Million Dollar Habits
By Brian Tracy
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
_________________________________________________
Introduction
You Are What You Do
Chapter-11
The Habits for Health and Well Being
Chapter-12
The Habits of Character and Leadership
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my three fine brothers- Robin, Dalmar and Paul –
each of them remarkable in his own way, each of them possessed of fine qualities,
buttressed by great habits, and destined for wonderful things.
INTRODUCTION
You Are What You Do
“Habit my friend, is practice long pursued, that at last becomes the man himself.” (Evenus)
Thank you for reading this book. In the pages ahead, you are going to learn a proven and practical series of strategies and techniques that you can use to achieve greater success and happiness in every area of your life. I am going to share with you the so-called “Secrets of Success” practiced by every person who ever achieves anything worthwhile in life. When you learn and practice them yourself, you will never be the same again.
The Great Question
Many years ago, I began asking the question, “Why are some people more successful than others?” This question became the focal point of a lifelong search, taking me to more than 80 countries and through many thousands of books and articles on the subjects of philosophy, psychology, religion, metaphysics, history, economics, and business. Over time, the answers came to me, one by one, and gradually crystallized into a clear picture and a simple explanation.
It is this: “You are where you are and what you are because of yourself. Everything you are today, or ever will be in the future, is up to you. Your life today is the sum total result of your choices, decisions and actions up to this point. You can create your own future by changing your behaviors. You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.”
Just think! Everything that you are or ever will be is up to you. And the only real limit on what you can be, do and have is the limit you place on your own imagination. You can take complete control of your destiny by taking complete control of your thoughts, words and actions from this day forward.
The Power of Habit
Perhaps the most important discovery in the fields of psychology and success is that fully 95% of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit. Beginning in childhood, you have developed a series of conditioned responses that lead you to react automatically and unthinkingly in almost every situation.
To put it simply, successful people have “success habits” and unsuccessful people do not. Successful, happy, healthy, prosperous men and women easily, automatically and consistently do and say the right things in the right way at the right time. As a result, they accomplish ten and twenty times as much as average people who have not yet learned these habits and practiced these behaviors.
The Definition of Success
Often people ask me to define the word “success.” My favorite definition is this: “Success is the ability to live your life the way you want to live it, doing what you most enjoy, surrounded by people who you admire and respect.”
In a larger sense, success is the ability to achieve your dreams, desires, hopes, wishes and goals in each of the important areas of your life.
Although each of us is unique and different from all other human beings who have ever lived, we all have four goals or desires in common. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, you can conduct a quick evaluation of your life by giving yourself a grade in each of these four areas.
Healthy and Fit
The first goal common to all of us is health and energy. We all want to be healthy and fit, to have high levels of energy and to live free of pain and illness. Today, with the incredible advances in medical science, the quality of our health and fitness, and our lifespan, is largely determined by design, not by chance. People with excellent health habits are far healthier, have more energy, and live longer and better than people who have poor health habits. We will look at these habits, and how we can develop them, later in this book.
Excellent Relationships
The second goal that we all have in common is to enjoy excellent relationships, intimate, personal or social, with the people we like and respect, and who like, love and respect us in turn. Fully 85% of your happiness will be determined by the quality of your relationships at each stage, and in each area, of your life. How well you get along with people, and how much they like, love and respect you, has more of an impact on the quality of your life than perhaps any other factor. Throughout this book, you will learn the key habits of communication and behavior that build and maintain great relationships with other people.
Do What You Love
The third goal that we all have in common is to do work that we enjoy, to do it well, and to be well paid for it. You want to be able to get and keep the job you want, to get paid more and promoted faster. You want to earn the very most that is possible for you at each stage of your career, whatever you do. In this book, you will learn how to develop the habits of the most successful and highest paid people in every field.
Achieve Financial Independence
The fourth goal we all have in common is to achieve financial independence. You want to reach the point in life where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. You want to be completely free of financial worries. You want to be able to order dinner in a restaurant without looking at the right hand column to decide how hungry you are.
Developing “Million Dollar Habits”
In the pages ahead, you will learn how to develop the “Million Dollar Habits” of men and women who go from rags to riches in one generation. You will learn how to think more effectively, make better decisions, and take more effective actions than other people. You will learn how to organize your financial life in such a way that you achieve all your financial goals far faster than you can imagine today.
One of the most important goals you must achieve to be happy and successful in life is the development of your own character. You want to become an excellent person in every respect. You want to become the kind of person that others look up to and admire. You want to become a leader in your community, and a role model for personal excellence to all the people around you.
In each case, the decisive factors in the achievement of each of these goals that we all hold in common is the development of the specific habits that lead automatically and inevitably to the results that you want to achieve.
All Habits Are Learned
The good news about habits is that all habits are learned, as the result of practice and repetition. You can learn any habit that you consider either necessary or desirable. By using your willpower and discipline, you can shape your personality and character in almost any way you desire. You can write the script of your own life, and if you are not happy with the current script, you can rip it up and write it again.
Just as your good habits are responsible for most of your success and happiness today, your bad habits are responsible for most of your problems and frustrations. But since bad habits are learned as well, they can be unlearned and replaced with good habits by the same process of practice and repetition.
George Washington, the first President of the United States and the General in command of the Revolutionary Army, is rightly called “The Father of His Country.” He was admired, if not worshiped, for the quality of his character, his graciousness of manner, and his correctness of behavior.
But that is not the way George Washington started off in life. He came from a middle class family, with few advantages. One day, as a young man aspiring to succeed and prosper, he came across a little book entitled “The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” As a teenage boy, he copied these 110 rules into a personal notebook. He carried it with him and reviewed them constantly throughout his life.
By practicing the “Rules of Civility,” he developed the habits of behavior and manners that led to him being considered “First in the hearts of his countrymen.” By deliberately practicing and repeating the habits that he most desired to make a part of his character, George Washington became in every respect a “self-made man.” He learned the habits he needed to learn to become the kind of man he wanted to become.
The First Millionaire
During the same period, Benjamin Franklin, who began as a printer’s apprentice and went on to become the first self-made millionaire in the American colonies, adapted a similar process of personal development.
As a young man, Benjamin Franklin felt that he was a little rough, ill mannered and argumentative. He recognized that his attitudes and behaviors were creating animosity toward him from his associates and coworkers. He resolved to change by rewriting the script of his own personality.
He began by making up a list of 12 virtues that he felt the ideal person would possess. He then concentrated on the development of one virtue each week. All week long, as he went about his daily affairs, he would remind himself to practice that virtue, whether it was temperance, tolerance or tranquility, on every occasion that it was called for. Over time, as he developed these virtues and made these habits a part of his character, he would practice one virtue for a period of two weeks, then three weeks, then one virtue per month.
Over time, he became one of the most popular personalities and statesmen of the age. He became enormously influential, both in Paris as an Ambassador from the United States during the Revolutionary War, and during the Constitutional Convention, when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the United States was debated, negotiated and agreed upon. By working on himself to develop the habits of an excellent person, he made himself into a person capable of shaping the course of history.
You Are in Complete Control
The fact is that good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with. Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to form, but hard to live with. In either case, you develop either good or bad habits as the result of your choices, decisions and behaviors.
Horace Mann said, “Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken.”
One of your great goals in life should be to develop the habits that lead to health, happiness and true prosperity. Your aim should be to develop the habits of character that enable you to be the very best person that you can imagine yourself becoming. The high purpose of your life should be to ingrain within yourself the habits that enable you to fulfill your full potential.
In the pages ahead, you will learn how your habit patterns are developed, and how you can transform them in a positive way. You will learn how to become the kind of person who inevitably and relentlessly, like the waves of the ocean, moves onward and upward toward the accomplishment of every goal that you can set for yourself.
“We first make out habits, and then our habits make us.” (John Dryden)
CHAPTER 11
The Habits for Health and Well Being
“March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.” (Kahlil Gibran)
There has never been a time in human history where you can live longer and live better than you can today. Incredible advances in pharmaceuticals, medicine and healthcare enable people to overcome disease and illness and continue to thrive well into their 70s and 80s. Perhaps the largest growing demographic group in America today is people who are 90 and 100 years old, or more. Your job is to join this group and to be fit and healthy all the days of your life.
For almost the entire history of the human race, longevity was a matter of accident or coincidence. Today longevity is a matter of design and choice. You can actually decide today to enjoy superb levels of physical health, and by developing specific health habits, you can assure that you live longer and better than has been possible for any other generation in human history.
Most of the major causes of premature death are preventable to some degree. They include heart disease, cancer, strokes, lung cancer caused by smoking, death from automobile accidents and death from diabetes often brought on by obesity and poor nutritional habits. To a greater or lesser degree, you can exert tremendous control over your health in each of these areas.
In this chapter, you will learn the health habits practiced by those men and women who are seldom sick, have abundant energy and vitality, and who both survive and thrive into the later decades of life. You will learn how to develop the habits that assure that you live longer and live better than most other people in society around you.
Choose to Be Healthy and Fit
The first habit for you to develop is the habit of achieving and maintaining your proper weight. More than 50 million Americans today are officially classified as “obese.” This means that they are more than 20% above their ideal weight, based on height and weight charts. Even worse, there are many millions who are officially classified as “morbidly obese.” This means that they are 40% and 50% above their ideal weights. They are in danger of dying from being so overweight.
An obese person once complained, “The reason I’m overweight is because of my glands.” To which the doctor replied, “Yes, you’re right. It is your mouth gland, and it is malfunctioning five times a day.”
Everything you are, and ever will be, is the result of your choices and decisions. If you want to change some aspect of your life, you have to make new choices and new decisions, and then you must discipline yourself to follow-through on your decisions.
Being overweight is very much a matter of choice. No one can eat for you but yourself. No one can put the food into your mouth for you. You only eat as the result of your own decisions and your own actions. Anyone who is overweight is in that condition because they have been unable to restrain themselves in the presence of food for a very long time.
The Secret of Good Health
There are thousands of diet books and plans. They can all be summarized into one simple five-word rule for proper weight, excellent health and long life: “Eat less and exercise more.”
The only way to achieve your proper weight is to develop the habit of eating less and exercising more each day and each week. But just as it takes you months and years to become overweight, it takes you many months to get rid of the weight once you make that decision.
It is not easy to lose weight. This is because you develop automatic habits of eating that are hard to break. You get into a rhythm of eating certain foods - morning, noon and night. You become accustomed to eating snacks between meals, and to overeating in the evening. It is not easy to break these habits, but it is definitely possible. This is your goal.
Set Your Goal for Superb Physical Health
The way to achieve your ideal weight is to first of all set a specific goal for the amount that you want to weigh at a specific time and date. Write it down. You make a list of everything that you think of that you can do to achieve that goal.
You then take action on your list and you work on achieving this goal every single day until you reach it.
At the same time, create a clear mental picture of yourself as thin, trim and fit. Take a picture of a body that you admire out of a magazine and glue a photo of your face onto that body. Put this picture on the door of your refrigerator, and another similar picture on your bathroom mirror. Feed your mind with this picture of yourself with your ideal body, at your ideal weight, over and over again, until your subconscious mind accepts this picture as a command and begins to influence your thoughts, feelings and behaviors toward that weight.
Affirm to yourself over and over again, “I weigh X number of pounds. I weigh X number of pounds. I weigh X number of pounds.” When you combine visualization and affirmation, plus daily action to achieve and maintain your ideal weight, you will begin moving rapidly toward fitness and health, almost without effort.
Be gentle with yourself. Don’t attempt to lose an enormous amount of weight in a short period of time. Just as it takes a long time to gain weight, it takes a long time to lose the weight and keep it off permanently. Resolve to lose one ounce per day, two pounds per month. You can set a higher goal if you like, but the more gradually you take off the weight by adjusting your eating and exercise habits, the more likely it is that you will develop new, permanent habits that will enable you to keep the weight off forever.
Rewire Your Thinking About Food
The primary reason for overweight and obesity is because of the habit of associating food with pleasure. As you know, all human motivation is based on the tendency to move from pain to pleasure, from discomfort to comfort, from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. As a child, you were rewarded with delicious foods and desserts when you cleaned your plate, or did something that your parents approved of. As an adult, you have now developed the habit of associating happiness with eating delicious things, and receiving the approval of others.
In order to achieve your ideal weight, you have to reverse the wires in your subconscious mind. You have to disconnect them and reconnect them so that you get genuine pleasure from eating less and being thin. You must develop a positive association between feeling mildly hungry, eating small portions and feeling light and trim as a result. When you develop the habit of enjoying the feeling of eating less and exercising more, this habit will grow stronger and stronger over time, and your weight problems will eventually disappear altogether.
Eat The Right Foods
The second habit you need to develop for long life full of health and fitness is the habit of eating a proper diet. You have to develop the habit of eating the right foods, in the right proportions, at the right times.
Everyone knows that they should eat a more balanced diet, containing more fruits, vegetables and whole grain products. In addition to this basic principle, there are several things that you can do to modify your diet, and develop the habits of good nutrition, which will lead to a combination of weight loss and higher levels of energy and fitness.
At the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984, athletes from more than 100 countries were studied to find out what their diets had in common. The researchers discovered that even though their diets consisted of many different foods, they all included a variety of fruits and vegetables, lean source proteins, and large quantities of water. This is the diet for peak performance and Olympic fitness.
The Three White Poisons
In addition to eating a peak performance diet to achieve rapid weight loss and improved functioning, you should develop the habit of eliminating the “three white poisons” from your diet. This change in your diet is so simple and yet so powerful that every one of my students who tries it is absolutely amazed at how quickly they get noticeable results.
A man from Florida wrote to me recently. “I have attended your seminars and listened to your audio programs for years. As a result I have gone from rags to riches. I moved to the top of my field and became a millionaire over the course of 12 years of hard work. But I still had one problem. I was about 20 pounds overweight and I could not get rid of this excess weight, no matter what I did.”
He went on to say, “Then one day, in listening to one of your programs, I heard about the importance of eliminating the three white poisons. Within 90 days, I had dropped the 20 pounds, and never put it on again. My self-image improved and my self-esteem went up. I had to get a whole new wardrobe. Now, every time I look in the mirror I feel wonderful about myself. It changed my life!”
The three white poisons are salt, sugar and flour. The average adult requires about two pounds of salt per year for ideal physical functioning. Unfortunately the average adult in America consumes almost 20 pounds of salt per year, in a variety of forms. Almost all snack foods, such as peanuts, chips, Fritos and others are soaked in large quantities of salt. In addition, many people pour salt on their food before they even taste it.
When you take in more salt than you require, your body has to compensate by retaining water to hold the salt in solution. This causes you to swell up and feel bloated. Not only that, too much salt can contribute to high blood pressure, fatigue, poor digestion, sleeplessness and nervous twitches, and a general feeling of tiredness throughout the day.
When you stop consuming foods that are heavy in salt, and stop putting salt on your meals, you will feel better immediately. The fact is that there is so much salt in the foods that you consume that you need no extra salt in your diet. If anything, you get too much salt without even trying.
Eliminate All Sugars
The second white poison is anything that contains sugar of any kind. The excess consumption of sugar is so harmful for you that you can transform how you feel almost overnight by refusing to consume anything that has sugar in it.
When you were a child, you developed the habit of associating sweet things with happiness, pleasure and rewards. As an adult, you continue to give yourself the same pleasures and rewards by consuming soft drinks, candy, cakes, dessert and sugars of all kinds, in all sorts of foods.
The average adult requires no extra sugar for adequate functioning and ideal health. But the average adult in America consumes something like 120 extra pounds of sugar over the course of a year. Just by eliminating all products containing sugar and salt, your weight will drop almost immediately.
Develop the habit of eating foods composed of complex carbohydrates. A complex carbohydrate is contained in fruits, vegetables and whole grain products. These foods contain large amounts of energy, but they must be broken down in the digestive process for that energy to be available. These foods also contain large quantities of vitamins and minerals. In the process of digestion, these vitamins and minerals are released and freed up for your body.
Avoiding the Sugar Rush
On the other hand, simple carbohydrates, those made of sugar products, require no time to digest at all. They go straight into the blood stream. This is why you often get a “sugar rush” after consuming a sugar-based product, such as a donut or candy bar. What is worse is that your glucose or sugar level spikes just after you consume a sugar-based food or drink. When your blood sugar level spikes, your body immediately goes onto “emergency” status. It quickly secretes insulin into your system to remove the excess sugar. As a result, in one to two hours, you actually experience an “energy slump.” The excess insulin secreted by your body removes so much sugar that you find yourself feeling fatigued and even light headed a couple of hours after consuming a sugar based food or drink.
If you continue to consume sugar products, thereby triggering the insulin reaction, you experience energy highs and lows throughout the day. As a result, you will experience greater stress, a decreased ability to concentrate and think clearly, and additional fatigue by the end of the day. Sugar is very much a “poison” that you can eliminate from your diet with no loss of nutrition and a tremendous increase in health, energy and fitness.
Learn to Eat Differently
To put it another way, consuming complex carbohydrates in the form of healthy, nutritious foods is like putting an energy log on your physical fire. It burns long and slowly and generates a consistent, steady flow of energy that enables you to perform at your best. Consuming a food high in sugar is like throwing gasoline on a fire. There is a huge flare-up for a short period of time, and then all the energy is quickly removed from your system and you are back to feeling tired again.
By the way, most people associate eating sweet things with eating dessert after a meal. What nutritionists have discovered is for you to feel completely satisfied after a meal, you need to have experienced the tastes of salt, pungency, bitterness and sweetness. But you only need one bite of something sweet at the end of a meal to round off the dining experience. You do not need to eat an entire dessert.
Avoid White Flour Products
The third white poison you must develop the habit of avoiding is anything that contains white flour. This includes breads, rolls, pastries of all kinds, bagels and donuts. Carbohydrates such as potatoes, rice and pasta will also make you fat.
Whole grain products are different. They are loaded with vitamins, minerals and first class proteins. They are exclusively complex carbohydrates. Not only do they satisfy your appetite in small quantities, but they also contain loads of nutrients that give you a feeling of satisfaction and lightness rather than feeling heavy and full.
In Barry Sears’ best selling book, “The Zone,” he explains that the body is not very good at breaking down white flour products. When you eat them, they form a thick gluten that moves slowly through your digestive system, making you feel sleepy and causing constipation.
Another reason to avoid these foods is that the whiteness in a white flour product is achieved by first of all milling the wheat to a fine consistency and then removing most of the nutrients. What is left over is then bleached, which kills any nutrients remaining. What you end up with in a white flour product is essentially an “inert” food. It is actually dead. It contains no nutritional value whatsoever.
In fact, all you get from consuming a white flour product, like bread, a roll or a bagel, is a form of simple carbohydrate, containing no vitamins, minerals or proteins. The very act of eliminating white flour products from your diet will immediately cause you to lose weight, have more energy, feel lighter and give you greater stamina throughout the day.
Why Many Foods Are Not Good For You
As an exercise, you should look at the “contents list” on the labels of canned or packaged foods sold in your local supermarket. You will be amazed to find that most canned and fast foods are loaded with sugar and salt. Sometimes, sugar or salt is the largest single ingredient in foods like canned soups or soft drinks. Why is this?
The reason has to do with preservation. What food manufactures found very early was that the best way to stop a food from rotting or decomposing on the supermarket shelf was to kill the food before you send it to the store in the first place. By immersing a food in salt or sugar, you actually kill it so that it will last much longer on the shelf, or in your pantry. But by killing it, you eliminate most of the food value that it would have if it were fresh.
Develop the habit of organizing your diet around foods that do not contain salt, sugar or flour. Instead, eat fresh foods, with bright colors, that are high in nutrients. By eating highly nutritious foods, you will begin to lose weight immediately. You will feel lighter and more alert, have more stamina, and function at far higher levels, both mentally and physically.
Timing Is Important
The time that you eat during the day is almost as important as what you eat. Nutritionists have found that you need about 2000 calories per day for ideal functioning. However, when you consume these calories will determine whether or not you gain or lose weight. If you consume 80% of your 2000 calories at breakfast and lunch, and only 20% of your calories after 2:00 pm in the afternoon, you will lose weight steadily. If however, you eat a light breakfast, a light lunch and then a heavy dinner, consuming 60% to 80% of your calories after 2:00 pm in the afternoon, you will gain weight, eating the same 2000 calories that someone else is consuming and losing weight.
From now on, resolve to eat as Adele Davis, the diet guru once said, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” By disciplining yourself to eat light and lean in the evenings, and not eating anything later than three hours before bedtime, you will sleep better and wake up more refreshed.
Turn Off Your Appestat
Develop the habit of eating half portions, of eating lightly rather than heavily at each meal. Eat better foods, containing more nutrients, and eat fewer of them. Use a smaller plate when you dish out your portions, and stop eating when you are no longer hungry.
Just as a room has a thermostat that keeps the temperature within a certain range, each person has an “appestat” that regulates their appetite. This appestat, which tells you that you are hungry, continues to function for about 20 minutes after you eat the first bite of food. At the end of 20 minutes, your appestat switches off and your appetite disappears. From then on, you are not eating for nutrition, but for pleasure.
You can turn off your appestat deliberately by beginning a meal with soup, fruits or vegetables of some kind. By eating and chewing slowly, stretching out the initial part of the meal past the 20-minute point, you can actually kill your appetite, satisfy your hunger, and end up eating less and feeling better. You can actually trick yourself into eating less and losing weight. Even eating something like a piece of fruit or a few nuts will begin the process of shutting down your appestat and enable you to stop eating.
You Become What You Eat
Develop the habit of viewing your body as a chemical factory. You know that you become what you eat. Nutritionists have concluded that everything you put into your body is broken down into its individual chemical components and is then absorbed by your body in the process of digestion.
Before you put anything in your mouth, carefully consider the chemical components of the food. Does this foodstuff contain the particular nutrients that are the very best for you at this time? What we refer to as a “junk food” is a food that is composed of elements containing no nutrients, and which are simultaneously hard to break down and digest. Junk foods are essential inert, dead, useless foods that provide nothing except the momentary olfactory and gustatory pleasure experienced at the moment of eating them. Refuse to put junk foods, and other poor quality foods into your chemical factory.
Imagine that you became extremely wealthy and you were able to purchase an expensive racehorse, one that cost perhaps one million dollars. What kinds of foods would you give to this racehorse? Would you allow this racehorse to eat candy bars, potato chips, bagels and other high carbohydrate, low-nutrient foods? Of course not!
Think of how much more valuable you are as a person. You are certainly worth more than a million dollars. You should at least treat yourself as well as you would treat an animal that you had purchased.
Get Lots of Exercise
The third habit you need to develop is the habit of proper exercise. Many people stop exercising in their late teens and early twenties, even people who were active in sports when they were growing up. However, the human body, made up of 610 muscles, is meant to be exercised regularly throughout your life.
Develop the habit of articulating and moving every joint in your body, every single day. This keeps your muscles and joints agile and flexible. Regular exercise assures that you have greater balance and mobility. It helps to diminish the likelihood of muscle or joint pain or problems.
Develop the habit of exercising 200 minutes each week. If all you did were to go for a walk, 30 minutes per day, seven days per week, you would be one of the fittest people in our society. If you disciplined yourself to ride an exercise bicycle, work out on a treadmill, swim, jog or engage in any aerobic exercises that get your lungs and heart pumping, you will dramatically improve your levels of health and energy in a short period of time.
Many people do not like to exercise. Well, that’s too bad. The fact is that, if your goal is to live a long and healthy life, to be slim, trim and attractive to members of the opposite sex, to have high levels of self-esteem and personal pride, it is absolutely essential that you become physically fit. Fortunately, physical fitness is eminently achievable if you will just develop some of the habits that we are talking about in this chapter.
Take Good Care of Yourself
The next habit that you need for superb all around health is the habit of proper rest. You need seven to eight hours of sleep each night for optimal performance. If you get less than six to seven hours of sleep per night, and you continue to work as hard as you normally do at your job, you will eventually develop a “sleep deficiency.”
It is estimated that more than 60% of Americans are walking around today in a form of “fog.” They are going to bed too late, often after having eaten late as well, sleeping poorly, arising not fully rested, and going through the day without the ability to function at their best, mentally and physically.
You can change the way you feel about yourself, and your performance in your work and personal life, by developing the habit of going to bed early, by 10:00 pm each night and getting a good night’s sleep every night of the week. Many people who have increased their sleeping hours from five or six to seven or eight have been absolutely amazed at the difference. They feel as if they have woken from a deep slumber. They feel brighter and clearer and are more alert, creative and intelligent. Sufficient rest is really important.
Take Regular Vacations
In our Advanced Coaching and Mentoring Program, we teach people to set a goal of taking 120 to 150 days off each year. Initially, our clients are incredulous. They claim that it is simply impossible. It cannot be done. They are too busy. They have too much to do. If anything, they need to take off less time so that they can get caught up with all of their responsibilities.
However, if you develop the habit of taking every weekend off completely, allowing your mental and physical batteries to recharge, that will amount to a total of 104 days per year. If you take off every public holiday, that will be 6 more days per year, making a total of 110 days. If you take off four, six, or eight weeks each year on vacation, and refuse to do anything associated with work during that time, you will soon be taking off 120 to 150 days each year, almost without noticing it.
As you do this, something extraordinary will happen in your work. You will be more bright and alert. You will be more intelligent and creative. You will come up with a continuous stream of ideas and insights that will enable you to accomplish vastly more than the people around you.
It seems that the more rest you get, and the more rested you are, as the result of going to bed early and taking regular vacations, the more productive you become, the fewer mistakes you make, and the faster you move ahead in your career.
I have studied this subject at great length for many years. What I have concluded is that you can take off as many as three full months each year and simultaneously increase your productivity, performance, output and income. Whenever we teach our clients to do this, they are absolutely astonished at how much more money they make, how much faster they move ahead in their field, and how much better they feel. We have never had an exception to this rule.
Early To Bed and Early To Rise
In addition to the habit of proper rest, develop the habit of going to bed early and arising early. Almost all successful people practice the old saying, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.”
When you get up early, at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, you will have ample time to think about the day ahead and to plan your work activities. Early rising gives you an opportunity to read, reflect and meditate. Early arising enables you to get up and get going without a feeling of pressure to rush out of the house in order to get to work on time.
Develop the habit of investing the first hour of the day in yourself. Read something inspirational, motivational or educational. Rewrite and reflect on your goals. Henry Ward Beecher once wrote, “The first hour is the rudder of the day.” When you invest this first hour in yourself, the rest of your day will seem much smoother, and will unfold with great efficiency and effectiveness.
Develop the habit of eating an excellent, high protein breakfast with no toast, bacon or sausage. Eat a high quality lunch, ideally composed of a salad with protein such as chicken or fish. Eat a light dinner, primarily composed of vegetables with a little protein, but no breads, rolls or pasta. By developing the habit of eating in this way, you will soon have your weight and your health under control.
Drink Lots of Water
In addition to proper weight, diet and rest, develop the habit of proper hydration as well. More and more people are finding that the consumption of large quantities of water throughout the day is one of the most important things you can do for excellent health.
The average person sips water throughout the day. But this is not enough. You need approximately two full quarts of water throughout the day to maintain the proper level of hydration in your body. Instead of sipping when you go past the drinking fountain, drink full glasses of water, at least once every hour.
You can tell if you are properly hydrated, rather than dehydrated, by looking at the color of your urine. When you are drinking sufficient quantities of water, your urine will be almost clear. When you are dehydrated, on the other hand, your urine will be a deep yellow, and sometimes even brown.
The fact is that you cannot drink too much water. If you drink any excess, it will just pass through in a short period of time.
Drinking lots of water has several great benefits. The most important is that proper hydration serves the purpose of detoxifying your body continually throughout the day. When you drink lots of water, the water washes away excess salt, sugar and other toxins that interfere with excellent health and functioning. You feel brighter and more alert. You become more creative and focused. If you are currently overweight, drinking lots of water will wash away the extra salt that often causes you to feel fat and bloated. This washing away of excess salt will cause you to lose weight. You cannot drink too much water.
Take Vitamin and Mineral Supplements
An important health habit for you is the habit of taking vitamin and mineral supplements each day. The fact is that you simply do not get enough of the essential vitamins and minerals that you need for optimum health in your current diet. There are a thousand reasons for this, including the excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides in growing crops, the depletion of the soil, and the way that foodstuffs are processed before they get to your table.
However, when you take high quality vitamin and mineral supplements along with your meals, you will be assured of getting all the nutrients you need for high levels of energy and fitness.
One of the arguments against vitamin and mineral supplements is that, “You get all the vitamins and minerals you need if you just eat a proper diet.”
This may be true, but nutritionists have calculated that you would need to consume about 20 pounds of food per day, including a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grain products and lean source proteins to get the entire range of vitamins and minerals you require to function at your best. It is much better, easier and more controllable for you to take vitamin and mineral supplements on a regular basis.
Practice Excellent Dental Hygiene
Develop the habit of brushing and flossing your teeth twice each day. There seems to be a direct relationship between dental health and hygiene and physical health and hygiene. People who take excellent care of their teeth tend to be healthier physically as well. Not only that, they look better, have cleaner, fresher breath, and are more attractive to others.
Get Regular Checkups
Develop the habit of getting regular physical and dental check-ups. Today, we have the most advanced medical technology and the best doctors in the history of the world available to us to enable us to live well and live longer. But none of these benefits or advantages will do us any good if we do not get regular check-ups.
Many of the life-threatening diseases, such as heart disease and various forms of cancer, can be detected years before they become dangerous if you get regular check-ups. It is tragic to learn about friends who died from cancer or heart disease because they put off going to a doctor until it was too late. Don’t let this happen to you.
Practice Moderation In All Things
Develop the habit of temperance, or “moderation in all things.” Just as you should eat less than your stomach is capable of holding, you should also apply the principle of temperance to other things that you consume as well, especially alcohol.
According to the Alameda Study, covering more than 20,000 men over a 22-year period, one of the most important of all health habits is “moderate to nil alcohol consumption.” One of the major killers in our society today is sclerosis of the liver. Another is the number of people killed in automobile accidents as the result of drunken driving. The practice of temperance, or moderation in alcohol consumption, is an essential habit for long life.
Belt Yourself In
Another discovery of the Alameda Study, in addition to proper weight, proper diet, proper exercise and proper rest, is the importance of wearing seatbelts when you drive. There is a saying that “They only have to work once.”
More than 42,000 people die each year as the result of automobile accidents. Most of these deaths could be avoided if people were wearing full seat and shoulder belts. Make it a habit to do up your seatbelt whenever you get into your car. Insist that your passengers fasten their seatbelts as well. This will not only give you an edge in terms of long-life, it can save the life of your passengers. It is a small effort for a huge potential benefit.
Clean As A Whistle
Develop the habit of cleanliness and excellent hygiene in every part of your life. Bathe and shower regularly, wash your hair, brush your teeth, clean your fingernails and resolve to look excellent in every respect. Use proper deodorant and mouthwash. Wear clean clothes each day. Not only will you be more attractive to others by practicing high levels of cleanliness and orderliness in your personal and business life, but also your self-image will improve and your self-esteem will increase.
Researchers have discovered that teachers pay greater attention to students who come to school clean and well dressed than they do to students who come poorly dressed and unkempt. By the same token, bosses, customers and coworkers are far more likely to be impressed and influenced by people who look and smell good at work. It is a big pay-off for a small effort.
Become An Unshakable Optimist
One of the most important habits that you can develop for health, happiness and long-life is the habit of maintaining a positive attitude toward the people and situations in the world around you. Remind yourself of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the ability to change the things I can, the willingness to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference,” (Reinhold Niebuhr).
Resolve to maintain a positive mental attitude no matter what happens. Refuse to allow yourself to become upset or angry when people and situations do not measure up to your expectations. Instead, be calm, relaxed and focused on solutions to the problems and difficulties facing you.
Practice Solitude Daily
Develop the habit of taking time for yourself, in solitude and meditation each day. Reserve for yourself a 30-60 minute period where you can be completely alone, in the silence. Turn off all radio and television, put aside all reading materials, and just allow yourself to commune deeply with the world around you.
Blaise Pascal, the French writer once wrote, “All the problems in the world originate because of man’s inability to be alone in a room with himself.”
Most people have never practiced solitude and meditation. We are so busy, with so much to do, and so little time, that we feel that we cannot take the few minutes necessary to sit quietly and be alone with ourselves. But this is mistaken.
Each time that you sit in solitude for 30 minutes or more, you will feel your mind becoming clear and calm. The problems and difficulties facing you will become lighter and easier to bear. You will receive superconscious insights and ideas to deal with the challenges of your day-to-day life. You will arise from a period of solitude greatly refreshed, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and with wonderful thoughts about how you can improve the quality of your life and work.
Set Peace of Mind as Your Most Important Goal
Develop the habit of making “peace of mind” your most important goal in life, and then organize all of your life and activities around this goal. Listen to your inner voice. Trust your intuition. Only do what feels right and natural for you to do.
When you begin to focus on developing greater peace of mind, and listening to your intuition, you will probably never make another mistake. You will always find yourself doing and saying the right things, in the right way, at the right time. As you trust your inner voice, you will receive an endless flow of ideas, insights and creative solutions to solving your problems, and achieving your every goal.
Fully 85% or more of all physical illnesses and ailments today are psychosomatic in origin. “psycho” the mind, makes “soma” the body, sick. The very act of letting go and relaxing, practicing solitude and meditation on a regular basis, dramatically lowers your levels of stress and tension, and raises your levels of energy and awareness.
The more centered you are within yourself, and the more positive and optimistic your thinking, the healthier and happier you will be and the longer you will live. By placing peace of mind as the central organizing principle of your life, you will become a more effective, efficient and happier person. The journey of your life will be far longer than that of the average person, and you will enjoy every step along the way.
Action Exercises:
Practice future-orientation and “idealize” perfect health for yourself; what level of health would you have if you were physically perfect in every respect?
Write out a description of your ideal future health, as if you had no limitations and you could achieve any condition you desired.
Set clear, written, time-bounded goals for your weight, waist size, number of minutes of exercise per week and your physical activities.
Make a complete health plan to live to be 100 years old; what would you immediately do more of, or less of, to reach that goal in fine form?
Organize your vacation schedule for the next year, in advance, and make the necessary bookings, with deposits, immediately.
Determine the one health habit that could help you the most at the moment and then launch on this habit immediately; allow no exceptions until it is a permanent part of your behavior.
Resolve to take time for yourself each day in solitude and meditation, either first thing in the morning or in the evening; keep this appointment with yourself.
“A strong, successful man is not the victim of his environment. He creates favorable conditions. His own inherent force and energy compel things to turn out as he desires.” (Orison Swett Marden)
CHAPTER 12
The Habits of Character and Leadership
“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.” (Aristotle)
The ultimate aim of human life and activity is the development of character, according to Aristotle. The most important goal that you accomplish in the course of your life is to become an excellent person, in every respect. Your purpose should be to develop the kind of personality and character that earns you the respect, esteem and affection of the important people in your world.
Men and women of great character are those who have developed the habits of thinking and behaving that are consistent with the fine qualities that they wish to be known for. They discipline themselves to do the right thing in every situation. By working on themselves, and by steady effort, great people in our world, living and dead, have behaved in certain ways, whether they felt like it or not.
In his Nicomachaen Ethics, Aristotle wrote about the great virtues possessed by the leading men and women of the age. He concluded that each virtue is a “Golden Mean” between the extremes of that quality on either side. For example, he concluded that courage was the golden mean between cowardliness on the one extreme and impetuosity on the other. He taught that it should be each person’s goal in life to reach the golden mean in each virtue, quality or attribute that he aspires to.
The Education of the Young
Aristotle also wrote that, “All improvement in society begins with the education of the young.” One of the primary responsibilities for those in charge of educating young people is to instill in them the importance of virtue, character and good behavior. Children are inordinately influenced by the people around them when they are growing up. This is the time when young people are most capable of incorporating the finest qualities into their characters.
But what if you have reached adulthood without the virtues and qualities that you most admire and aspire to? What can you do? Well, fortunately all virtues and values are merely habits of thinking and acting. You can learn any habit that you consider to be either desirable or necessary. You can learn a virtue or value of character and leadership the same way you develop a physical skill or habit, by practice and repetition.
Develop Your Own Character
Aristotle, probably the greatest philosopher and thinker of all time, said that, if you wish to learn a virtue later in life the method is simple. Simply practice the virtue in every situation where that virtue is required. In other words, if you wish to develop the quality of courage, act courageously even when you feel afraid. If you wish to develop the quality of generosity, be generous on every occasion, even if your feel stingy. As you practice and repeat the virtue, it becomes more and more a part of your personality. It soon becomes automatic and easy. Eventually, you will reach the point where you cannot imagine acting in any other way.
Decide today to become a “do-it-to-yourself” project. Establish a series of goals and a work schedule for the development of your own character and personality. Set high standards for yourself, and resolve to develop the habits of excellent behavior practiced by the men and women who you most admire.
Imagine Your Ideal Self
When we spoke about self-concept in Chapter One, we talked about the role of the “self-ideal” in shaping and forming personal character. The greater clarity you have about the qualities that you most admire, and desire to incorporate into your personality, the easier it is for you to engage in the behaviors that are consistent with those virtues and values. The more repeatedly you engage in those behaviors, the more you internalize those qualities, until they become a permanent part of you.
The starting point of character development is for you to develop the habit of longterm thinking in your work and in your personal life. There is no area where this is more relevant than for you to project to the end of your life, and to write your own eulogy, to be read at your funeral where your friends and family are gathered. If you could fulfill your potential, and become the very best person that it is possible for you to become, how would people think about you, talk about you and describe you to others? What words would they use? What virtues, values and qualities would they ascribe to you? How would you be remembered, and for what reasons?
Acting As If You Were Already That Person
As you develop greater clarity about how you want to be remembered in the hearts and minds of other people, you will become more clear about those values and qualities that are most important to you. You can then set those qualities as goals for yourself, and make plans for their accomplishment. From that point forward, you “act as if” you already had those qualities whenever they are called for.
If you wish to develop the quality of patience, for example, practice being patient even when you feel pressured or in a hurry. If you wish to develop the quality of compassion, practice putting yourself in the situation of the other person and thinking, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
This habit of projecting yourself forward into the distant future, and then looking back to the present for guidance on the steps that you should be taking each day can have a profound impact on your life. Many years ago, the brother of Alfred Nobel died in Stockholm. But the newspapers got the name wrong and instead concluded that it was Alfred Nobel himself who had died. They then wrote his obituary, which he read the next day. In his obituary, the primary accomplishment for which he was remembered was for the invention of gunpowder, which had been responsible for the death of countless human beings in wars and conflicts around the world.
Change Your Destiny
This obituary had such a shocking effect on Nobel that he immediately began rearranging his entire life to change his legacy and to assure that his obituary, when it was written, would be completely different. To this end, he established the Nobel Prizes, based on his great fortune, which are today the highest awards that can be attained in the worlds of literature, medicine, science, economics, peace and chemistry. By thinking clearly about the legacy he wanted to leave, he transformed both his present actions, and his ultimate memory. He rewrote his own obituary.
To become a person of great quality and value, you should develop the habit of reading about and studying about other men and women who have started with little or nothing and who have gone on to accomplish wonderful things with their lives. It seems that many men and women who achieve greatness as adults spend many hours as children reading the biographies and autobiographies of successful people. Because young people are so susceptible to the suggestive influences of others, as they read, they began to envision and imagine themselves having the same qualities when they grew up as the people that they were reading about. And that is exactly what happened in many cases.
Aspire To Leadership
It is not easy to rise to a position of leadership in any organization or in any society. The competition for leadership is fierce. Only the people who are the very best equipped to acquire leadership positions, and then to hold onto those positions against all others who desire them, rise to the top in any area.
Different areas of endeavor require different qualities of leadership to be successful. The qualities of leadership necessary to direct an army at war are very different from the qualities of leadership that are necessary to direct a large university. The qualities of leadership necessary to start and build a successful entrepreneurial business are very different from the leadership qualities necessary to run a large organization.
Whatever It Takes
In a way, leadership is “situational.” What is necessary for success in a leadership position is determined by many factors, including the people to be led, the objectives to be accomplished by the organization, the competition for resources, the social, cultural, political and economic environment, and the situation that the leader finds himself in at the moment. If you change any one of these factors, the qualities of leadership necessary for success will change as well.
There have been more than 3300 studies of leadership conducted over the years. They have discovered more than 50 different qualities that leaders have or develop over time. Of those qualities, there are a few that seem to be consistent in almost every case where a leader accomplishes great things and earns the undying respect, esteem and loyalty of other people, even long after he has passed from the scene. The one quality that all these studies on leadership held in common was the quality of “vision.” Leaders have vision; ordinary people do not.
Develop A Vision
To become a person of character, and a leader in your own life and world, the first habit you must develop is the habit of vision. You must develop the habit of projecting forward several years into the future. You must develop the habit of developing absolute clarity about what you want to accomplish in your position, and what it will look like if you are successful.
One way to develop a vision for each part of your life is to wave a magic wand in your mind and imagine that you have no limitations on what you can be, have or do. Create a perfect future ideal image of how your situation would appear if it were perfect in every way. Allow your mind to float freely. Imagine that you have no limitations of time, money, resources or ability. Imagine that everything is possible for you.
Just as you would design your dream house if you had an unlimited budget, take some time to design your “dream future” as if you had unlimited abilities and resources. The greater clarity you have regarding your long-term vision, the easier it is for you to motivate and to inspire other people to work with you to make that vision a reality.
Be The Best At What You Do
In business, the most important long-term vision you can have for your organization is to “be the best.” It is to identify a quality of your product or service that is relevant and important to your customers, and then to focus all the energies and creativity of your organization toward achieving superior performance in that area. Developing the habit of thinking in terms of making your business the very best in your industry is an essential quality of visionary leadership. Without this commitment to excellence, by default, organizations and individuals slip into mediocre or merely satisfactory performance.
Dare To Go Forward
The second quality you must develop, the second most common habit of great men, women and leaders at every level, is the habit of courage. Many people have exciting hopes, dreams and visions for the future. But only a few people have the courage to take the risks necessary to turn those visions into realities.
The most important part of courage is the willingness to launch, to take action in the direction of your goals and dreams, with no guarantee of success. Courage requires that you take risks with time, money, emotion and other resources. Courage requires that you accept the possibility of losses, setbacks, obstacles, difficulties, and temporary failure.
The rule is that it is impossible to succeed without failing. Failure seems to be an indispensable prerequisite for success. You only learn to succeed by failing, and by then evaluating the reasons for your failure. The faster you fail in a forward direction, the faster you succeed.
The Secret to Success
Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM, was once asked by the young journalist Arthur Gordon, “Mr. Watson, how can I be more successful faster?”
Watson replied with these profound words, “If you want to succeed faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.”
It seems that you will fail far more times than you succeed. Murphy’s Law will apply to every new goal that you attempt: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. And of all the things that can go wrong, the worst possible things will go wrong at the worst possible times, and cost the most money.”
The first corollary to Murphy’s Law is that, “Murphy was an optimist.”
Overcoming Your Fears
The way that you develop the habit of courage is by acting courageously whenever courage is called for. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that the most important lesson he learned as a young man was, “In every situation do the thing you fear.” He concluded, “If you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain.”
You develop the habit of courage by moving toward the things you fear. You develop the habit of cowardliness by moving away from or avoiding the things or people that you fear. From this day forward, make it a habit to confront your fears, to face your fears, to do the things that you fear and to deal with the people and situations that make you feel fearful. Each time you face a fear and overcome it, not only does your courage increase, but your self-esteem and self-respect goes up as well. You become a stronger and more confident person.
Eventually, by continually doing the things you fear, even when your natural tendency is to avoid them, you will reach the point where you are not really afraid of anything. You will recognize that facing fear is just something that leaders do each day, like driving through rush hour traffic. It is unfortunate, but inevitable and unavoidable.
The True Test of the Leader
Peter Drucker says that the only event that is inevitable in the life of the leader is the “unexpected crisis.” It is only when you encounter a setback, an obstacle, a difficulty or the inevitable crisis, that you demonstrate the kind of person you really are. It is not what you say, wish, hope or intend that reveals your character. It is only your actions, especially your actions in the face of adversity and possible setbacks or losses.
The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus once wrote, “Circumstances do not make the man; they merely reveal him to himself.”
Develop the habit of asking this question, “What one great thing would I dare to dream, if I knew I could not fail?”
Imagine that you have a magic wand that you can wave and you will be absolutely guaranteed of success in anything you attempt, large or small, long-term or short term. What goals would you set for yourself if you were guaranteed of success in any area?
Dorothy Brande once wrote, “Act as if it were impossible to fail, and it shall be!”
Develop the habit, from this day forward, of identifying the things you fear that may be holding you back, and then confronting each one of them until they contain no more fear for you. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, “Take arms against a sea of troubles, and in so doing, end them.”
Put another way, “Leap, and the net will appear.” Leap and build your wings on the way down.
Make it a habit to do the things you fear, and the death of fear is certain. As your level of courage and confidence increases, your fears and doubts will decrease. The more you confront your fears and eliminate them, the stronger and more confident you will feel. Your self-esteem and self-respect will rise. As your fears diminish, you will become more powerful and persuasive. You will move forward like a rushing flood. You will become unstoppable.
You Are Responsible
Once you have developed a clear vision for your ideal future, and resolved to develop unshakable courage by doing the things you fear, you must develop the habit of accepting complete responsibility for yourself and for every aspect of your life.
Leaders accept responsibility. Followers do not. Leaders refuse to make excuses while followers hide behind them. Leaders see themselves as the primary creative forces in their own lives. Followers see themselves as victims, and spend much of their energies rationalizing, justifying and explaining away their failure to make progress. The acceptance of complete responsibility is as essential to leadership as is courage.
Emerson once wrote that you could measure the size of a person by looking at the size of the responsibilities that he or she is willing to take on. There is a direct relationship between responsibility and a sense of control. The more responsibility you accept, the greater control you take over the various aspects of your life. When you accept total responsibility, you feel completely in control of yourself and everything that is happening around you.
Take Charge of Your Emotions
Make it a habit to continually repeat to yourself the words, “I am responsible!” Whenever you feel angry or frustrated about some person or situation, immediately cancel this thought and feeling by saying “I am responsible!”
Emotionally, it is impossible to accept responsibility and to remain angry. When you accept responsibility, you relax and your mind clears. You become more focused and effective. When you take complete responsibility, like putting both hands on the wheel of your own life, you feel in charge. You feel like a master of your own destiny. The habit of taking responsibility unlocks your mental powers and makes you a more positive and optimistic person. It characterizes you as a true leader.
Tell The Truth
Perhaps the most important quality of leadership is the habit of integrity. You develop integrity, and become a completely honest person, by practicing telling the truth to yourself and others in every situation. Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true, and then it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The most important asset you develop through life is your reputation, and the quality of your reputation is determined by your level of integrity. Shakespeare also said, “He who steals my purse steals trash; but he who steals my good name, steals all.” You must guard your integrity as a sacred thing, as the most important statement about you.
In every part of business and society today, the first quality looked for in an employee, a manager, a chief executive and even a friend or spouse, is the quality of honesty. You must develop the habit of living in truth with yourself, and with everyone around you. This does not mean that you will always be right, but you will always endeavor to tell the truth, as you see it. People will know that they can always rely on you and your word. They may not like what you say, but they will know that you always speak the truth. This is one of the very best reputations that you can possibly earn.
Decide What You Stand For
Living in truth means that you live consistent with the highest values that you know. This requires that you develop the habit of thinking through who you are and what you believe in. You continually clarify what you stand for, and what you will not stand for. Once you have decided that you are going to build your life around certain values, you refuse to compromise those values for anything.
A client of mine once explained integrity with these profound words, “Integrity is not so much a value as it is the value that guarantees all the other values.”
This is a wonderful insight. When you set integrity as your highest value, it becomes much easier for you to make decisions in each area of your life. You simply ask yourself, “Is this consistent with the very best that I know?”
If it is not, you refuse to do it. General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander during the 1991 Gulf War, once said that the most important leadership principle he learned, from a senior officer, was simply, “Do the right thing.”
Whenever you are in doubt about a course of action, simply ask yourself, “Is this the right thing to do?” And then behave accordingly.
Be A Role Model For Others
The men and women who are the most admired, esteemed and respected in our society, living and dead, are those who live or lived lives of exemplary honesty and integrity in everything they did. They were absolutely trustworthy. They always told the truth. You could always count on them and believe in them.
George Washington is often called the “Father of his country.” It was said that America only came into being because of the incredible character of George Washington. It was the respect that the Founding Fathers had for the honesty and integrity of Washington that held them together during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War.
Abraham Lincoln, considered the second most important and esteemed president in American history, got the nickname of “Honest Abe” as a young man when he walked several miles to return a few pennies that a woman had overpaid when she bought something from the general store where he was working. Throughout his career, he was esteemed and respected as one of the most honest men of his day. This is a wonderful reputation for you to have as well.
The Three Primary Virtues
Adam Smith, in his important book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, wrote that excellent people have three primary virtues. In order, these are Prudence, Justice and Benevolence. Each of them is essential to the others, and to the living of a full life in society.
The virtue of prudence refers to your developing the habit of providing well for yourself, your family, your friends, your coworkers and your company. This requires that you think intelligently and honestly about the very best course of action to maximize your opportunities and minimize possible danger and threats. The habit of prudence means that you investigate every investment carefully, think ahead about what might happen if you were to take a particular course of action, and take intelligent steps to guard against setbacks and reversals of fortune.
The most successful people are those who are prudent in the conduct in all of their personal and business affairs.
Justice Is Blind
The second habit for you to develop is the habit of justice. This refers to your commitment to the establishment and maintenance of laws in society that protect the persons and property of every individual. The American Republic has endured for more than 200 years because it was carefully established by the Founding Fathers on the basis of law, not men. At every level of our society, specific laws are prescribed and laid down that are applicable to all people, regardless of wealth or station in life.
John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher and author of A Theory of Justice, once presented a question to his class that has been repeated often through the years. “Imagine that you could write the laws and create the circumstances of your society. You are given the power to prescribe the economic, social and political relationships that would exist in your country throughout your lifetime.”
“There is only one limitation on your power. You would set up this structure without knowing into what sort of family or situation you would be born. You would not know in advance what sort of physical condition you might be born with. Whatever system of laws and customs you decided upon, you would then be required to live under them for the rest of your life. What kind of structure would you design in this situation?”
The answer to this question is the very essence of the concept of justice. The statue of justice, holding the balances and scales in her hand, is blindfolded. True justice is therefore applicable to all people who live under a certain system, irrespective of their background. When you make the habit of justice an organizing virtue for your own character, you will insist that, whatever the relative power of the parties, everyone be treated fairly and justly in the resolution of any difficulty or dispute.
The habit of prudence is essential for personal success. The habit of justice is essential for the creation of a society within which a person can pursue his or her own best interests with the greatest of possibilities. The rule is that you should never want or demand anything for anyone else that you are not perfectly willing to accept for yourself.
The Virtue of Generosity
The third quality or habit that you must develop is the habit of benevolence. This is one of the hallmark characteristics of the truly superior person. Aristotle referred to it as one of the eight essential virtues, that of “generosity.”
Each person is psychologically and emotionally structured in such a way that they are only truly happy and satisfied when they feel that they are doing something that serves and benefits other people. When you give freely and generously of yourself to others, whether it is to members of your family or to members of the public, you feel more valuable and happier inside. When you dedicate yourself to serving your customers with the very best quality of product or service of which you are capable, not only do you feel a deep sense of personal satisfaction, but you also put yourself on the side of the angels when it comes to personal and business success.
You remember the principle: “The more you give of yourself to others without expectation of return, the more good things there are that will come back to you from the most unexpected sources.”
The regular practice of prudence, justice and benevolence leads naturally to feelings and actions of kindness, compassion and tolerance toward other people. You become more open minded and flexible. You develop greater patience and understanding. You are less judgmental or demanding of others. You become a better and finer person.
Believe In Something Greater
One of the most important habits you can develop is the habit of faith. Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, it seems that most great men and women are men and women of faith, to a high degree.
By faith, I don’t mean that you believe in a dogmatic and inflexible set of religious principles or doctrines. The habit of faith requires that you simply believe that there is a higher power in the universe, and that this power wants the very best for you. The greater faith you develop, the greater confidence you will have that everything that is happening to you is part of a great plan that is moving you inevitably toward something better.
Seek For The Valuable Lesson
When you have faith, you believe that every setback contains a lesson that has been sent to you to help you. Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “When God wants to send you a gift, He wraps it up in a problem. The bigger the problem He wraps it up in, the bigger the gift that it contains.”
Most people are so preoccupied with the problem, difficulty or obstacle that they neglect to look inside of it for the gift that it might contain. One of the most important habits you can ever develop is an unshakable belief that every problem in your experience has been sent to you at exactly the right moment in your life to teach you something that you need to know to be more successful and happier in the future.
Napoleon Hill once wrote, “Within every difficulty or obstacle is contained the seed of an equal or greater benefit or advantage.”
The more you search for the benefit or advantage, for the valuable lesson or insight, the more likely it is that you will find it. Sometimes, your whole life will be changed as the result of a lesson you learn from an unexpected reversal of fortune or temporary failure.
Your ability to develop and maintain the habit of faith clears your mind, gives you greater self-confidence and enables you to tune into a higher power that will then guide you to always do and say the right thing at the right time.
Loyalty Is Essential
The habit of loyalty seems to be a quality of the very best people in our society. Disloyalty is a major reason for failure in business and the world of work. The decision from the outset that you will be completely loyal to the people who expect and deserve your loyalty enables you to remain clear and focused in the face of short-term successes and reversals.
Sometime ago, one of the big three automobile manufacturers in Detroit arranged a public demonstration against Japanese imports, demanding quotas, restrictions and higher tariffs in order to protect American manufacturing and jobs. As they had been ordered, the automobile workers arrived for the demonstration from all over Detroit. To the surprise and chagrin of the organizers, fully 40% of the Detroit autoworkers were driving Japanese cars. These workers were not even prepared to buy the same cars that they were manufacturing. This became a source of major embarrassment when the television crews began filming the arriving demonstrators.
Support Your Family, Friends and Company
The habit of loyalty requires that you be absolutely loyal to your company. You never criticize your boss or the people you work with, especially outside the company in the presence of other people. In addition, you purchase and use the products and services of your company, and recommend them proudly to others. It is amazing how many people work for one company but use the products and services of a competitor. They are then amazed to find that they are seldom if ever promoted to positions of higher responsibility. Their disloyalty disqualifies them from any kind of advancement.
It is essential that you be completely loyal to your spouse and to your children. When I was growing up, my parents, as a result of their own difficult upbringings, would turn on their children, including myself, at the slightest complaint or criticism from a neighbor or a teacher. No matter what was said about us by others, our parents would always take the side of the other person and assume that we were guilty before hearing our explanation of what had happened.
Learn From Experience
This young experience taught me something that has been priceless in my own personal life. From the birth of my first child, I have devoted myself to practicing 100% unconditional loyalty to my children, no matter what mistakes they made or what trouble they got into (and all children get into things when they are growing up).
Probably in reaction to my childhood, I have been strongly loyal to my friends and business associates throughout my life as well. Once I have decided that a person is my friend or colleague, I will stand by them almost indefinitely. I will praise them to others and defend them if they are attacked. I will take any challenge to their character or personality of a friend or relative as if it were a personal attack on me. You should do the same.
Never Give Up
Another quality of character and leadership that seems to be indispensable for great success is the habit of persistence and determination. Napoleon Hill wrote, “Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.”
Earlier in this book, I explained the Law of Belief, and the fact that your deeply held beliefs become your realities. You always act in a manner consistent with the way you believe inside, your self-concept. In my estimation, your level of persistence is the true measure of your belief in yourself, and your ability to succeed.
Imagine that there was a “Belief Store” just like a “Computer Store” in your neighborhood. You could go down to this belief store and buy a belief and program it into your subconscious mind, just as you would load a new computer program onto your hard drive. If this were the case, and you could buy any belief that you wanted, what would be the best belief for you to purchase to program into your subconscious mind?
In interviews with more than 500 successful men and women, the researchers found that they all had one particular belief in common. Each of them absolutely believed that they were destined to be great successes in life. They believed that everything that was happening to them in the short-term was part of a great plan to ultimately make them successful. They held to this belief through every storm of life. It eventually became unshakable. They saw the world in terms of inevitable success and personal greatness. And as a result, their beliefs became true. Each of these great men and women went onto accomplish wonderful things with their lives.
The Big Payoff
The good news is that the more you persist in the face of disappointment, disillusionment, setbacks, obstacles and temporary failure, the stronger you become as a person. The more you persist, the more you come to believe in yourself. And the more you believe in yourself, the more you will persist, no matter what happens. Each of them, persistence and belief, reinforces the other until you ultimately become unstoppable.
Earlier in this book, I emphasized the importance of self-discipline in developing the habits that lead you on to happiness, health and great achievement. The truth is that persistence is self-discipline in action. Each time you discipline yourself to persist, especially when you feel like quitting, both your ability to discipline yourself in subsequent events and your strength of persistence increases. Each reinforces the other.
We know that your level of self-esteem, how much you like and respect yourself, lies at the core of your personality. How much you like yourself determines how positive and optimistic you are, how resilient you are in the face of adversity, the size of the goals that you set for yourself, how well you get along with other people, how healthy you are, and almost everything that happens to you in your work and personal life. Self-esteem is the key to great personal success.
As it happens, each time you discipline yourself to persist in the face of adversity, your self-esteem goes up. You like and respect yourself even more. You become stronger and more determined. You become happier and more confident. Every act of self-discipline reinforces every subsequent act of self-discipline. Every act of persistence reinforces every subsequent requirement for persistence. Every act of persistence and self-discipline builds your self-esteem, makes you stronger and makes you even more capable of disciplining yourself to persist in the future. All three work together to develop within you the kind of character that makes you a leader in everything you do, and wherever you go.
An Attitude of Gratitude
The final habit for you to develop in becoming a truly excellent person is the habit of practicing an “Attitude of gratitude” in every part of your life. We spoke about this attitude earlier, regarding getting along well with others. As a part of character development, it means something more.
The habit of feeling and expressing gratitude, of saying thank you to people, and thank you to life in general, for all of the things in your life that you should be grateful for, has a wonderful effect on your personality.
An attitude of gratitude makes you a warmer, friendlier and more genial person. An attitude of gratitude causes you to be more sensitive and aware of people around you, and your environment. An attitude of gratitude gives you a great sense of happiness and inner satisfaction. The more gratitude you have, the more gratitude you express, the better and more positive is your personality, the higher is your self-esteem, and the more popular and liked you are by all the people around you.
Be Thankful For Everything
Even in the midst of the greatest difficulties you will experience, you can find things for which you are truly grateful. In fact, if you take a piece of paper and begin to write down the parts of your life for which you should be grateful, you will be amazed at how many items appear on your list.
Think about your physical body. No matter what your condition, you can be grateful for all of your senses, for the miracles of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and feeling. You can be thankful for the functioning of your body and for the health of your limbs. You can be grateful for the incredible gift of the life that you have lived up until now, and the great life that lies ahead of you. Just sitting alone in your room, thinking about your current blessings, can give you a page full of reasons to be truly grateful.
Look around you at your personal life. When you begin making a list of every person in your life, and the good qualities and actions of those people, you cannot help but be grateful. Think of every material item in your world, your home, car, clothes and other possession, and you will not know where to stop. Just thinking about the health and well being of the people you care about, your spouse, children and friends, and the qualities of their personalities, will make up a list that goes on and on.
Think of the wonderful experiences you’ve had in the past, the lessons you’ve learned, the books you’ve read, the movies you’ve seen, the songs you’ve heard and the foods you have eaten. Think of the places that you have visited and the experiences that you have had in your travels and work. Look back over the years that have passed and look at the years ahead. Think about the opportunities you have lying ahead of you, and you will be amazed at how many things you have in your life for which you can be truly grateful.
Your Great Good Fortune
The most successful people I have met, including millionaires, multi-millionaires and even billionaires, always seem to describe their successes in life by saying, “Life has been very good to me. I have been so fortunate. I have so many things to be grateful for.”
Virtually every successful person I have met attributes their success to other people, to their spouses, their children, their parents, their coworkers, their friends, associates and customers. Sir Isaac Newton, who is ranked as one of the ten most important people in human history, in the latter years of his life was asked, “How is it that you, amongst all men, could have made so many great contributions to so many sciences?”
Newton replied, thinking of all the great scientists who had preceded him and who worked for so many years before he came along, “If I have accomplished anything worthwhile in life, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
The Person You Are
Perhaps the greatest breakthrough thought in my life was the discovery that each of us is where we are, and what we are, because of ourselves. We are where we are and what we are because of our habitual thoughts and actions. Men and women of great character, competence and leadership abilities are those who have worked on themselves, usually for many years, to become the kind of people that others look up to, respect and admire. They are, in every respect of the word, “self-made” people.
William James of Harvard once wrote, “The greatest revolution of my generation is the discovery that individuals, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”
When you go to work on yourself, and you practice the behaviors that you wish to incorporate into your personality and character, you change the inner attitudes of your mind. As a result, you change the outer aspects of your life. You take complete control of your future. You become the very best person that you can imagine becoming. There are no limits.
Action Exercises:
What quality do you admire most in other people? How could you develop this quality in yourself?
Imagine that you could write your own eulogy; how would you like to be remembered and described by others when you are gone?
Create a vision for your ideal future; if you could wave a magic wand and make your life ideal in every way, what would it look like?
What would you do differently, how would you change your life, if you had no fears at all?
Imagine yourself to be a person of complete honest and impeccable integrity; is there any behavior of yours that you would change?
How would you change your goals and actions if you learned that you had been guaranteed of great success sometime in the future?
Resolve today to become a great man, or woman, and then practice the habits and behaviors that you would have if you were already that person.
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today will curse tomorrow; only one thing endures – character.” (Horace Greeley)
