CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Foundation of Self-Confidence
You Become What You Think About
Personal Growth is Not Easy
Your Inner Life Predicts Your Outer Life
Start with Your Inner Life
Determine Your Values
Values in Business
Clarify Your Personal Values
Values are Nonnegotiable
Values Clarification
Organize Your Values
Order of Values Forces You to Choose
Integrity Revisited
Set Peace of Mind as Your Highest Principle
Your Values are Only Expressed in Your Actions
The Law of Reversibility
The Act-As-If Principle
The Principle of Resistance
Developing Inner Strength
Chapter 2: Purpose and Personal Power
The Law of Indirect Effort
Become More Confident and Competent
Thought is Creative
The Law of Attraction
The Law of Correspondence
The Law of Concentration
The Law of Substitution
The Law of Emotion
The Power of Decision
The Importance of Goals
The Master Skill of Success
Remarkable Success Stories
Fear Holds You Back
The Comfort Zone
Resistance to Change
The Attainment of Personal Greatness
Imagine No Limitations
Categorize Your Goals
Organize Your Goals
Focus and Concentrate
Make It Measurable and Bound by Time
Make Your Plans
A Simple Technique
Chapter 3: Achieving Competence and Personal Mastery
The Edge of the Envelope
Expand Your Envelope
Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
Build Your Own Self-Confidence
Achieving Peak Performance
Getting Into the Flow Experience
Find Your True Place
Grandma Moses
Follow Your Heart
Courage and Confidence are Essential
The Four Quadrants of Work
Examine Your Work History
Design Your Ideal Work Life
Maximize Your Return on Energy
Do What You Love
Two Questions to Test Job Suitability
Commit to Excellence
Excellence is Learnable
The Law of Accumulation
The Law of Incremental Improvement
Pattern Recognition
The Grand Masters
The Foundation of Self-Confidence
Moving to the Top
Identify Your Key Skills
Analyze Your Skill Levels
Deliberate Practice
Identify Your Key Skill
All Skills are Learnable
Your Most Valuable Financial Asset
Chapter 4: The Inner Game of Self-Confidence
The Law of Belief
The Power of Belief
The $500,000 Check
The Man on the Bridge
First Convince Yourself
The Power of Suggestion
Control Your Suggestive Environment
Control Your Emotions
Think Before You React
The Power of Self-Suggestion
Make Self-Control into a Game
The Power of Autosuggestion
A Quick Review
Take Charge of Your Life
Actions Have Consequences
Problems versus Facts
Accepting Responsibility is the Beginning
Control Your Thoughts
Positive Self-Talk
Your Interpretive Style
Practice Positive Expectations
Talk to Yourself Positively
Control Your Thoughts and Feelings
Unlimited Potential
Written Affirmations
Practice Visualization
Mental Rehearsal
Improve Your Mental Pictures
Get Your Dream House
The End of the Movie
Feed Your Mind
Get Around Positive People
Attract Positive People into Your Life
Everything Counts
Take Action Continually
Chapter 5: Capitalizing on Your Strengths
Your Area of Excellence
Choose the Right Field
Happiness and Satisfaction
Living Congruently
Courage is Essential
Follow Your Heart
Be Honest with Yourself
Compensating for Weaknesses
Developing Strength and Resiliency
You are a Bundle of Resources
Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Increase Your Return on Energy
Differentiate Yourself
You are the President of You, Inc.
Join the Top 3 Percent
Designing Your Future
Find Out What You are Meant to Do
Be Prepared to Develop New Skills
Be Aware of Yourself
Invest in Yourself
Self-Analysis and Self-Disclosure
List All Your Current Skills and Capabilities
Cluster Your Roles and Activities
Set Priorities on Your Roles
Ask for Input from Others
An Important Insight
Determine What Motivates You
Make a Real Difference
Accept Your Weaknesses
Sales versus Management
Situational Weaknesses
You May Be Hypersensitive
Amenable to Education
Weaknesses are Good Indicators
Strengths and Weaknesses
Chapter 6: Triumphing over Adversity
Persistence is Essential
The Reality Habit
The Test of Character
Play Well on the Team
Crisis Management
Reversals of Fortune
The Challenge-Response Theory
Deal with the Challenge Effectively
All Civilizations Eventually Decline
The Story of Your Life
The Rise and Fall of a Business
Your Responses Determine Your Future
Problems and Difficulties Come Unbidden
Adversity and Character Development
Your Response-Ability is the Key
Responding Well to Disappointment
Crisis Anticipation
Advance Thinking and Planning
The Concept of Failure
Double Your Rate of Failure
Our Greatest Inventor
Success is a Numbers Game
Learn from Every Failure
Plan for the Future
Spread the Risk
What Could Go Wrong?
Become Intensely Solution Oriented
Never Consider the Possibility of Failure
Courage and Persistence
Chapter 7: Self-Confidence In Action
Self-Confidence is Critical
Try More Things
An Inauspicious Beginning
Early Behavior Problems
Failure from the Beginning
Laboring Jobs
Selling from Door to Door
The Big Question
The Big Turning Point
The Importance of Goals
Three Great Ideas
We Sabotage Ourselves
You Can Develop Any Quality
The Secret of Success
The Four Ds of Success and Self-Confidence
Positive Knowing versus Positive Thinking
The Gallup Success Survey
Five Essential Success Qualities
Be Good at What You Do
Self-Reliance
Intelligence is More Than IQ
Income and IQ
How is Intelligence Defined?
Intelligence Defined
Make Your Actions Congruent
Avoid Self-Delusion
Getting the Job Done
Get Onto the Fast Track
Do What the Top People Do
Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan
Do Your Work Quickly and Well
Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning
Take Continuous Forward Action
Be Your Own Cheerleader
Control Your Mental Pictures
Develop Discipline and Courage
Take Excellent Care of Yourself
Speak Up with Confidence and Clarity
Practice No-Limit Thinking
About the Author
Brain Tracy: Speaker-Author-Consultant
Index
Cover design: Paul McCarthy
Copyright © 2012 by Brian Tracy. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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This book is fondly dedicated to my son, David Tracy, one of the most positive, outgoing, optimistic, and self-confident people I have ever met.
INTRODUCTION
Entering the No Fear Zone
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved excepted by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
—Bruce Barton
Welcome to the no fear zone. In the pages ahead, you will learn how to develop confidence, courage, and unshakable determination in every area of your life. You will learn to approach the biggest challenges and opportunities of your life completely unafraid, convinced of your ability to accomplish anything you put your mind to.
The good news is that you have extraordinary potential for success, achievement, and prosperity, with more talent and natural ability than you could use in a hundred lifetimes. The only thing standing between you and the incredible life that is possible for you is fear—of all kinds—and by the time you finish this book, your fears will be gone forever.
For more than 25 years, I’ve studied successful men and women, looking for the characteristics and qualities they have in common that have enabled them to achieve so much more than the average person. I’ve read thousands of books, articles, and research studies on success, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the foundation quality of success in every walk of life is self-confidence.
Every man or woman who has ever accomplished anything out of the ordinary has turned out to have greater self-confidence than the ordinary person. When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know that you can accomplish almost anything you really want, your future will be unlimited.
A woman who had listened to one of my programs wrote to me recently and told me that one line in that program had changed her whole outlook on life. It was simply a question: “What one great thing would you dare to dream, if you knew you could not fail?”
When she began asking herself that question, over and over, her entire view of what was truly possible for her expanded dramatically. She saw clearly what she really wanted to be, have, and do, and she simultaneously realized that it was only fear, and doubt in her own abilities that was holding her back.
What would you do differently if you were absolutely guaranteed of success in any undertaking? What if some great force could endow you with the power to achieve any goal that you could set for yourself? To put it another way, what if you were completely unafraid of anyone or anything and you felt completely free to act, in any area, in your own best interests? The fact is that, if you developed the quality of unshakable self-confidence, your whole world would be different.
With greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, you would set bigger goals, make bigger plans, and commit yourself to achieving objectives that today you only dream about. You would take whatever steps were necessary to earn more money and enjoy a higher standard of living. You would set your sights on a bigger house, a better car, more beautiful clothes, and nicer vacations. You would want all kinds of things for your family and for those close to you. You would do what you really want to do and you’d refuse to conform to the wishes or opinions of anyone else. You would define your life in your own terms and live every day consistent with exactly what it is you want, and not the wishes of other people.
With greater self-confidence, you would be a different person in every part of your work life and career. You might decide to ask for a promotion, or a raise, or even change to another job or another company, or even another industry. You would move immediately to do whatever it took to get onto the fast-track in your career.
If you are in sales, you would call on more people, make better and more forceful presentations, ask for more orders, and close more business. If you are in management, you would organize and reorganize your human and material resources to create a work environment that suited you perfectly, rather than making endless compromises in an attempt to please a variety of different people.
With greater self-confidence, you would be bolder and more imaginative. You would be more creative and willing to experiment with new and different ideas and ways of doing things. You would be willing to consider unusual and risky alternatives and be willing to commit yourself wholeheartedly to projects that are today sitting only on the back burner of your mind.
If you had unlimited self-confidence, you would be more powerful, popular, and persuasive with other people. You would be more cheerful, likable, and welcome wherever you went. You would speak up and speak out clearly in your interactions with others, and you would be admired, respected, and sought after by everyone who knew you. Recognition and responsibilities would flow to you because of people’s belief in your ability to do whatever it took to get the job done. Positions of prestige and status would open up for you and people would bring you opportunities and possibilities that you cannot now imagine.
With greater self-confidence, you could deal more effectively with the inevitable problems and difficulties that arise in day-to-day life. You would think continually in terms of solutions, and how you could turn any situation to your best advantage. You would laugh at adversities that would dishearten most people and pluck success out of the jaws of failure. You would turn lemons into lemonade. You would feel invincible and unconquerable.
With higher levels of self-confidence, you would be far more effective in dealing with difficult people and situations. You would be a far better negotiator and be able to ask for, and get, better prices, terms, and conditions in everything you bought and sold.
With greater self-confidence, with an unshakable belief in yourself, nothing would be impossible for you. More than anything else, you would feel terrific about yourself. You would feel truly happy about every part of your life, knowing deep down inside that you have the ability to take whatever steps and make whatever changes are necessary to assure that your life is exactly the way you want it.
You would experience a tremendous sense of control, which is the fundamental requirement for happiness, well-being, and maximum performance. You would feel like “the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.”
With unlimited self-confidence, you would feel completely self-determined and in charge of your life. You would experience a feeling of strength and power and purpose, and you would have a positive mental attitude toward yourself, everyone in your life, and everything you do. With unshakable self-confidence, you would unquestionably be an exceptional human being.
Unfortunately, however, this is not all that easy. Most people have limited self-confidence and many people have no self-confidence at all. Human beings tend to be plagued with doubt about their own abilities and fears about every imaginable thing, especially the unknown. The psychologist Abraham Maslow said the story of the human race is the story of men and women “selling themselves short.”
The great majority of people tend to compare themselves unfavorably with others. They dwell on their own weaknesses and limitations, and they eventually settle for far less than what they are really capable of. Instead of enjoying high levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride, the average person just gets by from day to day.
If self-confidence, and the self-esteem that goes with it, is so desirable, why is it that so few people have enough self-confidence to live the lives that are possible for them? There are a thousand reasons, but perhaps the most wonderful discovery about self-confidence is that it is a mental quality that can be learned with practice. Because it is learnable, self-confidence can be developed and built up systematically and progressively over time by following the instructions in this book.
The good news is that everyone has a certain amount of self-confidence, more in some areas and less in others, and by working from that base, it is possible for you to build yourself up to the point at which you are completely confident in any area that is important to you.
Perhaps the most important of all the laws that govern our lives was put forth by Aristotle in about 350 b.c. He called it the “Principle of Causality,” and proclaimed for the first time that we live in a universe governed by order, and that there is a reason for everything that happens.
We call it the law of cause and effect, and it is often referred to as the “iron law” of human destiny. The law of cause and effect can imprison us in a cell of our own making, or it can liberate us by giving us complete freedom, depending on how we use it. The law itself, like the law of gravity, is neutral.
This law of cause and effect, which is both a physical and a mental law, says that for every effect in our lives, there is a specific cause, or causes. If there is an effect in our life that we want more of, like more money or greater success, we can trace it back to the cause, and by repeating the cause, we can enjoy more of the effects. If we are in sales or business and we have successes, we can trace those successes back to the specific things that we did to achieve them; by repeating those causes, we can enjoy the same effects.
This law also says that if there is an effect in our lives that we don’t want, whether it be overweight, insufficient funds, problems with people, or negative business conditions, we can trace that effect back to the causes, and by removing or changing the causes, we can achieve different effects or results.
This law of cause and effect is so simple and obvious that no one seriously questions it. We live in a world, and in a universe, governed by law, not by chance. Everything happens for a reason. Neither success nor failure is an accident. They have specific causes, and when we repeat the causes, we get the same effects, no matter who we are. This is just the way the world works.
The world is full of people who are not happy with their results, and yet they continue to do the same things, think the same thoughts, say the same things, and take the same actions, every day, and they are amazed that they continue to get the same negative effects. Einstein’s definition of insanity was, “continuing to do the same things and expecting to get different results.” However, this is simply not possible.
The law of cause and effect applies with equal validity to our levels of self-confidence. All around us, and throughout human history, there are and have been men and women with exceptionally high levels of self-confidence who have gone on to achieve extraordinary things.
In studying the lives and stories of these people, we find that some of them started out with high levels of self-confidence that they learned from their parents in early childhood. However, most of them started off the same way we all start off, with deep-down feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Because of destructive criticism, lack of love, and other mistakes that parents make with us in early childhood, we grow up with diminished feelings of self-esteem, low self-confidence, and a feeling that, “I’m not good enough,” in comparison with others.
With low self-confidence, many people today work extremely hard on the outside to achieve success. However, when they do, deep down inside they feel like “imposters.” This so-called “fear of success” is really a feeling of unworthiness that we can’t seem to get rid of no matter how much we achieve. Many successful men and women are repeating the line to the Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” when looking around them at their homes and cars.
What people want more than anything else is just to feel really good about themselves. We want to be happy and positive and have a sense of well-being. Above all, what we really want is peace of mind, and you can only enjoy peace of mind when you feel confident in your ability to deal effectively with the requirements of life, with your family, your friends, your work, your customers, your social activities, and all the other things that you are involved in.
The law of cause and effect tells us that if we want to enjoy the effect of high self-confidence, we need only engage in the causes of high self-confidence. If we can find out what it is that other highly self-confident men and women think and say and do, and then do the same things, we will eventually get the same results. We will eventually feel the same way. We will eventually become unstoppable.
It’s often hard for people to believe that mental qualities can be developed just as physical qualities can be developed. If this were a program on how to run a physical marathon, and I was offering to train you, day by day, over the next six months, to run a marathon, you would come to realize that even a nonrunner can go from being physically unfit to running a marathon of 26.4 miles in six months of disciplined training. Today, there are even men and women in their 50s and 60s who are running marathons with this kind of training.
What this book will do for you is to put you through a “mental marathon.” This marathon will not be as arduous or painful physically as a physical marathon, but it will still require a tremendous amount of work. The amount of work that you put in will exactly determine the results that you get out.
If you follow these proven and practical principles, drawn from the lives and behaviors of the most successful men and women alive today, and all of which are scientifically validated by extensive research and experience, you can develop the self-confidence that you desire so that you can achieve anything you really want. Let’s begin.
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
—William Shakespeare
Your thoughts and feelings about yourself, and what you can or cannot do, are the sum total result of a lifetime of experience and conditioning, and usually have little relationship to what is truly possible for you.
In personal development, there is a principle, or a law of becoming, that simply says that each person is in a continual process of becoming, or evolving and growing, in the direction of his or her dominant thoughts.
Your body is also in a state of becoming. At a normal rate of cell death and replenishment, you have a brand-new body every seven years. Whereas your physical evolution in becoming is effected by the food that you put into your body, your mental evolution and becoming is largely determined by the thoughts that you put into your mind.
The law of concentration says that “anything you dwell upon grows in your reality.” Anything that you think about long enough and hard enough eventually becomes a part of your mental processes, exerting its influence and power on your attitude and your behavior.
If you constantly think thoughts of boldness and courage and self-assertion, you become progressively bolder and more courageous and more self-assertive. The more you dwell on the person you would like to be, with the qualities you would like to have, the more you implant those deep into your subconscious mind where they become part of your ongoing evolution. What you habitually think about eventually becomes a part of your character and your personality.
In this sense, you are a self-made man or woman. You are where you are and what you are because of the thoughts that you have allowed to preoccupy your mind. Whatever you have dwelled on over the past months and years, you have become, and you are, right now, today, the result of all those thoughts.
Not only have you made yourself into the person you are today, but you are continuing with the job of construction with every thought you think. Because this is an unavoidable fact of life, the smartest thing that you can do is to persistently think the thoughts that are consistent with the kind of person you would like to be.
However, for most people this is too big a leap. Most people continue to think about and talk about exactly what they don’t want to happen, and then they are constantly amazed that exactly what they were hoping to avoid happens to them again and again.
One of the most profound discoveries in all of human history is that “thought is creative.” Thoughts held in mind, produce after their kind. Like begets like. Your thoughts become your realities. You do become what you think about most of the time. You cannot harbor one kind of thought and experience a different kind of existence. This law of cause and effect works perfectly, everywhere and always, for everyone.
The development of unshakable self-confidence, therefore, begins with you taking full, complete, systematic and purposeful control of the contents of your conscious mind, disciplining yourself to think consistently about only the things that you desire and to resolutely keep your mind off the things that you fear.
All of life is from the inside out. It is from the inner to the outer. The law of correspondence, perhaps one of the most important of all the mental laws, says that “your outer world will be a reflection of your inner world.” What you see on the outside is largely a reflection of what is going on inside you. This is not only true for you; it is true for everyone around you.
Many times we see people who seem to be very nice and pleasant on the outside, but who seem to have continuous problems in their personal and business lives. We wonder, “How could these unhappy things happen to such nice people?”
The unavoidable fact is that, with few exceptions, most of what a person experiences in his or her outer life corresponds exactly to something that is going on in their inner life, something that you seldom know, and it cannot be otherwise.
True happiness and success comes from living your life in harmony with the laws that govern your being. Even though these laws are invisible, they are like the law of gravity, which is also invisible but is to be violated only at your own peril. Happy people are those who obey and follow the laws of nature and live their lives consistent with those laws.
If you want to enjoy self-confidence on the outside, you must practice complete integrity on the inside. The foundation of self-confidence is for you to live your life consistent with your innermost values and principles, while thinking and acting in harmony with your highest aspirations.
Men and women with the most rock-solid self-confidence are those who are absolutely clear about what it is they believe to be right and good and worthwhile, and who live their lives consistent with these values. Everything they do or say is an expression of their innermost convictions. Your whole world can fall down around you, but as long as you know that you are doing the right thing, you will have a deep inner sense of calm that will manifest itself in an attitude of confidence and self-assurance in any situation.
You will have many ups and downs in life, but what is most important is that you remain “true to yourself.” Then, as Shakespeare said, “thou can’st not then be false to any man.”
The starting point of developing high levels of self-confidence and in becoming a superior human being is for you to think through and to decide on your values. Superior men and women are those who have taken the time to decide clearly what it is they believe in, and in what order, and they have then organized their lives so that everything they do reflects those values.
Recently, I addressed about 150 members of the national sales force of a very successful company. This company had started from an idea and had grown very rapidly in an extremely competitive market, and the company was very profitable.