What do you think about in moments of peace and quiet? How far have you come or how far should you go? About your strengths or weaknesses? About what can happen in the best case, or the worst that can happen? At times like these, pay close attention to your thoughts. Because perhaps the only thing that needs to change in order to experience more happiness, love and vitality is your way of thinking.
Below you can find 60 thought-provoking quotes to help put your mind in order.
1. You cannot change what you refuse to face.
2. Sometimes good deeds end in failure, but they are replaced by even more important and more successful ones.
3. Don't think about the price. Think about value.
4. Sometimes you need to step back to see certain things clearly.
5. Too many people buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't know. Read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad.
6. No matter how many mistakes you make and how slow your progress, you are still ahead of those people who have not yet tried to do anything.
7. If a person wants to be a part of your life, they will make an obvious effort to do so. Think twice before making room in your heart for people who didn't make the effort to stay there.
8. Make at least one person smile and maybe you will change the world - not the whole, but at least the world of this person.
9. Saying that someone is nasty or ugly will not make you more attractive.
10. The only normal people you know are the ones you don't know much about yet.
11. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
12. The most painful thing is to lose your head because of a strong love for someone and in denying your individuality.
13. Better to be alone than to be in bad company.
14. With age, we understand that it is not so important to have many friends as to have one, but real.
15. Making 100 friends is easy. But to have just one friend who will be on your side, even when hundreds of people are against you, this is an amazing thing.
16. Giving up does not always mean showing weakness, on the contrary, sometimes it means that you are strong and smart enough to put everything out of your head and move on.
17. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours in the day as Helena Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, etc. …
18. If you really want to do something, you will find a way. If you don't want to do it, you will always find an excuse.
19. Don't choose what looks pretty; choose what makes your world beautiful.
20. Falling in love does not mean making a choice. Choose whether to stay in love.
21. True love obliges not to be inseparable, but to be faithful to each other, even in separation.
22. While you are busy looking for the perfect person, you are likely to miss the imperfect person who could make you absolutely happy.
23. Never do something reckless just because you are temporarily upset.
24. You can learn something valuable from your mistakes, if you, of course, do not deny them.
25. In life, if you risk nothing, in fact you risk a lot.
26. Once you stop chasing the wrong things, you can catch up with the right things.
27. Every situation that has ever happened in your life prepares you for the moment that lies ahead of you.
28. There is nothing boastful about your superiority over another person. True boasting lies in your superiority over the person you once were.
29. Trying to be someone, you waste your time.
30. You will never become who you want to be if you keep blaming everyone else for who you are now.
31. People hide more from you than they show.
32. Sometimes people do not notice what they are doing for them until they stop doing it.
33. Don't listen to what people say, look at what they do.
34. Being alone does not mean you are alone, and being alone does not mean that you are alone.
35. Love is not based on sex, showing off, or walking together. Love is being with a person who makes you happy in a way that no one else can.
36. Anyone can walk into your life and tell you how much they love you. But not everyone will be able to show it, prove it and stay in your life.
37. Light candles, drink wine, dress nicely. Don't save everything for a special occasion, today is the occasion.
38. Love and appreciate your parents. We are so busy growing up that we forget that our parents also age with time.
39. If you are forced to compromise and give in to your principles for the sake of the people around you, it's probably time to change the people around you.
40. Learn to love yourself first, instead of loving the ideas of the people who love you.
41. When someone tells you: “You have changed”, then most likely you have stopped living the way they lived before.
42. It is not necessary to listen to the person who disagrees with you.
43. Be happy. Be yourself. If others don't like it, ignore them. It's your choice and you don't have to please everyone.
44. When things are going well for you, your friends know how you are and who you are. When luck is not on your side, then you already know who your friends are.
45. Do not look for someone who will solve all the problems for you, look for someone who will help you with their solution.
46. Thinking the world will be fair to you just because you are fair is like hoping the lion won't eat you because you don't want to eat him.
47. No matter how good or bad you live, wake up every day, be grateful for your life and all that it has provided you. Someone is now fighting for a piece of bread.
48. The most insignificant manifestation of kindness is much more valuable than the mere intention.
49. Many people are very poor because the only thing they have is money.
50. Learn to appreciate what you have before time forces you to appreciate the things you once had.
51. When you start noticing something good in other people, you eventually stop seeing and looking for the good in yourself.
52. You won't drown by falling into water. You will drown standing in it.
53. Better to know and be disappointed than never know and always wonder.
54. We do not want some things to happen, but we do not have the right to change anything, we do not want to know some things, but we must learn them, and there are people without whom we cannot live, but one day we will have to let them go .
55. Happiness is not in what is happening around you, but in what is happening inside you. Most people always expect happiness from other people, but, in truth, it is always born not outside, but inside you.
56. If you tell the truth, it becomes part of your past. If you lie, the lie becomes part of your future.
57. What you do every day matters more than what you are going to do soon.
58. You will not be able to start a new chapter in your life if you are still rereading the previous one.
59. Things work out best for those people who do their job regardless of what awaits them in the end.
60. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change anything, change your thinking.
Phrases that every person should say to himself for successful self-development and personal growth.
"I listen to my intuition and listen to my heart"
Don't make your problems the center of your life. Step confidently towards your dreams. Live the way you want, not the way circumstances force you. Be proud of yourself and do things for it. Set goals and objectives and follow them. Make mistakes and move forward, don't be discouraged if things don't work out right away.
After falling, get up again and continue on your way. It is better to do everything possible in order to achieve your goal than to regret later missed opportunities. Don't let others lower your self-esteem. Follow your own intuition and your heart. Be sincere and honest with yourself.
"I can be proud of myself"
Do not think that you have nothing to be proud of. Even if you are convinced otherwise from all sides, know that you are worthy of pride. Pride in oneself is not pride, it is an awareness of one's own significance, uniqueness, originality. If you do not have a sense of pride in yourself, then you will find yourself in the shackles of low self-esteem, which will prevent you from enjoying life and improving yourself. Analyze your actions, plans, achievements. After all, not everything is as bad as you think, and yet there is reason to think about yourself with pride. You are the main character of your own life, be a role model for others, be proud and love yourself.
"I am changing"
Analyze your actions, achievements, thoughts. You will notice that you are starting to change and these changes are aimed at self-development and success. Everyone is subject to change, this is normal. Only that person is able to achieve success, who is ready and willing to change. A static state is very dangerous for a person. Sometimes people are afraid of change, change and get stuck at a certain stage of development, being afraid and too lazy to move on. This is a mistake that needs to be corrected.
"I am grateful to fate"
The ability to accept the events of your own life with gratitude is a very valuable skill that will be useful to you in order to achieve success. People who complain about their fate and do not appreciate what they have are doomed to failure. Lack of gratitude is a sign that you are doing something wrong and acting to your detriment.
"I value my time"
Use every minute of your life wisely, do not waste time in vain. Remember that time is a very valuable resource and should be spent with great care. Look around you, how many people who have wasted their lives aimlessly and now regret it. Do not repeat this mistake and spend your free time on improving yourself, wherever you are.
"I'm honest with myself"
Lack of honesty towards oneself greatly hinders self-development. When you lie to yourself, you ruin your personal growth. When a person is honest with himself, many paths open for him, he becomes free.
"I appreciate my loved ones"
Everyone knows the fact that the support and love of loved ones is that powerful support that makes us strong. Lonely people are very vulnerable because they are deprived of all this. And do not believe the stupid reasoning that a person can be happy on his own. This is wrong. Only in interaction with loved ones do we open up and become better.
"I have forgiven my offenders"
Sometimes people hurt us. And this pain remains in our hearts for a long time, blocking our path to happiness and harmony. Do not let resentment take root in our heart, it will alienate us from people who really want us love and happiness. Resentment gives rise to a feeling of distrust for all people, this must be remembered. The sages say that the unwillingness to forgive brings a person great suffering. Why torture yourself?
"I do not regret anything"
This phrase should be said to yourself daily. Negativity and mistakes of the past are given to us for experience, and not for them to burn our hearts. There must be an understanding of the error, its analysis, but not the eternal scrolling in the head of the events of the past. Live for the future, not for the past.
“I am ready to take responsibility for my life”
Only that person can be happy who takes full responsibility for his actions and emotions. Without this rule, self-development is impossible. A person who takes responsibility for his life is on the right path leading to success and happiness.
Tracey Brian
CHANGE YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS- YOUR LIFE HOW TO UNLOCK YOUR FULL POTENTIAL FOR SUCCESS
UDC 037.6+219.4 BBK 88T67
Translated from English by Grineva N.I. edition: Change your ihinkg change your life by Brian Tracy. - S.F.: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2003.
Tracey B.
T66 Change your mind, your life will change / Per. from English. Pashutin N.A. - Minsk: Globus, 2004. - 236 s, - ISBN 409-257-041.
A wide range of readers is offered a simple but very effective methodology for overcoming difficulties in setting goals and on the way to them, which has helped more than a million people in different parts of the world rely on the potentials and resources of their personal psyche and quickly achieve success.
ISBN 409-257-041 (Russian) ISBN 1-57675-252-6 (English)
© Translation, edition in Russian. Decor. LLC Furor, 2003 © 2003 by Brian Tracy
To my wife Barbara
Who taught me to appreciate love and family life.
You are my support and my greatest inspiration.
Brian TRACY
Foreword
If you are ready to measure the level of your own achievements and achieve even more significant results, then you have a reliable travel book in your hands. In front of you is the DNA of your future. All you need to create a wonderful future is to read the book and decide how to use it in your future, make a plan and then get down to business with enthusiasm.
I must confess. I am one of Brian's zealous fans. I studied him, his wonderful work and the brilliant results he achieved. I am one of his colleagues and close friends. We worked on many projects together, often met and talked.
Brian is one of the leading thinkers and writers of our time, working in the field of personal development and personal success. I know it; he has sold over 82 million books designed to help people reach their full potential.
The book "Change Your Mind, Change Your Life" will teach you how to unlock your inner resources, release and realize your incredible powers and abilities. You will learn how to attract into your life the people and resources you need to achieve your goals.
You will be amazed as you begin to achieve new, much better results by applying these concepts and ideas to everything you do. It was these concepts that guided people who have achieved tremendous success, millionaires who started almost from scratch, and leaders in any field of activity.
In this book, you will learn how to move step by step to the great success that you will eventually achieve, easily and without much effort. This success strategy is so logical, attractive, effective and profitable in all areas of life that, in fact, it is a breakthrough in personal development.
Since you are constantly thinking, why not direct your thoughts to something outstanding and achieve this brilliant result?
"Brian is a shining light in the speaking and writing world." He gave us incredible ideas and achieved amazing results, himself and hundreds of thousands of people who followed his ideas. Brian's thoughts and ideas will inspire you to do the same or more.
Get ready for one of the most wonderful adventures and explorations of the limits of your perception, and first of all - your consciousness! You are on the threshold of amazing discoveries.
Change your mind - change your life
dedication
This book has taken years of work, reading, teaching, and research to produce. Many people have contributed to my ideas and have been invisible guides as the chapters of this book have been written. First of all, I would like to thank my friend Mark Victor Hansen, who introduced me many years ago to Ernest Holtes, probably the greatest spiritual thinker of the twentieth century. Ernest E.H., Founder of The Science of Mind, opened my eyes and heart to the incredible universe of potential that lies within each individual and unfolds the moment you change your thinking, and therefore your life. Eminent spiritual thinkers such as Charles Filler, Neville, Eric Bytworth, Wayne Dyer, and Robert Assajali have had a significant impact on my thinking.
I would also like to express my gratitude to those wonderful practical thinkers working on the problems of human achievement who have had such a significant impact on me and the whole world, such as Napoleno Hill, Maxwell Maltz, Claude Bristol, David Schwartz, Clyse Stone, Earl Nightingale , Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglzor, Denis Waitley and Charlie Jones.
Success, career and business thinkers such as Peter Drucker, Andrew Grove, Ken Blangard, Warren Bannis, Tom Peters, Nido Keobane, and Marshall Goldsmith have enriched me greatly with their ideas and perspectives.
I would like to thank my editor Matthew Holt of John Wiley & Sons for his support during the long months that this book was written.
I am also very grateful to my wonderful wife, Barbara, and my incredible children, Christine, Michael, David, and Katherine, for their support and patience during the long hours I spent working on this book.
Brian TRACY
Introduction
There is nothing in the world that you cannot have - once you realize this fact, you can have it.
Robert Callier
THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU
You are an extremely good person. You deserve a wonderful life filled with success, happiness, joy and excitement. You are destined to have joyful, happy relationships, excellent health, meaningful work, and financial independence. This is your birthright. It has to be present in your life from the very beginning. You have been programmed for success and built to have high levels of self-esteem, self-respect and pride in yourself. You are unique.
Throughout the history of mankind, there has never been anyone like you on this planet. You have completely untapped talents and abilities that, if used properly, will bring you everything you could ever wish for in this life.
You are living in the greatest time in the history of mankind. There are numerous opportunities around you that you can reasonably use to realize your cherished desires. The only real limits on what you can become, do, or have are the limits you have set for yourself by your own thinking. Basically, your future is unlimited.
How did you react to the previous three paragraphs? You probably have two answers. First, you liked what was said and you wish it was true. But your second answer is most likely skeptical and expresses your disbelief.
Even if you yearn to live a wonderful, healthy, happy, affluent life, when you read these words, all your doubts and fears immediately come to life to remind you of the reasons why your dreams and goals may become impossible for you. Okay , join the crowd!
This is exactly how I felt many years ago. Although I wanted to achieve great success in life, I did not have a specialty, had no education and was unemployed. I had no idea what could not be done to improve the situation. I felt squeezed between ideas on the one hand and limited resources and opportunities on the one hand on the other hand. Later, I discovered a set of wonderful principles that were responsible for all the great successes and achievements of that time, and my life changed forever.
After proving all these laws and principles in my own life, I began to speak, to teach others to apply the same ideas. Since then, I have given more than 2,000 talks and workshops (four days) in 24 countries with more than 2 million participants. Most of them were also initially skeptical of the ideas of optimism and opportunity until they learned what you will learn in the pages of this book. It changed their lives, and it will change yours.
THE GREAT PRINCIPLE
Probably the most important mental and spiritual principle ever discovered is that you become what you think about most of the time. Your outer world is, to a large extent, a mirror image of your inner world.
Usually this question is asked by people who have everything, if not very bad, then certainly not very good. I've been watching a guy for 5 years who asks the same question year after year: what is the easy and quick way to succeed? Yeah, once and from a pawn to a queen. No, of course there are ways, for example, to marry the daughter of a corrupt official who has stolen millions - but we will not talk about that.
I must say right away that I do not consider poverty to be a vice and, unlike the variegated "gurus", I think it is defective to call poor people " rogue". But at the same time, I consider that philosophy of life, which leads to poverty and inability to live in principle, to be deeply flawed and vicious. Erasing these poor ideas from your head and helping you change your thinking is my task. Then it all depends on your own actions and decisions.
Compared to them, you are rich!
Many of those who have achieved success in life started from scratch. From the point of view of the arrogant "gurus" they were the real " rogue“because they did not have a normal income and serious cash savings. The only thing they had was the desire to do what they like without looking back at anyone and without listening to anyone.
son of emigrants John Paul De Joria was poor. He took out a bank loan to start his business. He had no housing and therefore he lived in a car. And every day he went and sold his shampoo because he believed in it. Today John Paul Mitchell Systems is a $900 million a year company.
He just allowed himself to do what he likes.
Samuel Morse, despite the fact that he was born into a wealthy family, in his ordinary life he eked out a miserable existence, who almost died of malnutrition (a certain Strofer, who took painting lessons from him, literally saved his life by feeding him lunch and giving 10 dollars). However, he did not give up and, having created an electromagnetic writing telegraph (“Morse apparatus”), he eventually received 400,000 francs from ten European states. Bought a ranch and took up philanthropy.
Just because he allowed himself to do what he really wanted to do.
Joanne Rowling, a 31-year-old single mother living on social security that was barely enough to pay for cheap food and housing. She was depressed and had occasional thoughts of suicide. Her Harry Potter novel, printed on an antediluvian typewriter, was rejected by publishers one after another, mockingly advising you to find a "normal job." But she did not give up and continued to fight to get her book published. Today, Joan is the first female writer in the world to earn $1 billion from her work.
Simply because she did what she loved and believed in, not shying away from difficulties.
Daughter of slaves, black Sarah Walker, a 20-year-old impoverished widow with a daughter in her arms, who was paid a maximum of $ 1.5 per day. At the age of 25, she began to go bald, the available funds did not help. But she did not give up and found a way out - with the help of her brothers, she invented her own remedy for baldness. She liked it so much that she started selling it. But what was it like for a black woman to peddle her remedy while walking door to door in a 19th century society steeped in racism and male chauvinism? Not only did she succeed, she founded her own network marketing company and became the first black female millionaire.
Just because she allowed herself to be who she is and do what she wants.
Raymond Albert Kroc was also a "poor man". A trader in paper cups and milk mixers who did not reach material wealth by the age of 50. At one time he even worked for food and a roof over his head worked in one of the restaurants. But chance or providence brought him into conflict with the McDonald brothers and their restaurant. Ray liked the idea of fast food so much that he bought the brothers the right to open similar restaurants throughout the United States (now called franchisees). As a result, this led to the creation of McDonald's Corporation. At the time of Raymond Kroc's death in 1984, his net worth was over $500 million.
Simply because he was doing something that he liked and enjoyed.
Walt Disney was born into a large carpenter's family. The family was so poor that they couldn't buy him a pencil and paper, even though Disney really wanted to draw. Nevertheless, already at the age of 7 he began to sell his first comics, and at 22 he founded The Walt Disney Company with his brother. Even the meanness of business partner Margaret Winkler, who fraudulently stole the copyright for all the cartoon characters created at that time, did not stop Disney and now his company is a world-famous multimedia empire.
Just because he did what really made him happy.
All in all, it's not about how much money you have now. More importantly - what is your dream, goal, how large-scale, perspective and useful it is. It is important - do you have a business to which you are ready to devote yourself without a trace, or do you dream of becoming an “emele” and ordering the stove to fulfill your desires. This is the mindset that helps you become successful.
Slave installations in the head
But some mindsets, received from parents, communication with those who got a "normal job" and reading stupid books, prevent you from starting to think like that. Let's fix it.
Stop thinking that someone owes you something. You think that from the fact that you will sit and monotonously urge "The rich should help the poor, the government should make our life better, God should help the unfortunate", etc. will something change? Do you want to live on handouts?! Or do you want to get what you really deserve? Then stop whining and complaining.
Stop saving for yourself. Unemployed bum Edison Miranda gave his last pesos to a boxing coach to learn techniques and tricks. He could buy new clothes, a nice cell phone, or eat delicious food, but he invested in himself. In yourself, and not in clothes or grub. Your problem is that you value yourself less than the things you buy. This unconscious position manifests itself very clearly throughout your life.
Stop chasing "fast money". Every day, dozens of letters fall into my spam, something like “loot button”, “automatic earnings program”, “excellent earnings on the Internet” and other garbage. Who are they intended for? For those who are not ready to stubbornly and hardworkingly engage in the business that they really enjoy, but want to quickly “cut the dough” in order to pay for the fake “pleasures of life”. You can succeed in this business .. if you lie a lot and brazenly, but in such people both the brain and body are destroyed quite quickly due to the growth of neurotic zones (the famous liar and manipulator Dale Carnegie died of Hodgkin's disease).
A reliable plan is offered that provides positive! changes in your life by changing your personal ideas about yourself and your hidden (for the time being!) potentials.
Change your mind and you will change your life
To my wife Barbara, who taught me the value of love and family.
You are my main support and my greatest inspiration.
Foreword
If you are ready to make the effort to rise to a new level of spiritual development and achieve great results, then now you have in your hands the road map necessary for this. Here is the DNA of your future. All you need to build a great future is to read this book, decide how you are going to apply the author's advice in your own life, make and write a plan, and then go forward with enthusiasm and implement all your plans.
I have to admit, I'm one of Brian's biggest fans. I know him well, his brilliant work and the extraordinary results he achieved. Moreover, I am one of his close friends and colleagues. We worked together on many forums, met and talked on numerous occasions.
Brian is one of the world's finest thinkers on the subject of inner development and personal success. I already know - I have sold more than 82 million books that help people realize their inner reserves.
In the book "Change your mindset and you will change your life" shows you how to unleash your extraordinary spiritual potentials and unleash the incredible powers that lie within you. You will learn to attract into your life all the people and resources that you need to achieve any goal you set.
Once you start getting amazing new results using these concepts and ideas, you will be amazed at what you can do. These are exactly the principles that all winners, millionaires and leaders who have achieved success on their own adhere to.
This book will teach you how to gradually achieve great success, and you will eventually master this process easily and without much effort. This strategy for success is so logical, entertaining, and ultimately so effective and comprehensively useful that it will ultimately increase your performance tremendously.
Since you have to think anyway, why don't you think big and achieve big things?
Brian is a truly bright personality in the world of speakers and writers. He learned to think big and achieved amazing results both for himself and for many hundreds of thousands of people. Brian's intellect, which is filled with this book, will inspire you to the same success, or even more.
Get ready to make one of the greatest exploration expeditions to the last and most important of the unknown countries - your mind! You will experience the most exciting feelings.
Mark Victor Hansen, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Thanks
It took me many years of work, reading, learning, and experience to write this book. Many people have contributed to my intellectual development and have been my invisible guides, helping me to put together the twelve chapters of this book into a coherent whole. First of all, I would like to thank my friend Mark Victor Hansen, who many years ago introduced me to Emmett Fox, perhaps the most remarkable spiritual thinker of the 20th century. Ernest Holmes, the founder of The Science of Mind, opened my eyes and heart to the incredible universal potential that lies within the soul of every person and unfolds when that person makes the decision to change their thinking and life. Great spiritual teachers such as Charles Fillmore, Neville, Eric Butterworth, Wayne Dyer, and Roberto Assagioli have had a profound effect on my thinking.
I would also like to thank those great success thinkers who have had such an invaluable influence on me and the world at large: Napoleon Hill, Maxwell Maltz, Claude Bristol, David Schwartz, W. Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rowne, Zig Ziglar, Dennis Wortley and Charlie Jones.
Business thinkers such as Peter Drucker, Andrew Grove, Ken Blanchard, Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, Nido Quibein, and Marshall Goldsmith have enriched me greatly with their ideas and concepts.
I would like to thank my publisher, Matthew Holt of John Wiley and Sons, for his unwavering support and encouragement during the many months it took to write and publish my book.
I am equally grateful to my amazing wife, Barbara, and our wonderful children, Christina, Michael, David, and Katherine, for their support and patience during the long hours I took to complete this book.
Introduction
There is nothing on Earth that is not available to you - once you accept the fact that you can have it.
Robert Collier
The truth about you
You are an amazingly good person. You deserve a wonderful life filled with happiness, success, joy and excitement. You have the right to have pleasurable relationships, have good health, meaningful, rewarding work, and be financially independent. All of these are your birthrights. All of this should be your life.
You are designed to succeed and have high self-esteem, self-esteem and self-respect. You are an extraordinary person; in the entire history of the existence of mankind on Earth there has not been and there is no second exactly the same person as you. You have amazing untapped talents and abilities that, if properly developed and applied, can give you everything you could possibly want in your life.
You are living in the period of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind. There are so many favorable opportunities around you that provide all the advantages for the realization of any of your dreams. And the only real limit to what you can become, do, or have are the barriers you create yourself - through your own thinking. Your future is essentially limitless.
Make it real!
How did you react to the three previous paragraphs? You probably had two reactions. On the one hand, you liked what you read, and you would very much like it to be true for you too. But your second reaction, in all likelihood, was somewhat skeptical and incredulous. But even though you wholeheartedly want to live your life as a healthy, happy, prosperous person, when you read these lines, doubts and fears immediately awaken in you, which remind you of the reasons why these dreams and goals can be impossible for you. Well then, join the crowd!
I felt exactly the same way many years ago. And although I dreamed of achieving great success in life, I was then ignorant, uneducated and unemployed. I had no idea what could be done to improve my situation. I was trapped, crushed on the one hand, and on the other hand, by big ideas and limited resources and opportunities. But then I discovered a set of wonderful principles that underpinned all the great things and achievements over the centuries, and my life changed dramatically.
After I tested these laws and principles in my own experience, I began to lecture and teach others to apply the same ideas. Since then, I have given more than 2,000 talks and 4-day workshops in 24 countries to an audience of more than 2 million listeners. Most of these people were also skeptical when they first heard about principles built on optimism and self-belief - until they learned and learned what you are going to learn by reading the following pages. It changed their lives and it will change yours too.
Great principle
Probably the most important mental and spiritual principle ever discovered by man is this: you become what you think about most of your time. The world around you is mostly a mirror image of your inner world. What is going on outside, around you is a projection of what is happening in you inside. You can tell about the internal state of a person based on the external circumstances of his life. Otherwise it can not be.
Thoughts are material
The human mind has extraordinary power. Your thoughts govern and control almost everything that happens to you. They can speed up or slow down your heartbeat, improve or disrupt digestion, change your blood chemistry, promote sound sleep, or cause insomnia.
Your thoughts can make you happy or sad, sometimes instantly. They can make you alert and conscious, or distracted and depressed. They can make you popular or unpopular, confident or defenseless, positive or negative. Your thoughts can make you feel powerful or powerless, feel like a victim or a winner, a hero or a coward.
In the material realm, thoughts can promote success or failure, prosperity or poverty, cause you to be respected or neglected. Your thoughts and the actions they stimulate determine your entire life. But the most important thing is that they are completely under your control.
Thoughts, feelings and desires
You are a complex mix of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, images, fears, hopes, doubts, attitudes, and ambitions – all of which are constantly changing, sometimes every second. Any one of these elements of your personality affects others, sometimes in completely unpredictable ways. Your whole life is the result of the interweaving and interconnection of these factors.
Your thoughts set in motion imaginary pictures, as well as the emotions that accompany them. And these images and emotions set in motion beliefs and actions. Actions, on the other hand, have consequences and results that determine what happens to you.
If you think about success and believe in yourself, you will feel strong and competent and will start to do better in everything you undertake. If you think that you will make mistakes or get confused, then the work will not work out, no matter what abilities you have.
Pictures and images, generated by your imagination or external impulses, generate ideas, evoke emotions and shape the views that correspond to them. They then set in motion actions that lead to certain results and consequences. Thought a person, as well as a real situation, can cause him an instant feeling of joy or sadness, high spirits or anger, confidence that he is loved or that he will be abandoned by everyone.
Principles, actions and emotions
Your principles, positive or negative, constructive or destructive, give rise to corresponding images, emotions and actions that affect your life and relationships. The principles are based on previous experience and your general ideas about how things and circumstances should be.
Actions also trigger accompanying emotions. According to the law of reversibility, you can indeed cause in yourself this or that feeling, consistent with your behavior. By acting like you're already happy, positive, and confident, you'll soon begin to actually experience those feelings. Your actions, unlike your emotions, are under your direct control.
By themselves, the outer aspects of your life are neutral. What you define as your views, opinions, emotions and reactions to them is just meaning, that you give them. By changing the way you think about any aspect of your life, you will change how you feel and behave in that area. And since only you have the right to decide what you think, then you have the opportunity to take full control of your whole life.
Examine your beliefs
The law of faith says: What you believe with conviction will become your reality. You always act on your deepest, strongest, most important beliefs, whether they are true or not. All your beliefs you acquire over time. Once upon a time you didn't have them.
Your beliefs largely determine your reality. You don't believe in what see, but rather see what you already believe. You may have life-affirming beliefs that fill you with happiness and optimism, while negative beliefs about yourself and your potentialities act as roadblocks to your full potential.
The most harmful of all are It's those beliefs about yourself and your potential that keep you in place. Most of them are not true. They are formed on the basis of information that you, unwittingly, received in early childhood. As a rule, this information is completely untrue, but if you convinced themselves that they are not able to have excellent health, find happiness or earn a lot of money, then this will become your truth. As Richard Bach wrote in his book Illusions, “Give reasons for your limitations and you will see that they will immediately stick to you.”
You are a living magnet
The law of gravity says that you are a "living magnet" and you inevitably attract people, ideas, opportunities, and circumstances into your life in accordance with the main direction of your thoughts.
When you think positively, optimistically, when your thoughts are full of love and success, you create force field magnetism that attracts what you think about, just like iron filings are attracted to a magnet. This law explains why it happens that people around you do not show interest in you for your good deeds. But if you could keep your mind clearly focused on what you want, then would attract everything you need to achieve your goals, and exactly when you are ready for it. Change your thinking and you will change your life.
The only real dimension
The English philosopher Bertrand Russell once said: “The best proof that a task can be done is the fact that others have already done it.” In the New Testament, Jesus teaches how to measure the truth of any principle: "By their deeds you will know them."
In other words, any idea should ask you the only question: “Does it work?” Does it bring the results you want? Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, said, "The only true measure of any theory or idea is your ability to make accurate predictions of the future from it."
It is comforting to know that the ideas and principles you are about to learn have already been tested and proven in the lives of millions of people. In themselves they, like the principles of nature, are neutral. Nature has no favorites, it treats everyone equally. Whatever you sow in the ground, nature will take care of the seedlings. Whatever thought seeds whatever you sow in your mind, nature will nurture them in the same way. Everything depends on you.
Choose your thoughts
Successful people are those who thinks more constructively than those who do not succeed. They look at life, relationships, goals, problems and trials differently than other people. They sow the best seeds, and as a result they reap a greater harvest. If you learn to think and act like successful, happy, healthy, and prosperous people, you will soon enjoy a life like them. If you change your thinking, you will change your life.
Nature does not understand jokes. She is always honest, always serious, always harsh. She is always right, and only people make mistakes and mistakes. A person who treats nature with disdain is not able to appreciate it, and only to the understanding, pure and truthful does it submit and reveal its secrets.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Chapter 1 Change Your Thinking
It is a law of psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of who you would like to be and keep that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly what you imagined yourself to be.
William James
There was one woman, she was 30 years old, she was married and had two children. Like many others, she grew up in a family where she was constantly criticized and often treated unfairly. As a result, she developed a deep sense of inferiority and low self-esteem. She was negative about everything, always afraid of everything, and she did not have an iota of self-confidence. She was shy and always tried to keep a low profile; believed that she was of no interest to anyone and was of no use to anyone, that she had no special abilities or talents.
One day, when she went shopping, a car rushed through a red light and crashed into her car. The woman woke up in the hospital. She had a concussion, accompanied by a complete loss of memory. She could talk, but she had no memory of anything from her past life - it was total amnesia.
At first, doctors thought it was a temporary condition. But weeks passed, and the patient's memory did not return. Her husband and children visited her daily, but she did not recognize them. It was such an unusual case that many specialists came to her - they carried out tests and asked about her condition.
A new beginning
All the negative memories of her sad childhood were erased from her memory. The feeling of inferiority also disappeared. She became a different person. By changing her thinking, she changed her whole life.
Slate
The Scottish philosopher David Hume was the first to propose the clean slate theory. He believed that every person comes into this world without any thoughts or ideas, and everything that he thinks about and feels, he draws from the world around him from infancy. The mind of a child can be compared to a slate on which every passer-by and every event leaves some kind of mark. And an adult person is the total sum of all that he has known, felt and experienced in the process of growth. What an adult does and who he eventually becomes is the result of this process. As Aristotle wrote, “what is invested in us is what we express.”
Perhaps the greatest breakthrough in human potential research in the 20th century was the discovery self-awareness. This idea is that every person, starting from birth, develops a lot of beliefs about himself. Then your self-perception becomes the main program of your "subconscious computer", determining everything you think, say, feel and do. Therefore, everything new in your life begins with changes in self-consciousness, in the way you think and feel about your own personality and your world.
The child is born without self-consciousness at all. Every idea, opinion, feeling, principle or value that characterizes you as an adult, you learn in childhood. Everything you are today is the result of some idea or impression that you once accepted as true. Any fact you believe becomes true for you. "You are not what you think you are, but what you think you are."
First impressions last forever
If you were raised by parents who constantly told you how good you are, who loved you, encouraged you, supported you and believed in you - no matter what - then you would grow up with the belief that you are good and worthy of attention and respect. Human. By the age of three, this belief would be approved in your mind and would become the core of your self-perception in relation to the outside world. Afterwards, no matter what happens to you, you would still hold on to that belief. It would become your reality.
But if you were raised by parents who did not understand the power of their words and actions and the impact they could have on shaping your personality, they might not hesitate to use destructive criticism, disapproval, and physical or emotional punishment to maintain discipline or control you. When a child is constantly criticized from an early age, he soon concludes that something is wrong with him. He does not understand why he is criticized or punished, but assumes that his parents know the truth about him and that he deserves such treatment. He begins to feel that he is of no value and not worthy of love; that he is not really needed by others and must come to terms with this.
Almost all the problems associated with the development of personality in adolescence and adolescence are rooted in what psychologists call denial of love.
A child needs love just like roses need rain. When a child feels unloved, he feels unprotected and abandoned. He thinks, "I'm not good enough." And he begins to behave as compensation in such a way as to disguise his inner unrest. The feeling of lack of love gives rise to bad behavior, problems in the formation of personality, outbursts of anger, a state of depression, hopelessness, lack of ambition, inability to communicate with people and establish personal relationships.
You were born without fear
A child is born with little or no fear – he is only afraid of falls and loud noises.
Over the years, we all develop two basic fears: fear failures or losses and fear critics or rejection. Fear of failure instills in us if we are constantly criticized and punished for trying to do something new or different. There is a sobering cry: “Do not touch! Well, get out of there! Stop it! Put it on it's place!" And often these pulls and criticisms are accompanied by physical punishment and withholding of love - all the things that scare us and make us feel insecure.
And soon we begin to believe that we are still too small, weak, ignorant, inadequate and incapable of doing anything new or unusual. We express this feeling with the words: “I can’t, I can’t, I won’t succeed.” As soon as we think about doing something new or requiring special ingenuity, a feeling of fear automatically works in us, a trembling in the hands and a pain in the stomach appear. We react as if we are afraid of being spanked. And we say again and again: "I can't."
This fear is the main cause of failure in adults. As a result of the destructive criticism we were subjected to as a child, as an adult, we are still held in the background. We sell ourselves cheap. We give up without even making the first attempt. We use our amazing mind not to figure out how to get what we want, but to come up with reasons why we can't get what we want, and why what we want is unattainable for us.
The need to be loved
The second main fear that keeps us in the background, undermines our self-confidence and destroys the desire to live a happy life, is fear. rejection and its manifestation criticism. We get acquainted with this feeling in early childhood, when parents express their disapproval if we do something that they do not like, or do not do what they expect from us. As a result, because we do not please them, they become angry and deprive us of the love and encouragement that we need so much in childhood.
The fear of being unloved and being rejected and alone so traumatizes the soul of the child that he soon begins to adapt and tries to behave in such a way and do only what, according to his concepts, his parents would approve. Thus, the child loses its spontaneity and individuality. He starts to think, “I have to! I must!! I must!!!" That is, he concludes: "I must do what Mommy and Daddy want, otherwise they will not love me, and I will be left all alone!"
"Conditional" love
If a child has been brought up in so-called “conditional love” (as opposed to unconditional love, the greatest gift one person can give to another), then as an adult, he becomes painfully sensitive to the opinions of other people. The extreme form of this dependence is manifested in the inability to do something if there is even the slightest hint that someone might not approve of it. Such a person projects childhood relationships with parents onto important people in their adult life: spouse (spouse), boss, relatives, friends, authority figures - and desperately tries to earn their approval, or at least not lose their favor.
The fear of failure and rejection, caused by destructive criticism in early childhood, is the root from which most of the unhappiness and anxiety grows in our adult life. We constantly think: “I can’t!” or “I have to!”. But it is even worse when we feel that we cannot, but we must, or, conversely, “I can, but I must not!”.
We want to do something, but we are afraid of failure, loss, or at least disapproval. We want to do something to improve our lives, whether at home or at work, but are afraid of failure or criticism from others, or perhaps both.
Fear rules most people's lives. Everything they do is centered around one thing: avoiding failure or criticism. They keep thinking about how to get a guarantee of security, instead of stubbornly pursuing their goal. They seek security, not opportunity.
Double the scale of failure
One day, the writer Arthur Gordon asked Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, how he could get recognition faster. And Thomas J. Watson, one of the giants of American business, replied with these thoughtful words: “If you want to succeed faster, you must double the scale of failure. Success lies at the far end of failure."
The bottom line is that the more you have already failed, the more likely you are on the cusp of great success. Your failures have already prepared you for triumph. This is why a streak of success always seems to follow a streak of bad luck. When in doubt, "double the scale of failure." The more you do attempts the more likely you are to achieve triumph. You will overcome your indecision only if you do what you are afraid of, until fear loses its hold on you.
Your mental hard drive
Everything you know about yourself, all your views and beliefs are recorded on the hard drive of your mind, forming your self-perception. It predetermines and sets the level of your efficiency and effectiveness in everything you do. Obeying the law of correspondence, your behavior is always consistent with your self-consciousness. Therefore, all improvements in your life begin with a change in self-perception.
You have a general self-image built on all your beliefs about yourself and your abilities. This includes all experiences, decisions, successes, failures, ideas, information, emotions, and the choices you have made in your life up until now. This overall self-image determines how and what you think and feel about yourself and evaluates how well you conduct your business in general.
Your mini self-perceptions
You also have a series of "mini-self-perceptions". Together, they create your overall self-perception. For each area of life that you consider important, you have a separate self-perception. This mini self-perception determines how you think, feel and act in a given area.
For example, you have a self-perception about your health and general condition, as well as the rationality of nutrition and the intensity of physical activity. You also have a self-perception about your attractiveness and popularity in the eyes of other people, especially members (or representatives) of the opposite sex. You have developed a self-esteem of what kind of spouse or parent you are, whether you are a good friend, how smart and capable of learning you are. You have a sense of self in every sport you play and in every activity you are involved in, including the skill of driving your own car.
You have a self-assessment of the quality of your work and each part of it separately. You have a self-perception of whether you earn enough money and how rationally you save and invest it. This is an important area. The bottom line is that you can never earn more or less than your self-perception of your income allows. If you want to earn more money, you will need to change your beliefs about income and financial management. This is an important part of this book.
Change your beliefs
In any case, if you want to improve your position and results in any area of your life, you will have to change your self-perception - or your beliefs about yourself - in this area. Fortunately, your beliefs are mostly subjective. They are not always based on facts; as a rule, they are based on information that you received from the outside and accepted as truth, but which is not always supported by any evidence or evidence.
The most dangerous of all self-limiting beliefs. These are ideas about yourself that make you feel limited in some way or that you are incapable of doing something in a particular area. Such beliefs are rarely true, but if you accept them as an objective assessment of your abilities, they become unconditional truth for you.
The starting point in unlocking your potential and achieving what you have not been able to before can be call their self-limiting beliefs. You begin this process by letting go of those beliefs by painting in your mind's eye that they are completely untrue. Imagine for a moment that your abilities are absolutely unlimited. Imagine that you could be whoever you want to be and do or have whatever you want. Imagine that your potential possibilities are endless.
For example, imagine that you could earn twice as much as you do now. Imagine that you could live in a huge house, have a more expensive car and enjoy a luxurious life in every way.
Imagine that your abilities allow you to become one of the leading experts in your field; that you are one of the most popular individuals with power and influence in your business and social circle. Imagine that you are calm, confident and not afraid of anything; that they are able to set themselves any goal and achieve it. This is how you could begin to change your thinking and your life.
The starting point in eliminating fears and releasing your potentialities is to change the program of your mental hard drive to new, positive, constructive and courageous beliefs about yourself and your future. By reading this book, you will learn this.
Three elements of your self-perception
Your self-image is made up of three parts, like a pie divided into three pieces. Together, all three elements make up your personality. It is they who basically determine what you think, feel and do, as well as everything that happens to you.
Perfect self-image is the first part of your personality and your self-perception. This image is made up of all your hopes, dreams, aspirations, and ideals, as well as the virtues, values, and qualities you most admire in yourself and others. Your ideal self-image is the person you would most like to be if you were perfect at everything. This ideal guides and shapes your behavior.
The greats of this world - men and women, leaders and people with a strong character - are clearly aware of their values, ideas and ideals. They know who they are and what they believe. They have a high bar for themselves, and in this respect they do not compromise. Others look up to such men and women, and you can always rely on them. They have a certain and selective attitude towards others. In all their deeds and deeds, they strive to conform to their chosen ideals.
The second component of your self-perception is own image. This is how you look at yourself and what you think about your own person. This is often referred to as your "inner mirror" - you mentally look into it to determine how you should behave in a given situation. Thanks to the power of your image, you always bring the external manifestations in line with the "photo" of yourself that you have. inside.
The discovery of the internal image, made for the first time by Maxwell Maltz, was an important achievement in understanding the possibilities and potentials of a person. By imagining a picture of you working hard for something worthwhile, you send a message to your subconscious mind, which takes it as a command, and then coordinates your thoughts, words, and actions in such a way that they correspond to the created in your imagination models.
All improvement in your life starts with working on your mental pictures. Internal images affect your emotions, behavior, attitude, and even how other people react to you. Developing a positive self-image is an important part of changing your mindset and lifestyle.
What feelings do you have for yourself
The third part of your self-perception is self-assertion. It is the emotional component of your personality, the most important factor in determining how you think, feel and behave. The level of your self-esteem largely determines much of what happens in your life.
In other words, self-respect is how much you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the better at what you do. And according to the law of reversibility, the better you do your job, the more you like yourself.
Self-respect is the core of your personality reactor. It is a source of energy that determines your level of self-confidence and enthusiasm. The more you like yourself, the higher the demands you make on yourself will be. And the more you like yourself, the bigger your goals and the longer you will persist in achieving them. People with a high degree of self-esteem, in essence, know no barriers.
The level of self-esteem determines the quality of your relationships with other people. The more you value yourself, the more you respect others and the better they treat you. In business life and in the realm of your career, your personal level of self-esteem is the deciding factor in whether people buy from you, hire you, do business with you, or even lend you money.
The higher your self-esteem, the better you will be as a spouse or parent. Parents with high self-esteem and children grow up with self-esteem. These children develop self-confidence, and they communicate with the same uncomplexed peers. In a house where all family members have a sense of self-respect, love, happiness and joyful laughter always reign.
Determining Factor of Self-Esteem
The level of self-esteem is largely determined by the extent to which your internal image - your characteristics and behavior at the moment - corresponds to your ideal image of yourself, that is, who you would become if you put in your best effort. You always subconsciously compare your actual qualities with your ideal ones. Once you begin to feel like you're living life to the fullest, your self-esteem skyrockets. You experience a feeling of happiness and fulfillment.
When you do or say something that Not lives up to your ideals, or you don't do your very best, your self-respect goes down. If there is a wide gap between the person you are now and the ideal person you want to be in the future, you are underestimating yourself. That's why you get angry with yourself when you don't succeed or if you do unseemly things towards other people. Your ideal self-image constantly reminds you of how much better you could be.
The basis of personality
Nowadays, psychologists recognize that self-respect is at the core of your self-perception and your personality. Any self-improvement or improvement of personal qualities sharply raises self-esteem and causes even greater self-respect. The more you like yourself, the better your self-image and, consequently, your character will be, and the faster you will approach your inner ideal.
It is joyful to realize that between the level of your self-esteem and the fear of failure and rejection there is a direct and reverse interdependence. The more you like yourself, the less you will care about other people's opinions and the more calmly you will react to criticism. The more you love yourself, the more you will make decisions based on your own goals and ideals, and the less you will pay attention to what others think or say.
Manage your internal dialogue
Just like you turn into what you think about all the time, you become what you say to yourself. The most powerful words that you can repeat to yourself, especially if you feel inner tension or confusion about an upcoming event, are the words: “I love myself,” and your fears begin to decrease and your courage to increase. These words have such positive power that your subconscious mind immediately accepts them as a command. They instantly affect your thoughts, feelings and life position. “Body language” immediately changes, and your posture improves, your face acquires a calmer and more cheerful expression, your voice becomes stronger and more confident. You are satisfied with yourself, and as a result, you treat people around you with more warmth and friendly participation.
The process of transforming your thinking and your whole life begins - by changing your self-perception. You form a clear, positive, compelling, and inspirational self-image—an ideal self-image that models the person you imagine yourself to be in the future. You develop a positive self-image by presenting yourself at your very best in all your endeavors. And finally, you achieve a high and unshakable level of self-esteem, accepting yourself without any reservations and experiencing respect for yourself as a worthy and demanded person.
Test Your Fundamentals
Most of your thoughts and reactions to events and people throughout your life are determined by your basic principles. These are ideas, beliefs, opinions, conclusions that you come to as a result of observations and experiences since childhood. It is not only your self-perception, but also your philosophy of life. The more firmly and confidently you adhere to your core principles, the more they define and guide everything you do, say, and feel.
If you convince yourself that you can become a wonderful person, with talent and ability, friendly and outgoing, healthy and energetic, curious and creative, born to live a wonderful life, then these basic principles will push you to achieve goals, work hard , development of abilities, attentive attitude to others, will teach you how to cope with difficulties and, ultimately, will lead to success. Nothing can stop you on this path.
What matters is not what happens to you in life, but only what how do you react to what happened. It also doesn't matter where you come from, what really matters is where you go. The purpose of your path depends only on your imagination. And since it is limitless, your future also has no limits. That's what it is the basic prerequisites and beliefs you need to realize your potential.
Dispel the myths
Unfortunately, there are several myths that we learn as we grow up that can undermine our hopes for success, joy, and great achievement in later life. Let's look at these self-limiting beliefs one by one.
The first and worst is the belief that "I'm not good enough." This is the basic premise of feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. We believe that other people are better than us just because at the moment they do something better than us. We believe that they must be more worthy people; therefore we are probably less needed than they are. This feeling uselessness sits in the depths of our soul and makes us value ourselves cheaply. We focus on doing less than we are truly capable of doing. We are not able to achieve any new goal, because we do not put it in the first place.
To develop your personality and confidence in your ability to achieve something, you need to convince yourself not only that you are good enough, but also that you can perform at your best in any area that is important to you. You have unlimited potential to be, do and have much more than what you have already achieved at the moment. As William Shakespeare said in his drama The Tempest, "the past is a prologue to what will be." What you have already done in the past is just a hint of what you can do in the future.
Talk to yourself positively
The most powerful words in your vocabulary are the ones you tell yourself and believe in. Your self-talk, your internal dialogue, determines 95% of your emotions. When you have a conversation with yourself, your subconscious takes the words as commands and then aligns your behavior, self-image, and body language with the pattern formed by those words.
From now on, talk to yourself only in terms of how you want to be and how you want to act. Don't say anything negative about yourself if you don't want it to be true. Again and again repeat the strong, positive words: “I can!” Before any important event for you, repeat: “I love myself!” Say: “I am the best! I'm the best! I'm the best!" Say it over and over again as if you have no doubt about it. Then stand up straight, assume a confident posture, smile broadly, and do your best. It will soon become your habit.
You deserve the very best
Often people who have been subjected to damaging criticism in the past adopt another myth, the self-limiting belief: they do not believe that deserve success. This deep negative feeling is widespread among those of us who started life in very humble circumstances. It can also be imposed by people who told you at a young age that poverty is virtuous and wealth is sinful.
If you grew up feeling like you didn't deserve anything good - for one reason or another - and subsequently succeeded, then you may be experiencing what's called the "debtor syndrome." You will have the feeling that you are indebted to your good fortune and that you are about to be exposed. It doesn't matter that you become a successful person through hard work - you experience a nagging fear that it will all be taken away from you.
If you feel like an impostor, you will often feel guilty about achieving more success than others. To get rid of this feeling, many people go to self-sabotage. They overeat, drink, take drugs, neglect their family responsibilities, their behavior becomes unpredictable, and they often squander their money in wild lives and lose it in rash investments. Deep down in their souls, they feel that they do not deserve their success. And as a result, success often eludes them.
Dedicate yourself to serving others
The bottom line is that you deserve everything you can legitimately earn by doing your job well and producing or distributing products or services to improve people's lives and work. In a society like ours, based on a market economy, all transactions are based on the principle voluntariness. People only buy something if they think it will benefit them. Therefore, you can only succeed if you provide people with the things they need to improve their work and life. The more value you bring to other people, the more you, as well as them, earn and deserve respect.
The English word "deserve" (deserve) comes from two Latin words "de" - which means "for" and "servire" which means "serve". Therefore, the word "deserve" means "for service." The people who succeed in our society are, with few exceptions, the people who serve others best. Your entire career should be focused on bringing as much benefit to others as possible. And then you will deserve every dollar you earn.
Abraham Lincoln once said, "The best way to help the poor is to try not to be one of them." In our society, the more financially successful you are, the more taxes you have to pay. These taxes go to schools, hospitals, roads, welfare payments, medical care, military expenses, and all those other important things that our society needs to fund. You can be proud of your material successes. By earning a lot of money, you make a significant contribution to the lives of many people. When you benefit others, you benefit yourself.
Repeat the words: “I deserve every penny I earn by working for the benefit of other people, as I provide them with the products and services they need to improve their standard of living. I'm proud of my success."
You are an excellent person
You are a very good person. You are honest, decent, conscientious and hardworking. You treat others with courtesy, respect, and warmth. You are devoted to your family, friends and the company you work for. You are a strong, confident and responsible person. You are competent, smart and experienced. You are appreciated not only by people close to you, but also by the entire community. You were born to achieve a special purpose and have great potential to achieve it. You are an all around excellent person.
The previous paragraph is a description of your real personality and individual qualities. You may not be able to consistently meet all of these definitions, but this is a fair general description of your inner being and the direction of your life. If you unconditionally accept the installation that you are really a worthy and necessary person, this will manifest itself in all your words and deeds. Over time, this will become true for you. Your ideal will become a reality.
Repeat to yourself: “I love myself and love life. I am a good person in every way, and I always do my best in whatever I undertake.”
Mental Software Store
Imagine that there is a store that sells mental software. You can buy there any self-image, belief, or attitude that you would like to implant in your brain in order to improve your personality accordingly. If such a store existed and you could buy any set of beliefs, what would you choose?
I can suggest something. Take a look around and try to identify what core principles the happiest and most successful people in your environment have developed, and then adopt the same set of beliefs. Download them to your mental hard drive and start running the same programs as these people.
Fortunately, from hundreds of interviews with successful people, we know exactly how they built their programs and what beliefs they developed in themselves from an early age. The most important central attitude that you can adopt is the following belief: “I am a very good person and I am going to achieve great success in life. Everything that happens to me - good or bad - is just part of the process of achieving great success and happiness that will inevitably come into my life.
If you were absolutely convinced that happiness and success are guaranteed to you and that every failure or obstacle is sent to you in order to teach important lessons necessary to achieve your intended goals, then you would be unstoppable. You would be almost constantly positive and optimistic. You would set big goals for yourself and quickly recover from any temporary defeat. Your belief would eventually become your reality. By changing your thinking, you would change your life.
* * *
In the following pages, I will share with you time-tested, proven methods and techniques that you can use to take full control of every area of your mind. I will teach you to think in the most positive and effective way, so that you can feel the strength in yourself to achieve everything that you desire. You will learn to regulate and rebuild your self-perception programs so that your inner world matches the ideal you aspire to and the lifestyle you want to realize. You will learn how to become invincible.
Practical tasks
1. Clearly define your ideals. If you could be an excellent person in every way, what qualities would you like to have? What would be your behavior?
2. You become what you think about most of the time. Name one or more areas of your life where your thinking has the most influence on your emotions, principles, or actions.
3. In what area of activity do you show your best side? How do you see yourself in this area? How could you extend this render action to other areas?
4. What type of people do you admire and for whom do you have the most respect? Why? How could you change your behavior to match that of the most deserving people you know?
5. In what areas of your life do you like yourself the most? What activities give you the most self-respect and awareness of your own importance? How could you do even more?
6. You are a very good person. From this day on, always look at yourself as the person who brings out the best in him, and refuse to put up with any restrictions on your abilities.
7. Change your self-perception by constantly thinking, speaking and acting as if you are already the person you wanted to be and enjoying the life you want and deserve.
Chapter 2 Change your life
By mentally painting a picture of brilliant and joyful prospects, you thus tune in to the realization of your goals.
Norman Vincent Peel
How you think and feel about yourself, your beliefs and your expectation of being able to achieve what you want determines everything you do and everything that happens to you. By changing the quality level of your thinking, you change the quality level of your life – sometimes instantly.
In this universe, only your own thinking is under your complete control! In any situation, you can decide for yourself what to think about it and how to perceive it. Your thoughts and how you interpret any event set in motion your feelings - positive or negative. And your thoughts and feelings cause certain actions and determine the results. So it all starts with your thoughts.
positive thinking
Positive thoughts help raise the quality of your life. They empower you, make you gather and fill with self-confidence. Positive thinking is not just an motivating idea, it has certain constructive effects on your personality, health, energy levels and creativity. The more positive and optimistic you are, the happier you will be in every area of your life.
Negative thoughts bring the opposite result. They take away strength and make you feel weaker and less confident. When you think or say something negative, you lose energy. Inside, anger and a desire to defend themselves are growing. You feel frustrated and unhappy. Over time, negative thinking can make you physically unhealthy and even poison your personal relationships.
Positive thinking ensures spiritual health and maximum performance. Negative thinking leads to mental illness and reduces the efficiency of your work. Therefore, if you want to live a wonderful life, your goal is to develop positive emotions and get rid of negative ones.
Eliminating negative emotions is the most important step you can take to achieve health, happiness, and personal well-being. If you take full control of your thoughts and feelings and try to keep them in a positive direction, the quality of your life improves - both externally and internally. In the absence of negative emotions, your mind automatically fills you with positive impulses that generate feelings of happiness, which leads to the realization of desires.
You can choose your thoughts
The Law of Substitution says: “Your mind can only focus on one thought at a time, positive or negative. You are free to replace a negative thought with a positive one at your own discretion. Apply this law as soon as you want to interrupt a thought or get rid of an unpleasant feeling that makes you angry or sad, switching to thinking about something positive.
The Law of Habit says: “Any thought or action that you repeat over and over will eventually become a habit.” When you think positively day after day, you take complete control of your mind. Soon it becomes an automatic reaction, and you begin to think and act easily and without tension. Through willpower and repetition, you develop the habit of thinking and acting in new ways. By applying this law, you can become an all-round positive person and change your life.
Deprive your negative emotions of food
All your negative emotions since childhood have already been studied. What can be learned can be unlearn sometimes very quickly. You are capable of developing any habit or skill that you consider either desirable or necessary. In particular, you can learn positive, constructive ways of thinking about people, money, health, and more to push out negative ideas that limit your potential and hinder your success.
Many negative thoughts or attitudes are based on false premises. Sometimes a negative thought about a particular subject or a negative attitude towards a person can change to the exact opposite when even insignificant new information is received. You suddenly find out that some idea about yourself or another person was wrong. And as a result, your thinking instantly changes. Open yourself up to this opportunity.
Negative emotions exist only because we ourselves give them life, and then support them with all our might. We feed these emotions by constantly thinking and talking about things that make us angry or unhappy. Fortunately, you can change this situation by applying the Law of Emotions, which states: “The stronger emotion dominates and takes precedence over the weaker one; and the emotion on which you concentrate all your attention grows and becomes the strongest.
What does it mean? And what is the emotion on which you delay your attention, develops and eventually dominates your thinking on the subject. But if you divert the flow of your mental energy from any person or situation that or that makes you sad or resentful by refusing to think about it, then the emotion generated by this situation will eventually lose its strength. It will die out like a fire into which no wood is thrown.
You have already experienced this many times. For example, as we grow up, we enter into certain relationships with the opposite sex. Most of these bonds, as it turns out over time, are fragile. When they end, we tend to experience emotional upheaval and suffer. We often feel sad, angry, depressed, anxious and unhappy. We experience these feelings for a while, but then we recover. We meet another person and gradually forget about the sad end of the previous relationship. Months or years later, looking back or even meeting a former partner, we cannot imagine that we experienced such violent or difficult emotions because of this person. Because we have not fed these feelings all this time, and they have finally died out. This is an example of the law of substitution and the law of emotions at work in your own life.
Sources of negative emotions
There are four main causes of negative emotions. According to the theory of the Russian philosopher Pyotr Uspensky, set out in his book "In Search of the Miraculous" they are: (1) justification; (2) identification; (3) experience and (4) guilt. You will go a long way towards changing your thinking and your life when you begin to systematically eliminate these four negative factors.
stop making excuses
Justification- this is what you resort to when you give a rational explanation or try to find the cause of your anger and depression. You tell yourself and anyone who is willing to listen to you about how badly you are being treated and how disgustingly the other side is behaving. You constantly mentally grind this situation. You go over and over again all the reasons that caused your grief. Every time you think about your enemy or about the whole situation, you get furious. You think that you have the right to be angry because you paid a high price for it, from your point of view - because you were such a good and virtuous person! The best way "neutralize" the natural desire for justification and rational explanation is the decision not to do so at all. You stop indulging yourself and use your amazing mind to think about the reasons instead of justifying negative emotions. Remember: your negative emotions do you no good. They are destructive. They do not have the desired effect on the other person and cannot change the situation. They only undermine your self-confidence, sap your energy, and undermine success in other areas of your life, depriving you of the ability to feel happy.
Instead of justifying your anger and maintaining the belief that you are unhappy, you should use your mind and imagination to forgive that other person or stop clinging to this situation. For example, if someone wedged in front of you in traffic, instead of becoming furious, say to yourself, "Okay, I'll be more careful next time," or "He must be having a hard day today," or "He must be late for an important meeting."
Find excuses for others
Since your mind can only hold one thought at a time, the moment you start justify another person, the negative emotions of anger and dissatisfaction are deprived of energy - the fuel they need to warm up. You regain control of your feelings. You remain calm and kind. After some time, the conflict situation settles down, and you completely forget about it. By substituting a positive thought for a negative one, you get rid of all negative emotions, whatever they may be.
If you are facing a difficult life problem, such as a divorce, job loss, or bad investment, then the same rule applies here. Stop explaining to yourself (and anyone who will listen to you) why you have the right to be angry or feel miserable (unhappy). Instead, forgive the other person whenever you think about the situation until all the negativity has evaporated. When the flame of negative emotions begins to fade, you can turn your attention to something positive.
One of the most important rules for achieving success and happiness is: “Don’t get upset and don’t worry about what you can’t do anything about.” Do not criticize a person for what he cannot change. There is a well-known law: "If there is no solution, there is no problem."
Two periods of time
There are two periods of time in life: the past and the future. And the present is just a brief, fleeting moment. You have the right to choose where to focus your attention: on what has already happened and what cannot be changed, or on the future - on what can happen and what you can control to some extent.
Many people spend most of their emotional energy feeling upset and annoyed about past events. Unfortunately, you are wasting this energy. There is no point in constantly complaining and complaining about what has already passed. Worse still, negative emotions continue to build up as you relive past events over and over again, depriving yourself of the joy and excitement that you might have from contemplating favorable future possibilities.
Let go in peace
One psychiatrist with over 25 years of experience working with unhappy people wrote that while talking to them, he noticed something in common - they all constantly repeated: "If only ...". It turned out that most unhappy people are trapped in some event that happened in the past, which they cannot forget. And they cannot get rid of discontent, anger or depression due to the fact that once someone said offensive words to them, did bad things to them, or, conversely, did not do and did not say what was expected of him. They resent one or both of their parents, a brother or sister, a former lover (mistress) or a failed marriage, their boss or business relationship, a rash investment or a fatal mistake in financial affairs.
The bottom line is that with this approach, life will turn into a continuous series of problems, annoyances, blunders and temporary setbacks. These unexpected and unwanted mistakes and disappointments are a normal, natural, and inevitable part of your growth. But in order to change the way you think and live, you must make the decision to let go of those memories and move on, regardless of what happened to you in the past. Until you do this, you will remain a slave to the past, which cannot be changed in any way. Make a decision today: from now on, you will eliminate all “if only…” from your life.
Interpret events differently
Writer and public speaker Wayne Dyer says, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." What he means is that at any time you can begin to reinterpret - in a positive way - the sad events of an earlier stage in your life. Remember the Law of Substitution and address those negative experiences with the intention of finding something good in them—and thinking about it. You can focus on how these unfortunate events and the experiences associated with them have made you a better, wiser person. In fact, you can be grateful to the people who hurt you in the past, because thanks to them you are now much stronger. But this might not have happened.
Your parents had no experience in raising children. In addition, they themselves were the product of their parents' pedagogical experiences. Like all people, they got children, having a lot of problems and their weaknesses, which you have today. Nevertheless, they tried their best to cope with their task. They were exactly what they were, and could not have brought you up any other way. It is foolish to continue feeling unhappy about what they did or didn't do because they were incapable of doing otherwise. Let them go in peace and accept everything as it is.
Don't take it personal
The second important cause of negative emotions, according to Ouspensky's theory, is identification, or attribution. In this case, you take something personally or begin to adapt to some person or event. You perceive the unfortunate result of this or that event or circumstance as a personal insult, as an attack against you or against what you believe in or value very much. Emotionally, you allow yourself to be drawn into this or that situation and identify with it so strongly that it begins to negatively affect your feelings and perception of the world around you.
Great spiritual teachers such as the Buddha and Jesus especially emphasized the importance of separating yourself emotionally from the situation. (non-identification) to find peace and self-control. Psychologist and philosopher William James of Harvard wrote, “The first step to dealing with any difficulty is to be prepared for it.” He encouraged people by stating, "What cannot be healed must simply be endured." In other words, disengage from any person or situation that makes you angry or upset. Direct your emotional energy in a different direction to restore calmness and composure.
This method does not involve passively accepting everything that happens in your life. Rather, it encourages you to use willpower to keep your mind and emotions in check. Learn to mentally step aside and soberly consider the problem, so that you can then deal with it. Mobilize your mind to look at the situation objectively and find suitable solutions.
Neither people nor events should control you, except in cases where it can benefit you. To give you something or take something away from you, people must possess it. Once you emotionally shut yourself off from a person or fact and realize that you don't need anything else from it, you will be free. This ability to abstract is a positive force that you can develop through practice. It will make you the master of a situation that would otherwise make you angry or upset.
One of the most painless ways to help others is to encourage them with the following advice: let them step back from the problematic situation and evaluate it objectively. Teach them to look at difficulties as if it happened to someone else. Ask them what advice they would give to another person facing a similar problem. By separating yourself from a situation with a strong emotional charge, you will be able to deal with it much more effectively.
Opinion of others
The third main cause of negative emotions, according to Ouspensky's theory, is experience. In this case, strong feelings overwhelm you because of how others treat you. If you think that someone is not showing you the respect you deserve, you feel offended, anger boils in you and a desire arises to repay the same. If people treat you rudely or show indifference, you perceive their behavior as a violation of your self-esteem or censure of your character. This interpretation of other people's attitudes or behaviors can make you angry or discouraged.
Psychologists say that all our actions are aimed at increasing our self-esteem and self-esteem, or at protecting ourselves from the humiliation of other people or circumstances. If your sense of self-esteem is not as high as it should be, then you will be very sensitive to the actions of other people and their reactions to you. You will take too much at your own expense as if everything said or done by others was deliberately and deliberately directed against you. However, this rarely happens.
The fact is that most people are too concerned about themselves and their problems. 99% of the time people are occupied with thoughts about themselves and only the remaining 1% of their emotional energy they direct to someone around them, including you. The driver who blocked your path in traffic is so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he does not even realize that you also exist. And it would be foolish to be angry or upset because of his rash act.
Raise your own sails
There is one rule that I learned from my own life experience: never do or say no to something worrying about what people might think of you. The bottom line is that no one cares about you at all.
Of course, I'm not talking about criminal or anti-social behavior. But it's amazing how many people decide to start a relationship or not, to start a business or not to start a new venture, to make an effort or not, etc. - guided by the fear that someone might not approve of it. They maintain a marriage bond with a spouse they hate, continue in a business they do not love, or miss out on business opportunities for fear that someone will criticize them. The bottom line is that no one is more interested in your major life decisions than you are. Keep this in mind when planning your activities.
In researching people's capacity for self-actualization, Abraham Maslow found that the 1-2% of men and women who are mature, self-reliant adults have a certain common quality: they are completely honest with themselves. They objectively and clearly assess their strengths and weaknesses, do not hope that they could be different, and do not pretend to be. And it is precisely the fact that they accept themselves as they are that is the basis of their self-respect and self-esteem.
And since people of this type are soberly aware of who they really are, they do not need to try to earn the approval of others. Of course, they take into account the opinions of other people, but then they make their own, independent decisions. They are not affected by the possibility of approval or disapproval from others. And you can do the same. You have the greatest influence on yourself.
Respect from others
When a reporter asked the famous English writer Somerset Maugham about his main motive for writing, he replied: "I write to earn the respect of people whom I respect myself."
The same kind of anxiety influences much of your success or failure. In your conscious life, you do many things that are solely aimed at earning the recognition of people whom you yourself respect, or at least not to lose their favor. In fact, your self-perception is largely determined by the people whose attention you value most, both at home and at work. Respect from other people has a huge impact on your self-esteem, because it is very closely related to your ideal idea of \u200b\u200byou and your own image.
Only exceptional men and women look up to people with a strong character, capable of achieving a lot, and try to earn their respect. On a subconscious level, they strive to imitate these people and live in accordance with their ideals.
One of the most important driving forces in your life is the ability to make decisions in the same way as the people whose respect you hold most dear. Once you clearly define who is your authority and why, you can organize your life in such a way that you gradually earn the respect of these people, regardless of whether they know about your efforts or not.
Set high standards
in the famous book "Following in His Footsteps" Charles Sheldon (Christian Library, 1984) tells how the inhabitants of one city came to an agreement that every person, before making any decision or doing anything, should ask himself the question: “What would you do in this case? Jesus?" – and act accordingly. The end result of this practice was that all the problems of the inhabitants were safely resolved, and they began to live happily, and the city began to prosper. The bottom line is that these people have created for themselves ideal, and then brought your life into line with it.
Studying the lives of successful men and women, most of whom started their careers in very humble positions, the researchers found that almost all of them were avid readers of biographies and autobiographies of great people from childhood. Reading the stories of the formation of outstanding personalities, they imagined themselves as strong, with the same qualities and character traits. And when they grew up, all these high ideals and virtues became an integral part of their thinking and guided all their decisions in later life.
Throughout human history creating a role model used as an effective way to develop personality and character. At school, young people were taught on examples from the biographies of heroes and heroines and in every possible way encouraged the desire to imitate them. In the training of army personnel, the exploits of the soldiers of the past are necessarily included in the curriculum, which encourages young soldiers to think and act - when the situation requires it - like these heroes.
The people you most admire and look up to have a huge impact on how you think and feel about yourself, as well as on your decisions. What role models do you personally have? you?
Choose your role models carefully
There is nothing wrong with taking note of and considering other people's feelings and reactions to you and your actions. By choosing outstanding people as role models, you are developing an inner guidance that properly guides your behavior.
However, it is foolish to allow yourself to be recklessly influenced by the momentary opinions of those whose attitude and respect are of no value to you, and your reaction in this case is just a kind of self-defense. If you grew up in an environment of destructive criticism, you can easily fall into the trap that many fall into: basing your life around gaining approval or avoiding censure from people you don’t even know or have nothing to do with you.
To avoid this kind of negative emotion, choose the men and women you most admire and note the personal qualities you would like to emulate. And from now on, as soon as the need to make a decision arises, imagine one of these people and ask: “What would he or she do in this situation?”
By asking this question, you are actually subconsciously enlisting the support of a higher power that will provide you with guidance and understanding. You will gain a deep inner knowledge that tells you the right words or actions. You will make the best decision and achieve the desired result. This method is used by many successful men and women. Try it and see what happens.
Most negative impact
The fourth main cause of negative emotions, according to Ouspensky's theory, and the driving force behind anger, discontent, envy, jealousy and all kinds of disappointments is accusation. It is the accusation, especially if it generates anger, and is the worst of all negative manifestations. Anger is the most destructive force in the world where man lives. Uncontrolled anger destroys health, relationships, families, businesses and entire societies - it is the main generator of wars, revolutions and social conflicts.
The root cause of anger lies in early childhood, if at that time a person was constantly subjected to destructive criticism. In this case, the child reacts in exactly the same way as if he were attacked - he is defensive and full of indignation. And since any reaction you repeat over and over becomes a reflex, many people develop the habit of responding with an angry outburst to every problem, dissatisfaction, or frustration they experience. They eventually get to the point where they explode in anger over anything.
To fall into anger, a person needs to blame someone else for what happened, or what, on the contrary, did not happen, and what he does not like or what he does not approve of. Many people are so caught up in endlessly blaming others for their problems that they lose all touch with reality. They look at the whole world through the prism of blame and his sister - an emotion called guilt.
As soon as any problem of a personal or social nature arises, an embittered person automatically concludes that someone should be responsible for it. Then he spends his time and emotions looking for someone to blame. This obsession with blame and anger, leading to resentment and envy, often literally eats away at the person experiencing these feelings.
It's nobody's fault
Here is one of the most common examples. Two lovers were married. Both have the best intentions and the best hopes for the future - otherwise they would not be in a hurry to marry. Unfortunately, people and situations change over time. After some time, this couple discovers that life together no longer gives them joy, and the couple decide to divorce. This is where the real problems begin.
Instead of admitting - as adults should - that they are convinced of their complete incompatibility and no longer want to live together, they begin to blame each other. Someone must be guilty and punished. Lawyers and judges are involved in the conflict. Private detectives and financial consultants are hired to expose the dirty laundry of each participant in the trial. The situation becomes more and more unsightly, until it finally ends with outbursts of anger, bitterness, mutual insults and even hatred.
The best solution in the event of a broken marriage or intimacy would be to accept this fact as a deplorable reality, draw reasonable conclusions, fulfill the obligations associated with it, and then everyone can go their own way and arrange life to their liking. Today, many couples do just that, using someone else to mediate instead of going through the humiliation of traditional divorce proceedings. As a result, the problem is solved in an optimal way for all stakeholders.
According to the laws of psychology, most people feel that they are right in everything they do. But as soon as one person starts blaming the other—and worse, demanding that the other person plead guilty—emotional and legal conflicts flare up. But the saddest thing about these disputes is that they usually end where they started - no one involved in them wins anything.
Take charge
The best way to avoid all kinds of violent manifestations of negative feelings is to take full responsibility which immediately "neutralizes" the anger. At the same time, the flow of energy necessary to maintain negative emotions is blocked. As soon as you say: “I myself (myself) am responsible for this!” your anger stops. Because by the law of substitution, and given the fact that your mind can only hold one thought at a time, you cannot take responsibility for a situation and at the same time be inflamed with anger. The thought that generates blame and anger is annulled by the decision to take responsibility for what happened.
A positive view of the world versus a negative one
There are two main points of view on the world. You can have a positive and benevolent look or negative and critical. If you are ready to be responsible both for yourself and for what happens to you, you acquire a positive outlook on the world. You look at life optimistically, evaluate yourself and your capabilities higher, become a happy and successful person.
Conversely, when you begin to look at the world negatively or unkindly, you see problems and injustice, oppression and evil everywhere. All the people around you are guilty of something; everywhere you see all sorts of limitations and obstacles instead of opportunity and hope. But, worst of all, you are wasting your precious time, looking for the guilty and convicting them of all mortal sins.
Difference in results
In our country, some people live better than others. It has always been so, in any society, throughout the history of mankind. There are many reasons for this; for example, it may be the result of people differing from each other in the level of talent, ambition and desire; or by the fact that some people work harder than others, they have a better start in life; either they are born smarter, or they just happen to be in the right place at the right time and get into a favorable economic situation.
In any case, prosperous people cannot be blamed for the failure of others. Healthy people are also not to blame for the fact that someone is sick. Those who are content and happy cannot be blamed for the failure and unhappiness of others. People who build a good life for themselves and their families are not to blame for the fact that others do not.
The success of one does not cause the failure of the other. Ratio does not mean conditioning. If two situations develop simultaneously, this does not mean that one causes the other. A healthy acceptance of this simple fact would resolve many disputes and disagreements on the philosophical and political levels.
The power of petition
The cause of negative emotions, the main factor that makes a person blame others, get angry and show discontent, experience fear and doubt, envy and jealousy, is inability to forgive who we think has hurt us.
In childhood, gradually growing up, we go through a developmental phase when the fact of “justice” is very important for us. We fix all our attention on this concept. We are saddened by every situation that seems to us unfair and dishonest in relation to any person, but especially when it comes to ourselves. When we feel that we or someone else is being treated unfairly—for one reason or another—we see it as an attack on our identity, as a threat to our fragile sense of self-respect. And we react to it with anger and indignation. This is an obligatory phase in the process of personality development, which we go through as we grow up.
However, some people get stuck in this stage and never grow beyond it. If in childhood we are not taught the ability to overcome sorrows, then we will enter adulthood with a huge burden of unforgiven experiences. If we fail to solve this problem, then in the future our whole life will be filled with anger towards people whom we consider ourselves entitled to blame for some of their actions that are not approved by us. Many psychotherapists and psychiatrists dedicate their entire lives to helping people confront painful memories and cope with their painful past experiences and the trials they face in the present moment.
In this regard, the smartest decision you can make is to forgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way, because only by stopping blaming the other person, by forgiving him or her, can you free and myself. This is why most religions emphasize the importance of forgiveness as the first step towards peace of mind and happiness on earth.
Just imagine how you would feel if you didn't feel anger towards anyone in the whole world. Imagine yourself as a completely positive, optimistic, upbeat person, with a high level of self-esteem and enthusiasm and boundless self-confidence. Imagine that you are a benevolent, loving person, that absolute peace and tranquility reign inside you. All this is quite achievable if you live by the principle of forgiveness.
Conversely, the refusal or inability to forgive gives rise to negative emotions, anger, stress, anxiety, spiritual and physical illness, and a feeling that you are unhappy. By refusing to forgive, you remain trapped. And forgiveness sets you free. And this is only your choice - the other person or the prevailing circumstances have nothing to do with it.
It's about two
Some people refrain from forgiveness by resorting to a widespread false argument.
They believe that by forgiving someone who drives them crazy, they come to terms with the behavior of this person. They think that in this case they show indulgence towards him. They believe that they forgive the sins of a person who is not worthy.
The bottom line is that it takes two to make a prison: a prisoner and a jailer. They are both in captivity. When you set another person free, you set yourself free. You must not put up with the behavior of the person who hurt you, or imitate to him. You just need to forgive him or her so that you yourself can be happy and prosper for the rest of your life. Therefore, forgiveness is absolutely selfish measure. It really has nothing to do with the other person and is directed only at your own mental wholeness or peace of mind.
Comedian Buddy Hackett once said, “I never held a grudge against anyone; as long as you have a grudge against someone, you can't crack nuts!"
When you get angry at someone, you lose emotional control over that person every time you think about them. You allow him (or her) to control your emotions even at a great distance. By not forgiving, you give that person control over your emotional life as if he or she is right there with you, and the whole situation repeats over and over again.
Path to Forgiveness
Forgiving is so easy! Every time you think of your abuser, use the law of substitution and say: “God bless him (her); I forgive him (her) for everything and wish him (her) all the best.” But it also happens that while blessing and forgiving another person, at the same time you experience anger or discontent. Then some positive thought can come to the rescue, which will erase the negative one.
You can speed up the process of personal liberation, taking on a share of the responsibility for what happened. Very few negative events that cause anger and discontent happen completely without your participation. Almost inevitably you contribute something in the development of this situation. And therefore, as a mature person, you must have the courage to take some of the responsibility for what happened. And then you can say: “I take responsibility. I shouldn't have fixed on this situation or put up with it for so long. I shouldn't have done what I did. And I completely forgive him (her) and let go in peace.
At first, you may find it difficult to forgive. These words are not easy to say. Many people build their entire adult lives around their grievances. They are afraid that they will have nothing to talk about if they stop complaining about their parents or about their failed marriage. But don't worry.
When you forgive others and let them go in peace, you will soon feel relieved and joyful. As soon as anger and discontent disappear, your mind will be filled with positive thoughts. You will feel the energy and enthusiasm build up inside you. You will feel that you are becoming a stronger and more confident person. Vast vistas will open before you - it will be like the sunrise.
Don't worry about what your friends will think or say when you make the decision to forgive those who have hurt you. It is possible that they are already tired of your endless complaints about an unhappy past. In fact, when you begin to forgive, you may find - and this happens quite often - that the only thread connecting you with a friend (or girlfriend) was meetings (or gatherings) for the sake of these tearful outpourings. When you decide to forgive your offenders, it may very well be that you will no longer be interested in communicating with former friends (or so-called friends).
People you must forgive
There are four groups of people you must forgive if you are serious about changing your mindset and life.
First of all, it's your parents, alive or dead. You must completely and unconditionally forgive them for every mistake they made in your upbringing. At the very least, you should be grateful to them for giving you life. Thanks to them you came into this world. You have been given the happiness of living, and for everything else you can forgive them. And never blame them again.
Many of the listeners after my seminars called their parents or visited them to say that they forgave them everything. Often this simple act, in which courage and firmness of character are manifested, literally turned the further relationship of these people with their father or mother. From that day on, they became good friends, and this relationship continued for the rest of their lives.
Conversely, by refusing to forgive your parents, you remain children forever. You are depriving yourself of the opportunity to grow up and become a full-fledged mature person. You continue to see yourself as a victim. And even worse, you keep negative feelings of inferiority and anger inside you. If your parents die without being forgiven, it will torment you for the rest of your days.
Close personal relationships
The second group of people you need to forgive are those with whom you had close relations, failed for one reason or another. Marriage and other intimate relationships can be so destructive and such a threat to your self-worth and self-worth that you carry anger with you for years, unable to forgive your partner.
But in this case, you too, at least partially, you are responsible for what happened. Find the courage and honesty in yourself to say, "I'm responsible for this too." And then forgive the other person and let them go in peace. Say these words: "I forgive him (her) for everything and wish him (her) all the best." Each time you repeat them, the negative emotion ingrained in your memory will dissolve and soon disappear altogether.
Letter
Many of my graduates have come to the conclusion that the best way to permanently free themselves from failed personal relationships is through "writing." It is a powerful tool that can heal you from anger and resentment almost instantly.
Everything is very simple: you sit down at the table and write your partner (partner) a letter of forgiveness. It consists of three parts.
In the first, you write, "I forgive you for all the bad things you've ever done that hurt me."
In the second, you describe or list the things that still make you feel angry. Some people have to write several pages for this.
The third part of the letter is the final words: "I wish you all the best."
Then you go and put the letter in the mailbox. At this moment, you will experience a great sense of relief and finally be free.
Don't worry about how the other party might react to your letter. It no longer concerns you. Your goal is to free yourself, find peace, and fill your life with success and joy.
Wipe it off your slate
The third group of people you must forgive are All those people in your life who hurt you in one way or another. Release them in peace. Forgive every boss, business partner, friend, buddy, deceiver, or traitor who has ever hurt or hurt you. Erase their names and images from the slate board of your memory, saying these words: "I forgive him (her) everything and wish him (her) all the best." Repeat this affirmation whenever you think of that person or situation until the negative feelings disappear.
Free yourself
The fourth group, or rather, the last person you have to forgive, is you yourself. You must forgive yourself for every stupid, senseless, evil, shameful, thoughtless, or cruel act or word you have ever done or said. Stop carrying those past mistakes around with you. It was once, and you live now.
Look at it this way: when you did or said something in the past that made you feel uncomfortable, you were not the person you are today. At that time you were different, you were younger, you had little experience. In those words and deeds, not your true essence was manifested. You were not then the mature person that you have become now, having gained sufficient life experience. Stop beating yourself up about what happened in the past, because it can't be changed anyway.
During psychotherapy sessions, when a person feels the burden of deep-seated guilt or shame due to some traumatic event in childhood, there is a moment of relaxation - he (or she) suddenly understands: "It's not my fault." Sometimes you did bad things or someone else did them to you when you were too young or inexperienced to foresee the results or be able to change the situation. It wasn't your fault. You did everything in your power. Everything is fine. Forgive yourself and forgive your sins.
Just say: “I forgive myself for every mistake I make. I am a worthy person and now I am set for a wonderful future.” Whenever you think about a past event or situation, simply repeat, "I completely forgive myself." And then arrange your future life. Concentrate on the future, discarding the past. Look where you are now, not where you once were.
If, however, you did something that hurt someone and you still have a guilty conscience, you can go to that person or write a letter to him and ask for forgiveness. Tell him that you are sorry for your actions or words. Whatever his or her reaction - positive or negative - it does not matter. The very fact of acknowledging guilt, remorse expressing regret will free you from the heavy burden of guilt.
Final warning
Most people accept the idea of forgiveness. It underlies many religions, as well as psychology and metaphysics. You might like the idea of forgiving most of the people in your life who hurt you in one way or another. But there is one dangerous moment in this.
It lies in the fact that by refusing to forgive even one big wrong, you can upset your whole life. Your stubborn refusal to forgive even one person or forget even one situation can slow down all your further progress. Countless men and women ruin their lives because of their anger or resentment against a single person. They cannot let him go in peace, and therefore they will never free themselves.
Don't let this happen to you. You must find the courage and strength of character to forgive everyone without exception. There should not be a single person in your life that you still hold a grudge against. Your mind should be calm and clear. Dare to say: “I have no negative attitude or resentment towards any person in the world. I voluntarily forgive everyone."
Take control of your emotions
The starting point in eliminating negative reactions is the desire to take complete control of your thoughts and actions and cultivate the ability to restrain negative emotions when they arise (and this is inevitable). You may not be able to stop the initial negative reaction to unfulfilled expectations that caused grief or disappointment, but you can not express it - both in private and in public. You can instantly extinguish it with the words: "I'm in charge of this too!"
Some people argue that it is much more beneficial to vent the negative emotions of anger, resentment, bitterness, fear, and doubt. But the bottom line is that what you think about and talk about grows into your reality. Any insignificant event is like a spark that can flare up into a violent flame if you keep thinking and talking about it. So wouldn't it be better to nip it in the bud by saying: "I'm in charge of this too!" And then look for reasons why you are responsible for it. And you will definitely find them.
When the real gods come
An English poet wrote: "When the false gods go, the real ones come." When you stop thinking and talking about negative events, endlessly replaying them in your head, “real gods” will come into your mind and heart. When you get rid of the thoughts, opinions, prejudices and attitudes that make you unhappy, you will begin to develop ideas that will make you feel positive about yourself and your life.
Nature is on your side. She wants you to be happy, healthy, successful, and achieve your goals. Your destiny is to know joy, harmony, love, and the greatest of all human blessings - peace of mind. Just as a gyroscope, thrown out of balance, returns to its correct position, your life will be filled with peace and joy as soon as you stop doing and saying things that deprive you of inner harmony.
Make a decision today to end your negative emotions. From now on, in every area of your life, become a positive, happy, enthusiastic person. Change the way you think about yourself and your possibilities, and you will change your whole life.
Practical tasks
1. Decide today that from this day forward you will become a perfectly happy person. Do not ask yourself the question: “What in my life makes me unhappy or causes stress?” Whatever the answer is, make up your mind to deal with it and remove the obstacle.
2. Recall some event from your childhood that still makes you angry. Try to interpret this event positively and see it as a valuable learning experience.
3. In what areas of your life do you feel angry or resentful because you still blame someone for something they did or didn't do? Whatever it is, take responsibility for these events and move on to success.
4. Whom in your past have you not forgiven? What past event still causes you the most excitement? Whoever it is or whatever it is, make the decision to forgive and let it go in peace.
5. From now on, do not take anything to heart. From now on, if people don't show you respect or don't treat you the way you would like, rise above it, stop thinking about it and go about your business.
6. Decide today to forgive everyone in your past life for whom you still have negative feelings. Release them in peace, thereby freeing yourself.
7. Forgive yourself for every mistake you ever made. There is nothing wrong with asking for forgiveness from another person. Release yourself from the burden of guilt.
Chapter 3 Dream Big
Dream big, because what you dream becomes your reality. Your fantasies are a promise of what will eventually happen to you.
Your mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Thoughts alone are so powerful that they can make you healthy or sick, rich or poor, popular or unknown. Your mind is like a powerful force that can be turned in any direction to produce amazing results, or leave everything to devastation and destruction. The main goal of your life should be the intelligent and systematic use of these marvelous powers to achieve all that you really want to achieve.
Traveling in Italy
Let me tell you one story. A few years ago I took my family on vacation to Italy. We visited several fine art museums in Rome and Florence. There is a museum in Florence built specifically for the statue of David, created by Michelangelo several centuries ago. Perhaps this is the most beautiful sculpture in the world. The feelings that we experienced, being in front of this work of art, none of us will ever forget.
The history of the creation of the statue David very entertaining and contains a lesson for all of us. At that time, the Medici, the ruler of Florence, commissioned a statue from Michelangelo for the main city square. The Medici were the richest and most powerful family in Italy. Therefore, the order from the Medici was not just a great honor; it was a task that could not be refused. For two years, Michelangelo searched for a suitable piece of stone from which to create such a masterpiece as desired by the Medici.
Finally, somewhere on the outskirts of Florence, dirty and half overgrown with wild grass, he found a huge piece of marble lying on a wooden platform. It had been lowered from the mountains a few years earlier, and it remained lying there without any use.
Michelangelo had passed this street many times, but this time he stopped and took a closer look. While he walked around this stone, studying it from all sides, he actually already imagined the statue of David in its finished form.
Great success requires long, hard work
The sculptor quickly organized workers who were to drag a piece of marble to his studio, which was some distance from this remote place. And then began his long, hard work with a hammer and a chisel. It took two years of work to create the preliminary outlines of the statue. Michelangelo then put aside his hammers and chisels and spent another two years polishing and polishing before the statue was finished.
Michelangelo was then already a well-known sculptor, and the news that he was working on a responsible order for the Medici spread throughout Italy.
And then came the day of the first public display. Thousands of people came from all over the country and gathered in the main square. When the cover was pulled from the statue, the crowd froze with delight. It was so beautiful that people took their breath away. The audience applauded; the women fainted. The crowd was amazed by the incredible beauty of the huge statue. Michelangelo was immediately recognized as the greatest sculptor of his time.
Subsequently, when asked how he could create such a masterpiece, he replied that he saw David in all its perfection in the still uncut stone, and the only thing that had to be done was to remove everything is superfluous.
You are the masterpiece
There are many parallels between you and David. You, too, are very much like a great masterpiece encased in marble. But the marble that you and most people languish in is a stone wall of petty, limited thinking and excessive worry about possible loss or failure, instead of the pleasant excitement of expecting rewards in the form of success and achievement.
To reach your full potential, you need to break your limited thinking with the force of some big dream and imaginary picture of infinite possibilities. You need to get rid of all the negative beliefs that are ruining your desire to become who you are capable of becoming.
But remember that even after David was released from marble captivity, it took Michelangelo another two years of hard work of grinding and polishing to turn his creation into a masterpiece. In the same way, you need to work on yourself, polish and polish yourself, learn and test your knowledge in practice for many days, weeks, months and even years in order to discover and develop all the talents and abilities lurking deep within you.
You can become invincible
This book is designed to help you change your mindset so that you know no barriers to achieving any goal you set. Your task is to develop yourself psychologically to such a level that you become like an invincible force of nature. You will become unstoppable like a powerful surf wave or a violent thunderstorm sweeping over the earth.
Your task is to become so self-confident, courageous, strong and unbending person that you can set any goal for yourself without the slightest doubt that you can learn everything that will be necessary and do everything necessary to ultimately achieve what you want. You will become so stubborn and determined that no one can stop you from moving forward or lead you astray. You will become a truly invincible person!
Dream big
The process of developing a resilient character starts with dreaming big. And since everything you create in your world starts with a thought, the bigger the dream, the higher the goals you will achieve. All successful men and women are dreamers. Those who reach high peaks are called "great dreamers". They let their minds wander freely in the clouds, thinking about their possibilities. They look up to the vast blue sky above as the only limit to what they could do, have, or become.
Successful people think backwards from the future. They plan years ahead and imagine what their life would be like if they achieved all of their goals. They look back to the present, from an imaginary point in the future, as if they were looking from the top of a high mountain down to the plain where they are now. Then they see a path that they will have to take to get where they want to go in the future.
According to the Law of Correspondence, what you can clearly imagine, you will eventually experience in reality. Therefore, you must see what you are striving for as clearly and brighter. intensively visualize your goals and develop the feeling you would have if you had already achieved them. Visualize your dreams as best you can more often. Play the picture of the realization of your goal on the screen of your mind as many times a day as you can. Give this as much time as possible, preferably every night before bed.
Repeat these visualization exercises—brightness, intensity, frequency, and duration—until your goals become clear, vivid, exciting, clear pictures in your mind. The more skill you gain in moving from dream to goal through visualization, the stronger your drive and determination will be. And the more clarity you achieve, the more courage and self-confidence you have, the more stubborn you will become.
Create an image of an ideal future
The most important part of a big dream is to create an image ideal future. It is up to you to decide whether to think first about what you want, or before counting your possibilities. You dream big, looking into the future and imagining that you have no limits to achieve what your mind aims for.
Take a break from reality and allow yourself to dream. Imagine for a moment that you have enough time and money. Imagine that you have the connections and contacts, all the resources and opportunities, the appropriate education and knowledge, skills and experience that it takes to be what you want to be, have and do. All what you can only dream of.
Imagine the best lifestyle for you, the ideal job or income. Imagine where you would like to live and how you would like to spend every day, every week and every month. Picture in your imagination a happy family, an ideal state of health. In a word, imagine a life perfect in every way.
Make a list of all your desires
I offer you this exercise. Take a piece of paper and write the title - "Dreams". Underline that word, and then list below it whatever you think you could wish for if you had no restrictions.
Usually, most people are shackled by their self-limiting beliefs. You can break these mental chains with a list of everything you dream about. The very fact that you can write down something that you would like to have someday means that, in all likelihood, you are already able to achieve it now. While you are making the list, let your mind take flight. You will have plenty of time later to organize and evaluate your dreams.
What will you dream about?
Here is a wonderful question: “What is this great thing that you would dare to dream of if you knew for sure that you would not fail?”
If you had absolute guarantees of success in achieving any goal, big or small, long-term or short-term, what would it be? If some billionaire took a liking to you and offered to write you a check to sponsor any dream that you could clearly define, which goal would you choose?
If you could choose any job, what would it be? If you could get a job at any company, which company would you choose? Where would it be and what would people do there? If your family life and personal relationships could be absolutely perfect, what would they be like? Give clear answers to these questions and write them down.
Start working on your future
You start creating your ideal future by making a list of what you dream about. You write down everything you would like to have, do, and be, as if you had no limits. You make this list as if you are guaranteed complete success. You can then start to refine your list, step by step, to develop a detailed model of your life.
Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Have you built your castles in the air yet? Okay, this is exactly where they should be built. Now get to work and lay the foundation for them.” Once you have freed yourself from your limited thinking, now, like a balloon that has broken away from its dead anchors and soared high into the sky, you can begin to turn your dreams and fantasies into concrete practical goals with a specific plan of action.
Your ability to set goals and make plans to achieve them is the key to success. Thanks to this skill, there will be no obstacles on your way to your dream. Writing down goals is the next step in this process.
How to achieve any goal
There is a seven-step goal setting and achievement method that you can use anytime, in any situation, to achieve whatever you want. From these seven steps, a powerful, proven formula is built that can be used as a guide to immediately change your life.
Step 1: Decide exactly what you want
A realistic goal is always precise, specific, measurable, and time bound. An unrealistic goal - desire or hope - is always vague and unclear. It's a fantasy in the clouds. People with clear, specific goals who know exactly what they want are very different from people who live their lives passively hoping for the best. your ability exactly Deciding what you want in every area is one of the most important conditions in an adult's life.
In seminars, people often come up to me and ask what their goals should be. I reply that only they themselves can know. It's amazing how many of them tell me how difficult it is to choose a goal, and I agree with them. It is difficult, but also necessary. With clear goals, you can achieve almost anything. And without them, you can't really do anything.
One of the main reasons why people fail in life is that they waste so much time doing something extremely insignificant or completely meaningless. They spend so much time doing this because they can't figure out what they really want. And once you have a clear goal, your ability to manage your time will skyrocket.
Make good use of your time
To determine whether a particular activity is worth spending your time on, just ask yourself: “Will this get me closer to achieving one of my goals?” If an activity helps you achieve any of your goals, then this is a useful use of time. If not, then it's a waste of it.
When you get into the habit of doing only what moves you forward towards your goal, your life will be filled with success. Your results will improve. Soon you will find that every day, every hour, you are doing those things that help you move towards your goal in one way or another. You will not have time for those activities that do not bring any benefit to the realization of your dreams.
When you set clear goals for yourself and know exactly what you want, your impatience to quickly finish those things that do not contribute to your progress will constantly grow. You'll watch less TV, listen to the radio less, skim through newspapers—if you pick them up at all. You will begin to be more selective about your friends and communication. You will spend time only with those people who bring you joy, from whom you can learn something, and from whom you can derive some benefit from the relationship. But as the old saying goes, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
Step 2: Write down your goals
Make a list of your goals. When you pick up paper and pen and write down your goals, something absolutely amazing happens between your mind and hand—you simultaneously set the laws of expectation, attraction, and conformity into action. This reinforces your conviction and deepens your confidence that these goals are within your reach. The very fact of putting them down on paper gives you the feeling that you are in control, and it gives you strength. Written goals strengthen your intention and determination to do whatever it takes to achieve them.
The speed with which you begin to implement tasks after you have written them down is not a miracle. The mere fact of writing down goals increases the likelihood of achieving them by 10 times - by 1000%!
Thousands of my graduates have written to me or come to tell me personally about the amazing things that began to happen in their lives as soon as they began to put their goals on paper.
Stage 3: Be prepared to pay for your dream
Determine what price you are willing to pay to reach your goal. Make a list of everything you are going to do to make your dreams come true.
Maybe you intend to start your work day a little earlier, work harder and go to bed a little later than usual? Write it down. Maybe you intend to raise the level of your knowledge and skills and take some additional courses for this? Add this to the list too. Maybe you are going to change your job, field of activity or position in order to achieve all your goals? Write it down.
The law of cause and effect is the unshakable law of the universe. For everything you want, you have to pay some price; and need to pay fully And in advance. The law of sowing seeds and harvesting is not at all the same as the law of harvesting and sowing seeds. Before gather, you need something invest. Must give away before get. First you have to pay and only then enjoy the reward.
Your willingness to do your best, pay the right price, walk the distance, and sacrifice what is required is the measure of how much you want to achieve your goal.
Many people undermine their own success by deciding to achieve a particular goal and being ready to pay dearly for it, at the same time they are not willing to pay. full price required by their goal. It's like trying to win at cards without wanting to make a full bet. As a result, you lose everything. In the same way, people who are not willing to make a full commitment will not be able to achieve the goal.
Step 4: Make a detailed plan
Make a plan and write it down. Remember that the ability to analyze recorded goals and develop plans to achieve them is the main condition for success. Any plan starts with making a list of everything you think you need to do to make it happen. Having developed such a list, you can add new items to it as they arise. Then review your notes and rank the items according to their importance and sequence. That is most important on this list and what will you need to do to achieve the goal? What will you have to do earlier, what about later? Which items on this list are feasible only after other items have been completed?
The action plan clears the path for you to follow. It gives you confidence and strengthens the desire to achieve the goal. Gradually, you will begin to be convinced that your goal is really real and quite achievable. You will be able to see opportunities that you most likely did not even suspect until you had a written plan.
Step 5: Take Action as Planned
Take some action towards your goal. Once you have set a goal, written it down, determined the price you are willing to pay, and developed a plan, you must immediately take some action. Necessarily anything do. Even if it's just one phone call or collecting a small piece of the information you need. The Bible says, "Faith without works is dead."
There is a certain mighty power in the willingness to take a specific action, in faith, in the first step towards your goal, and without any guarantee of success. Your very act seems to set in motion all sorts of forces and energies in the universe. You activate the law of attraction, which immediately begins to help you. By taking action, you show yourself and others that you are truly serious about achieving your goal.
Until you take a specific, deliberate action, you are just doing a pleasant exercise, as if daydreaming. It's like putting the key in the ignition but not turning it.
Step 6: Do something every day
Every day, complete at least one task from the list, which will gradually move you towards the main goal. This is a vital success principle that generates energy and enthusiasm. To maintain courage, self-confidence, and motivation, you must do something every day, without exception, that will make you feel like you are moving forward and making some progress. Your task is to set yourself up so that you truly feel inflexible, and the only way to achieve what you want is to not stop and take at least a step towards your plan every day.
Step 7: Never back down
First of all, decide that you will never deviate from the path to your goal. No matter how many setbacks or obstacles you encounter along the way, make up your mind that you will stick to your commitments and persevere until you finally succeed.
By setting yourself up in advance to show perseverance, in spite of any obstacles, you seem to put a psychological barrier in front of you. When difficulties will increase, you will be prepared inwardly to overcome them, but not to retreat. Your willingness and ability to persevere forward is the ultimate guarantee of success.
Secrets of the people who made themselves millionaires
If money is your goal, remember that most of the rich people of our time started out penniless or even deeply in debt. Almost everyone who has risen to the heights of prosperity today was once at the very bottom. Almost every one of those who walk in the front ranks today, once trailed in the very tail. Nearly every rich person today was once poor.
Most of the 5 million millionaires in the United States created their wealth with their own hands. That is, they started from scratch and worked hard to pave the way up. In the modern world there are more than 300 "homemade" billionaires and multibillionaires. Many of these people started their lives with very little or nothing at all, but by changing the way they thought, they released their inner potential to achieve incredible financial success. And almost everything that they could do is available to you - without any reservations. So what are the goals you?
Force of Commitment
I really love one quote by climber Charles Murray:
“Until a person makes a commitment, he hesitates and is ready to retreat, and this always ends in failure. As for initiative and creativity, there is one elementary truth here that should not be forgotten, otherwise you can ruin countless ideas and amazing plans: at the moment when a person decisively binds himself to an obligation, providence takes a step towards him. Everything that otherwise would never have happened rushes to the aid of such a person. The whole flow of events is built in accordance with the decision made, all unforeseen circumstances, meetings and material assistance - everything is in favor of this person, which no one else could even dream of.
Murray ends his maxim with the words of Goethe:
Be honest with yourself
Always go ahead
And whatever the case is,
Eliminate obstacles persistently and boldly.
If the idea is ripe, quickly start it,
In decisiveness genius, strength, deity.
1. What great goal would you set for yourself if you were given an absolute guarantee of success?
2. Make a list of what you dream about; write down everything you would like to have in life if you had no limits.
3. Imagine your ideal lifestyle; If you were financially independent and could live how and where you want, what would you change?
4. Make a list of 10 goals you would like to achieve next year. From this list, choose the one goal that would most positively change your life if you could achieve it now.
5. Write down your most important goal on a separate piece of paper. It should be an achievable goal: set a deadline for achieving it.
6. Make a written plan to achieve this goal. Make a list of everything you think you need to make it happen.
7. Take the first action according to the plan. From now on, force yourself to do something every day that would bring you closer to your goal. Don't miss a single day until you reach your goal.
Chapter 4 Make a decision to become rich
Thought is the primary source of all wealth, success, all material values, all great discoveries, inventions and achievements.
Claude I. Bristol
We have come from a world based on material limitations to a world subject to mental concepts. We stepped out of the century of things in the "age of the psyche", the era mind. Now Wealth and Opportunity Are More About Who You Are are And How think than in those financial assets that you have acquired in life. Your future depends more on your intellectual abilities and responsible attitude to business and life than on the work you are currently doing or the combination of circumstances.
Since health, wealth, and happiness are mostly mental concepts, you can achieve all of these with almost no limits. In this and the following chapters, you are presented with many simple, practical, proven methods, techniques, and strategies that successful men and women use in every area of their lives to achieve far more than they themselves or those around them could ever dream of. . You will learn how to break the habitual limited thinking and how to expand the range of your desires and ambitions so much that you can realize any goal that you previously did not even dare to set for yourself.
Three main forces
Our world today is dominated by three major forces that are transforming the entire environment and creating unlimited opportunities for creativity. These three forces are driving incredible growth in the field. information, technology And competition.
Explosion in the information and scientific world
Information revolution in combination with fast data processing through a computer, the Internet and wireless communication, it makes it possible to double and expand knowledge in every area of life every two to three years. 90% of all thinkers, inventors, engineers, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs and creative people in the history of mankind live and work today. The results of their efforts are almost instantly available to everyone through the rapid and widespread dissemination of information.
Technology improvement
Explosion in technologies and high-speed computers are simply amazing. Today you can send an e-mail message to any corner of the globe simultaneously to tens, hundreds and even thousands of subscribers in a matter of seconds and for a ridiculous price. The Internet provides access to tens of millions of other users, as well as to the accumulated data on various branches of science in more than 50,000 libraries and research institutes. The instant transfer of information allows trillions of dollars a day to be pumped through the financial markets, sometimes in a matter of seconds, which makes it difficult for government agencies of different countries to control their currency, and even more so - the entire economy.
In the 21st century, you will be using a tiny, palm-sized computer that can process a billion commands per second. It will have a long life battery and a built-in cell phone connected to satellite dishes, giving you instant contact with anyone, almost anywhere in the world. You will have your own personal phone number, which will allow anyone from anywhere in the world to call you, wherever you are, even if the person who is looking for you does not know what country you are in now. And you can wear this phone technology on your wrist like the big digital watch you wear today.
Increasing competition
The third major factor that sets our lives in motion is competition. Every business organization seeks to drive sales and profit locally, nationally and, if possible, internationally. In order to survive and thrive, every individual and every business must constantly look for faster, smarter, cheaper, and easier ways to distribute their products to consumers.
Advances in science and technology create opportunities that nimble competitors seek to seize to produce new products and services and outperform others and each other in the marketplace. All three forces—information, technology, and competition—are multiplied many times over, driving the most incredible rate of change in human history. And if nothing unforeseen happens, this speed will increase even more in subsequent years.
Every change creates opportunities
80% of all products and services you will use in 5 years will come from new or completely modernized industries. It is likely that 80% of the types of work currently being done will give way to new ones in 5 years or will be completely changed due to the onslaught of information, technology and competition. This is good news for you, because every single change opens up a lot of favorable opportunities and chances for you to achieve your goals, as well as to make more and faster progress than ever before.
The forces of progress affect everything you do. The speed of modernization increases every week, every month. The pace and range of change is something you cannot control and you will have to take for granted. The only thing you can do is decide whether you are going to be the "master of change" or the victim. Do you intend to become creator circumstances or their creation? Are you going to ride on the crest of the wave and stay in the forefront, or will you let the wave wash over you and flounder helplessly? One way or another, progress will still not bypass you, no matter what you do.
Learn from the experts
If you want to learn how to cook food, you study culinary arts. If you dream of becoming a lawyer, study the laws. If you hope to become an engineer or an architect, study engineering or architecture. And if you want to succeed financially, you study the lives of other people who are already rich: find out how they acted, and do the same, trying again and again until you achieve the same results.
Making money is skill, just like riding a bike or working on a computer. Therefore, anyone who wants to get rich can learn this. If you have ever harbored in your mind the pernicious idea that you cannot earn or save as much money as you want, then now is the time to get rid of this illusion. This is a false belief. It's time to make the decision to become financially independent.
Great law
The great Greek philosopher Aristotle around 350 B.C. e. first clearly formulated the basic principle of Western philosophy. This is Aristotle's principle of causality. Today we more often call it the law of cause and effect. It says that for every effort you make in your life, there is a specific reason; everything that happens has reason. Success is not an accident, and neither is failure. What happens to you is not determined by luck or coincidence - it is the result of an immutable law.
My path from unemployment and poverty to success and financial independence began when I began to study the lives of the most successful people in our society. My idea was simple: find out what they did to achieve so much, and then try to repeat the same thing myself. Why not reinvent the wheel? What I discovered changed my life. It will change yours too.
Millions of millionaires
When I began my research in the 1960s, there were 700,000 millionaires in the United States, mostly self-made, starting from scratch. By 1980, according to statistics, there were already 1,800,000 families and individuals with assets of more than one million dollars. Today, there are already more than 5,000,000 millionaires, that is, their number has increased by 277% in 22 years. And again, most of them became millionaires thanks to their own intelligence. Among them are men and women who started from very little or nothing at all, often went bankrupt or deeply indebted, but gradually managed to accumulate enough money to become financially independent.
"Homemade" millionaires come from different walks of life, they do not have the same level of education and training; everyone has their own difficulties, obstacles, obstacles and problems that need to be overcome.
There are young people and old people among them. Some are emigrants who have recently arrived in America and did not even know English; others come from families that have long lived in America. Some received excellent education in the best higher educational institutions; others dropped out of high school without finishing. Some are in excellent health, while others are wheelchair-bound, hard of hearing, blind, or otherwise physically handicapped.
Remember, no matter what challenges you face and shackle you, there are people, and there are thousands of them, who have faced much greater obstacles - such as you never dreamed of - but they overcame them and succeeded in spite of everything. And what others can do, you can too.
End of introductory segment.