Success |What is Success | Success Synonym about all information...part 3
Put People First
Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life begins.- Ben Stein
The people you know, and who know you in a favorable way, will do more to determine your success, happiness, and level of achievement in life than any other single factor. No one achieves anything of consequence by himself or herself.
In life, relationships are everything. My friend Charlie Jones says, ''You will be in five years what you are today except for the books you read and the people you meet.''
Dr. David McClelland, author of The Achieving Society (Van Nostrand, 1961), concluded after 25 years of research at Harvard that your choice of a ''reference group'' would have more to do with your success than anything else. McClelland interviewed graduates of the university, as well as those who had attended his intensive seminars on achievement in American life. He tracked these people for many years. Many of them took what they had learned and did wonderful things with it. They built profitable businesses and successful careers.
However, many of the graduates failed to turn the information and ideas they had learned into later success.Why not? When he went back and surveyed them, he found that invariably they had returned to the same group of people they had been associating with before they had taken the advanced courses on achievement. As a result, they went back to the same old ways, the same old habits, the same old customs and manners of living. Because they were immersed in their old reference groups, nothing changed for them.
Your reference group is defined as the people you consider yourself to be similar to. For example, if you belong to a particular church, the members of that church are part of your reference group.You consider yourself to be like them. If you belong to a political party, a bowling league, or a particular profession, people in those groups and organizations are parts of your reference group. You identify strongly with them.
Over time, through a process of absorption, you will adopt their attitudes, mannerisms, ways of speaking, levels of aspiration, and even their style of dress. Your reference group will exert an inordinate influence on the kind of person you become.You will adjust your goals, behaviors, and thoughts to be consistent with what you feel they will approve of.You see this with teenagers all the time.
All change in your outer world begins with a change in your inner world. Major changes in your inner world start happening when you change the people with whom you associate and identify.When you select a new reference group, or find yourself in a situation with different people, you unconsciously begin to change, almost in spite of yourself.
This change process works quite quickly. In my speaking and travels, I have worked with countless men and women all over the country and throughout the world who have taken this advice to heart. They have deliberately changed their reference groups. They have begun associating with different people in different organizations. Very soon, they began to think differently about themselves, and their outer worlds begin to change.
The Law of Correspondence says that your outer world is a mirror of your inner world. It says in the Bible, ''As a man thinketh, so is he.''This means that as you see yourself and think about yourself in your conscious mind, your perception of outer world changes and conforms to fit a picture consistent with it. This is the central message of this book.
The most influential factors in your thinking and feeling will almost always be the other people in your life. Successful people are those who form the habit of associating with other positive, successoriented people. Unsuccessful people, by default, end up associating with people who are not going anywhere with their lives. Both sets of people become more and more like the people with whom they most identify.
If you really want to change your thinking and your life, make a decision today to begin associating, in every area of your life, with other men and women whom you admire, respect, and look up to. Resolve to associate with people whom you enjoy and from whom you can learn.Work and socialize only with the kind of people that you want your children to be like when they grow up.When you set these kinds of standards for your interpersonal relationships, your whole life will begin to improve almost immediately.
Your network is composed of the number of people you know, both directly and indirectly. These are people over whom you can exert some influence and who can in turn exert some influence over you.
The most successful people in our society, at every level, are those who know the greatest number of other successful people. They organize their lives to meet these successful people by deliberate design, not by accident. And so can you.
Many men and women, over time, move from one city to another, or from one field or industry to another. They start off with few contacts, yet in no time at all, they become some of the bestknown and most respected people in their new field.Why does this happen? It is because they apply the principles of creative networking to their new lives.
They immediately begin to form new, positive reference groups. They put into action a plan to develop as many good, high-quality relationships as possible within the shortest period of time.
Here is a great exercise for you. Over the course of the next six months to a year, make a list in a notebook of the 100 most important people in your community. As you gather these names from the newspapers, from conversations, from news broadcasts, and from your work as you move around, begin to think of how you could get to meet and know these people. Remember, the more people you know and who know and think about you in a positive way, the more successful you will be in every area of your life.
Once you have your list of 100 people, you should add to it regularly. Begin to network systematically with these people. Once you have a name, think of how you could communicate with that person. The simplest way of all is to write a letter expressing your opinion on something that the individual is involved in, or simply expressing your congratulations on the person's success for something recently achieved.
Be patient when you start to expand your circle of contacts. Don't expect the person you wrote to call you back or to come in your door to meet with you.You are in the business of sowing seeds. Sometime down the road, you may see that the person has done something else and you can write another letter. Over time, these little efforts will begin to bear fruit.
I write letters continually to people that I meet throughout the country. I always send a copy of a poem, sometimes a book, sometimes an audio program or something that I feel the other person would enjoy. I have done this over the years for hundreds and perhaps thousands of people. Now, wherever I go, people come up to me and remind me that I wrote to them and sent them something, often years ago.
A couple of years ago, I was in Washington, D.C., at a high-level conference, and a senior person from one of the largest organizations in the nation's capital came up to me and reminded me that I had written to him and sent him something five years before. He still remembered. After this meeting, over time, I got to know him very well. He has now introduced me to a variety of other powerful people. These new relationships have turned out to be very enjoyable and productive for me. They all started with me sitting down and writing a friendly letter.
Fully 85 percent of the best jobs in the United States are filled through contacts, rather than through want ads or recruitment agencies. Someone has the need for a particular job to be filled and lets it be known within a network. The word goes out from person to person, and an individual who could never be found any other way often surfaces and is directed, as the result of personal connections, to a job for which the person is well suited.
Many people have found that by broadening their contacts whenever they got a chance, they have changed their work lives profoundly. When they did change careers, they just happened to know the right person who was in the right place to make the right introduction to get the right job that saved the individual years of hard work in reaching that same level of responsibility and income.
The major focus of networking developed by most high-achieving men and women and self-made millionaires is their regular involvement with groups, clubs, and associations that contain members who can be of assistance to them in their particular fields.
In my own experience, moving from one city to another, I found that by joining certain clubs and organizations and getting involved, I was able to develop more friendships and make more progress in a couple of years than many people had made in 10 or 20 years.
Make a decision, right now, to join one or two clubs or associations. The first association you should join should be the one for your profession or occupation. If you are in real estate, join the real estate board. If you are an entrepreneur, join an entrepreneurial association. If you are in sales, join a club like Sales and Marketing Executives International.
br /> When you join a professional association, don't make the mistake of merely attending the meetings and going home. This is what 80 to 90 percent of the members do. They may get some benefit from their membership with the organization, but nowhere near as much benefit as you can get by becoming more involved.
Here is your strategy. When you join a club or organization, get the membership book and look at the various committees. Ask around and find out which of the committees is the most active and important to the organization.
Sometimes it is the membership committee. Sometimes it is the government relations committee. Sometimes it is the education committee or the fund-raising committee. But whatever it is, find out what committee seems to have the greatest impact on the health and growth of the organization, and then volunteer to serve on that committee. There will almost always be an opening for someone willing to help.
When you attend meetings of that committee, develop the habit of raising your hand. Volunteer for assignments. Volunteer to write things.Volunteer to do work that needs to be done.
The rule is this: In every organization, fewer than 10 percent of the people do most of the work. On any committee, fewer than 20 percent of the people do more than 80 percent of the work on that committee.Your goal is to be among that top 10 to 20 percent.
The most important committees attract the best and most important people in the association. These are the kinds of people that you want as part of your reference group. These are the kinds of people that you want to form relationships with.These are the kinds of people whose names you want for your Rolodex, and who you want to be a part of your professional network.
One of the great advantages of serving voluntarily on a committee for your association is that you get an opportunity to perform in front of your peers, but without ever attempting to impress them or to get them to give you anything or do anything for you.
Every time you accept a responsibility and fulfill it completely, they make a silent note of it. They may not say anything aside from an occasional thanks or congratulations, but they are making mental notes, which will serve you in good stead later on.
If you have any fears about public speaking, you should make a plan, right now, to get over them.Your ability to make a presentation to a small group or to stand up and give a talk or chair a meeting for a larger group can do more to bring you to the attention of people who can help you than almost any other thing you can do.
Fortunately, public speaking is a skill you can learn with practice. I have urged people over the years to take a Dale Carnegie course or to join Toastmasters International. They are both open to everyone and available everywhere.
When you sign up or join one of these fine organizations, leaders will train you thoroughly in how to speak on your feet. They will teach you how to design a talk - with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They will show you how to speak in a variety of different situations. And the better you get at speaking, by the Law of Attraction, the more you will attract people and opportunities into your life to speak to more and larger groups.
Here's something very important that I learned. The great majority of people, being selfish, are always thinking of how they can personally and immediately gain from any interaction that they have with other people. But this is not for you. Instead, your job is to look for ways to put in.Your goal must be to look for ways to contribute.
This seems to be the strategy used by many of the top people.Over the years, I have worked with many wealthy men and women. I will never forget a billionaire turning to me at the end of a meeting and privately asking me, ''Is there anything that I can do for you?'' Later, another man, worth more than $500 million, asked me the same question: ''Is there any way that I can help you?''
When I went to work for a man worth over $800 million, in our second or third meeting, he asked me if there was anything that he could do in his position to help me in my personal life. By that simple gesture, even though I could think of nothing, he earned my lifelong loyalty.
Over the years, I have observed that many of the most powerful men and women, at every level of society, got there by continually looking for ways to help other people.
Here is one of the greatest discoveries of the ages: The more you give of yourself without expectation of return, the more that will come to you from the most unexpected sources.
Most people think that if they do something good or helpful for a person or group, their rewards should come back directly from that person or group. But this is not the way the universe works. When you do something nice for someone else, you activate the law of attraction. Because it is a law, you never have to worry about your reward. As long as you continue to sow goodness, the universe will take care of the reaping.Your good will usually come to you from a completely unexpected source, and at a completely unexpected time. All you have to do is be sure that you are continually putting in. The getting out will take care of itself.
As a professional speaker, I work with groups and associations all over the country. Without fail, the best and most talented people in every association are the ones who attend almost every meeting. The top people are the ones who always take the time and make the sacrifice to be there. They are the ones who always sit on the committees and volunteer to help in any way possible.
And I have noticed an interesting phenomenon. Each year, one member of the association will be elected to be the national president. As the president, he or she will have to spend as much as half of his or her time traveling around the country voluntarily, without pay, on association business.
You would think that this would really cut into the person's ability to make a living. But it seems that exactly the opposite happens. All the association presidents I've spoken to found that they made more money, did better in their careers, and made more progress in their field in the year that they took off to work for the association than in any other year of their work lives.
The more you put in, without expectation of reward, the more you get back from the most unexpected sources. And you are in complete control of what you put in. The universe will take care of the rest.
Harvey Mackay, in his audio program, How to Build a Network of Power Relationships, says that the most important word not in the dictionary (at that time) is the word ''Rolodex.'' He claims that, if your Rolodex is big enough, you are never more than two phone calls away from anyone in the country. Harvey Mackay has a Rolodex with more than four thousand names that he has gathered over the years. He has found that at least one of those people in his Rolodex has direct access to virtually any other person in the country with whom he wants to communicate, including the president of the United States.
Napoleon Hill, after decades of studying the richest men in America, concluded that the formation of a mastermind network was an important step to great wealth. It was the creation or joining of a mastermind group that enabled countless men and women to go from poverty and obscurity to success and affluence.
The core of your personal network of contacts, even before you begin to go outside to join groups and organizations, should therefore be your mastermind network. This is a small group of four or five people with whom you meet and talk on a regular basis.
Getting together regularly, at least once per week or even more often, with other people who think like you do is the key to the success of a mastermind group. Don't worry about being self-serving in these relationships. Include in your mastermind only people you
You begin the formation of a mastermind group by approaching one or two people you like and admire, and who seem to have the same positive attitude you do. They may be in your field or in another field. They may be younger or older than you, of the same gender or not. It doesn't really matter as long as you have good chemistry.
The most important qualifications are that they have positive mental attitudes and are generally optimistic about themselves and their lives. They should have goals of their own that they are working on each day. They should be open-minded and curious. They should believe in personal development, and already read books, listen to audio programs, and attend courses and seminars.
When you get together with members of your mastermind group, you can have an agenda, or no agenda.Your meetings can be structured or unstructured.You can talk about general subjects or specific topics.You may talk about your own business or about theirs. It doesn't matter. The very activity of spending time around other positive people energizes you, makes you more creative, and makes you feel more enthusiastic toward whatever you are doing.
An important element of your mastermind group is the amount of laughter that you experience together. This is the key measure of the quality of any of your relationships. People who laugh a lot together like each other more.They are usually more helpful and supportive of each other. The people you enjoy the most in life will always be the people with whom you laugh and joke the most.
The most important mastermind group that you ever form is with your spouse or partner. A husband and wife together, or a couple, can be the most powerful mastermind of all. When two people are completely attuned to each other, and completely supportive of each other's hopes and dreams, they form a powerful combination that enables each of them to accomplish far more than either could achieve alone.
People who are in an excellent relationship with a person they describe as their best friend are some of the happiest, most successful, and most fulfilled people in our society. Two people together can create wonderful things for both of them.
You can have more than one mastermind network. Some people will have a mastermind network in their families. Others will have mastermind alliances with people who participate in the same hobbies or sports. You should definitely have a mastermind network that is specifically focused on your work or career. You can even have interlocking mastermind groups with people who are involved with you in more than one area.
The more you interact with other positive people, the more positive and productive you will be. Constantly talking with and sharing your ideas and experiences with others will give you a steady flow of ideas and insights from their experiences, and help you keep a healthy perspective on what you are doing.
Your most valuable asset is your time, and relationships with people are enormously time-consuming. The number of high-quality relationships you can form and maintain is limited. There are simply not enough hours in the day or enough days in the month.You must be selective about the people with whom you associate. You must choose them carefully.
Baron de Rothschild, in his Maxims for Success, said, ''Make no useless acquaintances.''
This may sound a bit cold, but remember, your life is precious, and your life is made up of the minutes and hours of each day.You cannot afford to squander it on relationships with people whom you cannot help, and who cannot help you, to live and enjoy a better life. You must guard your time carefully. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, ''Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.''
Many highly successful people are often described as ''loners.'' However, this does not mean ''a-loners.''They are not isolated, antisocial individuals. They are loners in that they are highly selective about who they spend time with. They do not drink coffee with whoever is sitting there, or go out for lunch with whoever happens to be walking out the door at the same time. They carefully build and maintain high-quality relationships, and they fastidiously avoid negative people who might hold them back.
If associating with positive people is a key to success, then the flip side is for you to get away and keep away from negative or ''toxic'' people. Negative people are the primary source of most unhappiness. Problems with such people are most likely your major sources of stress and frustration. Negative people do more to diminish your joy in life than any other single factor.
It's much easier to bounce back from financial loss or reverses in your career than it is to deal with negative people in your work or personal life. One major negative relationship can be enough to cut off all your chances of achieving your full potential in your career. Choose your relationships with care.
Most successful people have mentors at different stages of their lives. A person whom you know and who knows you and helps you on a regular basis often determines your success in life. The right mentor at the right time can save you from countless mistakes and years of hard work.
At each stage of your life you can benefit from the advice and experience of someone who is further along the path than you.The men who have been there to give me guidance and advice as I have grown up and gone into business at various levels have affected my life dramatically. This type of relationship can have a major impact on your success as well.
Many people are a little bit fuzzy about exactly how mentoring relationships work. A mentor is like an uncle. He or she is an older friend, someone wiser and more experienced than you, who will give you guidance and advice from time to time. A mentor can help you avoid pitfalls that might sidetrack your career or hold you back.
As it happens, the best potential mentors are successful people who are already very busy. Approaching one of them requires strategy and planning. Here is what you do.
When you decide that you would like a particular person to be your mentor in a particular area, you should contact that person with a specific question or need. Most successful people are open to helping other people who want to be successful as well, but they are busy. They don't have a lot of time. You should not ask for more than 10 minutes.
The best way to approach a prospective mentor for the first time is with a short list of key questions for which you need answers to help you to make current decisions in your life and your career. Do not approach a mentor asking personal questions about his or her life and experiences. Busy people are not interested in sharing their innermost experiences and feelings with someone they have never met before.
In your first meeting, by asking a few specific questions, you are testing the waters.What you are looking for is a certain form of chemistry. You are looking for a person you like and respect and feel comfortable with, and who likes you and will be willing to help you in the future.
For this reason, you must go slowly at first. You must ask for only a few minutes, and then you must get on with your business. You must ask for specific advice about a specific situation. Be respectful, friendly, and businesslike.
Here is the key to developing the mentor/mentee relationship. When you are given advice, follow it. Don't ask for specific advice and do nothing with it, and then attempt to come back for even more advice. This just demonstrates to the prospective mentor that you are wasting his or her time.
Instead, if the person suggests that you take a particular action, do it immediately. If the mentor suggests that you read a book, get it and read it. If he suggests that you listen to an audio program, get it and listen to it. If she suggests that you take a particular course, sign up for it and attend.
Many people contact me and ask me to be a mentor to them, not only from throughout the United States and Canada but from foreign countries as well. Aside from the fact that I am extremely busy, I respectfully decline all invitations because of the particular approach that they usually take. They call up or write and want me to take complete charge of their lives. They want me to spend many hours of my time guiding, counseling, and directing them, and helping them in their jobs or careers.
The fact is that a prospective mentor is usually very busy and cannot even consider the possibility of spending large blocks of time with a complete stranger.
However, if you go slowly and you follow the advice given to you by a mentor, the individual may conclude that investing time in you is worthwhile. He or she will be willing to spend even more time with you to help you even further. Eventually, a very good relationship can develop.
You may have more than one mentor at the same time, and you may have sequential mentors.This means that as one mentor serves his or her purpose in guiding you, and you evolve and grow in your career, it will often be time to move on to another mentor who is even further along than your first mentor.
The natural tendency in all relationships is toward entropy. Relationship entropy means that relationships run out of energy unless they are continually renewed. People stop doing the things that they had done earlier to establish the relationship in the first place. They work very hard to create the relationship, and then they take it for granted. They forget to communicate with the other person. They just assume that everything is going along fine and that no extra efforts are necessary to maintain the relationship. As it happens, men are more likely than women to let this happen.
But all relationships are a function of the time invested in them. You can only increase the value of a relationship by investing more time in it. This applies to a relationship with your spouse, relationships with your children, relationships with your staff members, and especially relationships with your friends and associates on a personal and professional level.
There is no alternative to personal time invested in building and maintaining a relationship.You must be alert to the danger of relationship entropy and be constantly working to counter it.
It is quite common in business for someone to work very hard to win a customer for the first time and to build the initial relationship. However, once the relationship is established, the businessperson begins to take the customer for granted and go off to work on new relationships that are not yet well established. Then, six months later, the businessperson is astonished to find that the customer has gone to a competitor.
As a businessperson, your customer relationships are some of the most important assets that you develop and maintain over the course of your career. Once you have invested the time and energy required to develop a customer relationship, it is essential that you develop a plan for relationship maintenance. You make sure that you are doing whatever is necessary to keep that relationship alive and growing.
There are several principles that apply to building and maintaining relationships of all kinds. Perhaps the most important is the Law of Indirect Effort. This law says that you achieve things with people more indirectly than directly. Here are some examples of this principle.
If you want to have a friend, the direct way is by trying to get people to like you. This seldom works. The indirect way is to be a friend, to treat other people in a friendly way without expecting anything in return.
If you want to impress other people, the direct way is to tell them about your accomplishments and show them how clever you are. The indirect way, which is faster and more effective, is to be impressed by them. The more you show that you are impressed by someone, the more they will find you to be an impressive person.
The indirect way of getting people to like you is for you to like them first. The way to get people to admire and respect you is for you to admire and respect them in advance.
The Law of Compensation seems to apply directly to relationships. This law says that you get out what you put in, and the more you put in, the more you get out. The more things that you do for other people, the more things other people will want to do for you.When you offer to help or serve others, they will want to help or serve you. What goes around comes around.Whatever you sow you will eventually reap.
We have entered into the era of the ''go-giver'' rather than just the go-getter. Each person has a deep desire to reciprocate in his or her relations with others.We want to even things up when anything nice has been done for us.We want to pay people back for any kindnesses or favors. We don't want to feel that we are obligated to another. Nowhere is this principle more important than in relationships.
There are many people who think that the key to success is to get around other successful people and then to exploit this relationship. This strategy seldom works. It is much better for you to become the kind of person that other people want to be around.When you go to work on yourself and become a better person, better people will want to associate with you. This is the indirect way.
Sometimes people say they want to marry a rich person. If you want to marry a rich person, by the law of indirect effort you had better get busy working on yourself to become the kind of man or woman that a rich person would want to marry. You should become very good at what you do, and develop the manners of an excellent person. Improvement of your life and prospects on the outside begins with your getting better on the inside.
There have been many studies of social climbers, people who have joined clubs and organizations in an attempt to associate with other successful people. Invariably they fail.Why? Because like attracts like. People are naturally attracted to people who are at the same level that they are. If you have not developed yourself to achieve a certain level of accomplishment in your field, you cannot take a shortcut and begin associating with people at that new higher level.They will not be interested in you, and you will only end up looking and feeling foolish.
Keep it foremost in your mind that relationships are everything. Your job is to become a relationship-creating individual.You should look for every way possible - in your personal reference groups, in your mastermind networks, in your clubs and associations, and with mentors - to form and maintain high-quality relationships.
Most successful men and women owe their success to the fact that, at an earlier time, they made the effort to establish and maintain a particular relationship that eventually paid off for them. Doors were opened and opportunities created that saved them years of hard work. And this can happen to you as well, if you use creative networking at every stage of your career.
When you know that your Rolodex contains hundreds of valuable names that you can call upon because you have already built a bridge with these people, it gives you a tremendous feeling of personal power and self-confidence.You begin to feel unstoppable.
ACTION EXERCISES
- Make a list of 10 people whom it would be helpful for you to know.Write each of them a letter congratulating them on something they have just done.
- Select three people with whom you can form a business/career type of mastermind group. Invite them to meet with you weekly for breakfast or lunch.
- Join at least one association that holds regular meetings in your community and begin attending every one.Volunteer to serve on one of the committees, and get involved.
- Examine each of the people with whom you regularly associate, in business or socially. Are these the right people for you to have as members of your reference group?
- Develop a personal development plan to prepare yourself to become the kind of person that you would like to meet and spend time with.Take control of your own future.
- Take a Dale Carnegie course in public speaking, or join a chapter of Toastmasters International. Learn to speak on your feet.
- Resist relationship entropy; keep in regular touch with the most important people in your personal and business life. Call or visit someone today.
CH-8-Think Like a Genius
Make every thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit. Make it work and produce for you. Think of things not as they are but as they might be. Don't merely dream - but create!- Maxwell Maltz
You are a potential genius.Your amazing brain has more than 18 billion cells, each one of which is connected to and interlinked with as many as 20,000 others. This means that the number of possible thoughts you can think is greater than all the molecules in the known universe.
You have the capacity to learn at incredible rates and to retain more information than you can even imagine. It is said that ''when an educated person dies, it is as if a library burned down.'' This potential library is contained between your ears.
Throughout human history, value has been contained in land, labor, capital, furniture, fixtures, machinery, and other hard assets. Wars and revolutions have been fought over their control. The primary creators of value were those people who could combine these various resources together to produce products and services for the marketplace.
In the twentieth century, however, we have seen change take place at a speed that is virtually unimaginable. In 1900, 50 percent of the American population lived on farms raising food for the other 50 percent who lived in towns and cities.Today, less than 3 percent of the population lives on farms, and they produce not only enough food for all Americans, but huge surpluses as well that are exported or even given away to the entire world.
We have moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age to the service age to the information age, and we are now entering the communications age. The primary source of value today is not land, labor, and other hard assets, but knowledge, information, and ideas.
The greatest wealth you could possibly possess is between your ears.You can create an unlimited future for yourself by tapping into your brainpower and channeling it, like a powerful current, to energize your life and get you anything you really want.
The richest American today, and perhaps the richest person in the world, is Bill Gates. The net worth of his company, Microsoft, is greater than the net worth of IBM, which has been in business many years longer. Microsoft is based entirely on brainpower. It creates wealth by making it easier to process information digitally within computers, and from computer to computer by telephone lines, wireless systems, and satellites.
If you own a company, your chief assets walk out the door every night at quitting time.Your building could burn to the ground, but as long as your people got out safely, you could walk across the street and start your business again. The chief assets of any organization, and of any individual, are contained in the ability to think and to apply that thinking to getting results that other people will pay for. The ability to create wealth is determined by mental strength rather than physical strength.
In generations past, it may have taken many years for a person to accumulate enough capital to start and build a successful business in manufacturing or services. Today, such a large investment in physical assets can actually be a liability. A change in technology on the other side of the world can render a $100 million manufacturing plant obsolete in a few months.
But what you have between your ears can be invaluable. It is capable of countless applications and uses. It is completely portable. It is versatile. It is flexible, and can be increased almost without limits, if you learn how.
An immigrant could arrive at a U.S. airport with the ability to create a billion-dollar industry in his head. He could walk up to customs; open his hands and say, ''Nothing to declare;'' and walk on through. His assets are all in his knowledge and skill. Many of the most successful and respected entrepreneurs and businesspeople in America arrived this way.
The primary source of value today is knowledge. Since there is no limit to the amount of knowledge you can acquire, there is no limit to the amount of value that you can create.You can start from wherever you are, no matter what your background, and begin to increase your mental assets. You can start work today on improving your ability to perform and get results for which others will pay.
The wonderful thing about knowledge is that it can be reproduced hundreds of thousands, even millions of times without losing its value. It is the one commodity that can actually be infinite in its application. If you or someone else comes up with a new idea to do something faster or better, that idea can be spread around the world in no time at all, and be in the hands of millions of other people who can also use it to improve their lives and work. And you have lost nothing. The idea still has its original value to you. This is absolutely incredible.
Today, our banking and financial industries are struggling to make the shift to knowledge as an asset. Banks, for example, will lend money today only against hard assets, things that can be seized as collateral and sold to repay the loan. However, the real assets of a company are not the tangible items at all. They are the thinking ability of the people who work there. They are contained in the combined brainpower of teams of experts working together to solve problems, create innovations, and produce goods and services for the competitive marketplace.
Your ability to utilize your brainpower and unlock your creative abilities is absolutely essential to your success. Today, we know more about how you can become smarter than we ever have before.
Often small improvements in the way you think and perform can lead to significant improvements in your performance. It is not necessary for you to attend university and get years of education to bring your knowledge up to the level where it can pay off for you. Sometimes very small changes in what you are doing right now, right where you are, can bring about amazing results.
Here's an example. If a horse runs in a horse race and wins by a nose, it earns 10 times the prize money of a horse that comes in second. Does this mean that the horse that comes in first is 10 times faster? Is it twice as fast? Ten percent faster? No, the horse that wins is only a nose faster.
By the same token, your possession of one small piece of information at the right time and in the right place can enable you to make an extraordinary difference in a particular situation. Often a single idea or insight can change your whole life or career.
The most successful people today are those who are continually investing in learning and expanding their intellectual asset base.They are wide open to new ideas and new approaches. A major mistake made by many people, especially those who have graduated from a university, is that they conclude that everything they know at the moment is all that there is to know about a particular subject.Sometimes they think that what they know is all they need to know about a subject as well.
This is called the ''intelligence trap'' of the poor performer, the unconscious incompetent. This is a person who does not know, and does not know that he does not know. This person cannot be helped, because he is closed to new information.This is why the beginning of all wisdom is often the awareness of how ignorant you really are, of how little you really know.
I have traveled in many countries and met countless highly intelligent and successful people. I have spoken with many millionaires, multimillionaires, and even billionaires. I have worked at the highest level of government with some of the smartest men and women who have ever lived. And the one thing that these people seem to have in common is that they never become impressed by their own intelligence. In fact, the smarter they get, the humbler they become and the less they look upon themselves as experts in any way.
Over 700 years ago, Roger Bacon of England was considered to be the last universal man. He was thought to be current with all the knowledge and science of the day. He, in his day, knew almost everything there was to know about everything that was taught academically.
Of course, at that time, the amount of available knowledge was limited. There were very few books. There were fewer scientists, philosophers, and researchers writing and teaching.
Today, however, it is impossible for one person to know everything about even one small subject. Just look at modern medicine. There are great minds who spend their entire lives studying the workings of the inner ear or the trachea or one of the other organs of the body. And even though these highly intelligent and dedicated professionals spend their whole careers specializing in a particular part of the body, they never learn everything there is to know about even that one organ.
Sometimes I ask audiences, ''Is there anyone here who is a know-it-all?'' Of course, no one raises his or her hand. Then I go on to explain what I mean by a know-it-all.
A know-it-all is a person who feels that he knows everything that he needs to know about a subject. How can you tell if you have become a know-it-all? It is easy. You have stopped learning and growing in your area of specialization.You have stopped reading, listening to audio programs, and taking additional courses.
The very fact that you fail to regularly seek out new knowledge in your field means that you have unconsciously, accidentally, slipped into the intelligence trap of the low performer.You have unwittingly become a know-it-all by the very act of not continuing to learn and grow.
After giving an advanced test to a graduate class of physics students at Princeton University, Albert Einstein was on the way back to his office when one of his graduate assistants asked the famous professor, ''Dr. Einstein, wasn't that the same exam that you gave to this physics class last year?''
Dr. Einstein nodded and said, ''Yes, it was the same exam as last year.''
The graduate assistant summoned up his courage to ask the great Nobel prizewinning physicist, ''But, Dr. Einstein, how could you give the same test two years in a row?''
''Because,'' Einstein replied, ''in the last year, the answers have changed.''
In the same way, your answers are changing today at a more rapid rate than ever before. The answers in your field are changing as you sit there. What was true a year ago may not be true today, and what is true today may not be true a year from now. The only way that you can be assured of staying on top of your field is by continually taking in new ideas and knowledge to compare it with what you know today.
Peter Drucker, in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Harper- Business, 1985), writes that the greatest business breakthroughs take place as the result of ''either the unexpected success or the unexpected failure.''
He explains that when something unusual or unexpected happens in any field, the average person dismisses it as a random event or as an accident. The superior person, however, studies each unexpected result as if it were a sign of an underlying trend or an indication of a fundamental change in the nature of things.
When an experiment in growing bacteria failed because a mold had blown across the laboratory and landed on the petri dish, killing the bacteria, the lab assistants were about to throw it out. However, a bacteriologist, Alexander Fleming, became curious about a mold that was so powerful that it could kill such strong bacteria. His research led to the discovery and development of penicillin, which saved millions of lives in World War II and won him both a knighthood and the Nobel prize.
In 1975, IBM commissioned consultants to study the market potential of the personal computer. They came back with the conclusion that the market for personal computers was only a few hundred in the entire world, at best. Based on this information, IBM decided to concentrate its efforts on mainframes, where it was already the world leader, and ignore the personal computer market, leaving it to a little upstart company in Cupertino, California, called Apple Computer.
When the Apple computers hit the market and began to sell by the hundreds, and then thousands, IBM got smart fast. IBM did an about-face and decided to plunge into the small computer business. And the company did. IBM came out with a PC that within four years captured more than 50 percent of the world market for smaller computers.
But IBM failed to notice that a major trend to smaller computers had taken place. Ignoring its initial success in PCs, IBM continued to concentrate on the development and sale of mainframes. While IBM's attention was focused on mainframes, more and more competitors rushed into the personal computer field, and eventually IBM was displaced as the world leader.
IBM failed to see that its success in capturing 50 percent of the personal computer market was indicative of a sweeping trend in computers that would change the entire world. Today IBM is scrambling to catch up, competing with companies like Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, Toshiba, and others. Because IBM missed the trend, it is unlikely that it will ever recover its position
Keep your eyes open. There are more changes taking place all around you today than ever before. Any one of these changes may be indicative of a trend that could lead on to fortune and success for you.You must be open, awake, and alert to these changes. Nothing remains the same for very long. All your best opportunities will come from applying your knowledge and brainpower to new products and new services in the future.
All you need to start a fortune is an idea that is 10 percent new. All you need is a product or service innovation that is a little better, faster, or cheaper than something else, and you can quickly move to the front of the line.
Many of the great fortunes being made today in the United States and throughout the world are being created by people who started with nothing. One day, they came up with a breakthrough idea that revolutionized or transformed their industry.What could it be for you?
There are two major factors that stand in the way of you using more of your natural intelligence. They are psychosclerosis and homeostasis. Psychosclerosis is another name for ''hardening of the attitudes.'' This is experienced by a particular type of person who is rigid, inflexible, and unchanging. This is the kind of person who develops fixed attitudes on a certain person or subject and then resists any attempt to change his mind. This is often called the mechanical way of thinking.You probably know people who suffer from it.
The opposite way of thinking is more open and flexible. This is called the adaptive worldview. Adaptive people keep their minds open to new information. They are curious and interested in new ideas and developments. They are more concerned with what's right than with who's right. They are willing to abandon an old idea if someone can come along and show them that a new idea has more merit. They are more concerned that the new idea works to solve a problem or achieve a goal than they are with being right themselves.
Geniuses have been studied extensively over the years. One of the most remarkable conclusions the experts have arrived at is that geniuses are not necessarily people with extraordinary high IQs.They are often ordinary people who use their intelligence in a superior way compared to average, or even smarter, people.What this means is that you can function at genius levels if you learn to think the way that geniuses do.
Geniuses seem to have three characteristics in common, each of which you can develop and make into a regular part of your thinking.
First, geniuses seem to have open minds. They are curious, questioning, flexible, and willing to consider a wide range of possibilities in dealing with a question or problem.This adaptive mind-set is like an open door that allows ideas to blow through from any direction, or source.This is the mind-set of the genius. And you can learn it by practicing it.
Second, geniuses seem to approach problems and decisions systematically. They don't throw themselves at a problem like a dog chasing a passing car. Instead, they approach every difficult situation by asking structured questions in a logical order, like solving a problem in math.
Third, geniuses approach problems with a series of questions. Geniuses first ask, ''What exactly is the problem?'' and ''Why is this a problem in the first place?'' They then ask, ''What would be an ideal solution to this problem?'' and ''What holds us back from achieving such a solution?''
They ask: Why does this situation exist? How did it happen? What caused it? Where and when did it first occur? Who is involved in it? What are the different ways that we could solve this problem? Of all the different ways, which solution seems to be the most acceptable, all things considered?
The very act of questioning opens your mind and expands your options. It increases your creativity and stimulates your imagination. Questioning enables you to think more effectively about the problem, and ultimately reach a better decision.
People with mechanical mind-sets tend to jump to conclusions.They see a problem and they immediately decide on a solution.When two events happen close together, they assume that one event is the reason for the second event. They confuse correlation with causation. Once they have made a decision, they look for evidence to confirm what they have already decided. Their egos quickly become involved, and they then become reluctant to change their minds.
There seems to be a direct relationship between the quantity of ideas and approaches you develop to solve a problem and your likelihood of coming up with the best idea that will solve the problem in the very best way. For this reason, you must discipline yourself to resist the temptation to jump to conclusions, or to rush to judgment. You must proceed more slowly, like a genius, and keep asking questions.You must keep your mind open.
If the truth were known, you are an idea-generating organism. Creativity is your birthright.You are a highly intelligent individual with a continuous flow of good ideas that you can use to accomplish goals and improve your life. In fact, even if you have not used your creativity for a long time, and most people have not, you can stir it up, like sugar that has sunk to the bottom of a cup of coffee, by stimulating your mind with methods that we will talk about in the next chapter.
There is a Law of Probabilities that applies to creative thinking and tapping into the powers of your mind. This law says that the more ideas that you are exposed to, the more likely it is that you will be exposed to the right idea, exactly when you need it.
The most successful people today are those who are constantly exposing themselves to new ideas from a variety of sources. Unsuccessful people, in contrast, are those who continue to recirculate the same tired old ideas with little imagination or creativity.
When you attend a seminar or a lecture given by an expert who is sharing some of the most current ideas in his or her field, you will often receive a bombardment of new insights that you can use to improve parts of your life. Many people's lives have been completely changed as the result of attending a single lecture given by a single intelligent person who gave them a single insight that was the key to their future.
Imagine what would happen if you attended courses, seminars, and lectures on a regular basis.You would be continually bombarding your mind with new ideas that would keep your mind alert and aware, and keep your creative juices flowing.
Creative people are constantly reading, not only in their own fields but in other fields as well. They read primarily nonfiction. They subscribe to a variety of magazines and newspapers. They are continually scanning through the tables of contents and through the critical articles.
Always read with a pen or highlighter in your hand. Even better, learn how to speed-read so that you can scan material at a thousand words a minute, or faster. Speed-reading is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that anyone can learn with a few hours of application. Forever after, you will be able to process more information than perhaps you ever imagined possible.
Effective people make a habit of associating with other positive, creative people. They are constantly sharing ideas and experiences, learning from each other. They cut clippings out of magazines and newsletters, and pass them on to their friends. They recommend books they have read and audio programs they have listened to. Their friends do the same for them. Sometimes one good idea that you get from someone else can change the direction of your life.
The second major factor that holds people back is homeostasis. This is defined as a ''striving for constancy.'' It is a deep desire to remain consistent with what you have done and said in the past. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay ''Self-Reliance,'' ''A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.''
He was referring to the natural tendency of individuals to try to remain consistent with previous opinions and behaviors. This form of rigidity blocks off almost all possibilities for growth in the future. To resist the tendency toward homeostasis, you should be willing to abandon your old ideas when someone can prove that there are newer, better ideas available.
One way to escape the mental trap of homeostasis is for you to be willing to admit that you are wrong. The mark of the superior person, in a time of rapid change, is to always remain open to the possibility that one's most cherished ideas are incorrect. This takes tremendous courage and maturity. But it stimulates more ideas and insights.
According to the American Management Association, at least 70 percent of your decisions will turn out to be wrong in the fullness of time. This 70 percent figure is an average. Some people will be wrong even more often. But you can assume, as a rule of thumb, that 7 out of 10 decisions that you make regarding your life and work will turn out to be wrong in the long run.
Here is a question for you. If 70 percent of the decisions that managers and executives make turn out to be wrong, how can the world continue to function? The answer is simple. Superior people - those who rise to the top of any organization - are those who are willing to cut their losses. They are willing to admit quickly that they have made a mistake and rectify the situation rather than persisting until it gets worse.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people fall in love with their past decisions, and once having made them, they are reluctant to give them up, even if all the evidence is against them. Don't let this happen to you. Instead, resolve to be the very first to recognize that a decision that you have made or conclusion that you have come to has been invalidated or disproven by new information. Be prepared to drop the old decision and embrace a new solution or new way of doing things.
According to the Menninger Institute, the most important quality that you will need to be successful in the twenty-first century is the quality of flexibility, especially in the way you think. Flexibility refers to your willingness to change and try new things. It especially means that you have the ability to continually abandon old, outmoded ideas in favor of new, more effective ideas.
Many people spend much of their time arguing, rationalizing, and justifying their behaviors. They are determined to continue doing things the same old way even when it is perfectly clear that the old way no longer works.The way to avoid this tendency is to remain flexible, especially when you are most convinced that you are right.
One of the great turning points in my life came when, as a young man in my early twenties, I discovered the miracle of personal development. My life has never been the same. I learned that through personal development you can indeed pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. I learned that, by learning what you need to learn to achieve the goals you have set for yourself, there are virtually no limits on what you can do, have, or be.
The truth is that the future belongs to the competent.You could lose all of your money tomorrow, but as long as you still had your ability to think and reason, you could make it all back and more besides. The future belongs to those who are better informed. The future belongs not to those who have more versus those who have less, but to those who know more versus those who know less.
Knowledge and information in your field are doubling every two or three years. Whatever information base you have is rapidly becoming obsolete. You must be in the process of continually taking in new information and ideas just to stay even.
Fortunately, there is a simple, three-part program that you can use to keep yourself ahead of the pack. I have used it and taught it to many thousands of people, and I have files full of letters from people whose entire lives have been changed as a result. The three keys to continuous personal and professional development are continuous reading, continuous listening to audio learning programs, and continuous training.
In order to stay on top of your job, you should read in your field at least one hour per day, underlining and taking good notes. Anything less than one hour per day will put you in danger of being passed by your competitors. My friend Jim Rohn advises, ''Work at least as hard on yourself as you do on your job.''
At the very least, you should get up every morning and read 30 to 60 minutes in something educational.Take careful notes. Review your notes on a regular basis. Reflect on what you have learned, and think about how you could apply the new ideas in your daily life.
Use your powers of visualization to imagine yourself using the new information in some way. This will dramatically increase the speed at which you learn and retain the new ideas, and increase the likelihood that you will use them at the first opportunity.
If you read just one hour per day, that will amount to about one book per week. One book per week will amount to about 50 books per year. Fifty books per year will total about 500 books over the next 10 years. At the very least, you will need a bigger house just to hold your books, and you will probably be able to afford it as well.
According to the American Booksellers Association, fully 70 percent of American adults have not visited a bookstore in the last five years. The average American reads less than one book per year; 58 percent of adult Americans never read another book from cover to cover after they leave high school.
Meanwhile, in the information age, if you are not reading continuously you are in serious danger of being made obsolete by the passage of time. However, if you read one hour per day, one book per week, you will be getting the equivalent of a Ph.D. in your field every year.You will become one of the smartest, best-informed, and most productive people in your business.
Some years ago, I had a good friend who read very little. He was not convinced that reading would make any difference to his life or income. He had gotten out of the habit of reading after he left school. He argued with me that reading wasn't that important. Meanwhile, he struggled to make a living. He was continually frustrated. He was continually losing business to his betterinformed competitors.
For almost three years, I kept at him, encouraging him to begin daily reading. Finally, he gave in and began to read each morning, just for a few minutes. He was amazed at how helpful the reading was, and how much more knowledgeable he was when he spoke to his clients.
He soon began reading, as I had recommended, an hour per day, one book per week. Within a year, his income had doubled. After two years, his income doubled again. Today he is one of the highest-paid people in his field. And he is proud to tell me every time I see him that he very seldom meets a client who is as well in formed as he is about their business. And the more he reads, the more competent and confident he becomes.
The rule is that to earn more, you must learn more.You cannot move ahead in your field further or faster than you are doing today except to the degree to which you learn and practice something new.
The second part of your personal and professional development program consists of audio learning programs. If you travel in your work, you spend between five hundred and one thousand hours per year in your car. If you turn this driving time into learning time, you will get the equivalent of three to six months of 40-hour weeks of additional education, just driving from place to place. I have met countless people who have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled their incomes by the simple act of listening to audio learning programs as they drive around.
The third key to continuous learning, and to unlocking your mental potential, is for you to take all the training you can get. If a training program is offered in the public arena, it has already been proven to be highly effective. The person presenting the program has probably acquired many years of experience, and may have spent hundreds of hours assembling the program that you can take in a half or a full day.You can sometimes save yourself weeks, months, and even years of hard work by attending a seminar given by an expert who explains to you state-of-the-art ways to get your job done faster and easier.
When you combine these three: regular reading, regular listening to audio learning programs, and regular and continuous training, you have a dynamite combination that can propel you forward at a greater speed than you ever could without them.
As mentioned earlier, Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power. This is only partially true. In fact, only knowledge that can be applied to practical purposes for someone else is actually power. The libraries are full of knowledge that does no one any good.
To change your thinking in a positive and constructive way, you must continually feed your mind with new ideas.You must stay current with your field.You must regularly associate with other leading people in your area of specialization.You must be continually looking for ways to do your work better, faster, cheaper, and easier.You must be continually seeking ways to serve your clients and customers better.You must stay on the cutting edge of your field so that you are, and you continue to be, one of the most valuable people in your business.
In the information age, knowledge is everything. And the amount of knowledge that you can gather and apply to your life is limited only by your own personal ambition. There are really no limits on what you can accomplish except for the limits you set for yourself.
The more you learn, the more you earn. The more knowledgeable you become about your field, the more courage and confidence you will have to implement your skills in your work. The more courage and confidence you develop, the higher will be your self-esteem and your sense of personal power.You will become virtually unstoppable in everything you do.
ACTION EXERCISES
- Begin today to create your own personal library of books in your field. Read 30 to 60 minutes each day, underline, and take careful notes.
- Examine your recent unexpected successes and failures in your business. Could they be indicative of a trend that you can take advantage of?
- Approach each problem in your life systematically. Imagine that the solution is exactly the opposite of what you are currently doing.
- Continually expose your mind to new ideas and viewpoints. Ask lots of questions. Consider the possibility that you could be wrong.
- Listen to educational audio programs in your car.Turn your car into a mobile classroom, a ''university on wheels.''
- Select an area where expertise can help you to move ahead in your career. Develop a plan to study and learn everything you possibly can in that area. Be the best at what you do.
- Associate only with positive, optimistic, creative, happy people who are going somewhere with their lives. Get around winners if you want to be one. ", " text/html