GOALS
Part-10
How to Get Everything You Want –
Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible
By Brian Tracy
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
_________________________________________________
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Chapter-21
Persist Until You Succeed
Conclusion: Take Action Today
DEDICATION
To Rick Metcalf, a good friend, a great American, an extraordinary entrepreneur,
one of the best salesmen who ever lived, and an inspiration to everyone who knew him.
I only wish you could be here to read this book. You left us all too soon.
PREFACE
This book is for ambitious people who want to get ahead faster. If this is the way you think and feel, you are the person for whom this book is written. The ideas contained in the pages ahead will save you years of hard work in achieving the goals that are most important to you.
I have spoken more than 2000 times before audiences of as many as 23,000 people, in 24 countries. My seminars and talks have varied in length from five minutes to five days. In every case, I have focused on sharing the best ideas I could find on the particular subject with that audience at that moment. After countless talks on various themes, if I was only given five minutes to speak to you, and I could only convey one thought that would help you to be more successful, I would tell you to “write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans every single day.”
This advice, if you followed it, would be of more help to you than anything else you could ever learn. Many university graduates have told me that this simple concept has been more valuable to them than four years of study. This idea has changed my life, and the lives of millions of other people. It will change yours as well.
The Turning Point
A group of successful men got together in Chicago some time ago, talking about the experiences of their lives. All of them were millionaires and multi-millionaires. Like most successful people, they were both humble and grateful for what they had achieved, and for the blessings that life had bestowed upon them. As they discussed the reasons why they had managed to achieve so much in life, the wisest man among them spoke up and said that, in his estimate, “success is goals, and all else is commentary.”
Your time and your life are precious. The biggest waste of time and life is for you to spend years accomplishing something that you could have achieved in only a few months. By following the practical, proven process of goal setting and goal achieving laid out in this book, you will be able to accomplish vastly more in a shorter period of time than you have ever imagined before. The speed at which you move onward and upward will amaze both yourself and all the people around you. By following these simple and easy-to-apply methods and techniques, you can move quickly from rags to riches in the months and years ahead. You can transform your experience from poverty and frustration to affluence and satisfaction. You can go far beyond your friends and family and achieve more in life than most other people you know.
In my talks, seminars and consulting, I have worked with more than two million people all around the world. I have found, over and over, that an average person with clear goals will run circles around a genius who is not sure what he or she really wants.
My personal mission statement has not changed in years. It is: “To help people achieve their goals faster than they ever would in the absence of my help.”
This book contains the distilled essence of all that I have learned in the areas of success, achievement and goal attainment. By following the steps explained in the pages ahead, you will move to the front of the line in life. For my children, this book is meant to be a road map and a guide to help you get from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. For my friends and readers of this book, my reason for writing it is to give you a proven system that you can use to move onto the fast track in your own life.
Welcome! A great new adventure is about to begin.
INTRODUCTION
This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more opportunities for creative and determined people to achieve more of their goals than they can today. Regardless of short-term ups and downs in the economy and in your life, we are entering into an age of peace and prosperity superior to any previous era in human history.
In the year 1900, there were five thousand millionaires in America. By the year 2000, there were more than five million, most of them selfmade, in one generation. Experts predict that there will be another ten to twenty million millionaires created in the next two decades. Your goal should be to become one of them. This book will show you how.
A Slow Start
When I was 18, I left high school without graduating. My first job was as a dishwasher in the back of a small hotel. From there, I moved on to washing cars, and then washing floors with a janitorial service. For the next few years, I drifted and worked at various laboring jobs, earning my living by the sweat of my brow. I worked in sawmills and factories. I worked on farms and ranches. I worked in the tall timber with a chain saw and dug wells when the logging season ended.
I worked as a construction laborer on tall buildings, and as a seaman on a Norwegian Freighter in the North Atlantic. Often I slept in my car, or in cheap rooming houses. When I was 23, I was working as an itinerant farm laborer during the harvest, sleeping on the hay in the barn and eating with the farmer’s family. I was uneducated, unskilled, and at the end of the harvest, unemployed once more.
When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got a job in straight commission sales, cold calling from office-to-office and from door-todoor. I would often work all day long to make a single sale so that I could pay for my rooming house and have a place to sleep that night. This was not a great start at life.
The Day My Life Changed
Then one day, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down an outrageous goal for myself. It was to earn $1,000 per month in doorto-door and office-to-office selling. I folded up the piece of paper, put it away and never found it again.
But 30 days later, my entire life had changed. During that time, I discovered a technique for closing sales that tripled my income from the very first day. Meanwhile, the owner of my company sold out to an entrepreneur who had just moved into town. Exactly thirty days after I had written down my goal, he took me aside and offered me $1,000 per month to head up the sales force and teach the other people what it was that I was doing that enabled me to be selling so much more than anyone else. I accepted his offer and from that day forward, my life was never the same.
Within eighteen months, I had moved from that job to another, and then to another. I went from personal selling to becoming a sales manager with people selling for me. I recruited and built a 95 person sales force. I went literally from worrying about my next meal to walking around with a pocket full of $20 dollar bills.
I began teaching my salespeople how to write out their goals, and how to sell more effectively. In almost no time at all, they doubled and tripled and increased their incomes as much as ten times. Many of them are today millionaires and multi-millionaires.
It’s important to note that, since those days in my mid-20s, my life has not been a smooth series of upward steps. It has included many ups and downs, marked by occasional successes and temporary failures. I have traveled, lived and worked in more than 80 countries, learning French, German and Spanish along the way, and working in 22 different fields.
As the result of inexperience, and sometimes sheer stupidity, I have spent or lost everything I made and had to start over again - several times. In every case when this happened, I would begin by sitting down with a piece of paper and laying out a new set of goals for myself, using the methods that I’ll explain in the pages ahead.
After several years of hit and miss goal setting and goal achieving, I finally decided to collect everything I had learned into a single system. By assembling these ideas and strategies in one place, I
developed a goal setting methodology and process, with a beginning, middle and end, and began to follow it every day.
Within one year, following this blueprint for goal achieving, my life had changed once more. In January of that year, I was living in a rented apartment with rented furniture. I was $35,000 in debt and driving a used car that wasn’t paid for. By December, I was living in my own $100,000 condominium. I had a new Mercedes, had paid off all my debts and I had $50,000 in the bank.
Then I really got serious about success. I realized that this “goal setting” stuff was incredibly powerful. I invested hundreds and then thousands of hours reading and researching on goal setting and goal achieving, synthesizing the best ideas I could find into a complete goal setting and achieving process that worked with incredible effectiveness.
Anyone Can Do It
In 1981, I began teaching my system in workshops and seminars that have now reached more than two million people in 35 countries. I began audiotaping and video taping my courses so that others could use them. We have now trained hundreds of thousands of people in these principles, in multiple languages, all over the world.
What I found was that these ideas work everywhere, for everyone, in virtually every country, no matter what your education, experience or background may be when you begin.
Most of all, these ideas have made it possible for me, and many thousands of others, to take complete control over our lives. The regular and systematic practice of goal setting has taken us from poverty to prosperity, from frustration to fulfillment, from underachievement to success and satisfaction. This system will do the same for you.
What I learned early on is that any plan is better than no plan at all. And it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. All the answers have already been found. There are hundreds of thousands, and even millions of men and women who have started with nothing and achieved great success following these principles. And what others have done, you can do as well, if you just learn how.
In the pages ahead, you will learn twenty-one of the most important ideas and strategies ever discovered for achieving everything that you could ever want in life. You will find that there are no limits to what you can accomplish except for the limits you place on your own imagination. And since there are no limits to what you can imagine, there are no limits to what you can achieve. This is one of the greatest discoveries of all. Let us begin.
“A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. Confucius
CHAPTER 21
Persist Until You Succeed
“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill;
great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.”
_____________________________________________________________________
Samuel Johnson
Every great success in your life will represent a triumph of persistence. Your ability to decide what you want, to begin, and then to persist through all obstacles and difficulties until you achieve your goals is the critical determinant of your success. And the flip side of persistence is courage.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that you will ever face in life is the conquest of fear and the development of the habit of courage. Winston Churchill once wrote, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.”
The Conquest of Fear
Fear is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of mankind. When Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was saying that the emotion of fear, rather than the reality of what we fear, is what causes us anxiety, stress, and unhappiness.
When you develop the habit of courage and unshakable selfconfidence, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for you.
Just think—what would you dare to dream, or be, or do, if you weren’t afraid of anything in the whole world?
You Can Learn Anything You Need To Learn
Fortunately, the habit of courage can be learned just as any other success skill is learned. To do so, you need to go to work on yourself to conquer your fears, while simultaneously building up the kind of courage and confidence that will enable you to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life unafraid.
Syndicated columnist Ann Landers wrote these words: “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and 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.
The Causes And Cures Of Fear
The starting point in overcoming fear and developing courage is, first of all, to look at the factors that predispose us toward being afraid. As we know, the root source of fear is childhood conditioning, usually destructive criticism from one or both parents, that causes us to experience two types of fear. These are, first of all, the fear of failure, which causes us to think, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t”; and second, the fear of rejection, which causes us to think, “I have to, I have to, I have to.”
Because of these fears, we become preoccupied with the fears of losing our money, or our time, or our emotional investment in a relationship. We become hypersensitive to the opinions and possible criticisms of others, sometimes to the point where we are afraid to do anything that anyone else might disapprove of. Our fears tend to paralyze us, holding us back from taking constructive action in the direction of our dreams and goals. We hesitate. We become indecisive. We procrastinate. We make excuses and find reasons to delay. And finally, we feel frustrated, caught in the double bind of, “I have to, but I can’t,” or, “I can’t, but I have to.”
Fear and Ignorance Go Together
Fear can be caused by ignorance. When we have limited information, we may be tense and insecure about the outcome of our actions. Ignorance causes us to fear change, to fear the unknown and to avoid trying anything new or different.
But the reverse is also true. The very act of gathering more information and experience in a particular area gives us more courage and confidence in that area. There are parts of your life where you have no fear at all because you have mastered that area, like driving a car, skiing or selling and managing. Because of your knowledge and experience, you feel completely capable of handling whatever happens. You have no fears.
Fatigue Doth Make Cowards of Us All
Another factor that causes fear is illness or fatigue. When we are tired or unwell, or when we are not physically fit, we are more predisposed to fear and doubt than when we are feeling healthy and happy and energetic.
Sometimes you can totally change your attitude toward yourself and your potential by getting a good night’s sleep, or taking a vacation long enough to completely recharge your mental and emotional batteries. Rest and relaxation build courage and confidence as much as any other factors.
Everyone Is Afraid
Here is an important point: All intelligent people are afraid of something. It is normal and natural to be concerned about your physical, emotional and financial survival. The courageous person is not a person who is unafraid. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear not absence of fear.” It is not whether or not you are afraid. We are all afraid. The question is, how do you deal with the fear? The courageous person is simply one who goes forward in spite of the fear. And here is something else I have learned: when you confront your fears and move toward what you are afraid of, your fears diminish while at the same time, your self-esteem and self-confidence increases.
However, when you avoid the thing you fear, your fears grow until they begin to control every aspect of your life. And as your fears increase, your self-esteem, your self-confidence and your self-respect diminish accordingly. As the actor Glenn Ford once said, “If you do not do the thing you fear, the fear controls your life.”
Analyze Your Fears
Once we have recognized the factors that can cause fear, the next step in overcoming fear is to sit down and take the time to objectively identify, define and analyze your own personal fears.
At the top of a clean sheet of paper, write the question, “What am I afraid of?” Begin filling out your list of fears by writing down everything, major and minor, over which you experience any anxiety. Start with the most common fears, the fears of failure or loss and the fears of rejection or criticism.
Some people, dominated by the fear of failure, invest an enormous amount of energy justifying or covering up their mistakes. They cannot deal with the idea of making a mistake. Others, preoccupied by the fear of rejection, are so sensitive to how they appear to others that they seem to have no ability to take independent action at all. Until they are absolutely certain that someone else will approve, they refrain from doing anything.
Set Priorities On Your Fears
Once you have made a list of every fear that you think may be affecting your thinking and your behavior, organize the items in order of importance. Which fear do you feel has the greatest impact on your thinking, or holds you back more than any other? Which fear would be number two? What would be your third fear? And so on. With regard to your predominant fear, write the answers to these three questions:
How does this fear hold me back in life?
How does this fear help me, or how has it helped me in the past?
What would be my pay-off for eliminating this fear? Some years ago, I went through this exercise and concluded that my biggest fear was the fear of poverty. I was afraid of not having enough money, being broke, perhaps even being destitute. I knew that this fear had originated during my childhood because my parents, who grew up during the Depression, had continually worried about money. My fear was reinforced when I was broke at various times during my 20’s. I could objectively assess the origins of this fear, but it still had a strong hold on me. Even when I had sufficient money for all my needs, this fear was always there.
My answer to the first question, “How does this fear hold me back?” was that it caused me to be anxious about taking risks with money. It caused me to play it safe with regard to employment. And it caused me to choose security over opportunity.
My answer to the second question, “How does this fear help me?” was that, in order to escape the fear of poverty, I had developed the habit of working much longer and harder than the average person. I was more ambitious and determined. I took much more time to study and learn about the various ways that money could be made and invested. The fear of poverty was, in effect, driving me toward financial independence.
When I answered the third question, “What would be my pay-off for overcoming this fear?” I immediately saw that I would be willing to take more risks, I would be more aggressive in pursuing my financial goals, I could and would start my own business, and I would not be so tense and concerned about spending too much or having too little. Especially, I would no longer be so concerned about the price of everything.
By objectively analyzing my biggest fear in this way, I was able to begin the process of eliminating it. And so can you.
Practice Makes Permanent
You can begin the process of developing courage and eliminating fear by engaging in actions consistent with the behaviors of courage and self-confidence. Anything that you practice over and over eventually becomes a new habit. You develop courage by behaving courageously whenever courage is called for.
Here are some of the activities you can practice to develop the habit of courage. The first and perhaps most important kind of courage is the courage to begin, to launch, to step out in faith. This is the courage to try something new or different, to move out of your comfort zone, with no guarantee of success.
Earlier I mentioned Professor Robert Ronstadt of Babson College who taught entrepreneurship for many years. He conducted a study of those who took his class and found that only 10% actually started their own businesses and became successful later in life. He could only find one quality that the successful graduates had in common. It was their willingness to actually start their own businesses, as opposed to continually talking about it.
The Courage To Begin
He discovered the “Corridor Principle,” that we spoke about earlier. As these individuals moved forward toward their goals, as though proceeding down a corridor, doors opened to them that they would not have seen if they had not been in forward motion.
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 which never happened.
The Future Belongs To The Risk Takers
The future belongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers. Life is perverse in the sense that, the more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.
Whenever you feel fear or anxiety, and you need to bolster your courage to persist in the face of obstacles and setbacks, switch your attention to your goals. Create a clear mental picture of the person that you would like to be, performing the way you would like to perform. There is nothing wrong with thoughts of fear as long as you temper them with thoughts of courage and self-reliance. Whatever you dwell upon, grows . . . so be careful.
The mastery of fear and the development of courage are essential prerequisites for a happy, successful life. With a commitment to acquire the habit of courage, you will eventually reach the point where your fears no longer play a major role in your decisionmaking. You will set big, challenging, exciting goals, and you will have the confidence of knowing that you can attain them. You will be able to face every situation with calmness and self-assurance. And the key is courage.
Learn From The Masters
What if you could sit down with one of the most successful men or women in our society and learn from him or her all the lessons of success that he or she had taken a lifetime to gather? Do you think that would help you to be more successful?
What if you could sit down with 100 of the most successful men and women who ever lived and learn from their rules, their lessons and their secrets of success? Would that help you to be more successful in your own life? What if you could sit down, over time, with more than 1,000 highly successful men and women? How about 2,000 or 3,000?
Action Is Everything
Your answer is probably that spending time with these extremely successful men and women, learning what they learned in order to achieve their goals, would be of great help to you. The truth is however, is that all of this advice and input would do you no good at all unless you took some specific action on what you had learned. If learning about success was all that it took to do great things with your life, then your success would be guaranteed. The bookstores are full of self-help books, each one of them loaded with ideas that you can use to be more successful. The fact is, however, that all of the best advice in the world will only help you if you can motivate yourself to take persistent, continuous action in the direction of your goals until you succeed.
The probable result of your reading the ideas in this book has been that you have made some specific decisions about things that you are going to do more of, and things that you are going to do less of. You have set certain goals for yourself in different areas of your life, and you have made resolutions that you are determined to follow through on. The most important question for your future now is simply: “Will you do what you have resolved to do?”
Self-Discipline is the Core Quality
The most important single quality for success is self-discipline. Selfdiscipline means that you have the ability, within yourself, based on your strength of character and willpower, to “do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”
Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed. It is not what you learn that is decisive for your future. It is whether or not you can put your head down and discipline yourself to pay the price, over and over, until you finally obtain your objective.
You need self-discipline in order to set your goals and to make plans for their accomplishment. You need self-discipline to continually revise and upgrade your plans with new information. You need selfdiscipline to use your time well and to always concentrate on the one thing, the most important thing that you need to do at the moment. You need self-discipline to invest in yourself every day, to build yourself up personally and professionally, to learn what you need to learn in order to enjoy the success of which you are capable.
You need self-discipline to delay gratification, to save your money and to organize your finances so that you can achieve financial independence in the course of your working lifetime. You need selfdiscipline to keep your thoughts on your goals and dreams, and keep them off of your doubts and fears. You need self-discipline to respond positively and constructively in the face of every difficulty. Persistence is Self-Discipline in Action
Perhaps the most important demonstration of self-discipline is your level of persistence when the going gets tough. Persistence is selfdiscipline in action. Persistence is the true measure of individual human character. Your persistence is, in fact, your real measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed.
Each time that you persist in the face of adversity and disappointment, you build up the habit of persistence. You build pride, power and self-esteem into your character and your personality. You become stronger and more resolute. You deepen your levels of self-discipline and personal strength. You develop in yourself the iron quality of success, the one quality that will carry you forward and over any obstacle that life can throw in your path.
The Common Quality Of Success In History
The history of the human race is the story of the triumph of persistence. Every great man or woman has had to endure tremendous trials and tribulations before reaching the heights of success and achievement. That endurance and perseverance is what made them great.
Winston Churchill is considered by many to have been the greatest statesman of the 20th century. Throughout his life he was known and respected for his courage and persistence. During the darkest hours of World War II, when the German Luftwaffe was bombing Britain, and England stood alone, Churchill’s resolute, bulldog tenacity inspired the whole nation to fight on in the face of what many felt was inevitable defeat. John F. Kennedy said of his speeches that, “Churchill marshaled the English language and sent it forward into battle.”
One of the greatest speeches in the annals of persistence was Churchill’s address to the nation on June 4th, 1940, which ended with these words, “We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our islands, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” In the later years of his life, Churchill was asked to address a class at his old preparatory school. They asked him if he would share with the young people present what he believed to be the secret of his great success in life. He stood before the assembly, leaning on his cane, shaking a little, and said with a strong voice, “I can summarize the lessons of my life in seven words: never give in; never, never give in.”
Your Guarantee of Eventual Success
What Churchill found, and what you will discover as you move upward and onward toward your goals, is that persistence is the one quality that guarantees that you will eventually win through.
Calvin Coolidge, a President who was so reluctant to speak in public that he was given the nickname of “Silent Cal,” will go down in history for his simple but memorable words on this subject. He wrote: “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men 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 alone are omnipotent.”
Persistence is the Hallmark of Success
Successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs are all characterized by indomitable willpower and unshakable persistence.
In 1895, America was in the grip of a terrible depression. A man living in the Midwest lost his hotel in the midst of this depression and decided to write a book to motivate and inspire others to persist and carry on in spite of the difficulties facing the nation.
His name was Orison Swett Marden. He took a room above a livery stable, and for an entire year, he worked night and day writing a book, which he entitled Pushing To The Front. Late one evening, he finally finished the last page of his book and, being tired and hungry, he went down the street to a small café for dinner. While he was away for an hour, the livery stable caught on fire, and by the time he got back, his entire manuscript, more than 800 pages, had been destroyed by the flames.
Nonetheless, drawing on his inner resources, he sat down and spent another year writing the book over again from scratch. When the book was finished, he offered it to various publishers, but no one seemed to be interested in a motivational book with the country in such a depression and unemployment so high. He then moved to Chicago and took another job. One day he mentioned this manuscript to a friend of his who happened to know a publisher. The book, “Pushing to the Front” was subsequently published and became the runaway bestseller in the nation.
Pushing To The Front was acclaimed by the leading businesspeople and politicians in America as being the book that brought America into the 20th century. It exerted an enormous impact on the minds of decision makers throughout the country, and became the greatest single classic in all of personal development. People like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and J. P. Morgan all read this book and were inspired by it.
The Two Essential Qualities
Orison Swett Marden says in his book that, “There are two essential requirements for success. The first is ‘get-to-it-iveness,’ and the second is ‘stick-to-it-iveness.’” He wrote, “No, there is no failure for the man who realizes his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavor; the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.”
Confucius said, more than 4,000 years ago, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
James J. Corbett, one of the first world heavyweight boxing champions, said that, “You become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round.” Yogi Berra said this, “It’s not over until it’s over.” And the fact is that it’s never over as long as you continue to persist.
Elbert Hubbard wrote, “There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”
Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down. It’s whether you get up again.”
All of these successful men and women had learned how critical the quality of persistence is in achieving greater goals and objectives. Successful men and women are hallmarked by their incredible persistence, by their refusal to quit, no matter what the external circumstances. The one quality that absolutely guarantees success in business, in financial accumulation, and in life is this indomitable willpower and the willingness to stick at it when everything in you wants to stop and rest or go back and do something else.
Persistence is Your Greatest Asset
Perhaps your greatest asset is simply your ability to keep at it longer than anyone else. B. C. Forbes, the founder of Forbes Magazine, who built it into a major publication during the darkest days of the depression, wrote, “History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeat.” John D. Rockefeller, at one time the richest self-made man in the world, wrote, “I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind, as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
Conrad Hilton, who started with a dream and a small hotel in Lubbock, Texas, and went on to build one of the most successful hotel corporations in the world, said, “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
Thomas Edison, the greatest failure, and also the greatest success, in the history of invention, failed at more experiments than any other inventor of the 20th century. He also perfected and was granted more patents for commercial processes than any other inventor of his age. He described his philosophy in these words: “When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes. Nearly every man who develops an idea, works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”
Alexander Graham Bell talked about persistence in these words, “What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.”
Rene McPhearson, who built build Dana Corporation into one of the great American success stories, summarized his philosophy by saying, “You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made, but I just kept pushing.”
The Great Paradox
There is an interesting and important paradox in life that you need to be aware of. It is that if you are an intelligent person, you do everything possible to organize your life in such a way that you minimize and avoid adversity and disappointment. This is a sensible and rational thing to do. All intelligent people, following the path of least resistance to achieve their goals, do everything possible to minimize the number of difficulties and obstacles that they will face in their day-to-day activities.
Disappointment is Inevitable
Yet, in spite of our best efforts, disappointments and adversity are normal and natural, unavoidable parts of life. Benjamin Franklin said that the only things that are inevitable are death and taxes, but every bit of experience shows that disappointment is also inevitable. No matter how well you organize yourself and your activities, you will experience countless disappointments, setbacks, obstacles and adversity over the course of your life. And the higher and more challenging the goals that you set for yourself, the more disappointment and adversity you will experience.
This is the paradox. It is impossible for us to evolve and grow and develop to our full potentials except to the degree to which we face adversity and learn from it. All of the great lessons of life come as the result of setbacks and temporary defeats which we have done our utmost to avoid. Adversity therefore comes unbidden, in spite of our best efforts. And yet without it, we cannot grow into the kind of people who are capable of scaling the heights and achieving great goals.
Adversity is What Tests Us
Throughout history, great thinkers have reflected on this paradox and have concluded that adversity is the test that you must pass on the path to accomplishing anything worthwhile. Herodotus, the Greek philosopher, said, “Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have lain dormant in its absence.”
The very 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. Everyone faces difficulties every step of the way. The difference between the high achiever and the low achiever is simply that the high achiever utilizes adversity and struggles for growth, while the low achiever allows difficulties and adversity to overwhelm him or her and leave him or her discouraged and dejected.
Bounce Back From Disappointment
The work by Abraham Zaleznik at Harvard proved that the way you respond to disappointment is usually an accurate predictor of how likely you are to achieve great success. If you respond to disappointment by learning the very most from it and then by putting it behind you and pressing forward, you are very likely to accomplish great things in the course of your life.
Success Comes One Step Beyond Failure
This is another remarkable discovery. Your greatest successes almost invariably come one step beyond when everything inside of you says to quit. Men and women throughout history have been amazed to find that their great breakthroughs came about as a result of persisting in the face of all disappointment and all evidence to the contrary. This final act of persistence, which is often called the “persistence test,” seems to precede great achievements of all kinds. H. Ross Perot, who started EDP Industries with $1,000 and who built it into a fortune of almost three billion dollars, is one of the most successful self-made entrepreneurs in American history. He said this; “Most people give up just when they are about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot away from the winning touchdown.”
Herodotus also wrote, “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.”
You find this principle of persistence, of keeping on, in the life and work of countless great men and women. Florence Scovel Shinn wrote that, “Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement comes apparent failure and discouragement.”
Napoleon Hill, in his classic, Think and Grow Rich, wrote, “Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is quit. And that is exactly what the majority of men and women do.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, also wrote these words, “Never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
What you do not see — what most people never suspect of existing — is the silent but irresistible power which comes to your rescue when you fight on in the face of discouragement.
Claude M. Bristol wrote, “It’s the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles.”
James Whitcome Riley put it this way, “The most essential factor is persistence — the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.” The power to hold on, in spite of everything, to endure — this is the winner’s quality. Persistence is the ability to face defeat again and again without giving up — to push on in the face of great difficulty. There is a poem by an anonymous author that I think everyone should read and memorize and recite to himself or herself when tempted to quit or to stop trying. This poem is called Don’t Quit.
Don’t Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will.
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill.
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 you 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.
Persist Until You Succeed:
Identify the biggest challenge or problem facing you today on the way to achieving your biggest goal. Imagine that it has been sent to test your resolve and desire. Decide that you will never give up.
Think back over your life and identify the occasions where your determination to persist was the key to your success. Remind yourself of those experiences whenever you face difficulties or discouragement of any kind.
Resolve in advance that, as long as you intensely desire your goal, you will never give up until you achieve it.
Look into every problem, difficulty, obstacle or setback for the seed of an equal or greater benefit or opportunity. You will always find something that can help you.
In every situation, resolve to be solution oriented and action oriented. Think always in terms of the things you can do right now to solve your problems or achieve your goals, and then get started! Never give up.
Conclusion
Take Action Today
You have now learned perhaps the most comprehensive strategy for setting and achieving goals that has ever been put together in one book. By practicing these rules and principles, you can accomplish more in the coming months and years than most people accomplish in a lifetime.
The most important quality you can develop for lifelong success is the habit of taking action on your plans, goals, ideas and insights. The more often you try, the sooner you will triumph. There is a direct relationship between the number of things you attempt and your accomplishments in life. Here are the 21 steps for setting and achieving goals, and for living a wonderful life.
Unlock Your Potential – Always remember that your true potential is unlimited. Whatever you have accomplished in life up to now has only been a preparation for the amazing things you can accomplish in the future.
Take Charge of Your Life – You are completely responsible for everything you are today, for everything you think, say and do, and for everything you become from this moment forward. Refuse to make excuses or to blame others. Instead, make progress toward your goals every day.
Create Your Own Future – Imagine that you have no limitations on what you can do, be or have in the months and years ahead. Think about and plan your future as if you had all the resources you needed to create any life that you desire.
Clarify Your Values – Your innermost values and convictions define you as a person. Take the time to think through what you really believe in and care about in each area of your life. Refuse to deviate from what you feel is right for you.
Determine Your True Goals – Decide for yourself what you really want to accomplish in every area of your life. Clarity is essential for happiness and high performance living.
Decide Upon Your Major Definite Purpose – You need a central purpose to build your life around. There must be a single goal that will help you to achieve your other goals more than any other. Decide what it is for you and work on it all the time.
Analyze Your Beliefs – Your beliefs about your own abilities, and about the world around you, will have more of an impact on your feelings and actions than any other factor. Make sure that your beliefs are positive and consistent with achieving everything that is possible for you.
Start At The Beginning – Do a careful analysis of your starting point before you set off toward the achievement of your goal. Determine your exact situation today and be both honest and realistic about what you want to accomplish in the future.
Measure Your Progress – Set clear benchmarks, measures, metrics and scorecards for yourself on the road to your goals. These measures help you to assess how well you are doing and enable you to make necessary adjustments and corrections as you go along.
Remove The Roadblocks – Success boils down to the ability to solve problems and remove obstacles on the path to your goal. Fortunately, problem solving is a skill you can master with practice, and thereby achieve your goals faster than you ever thought possible.
Become An Expert In Your Field – You have within you, right now, the ability to be one of the very best at what you do, to join the top 10% in your field. Set this as a goal, work on it every day, and never stop working at it until you get there.
Associate With The Right People – Your choices of people with whom to live, work and socialize will have more of an effect on your success than any other factor. Resolve today to associate only with people you like, respect and admire. Fly with the eagles if you want to be an eagle yourself.
Make a Plan Of Action – An ordinary person with a well thought-out plan will run circles around a genius without one. Your ability to plan and organize in advance will enable you to accomplish even the biggest and most complex goals.
Manage Your Time Well – Learn how to double and triple your productivity, performance and output by practicing practical and proven time management principles. Always set priorities before you begin, and then concentrate on the most valuable use of your time.
Review Your Goals Daily – Take time every day, every week, every month to review and reevaluate your goals and objectives. Make sure that you are still on track and that you are still working toward things that are important to you. Be prepared to modify your goals and plans with new information.
Visualize Your Goals Continually – Direct the movies of your mind. Your imagination is your preview of your life’s coming attractions. Repeatedly “see” your goals as if they already existed. Your clear, exciting mental images activate all your mental powers and attract your goals into your life.
Activate Your Superconscious Mind – You have within you and around you an incredible power that will bring you everything and anything you want or need. Take the time regularly to tap into this amazing source of ideas and insights for goal attainment.
Remain Flexible At All Times – Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it. Be constantly open to new, better, faster, cheaper ways to achieve the same result, and if something is not working, be willing to try a different approach.
Unlock Your Inborn Creativity – You have more creative ability to solve problems and come up with new and better ways for goal attainment than you have ever used. You are a potential genius. You can tap into your intelligence to overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you can set for yourself.
Do Something Every Day – Use the “Momentum Principle of Success” by getting started toward your goal and then doing something every day that moves you closer to what you want to accomplish. Action orientation is essential to your success.
Persist Until You Succeed – In the final analysis, your ability to persist longer than anyone else is the one quality that will guarantee great success in life. Persistence is self-discipline in action, and is the true measure of your belief in yourself. Resolve in advance that you will never, never give up!
There they are, the twenty-one most important principles of goal setting and goal achieving ever discovered. Your regular review and practice of these principles will enable you to live an extraordinary life. Nothing can stop you now.
Good luck!
