Million Dollar Habits
By Brian Tracy
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
_________________________________________________
Introduction
You Are What You Do
Chapter-1
Where Your Habits Come From
Chapter-2
The Master Program of Success
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 1
Where Your Habits Come From
“Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be as a spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted, it soon binds us with chains of steel.” (Tryon Edwards)
You are extraordinary! You came into this world with more talents and abilities than you could ever use. You could not exhaust your full potential if you lived 100 lifetimes.
Your amazing brain has 20 billion cells, each of which is connected to as many as 20 thousand other cells. The possible combinations and permutations of ideas, thoughts and insights that you can generate are equivalent to the number one followed by eight pages of zeros. According to brain expert Tony Buzan, this number is greater than all the molecules in the known universe. Whatever you have accomplished in life to this date is only a small fraction of what you are truly capable of achieving.
The psychologist, Abraham Maslow, once wrote that, “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” The average person settles for far less than he or she is truly capable of achieving. Compared with what you could be, everything you have accomplished so far is only a small part of what is truly possible for you.
The challenge is that you come into the world with the most incredible brain, surrounded by unlimited possibilities for success, happiness and achievement, but you start off with no instruction manual. As a result, you have to figure it all out for yourself. Most people never do. They go through life doing the very best they can, but they never come within shouting distance of doing, having and being all that is possible for them.
Coming From Behind
I started off in life with few advantages. My father was not always employed and my family never seemed to have any money. I began working and paying for my own clothes and expenses when I was 10 years old, doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. I hoed weeds, delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, and raked leaves. When I was old enough, I got a job washing dishes in the back of a small hotel. My biggest promotion at that time was up to washing pots and pans.
I left high school without graduating and worked at laboring jobs for several years. I worked in sawmills stacking lumber, and in the woods slashing brush with a chain saw. I dug ditches and wells. I worked on farms and ranches. I worked in factories and on construction sites. For a time, I was a galley boy on a Norwegian Freighter in the North Atlantic. I earned my living by the sweat of my brow.
When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got a job in straight commission sales, cold calling from door-to-door and office-to-office. For a long time, I was one sale away from homelessness. If I did not make a sale that day, and get my commission immediately so that I could pay for my room at the boarding house, I would be out on the street. This was not a great way to live.
The Key To Success
Then one day I began asking that question, “Why is it that some people are more successful than others?” Especially, “Why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others?”
With that one question, I did something that changed my life and began the formation of a habit that had a profound effect on my future. I went and asked the most successful salesman in my company what he was doing differently from me. And he told me. And I did what he told me to do. And my sales went up.
In the Bible it says, “Ask and ye shall receive.” I soon developed the habit of asking everyone, and in every way possible, for the answers that I needed to move ahead more rapidly. I began to read books on selling, and put into action what I had learned. I listened to audio programs while I walked and eventually, as I drove around. I attended every sales seminar I could find. I continually asked other successful salespeople for advice. And I developed the habit of immediately taking action on any advice or good idea that I received or learned.
As a result, and not surprisingly, my sales went up and up, and eventually I surpassed everyone in my company. Soon they made me a sales manager and asked me to teach other people what I was doing that enabled me to be so successful. Soon I was recruiting people with newspaper ads, teaching them the sales methods and techniques that I had learned, and sending them out to call on prospects and customers. In no time at all, they were making sales and moving upward and onward in their own lives. Many of those early salespeople are millionaires today.
The Iron Law Of The Universe
What I learned from this experience was the great Law of Cause and Effect. This is the foundation principle of western philosophy and of modern thought. It says that for every cause, there is an effect. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. This law says that, even if you do not know the reason why something happens, there is still a reason that explains it.
Here is one of the most important of all success principles: “If you do what other successful people do, you will eventually get the same results that they do. And if you don’t, you won’t.”
Nature is neutral. Nature does not favor one person over another. The Bible says, “God made the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” When you do the things that other successful people do, over and over again, you will eventually get the same results that they do. It is not a matter of luck, or chance, or accident. It is a matter of law.
This was an extraordinary idea for me. Even today I am awed by the immensity and power of this simple principle. If you want to be happy, healthy, prosperous, popular, positive and confident, just find out how other people who are enjoying these benefits got that way and do the same things that they do. Think the same thoughts. Feel the same feelings. Take the same actions. And as sure as two plus two makes four, you will eventually get the same results as others do. It is no miracle.
You Can Learn Anything
Over the years, I have worked in a variety of businesses and industries. I have traveled in 90 countries, learned different languages, and developed various skills. In my 30s, I completed my high school and got a business degree from a leading university. In every job, and in every situation, I started off by asking, “What are the rules or principles for success in this area of activity?” I then read books, attended courses, and asked everyone I could find for their insights and ideas.
When I became a sales manager, I read every book and article I could find on sales management, and applied the ideas and principles to building and directing a successful sales force. When I got into real estate development, I read dozens of books on the subject. Within a year, starting with no money and no contacts, I developed and built a three million dollar shopping center and came out owning 25% of it.
When I got into the importation and distribution of Japanese automobiles, I again read the books, spoke to the experts, and did my research to find out how to set up a network of dealerships. In the next four years, I established 65 dealerships and imported and sold more than $25 million dollars worth of vehicles.
Over the past 22 years, in my work with more than 500 corporations, my entire focus has been on discovering the reasons for sales, revenues and profits in each business or industry, and then determining how those principles could be best utilized to achieve the results of the most successful companies.
When people complimented me on my successes, I eagerly shared with them what I had learned in each area. I told them that they too could learn anything that they needed to learn to achieve any goal they could set for themselves. All they had to do was to find out the cause and effect relationships in any area of endeavor, and then apply them to their own activities. If they did this, they would soon get the same results that other successful people get.
Taking Control of Your Life
But instead of taking this advice, they would nod, smile and agree, and then turn away and go about their day-to-day business. They would start work at the last possible moment, waste much of the day in idle conversation with co-workers and personal business, leave work at the earliest possible time, and then spend their evenings socializing or watching television.
In frustration, I began to study psychology and metaphysics. I eventually learned that there are a series of universal principles and timeless truths that explain much of human success and failure. These principles explain happiness and unhappiness, riches and poverty, health and ill health, and good and poor relationships. These mental laws explain why some people have wonderful lives and why others do not.
The Law of Control
The first law that I discovered was the Law of Control. This law says that, “You feel happy to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. You feel unhappy to the degree to which you feel you are not in control of your own life.”
Modern psychology calls this “Locus of Control Theory.” Psychologists differentiate between an internal locus of control and an external locus of control. Your locus of control is where you feel the control exists in each area of your life. This location determines your happiness or unhappiness more than any other factor.
For example, if you feel that you are the primary creative force in your own life, that you make your own decisions, and that everything that happens to you is a result of yourself and your own behaviors, you have a solid internal locus of control. As a result, you will feel strong, confident and happy. You will think with greater clarity and perform at higher levels than the average person.
On the other hand, if you feel that your life is controlled by other factors or people, by your job, your boss, your childhood experiences, your bills, your health, your family or anything else, you will have an external locus of control. You will feel like a victim. You will feel like a pawn in the hands of fate. You will soon develop what Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania calls “learned helplessness.” You will feel helpless and unable to change or improve your situation. You will soon develop the habit of blaming others and making excuses for your problems. This type of thinking leads inevitably to anger, frustration and failure. We will talk more about this later in this chapter.
The Power of Belief
The next law I discovered was the Law of Belief. This is the basic principle that underlies most religion, psychology, philosophy and metaphysics. The Law of Belief says that, “Whatever you believe, with conviction, becomes your reality.”
In the New Testament it says, “According to your faith, it is done unto you.” In the Old Testament, it says, “As a man thinketh, in his heart (his beliefs), so is he.” William James of Harvard wrote, “Belief creates the actual fact.”
The fact is that, “You do not believe what you see, but rather, you see what you already believe.” Your deeply held beliefs form a screen of prejudices that distort your external reality and cause you to see things not the way they are, but the way you are.
The worst of all beliefs are self-limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that you have developed through life, usually false, that cause you to believe that you are limited in some way. Your negative beliefs soon become habitual ways of thinking. You may believe that you lack intelligence, creativity, personality, the ability to speak publicly, the ability to earn a high income, the ability to lose weight, or the ability to achieve your goals. As a result of your self-limiting beliefs, you continually “sell yourself short,” give up easily in the pursuit of a goal, and even worse, tell other people around you that you lack certain qualities or abilities. Your beliefs then become your realities. “You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”
In developing million dollar habits, one of the most important steps you take is to challenge your self-limiting beliefs. You begin this process by imagining that you have no limitations at all. When you develop your mind to the point where you absolutely believe that you can do anything you put your mind to, you will find a way to make that belief a reality. As a result, your whole life will change.
As we will discuss later, beliefs are the hardest things of all to change. But there is good news. It is that all beliefs are learned. And anything that has been learned can be unlearned. You can develop the beliefs of courage, confidence and unstoppable persistence that you need for great success by reprogramming your subconscious mind in a specific way.
Your Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
The next law that I discovered is the Law of Expectations. This law says that, “Whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.” In other words, you do not necessarily get what you want, but rather what you expect.
If you confidently expect something to happen, this expectation has a powerful effect on your attitude and your personality. The more confident your expectations, the more likely it is that you will do and say the things that are consistent with what you expect to happen. As a result, you will dramatically increase the probabilities that you will achieve exactly what you are hoping for.
One of the wonderful things about expectations is that you can manufacture your own. You can get up each morning and say; “I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today.” As you go through the day, you create a force field of expectations that surrounds you and effects the people with whom you come in contact. And in some remarkable way, a series of wonderful things, both large and small, will happen to you throughout the day.
Successful people expect to be successful, in advance. Happy people expect to be happy. Popular people expect to be liked by others. They develop the habit of expecting that something good will happen in every situation. They expect to benefit from every occurrence, even temporary setbacks and failures. They expect the best of other people, and always assume the best of intentions. And they are seldom disappointed.
The flipside of positive expectations are the negative expectations that many people have. Unhappy people expect to fail more often than they succeed. They expect that other people will hurt or disappoint them. They expect their ventures to do poorly. Instead of expecting the best, they expect the worst, and because the law is neutral, they are seldom disappointed.
One of the most important things you can do to assure a happy, healthy, prosperous life, is to expect the very best from every person or situation, no matter how it may look at the moment. Develop the habit of positive expectations. You will be amazed at the effect this has on yourself and on the people around you.
You Are A Living Magnet
The next law I learned about was the Law of Attraction. This law says that, “You are a living magnet; you invariably attract into your life the people, ideas and circumstances that harmonize with your dominant thoughts.”
This law of attraction has been written and spoken about for five thousand years. It is one of the most important of all principles in explaining success and failure. The law of attraction says that your thoughts are activated by your emotions, either positive or negative, and that they then create a force field of energy around you that attracts into your life, like iron filings to a magnet, exactly the people and circumstances that are in harmony with those thoughts.
Like all mental laws, the law of attraction is neutral. If you think positive thoughts, you attract positive people and circumstances. If you think negative thoughts, you attract negative people and circumstances. Successful, happy people continually think and talk about the things they want to attract into their lives. Unsuccessful, unhappy people are continually talking about the people and situations that cause them to feel angry and frustrated.
One of the most important habits you develop is the habit of keeping your mind full of exciting, positive, emotionalized pictures and images of the exact things you want to see materialize in your life, and in the world around you. This is one of the most difficult of disciplines, but one that pays off in extraordinary ways.
As Within, So Without
The summary law of the laws we have just discussed is the Law of Correspondence. This law says that, “Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.”
It is as though you live in a 360-degree mirror. Everywhere you look, you see yourself reflected back at you. People treat you the way you treat them. The way you think about your physical body will be reflected in your health habits and your appearance. The way you think about people and your relationships will be reflected back to you in the quality of your friendships and your family life. The way you think about success and prosperity will be reflected in the results that you enjoy in your career and your material life. In every case, your outer world reflects back to you, like a mirror image, exactly what you are thinking in the deepest recesses of your mind.
When you put the Laws of Cause and Effect, Belief, Expectations, Attraction and Correspondence together, you arrive at the great universal principle that explains your life and everything that happens to you: “You become what you think about – most of the time.”
Just think! You become what you think about most of the time. You always move in the direction of your dominant thoughts. Everything in your outer world is controlled and determined by what you are thinking in your inner world.
The good news is that there is only thing in the universe over which you have complete control, and that is the content of your conscious mind. Only you can decide what you think about most of the time. And fortunately, this is all the control that you need to shape your own life and determine your own future. By taking complete control of your conscious thoughts, you can control the direction of your life. By taking control, you will feel happy, powerful, confident and free. You will become unstoppable.
Action Exercises:
Look at your field today; identify the three most important reasons why some people are more successful than others.
Accept complete responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you; refuse to make excuses or to blame others for anything.
What self-limiting beliefs do you have that might be holding you back? What if they weren’t true at all?
Expect the best of yourself and others; what would you change if you were absolutely guaranteed of success?
In what ways have your dominant thoughts and emotions attracted people, circumstances and situations into your life? How could you change this?
Everywhere you look, there you are; what do you need to change in your inner world if you want to see changes in your outer world?
Determine the three most important habits of thought, about yourself and others that you could develop to be happier and more successful.
“You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door to unlimited possibilities.” (Robert Collier)
CHAPTER 2
The Master Program of Success
“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what it is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” (Henry Ford)
The great question for success is, what determines what you think about most of the time? Why is it that some people think thoughts that are positive, constructive and success-oriented while others think thoughts that are negative, pessimistic and which lead inevitably to failure and underachievement?
Many successful people have been interviewed over the years and asked the question, “What do you think about, most of the time?” Their answers are simple and consistent, and yet so profound that they can be life changing. In short, successful people think about what they want, and how to get it most of the time.
Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, think and talk about what they don’t want most of the time, and who is to blame for their problems and difficulties. As a result, they attract more and more of what they don’t want, and what makes them unhappy into their lives. The laws are neutral. Whatever you think and talk about most of the time eventually comes into your life.
For more than one hundred years, psychologists have worked to understand and explain the functioning of the human mind. Starting with Sigmund Freud, and moving through the psychologists Alfred Adler, Karl Jung, Abraham Maslow, William Glasser, Eric Fromm, B. F. Skinner, and through to the modern day, they have sought for the reasons for happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, achievement and underachievement. They have all concluded, one way or the other, that the way your mind is programmed from early childhood plays a decisive role in almost everything you think, feel and accomplish as an adult.
Your Master Program
I have personally read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on psychology and the functioning of the human mind. Perhaps the discovery for me was when I learned about the role of the self-concept in human performance and behavior. Margaret Meade, the Anthropologist, called the self-concept, “the most important breakthrough in the understanding of human potential in the 20th century.”
Your self-concept is the “master program” of your subconscious computer. It acts as your mental operating system. Every thought, feeling, emotion, experience, and decision you have ever had is permanently recorded on this mental hard drive.
Once recorded, these impressions then influence the way you think, feel and behave from that point onward.
Your self-concept precedes and predicts your levels of effectiveness in every area of your life. You always act on the outside in a manner consistent with the way that you feel and think about yourself on the inside. Your self-concept explains why the mental laws have such an inordinate effect on your personality.
The Role of the Mini-Self-Concept
Once your self-concept in a particular area is formed, you always act in a manner consistent with it. You may have extraordinary ability in a particular area, but if your self-concept is poor in that area, you will always perform below your true potential.
It turns out that you have a “mini-self-concept” for every area of your life that you consider important. For example, you have a self-concept for how creative you are. You have a self-concept for how well you speak in public, for your memory and for your ability to learn new subjects. You have a self-concept for how popular you are and how well you get along with other people. You have a self-concept for what kind of a spouse or partner you are, and how desirable or attractive you are to members of the opposite sex. You have a self-concept for what kind of a parent you are. You have a self-concept for how well you perform in each sport or physical activity. You have a self-concept for how organized or disorganized you are, how well you manage your time, how productive you are, and how much you get done in an average day. You have a self-concept for your ability to read, write and do mathematics.
In your business and career, in the context of Million Dollar Habits, you have a self-concept for every aspect of your financial life. You have a self-concept for how much you earn, and how hard you have to work to earn that amount of money. You have a self-concept for how rapidly you are promoted and how much your earnings increase month-by-month and year-by-year.
You have a self-concept for how much you earn on an annual basis, and for how much you will be earning in the future. You have a self-concept for how well you save, invest, spend and accumulate money. You have a self-concept for your personal financial net worth, and how much you are able to acquire in the months and years of your life. Every aspect of your financial life on the outside is determined by your self-concept relative to that way of dealing with money on the inside.
Your Comfort Zone
Whatever your self-concept, your habit of thinking with regard to money or any other area of performance, this very soon becomes your “comfort zone.” Your comfort zone then becomes your greatest single obstacle to improved performance. Once you get into a comfort zone in any area, you will strive and struggle unconsciously to remain in that comfort zone, even though it may be vastly below what you are truly capable of achieving in that area.
For example, with regard to money, if your comfort zone is earning $50,000 per year, that is how much you will earn. No matter what happens in the world around you, recessions, depressions, booms and busts, you will eventually stabilize at an earning level of $50,000 per year. You will use all your talents and abilities to get into and maintain that financial comfort zone.
If you are accustomed to earning $100,000 per year, and you lose your job, or move across the country and start over, within a few months, you will be earning $100,000 per year. Once you have developed a self-concept level of income, and it is permanently programmed into your mental hard drive as a habit, your subconscious and superconscious minds will always find a way to achieve that level of income, no matter what happens around you.
The key to achieving your full potential, to increasing your income to vastly higher levels than it is today, and to enjoying the very best that is possible for you in every area of life, is for you to raise your self-concept in that area. It is for you to develop new habits of thinking about what is possible for you. The way that you accomplish vastly more on the outside is by changing your thoughts and feelings about your potential in that area on the inside.
Reprogram Yourself for Greater Success
In medicine it is said that, “Proper diagnosis is half the cure.” To that end, let us look at the three parts of your self-concept, how they interact on each other, and how you can act to alter or improve them in any way you want.
The first part of your self-concept is your self-ideal. This is the ideal image or picture you have of yourself, as if you were already the very best person you could possibly be. Your self-ideal is made up of your wishes, hopes, dreams, goals, and fantasies about your perfect future life, combined with the qualities and virtues that you admire most in yourself and in other people. Your self-ideal is a composite of the very best person you could imagine yourself being, living the very best life you could possibly live.
High performing, successful, happy people have very clear self-ideals. They have clear ideas of what they like, respect and admire. They have clear ideals about the virtues, values and attributes of the superior men and women that they want to emulate. The most successful people have an uplifting, inspiring vision of what a truly excellent person looks like and how he or she behaves.
Because of the Law of Attraction, you inevitably move in the direction of becoming that which you most admire. The greater clarity you have with regard to the ideal future life you want to live, and the ideal person you want to be, the faster you will move toward becoming that person, and the more opportunities that will open up for you to make your ideal future vision for yourself a reality.
Develop Positive Role Models
In one study conducted some years ago, the researchers found that many men and women who accomplished great things later in life had been avid readers of the biographies and autobiographies of successful people when they were younger. It seems that you have a natural tendency to identify with the hero or heroine in any story that you read, watch or hear about. When you continually immerse your mind in the stories of men and women who have accomplished wonderful things with their lives, you unconsciously identify with those characters and actually absorb their values, virtues and qualities into your own personality.
Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, in his book The Achieving Society explains how role models have an inordinate effect on shaping the character and personality of the young. One of his conclusions was that the men and women who are the most admired, and held up as models in society during the formative years of the young person, have an inordinate influence on the character and the aspirations of that person when he or she grows to adulthood.
By the same token, young people who have positive role models around them when they are growing up are much more likely to become men and women of quality and character as adults than young people who have no role models, or even worse, negative role models, as often occurs today.
With regard to the self-ideal, unhappy, unsuccessful men and women tend to be very fuzzy or unclear about their ideals. If you ask them what they consider to be the most valuable and important qualities in human character and personality, they have either unclear or contradictory answers. This lack of clarity or certainty about what constitutes an ideal person often causes an individual to go around in circles in life, to associate with negative influences and spent time with people who are equally unclear and unfocused about “the person they want to be when they grow up.”
Your Values Shape Your Personality
The values you choose to live by, and the way you define those values, shape and influence your personality and your achievements as much or more than any other single factor. When you take the time to think through and develop absolute clarity about the key values and qualities that you admire the most, and wish the most to incorporate into yourself, you begin to shape and direct your whole personality, and determine the results you achieve in the future.
As you think about your values, and reflect upon how you could incorporate them into your life and behaviors, you become a different person. As a result, you attract different people and opportunities into your life. Your outer world soon begins to mirror your inner world. You start to move more rapidly toward the achievement of your most important goals, and your goals begin to move rapidly toward you. It all begins with you taking complete control of the formation and development of your personal self-ideal.
How You See Yourself
The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. Beginning with the work of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, and his book Psycho-Cybernetics, we learn that the way you see yourself on the inside largely determines how you perform on the outside.
If you see yourself as positive, popular, productive and successful on the inside, that is exactly how you will act on the outside. The way you behave on the outside will largely determine the results that you get. The results that you get will reinforce your self-concept, in either a positive or negative way, and will set you up to repeat the same behaviors in the next similar situation.
Your self-concept is often called your “inner mirror.” This is the mirror that you look into prior to engaging in any performance, or entering into any event of importance. If you see yourself as confident and successful prior to meeting a new person, applying for a job, or making a presentation, that is how you will perform in the actual situation. If you have a poor self-image, if you see yourself as not being particularly popular, confident, or attractive, your negative self-image will cause you to feel clumsy, awkward and inadequate in subsequent situations.
One of the most important habits that you develop is the habit of feeding your mind with positive pictures and images of yourself performing at your very best prior to every situation of importance. Take a few moments, as athletes, politicians and performers do, and imagine yourself as if you were outstanding at what you were about to do. Hold that picture in your mind for as long as you possibly can. Then, relax and let it go. Later, when you find yourself in that situation, your subconscious mind will remember the picture and give you the words, actions and gestures that correspond exactly to the picture that you created a short time before.
The Core of Your Personality
The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. This is the feeling or emotional component of your personality, the “reactor core” of your subconscious mind. Your level of self-esteem determines the vitality and energy of your personality and is the control valve on your performance.
Most psychologists today agree that your level of self-esteem is the most important part of your personality, and largely predicts your success or failure, happiness or unhappiness, in every area of your life. In fact, your self-esteem is so important that you tend to organize your whole life around it. Almost everything you do is either to gain self-esteem, or to protect against the loss of self-esteem.
The rule with regard to your self-esteem is that “Everything Counts!” Everything that happens to you and around you affects your self-esteem in some way. Everything either increases your self-esteem or lowers it. Everything that happens to you either supports your self-esteem or threatens it. You are like the proverbial “long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” Every word or gesture of other people toward you affects your self-esteem in some way. The preservation and development of your self-esteem thus becomes the key to high performance, happiness and great success.
Comparing Your Behavior With Your Ideal
Your self-esteem is affected by many factors. One of the most important is the distance between your self-image, the way you see yourself in the moment, and your self-ideal, the way you would ideally like to be sometime in the future.
Whenever you feel that your current performance and behavior is consistent with the best person that you can possibly be, your self-esteem goes up. You feel happier and more exhilarated. You have more energy and enthusiasm. You are more positive and personable with others.
On the other hand, whenever your current performance or behavior seems to be inconsistent or distant from the person that you would most like to be, your selfesteem goes down. You feel anxious and unhappy. You feel self conscious and embarrassed. You feel frustrated and angry.
The good news is that, the greater clarity you have with regard to your self-ideal, the person you would most like to be, the easier it is for you to tailor your performance and behavior so that it is consistent with being the kind of person you most admire. And every time you do or say anything that you feel is more consistent with the best person you can possibly be, your self-esteem goes up. You feel happier and more confident. You feel more positive and powerful. You feel capable of doing more and better things in that area, and in other areas of your life.
The Best Definition of Self-Esteem
The very best definition of self-esteem is, “How much you like yourself.” What we have found is that, the more you like yourself, the better you do. And the better you do, the more you like yourself. Each time you perform well in any area, your selfesteem goes up. You like yourself more, and you perform even better in that area, and in other areas as well.
The most powerful words you can use to take control of your personality, and to build your self-esteem, are the words, “I like myself!” The more you repeat the words, “I like myself!” to yourself, the happier and more confident you feel, and the better and more effectively you perform in whatever you are doing.
When I first learned this powerful affirmation many years ago, my self-esteem was quite low. I had a poor self-image. I had a vague self-ideal. I was plagued by fears and doubts, and tended to compare myself in negative terms with other people. To counter these feelings, I began to repeat the words, “I like myself!” ten, twenty and even fifty times a day. It had a remarkable impact on my personality.
Perhaps the most powerful words in your vocabulary are the words that you say to yourself and believe. Fully 95% of your emotions are determined by the words that are running through your mind at any given time. And your mind is very much like a vacuum. It does not remain empty for very long. If you do not deliberately fill your mind with positive, constructive words, it will fill up by itself with your fears, worries and concerns.
To put it another way, if you do not deliberately plant flowers in the garden of your mind, weeds will grow automatically, with no encouragement or support.
Positive Self-Talk Shapes Your Personality
One of the most important habits you can develop is the habit of talking to yourself positively most of the time. And the most positive words that you can use throughout the day, especially prior to any event of importance or significance, are the words “I like myself!” You cannot say these words to yourself without feeling happier, especially if you repeat them emotionally and emphatically,
Every time you say, “I like myself!” your self-esteem goes up. As your self-esteem increases, you feel more positive and optimistic. You become eager to set bigger goals and face greater challenges. The more you like yourself, the greater courage and confidence you have. The more you like yourself, the less your fears and doubts get in your way or interfere with your success. And you get all the benefits of self-esteem enhancement by continually repeating “I like myself!”
Supercharge Your Personality
The higher your self-esteem, the faster and easier it is for you to develop the Million Dollar Habits that enable you to accomplish extraordinary things with your life. Since everything you do on the outside is controlled by your subconscious mind, by your current programming, as you change your self-concept, you change your reality.
Your self-concept is the seat of the Laws of Belief, Expectation, Attraction and Correspondence. Your self-concept determines what you think about, most of the time. Your self-concept contains the roots of “learned helplessness.” Your selfconcept represents your “comfort zone.” Your main goal is to take complete control over the evolution and development of your self-concept, and shape your personality and you character into becoming an extraordinary person who can accomplish remarkable things.
Take time to become absolutely clear about the virtues, values, qualities and attributes that you most admire, and which you most aspire to make a part of your personality. Prior to every event of importance, create a clear mental picture of yourself performing at your very best, consistent with the highest values and qualities that you have, or desire to have.
Especially, continually repeat the magic words “I like myself!” over and over again, until they are accepted by your subconscious mind and become a permanent part of your personality. The more you like and respect yourself, and consider yourself to be a valuable and important person, the faster you will develop every other habit, quality and attribute that you need to fulfill your full potential.
The Foundation of Your Personality
At this point, many people ask, “Where does your self-concept come from? How does it begin? How does it develop? What are the major influences that shape your self-concept and how can you change your self-concept once it has developed?” These are vital questions, and there are definite answers for them.
The fact is that each child is born with no self-concept at all. Every thought, feeling, idea, opinion, belief or conviction that you have as an adult has been learned, starting in early infancy. You have been taught to believe the things you believe by the people and influences around you over the course of your lifetime, especially when you were a child.
It is true that each child is born with certain personality characteristics, propensities, talents, leanings, and other unique attributes and qualities. Some psychologists say that fully 60% of personality characteristics, such as courage, extroversion, musical interest, sensitivity, athletic ability and so on, are inborn and innate. This is why children born into the same family, with the same parents and similar upbringing, often turn out totally different from each other. But in terms of self-concept, how a person thinks and feels about themselves relative to their ability and potential, this is learned from early infancy.
Your Two Natural Qualities
When you are born, you come into the world with two natural qualities. First, you are completely unafraid. You are totally fearless. You have no reason to be afraid because you have had no experiences to make you afraid. The second natural quality that you are born with is that you are completely spontaneous. You laugh, cry, pee, poop, sleep and express yourself with no thought or concern about whether anybody approves or disapproves. These are your natural qualities in a state of nature.
As an adult, when you feel completely relaxed and safe, surrounded by people whom you like and trust, your natural tendency is to revert to being completely open and unafraid, spontaneous and expressive. This is the ideal condition of the completely happy, fully functioning adult.
Starting early in childhood, as the result of the things your parents do and say, you begin to learn the two basic negative habit patterns that then become the most destructive influences in your life as an adult.
The first negative habit pattern that you learn is called the inhibitive negative habit pattern. This is what soon becomes the fear of failure, risk and loss. As a child, your natural urge is to explore your environment. You eagerly reach out to touch, taste, feel and experiment with everything around you. But often your parents react and even over react to this behavior by discouraging you as much as possible. They say, “No! Get away from that! Don’t touch that! Leave that alone!” Many parents reinforce their words and threats with spankings and punishment.
Children need love like roses need rain. Love is as important to the developing child as is food. Any interruption of the flow of unconditional love to the child causes the child to feel nervous and frightened. Psychologists say that virtually all adult problems are rooted in the phenomena of “love withheld” in early childhood.
When your parents become angry with you as the result of your natural desire and drive to explore your world and your environment, you have no way of understanding that this is because of their fear for your safety. Instead, as a child, you merely react and respond with the idea that, “Every time I try or touch or taste something new or different, my mother or father gets angry at me. It must be because I am incapable and incompetent. It must be because I am no good. It must be because I can’t do it.”
Fear of Trying Anything New
This feeling of “I can’t” begins the development of the fear of failure. If you are discouraged or punished too often as a child, very early in life you will become fearful of trying new things. This fear will then carry over into later childhood, adolescence and adult life. Thereafter, whenever you think of doing something new or different, something that entails risk or uncertainty, your first reaction will be “I
can’t!” As soon as you say the words “I can’t” to yourself, you will begin immediately to think of all the reasons why such a thing is not possible for you. You will think and talk in terms of failure, rather than success. You will think of the uncertainties and all the possible risks of loss that may occur. Before you even try something new, you will talk yourself out of it.
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, once asked an audience, “What is the average number of times that a person tries to achieve a new goal before they give up?” After several guesses from the audience, he gave the answer. “Less than one.”
The point he made was that most people give up before they try the first time. They give up without even trying once. Even though they want to improve their lives, increase their incomes, and accomplish more than they are today, as soon as the new goal pops into their mind, they automatically respond with the words “I can’t!” And begin thinking of all the reasons why it is not possible for them.
The most important habit you can develop for great happiness and success is the habit of repeating to yourself and believing, “I can do anything I put my mind to!”
The most powerful words that you can repeat, over and over, to neutralize and overcome the fear of failure, are the words, “I can do it! I can do it!”
The kindest words that a parent can tell his or her child, in addition to the words “I love you,” are the words “You can do anything that you set your mind to.” It is amazing how many people’s lives have been dramatically affected by the influence of a single person, a parent, relative or friend, who simply told them, over and over again, “You can do it.”
What Others Might Say
The second fear that we learn early in life, which then affects us for the rest of our lives, is the fear of rejection, or criticism. We are all sensitive to the opinions of others, especially to the opinions and reactions of our parents when we are growing up. Parents often take advantage of this need to please to control and manipulate their children. The way they do it is by giving or withholding approval and support, based on the behavior of the child at the moment.
When the child does or says something that the parents don’t like, they immediately become rejecting and critical of the child. Since the approval and support of the parent is like a psychological lifeline to the emotional health of the child, the child is immediately affected and pulls back from the behavior in order to regain the love and approval of the parents.
Parents very soon slip into the habit of manipulating the child with “carrot and stick” treatment. They alternate with approval and disapproval, with compliments and criticism, to control and manipulate the child’s behavior.
As a child, you are too young to understand what is going on. You know only one thing. The love and approval of your parents is indispensable to your well-being. It is the key to your emotional health. You therefore learn that, “If you want to get along, you go along.” At an early age, you begin to conform your behaviors to earn the approval, and avoid the disapproval, of your parents.
The Approval of Others
As you grow older, you become increasingly sensitive to the approval or disapproval of others, starting with members of your family, and then your friends and associates. Teenagers especially become extremely sensitive to whether or not they are liked or disliked by their peers. Instead of being fearless and spontaneous, completely open, honest and expressive, they begin to shape their behaviors and conform to whatever they feel their peers will approve of at the moment.
The child does not know why the parent is behaving this way. The child simply concludes that, “Every time I do something that Mommy or Daddy disapproves of, they stop loving me. Therefore, whatever it is, I have to do what makes them happy. I have to do what pleases them. I have to do what they want if I want to be safe.”
This feeling generates what is called the “compulsive negative habit pattern,” which is characterized by the words “I have to!” As an adult, the child who was subjected to disapproval and destructive criticism becomes hypersensitive to the attitudes and opinions of others. They are continually saying, “I have to do this” or “I have to do that.” When the fear of rejection becomes extreme, the individual becomes so hypersensitive to the opinions of others that he or she cannot make a decision until he or she is absolutely convinced that everyone in the world around them will approve and support the decision.
Like A Deer In the Headlights
The worst situation of all, which is quite common in most people, is the combined feeling of, “I have to” but “I can’t.” The individual feels that he has to do something in order to win the approval of an important person in his life, but simultaneously, he is afraid of trying anything new or different, and becomes extremely sensitive to the reactions and comments of anyone around him.
The root cause of negative habit patterns can almost always be traced back to “destructive criticism” in early childhood. Often, destructive criticism is accompanied by physical punishment. In either or both cases, the child very quickly loses his or her natural spontaneity and becomes fearful and hypersensitive to others.
All the other fears that hold people back - the fears of loss, of poverty, of embarrassment, of ridicule, of ill health, of the loss of love of someone, of public speaking, of taking a chance, of starting or trying something new or different – are all rooted in the fears of failure and rejection that begin in early childhood.
The Antidote to All Your Fears
One of the greatest discoveries in the development of the peak performance personality is that your fears and your level of self-esteem have an inverse or opposite relationship. In other words, the more you like yourself, the less you fear failure and rejection. The higher your levels of self-esteem, the lower are the fears and doubts that hold most people back. The more you like and value yourself, the more willing you are to take risks and to endure the inevitable setbacks, obstacles and temporary failures that will occur. The more you like yourself, the less concerned you are with the approval or disapproval of other people. You go your own way.
The very fastest way to build your self-esteem and self-confidence, and to neutralize the fears that may be holding you back, is to repeat continually the words “I like myself!” Whenever you feel doubtful or uneasy, begin repeating these words to yourself, “I like myself! I like myself! I like myself!”
The most important Million Dollar Habit you can develop is the habit of deliberately building your own self-esteem and self-confidence on a daily basis. The more you feed your mind with positive words, pictures, and thoughts, the more positive, confident, optimistic and unafraid you become. The more you like yourself, the better you do at anything you attempt. The more you like yourself, the less you fear failure and rejection. The more you like yourself, the less you worry about short-term setbacks and obstacles. The more you like yourself, the greater courage and resilience you will have to face the inevitable ups and downs of life. And the more you like yourself, the more it is that you will persist until you succeed. Self-esteem is everything.
Fulfill Your Complete Potential
There are four more mental laws that you need to know and work with in order to fulfill your complete potential. The first of these is the Law of Habit. This law says that, “Whatever you do repeatedly eventually becomes a new habit.” In its simplest terms, this means that you can develop any habit of thought or action that you desire, if you will just repeat it often enough and long enough. We will talk about new habit formation and development in the next chapter.
The second law that you must know and use is the Law of Emotion. This law says that, “Every action that you take is stimulated by an emotion of some kind, either positive or negative.”
You can think of emotions the way you would think of a campfire. In order for the campfire to continue burning, you must continue to put wood on the fire. If you stop putting fuel on the fire for any period of time, the fire will eventually go out.
The things that you think about most of the time are very much like logs on the fire. If you think about what you want, and how to get it, most of the time, more and more of your mental abilities will be focused on achieving the goals that you have set for yourself. But since your amount of “thinking time” is limited, when you discipline yourself to think only about what you want, you stop putting wood on the fire of your negative emotions. As a result, you begin to eliminate the doubts and fears that hold most people back.
Concentrate on What You Want
This brings us to the Law of Concentration. This law says that, “Whatever you dwell upon, grows and expands in your life.”
In other words, whatever you think about most of the time, increases. More and more of your emotions and mental energies become focused and concentrated on what you are dwelling upon. The more you think about your goals and how to accomplish them, the faster you will move toward them. You will focus more of your emotional energy on them, and you will have less energy available for the problems, worries and concerns that preoccupy most people.
The final law in this series is the Law of Subconscious activity. This law says that, “Your subconscious mind accepts any thought, plan or goal created by the conscious mind, and then organizes your thoughts and behaviors to bring that goal into reality.”
Whatever thoughts or goals you repeat over and over again in your conscious mind are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then goes to work, 24 hours a day, to coordinate your thoughts, words and actions to bring those goals into your life.
One Thought At A Time
Your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, either positive or negative. You may be capable of thinking hundreds of thoughts in a row, but you can only think of one thought at a time. And you are always free to choose that thought. An essential success habit is the habit of keeping your mind focused clearly on the person you want to be, the goals you want to achieve, and the steps that you will have to take to achieve those goals.
When you make a habit of thinking and talking most of the time about where you are going and how to get there, you take complete control of the development of your self-concept and your personality. You step on the accelerator of your own potential. You move yourself onto the fast track in your life. You begin to move ahead at a speed that will amaze you, and everyone around you.
Your Potential Is Unlimited
You are a remarkable person, possessed of incredible untapped potentials and abilities. Whatever you have accomplished in life so far is only a shadow of what is truly possible for you. There are virtually no limits on what you can do, be and have except for the limits that you impose on yourself with your own thinking.
Of all creatures, only human beings can reprogram themselves and alter the courses of their lives. You can decide, right now, to take complete control of the shaping and sculpting of your self-concept, and turn yourself into the very best person you can possibly imagine yourself becoming. By releasing your subconscious brakes, your fears of failure and rejection, and by building your selfesteem and self confidence through positive self-talk, you can unlock your potential and accomplish any goal you can set for yourself.
By taking complete control of the development of your self-concept, you lay the foundation for the development of the Million Dollar Habits that will enable you to accomplish more in the next few years than the average person accomplishes in a lifetime.
Action Exercises:
Identify the primary causes for the effects in your life. Why are you where you are and what could you do differently to get different results?
On a scale of 1-10, how much do you feel that you are in control of your life? What could you do to increase your feelings of control?
What do you think about most of the time? What should you focus and concentrate on to improve your life?
What are the values, qualities and attributes of other people that you most admire? What actions could you take to incorporate those values into your personality?
How much do you like yourself? What are the experiences that give you your greatest feelings of self-esteem, and how could you create more of them?
What are your greatest fears? How would you behave differently if you had no fears at all?
What can you do, starting today, to feed your mind with more of the thoughts, words, people and pictures that are more consistent with the very best person you could be, and the most important goals you want to achieve?
“Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last compels.” (Orison Swett Marden)
