JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.

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How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

B R I A N T R AC Y

JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.

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Copyright 2003 by Brian Tracy. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior writtenpermission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriateper-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive,Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008,e-mail: [email protected].

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty:While the publisher and author haveused their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations orwarranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of thisbook and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitnessfor a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by salesrepresentatives or written sales materials.The advice and strategies containedherein may not be suitable for your situation.The publisher is not engaged inrendering professional sevices, and you should consult with a professional whereappropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profitor any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental,consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact ourCustomer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outsidethe United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content thatappears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more informationabout Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:Tracy, Brian.

Change your thinking, change your life : how to unlock your full potential for success and achievement / Brian Tracy.

p. cm.ISBN 0-471-44858-3 (alk. paper)

1. SuccessPsychological aspects. I. Title.BF637.S8T634 2003158.1dc21 2003006625

Printed in the United States of America.

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http://www.copyright.comhttp://www.wiley.com

To my wife Barbara,from whom I have learned so much

about the importance of love and family.You are my mainstay

and my greatest inspiration.

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Foreword

If you are ready to leverage yourself to greatness and achieve giantresults, you have the right road map in your hands.You have beforeyou the DNA of your future. All you need to create a wonderful fu-ture for yourself is to read this book, decide how you are going toapply it to your own life, write out a plan, and then go forth with en-thusiasm and make it happen.

I have a confession to make. I am one of Brians raving fans. Ihave studied him, his brilliant work, and the extraordinary resultshe has achieved. I am also one of his close colleagues and friends.We have worked together on many platforms, and met and talkedwith each other on numerous occasions.

Brian is one of the finest thinkers and writers on inner develop-ment and personal success in the world. I know; I have sold over 82million books aimed at helping people get the most out of themselves.

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life shows you how to dis-cover your extraordinary inner resources and tap your incrediblepowers.You will learn how to attract into your life all the people andresources you need to achieve any goal you can set for yourself.

You will absolutely amaze yourself as you start to achieve newand better results by employing these concepts and ideas in every-thing you do.These are the same concepts used by all big-time win-ners, self-made millionaires, and leaders in every field.

In this book, you will learn a step-by-step process to great suc-cess that you will eventually implement, easily and effortlessly. Thisstrategy for success is so logical, so inviting, and ultimately so fulfill-ing and omni-beneficial that it is virtually a breakthrough in per-sonal performance.

As long as you are going to think anyway, why not think greatthoughts and get great results?

Brian is a shining light in the speaking and writing world. Hehas done incredible thinking and achieved amazing results, for

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himself and many hundreds of thousands of other people. Briansthinking in this book will inspire you to do the same or more.

Get ready for one of the great adventures and explorations intothe last great frontier, and the firstyour mind! You are about tohave a wonderful experience.

MARK VICTOR HANSENAuthor, Chicken Soup for the Soul

viii FOREWORD

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Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

Chapter 1 Change Your Thinking 1

Chapter 2 Change Your Life 18

Chapter 3 Dream Big Dreams 40

Chapter 4 Decide to Become Rich 52

Chapter 5 Take Charge of Your Life 77

Chapter 6 Commit to Excellence 90

Chapter 7 Put People First 118

Chapter 8 Think Like a Genius 136

Chapter 9 Unleash Your Mental Powers 154

Chapter 10 Supercharge Your Thinking 179

Chapter 11 Create Your Own Future 201

Chapter 12 Live A Great Life 222

Summary and Conclusions 249

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Bibliography 256

Index 260

Advanced Coaching and Mentoring Program 268

About the Author 269

x CONTENTS

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Acknowledgments

The writing of this book has taken many years of work, reading,teaching, and experience. Many people have contributed to mythinking and have been invisible guides as these chapters came to-gether. I would like to first thank my friend Mark Victor Hansen, whointroduced me many years ago to Emmet Fox, perhaps the finestspiritual thinker of the twentieth century. Ernest Holmes, founder ofScience of Mind, opened my eyes and heart to the incredible universeof potential contained within each person when they changed theirthinking and changed their lives. Great spiritual teachers such asCharles Fillmore, Neville, Eric Butterworth, Wayne Dyer, andRoberto Assagioli have had a profound influence on my thinking.

I would also like to thank those great practical thinkers on suc-cess who have had such a wonderful influence on meand on theworldsuch as Napoleon Hill, Maxwell Maltz, Claude Bristol,David Schwarz,W. Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn, ZigZiglar, Dennis Waitley, and Charlie Jones.

Business thinkers such as Peter Drucker, Andrew Grove, KenBlanchard,Warren Bennis,Tom Peters, Nido Qubein, and MarshallGoldsmith have greatly enriched me with their ideas and insights.

I would like to thank my editor, Matthew Holt of John Wiley &Sons, for his unflinching support of this book, and his constant en-couragement over the many months that it has taken to write and edit.

Not least, I thank my wonderful wife Barbara and my fabulouschildrenChristina, Michael, David, and Catherinefor their sup-port and patience during the long hours away from them to finishthis book.

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Introduction

There is nothing on earth that you cannot have once you havementally accepted the fact that you can have it.

Robert Collier

THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUYou are a thoroughly good person.You deserve a wonderful life, fullof success, happiness, joy, and excitement.You are entitled to havehappy relationships, excellent health, meaningful work, and finan-cial independence. These are your birthright. This is what your lifeis meant to include.

You are engineered for success and designed to have high levelsof self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. You are extraordi-nary; there has never been anyone exactly like you in all the historyof mankind on earth.You have absolutely amazing untapped talentsand abilities that, when properly unleashed and applied, can bringyou everything you could ever want in life.

You are living at the greatest time in all of human history. Youare surrounded by abundant opportunities that you can take advan-tage of to realize your dreams.The only real limits on what you canbe, do, or have are the limits you place on yourself by your ownthinking.Your future is virtually unlimited.

GET REAL!How did you react to the preceding three paragraphs? You probablyhad two responses. First, you liked what they said, and your fondestwish was for them to be true for you. But your second response wasprobably one of skepticism and disbelief. Even though you deeply

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desire to live a wonderfully healthy, happy, prosperous life, whenyou read those words, your doubts and fears arose immediately toremind you of reasons why these dreams and goals may not be pos-sible for you.Well, join the crowd!

This is exactly how I felt many years ago. Even though I wantedto be a big success in life, I was unskilled, uneducated, and unem-ployed. I had no idea what I could do to improve my situation. I felttrapped between big ideas on the one hand and limited resourcesand opportunities on the other. Then I discovered a series of re-markable principles that have been responsible for all the great suc-cesses and achievements of the ages, and my life changed forever.

After proving these laws and principles in my own life, I beganspeaking, and training others to apply the same ideas. Since then, Ihave given more than two thousand talks and seminars as long asfour days in length, in 24 countries, to a total of more than two mil-lion participants. Most of them were also skeptical when they firstheard these ideas of optimism and possibility, until they learnedwhat you are going to learn in the pages ahead. It changed theirlives, as it will change yours.

THE GREAT PRINCIPLEPerhaps the most important mental and spiritual principle ever dis-covered is that you become what you think about most of the time.Yourouter world is very much a mirror image of your inner world.Whatis going on outside of you is a reflection of what is going in inside ofyou. You can tell the inner condition of a person by looking at theouter conditions of his or her life. And it cannot be otherwise.

THOUGHTS ARE THINGSYour mind is extraordinarily powerful. Your thoughts control anddetermine almost everything that happens to you.They can raise orlower your heart rate, improve or interfere with your digestion,change the chemical composition of your blood, and help you tosleep or keep you awake at night.

Your thoughts can make you happy or sad, sometimes in aninstant. They can make you alert and aware, or distracted and de-

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pressed. They can make you popular or unpopular, confident orinsecure, positive or negative. Your thoughts can make you feelpowerful or powerless, a victim or a victor, a hero or a coward.

In your material life, your thoughts can make you a success or afailure, prosperous or poverty-stricken, respected or ignored. Yourthoughts, and the actions that they trigger, determine your wholelife. And the best news of all is that they are completely under yourown control.

THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, AND DESIRESYou are a complex bundle of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, desires,images, fears, hopes, doubts, opinions, and ambitions, each of themconstantly changing, sometimes from second to second. Each ofthese elements of your personality affects the others, sometimes inunpredictable ways.Your entire life is the result of the intertwiningand interconnecting of these factors.

Your thoughts trigger images and pictures, and the emotionsthat go with them.These images and emotions trigger attitudes andactions.Your actions then have consequences and results that deter-mine what happens to you.

If you think about success and confidence, you will feel strongand competent, and you will perform better at whatever you at-tempt. If you think about making mistakes or being embarrassed,you will perform poorly, no matter how good you really are.

Pictures and images, from your imagination or from the exter-nal influences, produce ideas, emotions, and attitudes that corre-spond to them. They then trigger actions that bring about certainresults and outcomes.The thought of a person or situation can causeyou to instantly feel happy or sad, elated or angry, loving or lonely.

ATTITUDES, ACTIONS, AND EMOTIONS

Your attitudes, positive or negative, constructive or destructive,lead to corresponding images, emotions, and actions that affectyour life and relationships. Your attitudes, in turn, are based on

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your previous experiences and your basic premises about howthings are supposed to be.

Your actions trigger the emotions and attitudes that go withthem. By the Law of Reversibility, you can actually act your wayinto feeling in a manner consistent with the action. By acting as ifyou were already happy, positive, and confident, you soon begin tofeel that way on the inside. And your actions are under your directcontrol, whereas your emotions are not.

In and of themselves, the outer aspects of your life are neutral.It is only the meaning that you give to them that determines yourattitudes, opinions, emotions, and reactions to them. If youchange your thinking about any part of your life, you will changehow you feel and behave in that area. And since only you can de-cide what to think, you have the ability to take complete controlover your life.

QUESTION YOUR BELIEFSThe Law of Belief says: Whatever you believe, with conviction, be-comes your reality.You always act in a manner consistent with yourdeepest and most intensely held beliefs, whether they are true ornot. And all your beliefs are learned. At one time, you did nothave them.

Your beliefs largely determine your reality.You do not believewhat you see; you rather see what you already believe. You canhave life-enhancing beliefs that make you happy and optimistic,or you can have negative beliefs about yourself and your potentialthat act as roadblocks to the realization of everything that is trulypossible for you.

The most harmful beliefs you can have are your self-limiting be-liefs. These are beliefs about yourself and your potential that holdyou back. Most of them are not true. Most of them are the result ofinformation you have accepted without question, often from earlychildhood. Even if it is completely untrue, if you believe yourself tobe limited in areas such as achieving wonderful health and happi-ness and earning a lot of money, that will become your truth. As theauthor Richard Bach in his book Illusions wrote, Argue for yourlimitations and sure enough, theyre yours.

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YOU ARE A LIVING MAGNETThe Law of Attraction says that you are a living magnet and thatyou invariably attract into your life the people, ideas, opportunities, andcircumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

When you think positive, optimistic, loving, and successfulthoughts, you create a force field of magnetism that attracts, like ironfilings to a magnet, the very things you are thinking about.This lawexplains why it is that you dont have to be concerned where yourgood is going to come from. If you can keep your mind clearly fo-cused on what you want, and refrain from thinking about what youdont want, you will attract everything you need to achieve yourgoals, exactly when you are ready. Change your thinking and youchange your life.

THE ONLY REAL MEASUREBertrand Russell, the English philosopher, once said, The verybest proof that something can be done is that others have alreadydone it. In the New Testament, Jesus taught the way to measurethe truth of any principle: By their fruits, ye shall know them.

In other words, the only question you need to ask about anyidea is, Does it work? Does it bring about the results that you de-sire? Milton Friedman, the Nobel prizewinning economist, said,The only true measure of a theory or idea is your ability to makeaccurate predictions of the future based on it.

The good news is that the ideas and principles you are about tolearn have been tested and proven in the lives and experiences ofmillions of people. In themselves, like any principles of nature, theyare neutral. Nature plays no favorites. Nature treats everyone alike.Whatever seed you plant in the ground, nature will grow. Whateverthought seeds you plant in your mind, nature will grow as well. It isentirely up to you.

CHOOSE YOUR THOUGHTSSuccessful people are those who think more effectively than un-successful people. They approach their lives, relationships, goals,

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problems, and experiences differently from others. They sow bet-ter seeds, and as a result they reap better lives. If you learn tothink and act like other successful, happy, healthy, and prosperouspeople, you will soon enjoy the kind of lives they do. When youchange your thinking, you change your life.

Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, alwaysserious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors andfaults are always those of man. The man incapable ofappreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure,and the true does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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1Change Your Thinking

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture inyour mind of what you would like to be, and you keepand hold that picture there long enough, you will soonbecome exactly as you have been thinking.

William James

Once upon a time there was a woman, about 30 years old, marriedwith two children. Like many people, she had grown up in a homewhere she was constantly criticized and often treated unfairly by herparents. As a result, she developed deep feelings of inferiority andlow self-esteem. She was negative and fearful, and had no confi-dence at all. She was shy and self-effacing, and did not considerherself to be particularly valuable or worthwhile. She felt that shewas not really talented at anything.

One day, as she was driving to the store, another car wentthrough a red light and smashed into her.When she awoke, she wasin the hospital with a mild concussion and complete memory loss.She could still speak, but she had no recollection of any part of herpast life. She was a total amnesiac.

At first, the doctors thought it would be temporary. But weekspassed and no trace of her memory returned. Her husband andchildren visited her daily, but she did not know them. This wassuch an unusual case that other doctors and specialists came to visit her as well, to test her and ask her questions about hercondition.

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STARTING OVEREventually, she went home, her memory a complete blank. Deter-mined to understand what had happened to her, she began readingmedical textbooks and studying in the specialized area of amnesiaand memory loss. She met and spoke with specialists in this field.Eventually she wrote a paper on her condition. Not long afterward,she was invited to address a medical convention to deliver her pa-per, answer questions about her amnesia, and share her experiencesand ideas on neurological functioning.

During this period, something amazing happened. She became anew person completely. All the attention in the hospital and afterwardmade her feel valuable, important, and truly loved by her family.The attention and acclaim she received from members of the med-ical profession built her self-esteem and self-respect even higher.She became a genuinely positive, confident, outgoing woman,highly articulate, well informed, and very much in demand as aspeaker and authority in the medical profession.

All memory of her negative childhood had been wiped out. Herfeelings of inferiority were wiped out as well. She became a newperson. She changed her thinking and changed her life.

THE BLANK SLATEThe Scottish philosopher David Hume was the first to propose theidea of the tabula rasa or blank slate.This theory says that each per-son comes into the world with no thoughts or ideas at all, andeverything that a person thinks and feels is learned from infancy on-ward. It is as though the childs mind is a blank slate that everypassing person and experience leaves a mark on.The adult becomesthe sum total of everything he or she learns, feels, and experiencesgrowing up. What the adult does and becomes later is the result ofthis early conditioning. As Aristotle wrote, Whatever is impressedis expressed.

Perhaps the greatest breakthrough in the field of human poten-tial in the twentieth century was the discovery of the self-concept.This is the idea that each person develops a bundle of beliefs re-garding oneself, starting at birth. Your self-concept then becomes

2 CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE


the master program of your subconscious computer, determiningeverything you think, say, feel, and do. For this reason, all change inyour outer life begins with a change in your self-concept, with achange in the way you think and feel about yourself and your world.

The child is born with no self-concept at all. Every idea, opin-ion, feeling, attitude, or value you have as an adult you learned fromchildhood. Everything you are today is the result of an idea or im-pression you took in and accepted as true.When you believe some-thing to be true, it becomes true for you, whatever the fact may be.You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE LASTINGIf you were raised by parents who continually told you what a goodperson you were, who loved you, encouraged you, supported you,and believed in you, no matter what you did or didnt do, you wouldgrow up with the belief that you were a good and valuable person.By the age of three, this belief would lock in and become a funda-mental part of the way you view yourself in relation to your world.Thereafter, no matter what happens to you, you would hold to thisbelief. It would become your reality.

If you were raised by parents who did not know how powerfultheir words and behaviors could be in shaping your personality,they could very easily have used destructive criticism, disapproval,and physical or emotional punishment to discipline or control you.When a child is continually criticized at an early age, he soon con-cludes that there is something wrong with him. He doesnt under-stand why it is that he is being criticized or punished, but heassumes that his parents know the truth about him, and that he de-serves it. He begins to feel that he is not valuable or lovable. He isnot worth very much. He must therefore be worthless.

Almost all personality problems in adolescence and adult-hood are rooted in what psychologists refer to as love withheld.The child needs love like roses need rain. When children feelunloved, they feel unsafe and insecure. They think, Im not goodenough. They begin to engage in compensatory behaviors tomake up for this inner anxiety. This sense of love deprivation ismanifested in misbehavior, personality problems, bursts of anger,

Change Your Thinking 3


depression, hopelessness, lack of ambition, and problems withpeople and relationships.

YOU ARE BORN UNAFRAIDThe child is born with no fears, except those of falling and loudnoises. All other fears have to be taught to the child as he or shegrows up.

The two major fears we all develop are the fear of failure or lossand the fear of criticism or rejection.We begin to learn the fear of fail-ure if we are continually criticized and punished when we try some-thing new or different. We are shouted at and told, No! Get awayfrom there! Stop that! Put that down! Physical punishment and thewithholding of love, possibilities that scare us and make us feel inse-cure, often accompany these shouts and criticisms.

We soon begin to believe that we are too small, too weak, in-competent, inadequate, and incapable of doing anything new or dif-ferent. We express this feeling with the words, I cant, I cant, Icant.Whenever we think about doing something new or challeng-ing, we automatically respond with feelings of fear, trembling, and achurning stomach. We react exactly as if we are afraid of getting aspanking.We say, I cant over and over.

The fear of failure is the primary reason for failure in adult life.As the result of destructive criticism in childhood, we hold our-selves back as adults. We sell ourselves short. We quit before weeven try the first time. Instead of using our amazing minds to fig-ure out how to get what we want, we use our reasoning ability tocreate reasons why we cant, and why the things we want are notpossible for us.

THE NEED TO BE LOVEDThe second major fear that holds us back, undermines our confi-dence, and destroys our desire for a happy life is the fear of rejec-tion, and its expression, criticism. This emotion is learned in earlychildhood as the result of our parents expressing disapproval ofus whenever we do something they dont like, or dont do some-thing that they expect. As a result of our displeasing them, they



become angry and withdraw the love and approval we need somuch as children.

The fear of being unloved and alone is so traumatic for a childthat she soon conforms her behavior to do whatever she thinks herparents will approve of. She loses her spontaneity and uniqueness.She begins to think, I have to! I have to! I have to! She concludes,I have to do whatever Mommy and Daddy want me to, or theywont love me, and Ill be all alone!

CONDITIONAL LOVEAs an adult, a child raised with what is called conditional love (asopposed to unconditional love, the greatest gift one person can giveto another) becomes hypersensitive to the opinions of others. In itsextreme form, he cannot do anything if there is the slightest chancethat someone else may not approve. He projects his childhood rela-tionship with his parents onto the important people in his adultlifespouse, boss, relatives, friends, authority figuresand triesdesperately to earn their approval, or at least not lose it.

The fears of failure and rejection, caused by destructive criti-cism in early childhood, are the root causes of most of our unhap-piness and anxiety as adults. We feel, I cant! or I have to!continually. The worst feeling is when we feel, I cant, but I haveto! or I have to, but I cant!

We want to do something, but we are afraid of failure or loss,or if we are not afraid of loss, we are afraid of disapproval. Wewant to do something to improve our lives, at work or at home,but we are afraid that we may fail, or that someone else may criti-cize us, or both.

For most people, their fears govern their lives. Everything theydo is organized around avoiding failure or criticism. They thinkcontinually about playing it safe, rather than striving for their goals.They seek security rather than opportunity.

DOUBLE YOUR RATE OF FAILUREThe author Arthur Gordon once approached Thomas J.Watson Sr.,the founder of IBM, and asked him how he could succeed faster as



a writer.Thomas J.Watson, one of the giants of American business,replied with these profound words: If you want to be successfulfaster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the farside of failure.

The fact is that the more you have already failed, the more likelyit is you are on the verge of great success. Your failures have pre-pared you to succeed.This is why a streak of good luck seems to fol-low a streak of bad luck. When in doubt, double your rate offailure.The more things you try, the more likely you are to triumph.You overcome your fears only by doing the thing you fear until thefear has no more control over you.

YOUR MENTAL HARD DRIVEEverything you know about yourself, all your beliefs, are recordedon the hard drive of your personality, in your self-concept. Yourself-concept precedes and predicts your levels of performance andeffectiveness in everything you do. Because of the law of correspon-dence, you always behave on the outside in a manner consistentwith your self-concept on the inside. All improvement in your lifetherefore begins with an improvement in your self-concept.

You have an overall self-concept that is made up of all your be-liefs about yourself and your abilities. This bundle of beliefs in-cludes all the experiences, decisions, successes, failures, ideas,information, emotions, and opinions of your life up to now. Thisgeneral self-concept determines how and what you think and feelabout yourself, and measures how well you are doing in general.

YOUR MINI-SELF-CONCEPTSYou have a series of mini-self-concepts as well. These mini-self-concepts combine to make up your overall self-concept.You have aself-concept for every area of your life that you consider important.This mini-self-concept determines how you think, feel, and performin that area.

For example, you have a self-concept for how healthy and fityou are, and how much you eat or exercise.You have a self-concept



for how likable and popular you are with others, especially withmembers of the opposite sex.You have a self-concept for what kindof a spouse or parent you are, for how good a friend you are to yourfriends, how smart you are, and how well you learn.You have a self-concept for every sport you play, and for every activity you engagein, including how well you drive your car.

You have a self-concept for how well you do your work, andfor how well you do each part of your work. You have a self-concept for how much money you make and how well you saveand invest it. This is a critical area. The fact is that you can neverearn much more or less than your self-concept level of income. Ifyou want to make more money, you have to change your beliefsabout yourself relative to income and money.This is an importantpart of this book.

CHANGE YOUR BELIEFSIn every case, if you want to change your performance and yourresults in any area of your life, you have to change your self-conceptor your beliefs about yourselffor that area. Fortu-nately, your beliefs are largely subjective. They are not alwaysbased on facts. Instead, they are based largely on information youhave taken in and accepted as true, sometimes with very little evi-dence or proof.

The very worst beliefs you can have are self-limiting beliefs of anykind. These are beliefs about yourself that cause you to feel some-how limited or deficient in a particular area. These beliefs are sel-dom true, but if you accept them as valid estimates of your ability,they become true for you, exactly as if they were correct.

The starting point of unlocking your potential, and accomplish-ing more than you ever have before, is for you to challenge your self-limiting beliefs. You begin this process of freeing yourself fromself-limiting beliefs by imagining that, whatever they are, they arecompletely untrue. Imagine for the moment that you have no limi-tations on your abilities at all. Imagine that you could be, do, orhave anything you really wanted in life. Imagine that your potentialis unlimited in any way.



For example, imagine that you could be earning twice asmuch as you are earning today. Imagine that you could be livingin a bigger house, driving a better car, and enjoying a more ex-pensive lifestyle.

Imagine that you have the ability to be one of the top people inyour field. Imagine that you are one of the most popular, powerful,and persuasive personalities in your social and business world.Imagine that you are calm, confident, and unafraid of anything.Imagine that you could set and achieve any goal you put your mindto. This is how you begin changing your thinking and changingyour life.

The starting point of eliminating your fears, and releasing yourpotential, is to reprogram your mental hard drive with new, positive,constructive, and courageous beliefs about yourself and your future.Throughout this book, you will learn how to do this.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR SELF-CONCEPT

Your self-concept has three parts, like a pie divided into threewedges. Each is linked with each of the others. All three elementstogether make up your personality.They largely determine what youthink, feel, and do, and everything that happens to you.

Your self-ideal is the first part of your personality and your self-concept. Your self-ideal is made up of all of your hopes, dreams,visions, and ideals.Your self-ideal is composed of the virtues, val-ues, and qualities that you most admire in yourself and others.Your self-ideal is the person you would most like to become, if youcould be a perfect person in every way. These ideals guide andshape your behavior.

Great men and women, leaders, and people of character arevery clear about their values, visions, and ideals. They know whothey are and what they believe in.They set high standards for them-selves, and they dont compromise those standards. They are menand women that others can look up to and depend on.They are def-inite and distinct in their interactions with others. In everythingthey do, they strive to live up to their ideals.



THE WAY YOU SEE YOURSELFThe second part of your self-concept is your self-image. This is theway you see yourself and think about yourself. It is often called yourinner mirror. It is where you look internally to see how youshould behave in a particular situation. Because of the power ofyour self-image, you always perform on the outside consistent withthe picture you have of yourself on the inside.

The discovery of the self-image, pioneered by Maxwell Maltz, isa major breakthrough in understanding human performance and ef-fectiveness. By visualizing and imagining yourself performing at yourbest in an upcoming situation, you send a message to your subcon-scious mind.Your subconscious mind accepts this message as a com-mand, and then coordinates your thoughts, words, and actions sothat they fit a pattern consistent with the picture you created.

All improvement in your life begins with an improvement inyour mental pictures.Your internal images influence your emotions,your behaviors, your attitudes, and even the way other people re-spond to you. The development of a positive self-image is a vitalpart of changing your thinking and changing your life.

HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELFThe third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. This is theemotional component of your personality, and is the most impor-tant factor in determining how you think, feel, and behave. Yourlevel of self-esteem largely determines much of what happens toyou in life.

Your self-esteem is best defined as how much you like yourself.The more you like yourself, the better you perform at anything youattempt. And by the law of reversibility, the better you perform, themore you like yourself.

Your self-esteem is the reactor core of your personality. It isthe energy source that determines your levels of confidence andenthusiasm. The more you like yourself, the higher will be thestandards you will set for yourself. The more you like yourself, thebigger the goals you will set for yourself and the longer you will



persist in achieving them. People with high self-esteem are virtu-ally unstoppable.

Your level of self-esteem determines the quality of your relation-ships with others.The more you like and respect yourself, the moreyou like and respect others and the better they feel toward you. Inyour business life and career, your personal level of self-esteem willbe the critical factor that determines whether or not people will buyfrom you, hire you, enter into business dealings with you, and evenlend you money.

The better your self-esteem, the better you will be as a spouseand parent. High self-esteem parents raise high self-esteem chil-dren. These children develop high levels of self-confidence and as-sociate with other high self-esteem children. High self-esteemhomes are characterized by love, laughter, and happiness for every-one who lives there.

THE DETERMINANT OF SELF-ESTEEMYour level of self-esteem is largely determined by how closely yourself-imageyour current performance and behaviormatches yourself-idealyour picture of how you would perform if you were atyour very best.You are always comparing your actual performancewith your ideal performance at an unconscious level.Whenever youfeel that you are living up to your very best, you feel terrific aboutyourself.Your self-esteem soars.You feel happy and fulfilled.

Whenever you do or say something that is not in keeping withyour ideals or the best of which you feel you are capable, your self-esteem goes down.Whenever there is a wide separation between theperson you are in the moment and the ideal person you want verymuch to be in the future, you feel badly about yourself.This is whyyou get angry with yourself whenever you fail at something, or be-have badly in a situation with other people.Your self-ideal continu-ally reminds you of how much better a person you can be.

THE CORE OF PERSONALITYPsychologists agree today that your self-esteem lies at the core ofyour self-concept and your personality. Every improvement in any



part of your personality or performance boosts your self-esteem,and causes you to like and respect yourself even more. The moreyou like yourself, the better will be your self-image and subsequentperformance, and the faster you will move toward becoming morelike your self-ideal.

The best news of all is that there is an inverse relationshipbetween your level of self-esteem and your fears of failure and rejection. The more you like yourself, the less you fear failure.The more you like yourself, the less concerned you are with theopinions of others, and the less you fear criticism. The more youlike yourself, the more you make your decisions based on yourown goals and standards, and the less you care what others thinkor say.

CONTROL YOUR INNER DIALOGUEJust as you become what you think about, you also become what yousay to yourself. The most powerful words you can repeat to yourself,especially if you are feeling tense or uneasy about an upcomingevent, are the words, I like myself! I like myself! I like myself!

Whenever you say, I like myself! your fears diminish and yourcourage increases. The words, I like myself! are so powerful andpositive that they are immediately accepted by your subconsciousmind as a command. They instantly affect your thoughts, feelings,and attitudes. Your body language immediately improves, and youstand straighter.Your face becomes more positive and cheerful.Yourtone of voice becomes stronger and more confident.You feel betterabout yourself, and as a result, you treat everyone around you in awarmer, friendlier way.

You begin the process of changing your thinking and chang-ing your life by going to work on your self-concept. You start bydeveloping a clear, positive, exciting, and inspiring self-ideal,consistent with the very best person you can imagine yourself becoming. You develop a positive self-image by imagining your-self performing at your very best in everything you do. Finally,you develop high and unshakable levels of self-esteem by lovingand accepting yourself unconditionally as a valuable and worth-while person.



EXAMINE YOUR BASIC PREMISESMost of your thoughts and your responses to the events and peopleof your life are determined by your basic premises. These are theideas, beliefs, opinions, and conclusions you have come to as the re-sult of inputs and experiences starting in childhood.They constitutenot only your self-concept, but also your philosophy of life.The moreadamant and convinced you are of your basic premises, the morethey predict and control everything you do, say, and feel.

If you believe yourself to be an excellent person, loaded with tal-ent and ability, friendly and popular, healthy and energetic, curiousand creative, and destined to have a wonderful life, these basicpremises will lead you to set goals, work hard, develop yourself,treat others well, bounce back from adversity, and ultimately suc-ceed. Nothing will be able to stop you in the long run.

It is not what happens to you in life that is important. It isonly how you react to what happens. It doesnt matter whereyoure coming from, either. All that really matters is where youare going. And where you are going is limited only by your ownimagination. And since your imagination is unlimited, your futureis unlimited as well. These are the basic premises and beliefs youneed to fulfill your potential.

DISSOLVING THE MYTHSUnfortunately, there are several myths that we accept as we grow upthat can sabotage our hopes for success, joy, and fulfillment later inlife. Lets look at these self-limiting beliefs one at a time.

The first and worst is summarized in the feeling, Im not goodenough. This is the basic premise that causes feelings of inferiorityand inadequacy.We assume that other people are better than we arejust because, at the moment, they are doing better than we are. Wefeel that they must be worth more than us. Therefore, we must beworth less than them. This feeling of worthlessness sits deep in thepsyche and causes us to sell ourselves short. We settle for less thanwe are truly capable of. Rather than to fail at a new goal, we dontset it in the first place.

The correct basic premise for you to develop, or belief for you to



have, is that not only are you good enough, but you have the abilityto be excellent in any area that is important to you.You have unlim-ited potential to be, do, and have more than you have ever achievedup to now. As William Shakespeare said in The Tempest, Whats pastis prologue. Whatever you have accomplished in the past is only ahint of what you can do in the future.

TALK TO YOURSELF POSITIVELYThe most powerful words in your vocabulary are the words that yousay to yourself and believe.Your self-talk, your inner dialogue, deter-mines 95 percent of your emotions.When you talk to yourself, yoursubconscious mind accepts these words as commands. It then ad-justs your behavior, your self-image, and your body language to fit apattern consistent with those words.

From now on, talk to yourself only in terms of what you want tobe and do. Refuse to say anything about yourself that you do not sincerelydesire to be true. Repeat the powerful, positive words, I can do it!over and over. Prior to any event of importance, repeat the words, Ilike myself! Say, Im the best! Im the best! Im the best! againand again like you really mean it.Then, stand up straight and strong,put a confident smile on your face, and do the very best of which youare capable. Soon it will become a habit.

YOU DESERVE THE BESTAs the result of previous destructive criticism, people accept an-other myth, or self-limiting belief. It is that they dont really be-lieve that they deserve to be successful. This deep inner feeling ofundeservingness is quite common among those of us who startedoff with very little in life, or who came from families that had littlemoney when we were growing up. It can also be caused by peoplewho told us at a young age that to be poor is virtuous but to berich is sinful.

If you have grown up feeling undeserving of good things, for anyreason, and you do achieve success in your field, you may experi-ence what is called the imposter syndrome.You will feel that youare an imposter in your success, and that you are going to be found



out. No matter how successful you become as the result of yourhard work, you will have a nagging fear that it will all be taken awayfrom you.

If you feel like an imposter, you will often feel guilty for achiev-ing greater success than others. To escape these feelings of guilt,many people engage in self-sabotage. They eat too much, drink toomuch, take dope, ignore their families, engage in unpredictable be-haviors, and often throw their money away in extravagant living andunwise investments.They feel deep down inside that they dont de-serve their success. As a result, they often drive it away.

DEDICATE YOURSELF TO SERVING OTHERS

The truth is that you deserve everything you can rightfully earn bydoing an excellent job, and producing or distributing products orservices that improve peoples lives and work. In a market societysuch as ours, all transactions are voluntary. People buy somethingonly if they feel that they are going to be better off as a result.Youcan therefore be successful in the long run only by providing peo-ple with the things they want to improve their lives and work. Themore and better you serve other people, the more you both de-serve and earn.

The word deserve comes from the two Latin words, de-which means from and servire which means to serve. There-fore, the word deserve means from service. The people who dothe best in our society, with few exceptions, are those who are serv-ing other people better than someone else.Your whole focus in yourcareer should be on serving other people better. Then you will de-serve every dollar you earn.

Abraham Lincoln once said, The very best way to help thepoor is not to become one of them. In our society, the more finan-cially successful you are, the more taxes you are likely to pay.Thesetaxes help pay for the schools, hospitals, roads, welfare, Medicare,military expenditures, and all the important things that our societyoffers.You can be proud to be financially successful. By making a lotof money, you make a significant contribution to lots of people.Youdo well for yourself by doing well for others.



Repeat the words, I deserve every penny I earn as the result ofserving others with the products and services they need to improvetheir lives. I am proud of my success.

YOU ARE AN EXCELLENT PERSONYou are a thoroughly good person.You are honest, decent, truthful, andhardworking.You treat other people with courtesy, respect, and warmth.You are dedicated to your family, friends, and your company.You arestrong, confident, and responsible.You are knowledgeable, intelligent, andexperienced.You are important not only to the people closest to you, butalso to your community.You were born for a special reason, and you havea great destiny to fulfill.You are an excellent person in every way.

The preceding paragraph is a statement of your real personalityand character. It may not be true for you 100 percent of the time,but it is a good general description of who you really are inside, andwhere you are going with your life. When you unconditionally ac-cept that you are a truly valuable and worthwhile person, you willexpress it in everything you say and do. Over time, it will becometrue for you.Your ideal will become your reality.

Repeat to yourself, I like myself and l love my life. I am a thor-oughly good person in every way, and I always do my very best atanything I attempt.

THE MENTAL SOFTWARE STOREImagine that there was a store that sold mental programming.Youcould purchase any self-concept, belief, or attitude that you wantedand install it in your brain, and that is the person you would befrom then on. If such a store existed, and you could buy any set ofbeliefs, what would you choose?

Here is a suggestion. Look around you and find out what thehappiest and most successful people in your world have developedas their core beliefs, and then get the same set of beliefs for yourself.Load them onto your mental hard drive and start running the sameprograms they are running.

Fortunately, based on hundreds of interviews with successfulpeople, we know exactly how they are programmed and what beliefs



they have developed from an early age.The most important core be-lief you can adopt for yourself is this: I am a thoroughly good per-son and I am going to be a big success in life. Everything thathappens to me, good or bad, is simply a part of the process ofachieving the great success and happiness that is inevitable for me.

If you absolutely believed that you were guaranteed to be happyand successful, and that every setback or obstacle was sent to you toteach you important lessons that you needed to know to achieveyour goals, you would be completely unstoppable. You would bepositive and optimistic most of the time.You would set big goals foryourself and bounce back quickly from any temporary defeat.Yourbelief would eventually become your reality. By changing yourthinking, you would change your life.

Throughout the pages that follow, I will share with you a series oftime-tested and proven methods and techniques that you can useto take complete control over every area of your thinking. I willshow you how to think so positively and effectively that you willfeel yourself capable of accomplishing anything. You will learnhow to program and reprogram your self-concept so that your in-ner world is consistent with the person you want to be and the lifeyou want to experience on the outside. You will learn how to be-come unstoppable.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. Define your ideals clearly. If you could be an excellent personin every way, what qualities would you have? How would youbehave?

2. You become what you think about most of the time. Identify oneor more areas of your life where your thinking is having a majorinfluence on your emotions, attitudes, or actions.

3. In what area of activity do you perform at your best? How doyou visualize yourself in that area? How could you extend thisact of visualization to other areas?



4. What kind of people do you most admire and respect? Why?How could you change your behavior so that it is more consis-tent with that of the best people you know?

5. In what areas of your life do you like yourself the most? Whatsorts of activities give the highest levels of self-esteem and per-sonal value? How could you do even more of these things?

6. You are a thoroughly good person. From this day forth, seeyourself as the very best you can be, and refuse to accept anylimitations on your possibilities.

7. Change your self-concept by continually thinking, talking, andacting as if you were already the person you would like to be, en-joying the life that you want and deserve.



2Change Your Life

If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happyexpectations, you put yourself into a condition conduciveto your goals.

Norman Vincent Peale

The way you think and feel about yourself, including your beliefsand expectations about what is possible for you, determines every-thing you do and everything that happens to you.When you changethe quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life,sometimes instantly.

You have complete control over only one thing in the universeyour thinking! You can decide what you are going to think in anygiven situation.Your thoughts and the way you interpret any eventtrigger your feelingspositive or negative. Your thoughts and feel-ings lead to your actions and determine the results you get. It allstarts with your thoughts.

POSITIVE THINKINGPositive thoughts are life enhancing. They empower you and makeyou feel stronger and more confident. Positive thinking is not just amotivational idea. It has measurable, constructive effects on yourpersonality, your health, your levels of energy, and your creativity.The more positive and optimistic you are, the happier you will be inevery area of your life.

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Negative thoughts bring about the opposite. They disempoweryou and make you feel weaker and less confident. Whenever youthink or say something negative, you give your power away. Youfeel angry and defensive. You feel frustrated and unhappy. Overtime, negative thinking can make you physically ill, and even poi-son your relationships.

Positive thinking leads to mental health and peak performance.Negative thinking leads to mental illness and decreased effective-ness.Your goal, therefore, if you want to live a wonderful life, is tocultivate positive emotions and get rid of negative emotions.

The elimination of negative emotions is the most important sin-gle step you can take toward health, happiness, and personal well-being. Each time you take complete control over your thoughts andfeelings, and discipline yourself to keep them positive, the quality ofboth your inner and outer lives improves. In the absence of negativeemotions, your mind automatically fills with the positive emotionsthat generate feelings of happiness and fulfillment.

YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR THOUGHTSThe Law of Substitution says, Your mind can hold only onethought at a time, positive or negative.You can substitute a positivethought for a negative thought whenever you choose. You can applythis law by deliberately thinking about something positive when-ever you want to cancel out a thought or feeling that makes youangry or unhappy.

The Law of Habit says, Any thought or action that you repeatover and over will eventually become a new habit. When you repeat-edly react and respond in a positive way, you take full control overyour conscious mind. Soon it becomes automatic and easy to thinkand act in that manner. By using willpower and repetition, you de-velop new habits of thinking and acting. By applying this law, youcan become a completely positive person and change your life.

STARVE YOUR NEGATIVE EMOTIONSYour negative emotions have all been learned, beginning in child-hood. And what has been learned can be unlearned, sometimes

Change Your Life 19


quite quickly.You can learn any habit or skill that you consider to beeither desirable or necessary. Especially, you can learn positive, con-structive ways of thinking about people, money, health, and otherfactors to cancel out negative ideas that limit your potential and in-terfere with your success.

Many negative ideas or attitudes are based on false premises.Sometimes a negative idea about a subject, or a negative attitudetoward a person, can be completely reversed with a single piece of new information. You could suddenly learn that an idea youhad about yourself or another person was not true. As a result,you could change your thinking in an instant. Be open to thispossibility.

Negative emotions exist only because we give them life andthen keep them alive. We feed them by continually thinking andtalking about things that make us angry or unhappy. Fortunately,you can change this situation by applying the Law of Emotion.This law states, A stronger emotion will dominate and override aweaker emotion, and whichever emotion you concentrate on grows andbecomes stronger.

What this means is that whatever emotion you dwell upon growsand eventually dominates your thinking in that area. If you with-draw your mental energy from a person or situation that makes yousad or angry by refusing to think about it, the emotion connectedwith that situation eventually dies away. Like a fire with no fuel, itgoes out.

You have experienced this many times already. For example, aswe grow up, we have relationships with the opposite sex. Most ofthem do not work out over time.When they end, we are often emo-tionally distressed and hurt.We are often sad, angry, depressed, pre-occupied, and unhappy. These feelings last for a certain period.Then we recover.We meet someone else. Gradually we forget aboutthe unhappy ending of the earlier relationship. Months or yearslater, we look back or even meet the other person, and we cannotimagine how emotionally involved we were with him or her. Be-cause we did not feed them, the feelings have died away completely.This is an example of the laws of substitution and emotion in actionin your own life.



THE SOURCES OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

There are four basic causes of negative emotions. According to theRussian philosopher Peter Ouspensky, in his book In Search of theMiraculous, these are: (1) justification; (2) identification, (3) inwardconsidering, and (4) blame. The greatest leap forward in changingyour thinking and changing your life will take place when you sys-tematically eliminate all four of these causes of negative emotionsfrom your life.

STOP JUSTIFYINGJustification is what you do when you rationalize or create a rea-son for your anger and unhappiness. You tell yourself, and who-ever else will listen, how badly you were treated and howdreadfully the other person behaved. You continually rehash thesituation in your mind.You repeat all the reasons you have for be-ing upset. Each time you think of the person or situation, you be-come angry. You feel entitled to your anger, as if you have paid ahigh price for it, especially since, in your estimation, you weresuch a good and virtuous person.

The way you short-circuit the natural tendency toward justifica-tion and rationalization is by refusing to engage in it. Instead, youstop justifying.You use your marvelous mind to think of reasons notto justify your negative emotions. Remember, your negative emo-tions do you no good. They are totally destructive. They do not af-fect the other person or change the situation. They simplyundermine your happiness and self-confidence, making you weakerand less effective in other areas of your life.

Instead of justifying your anger and unhappiness, you shoulduse your intelligence and imagination to excuse the other person, orto let go of the unhappy situation. For example, if someone cuts youoff in traffic, instead of becoming angry, you say, Well, Id better bemore careful next time, I guess he is having a bad day, or Hemust be late for an important appointment.

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MAKE EXCUSES FOR OTHERSSince your mind can hold only one thought at a time, the instantyou start excusing the other person you withdraw the energy orfuel that the negative emotions of anger and resentment requireto get going and stay burning. You reassert your mental control.You keep yourself calm and positive. In a little while, the situationpasses and you forget all about it. By substituting a positivethought for a negative thought, you get rid of the negative emo-tion, whatever it is.

If you have a major life problem, such as a divorce, a lost job, ora failed investment, the same rule holds true. Stop telling yourself(and anyone who will listen) why you are entitled to be angry or un-happy. Instead, make excuses for the other person each time youthink about the situation until the negativity dies away. When thefire of negative emotion goes out, you can then turn your attentionto something positive.

One of the most important rules for success and happiness is,Dont be upset or worry about something that you cant do any-thing about. Dont criticize anyone for something that the personcannot change. A famous law says, If there is no solution, there isno problem.

TWO TIME PERIODSThere are two time periods in life, the past and the future.The present is only a brief, fleeting moment. You can choose tofocus your attention on what has happened, which cannot bechanged, or on the future, on what is possible, over which youhave some control.

Many people spend most of their emotional energies beingupset and angry about events that occurred in the past. Unfortu-nately, this energy is completely wasted. Nothing good can comeof constantly complaining about the past. Even worse, the nega-tive emotions kept alive by reliving past events rob you of the joyand excitement that you could experience by thinking about fu-ture possibilities.



LET IT GOA psychiatrist with more than 25 years experience working withunhappy people wrote that the two most common words he heardin his practice were the words if only. It seemed that most un-happy people are held back by some event that occurred in the pastthat they cannot let go of. They are still resentful, angry, or de-pressed over something that someone did or did not do or say.Theyare angry with one or both parents, a sibling, a previous relationshipor marriage, a boss or business relationship, a failed investment orfinancial mistake.

The fact is that your life will be a continuous series of problems,difficulties, setbacks, and temporary failures. These unexpected andunwanted reversals and disappointments are a normal, natural, andunavoidable fact of growing up.To change your thinking and changeyour life, you must make a decision to get over them and to get onwith your life, no matter what happened. Until you do, you remain aslave to the past, which cannot be changed in any case. Make a deci-sion today that, from now on, you are going to eliminate all the ifonlys from your life.

REINTERPRET EVENTS DIFFERENTLYThe author and speaker Wayne Dyer says, Its never too late tohave a happy childhood. He means that at any time you can rein-terpret the unhappy events of your early life in a positive way.Youcan practice the Law of Substitution and look into those negativeexperiences for something good, and think about that instead.You can focus on how your unhappy experiences have made you abetter, wiser person. You can actually be grateful to people whohave hurt you in the past because they have made you so muchstronger in the present. And in any case, it could not have hap-pened otherwise.

Your parents had no experience with raising children. In addi-tion, they were a product of the way they were raised. Like all hu-mans, they came to parenting with their problems and weaknesses,just as you have today. Nonetheless, they did the best they could

Change Your Life 23


with what they had. They were the people they were, and theycould not have raised you any differently than they did. It is silly tocontinue to be unhappy about things they did or didnt do thatthey were incapable of doing otherwise. Let it go and get on withyour life.

DONT TAKE IT PERSONALLYThe second major cause of negative emotions according to Ouspen-sky, is identification, or attachment. This occurs when you takesomething personally or you become attached to a person or thing.You see the unhappy outcome of an event or circumstance as a per-sonal affront or attack on you or on something you believe in orhold dearly. You become emotionally involved in a situation andidentify so strongly with it that it affects your emotions and yourreason in a negative way.

The great spiritual teachers, such as Buddha and Jesus, haveemphasized the importance of separating yourself emotionally fromthe situation (disidentification), in order to regain your calmness andcomposure. Psychologist and philosopher William James of Har-vard wrote, The first step in dealing with any difficulty is to be will-ing to have it so. He encouraged people to say, What cannot becured must be endured. In other words, practice detachment fromany person or situation that makes you feel angry or upset. With-draw the emotional energy from it so that you can regain your calm-ness and composure.

This approach does not suggest that you passively accept any-thing that happens to you. Instead, it encourages you to use yourwillpower to keep your mind and emotions under control.You disci-pline yourself to stand back mentally and deal with the problem in-telligently. You use your mind to see the situation objectively andmake better decisions to resolve it.

Nothing and no one can have any control over you unless thereis something you still want from them. They must have somethingthat they can still give you or withhold from you. As soon as you de-tach emotionally from a person or object and no longer want any-thing from them, you are free.This ability to practice detachment is



a power you can develop through practice. It can make you themaster of a situation that might otherwise cause you to become up-set and angry.

One of the kindest things you can do to help others is to encour-age them to stand back from a problem situation and be objectiveabout it. Encourage them to view the difficulty as if it was happen-ing to someone else. Ask them what advice they would give to an-other person who was facing this same problem. By detaching fromthe emotionally charged situation, you and others will becomemuch more capable of dealing with it effectively.

THE OPINIONS OF OTHERSThe third major cause of negative emotions, according to Ous-pensky, is inward considering.This occurs when you become overlyconcerned with the way people are treating you. If you perceivethat someone is not giving you the respect that you feel you de-serve, you can feel insulted and angry, and want to strike back.If people are rude or indifferent to you, you can experience theirbehavior as an attack on your personality or character. This in-terpretation of their attitude or behavior can make you angry or depressed.

Psychologists say that everything we do is to increase our self-esteem and sense of personal value, or to protect it from being di-minished by other people or circumstances. If your self-esteem isnot as high as it could be, you will be sensitive to the actions and re-actions of other people toward you.You will take everything person-ally, exactly as if what they said or did was consciously anddeliberately directed at you. However, this is seldom the case.

The fact is that most people are preoccupied with themselvesand their own problems. As much as 99 percent of the time, peopleare wrapped up in their own thoughts about themselves. They de-vote the other 1 percent of emotional energy they have available toeveryone else in the world, including you.The person who cuts youoff in traffic is so involved with his own thoughts, he is not evenaware of your existence. It would be silly to become angry or upsetover his thoughtless action.

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SET YOUR OWN SAILSThere is a rule that I have learned from experience: Never do or re-frain from doing something because you are concerned about what peoplemight think about you. The fact is that nobody is even thinking aboutyou at all.

Of course, I am not talking about criminal or antisocial be-haviors. But it is amazing how many people make decisions to get into or to not get into relationships, businesses, new endeav-ors, adventures, and other things for fear that someone else mightnot approve. They stay in marriages they hate, they work at jobsthey dislike, or they turn down business opportunities for fearthat someone, anyone, might criticize them. The truth is that no one cares more about your key life decisions than you do.Plan accordingly.

In Abraham Maslows studies of self-actualizing people, those1 or 2 percent of men and women who are fully mature, fullyfunctioning adults, he found a particular quality that they all hadin common: They were completely honest with themselves. They wereobjective and clear about their own strengths and weaknesses.They did not hope or pretend that they were other than they were.This self-acceptance was a foundation stone of their self-esteemand self-respect.

Because they knew who they were, and who they were not, theydid not feel that they had to continually earn the approval of others.They took the opinions of others into consideration, but then theymade their own decisions. They were not overly influenced by thepossible approval or disapproval of other people.You should do thesame.You are the one who cares the most and who is most affected,in any case.

THE RESPECT OF OTHERSWhen Somerset Maugham, the famous English author, was askedby a reporter for his chief motivation for writing, he replied, I writeto earn the respect of the people I respect.

The fact is that much of what you do, or fail to do, is influencedby the same concern.You do many things in your social life to earn



the respect of the people you respect, or at least not to lose it. Infact, the people whose respect is most important to you largely de-termine how good you feel about yourself, both at home and atwork. The respect of others has an inordinate influence on yourself-esteem because it is so closely linked to your self-ideal andyour self-image.

Exceptional men and women look up to and seek the respect ofmen and women of character and accomplishment. They strive, atan unconscious level, to behave and to live up to their ideals of howan excellent person would behave.

One of the most important decisions you make as you gothrough life is to decide for yourself the specific people whose re-spect is of the greatest value to you. Once you are clear about whoyou respect and why you respect them, you can then organize yourlife in such a way that you continually earn that respect, whetherthey know of your actions or not.

SET HIGH STANDARDSIn the famous book In His Steps, by Charles M. Sheldon (ChristianLibrary, 1984), an entire town agrees, prior to every act or decision,to ask the question, What would Jesus do? and then to behave ac-cordingly. The eventual outcome for the townspeople was that theproblems that had divided them were soon solved and the town be-came happy and prosperous. They created an ideal for themselvesand then built their lives around living up to it.

In a study of successful men and women, most of whom hadstarted from humble beginnings, researchers found that thesepeople had almost all been avid readers of biographies and auto-biographies when they were young. As they read the life stories offamous men and women, they imagined themselves having thesame qualities and characters of the people they were studying.When they became adults themselves, those qualities and virtueshad become part of their thinking and guided their choices anddecisions in later life.

Modeling has been used as a powerful way to develop personalityand character throughout history.Young people have been encour-aged to study school heroes and heroines, and emulate them as

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much as possible. In the military, the heroic acts of soldiers andsailors from the past are taught as part of the curriculum, encourag-ing young soldiers and sailors to think and act like them when thesituation demands it.

The people you most admire and look up to have an inordinateinfluence on how you think and feel about yourself, and the kind ofdecisions you make.Who are your role models?

CHOOSE YOUR ROLE MODELS WITH CARE

There is nothing wrong with being thoughtful and concernedabout the feelings and reactions of others toward you and yourchoices. When you select admirable people to look up to, you de-velop an inner guide that leads you to conduct yourself in an excel-lent way yourself.

What is silly and self-defeating however, is for you to allowyourself to be inordinately influenced by the fleeting opinions ofpeople whose regard and respect is of no concern or value to you. Ifyou have been raised with destructive criticism, you can easily slipinto the trap of organizing your life around trying to gain the ap-proval, or escape the disapproval, or people you dont even know orcare about.

Here is the way to avoid this form of negative emotion:Decide for yourself the men and women you most admire, andthe qualities they have that you would most like to emulate.From now on, when you have to make a decision, think aboutsomeone you admire and ask, What would he or she do in thissituation?

When you ask this question, you actually connect at an unconscious level with a higher power that will then give youguidance and insight. You will experience a deep inner knowing of exactly the right thing to do or say. You will make the right decision and achieve the desired result. This is a technique usedby many successful men and women. Give it a try and see what happens.



THE WORST NEGATIVE INFLUENCE OF ALL

The fourth major cause of negative emotions, according to Ouspen-sky, and the trigger of anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, and frustra-tion of any kind is blame. It is blame especially that generates anger,the worst of all the negative emotions. Anger is more destructivethan any force in the human world. Uncontrolled anger destroyshealth, relationships, families, businesses, and societies, and is thechief generator of wars, revolutions, and social conflict.

The primary cause of anger can be traced back to destructivecriticism in early childhood. Whenever a person is criticized, hereacts exactly as if he is being attacked, with defensiveness and re-sentment. Since any behavior that you repeat over and over be-comes a habit, many people develop the habit of responding withanger to every problem, disappointment, or frustration they expe-rience. Eventually, they reach the point where they are always an-gry about something.

To become angry, a person must be able to blame someone forsomething that has happened or not happened that they dont likeor approve of. Many people are so preoccupied with blaming othersfor their problems that they lose contact with reality. They see theentire world through a lens of blame and its sister emotion, guilt.

Whenever there is a problem, personal or public, the angry per-son automatically concludes that someone must be to blame. Theindividual then spends his time and emotion apportioning blameamong various parties. This obsession with blame and anger, lead-ing to resentment and envy, can often consume the person who ex-periences it.

NO ONE IS GUILTYHere is a common example.Two people in love get married. Both ofthem have the best of intentions and the highest of expectations forthe future, or they wouldnt get married in the first place. Unfortu-nately, people and situations change over time. The couple findsthat they are no longer happy together and decide to divorce. Butthen the problems really begin.

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Instead of agreeing, like adults, that they have reached a pointwhere they are incompatible and they no longer want to live to-gether, blame must be apportioned. Someone must be guilty. Theguilty party must be punished. Lawyers and judges now have to getinvolved. Detectives and accountants are hired to dig up dirt oneach party. The situation gets worse and worse, until it finally endsin anger, bitterness, accusations, and even hatred.

The best of solutions, when a marriage or a relationship doesnot work out, is to accept that fact as an unfortunate reality, makereasonable provisions for each party, and then for each person toget on with his or her life. Many couples are doing this todaythrough mediation rather than going through the bitterness of a traditional divorce. The results turn out to be better for every-one involved.

It is a psychological fact that most people feel that they are rightin whatever they do. But as soon as one person starts to blame theother, and even worse, demand that the other person admit to beingguilty, the emotional and legal battles begin. The saddest part ofthese legal battles is that they usually end where they started, withno one having gained very much.

ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITYThe best way to eliminate anger of all kinds is to accept responsibility.The acceptance of responsibility immediately short-circuits theemotion of anger. All the energy that anger requires for its existenceis cut off. As soon as you say, I am responsible! your anger stops.Because of the Law of Substitution and the fact that your mind canhold only one thought at a time, you cannot accept responsibilityfor your situation and be angry at the same time.The idea of blame,on which the emotion of anger is based, is canceled out by the deci-sion to accept responsibility.

POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE WORLDVIEWS

There are two basic ways of looking at your world.You can have apositive and benevolent worldview or a negative and malevolent



worldview. By taking responsibility for yourself and what happensto you, you become positive. You see the world in benevolentterms.You become more optimistic toward yourself and your possi-bilities.You become a happier and more effective person.

In contrast, when you take a negative or malevolent worldview,you see problems and injustice everywhere.You see oppression andevil. You see guilty people all around you. You see limitations andunfairness rather than opportunity and hope. Worst of all, youspend your time apportioning blame to various people and institu-tions for all the problems you see.

DIFFERENCES IN RESULTSFor example, in this country, some people are better off than others.This has been true of all societies throughout human history. Thiscan be for various reasons. It may be the result of different peoplehaving different talents, ambitions, and desires. It may be the resultof some people working harder, having a better start at life, beingborn with greater intelligence, or simply being at the right place atthe right time to catch a favorable trend in the economy.

In any case, people who are well off are not to blame for the fatthat other people are not well off. People who are healthy are not toblame for the fact that other people are sick. People who are suc-cessful and happy are not to blame for those who are unsuccessfuland unhappy. People who are building a good life for themselvesand their families are not at fault because other people are not.

Success does not cause failure. Correlation is not causation. Be-cause both situations occur simultaneously, this does not mean thatone caused the other. An honest acceptance of this simple factwould solve many arguments and disagreements at the philosophi-cal and political levels.

THE POWER OF FORGIVENESSThe root cause of negative emotions, the main factor that predis-poses a person to blaming and to anger and resentment, fear anddoubt, envy and jealousy, is the inability to forgive someone we feelhas hurt us in some way.

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As we develop as children, we go through a phase where jus-tice is very important to us.We fixate on the concept of fairness.We are upset by any situation in our lives that does not seem to befair and equitable to anyone, especially if it concerns ourselves.Whenever we feel that we or anyone else has been unfairly treated,for any reason, we take it as a personal attack. Our fragile self-esteem is threatened.We react with anger and resentment. This is anormal developmental phase of growth that we go through as wemove toward adulthood.

However, some people fixate at this stage and never grow beyondit. If we are not taught the importance of letting go of our grievancesas children, we will come into adulthood with a gunnysack of unfor-given experiences. If we are not careful, we will then build our livesaround our anger toward people who we feel are to blame for some-thing they did or that we disapprove of. Many psychotherapists andpsychiatrists spend their entire careers helping people confront anddeal with these unhappy past and current experiences.

The most powerful and liberating decision you can make is toforgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Only by freeingthe other person, in your mind, by forgiving him or her can you befree yourself.This is why most religions stress the importance of for-giveness as the first step toward peace of mind and earthly bliss.

Just imagine how you would feel if you had no anger towardanyone at all in the whole world. Imagine being a completely posi-tive, optimistic, cheerful person, with high levels of self-esteem andenthusiasm and unlimited self-confidence. Imagine being a warm,friendly, loving person filled with feelings of calmness and innerpeace. All this is possible for you when you practice forgiveness.

In contrast, the refusal or failure to forgive lies at the base ofnegativity, anger, stress, anxiety, mental and physical illness, andmost unhappiness. The refusal to forgive keeps you trapped. For-giveness sets you free. And it is always a choice you make. It hasnothing to do with the other person or situation.

IT TAKES TWOSome people hold themselves back from forgiving with a false basicpremise.They think that by forgiving they are condoning the behav-



ior of the person they are mad at.They think that, if they forgive theother person, they are doing that person a favor. They even thinkthat they are letting the other person go free, which they are deter-mined not to do.

The fact is that it takes two to make a prison, the prisoner andthe jailer. Both are in the jail. When you let the other person gofree, you liberate yourself.You dont have to condone the behavioror like the person who hurt you.You just have to forgive him or herso that you can get on with the rest of your life. Forgiveness istherefore a totally selfish act. It really has nothing to do with theother person at all. It has only to do with your own mental integrityand peace of mind.

The comedian Buddy Hackett once said, I never hold grudges;while youre holding grudges, theyre out dancing!

When you remain angry with another person, you give awayyour emotional control to that person each time you think of him orher.You allow him or her to control your emotions at long distance.By not forgiving, you allow that person to run your emotional life,exactly as if he or she were right there with you and the situationwas occurring all over again.

THE PATH TO FORGIVENESSThe way you forgive is simple. Each time you think of the otherperson, you use the Law of Substitution and say, God blesshim/her; I forgive him/her for everything, and I wish him/her well. Itis not possible to bless and forgive another person and simultane-ously be angry or upset.The positive thought cancels out the neg-ative thought.

You can speed up the process of personal liberation by accept-ing responsibility for your share of what happened. Very few nega-tive events that lead to anger and resentment occur in a vacuum.Almost invariably, you did something to contribute to the situa-tion.You therefore need to have the maturity to take your share ofthe responsibility.

You can then say, I am responsible. I shouldnt have gotten into thesituation in the first place, or stayed in so long. I should not have donewhat I did. I forgive him/her completely and let it go.

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It may be difficult for you to forgive at first.These words will behard for you. Many people have built their entire adult lives aroundtheir grievances. They are afraid that they will have nothing else totalk about if they stop complaining about their parents or their badmarriages. But dont worry.

When you forgive others and let them go, you soon begin tofeel lighter and happier. As the thoughts of anger and resentmentfade away, your mind will fill with positive thoughts.You will havemore energy and enthusiasm. You will feel stronger and moreconfident.Your whole future will open up before you, like a sum-mer sunrise.

Dont worry about what your friends think or say when you de-cide to forgive people who have hurt you.They are probably tired ofhearing your complaints about the unfortunate events of your past.In fact, when you start forgiving, you will often find that the onlycommon bond between you and certain people is your gripe ses-sions. When you decide to forgive others, you may no longer findthem very interesting to talk to.

THE PEOPLE YOU MUST FORGIVEThere are four groups people you need to forgive if you are seriousabout changing your thinking and changing your life.

The first is your parents, living or dead.You must absolutely for-give them for every mistake they ever made in bringing you up. Atthe very least, you should be grateful to them for giving you life.They got you here. If you are happy to be alive, you can forgivethem for everything else. Never complain about them again.

Many of my seminar participants have phoned or visited theirparents and told them that they forgive them for everything. Oftenthis simple act of courage and character has had a profound effecton their relationship with their mother or father. From that day on-ward, they have become good friends, which lasted the rest of theirlives together.

In contrast, by not forgiving your parents, you remain forever achild. You block your own chance to grow up and become a fullyfunctioning adult. You continue to see yourself as a victim. Evenworse, you keep your negative feelings of inferiority and anger alive.



If your parents die without your having forgiven them, it c

Change your thinking, change your life - Brian Tracy

Self Improvement

Transcript of Change your thinking, change your life - Brian Tracy