Success |What is Success | Success Synonym about all information...part 5
Create Your Own Future
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave and determined spirit.- Mark Twain
There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.
- Orison Swett Marden
Every successful person has experienced countless temporary setbacks, obstacles, and even outright defeats, in the course of his or her life. But it has been the ability to respond positively and constructively to these defeats and to bounce back that ultimately has assured success. This quality of bouncing rather than breaking will determine your success as well.
If you are a normal, intelligent person, you will organize each area of your life to avoid failure and disappointment as much as possible. You will think ahead and anticipate what could go wrong. You will then take the necessary precautions to guard against setbacks and problems.You will weigh and balance different options. You will select the course of action that offers the greatest likelihood of success.
Nonetheless, no matter how well you think and plan, things will not always turn out the way you expect. Murphy's Law says: ''Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Of all the things that can go wrong, the worst possible thing will go wrong at the worst possible time and cost the most amount of money.'' Cohen's Law then adds: ''Murphy was an optimist!''
Therefore, disappointment comes unbidden. Disappointment comes in spite of your best efforts to avoid it. Disappointment is inevitable and unavoidable. As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, you are going to experience disappointments in life. And the more goals you set and the more things you try, the more difficulties and problems you will have.
What Dr. Zaleznik discovered was that successful people respond to disappointment differently from unsuccessful people. His conclusion was that the way you deal with disappointment is an extremely good predictor of whether you will achieve success in your field, or in life overall.
Since you can't always avoid disappointment, no matter what you do, the only thing that matters is how you deal with the disappointment when it comes upon you, unwanted and unexpected. Do you let it overwhelm you? Do you blow up, become angry, and blame or attack other people? Or do you roll with the punches, and respond effectively?
Successful people deal with disappointment by taking it in stride. Unsuccessful people allow disappointment to stop them. Successful people recover and continue forward. Unsuccessful people often quit and go back. Motivational speaker Charlie Jones says, ''It's not how far you fall but how high you bounce that counts!''
Most negative emotions are triggered by frustrated expectations.You wish, hope, or plan for something to happen in a certain way, and when it doesn't, you react with impatience and anger. This is quite normal. If you care about a result, you are going to be hurt if you don't achieve it.
The challenge is that emotions are triggered instantaneously. For this reason, you can have very little control over your emotions and reactions at the moment that something happens to you. It is too late. When the disappointment occurs, you will react instinctively and habitually, depending on your previous experiences. When things go wrong, it is too late for you to think of fine and noble thoughts.You simply react.
Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, once wrote, ''Circumstances do not make the man; they only reveal him to himself,'' and to others, for that matter. It is not the adverse situation that builds your character so much as it reveals your character as it exists at that moment.
One of the best ways to change your thinking, and your life, is to prepare for disappointment in advance. Set yourself up to bounce back quickly by practicing mental prepreparation.
Mental prepreparation enables you to prepare internally for the inevitable disappointments of life and work, even though you do not know what they are or when they will come. This is one of the most powerful of all thinking techniques that you can use to gain and keep control of your emotions, assuring that they are primarily positive and constructive, no matter what happens.
In mental prepreparation, you begin with the premise that you are going to face all kinds of problems and difficulties when you decide to accomplish anything worthwhile in life. In fact, if you set a big, challenging goal for yourself, one that forces you out of your comfort zone, you are going to meet with countless obstacles and difficulties that you cannot now imagine.
This trial by endurance seems to go with the territory. Every time you try to be or do something more or different, problems of all kinds will arise in your path. If you are not prepared in advance, they can discourage you and drive you back into your comfort zone.
Instead of waiting for the inevitable problems to occur, you mentally prepare for these inevitable difficulties before they happen. You say to yourself: ''Today I will face all kinds of ups and downs, difficulties and setbacks, but I will not let them get me down. Once I start toward my goal, I will be unstoppable!''
In business consulting, we teach a way of thinking called ''crisis anticipation.'' I encourage decision makers to look six months to a year into the future and ask the question, ''What are some of the negative things that could happen that would derail our plans? Of all of them, what are the very worst things that could happen?''
We then make a list of all the different setbacks or unexpected emergencies that could occur that would threaten the enterprise. For example: A competitor could come out with a new product or service that was better and/or cheaper than ours. Interest rates could go up. Government could place new taxes and regulations on our activities. Costs of fuel or raw materials could increase. A key person or persons within the organization could depart for some reason. A key customer or customers could leave and go to a competitor. Competitors could cut their prices below costs in order to take business away. The economy could tip into recession and the overall market could shrink dramatically.
In each of these cases, the ability of the company to respond quickly and effectively could determine its very survival. These possible reversals and setbacks should be thought through in advance. The best rule is ''no surprises!''
Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands has one of the most complete forward planning processes of any company in the world. It has developed over 600 scenarios to deal with problems that might occur around the world in areas where it has oil and gas operations. As a result, the company is seldom surprised by anything that happens. It is never caught off guard. It always has a backup plan ready to go. It has also become one of the most continuously profitable and successful companies in the world. Thinking ahead really pays off.
What works for large and small corporations can work for you as well.You should practice crisis anticipation regularly in everything you do. Look down the road of your life, like a traveler, and imagine some of the negative things that might happen and how you could respond to them. You will be amazed at how much more positive and confident you will feel when you have already developed alternative courses of action to some of the worst things that could happen in a particular area.
For example, what would you do if you lost your job today? The idea of losing one's job is a major fear for most people, affecting 37 percent of the working population according to one study. I received a letter recently from a gentleman who told me that his fear of losing his job, which he recognized was completely irrational, was so great that it was paralyzing him. It was actually holding him back from doing the kind of work that he had to do in order to keep his job. His fear and his lack of alternatives were actually increasing the likelihood that he would be laid off.
Sometimes I ask people in my audiences, ''What is your next job going to be?'' For most people this question comes as a surprise. They have not even thought about what their next job is going to be. But we know that the world of work is changing at a rapid rate. The fact is that you have already changed jobs several times. It is virtually inevitable that you will change jobs again, and perhaps sooner than you expect.What is your next job likely to be?
When I explain that each person must be preparing for his or her next job, it is a new idea for most people. They either have not thought about it or don't want to think about it. But the only question is this: ''What level of knowledge, skills, and ability will you require at your next job in order to continue to earn the kind of money that you want to earn in the future?''
If you don't think about this question in advance, you may be forced to think about it when your time has run out and the question is forced upon you.
After audience members have thought about what their next job is going to be, I then ask the second question, ''What is your next career going to be?'' What entirely new field, industry, business, or line of work are you going to be in 5 to 10 years from now?
According to employment experts, a person starting work today will have an average of 14 or 15 full-time jobs, each lasting two years or more, over the course of a working lifetime. He or she will also have as many as five different careers, in completely different fields, each of which will require new kinds of knowledge and different skills.
Much of what you know about your current work will be obsolete within five years. Because of rapid changes taking place in every area, your existing store of knowledge, information, ideas, and skills will be of little value. These will have no relevance or application to the job market and the economy of the future.You will need new knowledge and skills if you want to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive society.
This is why Peter Drucker said, ''The only skill that will not become obsolete in the years ahead is the ability to learn new skills.''
You probably recall the famous comment by hockey star Wayne Gretzky. When he was asked by a reporter for the secret of his success on the ice, he replied by saying, ''Most players are pretty good, but they go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be.''
This observation is directly relevant to you. Where is your puck going to be three to five years from now? Where is your puck going to be 10 years from now? Taking a long-term perspective on your work life enables you to make better decisions in the short term. As strategic planner Michael Kami says, ''Those who do not think about the future cannot have one.''
Look into your future and begin to imagine and anticipate some of the twists and turns that might occur. If you lost your job today, how would you react? What would be your first thought? The great majority of people, when they think about losing their jobs, go into a form of panic.They have no idea what they would do.
However, in my work with many thousands of successful people, I have found that they have one particular attitude in common. They all know with complete assurance that if they lost their jobs they could walk across the street and get another job tomorrow. They are so good at what they do, and so confident in their abilities, that job loss to them would be merely an inconvenience. They have lots of options.
As I mentioned in Chapter 6, there is a way to determine how good you are in your field.What is the number of job offers you get on a regular basis? Just as a store or restaurant can measure its success by the number of customers or patrons it attracts, you can measure how valued and respected you are for what you do by counting the number of people who want to hire you and use your services. How are you doing?
Sometimes I ask audiences what they would do if their entire industry disappeared overnight. They shake their heads and they say that can't possibly happen. Then I point out that the defense industry in California literally collapsed in the early 1990s and over 400,000 highly competent defense engineers and executives, with many years of education and experience, were rendered obsolete. Their jobs were not only gone; they were gone forever. Each of these thousands of competent, capable men and women were forced into the position of going out into the marketplace, developing new skills, and going to work in entirely new fields.
The collapse of the dot-com mania wiped out more than 90 percent of the Internet jobs and companies that had sprung up across the country. The collapse in the telecom sector led to layoffs of many thousands of workers. The decline in recent years of the frantic investment activity that had been seen during the 1990s triggered the layoffs and firings of tens of thousands of people in the financial services industries. It goes on and on, and will continue. Only the names of the industries will change.This rapid shift in jobs and industries is going to happen more and more often to more and more people.
The world of finance and investments is constantly changing. The markets are increasingly volatile. The old philosophy of ''buy and hold'' is no longer relevant to the world of today, and tomorrow. If you have money invested, you should be thinking continually about what might happen if your investments went bad and you lost all your money.You should always be preparing against the worst possible outcome of a particular investment.
There is a direct relationship between how much time you invest in thinking about and planning your financial life and how likely you are to become financially independent. According to Dr. Thomas Stanley's interviews with thousands of self-made millionaires, they share a common characteristic: they spend far more time thinking about financial matters than the average person.
The average adult, even though he or she worries about money much of the time, spends only two to three hours per month actually thinking about his or her finances, usually at bill-paying time. The average affluent American, in contrast, spends 20 to 30 hours per month thinking about his or her money. As a result, they make far better spending decisions and more intelligent investments than the majority. They become increasingly skilled in money matters, and eventually pull ahead of their peers.
The French general Napoleon dominated the continent of Europe for almost 20 years. He led his armies to victory in dozens of battles, and lost only three battles in his entire career. He lost almost 600,000 men when he invaded Russia, failing to anticipate the cold of the Russian winter. Greatly weakened from the Russian campaign, he subsequently lost the battle of Leipzig, which led to his being exiled to the island of Elba. And finally, he lost at the battle of Waterloo due to a series of miscommunications with his field generals.
It is often forgotten that he won many other battles, small and large, and is considered to be one of the three greatest military geniuses of history. (Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were the other two.) Napoleon had developed a quality that helped him to achieve victory, which you also can develop. It is called extrapolatory thinking. This is the ability to think and plan several moves ahead in whatever you are doing. This way of thinking involves your considering every possible event that could occur, and then making provisions for them, well in advance.
Napoleon personally felt that his thoroughness and depth of preparation, carefully considering every detail, were his key to victory. This quality was demonstrated by his phenomenal ability to arrive onto the field of a potential battle and then to think through every single possible twist and turn of the battle to its logical conclusion - before the first shot was fired.
Once he had completed his preparations, he could take his position at his command center to direct the battle. No matter what news he received from any part of the battlefield, he was always ready with an immediate response. Many people thought that his quickness of response under fire was because he was a brilliant thinker, which he was, but that was not the secret of his success. His secret was that he had thought through every possible eventuality, in advance.
This ability, to think through every major situation in your life in advance, is a way of thinking that you can learn with practice.The better you become at anticipating future events based on current facts, the better your life will be.You will be able to minimize reversals and maximize opportunities. Thinking this way will give you an edge over others who simply react and respond to whatever happens.
If you work for a company, you should be thinking through the worst possible things that could happen in the next six months to a year that could affect your job and your security. If you own the company, you should identify the worst possible things that could affect the survival and health of your enterprise. You and your spouse should discuss possible problems and difficulties that might occur in your family life, and then make plans to guard against them.
You often read about people who failed to insure properly and consequently lost their cars, their homes, and sometimes all of their possessions. They failed to look into the future and ask what the consequences to their life would be if a fire occurred in their home or if they had a traffic accident and they were not sufficiently insured.
One of the smartest things that you can do to preserve your financial well-being is to develop a regular savings program.Your goal should be to save 10 percent and more of your income, off the top, each month, from each paycheck or income source. There are few things that will give a greater sense of confidence and control than for you to know that you have a cash reserve set aside in the event of an unexpected emergency. In contrast, there is nothing that will cause you more stress and tension than to be living on the edge of your financial resources, unable to deal with a financial emergency or a need of any kind.
W. Clement Stone once said, ''If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.''
Your ability to save money and to discipline yourself to live within your income is a key measure of your ability to succeed in life. If you do not have the internal self-control to refrain from spending everything you earn, this suggests that you probably don't have the discipline necessary to succeed in other areas of your life. Although the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, it is far more likely that the lack of money is the root of all evil.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of saving your money and building up a cash reserve is that it enables you to take advantage of opportunities when they arise, as they always do. In the movie Field of Dreams, a profound idea was expressed: ''If you build it, they will come.'' In the financial world, this means that if you accumulate money through hard work and saving, you will attract into your life opportunities to invest that money to earn even more.
The Law of Attraction is very powerful in monetary matters.When you save even a small amount of money and put it in a bank account or a carefully chosen mutual fund, you create a certain force field of energy around that money. This energy somehow begins to attract even more money into your life. As your savings and investments grow, the magnetic power of your money grows even stronger. The more money you accumulate, the more money that will be attracted to you, and the more opportunities you will have to accumulate even more.
When you think about your money and the pleasure it gives you to have money in the bank, you increase the energy field around your money and you attract even more. This force field becomes even more powerful when you love your money. When you think about your growing financial reserves with intense happiness, you intensify the energy around your money and you attract even more.
When people say that it takes money to make money, they are right in two special ways. First, your ability to save money and build up a nest egg is a measure of whether you have the ability to earn even more money and whether you can be trusted with money. Second, when you put together even a small amount of money, you will attract opportunities to accumulate an even larger amount.
A participant came up to me at a seminar recently and asked if I remembered him. I told him that unfortunately I spoke to too many people each year to remember all of them. He reminded me that he had attended my two-day seminar about six years before. He was quite shy so he waited at the lunch break until everyone had left. He then told me about a most remarkable series of events that had happened to him since the seminar.
When he came to my seminar, he was a used car salesman. He had two children and was in his early thirties. He was earning an average income and was up to his neck in debt. He was living in a rented house with his family.
At the seminar, he decided that his biggest source of worry was the fact that he was in debt and had no money in the bank. So he set a goal to get out of debt and to save $30,000 over the next five years. This was a huge goal for him, considering his circumstances and his past. He had not been out of debt since his teens.
Nonetheless, in faith, he wrote down his goal, made a plan, and began working on it every day.This decision activated his mental powers. Because of the Law of Correspondence, the Law of Attraction, and the Law of Subconscious Activity, among others, things began to change for him far faster than he had imagined. He actually achieved his financial goal in only three years. He was out of debt and had $30,000 in the bank.
One day, his boss, the owner of the dealership, called him in and asked him if he was interested in a business opportunity. He was quite flattered and asked his boss to explain. His boss said that he had observed how much better he had become as a salesman, and he had also heard that he had saved up some money from his income.
This salesman was shy and cautious, and asked his boss what he had in mind. His boss told him that he had been approached by the automobile manufacturer in Detroit and asked to recommend someone who would be interested in opening a new car dealership in the same city in a growing part of town. The boss said he was willing to recommend him, and back him in this dealership. He would go in with him as a full partner if he were willing to put in his money as well.
The final outcome of this story was that his boss helped him set up the new dealership; he helped him with all the purchasing, inventory, parts, service department decisions, and staffing. After two years, his boss sold the half share back to him, so he ended up owning the dealership 100 percent.
Then he said to me, ''And today, I'm a millionaire.'' He said, ''Six years ago I was a used car salesman, and today I am a millionaire.'' He was one of the happiest people I've ever met. He said if he had not taken that advice from the seminar and begun saving his money and getting out of debt, he would not have been in a position to take advantage of that opportunity when it came along. He said, ''Taking your seminar probably saved me 20 years of hard work, and maybe even a lifetime.''
This story applies to your life as well. One of the most important actions that you can take to remain positive and optimistic is to prepare mentally, financially, and physically in advance. Think through what might possibly happen and make plans to prepare for opportunities. Make plans and put aside reserves to minimize or escape the consequences of a financial setback. This way of thinking, of planning ahead in every area, is a mark of the superior individual.
Here are two questions that you can ask to turn failure into success. I call these the magic questions because of the incredible power they have to improve your life.You can ask them and benefit from them after every experience.
The first question is, ''What did I do right?'' No matter what you do, or how it turns out, whether it is a success or a failure, you should do an instant mental replay of the event and assess everything that you did right in that situation.
Even if it turns out badly, or was a complete failure, there were always things that you did that were correct. If you can isolate the positive parts of your performance and write them down, you will be preprogramming your mind to repeat the things that you did right in the next similar situation.
The second magic question is, ''What would I do differently?'' This is an excellent question because it forces you to think positively about what happened and how you could do better. Ask yourself, if you had to do it over again, how would you change or improve your performance or behavior in that situation? What would you do more of or less of?
Be sure to write down your answers. This ensures that you capture them before you forget. Each time you try something new or different, immediately sit down with a pad of paper and answer those two questions: ''What did I do right?'' and ''What would I do differently?'' Both of these questions are positive and they both require positive responses.Your answers prepare you, consciously and unconsciously, to do even better next time. Both sets of answers keep you focused on improvement rather than regret.
Both winners and losers examine how they performed after an important event. But underachievers almost invariably rehash the mistakes they have made, the expenses they have incurred, and the failures they have experienced. High achievers, in contrast, those who think positively about themselves and their lives, are constantly reviewing the best parts of their performance and making plans to repeat those actions the next time.
When you think about what you did right and what you could do differently next time, your mind will be completely positive.Your creativity will be stimulated.You will see all kinds of opportunities and possibilities for improvement that you would have missed completely if you allowed yourself to feel sorry for yourself after an unsuccessful event.
If you are in business, you should ask these questions regularly of yourself and your key staff: ''What did we do right?'' and ''What would we do differently next time?'' Remember, most things you try will be unsuccessful the first few times. By asking these questions, you extract the greatest value possible from the situation. Treat every experience as an opportunity to learn something that can help you next time.
If you are in sales, use this method after every sale. Immediately after a sales call, successful or not, ask the magic questions. This quick review will dramatically increase the speed at which you learn and grow as a sales professional.
Make this instant replay a part of your life. Use this method repeatedly so that it becomes automatic. No matter how disappointing the setback or difficulty may be, you will soon be preprogrammed to learn the most from the situation and to extract every kernel of good that you can possibly get from it.
When you combine this method with mindstorming - forcing yourself to generate 20 answers to each question - you will be absolutely astonished at the number of great ideas and insights for growth and improvement you will come up with. These ideas will dramatically increase the speed at which you become one of the best in your field.
Thomas Edison, the greatest inventor of the modern age, was convinced that experimentation was simply a process of elimination. He therefore kept accurate records of every experiment. Once he had decided that an invention was possible, he dedicated himself to eliminating the ways that wouldn't work until the only method left standing was the one way that would work. As a result, he became the greatest inventor of the modern age and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country.You should do the same.
From now on, each time you try and fail, shrug it off as a learning experience that just moved you one step closer to success. As Henry Ford once said, ''Failure is merely an opportunity to more intelligently begin again.''
When you experience a disappointment of any kind, your natural reaction is to feel stunned emotionally.You feel as though you have been punched in your emotional solar plexus. You feel hurt, let down, disappointed, and discouraged. You occasionally feel like quitting altogether and doing something completely different. These feelings are normal and natural when you experience frustration or failure of any kind. The only question is, how long do they last?
When you go to a doctor or clinic for a complete medical exam, you will often be given a stress test. First, they will take your pulse at your resting heart rate.Then they will ask you to do some aerobic exercises to raise your heart rate. Once your heart rate is up to a particular point, they will measure it again. They will wait one, two, and five minutes after the exercise, and again take your pulse. The mark of how fit you are is how rapidly your heart returns to its resting pulse rate after exercise.
With your personality, it is the same. The mark of how mentally healthy you are can be measured by how quickly you recover after experiencing a disappointment. Of course, a setback or reversal will hurt. It always hurts if what you are trying to do is important to you. But that's not the main point. The main point is how quickly you bounce back.Your recovery rate is everything. If you plan in advance for setbacks and problems, and preprogram your mind the way we have described in this chapter, your recovery rate will be much faster.
Your recovery rate is under your control. It is completely determined by the way you think about what happens to you. It is not the event itself that affects you, but rather the way that you interpret the event to yourself. And this is very much a choice you make.
Here are several powerful affirmations that you can use to take immediate mental and emotional control over a negative situation. These words quickly neutralize any negative feelings you might have.
The first thing you say when something goes wrong is the words: ''I am responsible!''
Your natural tendency when something goes wrong will be to become angry and upset and either blame someone or something else or make excuses. But the moment you say, ''I am responsible!'' you stop blaming someone else for the problem. By accepting responsibility, even if it is only for the way you react, you short-circuit your feelings of disappointment, anger, and frustration. The instant you say, ''I am responsible!'' your mind becomes calm and clear again.You begin to think of positive, constructive things you can do to minimize the damage or to maximize the opportunity.
Here is an affirmation that has been extraordinarily helpful to me over the years. No matter what has happened, and no matter how disappointed I am, I immediately say, ''Every experience is a positive experience if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.''
This statement enables you to assert control over your emotions. It forces you to think about how you can learn and grow from this problem. Like the statement ''I am responsible,'' these words give you a sense of control and personal power in any situation. ''Every situation is a positive situation if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.''
You then look into the situation and ask yourself what you can possibly learn from what has just happened. How can you grow as a result of this difficulty? What has this situation been sent to teach you? If you had a divine force that was controlling your destiny, and this force was sending you specific learning experiences to help you to be successful, what lessons could you find in your current problem?
Your mind can hold only one thought at a time, positive or negative. If you are constructively looking for a solution for or a valuable lesson from every difficulty, you can't be upset or angry at the same time. If you apply the Law of Substitution and deliberately force yourself to think about the positive aspects of the situation, you will always find them.You will then be able to turn them to your advantage.
A positive mental attitude, which means a positive and constructive response to disappointments and setbacks, is largely determined by your feeling a sense of control. Having a sense of control means that you feel you are in control of your own life.You feel that you are in charge.You feel that you are in the driver's seat.You feel that you are on top of things.
One of the most powerful ways to bounce back from failure is to put the negative situation into its proper perspective. Remember, failure is never final. Most mistakes that you make are small relative to the great scheme of things. If you think back, you will probably not even be able to remember what it was you were worrying about a year ago, much less three, four, or five years ago.
The key to your having a sense of control is for you to develop and maintain a clear sense of direction.This sense of direction comes from having clear, specific, written goals. One of the most powerful ways to keep your mind positive is to simply think about your goals. When something goes wrong, think about your goals.When you lose a sale, or even a job, think about your goals.When an investment fails or a business deal falls through, think about your goals.
Your long-term goals are to be financially independent, to enjoy excellent health, to have wonderful relationships, and to do work that makes a difference in the world, among others.
When you keep your mind on these goals, and on what you are doing to achieve each of these goals, you will find that it is almost impossible to feel upset or angry. Thinking about your goals empowers you and makes you a more positive and confident person.
Look at your life as a series of cycles and trends. Think in terms of regular ups and downs. Think in terms of summers and winters, falls and springs. When you develop this long-term perspective and you see things that happen as part of a larger pattern, you will not be too caught up in short-term fluctuations of your fortunes. You become much more capable of responding effectively to little problems and difficulties of day-to-day life. You can put things into proper perspective.
The sigmoid curve, which looks like an ''S'' lying on its side, explains much of human life. It has three phases. In the first phase, you are struggling and working hard to figure things out and get established. This is true for a job, a relationship, a new business startup, or the introduction of a new product or service.
The second phase comes after you have learned the critical lessons of phase one. This is the growth phase, where you make great progress and get excellent results.Your business expands, your products and services sell well, your career takes off, and your relationships are at their best.
Then comes phase three, the decline phase, which follows phase two just as the winter follows the harvest season. In this phase, it becomes harder and harder to get the same results and satisfactions as in phase two. Sales and profitability are harder to achieve.Your job or relationship is no longer as enjoyable.Your company struggles to survive or thrive.
Which phase are you in today, in each of the important areas of your life and work? What could you do to get into or back into phase two, the growth phase? What are the cycles and trends in your life and business?
Many of our problems in dealing with setbacks and disappointments come from our resisting reality.We engage in denial.We become angry and insist that this should not have happened to us or should not have happened at all.We reject it and wish that it hadn't occurred in the first place.
It is this resistance and denial that causes most of our stress. When you say, ''What can't be cured must be endured,'' you lower your flash point.You become more relaxed.You become calmer and you develop a more detached perspective.You stand back and you look at the situation as though it were happening to someone else. As a result you become more constructive about how the situation can best be resolved.You don't allow yourself to become emotionally involved in every little thing that happens to you.
Abraham Lincoln wrote, ''Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.'' In the Foundation for Inner Peace's Course in Miracles, it says, ''You give meaning to everything you see.'' Without the meaning or emotion that you attach to an event or circumstance, it has no emotional significance for you. And you can change the meaning by controlling your thinking. You can even eliminate its negative effect on you altogether by refusing to become emotionally involved in a short-term setback. It is up to you.
Your ability to deal with disappointment in a positive, constructive way will do more to enable you to succeed and say more about you to other people than any other single factor. This is a learned ability, acquired by practice. Effective men and women are invariably those who have developed the ability to respond constructively to the large and small crises that occur unbidden, unexpectedly, and unavoidably. You must do the same.
Decide in advance that, no matter what happens, nothing will ever stop you. Decide in advance that, although you will have countless ups and downs in the course of your life, you will keep on persisting until you win through to your goals. When you make this decision in advance, you will be ready.When you engage in mental prepreparation, you will be fast on your feet when the inevitable problems appear, and be ready to bounce instead of break.You will be virtually unstoppable.
ACTION EXERCISES
- Resolve that you will bounce rather than break. Examine your biggest disappointment in life right now and determine how you can learn or benefit from it.
- Identify the three worst things that could happen to you in the months ahead.What is your plan to avoid or minimize their possible negative effects?
- Select your biggest worry or problem right now and determine how you can learn and grow from this difficulty. What is the most important lesson that it contains?
- Practice the Edison approach to life. Calmly accept that every temporary setback is merely a way of identifying a way that does not work. Therefore, it is a success.
- No matter what happens, think about your goals and what you can do right now to achieve them. Get busy.
- Identify the trends in your business.Which way is the market going? If things continue the way they are today, what decisions or changes will you have to make?
- Ask two questions about your most recent important experience: What did you do right? And what would you do differently next time? Resolve to learn every possible lesson from every setback or difficulty.
Summary and Conclusions
The world is like a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving, friendly, and helpful to you. The world is what you are.- Thomas Dreier
The most important principle of human life is that you become what you think about most of the time. This insight is the foundation of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, and all success. Your outer world is very much a reflection of your inner world. If you change your thinking, you change your life.
Your biggest challenge and your greatest responsibility are to create within yourself the mental equivalent of what you want to experience on the outside. By doing this, you activate all your mental powers, and put the forces of the universe to work on your behalf. You take full control over your life.
Many thousands of people have been asked what they think about most of the time. Over and over, the most successful men and women report the same things.They think about what they want and how to get it most of the time. Unsuccessful and unhappy people, in contrast, think and talk about what they don't want. They think and talk about their problems and worries, and about the people in their lives that they don't like. But this is not for you.
When you think and talk continuously about what you want and how to get it, this way of thinking soon becomes a habit.When you think and talk about what you want, you become more positive, purposeful, and creative. When you stay focused on where you're going, you become a more productive and effective person.
Perhaps the most important quality you can develop to achieve greater success and happiness is the quality of optimism. You can learn the habit of optimism by thinking the way that optimists do most of the time. According to interviews with thousands of the happiest and most successful people in every field, optimists seem to have two special ways of dealing with life. These are attitudes of mind that you can develop with practice.
First, optimists look for the good in every situation, especially when they experience reversals and setbacks. They keep themselves positive by looking for the bright side, the silver lining, to every problem. And they always find something.
Second, optimists seek the valuable lesson in every problem or difficulty. They believe that each temporary failure or obstacle has been sent to teach them something. They continually ask, ''What am I meant to learn from this situation?'' And they always find something.
Your mind is structured in such a way that you cannot look for the good and seek the valuable lesson without taking full control over your conscious mind.When you do, you feel more positive and optimistic about yourself and your situation. You feel in complete control of your life.You perform at your best.
- Think about the Futur
First, positive, happy people are future-oriented. They think and talk about the future much of the time.They think and talk about where they are going, rather than about what has happened in the past. They create a clear, exciting future vision of what is possible for them. By the Law of Attraction, they find themselves attracted toward their future hopes and dreams, and their future hopes and dreams are attracted toward them. - Think about Your Goals
Second, they are goals-oriented.They think and talk about their goals much of the time. Once they have dreamed and fantasized about their ideal future visions, they boil them down into clear, written goals and plans that they work on every day. They focus their attention and concentrate their energies. They use their goals to take control over their futures. - Think about Excellence
Third, they are excellence-oriented. They commit to becoming excellent at what they do, to joining the top 10 percent of people in their field, whatever it is.They identify their key result areas, and set standards of excellent performance for themselves in each one. They work on themselves each day, and never stop improving. - Think about the Solution
Fourth, they are solution-oriented. They think about the solution rather than the problem. They think about what needs to be done rather than who is to blame. They use creative thinking methods to unlock their creativity and that of the people around them. They view their goals as problems to be solved, and they believe that there is a logical solution to every difficulty just waiting to be found. - Think about Results
Fifth, successful, happy people are intensely results-oriented. They carefully plan each day in advance. They set clear priorities on their activities. They then work on those tasks that represent the most valuable use of their time.They plow through enormous amounts of work and become known as highly productive people. Because they are so effective and efficient, they get more done, they move ahead faster, and they make a greater contribution to their work and to their worlds. - Think about Growth
Sixth, high performers are growth-oriented. They are continually reading, listening to audio programs, and attending additional courses and seminars. They are determined to stay at the cutting edge of their fields. They know that the future belongs to the competent, to those few people who know more than their competitors. They know that there is a race on, and that they are in it. They are determined to win. - Think about Action
Seventh, and perhaps more important than any of the others, the most successful people are intensely action-oriented. They think about what they can do, right now, to move faster toward their goals. They are in constant motion. They work in real time. They have a sense of urgency.They cover more ground and get a lot more done than the average person. The more they get done, the better they get, the more valuable they become, and the more they earn.<> - YOUR POSSIBILITIES ARE UNLIMITED
We are living in the golden age of mankind. There have never been more opportunities and possibilities for you to become all you are capable of becoming, and to achieve more of your goals, than there are today.You can use this book as a guide to greater success and happiness for the rest of your life. Here again are the 12 core ideas:
- Change Your Thinking. The way you think about yourself, your abilities, and your potential - your self-concept - determines everything you are today, and everything you ever will be. Fortunately, your self-concept is learned. By taking complete control over the words, pictures, and ideas you let into your mind, you take complete control of your future.
- Change Your Life.You come into the world as pure potential, with unlimited abilities in countless areas. As the result of destructive criticism in childhood, you can inadvertently develop fears of failure, loss, rejection, and criticism.You can develop self-limiting beliefs that hold you back. By getting rid of these negative emotions, you liberate your potential and change your life.
- Dream Big Dreams. The true starting point of living the kind of life that is possible for you is to create an exciting future vision of what you would want your life to be, in every area, if you had no limitations at all. Imagine that you could be, have, or do anything at all in your family, finances, and personal life. Then set clear, written goals, backed by detailed plans, to make your dreams come true.
- Decide to Become Rich. Resolve today to take complete control over your financial future. Begin to do the things that others have done to become financially independent, starting from where you are today. Determine exactly how much you want to earn, keep, and acquire; set these amounts as goals; and then think about them all the time. Whatever others have done, you can do as well.
- Take Charge of Your Life. You are the primary creative force in your own life. Everything you are or ever will be will be the result of what you do or fail to do. Resolve today to accept 100 percent responsibility, with no blaming and no excuses, for everything that happens. Exert your personal power and take control of your thoughts, words, and actions. Become the master of your own destiny.
- Commit to Excellence. The biggest rewards and the greatest satisfactions go to those who are very good at what they do. Resolve to join the top 10 percent of people in your field. Determine the key skills you will have to excel at what you do, set superior performance as your goal, make a plan, and then work on getting better every day.
- Put People First. The quality and quantity of your relationships will have more of an impact on your success and happiness than any other factors. Organize your life around building and maintaining high-quality, high-trust relationships with the most important people in your world. Network regularly to expand your range of contacts. Mastermind with other positive, successoriented people.
- Think Like a Genius.You are actually a mind, with a body to carry it around.You are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.You have the ability to think better and more efficiently than you ever have before. When you begin to think the same way that the smartest and most successful people think, you will soon get the same results they do.
- Unleash Your Mental Powers. Ideas are the primary sources of wealth today. The more ideas you develop to help you to achieve your goals, by the Law of Probabilities the more likely it is that you will come up with exactly the right idea for you, at exactly the right time.Your ability to generate new ideas is unlimited. Therefore, your future is unlimited as well.
- Supercharge Your Thinking. There are several key thinking strategies and techniques practiced by top people everywhere. Any one of these methods of analyzing and assessing your situation can give you vital insights and ideas that can change your perspective, and even change your life. The more thinking tools you have, the more wonderful the life you can build for yourself.
- Create Your Own Future. The ability to look into the future and then to take the steps today that will assure the future you desire is an essential way of thinking practiced by the most successful people in history. The most effective people plan their lives carefully, and make every effort to anticipate what might go wrong, well in advance. As a result, they think better and make better decisions than the people around them.
- Live a Great Life. The world around you is largely determined by the world within you. The happiest, most highly paid and respected people in every area are those who are known for the quality of their character. When you organize your life around the twin qualities of integrity and courage, every door will open for you, and you will be a genuinely happy person. You will change your thinking and change your life.
- JUST DO IT!
Mental fitness is very much like physical fitness. It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to achieve it and maintain it. But it is worth every bit of effort you put in.The payoff can be extraordinary!
When you begin the process of working on yourself, to create on the inside a clear picture of what you want to enjoy on the outside, progress may be slow at first. But when you persist, when you keep doing and saying the right things in the right way, you will before too long get results out of all proportion to the efforts you put it.
There are no real limits to what you can be, do, and have, except for the limits you place on yourself.You are a thoroughly good and extremely talented person, and there is very little that you cannot achieve if you want it intensely enough and work toward it long enough and hard enough. The key is to begin today, and then never give up!
In addition to looking for the good and seeking the valuable lesson, optimists have seven orientations, or generalized ways of thinking about themselves and their lives. These are the seven subjects that they think about most of the time.