Brian Tracy | The Phoenix Seminar | Complete in HD and English

Hi, I'm Brian Tracy, and welcome to the Phoenix seminar on the psychology of achievement. Have you ever wondered why some people are more successful than others? Why some people earn more money, are happier, have better jobs, better relationships, better health, and seem to get far more out of life?

Well, when I was 15 years old, this question began to preoccupy me. I've spent over 25 years, I've traveled in over 80 countries, I've worked at 30 different jobs, and I've spent, by my own estimate, about 30,000 hours in study to try to find the answer to why some people are more successful than others. And you know something? I have found that this is one of the most studied subjects in the world. That there's more information available on it today than has ever been available before. And that today, we can say with complete confidence that success is as predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. Today, you can be more successful, faster than you ever dreamed possible, if you will do two basic things.

Number one, make a decision to exceed all your previous levels of accomplishment. Make a decision to be successful and to achieve your goals, whatever you construe them to be. And number two, learn how. This seminar has been assembled in order to teach you how. Since we put it together several years ago, over 150,000 men and women have been through this seminar in one form or another. And many of them have said, "It's like getting a brand new chance at life." One gentleman said to us, "It was like getting a blank check on the future." We're going to teach you in the next few hours some of the most important things that have ever been found, that have been discovered and rediscovered, that go back 4,000 years into history. Science, religion, metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, and all esoteric fields of study have come to the conclusions that we are going to talk about in this seminar. If you will just use some of the things you learn in this seminar, it can dramatically change your results for the better.

Now, in studying the subject of success, one of the things we have to do is put some preconceptions aside. One of the things that I began thinking was that in order to be successful, you had to be especially intelligent, or you had to have a great education, or you had to be terrific looking, or you had to have context, or you had to have luck. Do you know that these items have been examined thoroughly, and there's no correlation at all between success and intelligence, education, luck, contacts, and appearance? They are helpful in some cases, but there's no direct correlation. Success is based on other things.

Now, before we go any further, let's talk about what we mean by success. When we look at the difference between animals and human beings, we find that animals have what is called a survival instinct. Animals work to get enough to eat, a place to sleep, to reproduce their species, and then they either hibernate and or die. Human beings have what you might call a success instinct. A success instinct means that human beings are driven internally to succeed. That it is as natural for you to be a success and to want to be a success as it is for you to breathe in and breathe out. That success, the drive to be and have and do more, to fulfill your potential as a human being, is an absolutely essential part of your being. That we never are satisfied as long as we're alive. We always want to have more, we always want to be more, we always want to do more. The question, of course, is why is it that so few people achieve things in life? Let's talk about what the success instinct embraces.

Now, I have looked at this for years and years, and in my estimation, success can be broken down and put under seven categories. There are seven ingredients of success, and if you have these seven, everything you could ever want in life can be put under one of these categories. So let's look at what we're talking about.

Number one, starting point of success. Top of the hit parade throughout all of human history is peace of mind. Peace of mind means that you feel content, at peace, relaxed inside. Peace of mind, to a great degree, means freedom. It means freedom, especially from fear. Freedom from fear, freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from want, freedom from lack, freedom from negative emotions, freedom from guilt, and so on. But peace of mind is the first and most important ingredient of success. Why? It's because if you get anything else in life and you don't get your peace of mind, you won't even enjoy it.

Number two, ingredient of success, health and energy. Health and energy. Health means that we have the health, we are free from sickness, freedom from disease, freedom from pain, freedom from ailments, and so on. But also energy. We mean vitality. And today, we know as a result of exhaustive research in medicine and psychology that there's a very close correlation between peace of mind and health and energy. Is that 80 to 90% of all the ailments that the human body suffers, including most of the reasons why we die before our time, have to do with disrupted peace of mind? Psychosomatic medicine is based on the discovery that psycho, the mind, makes soma, the body, sick. So, therefore, as we strive for higher levels of peace of mind, we almost automatically have better levels of health and energy.

Now, the third ingredient of success is loving relationships. Loving relationship means that we have the ability, the capacity, to enter into long-term loving relationships with other men and women. It means that we have the ability to give of ourselves, to love and to be loved, and the ability to enter into loving relationships is an essential part of being human. It is the one essential characteristic of our humanhood. And when we look at loving relationships, you'll find that almost all of the problems you have in life, about 80%, 85% of our problems in life, as they say, talk back. That 85% of all the success you'll ever enjoy in life is going to be determined by how well you get along with other people. The quality and quantity of our relationships is the true mark of how well you're doing as a human being. And as you know, that problems within your relationship, starting from early childhood all the way up through our adult lives, disrupt our health and energy, disrupt our peace of mind. If our loving relationships are stable, usually our health and energy is stable, and we have great peace of mind.

Now, how do you measure loving relationships? Well, one of the simplest measures that you can use is simply this. It is to ask yourself how much you laugh with another person. How much do you laugh? Because you'll find that the first thing that enters into a happy relationship is laughter. And the first things that leaves when the relationship starts to go sour is the laughter. Laughter, because it is a completely spontaneous expression of life, is the true mark of a healthy personality and a healthy relationship, as you know from your own experience.

Now, number four, ingredient of success, financial freedom. Financial freedom means that you have enough money so that you don't worry about money. Now, some people have a tendency to say, "Well, success is just simply a matter of money," and they're not interested in money. But the fact of the matter is that money is important. It takes money to buy clothes and books and to go to school and buy medical attention and to travel and to have all the good things in life. And every one of us, in order to be a success, has to reach the point where we know we have the capacity to earn enough money so that we don't worry about money. We have to reach the point where we can turn our minds to other things, higher things, to our relationships, to our health, to the improvement of our minds, to the expansion of our emotional and our spiritual life. But we all have to have the ability to earn more money. And the great majority of people, unfortunately, don't earn enough by their own estimation. In this course, you're going to learn how you can earn virtually all the money that you want in the course of your lifetime, if you're willing to make the efforts and to pay the necessary price.

Now, the fifth ingredient of success is worthy goals and ideals. Worthy goals and ideals. Sometimes when we talk about ideals, we mean values. And we know that values really lie at the core of the human being. What your values are determines almost everything that happens to you. Worthy goals and ideals are what give us a sense of meaning, meaning and purpose. Dr. Victor Frankl, the founder of logo therapy, concluded after a lifetime of research that we as human beings need meaning and purpose. We need significance. You need to know that you're doing something that's important. You need to know when you get up in the morning why you're getting up. You need to believe in what you're doing. You need commitment, you need involvement, you need dedication, you need excitement in life. So, therefore, worthy goals and ideals are critical. And worthy goals and ideals, of course, that are consistent with your values. What we have found, unfortunately, is probably 80% or more of people have little or no values. They have no sense of direction. They just wander. They do whatever, whatever someone else wants them to do. And this is a major problem that contributes to unhappiness.

The sixth ingredient of success is self-knowledge, self-understanding. Self-knowledge, self-understanding. What does this mean? Well, it means that you know and understand who you are, why you do the things you do, what makes you tick. It also means that you have self-honesty. It also means that you have the character and the courage to face yourself honestly and squarely, as Shakespeare said, warts and all. You have the honesty to face your strengths and your weaknesses. You have the honesty, if you like, and the integrity to look into yourself, to fully understand why you do what you do, what makes you tick. And in this seminar, by the way, we're going to give you an enormous amount of information on why you are the way you are and how you can change it in a very positive way, if you're not happy with it.

Now, the seventh ingredient of success is really a result, and it is a sense of personal fulfillment. It is a sense of personal fulfillment. What Abraham Maslow called self-actualization. Self-actualization is the feeling that you are becoming everything that you're capable of becoming. Self-actualization means that you feel every single day that you're moving toward the fulfillment of your inherent possibilities. And self-actualization comes as a result of having worthy goals and ideals, having loving relationships, having a high degree of self-knowledge and self-understanding, which generates health and energy, peace of mind, loving relationships, and so on.

Now, the interesting thing is, the tragedy is, the great majority of men and women today achieve so little. On a score of 1 to 10 in terms of human potential, the average person is functioning far, far below what they're capable of. On a score of 1 to 10, the average person is scoring perhaps two or three on most of these scales. 84% of people working today are underemployed, in that their jobs do not fully tax their abilities and their potential. 80% would rather be doing something else. In a study of married couples, what we found was that 38% of married couples would rather be married to someone else. We've also found that the great majority of people in our society, after a lifetime of well-paid work, retire broke. They retire poor. They retire on pensions. Only 1% become wealthy. Only 5% become financially independent. 15% have some savings, and 80% are dependent on others. The average savings, lifetime savings of a retired couple in America or Canada today is less than $6,000. That's after earning between half a million and a million dollars in an average working lifetime.

Well, why is this? The number one reason is that we come into this world without an instruction manual. You can go through your entire education and never, never be taught anything about success. I personally believe that there should be a course on success in every single grade level, in every single school, in every single college and university. We come into the world like a computer. If you can imagine a computer, imagine that you bought this beautiful, sophisticated computer and you took it home and you took it out of the box and you set it up, but you had no instruction manual. That you had to figure out how to work out this computer all by yourself. Or imagine a combination lock being given a beautiful combination lock that is on a box that contains everything that you ever want, but you don't know the combination. We come into the world with no instruction manual, and we spend our whole lives trying to figure out how to do things right.

Well, the key to success is first of all, what we call understanding. Learning how to do things right. And this course is an instruction manual on success. You'll be able to get more out of yourself as a result of this course than you can possibly dream of. Today, the second ingredient is effort. Which requires effort. There are many people, as you know, lifelong students who study and study and study, but they never make the necessary or the correct efforts. The middle point is a multiplication sign. Understanding multiplied by effort equals results. In this course, what we're going to do is we're going to dramatically increase your understanding. We're going to give you the tools to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your efforts. So you're doing not only things right, but you are doing the right things. And you're going to dramatically increase your results. Many people have taken this course and been able to earn more in the following year than they earned in the previous five. Many people have taken this course and been able to make more progress in one or two years than they made in their lifetime to date. It is not unusual for a person to take this course and double or triple their income within a matter of a few weeks or a few months, simply by applying some of these principles.

Now, do these principles work? These principles are the basis of all success and achievement in adult life. Every successful man or woman uses them to some degree. Every successful man or woman practices them consciously or unconsciously. What we've done is we've developed them together in this seminar program as a system. Very much like a process of learning anything that if you will take it, if you will use it, if you will apply it systematically, if you will put it into action, and you'll work with it consistently for even a short period of time, you're going to start to see changes that are absolutely marvelous. It is my contention that you can be, have, or do anything that you want in life. You can grow and expand and fulfill your potential. You can earn more money. You can have greater peace of mind. You can have more health and energy. You can have better loving relationships. You can have financial security. You can have a sense of personal fulfillment. You have a great feeling of peace inside, simply by following what's in this course. So please, come with me. Let's go, and let's begin to explore everything that you're capable of doing.

Let us look at what you may be in terms of your future. Session two, seven mental laws. The starting point of self-knowledge is to recognize this wonderful fact: is that you are extraordinary. You are unique. The odds against there being someone exactly like you are over 50 billion to one. That every single part of your body, and anatomists and physiologists and doctors have demonstrated that your blood composition is different from any other person that has ever lived. Your fingerprints are different, your limb prints are different, even your ear prints are different, even your toe prints are different from anybody that has ever lived. You are different from anyone else. And self-knowledge begins with accepting that you are a unique and special individual, and that you have the capacity to do something wonderful with your life.

Now, that being said, you are also the same as everybody else with respect to certain basic principles. Throughout the history of mankind, the most intelligent men and women who have ever lived have sought answers to the question of the human dilemma: what can people do in order to change the quality of their lives, their relationships, and their results? The great philosophers, the great metaphysicians, the great scholars have pondered over this, sometimes for their entire lifetimes. In our century, I know men and women who spent 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50 years studying success and achievement to find out what general rules and principles we can draw upon to be more successful.

The first thing that we have to start with, the basis for this entire course, the psychology of achievement, is this: is that you are a mental creature. The only thing that makes you truly unique is your mind. Everything else you have in common, as Eugene O'Neill, the playwright, said, with a horse or a pig. Your mind is what makes you unique. Your body simply carries your mind around. And just as electricity works on laws of electricity, and physics works on laws of physics, and nature works on laws of nature, there are certain mental laws that determine everything that happens to you. And these mental laws are as inexorable as the laws of gravity. They work 100% of the time. And every single success you have in life comes from living your life in harmony with basic mental laws. And every problem or difficulty you ever have in life comes from living your life out of harmony with those basic laws.

Mental laws work 100% of the time, like gravity works 100% of the time. What they say, what it means is that if you step off a 10-story building in the city where you're living, or in London, England, or in Lima, Peru, you're going to go splat on the sidewalk, whether you know about gravity, whether you believe in gravity, whether you agree with gravity, or whether gravity is convenient for you. It's going to work on you nonetheless. The mental laws are exactly the same. And in this course, I'm going to introduce you to about 20 mental laws, some of which are more important than others, but all of which it is critical for you to understand.

Now, let's start with the first of the mental laws. The first mental law, and by the way, these laws have been written about and studied for century after century, and many of them have been tested in our leading universities, research institutes, and think tanks in the last few years and found to be as true as they'd ever been imagined to be. The first law is what we call the law of control.

Now, the law of control is very simple. It's the basic law, and we'll come back to it over and over again. It says simply this: it says that you feel good about yourself, you feel positive about yourself, to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. Or you feel negative about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are not in control of your own life. All you have to do is look at your life today and ask yourself, what parts of your life do you feel the best at? What parts of the life do you feel your life do you feel most in control? You will find those are the places where you are the happiest. And since the supreme human good is to achieve a state of happiness, which is expressed in peace of mind and health and loving relationships, control is absolutely essential. Psychologists today call this the difference between an internal locus of control, which is feeling that you're in charge of your own life, versus an external locus of control, which means the feeling that something outside of you, your bills, your relationships, your job, your health, are somehow controlling you. As a matter of fact, locus of control research, and there are many tests that you can take to determine where you are on this chart in terms of locus of control and what areas of your life you feel more in control and less in control. People with a very high internal locus of control are high achievers. They are more successful. They're more self-determined. They're happier. And many of the things we're trying to do in this course is to give you a far greater sense of control, of being in charge of every aspect of your life.

Control begins with first of all, your thoughts. Interestingly enough, your thoughts. What you think about things and how you think determines your values. It determines what is going on inside you. Once they are stored away, your thoughts determine your feelings. It's how you think about something that determines your feelings, whether you are happy or unhappy, whether you are scared or confident. Your feelings then determine your actions. So, we start off with a law of control saying that the key to success is to feel that you are the master of your own destiny, that you're behind the steering wheel of your own life, you're in charge of your life by taking full and complete control over your thoughts. Your thoughts will control your feelings, your feelings will control your actions, and your actions, remember, there always, your actions will determine your success or your lack thereof. So, the law of control is important.

Now, as opposed to the law of control, we have what is called the law of accident. Now, the law of accident is really a metaphysical principle. It is only a law, like a traffic law or like a legal law, to the degree to which we live by it consistently. The law of accident is what about 80% of the population live by, plus or minus. The law of accident simply says that by failing to plan, you're planning to fail. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Now, the majority of people don't believe that they're living by this, but if you look at their lives, you see that that's true. Failing to plan means planning to fail. These are the sort of people that say, "Well, not what you know, it's who you know. It's being in the right place at the right time. It's luck. It's the luck of the draw," and so on. These are people who, as a result of feeling that their life is controlled by forces outside themselves, don't have clear plans, don't have clear goals, do not are not working persistently and consistently day by day toward accomplishing something they want. And their lives just seem to drift and go around in circles, like a ship without a rudder.

A person, just like a ship without a rudder, a person with no central plan is a person who has very little control. As a person who feels that, in fact, they are out of control of their lives, like they're falling through space with no place to stop. And these people are invariably unhappy. The reason why people are negative today, the reason why people are unhappy, the reason why people are sick and frustrated, the reason why people underachieve in life is most of them are living by this law of accident. And in so doing, they have no sense of control over their lives. They have no sense of inner peace. They have no sense of happiness, and so on. So, we are going to show you how to free yourself from the law of accident, personally or permanently.

The next law is what is called the law of cause and effect. The law of cause and effect says that for every effect in your life, there is a specific cause. That everything that happens in the universe happens for a reason. That nothing happens by accident. That failure does not happen by accident, and success does not happen by accident. That happiness or lack of happiness are a result of cause and effect relationships. That if we have an effect in your life that you want to have more of, more success, more money, more happiness, better health, you can trace it back to a cause. And what you do is you repeat and duplicate the cause. If you have an effect in your life that you want to have less of, if you have problems, difficulties, and so on, you can also trace that back to a cause. All progress in human life, in human society, stems back from identifying the causes of what we want more of or less of, and changing the causes.

The law of cause and effect, of course, is the iron law of the universe. This is the law, if you like, that we can come back to over and over again. And many of our laws are paraphrases of the iron law. It's also called the law of sowing and reaping. That whatsoever you sow, that also shall you reap. But the iron law, the law of cause and effect, gives us a complete sense of control. If we believe that there's a cause and effect relationship, that everything happens for a reason, then we have a tremendous feeling of control in our lives. We can identify the causes, we can duplicate the causes, we can make our lives anything we want. The most important application of the law of cause and effect is this: it is that thoughts are causes. Thoughts are causes, and conditions are effects. Thoughts are causes, and conditions are simply effects. The starting point of everything is your thoughts about something. It's your thoughts about a job, your thoughts about a relationship, your thoughts about your health, your thoughts about your future. Your thoughts become causative agents. The conditions become the effects. That if you wish to change any of the conditions of your life, you have to change the thoughts that precede those conditions. You have to change what is going on in your mind.

Wonderfully enough, there's only one thing in the whole universe over which you have complete control, and that is your thoughts. So, if you take full and complete control over your thoughts and keep your thoughts on what it is you want, make them positive causes, the conditions or effects will take care of themselves with the inexorability of a law of nature.

The next law is what is called the law of belief. The law of belief simply says that whatever you believe with feeling, and this is the key, with feeling, and the more emotion you put into a belief, becomes your reality. It becomes your reality because you will always act in a manner consistent with your beliefs. As a matter of fact, your entire reality right now is simply an outward picturing of your most intensely held beliefs. If you believe something that is positive, or believe something that is negative, or as Henry Ford said, "If you believe you can do a thing, or if you believe you cannot, you are right." Our beliefs do form our realities. To the degree to which we believe anything to be true, our beliefs act as sort of like a screen. They filter out any information that is inconsistent with our beliefs. We have a deep-down desire inside of us to remain consistent. So, we're always trying to view our world, rationalize our world, interpret our world so that it is consistent with what we have already decided to believe. We develop what is called scotomas. A scotoma is a word in psychology that simply says that we develop blind spots. We do not see opportunities if we are convinced that there are no opportunities. We do not see possibilities for success if we don't believe that success is possible for us. However, if we begin to change our beliefs, we begin to change our realities.

Let me give you an example. There's a story of a young man who came from a small Midwestern town. It's a true story, was reported in the psychological journals a couple of years ago. He got straight A's all through junior high school and high school. At the end of 12th grade, he wrote his Scholastic Achievement Test to go to university. A few weeks later, he got back a letter from the university saying, "You have scored 98 on the Scholastic Achievement Test and you're hereby admitted to the university for the fall semester." Well, he didn't know very much about Scholastic Achievement Tests, and he thought that the 98 was an IQ score. Now, an IQ score of 98 is slightly below average and is about 20 points below what is necessary for college-level work. He was convinced, and he just discarded his entire high school career, all the A's that he's gotten. He was convinced that he could not do college-level work. But he went off to college in the fall. After the first semester, he was failing or nearly failing in every subject. His counselor called him in and said, "What seems to be the problem? You did extremely well in high school. These courses are only one degree of difficulty removed from your high school courses. Are you having problems with girls? Are you having problems with drugs? Are you having problems adjusting? What is it?" He said, "Well, sir," he said, "I'm doing the very best I can, but you can't blame me. I've only got a 98 IQ." And the counselor had a file in front of him. "Said, what are you talking about?" "Well," he said, "in my letter of admission to the university, it said that I got a 98 on the Scholastic Achievement Test." "He said, 'Son, that's not an IQ. He said, 'They said that's not an IQ. That is a percentile. What that means is that you scored equal to or higher than 98% of the students in the country who wrote that test. You're one of the brightest kids in this university.'" Well, this young guy went out, he checked on the Scholastic Achievement Test, he found it was true that the 98 was a percentile, not an IQ. He went back to his courses, and two years later, he was in the top 10 in a 30,000-student university. He was leading in all of his classes. Once he changed his reality, once he changed his beliefs about his intelligence, his reality changed automatically.

Now, an important point with regard to this is that every one of us has self-limiting beliefs. Every one of us believes ourselves to be limited in some way. Every one of us believes ourselves to be limited in intelligence, creativity, money-making ability. "I can't sell. I can't speak in front of audiences." We tend to think that we are not capable, being on time, we're not mechanically inclined, and so on and so forth. But exhaustive research demonstrates that talents are pretty evenly spread throughout the population. That most of the limitations we have do not exist in reality. They exist only in your own mind. And one of the starting points of great achievement is to start questioning those self-limiting beliefs and throw them off and act as if they did not exist. And when you act as if they didn't exist, slow and behold, they simply disappear.

Okay, the next law is what is called the law of expectations. Now, the law of expectations is a law that has been talked about throughout all of human history. Just like in the law of belief, William James of Harvard said, "Belief creates the actual fact. As a man thinketh in his heart, or as he believeth, so is he." The law of expectations over and over says, "What you expect, you get. You get not what you want, but what you expect." That your expectations, especially your expectations about outcomes, how you think things are going to turn out, become your own self-fulfilling prophecies. And Dr. Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University has done something like 300 experiments on expectations theory, on what is called experiment theory. And he finds that your expectations have an effect on other people and events and circumstances, even if your expectations are based on totally false information. Whatever you expect with confidence, in other words, if you confidently expect good things to happen, surprise, surprise, good things happen to you. If you confidently expect negative things to happen, then negative things are going to happen to you. That most successful people have developed an attitude of confidently expecting good things to happen. It's called the attitude of positive self-expectancy. It is the attitude of the winner. The winner looks for good things to happen. The winner expects to win in advance. And lo and behold, whatever you expect with confidence tends to come true, even if the information upon which your expectations is based is totally false.

Now, let me give you an example of expectations. Some years ago, Dr. Rosenthal, after conducting a variety of different experiments, came to the conclusion that the expectations that teachers had of students was having a tremendous effect on their ability to learn and their grade level averages. So he put together a series of experiments, and then one major experiment, which was tremendous. He went to the San Francisco Bay Area, and at the beginning of the school year, he had the principal call in three teachers. The three teachers were told that by the principal, as a result of teaching excellence, they had been singled out as the three best teachers in the school, and that they were going to be given 30 students each, of the brightest students in the school, identified by IQ tests at the end of the last semester. They would be able to teach these students for the entire year, and it was estimated by experts that these students would jump in scholastic achievement an average of 20 to 30% over the course of that school year. Now, the teachers were told that one of the conditions was that they mustn't tell the teacher, they must tell the students, and they mustn't tell their parents. They must continue to teach the same way, and classes were carefully monitored to make sure they taught the same way they taught before. But only they would know that they had been given 30 bright students each to teach for the whole year. The teachers were delighted. The teachers went out, they were excited about this. They worked hard with those students. They spent time after school with them. They got really, really involved in teaching more than they ever had before. And at the end of the school year, lo and behold, those three classes led not only the school, but the entire school district in academic accomplishment. At the end of the year, they called the three teachers in. They sat them down and they said, "Well, you've had a good year." And they said, "Yes, it was great. Those kids were so bright, they were so eager to learn." They said, "Well, maybe we should tell you the truth, that this was an experiment. And the fact is that at the beginning of the school year, we selected the names of 90 children by lottery from the school population at large and assigned them to your class. We didn't even know what their IQs were." They said, "Well, well, that's remarkable. How could it have happened that they did so well?" And then they looked at each other and said, "Well, of course, it's because we are the three most excellent teachers in this school." They said, "Well, the other side of it was simply this: at the beginning of the school year, we put all the teachers' names in a hat, and yours were the first three names that were drawn." So, this is what it's called, a double-blind experiment. They held constant for everything but expectations.

Now, the expectations on the teachers were explicit: "We believe that you are excellent teachers." The expectations of the teachers on the students were implicit. They were never spoken. The teachers just treated those students as though they were really intelligent, and the students bloomed and blossomed. And in one of the classes, a student from the beginning of the year to the end of the year jumped 25 IQ points. In a subsequent experiment, a student jumped as much as 27 IQ points, which is to prove that high expectations teachers bring out intelligence in students that is completely unheard of. Marva Collins, the famous teacher in the Chicago inner city, has found that if you treat students as though they're intelligent and talk to them and work with them as though they are really bright, they will absolutely astonish you in terms of academic accomplishment.

All right, this brings us to the critical role of expectations in your life. First part of expectations in your life, number one, and where expectations affect you: expectations of your parents. We have found that we have a tendency as adults to try to live up to or down to the expectation of our parents all our lives. If our parents were strong and supportive and loving and kind and encouraging and really believed in us, all our lives we will strive unconsciously to live a life consistent with those expectations. If our parents were critical and condemnatory and bitched and complained and griped about our grades and so on and so forth, we will find that all of our life we'll have a tendency to hold ourselves back. So, be alert to that. What were the expectations of your parents? Were they positive? Were they negative? Were they boosting or were they discouraging? And how much are they affecting you today?

Second area of expectations is the expectations of your boss. In all of our studies, we have found, especially in the studies on excellence in organizations, we have found that high expectations bosses have high performance work environments. Now, if you work for a boss who's negative, critical, and condemnatory, if you work for a boss that has negative expectations or a negative attitude, chances are your performance will be at the very lowest. As a matter of fact, if you look at the course of your working career, you'll find that the times of your life that you've enjoyed the most is working under a boss that has high positive expectations of you and your ability, isn't that correct?

The third area of expectations is the expectations you have of others, especially of your children, especially of your spouse or your mate, especially of your subordinates or the people who look up to you. You see, we have are profoundly affected by the opinions of anybody we respect, by the attitudes toward us of anybody we respect. And if you have high positive expectations of the people around you, especially your children, they will rise to fulfill those expectations. So, the basic rule with regard to this is always expect good things of other people. In word and deed, tell them continually, "I believe in you."

And number four, core area of expectations is the expectations you have of yourself. In the final analysis, these are the most powerful. If you have high positive expectations of yourself, you'll be astonished at what it will mean to your life. Always expect the best. Always expect the best. And here's a little exercise which I learned from one of my graduates, one of our live seminars. He found that by starting off every day with this simple little exercise and saying to himself, "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today. I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today. I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today." That this little exercise changed his whole attitude. That he went through the whole day with the attitude of somebody with a confident self-expectancy. You know, that if you will do this, if you will say before you go to sleep, "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me tomorrow." And if you'll say when you get up in the morning, "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today." And if all day long you say, "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me," you'll find that as you go to sleep the next night, and try this today, it's a very powerful exercise. Sounds a little bit corny, but it's a very powerful exercise. If you'll try it, you'll find that when you go to sleep, you will not be able to think of all the wonderful things that happened to you. You'll just be surprised that your parking spaces will open up, and friends will call, and you get checks in the mail. Just your life will be a series of really positive, happiness experiences. So, always expect the best. "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today." And by the inexorability of a law of nature, it's going to happen to you. I can assure you, it's happened to thousands and thousands and thousands of our graduates who will literally astonish you, the effect of this corny little exercise.

All right, the next law is what is called the law of attraction. Now, the law of attraction simply says that you are a living magnet. You are a living magnet, and that you inevitably attract into your life the people and circumstances that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts. In the universe, we know that all energy is in a state of vibration. That everything is vibrating. Even this board is vibrating. Your skin is vibrating. Every substance is vibrating because of its molecular structure. And we also know this is a law of radiation, that everything is vibrating outward, the process of entropy. And we find that whatever you are thinking, your thoughts are also a form of energy that is vibrating and radiating out from you, and that travels at the speed of light. So that you can affect people and circumstances at great distances. Have you ever had an experience where you're thinking about somebody, and the telephone rings, and it's them? Have you ever had an experience where you phone somebody else, and they say, "We were just talking about you"? It just leaps into your mind. Have you ever had an experience when you're in tune with your husband or wife, and you think, "You know, I'd like to go out to dinner at such and such a place tonight," and you call home, and they will say, "Why don't we go to dinner at such and such a place?" These are all examples of this law of attraction. The law of attraction is considered by many to be one of the most important laws of human existence. In this, you will always attract to yourself positive or negative people and circumstances that harmonize with your dominant thoughts. That whatever you're thinking on a continuing basis, you're attracting into your life. You're drawing it into your life like a magnet. That's why it's so important that you keep your thoughts on what you want, keep your thoughts on what you desire, and keep your thoughts off of what you don't want. And by the way, as you advance and develop and become more proficient and more sharp with these methods, the law of attraction will work faster for you and with greater accuracy. So, be careful. Use it.

The last law we'll talk about in this session is called the law of correspondence. The law of correspondence is a law that says, and it's quoted by Jesus, "As within, so without." As within, so without. And what it simply means is this: it means that your outer world is a mirror, and that's probably the best word. Your outer world is a mirror, and it simply reflects back to you what is going on in your inner world. That your outer world is the result of your inner world. That what is going on within determines what is going on without. That if you want to change your outer world, you have to change your inner world.

Now, that means that you can look at your words, you can look at your level of health. What is going on in terms of your physical health is largely determined by what is going on in your mind. What is going on in your relationships is the most perfect example, because you find that when you are feeling good inside, your relationships go smoothly. When you're feeling negative or stressed inside, your relationships go poorly. Your relationships are the mirror image reflection of the quality of your own personality. You can tell how healthy your personality is by looking at the relationships around you. Your wealth is a very important thing. The level of financial wealth, the level of comfort that you have, is a direct relationship of what you have put into your mind in terms of thought and preparation for achieving wealth and affluence. If you wish to be more successful on the outside, you have to be more successful on the inside. And the more you go to work on the inside, which is the only part of your whole life that you can control, the more you go to work on the inside, the more rapidly your external world changes. The big mistake in life, and the reason why most people are unhappy, is why? It's because most people try to change the external world, which they cannot control, and they leave the internal world messy. It'd be the same as trying to make an automobile run better by washing the outside of it, polishing the outside of it, and changing the tires. No, you got to go to work on the inside workings. As you change your mind, as you change what is going on inside you, change what is going on outside.

Now, many years ago, Earl Nightingale, a great success philosopher, woke up in the middle of the night with a quotation which changed his life and changed the lives of millions of others, which sort of tacks on to all of these laws that we're talking about, and was simply this: "You become what..."

You think about, you become what you think about. And since the only thing that you can control is your thinking, if you change what you are thinking about, you will begin to change your reality. If you change what you expect, you change what you believe. You change your dominant thoughts, you change your inner workings. You begin to attract into your life people, circumstances, events, opportunities, and everything consistent with your new thoughts.

The reason people are unsuccessful is that they think thoughts of unsuccess or failure. Another line, which is very, very important, says that all causation is mental. We live in a mental universe. All causation is mental. If you wish to change your universe, you have to change your mentality. And this brings us to the most important line of all, which is simply this, and let me write it over here: If you change your thinking, change your thinking, and you change your life. Change your thinking, and you change your life.

Now, over the course of years, you have accumulated and gathered an enormous amount of information. You've accumulated and gathered an enormous number of experiences, some of them positive, some of them negative. Every single one of them is stored away. Every single one of them is having an effect on what is happening to you right now.

In the New Testament, Jesus had a beautiful line which I refer to, and I think about it all the time. He said, "By their fruits you shall know them." And what it simply meant was that you can tell what is going on inside the person, what the fundamental character and thought life of a person is, by looking at the fruits of their external life, by looking at their health, looking at their relationships, looking at their levels of success. If you change your thinking, you change your life. And as we proceed through this course, we're going to show you systematically how you can change your thinking and bring it into perfect correlation inside with a type of successful, happy, dynamic, vital living, successful life that you desire on the outside.

Session Three: Unlocking Your Potential

When we talk about human potential, have you ever wondered what accounts for the huge disparity in results and performance between one person and another? You know, a person who's making $250,000 a year is not 10 times smarter or better than a person who's making $25,000 a year. Why is there 10 times the difference in income? And you go all the way up the ladder. The person who's making $2.5 million a year, is that person a hundred times better, smarter than a person making $25,000 a year? Impossible.

In a recent study of IQs, they picked a thousand men and women out of the population and tested them for IQ. They found that the top person in that thousand selection was only two and a half times smarter than the bottom person in that selection of IQs. Only two and a half times. The disparity. And that's probably true over the whole population. So what accounts for this great difference?

Well, we talk about human potential. We come down to a very simple formula that I came up with some years ago that probably explains it a little bit. The formula starts off with what we call IA, which is inborn attributes. That's the qualities, the intelligence, the ability, the temperament, the things that you're born with that you can't really change very much. Plus acquired attributes. Now, acquired attributes are very important. Those are your education, your training, your skill, your experience, knowledge, wisdom, and so on. Multiplied times A, which is your attitude, equals individual human potential, or individual human performance, or individual human results, if you like.

Now, of these three, inborn attributes are largely fixed at birth. Acquired attributes can be changed, but it takes a while to change them, although sometimes they can be changed very rapidly. One valuable piece of information can dramatically change your effectiveness. But attitudes can be increased or decreased dramatically in seconds. That every single time we improve our attitude, we multiply all our capabilities. So that attitude has been rightly called the most important language in the human, or the most important word in the human language.

Everything that we do in life, according to a Harvard study amongst executive recruiters, will be 85% attitudinal. 85% of your success will be determined by your attitude. That means determined by how positive, or how much of a positive mental attitude you have. People with positive mental attitudes tend to advance more rapidly, move to the top of valuable organizations, earn more money, get more life satisfaction, and so on.

Now, a positive mental attitude doesn't mean that you dance around in the street and throw flowers. It just means that you take a generally constructive attitude or approach towards your work, your life, your problems, your relationships, and so on. But according to the Cox reports on American Business, according to Success magazine, 85% or more of everything that you accomplish will be attitudinal.

So our question is, where do attitudes come from? And we found that attitudes come from expectations. Very, very simple. We talked about that before. And a very powerful way to instantaneously improve your attitude is to say to yourself, "I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today." As we said before, our expectations about outcomes determine our attitude. In other words, if you expect things to turn out well, you're going to have a positive attitude. If you expect things to turn out negatively, you're going to have a negative attitude. And the wonderful thing is, you can manufacture your own expectations. I mean, you can expect whatever you want. You can expect good things, you can expect negative things, and chances are, you won't be disappointed.

Where do our expectations come from? Our expectations come from our beliefs, if you like, and our values. These are the core or the central motivating factors in our personality, our beliefs and values. And this brings us to an understanding of human potential. It means that basically, our attitude is the outward expression of what is going on internally, consistent with the mental laws that we talked about. And with regard to beliefs, each of us has a bundle of beliefs way down deep inside, which psychologists call the self-concept.

Now, the self-concept, or the discovery of it, has been considered by many to be the most important single breakthrough in understanding human performance in the 20th century, and I personally agree. The self-concept is like, if you wanted to use a military analogy, is the command center. Or if you wanted to use a technological analogy, it is the central program of your basic computer. It is a bundle of beliefs, values, attitudes, feelings, ideas, and so on, which are stored away down inside, which are a result of virtually every experience you've ever had in your life. And some researchers say that the self-concept begins to form even before birth.

But this self-concept, once it is in place, precedes, predicts, and determines your levels of effectiveness and performance in every area of your life. Your self-concept becomes the command center, or the master program. The self-concept, or this bundle of beliefs, then determines what you will say, what you will do, how you will act, how you feel and react, and so on.

What does it mean? It means that all improvements in your external life, all changes in your reality, begin with a change in the self-concept. Let me give you an understanding of how it means. Here's a very simple graph. We talk about human potential. We say the average person uses 10% or less of their potential. According to the research, it's probably much less. Stanford Brain Institute in Santa Clara, California, estimates that it's probably closer to 2%. But we'll be generous. Say the average person is using 10%. It means that in the best of cases, the average person, you and I, have 90% of our potential untapped.

One of the great philosophers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, "The great tragedy of the average person is they go to their grave with their music still in them." They're still functioning on far, far less of their potential. So this is human potential. We find there's a direct relationship between human potential and the self-concept. That since our self-concepts, or our estimates of ourselves, if you like, are usually far lower than they need to be, our level of performance and effectiveness is far lower too.

And we know that our self-concept is largely subjective. What does that mean? It means that the self-concept, what we believe to be true about ourselves, is really not based in reality. It's based on information that we've taken in. We accept it as true. And to the degree to which you believe anything about yourself, it becomes true for you, because you act in a manner consistent with it.

You know, there's some people who read their horoscopes and believe that their horoscopes are predicting their future. There's some people who will take criticism and condemnation from other people that they don't even respect and believe that that is an adequate or accurate reflection of their own abilities. But whatever you believe, whatever you accept as true, becomes true for you.

Now, we also know that as an adult, you have a variety of self-concepts. You have a self-concept for how you dress, how much you weigh, how much you eat, how well you speak in public, what kind of a parent you are, what kind of a child you are to your parents, what kind of a husband or wife you are, what kind of a lover, what kind of a driver. Interesting about driving. All men have a very positive self-concept with regard to driving. Women don't understand this, but all men are born with an inherent genius at driving. That men are all great drivers. And if you don't believe it, all you have to do, ladies who are watching this, all you have to do is think about the last time you tried to correct a man's driving. You'll find it is not well responded to.

How do we respond when somebody challenges our self-concept by suggesting that we are not the person we think we are? We become defensive, we become angry, we become irritable, we become difficult to get along with. We have a self-concept for how creative we are, how intelligent, how fast we read, how good we are at athletics. And if you practice a variety of different sports, you have a self-concept for every one of those sports. We have a self-concept for how well we cook, how well we raise our children, how well we clean our home, what kind of cars we drive, and so on.

We also have a self-concept for what it's worth, for how much money we earn. Interesting enough, you can never earn more than 10% above or below your self-concept level of income. That your self-concept determines your income level. This self-concept level is called your comfort zone. And even if you want more money, you will find that the natural human tendency of all action is to struggle and strive to get into a comfort zone and then to stay there. That if you earn 10% or more above your self-concept level of income, you will have an irresistible urge to get rid of the money. You'll give it away, you'll spend it, you'll blow it, you'll spend it extravagantly, you'll even lose it if you get enough. That's why people who win lotteries are often flat broke two or three years later. They just burn the money because the money is far beyond their self-concept.

If you go 10% or more below your self-concept level of income, you find yourself scrambling. You work harder, you work longer, you think more creatively, you look at different ways to increase your income, or second income opportunities. The only way to improve any part of your life, including your income, is to raise your self-concept level of income by beginning to think about yourself continually in terms of earning more money.

If you want to lose weight, the only way you can lose weight is to think thin, by beginning to think of yourself as a thinner person. If you want to become a more popular, a more loving, a happier person, a healthier person, you have to begin to think over and over about those things until they become part of your new self-concept. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. It's an essential part of programming your mind for success.

Your overall self-concept is determined by the average of your self-concepts in all the areas that you consider important. Now, your self-concept is made up of three critical parts. The first part of the self-concept is the self-ideal. The self-ideal is the person you would most like to be. It is your idea of what constitutes a winner. It is your vision or your mission or your ideal of the very best you that you can be. Now, one of the things that we know about successful people is this: successful people have very clear self-ideals. They have very clear ideas of who they want to be in the future. Unsuccessful people have very vague ideals.

Number two is your self-image. Your self-image is a picture of the way you see yourself and the way you think about yourself. Your self-image, the inner mirror, is how you perceive yourself now and determines your current performance on a day-to-day basis.

The third part is your self-esteem. Now, your self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. How you feel about yourself is the engine force, it's the motor, it's the power force within your subconscious, it's the power force within the self-concept, and it determines virtually everything that happens to you. The best definition of self-esteem is how much you like yourself. How much you like yourself as a parent, how much you like yourself as an employee, how much you like yourself as a boss, how much you like yourself as a money earner, a professional speaker, an athlete, and so on. How much you like yourself.

Your level of self-esteem, your overall emotional feeling about any area of your life, determines your performance and effectiveness in that area. Wonderfully enough, since you become what you think about, your self-concept is malleable. Your self-esteem can be built by repeating over and over again, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." The more you say, "I like myself, I like myself, I like myself," the more you repeat that over and over again, the more your self-esteem goes up. The more your self-esteem goes up, the more your overall self-concept goes up. When your overall self-concept goes up, you perform better at everything else that you attempt. That every single time you say, "I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself," it's like pumping yourself up psychologically. Everything that happens that causes your self-esteem to go up causes you to perform better. Everything that happens that causes your self-esteem to go down causes you to perform worse, make more mistakes, be unhappier, and so on.

Now, a critical point about liking yourself, about self-esteem and self-liking, is that number one, you can never like or love anybody else more than you like or love yourself. That your level of self-esteem is the determinant of the quality of the relationships you have with others. And number two, you can never expect anybody else to like or respect you more than you like or respect yourself. That how much you like and respect yourself determines their attitudes toward you.

Every single school of psychology today is coming to agreement on the fact that how much you genuinely like and accept yourself as a valuable and worthwhile human being has an effect on everything that happens to you. How much you'll like yourself. And what you can do is you can improve your self-esteem. But I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself.

Well, this brings us to the question, where does self-esteem, where does the self-concept come from? And we found that self-concept, if anything, self-concept is malleable, in that you are not born with a self-concept. That you're not born with any idea of yourself. You're not born with self-image or self-esteem. That you're born in a way as pure potential. It's probably the best way to put it. The average person comes into the world as pure potential and has no self-concept. That everything you are today, every feeling that you have, every attitude or value, you had to learn over the course of your lifetime.

We also know that the child comes into the world with a very high need for love and touching. And a tremendous amount of research indicates that we need a lot of love and touching all of our lives, but especially in our formative years. Because as a child, we learn who we are, how valuable we are, whether we're important, intelligent, attractive, lovable, funny. We learn all of these things by the way our parents treat us. If our parents, our siblings, our aunts and uncles, but especially our parents, treat us like we're really important kids, then we grow up thinking that we're really important. If our parents do not, then something else happens.

We know that the first few years of life are the most important in developing the self-concept. That a child starts off at zero when the child is born with no idea of who she is or who he is or how valuable they are. And in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth years of life, you psychologists used to think it was five years, but now they're saying it's three years. In these first three years of life, children learn who they are. They say if you give enough high-quality and quantity of love to a child in the first three to five years, you set them up for life. You set them up on a solid foundation of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, self-value. As a matter of fact, there's a direct relationship between the quality and quantity of love and the development of healthy personality. That the more love, unconditional love, that a child receives in those formative years, the stronger is the foundation of the personality.

To reverse the equation, that virtually all problems in psychosis, neurosis, personality disturbances, and behavior problems arise from problems way down in the self-concept. And we can go back as adults. Here's our adult personality. We can go back as adults, we can correct the flaws in our foundation, the cracks, if you like, by repeating over and over again, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." And driving down that healing concrete deep into the foundation of our personality. Remember, children need love like roses need rain. Children that are deprived of love often die of love starvation. It's a disease called marasmus.

Now, what else do we know about children? We know that children come into the world with two remarkable attributes. The first is that they're fearless. Children are born with no fears. They're not afraid of anything except falling and loud noises. And this is expressed in the attitude, "I can." Children come into the world believing they can do anything. And anybody's ever raised a child to the age of three or four or five knows you have to spend those first few years stopping them from killing themselves because they're little kamikaze pilots because they're not afraid of anything.

The second attribute is they come into the world completely spontaneous. They say what they want, they do what they want, they are completely uninhibited. They just are completely unafraid. They do anything that they want. And this is expressed in the attitude, "I don't have to." "I don't have to." If you ever try to control a child, you'll find that the attitude of a child, the first thing they say is, when you start giving them orders, the first thing they learn is no. They say, "No, I don't have to." Well, of course, we eventually change their minds on that one way or another. But these are the two attributes that each of us come into the world with. You come into the world unafraid and uninhibited.

What does that mean? It means that our natural birthright is to be unafraid and uninhibited. And that only when we can create the same situation in adult life where we are unafraid and uninhibited do we feel truly great about ourselves. The very best organizations, the very best companies, are those that create an environment where people feel unafraid and unreserved to be themselves and to do the very best they can.

Well, as we grow up, we know that children learn two ways. The first way they learn is by imitation. They imitate one or both parents, especially the dominant parent. And sometimes the parent, dominant parent, will change as the child is growing up. Sometimes children will imitate the father, sometimes the mother. But they learn by imitation. Many of the characteristics and habits that we have as adults, we learn from our parents. If you ever had the opportunity or the occasion to scream at one of your children or shout at one of them and find yourself saying the same things your mother or father sent to you, said to you when you were a child. Well, we imitate. Sometimes we imitate their walk, sometimes we imitate their talk, sometimes we imitate their values, their beliefs, and so on, even if those values and beliefs are of no value. Why? It's because our parents are like gods to us when we're children.

The second way that we learn is by moving from discomfort, from what doesn't feel good, toward comfort. Now, Freud called this the Pleasure Principle. Is that we move toward what makes us feel comfortable, what gives us pleasure, what makes us feel good about ourselves. We move from discomfort toward comfort. That's how we learn to become toilet trained. We say it's no longer fun to walk around with pee and poop in our diapers. So we watch what our parents do, we watch what our older siblings do, and we see that those people aren't doing this. And that's how we learn to walk. That's how we learn everything. So we move from discomfort toward comfort throughout our lives. By the way, that's how we learn. We imitate by reading what other people have done, by studying books, by at our work. We imitate. When we go to school, and we do what gives us a positive payoff, what gives us positive reinforcement, what gives us pleasure, and we do less of those things that give us discomfort or pain.

Now, very early in life, as a mistake, or as a result of mistakes that parents make in upbringing, children begin to learn negative habit patterns. And negative habit patterns have their root primarily in destructive criticism. Destructive criticism begins very early in life, sometimes in the first few months. And destructive criticism is used by parents to direct and control their children. Unfortunately, it has a very, very dangerous and damaging effect on children, in that destructive criticism begins to undermine the integrity of the child's personality. And more of us, including myself, and including most of you, have been undermined and hurt by destructive criticism probably more than all the wars in history.

Now, as a result of destructive criticism, we begin to develop negative habit patterns. Negative habit patterns are conditioned responses to stimuli. Negative habit patterns develop very, very early in life. They're developed as a result of a repetition of fear and pain over and over again. They're developed as the result of destructive criticism, physical punishment, and so on. Very early in life, we begin to develop two major manifestations which follow us throughout our lives and more than anything else inhibit our potential as adults.

The first is what is called the inhibitive negative habit pattern. The inhibitive negative habit pattern is learned when the child is told over and over again, "Don't get away from there. Stop. Leave that alone." And the child is punished whenever the child tries something new, or gets into something, or smells something, or pours something over, or breaks something accidentally. The parent blows up and gets angry and upset. You see, the child is driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore his or her world. And what happens is when they do explore it and they get into something, they tip something over. If the parent overreacts and spanks the child, the child soon begins to think that every time I try something new, every time I try something different, every time I go beyond my boundaries, every time I move out of my comfort zone, every time I don't play it safe, I get spanked, I get punished, I get hurt, I get sent to my bedroom, and I feel terrible. And pretty soon, the child develops the feeling of, "I can't. I can't. I can't." Every time I try something different, I get punished. "I can't. I can't. I can't."

This is like the Pavlovian response, where Pavlov would ring the bell and feed the dog meat, and the dog would salivate. And Pavlov would ring the bell while they fed the dog meat, and the dog would salivate. They keep doing that. Pretty soon, Pavlov just rings the bell, and the dog would salivate. What happens in adult life is that this creates what we call the fear of failure. The fear of failure is a conditioned response to a process of destructive criticism that occurs in the first five or six years of life. The fear of failure automatically triggers us. We feel anxious, tense, uneasy. We feel tension and stress in our solar plexus. We feel like withdrawing and getting away from the event. And the fear of failure is the major reason for failure in adult life. It's the major reason why we hold back from fulfilling our potentials.

As a matter of fact, all negative habit patterns are experienced in the physical body. That you can tell a negative habit pattern because you actually feel it in your physical body. The inhibitive negative habit pattern, the fear of failure, "I can't," is experienced first of all in the solar plexus. You ever have an occasion where you have to speak in front of a group, or you have to go into a performance review, or you have to make a cold call? First of all, the solar plexus tightens up. If the fear situation continues, you start to breathe harder, and your heart starts to beat faster. Your respiratory rate, and sometimes you get a headache like a migraine headache in the front of your head. Sometimes your throat will tighten up and you won't be able to speak. You'll go completely dry. Sometimes you'll get so tense and so frightened that you'll have to run and go to the bathroom. These are all manifestations. There's no physical danger, but there's a psychological danger, a conditioned response. And whenever we feel these things, the natural tendency is to back away from the situation that's causing them, which is the reason why we don't achieve very much.

If we are held back. The second negative habit pattern is the compulsive. Now, the compulsive negative habit pattern is learned when children are told over and over again, "You better, or else. If you don't, you're in big trouble. Now, you're going to get it." It's when children are made the recipients of what is called conditional love. Parents don't mean to do this, but what they do is they suggest to the child that, "You are not loved, therefore you're not safe unless and until you do what we want." The child grows up feeling that, "I have to do what Mommy wants. I have to please Daddy. I have to please other people. I have to please my siblings. Eventually, I have to please my peers. I have to please my teachers. I have to please everybody." They grow up with this, "I have to. I have to. I have to. I can't do what I want to do. I have to do what pleases other people."

This compulsive negative habit pattern, very early in life, translates into the fear of rejection. The fear of rejection is experienced by men as adults as Type A behavior. We'll talk about Type A behavior later on in the course. Type A behavior is a compulsive, an obsessive-compulsive need to somehow please somebody with no standards of performance, so that you can never accomplish it. The fear of rejection drives us. It makes us very, very sensitive to the opinions of other people. We do things that other people want. We don't do things that we want. We're always trying to please others. We have a preoccupation or a concern with the opinions and feelings and attitudes of others to the point where we deny our own needs.

Now, the fear of rejection is felt down the back half of the body. If you divide the body in half, it's felt right down the back half of the body. The first place you start to feel the fear of rejection is usually in the shoulders and in the neck. You start to feel stiff and sore and tense. Sometimes when you have a lot to do, you'll feel tremendous stress in the lower back. The muscles will start to pull in the lower back. Sometimes it'll represent, you'll manifest itself in phlebitis and varicose veins. Very often, it can give you very bad headaches in the back of the head because the carotid arteries, which carry blood up into the head, the muscles around them constrict, and the amount of blood flow to the head slows down, and you feel this pounding headache in the back of your head.

These two fears, the compulsive, or these two negative habit patterns, the compulsive and the inhibitive, which are the result of destructive criticism, the great personality destroyer, plague us all our lives. Now, the wonderful thing about these is because that they are, because they are learned habits, we can unlearn them. We can overcome the fear of failure that holds us back. We can overcome the fear of rejection that causes us to do things that please other people rather than pleasing ourselves, by working on our own self-esteem. Because there is a relationship between self-esteem and the basic negative habit patterns. The more you like yourself, the less you fear failure. The more you like yourself, the less you fear rejection. The more you like yourself, the less you fear anything.

And if you continue to repeat, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself," over and over again, if you continue to say this, eventually, over time, your self-esteem goes up higher and higher and higher, and your fears go down. As your self-esteem goes up, your fears go in the opposite direction.

Now, how do you deal with destructive criticism? If you have to give criticism to other people, well, that's very simple. Many parents have asked us that, "How do you control children?" One of the keys to controlling children is to redirect them so that they're doing something constructive versus something that is destructive. Another thing to remember is that what you want to do is you want to give information, criticism, or constructive criticism, which means that you tell children what they can do, or adults what they can do, to be better. Remember, the whole purpose of giving feedback of any kind is what? It's to improve performance.

If you are a parent, or if you are a boss, or if you are a person in a relationship, if a person is doing something wrong or inappropriate, the whole purpose in giving them any kind of feedback at all is so that they'll do it better next time. However, there's a direct relationship between self-esteem and destructive criticism. Every time you criticize a person, their self-esteem goes down. Every time their self-esteem goes down, their ability to perform goes down too. If you destructively criticize a person often enough, long enough, and hard enough, they get to the point where they won't try anything at all. They become what we call hypersensitive. And a hypersensitive adult is a person who cannot take criticism from anybody. A hypersensitive adult is a person who is very, very tense and anxious if you even suggest that they're not doing the right thing.

If you have to deal with a hypersensitive adult, the key is to sit them down and remember four things. Number one, always begin with praise. Number two is, protect the person's self-esteem at all costs. Number three is, discuss the performance, not the person. Talk about the behavior rather than the person. And number four is, is it number four? Number four is to focus on the future versus the past. Focus on what is going to be done differently in the future, rather than what has happened in the past. Why? Very simple reason is because a person cannot control the past. Not being able to control the past, any criticism over what they've done in the past causes them tremendous stress and frustration.

So, let me summarize. The key to success in life is a positive mental attitude. A positive mental attitude is based on expectations of success, of a positive set of expectancies. Positive set of expectancies is based on beliefs and your self-concept. The core of your self-concept, which determines your effectiveness in life, is your self-esteem. And your self-esteem is measured by how much you like yourself. The two things that hold us back more than anything else are the fears of failure and the fears of rejection.

So, one of the core secrets of success is this: is become a perpetual self-esteem generating organism. Continually be doing things for yourself, to yourself, in your life, that cause you to like yourself, to love yourself, to accept yourself, to respect yourself. It causes you to feel terrific about yourself. If you're a boss or a parent, remember that the key to peak performance in your home and in your workplace is to make people feel terrific about themselves. And the more terrific you feel about yourself, the more you like yourself, the more likely it is that you make the people around you like, love, accept, and respect themselves. And you'll create a peak performance environment. It is the starting point to great success and achievement in life. So say over and over to yourself, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself."

Session Four: Your Subconscious Powerhouse

In order to unlock your full potential, it's absolutely essential that you understand the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious mind. There are thousands of books have been written on this subject. There's tremendous complexities. There's references to the conscious and the subconscious, especially the subconscious, throughout all of human history. The subconscious is often called the powerhouse of your being. And we're going to talk about how you affect the subconscious more as we go through this program. But let's start off talking about the relationship between the two minds and what you can do to begin controlling and changing the programming within the subconscious.

The conscious and the subconscious minds are very beautifully designed by a master master designer, if you know what I mean, in that they have very separate functions and they work perfectly in tandem with each other. Probably a good way to illustrate it is say to say this is the conscious mind and this is the subconscious mind. Actually, the conscious mind does about 10% of your thinking. It's responsible for about 10% of your conscious awareness. And the subconscious mind is at least 90% or more. When we talk about human potential and unlocking human potential, we mean unlocking the vast capacity or power of the subconscious.

So what does the conscious mind do? Well, the conscious mind has certain specific functions. First of all, the conscious mind is objective. The conscious mind can look at the world clearly, if you like, with clarity and think about it analytically. Objective by meaning without emotion. Second of all, the objective mind, or the sub, the conscious mind is rational, and it is also discriminating. These are three of the qualities. In other words, it can discern the differences between truth and falsehood. It can analyze. It is sort of like the mathematical or unemotional part of the brain.

The conscious mind has four major functions. The first function is that the conscious mind identifies incoming data. Now, incoming data can come from a variety of different sources. It can be thoughts that you have, or it can be things that are happening to you in the external world. So let us say you're walking across the street. This is your mind. You're walking across the street and you hear the roar of an automobile engine. Your eyes immediately turn to the right to see what the sound is and to identify what is that sound. When you see the automobile, you identify, you attach the sound to the car.

The second thing that the conscious mind does is it compares that moving automobile to all other moving automobiles of your experience. Now, if you live in a big city like New York, when you see a car and you compare that moving automobile with other cars you've seen, a hundred thousand, maybe a million cars moving, and your reflexes are very, very sharp. If you live in a country that doesn't have very many automobiles, chances are when you see a moving vehicle, your reflexes will be very, very slow. The comparison is done by, if you like, making a quick inspection into the subconscious and checking every single previous experience that you've had with moving cars. As that is done, as the comparison is done, you instantaneously get a response back. As a matter of fact, it is said that the subconscious functions at about 30,000 times the speed of the conscious mind. And that you can just have one glance, one noise, or think one thought in the conscious mind, and you can instantly trigger a reaction that might take an enormous amount, hours and hours of evaluation, if you were to do it consciously.

The third thing, the third function of the conscious mind is that it analyzes. Once it has a response back in its comparison, it analyzes the situation. You're walking across the street, you hear the sound of the automobile engine, you turn eyes right, you see the car moving down at you. Your comparison tells you that that car is moving at a speed of 50 miles an hour and it will be where you are in one second unless you move. So you now analyze and you say, "What do I do? Should I move or not?" And if the answer is yes, what you do is you move. And that takes us to the fourth function of the conscious mind, which is to decide. The conscious mind decides what to do after the analysis. It says yes or no. The conscious mind functions like a binary computer. It is always saying yes or no to incoming information. And the conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time.

Now, this is really amazing, as you're going to see. This is a really brilliant structure. So you're walking across the street, you hear the sound, you look to the right, you see the car moving. The comparison says that that car is moving on you. The analysis of the moving car says you've got to get out of the way. So you say, "Do I move? Yes or no?" Answer: "Yes." "Do I move forward? Yes or no?" Answer: "No." "Do I move backward? Yes or no?" And as soon as you say, "Yes, I move backward," and you convey this word "yes" to the subconscious mind, the subconscious mind instantly triggers all the muscles, all the nerves, all the sinews, all the tissues to move yourself back out of the way. You don't have to sit there and think, "Well, should I move my right foot first? Should I move my left foot first?" All you do is send a signal to the conscious mind, backed by a charge, if you like, or a detonation of emotion. And the stronger the emotion, the more instantaneously the subconscious responds to your command. The subconscious is activated by emotion. Emotion of fear, emotion of desire, the survival instinct, the love instinct. But it is always an emotion that triggers the subconscious.

Okay, what are some of the features of the subconscious mind? The subconscious mind is like a massive data bank. As a massive data bank, the role of the subconscious is to store and retrieve data. In other words, the subconscious mind is the subjective mind, in that it simply is the mind that obeys. Just as the conscious mind commands, the subconscious mind obeys. The subconscious mind has no thought of its own, by the way. The conscious mind has no memory. The subconscious mind is the seat of all memory. The conscious mind, remember, could only hold one thought at a time, whereas you can remember millions of facts.

The relationship between the conscious and the subconscious is: the conscious is like a gardener, and the subconscious is like a garden. Whatever seeds you plant in your subconscious mind, the subconscious mind goes to work to grow. In the subconscious mind, you have a whole series of different programs. The self-concept, which contains all the information on all the subjects that are important to you, and all of your previous experiences and responses to those situations. So that if you have a new situation similar to it, one of the roles of the subconscious is to keep your behaviors consistent with your previous behaviors. So that if you've always been fearful in a situation, you see the situation, you'll instantaneously be fearful without thought. If you're in a situation that you don't know anything about, the natural tendency is for you to be neither fearful nor unfearful, because you don't know enough until you build up an experience bank.

Now, this brings us to three critical laws. Three of the most important mental laws that we talked about. Remember, we talked about how your whole life is determined by mental laws. The first of these three mental laws is the law of subconscious activity. The law of subconscious activity says that whatever you plant into your subconscious mind, it immediately goes to work to bring into your reality. And your subconscious mind makes all your words and actions, it makes all your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept. In other words, it keeps all your words and actions in a pattern, fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept, or consistent with all previous information that you have put in. Also, it keeps your words and actions consistent with your dominant goals, which eventually, if you like, become part of your self-concept. So that means that your body language, your attitude, your level of energy, your level of self-confidence, the way you get along with other people, your social skills, everything is consistent with your self-concept. The subconscious simply, without you thinking about it at all, keeps everything consistent with it. So when you feel really good, when your self-concept is positive, you have a bounce in your step, your body language is confidence, it's courageous, it's outgoing, and so on. And when you feel negative, your self-concept is negative, and you will act in the same manner.

Which brings us to our second law. The second law is the law of concentration. Actually, this is the ninth law that we've talked about since we began. The law of concentration is very, very, very important. It's so important, as a matter of fact, each of these laws is so important in their place as to be enough in themselves to control your destiny. The law of concentration simply says this: it says that whatever you dwell upon, it grows. Whatever you dwell upon, it grows. Whatever you think about over and over again, grows in your reality. It's very simple. I used to do a course on creative thinking, and the way that you explain it is, you imagine that this is the total mental capacity that you have. And when you send a thought into this, it takes up this amount of space. And all the rest of the mental capacity is used to this. Your thoughts are used to think about all the other things in your mind. But the more you think, from the conscious down to the subconscious, the more of your mental capacity is committed to thinking about this one idea, until you reach a point where, if you dwell upon something consistently, you reach a point where you think of nothing else. And as you think of nothing else, you begin to set up this vibratory field. The subconscious mind is the core of the Law of Attraction and the law of vibration and the law of radiation. You begin to set up this vibratory field that sends out thought energy from you, consistent with what you are thinking about, and draws back into your life people and circumstances in harmony with those thoughts. So you just have to look around you and you have to say, "What are you thinking about all the time? What are you dwelling on all the time?" And the basic rule with regard to the law of concentration is to dwell upon, think about what you want to happen, not about what you fear.

And this brings us to the third law in this series, and that is the law of substitution. Now, the law of substitution, I've had many of my graduates tell me this has been the most important law they've ever learned. It's a very simple law, and it's based on a fact that the conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, positive or negative. If you want to get rid of a negative thought, the mind is not like a vacuum; it doesn't stay empty. If you want to get rid of a negative thought, you have to knock it out, if you like, with a positive thought. Is that you can replace one thought with another. You can replace one thought with another. And if you do that consistently, and if you replace any negative thought, any fear thought, any anxiety thought, any self-limiting thought, any negative expectations, anything that's holding you back, any fear of failure, lack, poverty, rejection, loss, or anything else, if you replace it with a desire thought, and this is the key: fear versus desire. If you keep your mind on what you want, and keep it off of what you don't want, as

You dwell on your desire, your fears diminish and get smaller as you think about what you want. Eventually, because of the law of substitution, you have less and less time, less and less emotion to think about what you don't want.

Why is it that people are successful? It's simply this: in the Bible, it says, "From them that hath shall more be given, and from him who hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away." What it means is simply this: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Why? It's because the rich think about wealth and affluence all the time. And what do the poor think about? The poor think about lack, loss, and limitation, risk, danger, fear, failure, all the time.

So if you want to unlock your potential, if you want to go straight to the stars, you have to use the law of substitution to keep your mind on what you want. Use the law of concentration to dwell continually on the results you desire. Be solution-centered rather than problem-centered. Be goal-centered rather than law-centered. And the law of subconscious activity will begin to adjust your words, your actions, your feelings, your emotions, and everything to the point where you will draw into your life the people and circumstances that will harmonize with it.

Now, what's the most powerful thing you can do? It's very simply this: Success begins with taking purposeful, systematic control of the content of your conscious mind. Purposeful, systematic control of the content of your conscious mind. Everything comes back to the law of control. As we talked about at the very beginning, purposeful, systematic control is best taken by saying over and over again, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself."

When you repeat "I like myself" or better, "I love myself," over and over again, you drive this thought into the subconscious mind more and more. You think of yourself in positive terms more and more. You push out thoughts of inferiority, negativity, fear, failure, rejection, and so on, more and more. You reprogram all previous data in your subconscious computer so that it is consistent with high self-esteem, personal effectiveness, and excellent personal performance. Is that the key to your success in life? Is to use the power of your subconscious mind to program it with thoughts, words, pictures, ideas, and feelings consistent with high performance, and keep your mind on what you desire and off of what you fear. Remember, the only thing in the world you can control is your thinking. The only thing in the world you can control are your conscious thoughts. And if you will do that, everything else will become possible for you.

[Music]

[Applause]

Brian Tracy presents: Session Five: Taking Charge of Your Life.

We said in the first series of modules that the starting point of all peak performance is self-esteem. It's how much you like yourself, how much you love yourself, how much you accept yourself as a valuable and worthwhile human being. The second part of peak performance, I think the two key requirements, the second part is self-responsibility. Self-esteem plus self-responsibility, each reinforcing themselves.

And what self-responsibility says, simply, is that you are the architect of your own destiny. That you are the master of your own fate. That you are totally self-responsible. That everything that you are or ever will be is up to you and you alone. Now, you can believe in a higher power, as I do, and you can say that the higher power is responsible. But God helps those who help themselves. And for this earthly life, you're in charge of your life. You're in charge of what happens to you. If you don't like the way things are going, it's up to you to change it. But there's no way that you can ever give away responsibility.

And this whole subject of responsibility is one that is very controversial. And as you see, you will see as we talk in this session, it's one that you have to understand with crystal clarity if you want to achieve your full potential as a human being.

Now, we go over here. One of the things that we know is we start off as infants, if you like, when we're born. I'll just write "I" for infant. We start off as infants. And as we grow to become adults at the age of 18 years, we start off with zero responsibility. And as we grow toward becoming adults, we gradually, we gain responsibility more and more. Until by the time we become adults at the age of 18 years, if our parents have brought us up properly, if they have prepared us, if they've encouraged us to be self-reliant, if they've encouraged us to make our own decisions and think for ourselves and plan our own lives, at the age of 18 years, legally speaking, psychologically, morally, mentally, physically, and everything else, you are ready to take over your own life.

Now, if your parents have not prepared you as an adult for total responsibility, it doesn't matter. At the age of 18, and from 18 onward, you are 100% responsible for the rest of your life. You can never absolve yourself of responsibility for the rest of your life. Everything that happens to you is up to you, totally and without forgiveness. The slogan of the truly responsible person is: "If it's to be, it's up to me." Which means, as Henry Ford said, "Never complain, never explain." Never complain, never explain.

What that means is, if you don't like the way things are, then it's up to you to change them. And if you're not willing to take steps to change them, then don't complain about them. Just simply accept them. Men who are men, and women who are women, don't complain about the difficulties of life. They just accept them as the difficulties of life, and they either do something about them or they don't say anything. So, if it's to be, it's up to me. If it's to be, it's up to you.

This is one of the hardest things to understand because when we're children, at this stage, we're totally dependent. And being totally dependent, we develop, if you like, a habit pattern or a conditioned response. And we look for the reason that things happen outside of ourselves. As we become adults, if we're not careful, we will still retain this dependency. And we will long for the what is called the pseudo security of childhood. That time in childhood when someone took care of us. That time in childhood when we were fed and clothed, and our, our home was taken care of, and our school, and everything. We didn't have to worry about a thing because they took care of it.

As we grow up, we go out to school, and the people at school, they take care of things. And if we're not careful, we get into the work world, and then again, it's "they," it's always someone else outside of ourselves who is ultimately responsible for ourselves. One of the things which I'll talk about later is the whole idea of self-development. Most people, because they've been taking all their education in the public school system, think that it's up to them when they're adults to continue their education. If nobody comes along to continue it, they just simply don't do it.

Now, there's another point, and that's the difference between maturity and immaturity. And here's a very simple example. Imagine that this is the course of life again, from infancy to adulthood. And everybody reaches the stage sooner or later where they come to this great cliff and this great canyon. And this is the side of immaturity. This is the side of childhood. This is the side where we are dependent upon others, and where we look to others for our answers and our solutions. We look outside of ourselves.

At this point, we come to the edge of this canyon. At the edge of this canyon, we look across into the land of maturity, the land of adulthood. And each one of us has to make a decision to jump in, one great leap, from being a child to being an adult. Now, sometimes this is forced on us. Sometimes it happens in an evolutionary way. But sooner or later, we have to make the decision to accept the fact that we're in charge of our own lives, we the architects of our own destiny, and then get on with it.

What do most people do? Unfortunately, what most people do is they turn back at this point. They slip into marriages where somebody will take care of them. They take jobs where they expect their bosses to take care of them, and so on. Or they just simply avoid responsibility by looking for the cause of everything that happens to them in other people and other circumstances. It's their bills, it's their health, it's the way their parents treated them, and so on. They're not really responsible.

On the other hand, sometimes they decide to take a little responsibility, but not too much. Which is the equivalent of trying to leap over a canyon in two jumps. And where the great vast majority of people end up, unfortunately, is in the valley. And this is the valley of excuses. The great majority of people spend their whole life in the valley of excuses, making excuses rather than making progress.

There's an old saying that says the disease of "excusitis," which is the habit of making excuses to excuse away our failures and our inadequacy, is fatal to success. The habit of making excuses is fatal to your success. So the question you have to ask yourself when we talk about responsibility is, what excuses do you use not to move ahead?

There was a very famous story by Tolstoy where Tolstoy and his brothers would play. And they had a game. And the game was that out in the garden, there would be a box. And in the box was the answer to all the riddles of life. And you could find the box under a certain bush, as long as you didn't think about a big white rabbit. As long as you kept your mind clear of that big white rabbit, and you didn't think about the rabbit, you could find the answer to all the mysteries of life. Well, of course, nobody ever found the box, or nobody ever found the answer to the mysteries of life, because they couldn't stop thinking of the big white rabbit.

The question you have to ask yourself is, what is your big white rabbit? What is it that you think of? What is the excuse that looms into your mind whenever you think of something that you could do, or have, or be? A new job, a new challenge, an opportunity, changing something in your life that you're not happy with? What is the white rabbit? What is the excuse that pops into your mind? You say, "Well, I could, I can't do that because..." Or another thing is, "Yes, but I'd like to, but..." There's always a reason. "I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm too tall. I'm too short. I don't have enough education. I've got too much education. It's the wrong time. It's the wrong place." And so on.

What is your white rabbit? What is it that sticks in the back of your mind that causes you to make excuses? That causes you to hang back from taking responsibility? That keeps you in the land of childhood, immaturity, and irresponsibility? Very, very important question to ask.

Now, when we talk about responsibility, we talk about something else. It's simply this: that the acceptance of responsibility is not optional. Many of us like to think that, well, you know, I'll take a little responsibility here, I'll take a little responsibility there. No, the acceptance of responsibility is not optional. From the time you become 18 years old, you are 100% responsible. You have no choice in the matter. As a matter of fact, there are very few things in life over which you have no choice, but you have no choice in this. It is mandatory. It is mandatory if you wish to fulfill your potential, if you wish to become everything you're capable of becoming. You must take full responsibility for bringing about the circumstances, for making the changes, for making the hard decisions necessary.

If you take the word "responsibility," you know, you can break it into two words: "response" and "ability." And one of the things which I've learned as I've studied history is that all of life is a series of challenges, difficulties, problems, setbacks, obstacles to face. And the difference between the winners and losers in life is not the difference in problems, because everybody has problems. And most people, and many people, have more and bigger problems than you and I could ever dream of. The difference in life, the difference between winners and losers, is the responses to the problems.

Many years ago, a man named Oswald Spengler wrote a book in which he talked about what he called the "challenge-response theory." The challenge-response theory simply said that civilizations grow and decline to the degree to which they meet challenges effectively and respond effectively. A small society starts out small, and almost invariably, it will be challenged by either an external enemy, or nature, or weather, or something else. If the society responds in a positive and constructive way to the challenge, the society grows. As it grows, it triggers additional challenges, difficulties. If it responds to them effectively, it grows some more. Oswald Spengler studied the 21 great empires of human civilization and found that every single one followed this cycle. As long as the civilization continued to rise to the challenge, it continued to grow stronger and stronger.

The reason why this analogy is so important is that we, as human beings, are exactly the same. We grow to the degree to which we respond effectively. To the degree to which we rise to the challenges without making excuses that life throws at us. And when we look at the great men and women of history, whether it's Albert Schweitzer, or Winston Churchill, or George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, we look at those great people. We find that they were always people that rose to the challenges of the time. If ever you wish to be capable of rising to great challenges, what you have to do is you have to start off on a daily basis rising to small challenges. Which means, no matter what happens, you accept the challenge, you accept the responsibility, you refuse to make excuses, and you go forward.

Now, there are three areas in life in our modern life which you must be very, very aware of. The first area is the political area. If you look around you, you will find that there is a great drive toward "the government doing it," "the government being responsible." Make the government responsible. What people are doing is they want the government to be their parent. They want the government to protect them and take care of them. But is the more you vote for politicians to do things for you, the more you give politicians control. You see, you can never give away responsibility, you can only give away control. How do you give away control? You give away control in terms of voting for them to spend more of your money, regulate more of your businesses, tax away more of your income, and so on.

The second area... So let me just finish this. The merge towards statism, collectivism, socialism, large government, and so on, is all aimed at somehow making the government, that faceless bunch of bureaucrats, responsible for the challenges of our own lives. Now, the second area where this is prevalent is in the criminal justice system. In the criminal justice system, you will find that the one characteristic of all criminals is that they refused to accept responsibility for their crime. It was always someone else or something else. It was always their childhood, or the background, or the other guys. The way that people get out of the criminal justice system is they accept responsibility for the crimes they've committed and they say, "I did this. Nobody made me do it. I am responsible." And they stop going back to jail.

The third area is in medicine. Today, we know that almost all of our problems in medicine are psychological in origin, or we inflict things on ourselves. The average American or Canadian is about 10 to 20 pounds overweight. In medicine, we expect the doctor to be responsible. Just imagine how we would take, what kind of care you would take of yourself if you ran a desert island for life with no doctors, no nurses, no hospitals, no medicine, no nothing, where you had nothing to fall back on. Very, very important point.

So, all around you in society, you're going to notice this clamor, this demand: "I am not responsible. Make somebody else responsible." But this is the key. Remember, you are always free to choose. You are free to choose your responses. You are free to choose the quality of your emotional life. You know, you decide how you're going to feel by how you are going to respond. You decide when to get angry, when to be happy, when to be unhappy. You decide what your attitude is going to be when you get up in the morning. You decide the quality of your physical life. You're the one who decides what you eat, what you drink, what you don't eat and drink. You determine the quality of your financial life. You're the one who determines the quality and quantity of the work that you contribute. In every case, you're free to choose what you want.

If you want things to be different, the starting point is to accept full, unqualified responsibility for your life. I first discovered this whole concept of responsibility when I was 21 years old. I was living in a little apartment. I was working on a construction job. It was 35 degrees below zero outside. I didn't have a car. I didn't have any money in the bank. My clothes were old. I had failed out of high school. And I looked around me in that cold winter, in that little apartment, with no future and not much of a past, and I said to myself, "If ever I want anything to change, it's up to me." That's the time where I really got scared. It suddenly hit me right between the eyes that if I wanted my life to be different, it was up to me to make my life different. And if I can get only one point across to you in this simple segment, this little segment, is this: that the starting point of flying to the stars, the starting point of taking complete charge of your life, the starting point of great success and great achievement, is to accept complete, unconditional responsibility. If it's to be, it's up to me.

Session Six: Eliminating Negative Emotions.

Continuing on the subject of responsibility versus irresponsibility. Many years ago, back in 1972, I began a study in an area of metaphysics that dealt with the psychology of the evolution of human potential. And one of the things that leaped out of those pages at me, and I've never really have recovered from it, was the discussion of the connecting link between irresponsibility and negative emotions. And the fact that negative emotions are the great blocking emotions, are crippling emotions of your life and my life. If the whole purpose of life, if you like, is to achieve higher levels of peace of mind, happiness, contentment, satisfaction, and so on, we have to sit down, we have to look and say, "What stops us? Or what is blocking us? Or what gets in the way of us really enjoying our lives?" And you find invariably, it's negative emotions of some kind.

Now, I'm not talking about the negative emotions that are associated with someone dying or with a great loss. I'm talking about the negative emotions that we experience on a day-to-day basis that rob us of peace of mind, rob us of health and energy, affect our loving relationships, get in the way of our financial independence, rob us of a feeling of fulfillment, and so on. So, we're going to talk in this session about eliminating negative emotions. And I want to bring us back to this whole discussion of responsibility. This is one of the most important things that I've ever found in my life. It's simply this: that if we take a graph or chart, and come with me for a second, and let's chart this. And we take from highest to the lowest. And here we have a totally responsible person. This is a person who is completely self-assured, completely self-responsible, makes no excuses at all. And down here, at the other end, we have an irresponsible person, a person who makes excuses for everything.

Now, this is the positive end of the scale. This is the negative end of the scale. Every one of us, you and I, are somewhere on this scale, moving up or down with every decision that we take. Now, we found, and this is what got to me, and I said a little bit earlier, that there's a one-to-one relationship between how much you feel you are in control of your own life and how positive or how happy you are. Well, there's a one-to-one relationship between the amount of responsibility you accept and the amount of control you experience in your life. And there's a one-to-one relationship between the amount of responsibility and control you accept and the amount of freedom that you feel that you have. Freedom is the indispensable requirement for happiness. That true success, true happiness in life, means being free to live your life your own way, as you decide, without anybody else telling you what to do. Living your life as a bird, free as a bird, to do whatever you want.

Well, there's a direct relationship between responsibility, control, and freedom. And there's a direct relationship between these three and positive emotions. Now, positive emotions are the great emotions. Positive emotions are those of happiness, and love, and joy, and vitality, and energy, and exuberance, and enthusiasm, and excitement, and so on.

Now, down at the other end, however, we have an attitude of irresponsibility. And what does that lead to? This is what shocked me so much when I first learned it. It leads to a lack of control. Is that to the degree to which we are irresponsible, we lose control. Our inner selves disintegrate and fragment. It also leads to a lack of freedom, because we no longer see ourselves as free agents choosing the direction of our own lives. We see ourselves as pawns, as victims, if you like, of external forces. And a lack of control and freedom leads to negative emotions.

When I first began to understand this, I thought, "Well, yeah, but what about my parents? And what about my childhood? And what about my condition? I didn't have a very good job. And what about my friends? I had crummy friends. And what about my health? And what about the weather? And what about the economy?" When I began to realize this, I began to realize that you put all that aside. If your highest aim, your highest goal, is positive emotions of happiness, joy, freedom, enthusiasm, and so on, then you have to stop making excuses.

Now, Carl Menninger, the great psychoanalyst, said a very interesting thing some years ago. He said that physical ailments are all different, caused by different bacteria, different viruses, and so on. He said, but mental illness is the same illness, simply spread along a spectrum from the least to the worst. And Thomas Szasz, the psychiatrist, said in his book, "The Myth of Mental Illness," that there is no such thing as mental illness. There are merely varying degrees of irresponsibility. So, when we say that an irresponsible person is not only negative, we say an irresponsible person is also mentally ill. A totally responsible person is mentally healthy.

How does this affect you? Well, I know you want to advance as much as you can in life, or you wouldn't be going through the efforts of taking a program like this. There is a direct relationship between the amount of responsibility you accept for the results of your organization and the amount of power, influence, position, prestige, and status you will have in your work now and in the future. At the top of the graph of responsibility, we have people who accept total responsibility, and power and opportunity gravitate toward them. Down at the other end, we have no power or powerlessness until you reach the extreme example of a person who's totally irresponsible, completely out of control, who has to be constrained in a straitjacket and locked up in a padded room for their own safety and for the safety of others. Completely powerless, completely without control or freedom.

Now, every time we make a decision to be self-responsible, we move up on this graph. Every time we make a decision to make excuses, we move down in this graph. So, let's take it a little bit further, and let's talk about the relationship between negative emotions and irresponsibility, so that you understand it perfectly clearly. And a perfect example is this: Imagine here is a tree. All right? Here's a tree. And here are the bushes. This is what is called the negative emotion tree. In the negative emotion tree grows the predominant negative emotions: fear, doubt. It's many people have considered that self-doubt is the most destructive of all negative emotions. Holds you back more than you can imagine. Also, hate is a negative emotion. Then there's envy, there's resentment. And then, of course, there's resentment's sister, guilt. These are all the big negative emotions. These are the ones that have led to hit parades for years. There's about 54 different negative emotions, but these are the top.

And if you take these negative emotions, and you boil them all down, you can put in your own favorite, by the way. Everybody has their own favorite negative emotion. Jealousy could be yours. Self-pity is a good strong one. It's doing well. But if you boil it down, you find that all negative emotions eventually boil down to anger, either inwardly expressed, that is where you make yourself sick, or outwardly expressed, that is where you make other people sick.

And this negative emotion tree, if we just take a look at its structure, we find the negative emotion tree has a root system. Now, the root system is where the nutrients come from that keep the negative emotion growing and keep the fruit of the negative emotion growing and blossoming. We look at the root system. We say, "What are the nutrients? What keeps negative emotions alive? What is the fertilizer? What is it that you heap on the fire, if you like, or put into the ground?" We find that there are two things essential to keep negative emotions alive. The first is justification. Justification. That's the simp... that's that's merely telling yourself and anybody else who will listen why you are justified in having this emotion. And the other is what we call identification. Identification means taking things personally. That's why, of course, they suggest that a person who acts as their own lawyer has a fool for a client. Probably a person who acts as their own doctor has a fool for a patient too, because we become so personally identified with our own situation, and so do you. We take it so personally that we get all emotionally involved and wrapped up in it.

So, we find that it's not possible for you to be negative about anything for very long unless you can justify or have a reason for it and explain it to other people, or unless you can identify and take it personally. For instance, if somebody comes in from the parking lot and says they just ran into a car in the parking lot, it doesn't bother you at all because you don't identify with it. Now, if they said they just ran into a car in the parking lot, and it's your car in the parking lot, and the person's gone now, you can become extremely upset.

Remember this, however, that we always choose these responses. I'll come back to this in a second. So, how do we get rid of justification? How do we starve the root system of the negative emotion tree? The way that we get rid of justification is by becoming non-judgmental. In the Bible, it says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." And since the Bible is, amongst many other things, a book of philosophy and metaphysics and how to live, being non-judgmental means that you just refrain from judging. Hold back from judging. Instead of casting a judgment that somebody is guilty of something, somebody has done something, just remain open and neutral. Just remaining neutral. And that's the key. Stops the negative emotion from getting going.

One of the things that we know about negative emotions, and I've studied them for years, is that negative emotions start off like a spark. And as they are fed, as we dwell upon them, as we justify them, as we become judgmental about the situation, they start to grow and grow and grow until they absolutely consume our minds. Now, with regard to identification, which is taking things personally, what we do is what is called we disidentify. We objectify, or we again remain neutral. We try to keep it at arm's length. We say, "There is a problem, but I am not the problem. There is a difficulty, but the difficulty is not me." And we keep it at arm's length.

So, these two, once we begin to stop justifying and stop identifying, or taking things personally, stop getting emotionally involved. Have you ever had the situation where somebody comes to you with a problem, and you get so emotionally involved with their problem that you lose that, that you start to feel upset, and they go away, and they don't have a problem anymore, and you're, you're still there and you're upset? This is because we've taken it so personally.

However, the key to getting rid of negative emotions, and this is the most important part of this, is the trunk. It's cutting down the trunk of the negative emotion tree. And the trunk of the negative emotion tree is blame. Blame is 99% of negative emotions. Now, it's very important to understand where negative emotions come from. Negative emotions come from inside you. Negative emotions are not contained in external situations. Negative emotions are not caused by other people or other situations. Negative emotions are caused by your response to other situations.

Perfect example: two people meet the same situation. A traffic jam, a rude waiter, whatever it happens to be. And one person gets all upset and uptight and angry. The other person lets it go off their back. Another example: the same person, two different days. One day they've had an argument, or a flat tire, or they're late for work. They get into a traffic jam, and they're angry and they're uptight. The next day, they leave with plenty of time, they had a lovely breakfast with their family, they've got lots of time to get to work. They have a traffic jam. Doesn't bother them at all. In both cases, it's an example of that the negative emotion does not come from the situation. Is that you are always free to choose the quality of your emotional life. Is that you choose to become an angry... Now, understand this: nobody makes you feel anything. Nobody makes you feel angry. Nobody makes you feel tense. Nobody makes you feel upset. You always decide how you're going to feel.

And then, if you're not careful, you will fall into a negative habit pattern of blaming the other person. Blame is the core of all negative emotions. When you stop blaming, you cut down the negative emotion tree. You cut it off. You kill it. And all the negative emotions die simultaneously. It's almost exactly as if this negative emotion tree were a Christmas tree, and it were plugged into the wall, and the negative emotions were Christmas tree lights. And you took this plug and you jerked it out of the wall. What would happen? Well, what would happen is that all the negative emotions, the lights, would go out simultaneously, just like that.

How do you do this? You do this by using the law of substitution. Remember, the law of substitution says that the conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time. It's a thought that the conscious mind holds that determines how the emotions will react, how the subconscious mind will react. Since it can only hold one thought at a time, what you do is you knock out the thought that is causing the negative emotion, the blame thought, and you replace it with this affirmation: "I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible." This, in conjunction with "I like myself," "I am responsible" is the most powerful positive affirmation you can use. Because the instant that you say "I am responsible," you exert complete control over your emotional life. The instant you say "I am responsible," suddenly you are back in the driver's seat. You cannot say "I am responsible" and feel a negative emotion simultaneously. The one knocks the other one out of your conscious mind.

And you can start off, for instance, each one of us has a situation that causes us a lot of aggravation. You have a situation. It may be a person. But every time you think about it, you get angry. Every time you think about it, you get cross, or you get distracted. What you do is, whenever you start to think about that situation, neutralize it by saying, "I am responsible." Wait a minute. "I am responsible." Is it a relationship? Who got yourself into the relationship? Did somebody put you there at gunpoint, or did you get into it by yourself? Is it a job? Is it an investment? Is it a health problem of some kind? In every case, accept responsibility.

Now, there's a big difference between acceptance of responsibility and, let me just write this up, it's responsibility versus blame. Responsibility versus blame. What is, what is blame? Blame always looks backward toward the past. Blame looks toward the past, toward what cannot be done, toward what can't be changed. Responsibility always looks to the future. So, people say, "Well, when you accept responsibility, isn't that the same as saying you're to blame?" No, it's the same as saying that you are in charge of the quality of your thinking from this moment onward.

So, let us say that you come out to the parking lot and somebody's run into your car. Now, you have two choices. You can become angry and upset and run around and scream and shout, or you can act in a responsible manner. You can do everything possible to trace the culprit. And other than that, you can live with it maturely. So, responsibility always looks to the future. Responsibility always asks this question when faced with a problem: "What can we do?" Not "Who did it?" But "What can we do from here? Where do we go from here? What can we do?" This is the question of the responsible person. We don't cry over spilled milk. We just say, "All right, what's the solution?" and we get on with the game. The irresponsible person always says, "Who did it?" and is obsessed with finding out who did it, and then taking whatever blame there is and apportioning it so that everybody gets their fair share of the blame, which of course does nothing to resolve the difficulty.

So, the key to cutting down the negative emotion tree is using the ax and eliminating blaming. The day that you begin to eliminate blaming from your life is the day that your life starts to take off. Because the day that you start to eliminate blaming and negative emotions, suddenly most of the problems, most of the things that stand between you and the happiness you desire, vanish.

Why am I making such an emphasis on negative emotions? Well, let me make that clear for just a second. What I found, and this is what was staggering to me, because I've always been committed to realizing my potential as a human being, is that you cannot advance in life except to the degree to which you get rid of your negative emotions. You cannot make any progress, you cannot go any further than where you are right this minute, except to the degree to which you leave your negative emotions behind.

Now, by the way, with regard to the negative emotion that you have that's associated with another person or situation, it's difficult to accept responsibility. It's difficult to say, "I am responsible," initially, because you've been blaming that person for so long. So sometimes you have to say it with gritted teeth. You have to say, "Wait a minute. Responsible. I am responsible." But the more you repeat this, "I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible," it comes easier and easier. Eventually, it gets to the point where as soon as you think of that person or situation, you can neutralize the thought by the law of substitution by saying, "Wait a minute. I'm responsible. I am responsible."

There's a beautiful line that you can use also in dealing with difficult people that goes back to self-esteem and it also has to do with eliminating negative emotions. It goes something like this: "No matter what you say or do, I'm still a valuable and worthwhile person." Or, "No matter what happens, I am still a valuable and worthwhile person." Or, "No matter how this situation turns out, I am still a valuable and worthwhile person."

The natural course of life is this. Here's the road of life. And when we're children, we start off with no negative emotions. All negative emotions, by the way, have to be taught to a child. They have to be taught, and the child has to learn them from their parents. Have you ever seen a negative baby? There's no such thing as a negative baby. Babies just laugh, and they're happy, and they cry when they have needs. But babies are not negative. But as we grow up, we watch the people around us, and we begin to develop our own negative emotions, which we carry in a sack on our back. As we become teenagers, this sack grows big enough to the point where we can even go to slumber parties, or we can get together with our buddies, and we can talk about how terrible our childhood has been, how rotten our parents are, how rotten our siblings, teachers, and everything else are.

Now, when we become adults, what is the mark of adulthood in our society? The mark of adulthood is that you have a great gunny sack full of negative emotions because you have suffered. And what happens is you spend most of your time when you're with other people letting down your guards and telling them about how much you've suffered. What you do is you use exchanges of negative emotions as the basis for your relationships. You say, "Look, I'll show you my negative emotions if you'll show me yours." Remember, like we used to do as kids. And what you do is you get together like a couple of traders in an Arab bazaar, and you display your negative emotions. You say, "Oh, look at this rotten childhood I had. And look at this terrible relationship. And look at how crummy my boss is. And how rotten this is." And so on. And you exchange them back and forth.

Now, what happens when you talk about and think about your negative emotions? Remember the law of concentration: whatever you dwell upon grows. Whatever you dwell upon grows and gains strength and stays alive. Negative emotions, by the way, and this is another thing that I learned in the study, is negative emotions are very fragile and ephemeral things. He said, if you don't keep them alive through constant talking, through constant cultivation, you know what happens? They die on you. Yes. You see, negative emotions just die. It's like a fire. If it falls where there's nothing, or spark, if it falls where there's nothing to burn, it goes out. Negative emotions, unless you talk about them and keep them going, unless you dwell on them all the time, they die on you.

You ever had an experience where you're really worried about something, you're really upset about something, and it's preoccupying all of your time? And then you get to work, or you get home, and you get so busy doing something else that for about three or four hours, you don't have time to think of anything else. About three or four hours, you stop and say, "Geez, I haven't worried about that for a long time. I got to get back to worrying about it." Because what's happening? It's going out. It's like a fire that's going out. So you got to get back to it. You got to think about it and talk about it and worry about it and hassle it to get it back up to the point where it's preoccupying your whole mind. How many times does that happen?

Well, what the mature adult does is, the mature adult leaves their negative emotions by the side of the road and gets on with the rest of their life. They get on with the rest of their life. They leave them there. Instead of dragging them along, they leave them like a big pile of garbage at a garbage strike. They just leave it there. And when people say, "How are things going?" you say, "Wonderful." You say, "How's life?" "Terrific." You say, "How's your relationships?" "Couldn't be better." "How is your health?" "How you feeling?" "I feel great." In other words, don't talk about negative things, because when you talk about negative things, you actually increase them and you draw more of them into your life.

Look at the people that you know who have problems. You know, most of the people that you know have problems all the time, never seem to solve their problems, are people who talk about their problems all the time. "To him that hath shall more be given. From him who hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away."

Now, this is another and critical point with regard to relationships. And I learned this again in my studies. It is that each of us has a certain amount of suffering that we've gone through. And people fall in love with their suffering. People love their suffering. As a matter of fact, they feel that they've paid for it. They've thought about it. They've lived with it for so long that most people are very reluctant to give up their suffering. You can't talk them out of it. You say, "Well, why don't you just forget it? Why don't you just put it behind you? Why don't you just get on with it?" They say, "Well, I can't do that. Do you know how much I've suffered? Do you know how much emotional investment I've put into this relationship, his job, his career, and so on?"

I remember, oh, I can tell you a thousand people have come up to me who are in bad relationships and they say, "Well, I've been in this relationship or in this marriage now for several years, and I'm miserable. I'm unhappy. We don't like each other. It's going..." I say, "Why don't you do something about it?" But after all these years. And what I say to them is, I say, "Look, the average life expectancy of the average American today is between 75 and 80 years. And it's going up. By the time we reach the end of the century, the average life expectancy will probably be 80, 85, 90 years old." You know what that means? That whatever age you are now, and you may be 20, 25, 30, 35, it doesn't really matter. You subtract that from 80. You get the number of years that you've got left to live in this current situation. You ask yourself, "Do I want to live in this situation for the next 30, 40, 50 years?" And the answer, in all honesty, has to be no. Because it's probably not going to get any better. People love their suffering. They hate to give up their suffering.

So, what we've devised is a very simple bit of advice. And this advice, I just recently discussed this with a consulting psychologist, and he said it's the simplest advice he's ever heard to give to people who need it. It's when somebody comes up to you and wants to talk to you about their problems, you say, "Yes," and you be sympathetic and empathetic. It's very good to hear people and let them talk about their problems. Except there are some people who do nothing but talk about their problems. Every time you see them, they talk about their problems. Very often, they talk about the same things they talked about last time. What you do is you say, "Yes, I hear what you say, and I'm very sympathetic. However, you're responsible for your own life. You are responsible. What are you going to do about it? You are responsible for your own life. What are you going to do about it?"

Now, what will happen is this: is that your good friends will say, "Yes, you're right. I am responsible. I have to make a change. I have to do something about it." And they'll go out and they'll do it. As a matter of fact, they'll come, they'll lay out all their problems to you, and all you say to them is this: you say, "Well, what do you think you should do about it?" Now, your good friends can use that conversational time to get their own thoughts in line, to come up with their own conclusions, and go out and they don't need your advice. Most people don't need advice. There's an old saying that says that "Don't worry about the universal propensity to give advice, because the propensity to ignore it is equally universal." People don't need advice. Sometimes they just need a sounding board.

However, there are some people who don't have any intentions of doing anything about their problems. All they want to do is they want to use their problems as an excuse to get you to talk about them. You understand that? It's a very common neurotic tendency in our society is to use your problems as the basis for the discussion. "Here's my problems. Let's you and me talk about them." And the person in himself or herself has no.

Interest in you at all. All they have an interest in is having you listen. As a matter of fact, we say this as a joke. We say that this is what these people look like. Is these people look upon you as being a person, and this is your face, and this is your eyes, and these are your ears. See? And here is your eyes, preferably wide open and sympathetic. Here's your mouth, preferably shut. And here's your ears, preferably wide open.

These people don't even look upon you as a person. They don't care about your problems at all. All they care about is you sitting there listening and nodding sympathetically and giving them advice, which they have no intention whatever of following. When you run into people like this, it's a very simple way to test the friendship. Just start talking about yourself. Say, "Well, you know, I'm really glad you brought your problems to me because I've got some problems of my own and I'd like to discuss my life with you." You will find these people will run for the door. They'll watch their watch. They've got an appointment. They'll take off so fast you can't imagine.

All right, now one final point, and this is critical. It's absolutely critical to the whole subject. It's the wrap-up point, if you like. It's this: If is that when we start talking about giving up negative emotions, almost everybody says, "Yes, I agree. What you say is true. It makes sense to me, Brian, and I am going to give up my negative emotions. I am going to accept responsibility. I am going to take charge of my life, and I'm not going to blame anybody else anymore." Except for one. Everybody has one that they're not going to part with. Everybody has that favorite negative emotion that they've been paying for and holding on to for years.

Now let me tell you why it's so important that you give it up. Here's a car. Imagine this: a beautiful Mercedes automobile, brand new from the factory, absolutely spitting 560 SEL, $55,000, beautiful vehicle, tested in every aspect, absolutely perfect. It's given to you without a flaw, except for one. This is the front of the automobile, and there's one small problem: is that for some mechanical reason, this brake is locked on.

Now, you get into this beautiful Mercedes, just as you are, beautiful mind, beautiful body, beautiful potential, incredible capability. You get into this beautiful Mercedes and you start it up, and you step on the gas. And what happens? Well, if the front brake is locked on, what will happen to the car? No matter how hard you step on the gas, what will happen to the car? What will happen is that the car will spin. It'll go around in circles. It'll spin, and it will go around in circles until you stop stepping on the gas. And you get give up. As long as that front brake is locked on, you can't go anywhere.

What I found was this: is that the existence of just one negative emotion that you will not let go of, for whatever reason, and the reason is always an ego reason, the reason it always has to do with your own ego, will cause you to stay in the same place and spin your wheels and go in circles for the rest of your life. That you all know people who are talented, who have opportunities, good educations, and so on and so forth, and their life just goes around in circles. They just seem to be spinning. They've got everything going for them, and they just continually have problems. Why is it? Almost invariably, and this is what all psychoanalysis does, all psychotherapy is, they've got one negative emotion locked on. And the negative emotion they have locked on is blame. There is somebody that they are still blaming for something. There's somebody that they are not going to let off the hook because that son of a gun did something to them. You know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about because we're all in the same boat. We're all human beings.

The reason this makes sense to you and I is because we do have a tendency to fall in love with our suffering. We do have a tendency to gunny sack and to think that part of our humanity is all these negative emotions. We do have a tendency to see that other people are responsible. Other people have hurt us. They did cost us money. They did hurt us in a relationship. But the key to peak performance, the key to happiness, the key to success, is to use the law of substitution and knock those negative emotions out of the box by the very first time you think of anything that causes you any stress, you say, "I am responsible." "Wait a minute, I am responsible." "I am responsible." "I like myself, and I am responsible." "I like myself, and I am responsible." And nothing outside of me is going to disrupt my peace of mind. I am in charge of my emotional life. I am responsible. You are responsible.

Session Seven: Releasing Your Brakes. When I began studying negative emotions many years ago, the most critical point I discovered was that you cannot make any progress toward health, happiness, love, and fulfillment of your potential as long as you insist on keeping your negative emotions intact. Now, the only good thing about negative emotions, if there is any good thing at all, is that negative emotions are not permanent. Even according to Sigmund Freud, there is no permanent place for negative emotions in the subconscious. In other words, they are unwanted visitors. They are negative habits or negative response patterns that can be eliminated. And the starting point of eliminating them is understanding where they came from, understanding what were the causative factors going back to early childhood that have triggered the development of negative emotions and have given us as adults a propensity to be negative in one way or another.

That takes us to early childhood conditioning. Remember, we said before that the starting point of inhibitive and compulsive negative habit patterns was destructive criticism. Destructive criticism is the great destroyer. Destructive criticism destroys people on the inside and leaves them walking around on the outside. More personalities have been under and destroyed, more self-esteem has been cast aside as a result of destructive criticism than anything else that we can possibly imagine. So destructive criticism is the great killer.

Now, why is it so bad? Well, we know that children, as infants, children as they're growing up, have a tremendous need for love and approval from their parents. In fact, many psychiatrists and psychologists have said that the number one reason for mental illness in adulthood is withdrawal of love or love withheld. We know that any prestigious person, any person who is important to a child, has an inordinate impact on that child. And that children up to the age of six years have very little ability to discriminate between valid and invalid criticism. What this means is that anything that a parent or an older sibling or an older relative, anything that a prestigious person or important person says to a child is accepted as true. It's accepted as a valid representation of reality.

If a mother says, "You're a bad boy," if a daddy says, "You're lazy," if someone says that you're not dependable, if someone says you're stupid, or you're clumsy, or you're ugly, the child has no capacity whatever to discriminate between valid and invalid. The child accepts that as a true representation of reality. It bypasses the conscious mind, goes straight into the subconscious, and is stored. Many of us as adults are still living on the basis of negative information that was programmed into us when we were children. And then as adults, what do we say? We say, "Well, that's just the way I am," or "I've always been that way," or some people even say, "Well, it runs in the family. Your father was like that. Children are like that," or "Your mother was like that," and so on. But where did it come from? None of these things run in the family.

For instance, when I was growing up, my parents had gone through the Depression, and the Depression had made an inordinate impact on them. So whenever we talked about buying anything, all the time I was growing up, my parents would become very, very tense and they said, "We can't afford it. We can't afford it. We can't afford it. We can't afford it." They had this lack mentality, this "we can't afford it" mentality all their lives. And I grew up so even though I've never experienced the depression, and you've never experienced the depression in most cases, 10, 20, 30, 40 years later, we're still saying, "I can't afford it. I can't afford it. I can't afford it." We're still going on the basis of those critical remarks, those emotionalized remarks that our parents said.

Maybe your parents said, as my father told me over and over again, "You never finish anything you start. You never finish anything you start. You never finish anything you start." Or, "You're lazy. You never finish anything you start." Do you know when I was an adult, I had a terrible time finishing things that I started? As I would get close to the end of a task, I would actually begin to seize up and look for every single excuse to procrastinate and delay.

The second factor that predisposes us to negative emotions is lack of love. We know that children's personalities develop to the degree to which they receive a high quality and a high quantity of love from their parents. There's a one-to-one relationship between the amount of love, the quality and quantity of love, and healthy personality. That love withdrawn or deprivation of love is the key cause of unhappiness, negativity, and mental illness in adulthood.

Now, in order for a child to feel truly loved, the child must have high self-concept parents. And most of us, unfortunately, had parents that were the victims of their parents, and the victims of their parents. What one of the writers say? "Everybody is a victim of a victim." We are all victims of victims. In other words, parents meant to raise us the best way they could, but they were victims of victims themselves.

Now, in order for a child to feel fully loved, three conditions have to exist. Number one condition is that parents must love themselves. Parents must love themselves. Remember, you can never give any more love to others than you have for yourself. If you don't love yourself, you can't love your children. If you have a little bit of love for yourself, you have to spread it over your children. If you have a little bit of love for yourself, and that's all taken up by your husband or your wife, then sometimes, even though you want to love your children, you don't have the love. Even if your parents wanted to love you, in many cases, they didn't have the love to give. Why? It's because they never got it when they were growing up.

The second requirement is that parents must love each other. In order for a child to grow up feeling self-confident, to grow up feeling loved, to grow up feeling safe and secure, he or she must grow up in an environment where the parents love each other. There is nothing that is more frightening to a child than to grow up in a household where the parents are fighting with each other, where the parents don't love each other, where there's difficulty, because the child always has a tendency, first of all, to be a victim, and that the child is shouted at and screamed at, and the child believes that the reason my mommy and daddy are fighting is it's my fault.

Now, interesting research. Since there are so many single-parent families today, interesting research shows that when one of the parents leaves as a result of a separation or a divorce, the remaining child or children are invariably convinced that the reason the other parent left was because of something they did. And it's critical if a marriage or a relationship is going to end and one is going to leave, that the remaining parent tell the children over and over again that the reason the relationship didn't work out has nothing to do with you. It has only to do with me and Daddy, or me and Mommy. Has nothing to do with the child. The child needs to hear it many, many times before the child feels confident and secure. And of course, it's always better that a child be raised in a home with one parent that loves them rather than two parents that don't love each other.

Now, the third condition that must be fulfilled if lack of love is not to exist is that parents must love the child. Parents must love the child. Well, this seems pretty obvious. I mean, seems pretty logical. The fact of the matter is, though, and this is the hardest thing for you or I as adults even to think about, but it is possible that our parents didn't love us. Not that they didn't intend to. I mean, they meant to love us, and they wanted to love us, and they had us intending to love us, and so on. But simply because they had conflicts with each other, and they had unresolved problems with their parents, and they had the war, and the depression, and they had their careers, and they had other responsibilities, they just never got around to it. You see, that was the difficulty. They meant to, but they never got around to it. The only way that you can really love a child is by spending a high quantity and high quality of time with the child. High quantity, high quality with the child. Ten minutes a day doesn't do it. Children consider themselves valuable to the degree to which the most important people in their lives spend time with them. If the most important people in their lives, their parents, only spend a little time with them, the children conclude that the reason for that is because they are defective. There is something essentially wrong with them, and that's why their parents don't spend time with them. Parent, the children don't think rationally, they think purely emotionally. They only think, "If the parent is here, he loves me, or she loves me. If the parent doesn't spend time with me, he or she doesn't love me."

So if any one of those three conditions or more existed when you were growing up: the parents didn't love themselves, the parents didn't love each other, or maybe the parents didn't love you because they never got around to it, although they meant to, then you will have grown up in conjunction with destructive criticism, with what is called guilt.

Now, what is guilt? Guilt is a feeling of not being worth very much. Where do we get this feeling? Well, when we're continually criticized by the important people in our lives, and simultaneously we are not given the amount of love that we need, we feel that we're not worth very much. We feel that we are worth less. And a feeling of guilt leads to a feeling of worthlessness. Worthlessness and guilt. The feeling of worthlessness is the underlying fundamental problem of the 20th century. It is the main source of mental illness. It is the main source of problems in relationships. It's the main source of psychosomatic illness. It is the main source of most of the problems that beset our society. Is this deep down feeling of guilt and worthlessness, which is expressed or unexpressed in the thought or the attitude, "I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough."

You know, we talked about self-esteem and how important it was. Self-esteem means, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." People who've been raised with destructive criticism and lack of love not only don't like themselves, they don't feel that they're good enough for anybody or anything. And in many cases, they are plagued by self-hatred. They hate themselves. Self-hatred or self-condemnation. And you will see this will come out in their conversation, and it will come out in their relationship with other people. People who hate themselves, even though they want to have good relationships with other people, are simply not capable of it. People who don't feel that they're good enough for anything will always bring it to the surface. It will always be a problem.

Now, what is the main reasons for guilt? Actually, where do guilt, where does guilt come from? Guilt comes from three negative sources: negative parents, negative influences, or negative religion. One of the three. Any one of the three uses guilt. And guilt is used or practiced, especially by parents and by some religious denominations, for two reasons. One is punishment. Guilt is used to punish us when we're growing up. It's the easiest way to punish a person is to make them feel bad. So our parents make us feel bad by physically punishing us or by verbally abusing us. And punishment is a very good way to gain conformance. Punishment is a very good way to get people to do what you want.

The second reason why guilt is used, when it's consciously practiced, and some organizations practice it consciously, is for control. Emotional control, especially. Because if you can emotionally control a person with guilt, you can manipulate their behavior. And there are many organizations that use guilt as a tool of control and manipulation. If you can control people strongly enough, especially emotionally, you can get their money. You can get their time. You can get their commitment. You can demand their resources, and so on. And many organizations use punishment, um, use guilt as a tool for D. Many of the charities that advertise on television, especially charities for very needy causes involving children or disabled people, use the feeling of guilt. "You're doing so well. You should feel guilty for these people who are suffering. Therefore, send us some money, and that will take care of your guilt for a little while until we get you on our mailing list and and so on." So guilt is a standard.

Why is it that guilt is so commonly used? Well, first of all, because almost all of us have it to a greater or lesser degree. And number two, it's easy. Guilt is the easiest. Why does our parents use guilt on us? Why do our mothers use guilt on us? Because a mother can control us with guilt across a crowded room. She can control us over a thousand miles of telephone line. Parents can use guilt on their children because their parents use guilt on them. When their parents use guilt on them, because it's the easiest. There's no physical effort. You can do it with a look, a glance, and a word. And people always do the easiest thing, as you know. So be alert to it.

Now, if you've been brought up in an environment where you've been made to feel guilty, and almost all of us have, you must understand that guilt is like a cesspool of negative emotional bacteria that sits at the core or the root of your psyche or your subconscious. And it springs forth all other negative emotions: anger, hatred, envy, resentment, uh, uh, frustration, uh, and, uh, doubt, and fear, and so on and so forth. It controls it. It creates them all. And the way to really, really get rid of that core is to excise it and cut it out completely. So that's what we're going to do in the rest of this session.

First of all, how can you tell if you've been brought up with feelings of guilt? All right, we'll call this the adult manifestations of guilt. Adult manifestations of guilt. You can tell, and you can just test yourself. How many of these do you have?

Number one adult manifestation of guilt is you have feelings of inferiority, feelings of inadequacy, and feelings of undeservingness. In other words, you don't feel that you deserve good things to happen to you. If a person has been brought up with destructive criticism, made to feel guilty, then when they do succeed, even with tremendous effort later on in life, they have a terrible tendency to feel that they don't deserve it. This is called, by the way, fear of success. Fear of success is just another way of saying that a person who has been conditioned to believe themselves to be unworthy or not good enough feels very, very uncomfortable when they experience success. They feel very, very tense and uneasy. As a matter of fact, if they feel too much tension, they'll start snorting coke, drinking too much alcohol, they'll engage in self-destructive behaviors. They'll have a tremendous overwhelming feeling of anxiety, like somebody's going to find them out. There's a book on the book stands, it says, "If I'm doing so well, how come I feel like an imposter?" They have what is called the imposter syndrome. Have you ever been successful at something, and people come up to you and say, "Boy, you did a great job at that," or "That's wonderful," even if you had worked hard, hard, hard at it, and you felt like they were going to find you out? You felt like, you know, they would find out that you weren't really that good, that it was just a fluke, it was just an accident. And of course, that's what people say. They say, "It was just a fluke. It was just an accident. You know, I don't know how it happened. I'll blow it next time." They do everything possible to get away from this feeling of inferiority and undeservingness. So be alert to that.

Number two is destructive self-criticism. There is a line from one of the poets that says, "Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return." Children at a very early age, sometimes at the age of two or three, begin to run themselves down, tear themselves down, even to hit themselves and physically punish themselves. If they're criticized enough, they're always saying the equivalent of, "I'm not good enough," or "I'm not very good," and they punish themselves. So destructive self-criticism is a real symptom of an underlying feeling of guilt and inadequacy.

Number three is easily manipulated by guilt. People can pull your guilt strings very simply. As a matter of fact, we find that there are two types of people in the world: there's guilt throwers and there's guilt catchers. And these people are invariably attracted to each other. And of course, the guilt thrower is the person who identified with a parent who threw the guilt. The guilt catcher is the person who identified with a parent who caught the guilt. But the guilt throwers and the guilt catchers then get together. Uh, they balance nicely, they settle down, they raise new generations of little guilt throwers and guilt catchers. But you can tell that you're easily manipulated by guilt, uh, because you've been conditioned to be responded to. Your boss can pull your guilt string. A person on a bus can pull your guilt string. The airline, uh, flight attendant can pull your guilt string. And be very, very alert to this.

The third manifestation, or the fourth manifestation of guilt, is that you use it. You use guilt and blame generously. Why? Well, it's been worked on you, you work it on them. I mean, fair exchange is a fair deal. You use guilt and blame generously. It becomes the basis of your relationships with other people. Is when something goes wrong, you pin the rap on them. Something goes wrong, you blame someone instantly. There's a problem, you look around to see who's to blame. They did an interesting experiment, uh, in Candid Camera a few years ago, where they took and they put a patch of ice on a sidewalk where it shouldn't be. It wasn't that cold, but they froze the ice. And then they watched how people would react as they walked along. And they'd be walking along, and they'd hit this patch of ice, and they'd grab their balance, and they'd throw around. The first thing they do is they look at the person closest to them and they glare at them as if they're furious. In other words, they looked at somebody to blame. Now, if there wasn't anybody within 10 or 15 feet, they would get their balance back again, they look around, there'd be nobody around them, and they kick the ground and stomp on the ground and walk away. You see, our natural tendency whenever anything goes wrong is to look for someone or something to blame, especially if we've been brought up being blamed continuously.

And the fifth manifestation is what is called victim language. Now, remember, we talked about the law of concentration: "Whatever you dwell upon grows." It also says that if you use victim language, you keep the guilt alive. You reinforce it, you build it, you grow it, you fertilize it. Victim language is language like, "I can't. I can't. I can't." Whenever you say, "I can't. I can't. I can't," you're sending a message to the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind picks up that you are helpless, that you're not in control, that you're a victim. And so when you actually come to want to do something, the subconscious mind just feeds back your own command and says, "You can't. You can't."

The second thing is, you say, "I have to. I have to." Again, I have no control. I'm not in charge. But here's two other expressions of victim language that you got to be careful of, and it's this one: "I'll try." "I'll try." Whatever it is, "I'll try." What is the words "I'll try"? I mean, well, let me tell you what they mean. They mean, "I'm going to fail, and I'm telling you in advance so that you can't come back on me." In other words, you say, "Well, I'll try to be there on time," but what you're saying is, "I'll probably be late, and there's no point. You can't come back on me because I said I'd try." Whenever a person says, "I'll try," they are excusing failure in advance.

If you went to the doctor, and the doctor did an examination and checked you all over and looked at you and came back and said, "Well, geez, you're in terrible condition. We're going to have to do triple bypass surgery and get you over to the hospital right now. I'm surprised you even made it in." And you say, "Well, geez, doctor, I sure hope you'll do a good job." And he says, "I'll try." And he says, "I'll try." You said, "Wait a second. Maybe I got to get a second opinion." You go to a lawyer, you you're charged with something, you go to a lawyer, and you present your case to the lawyer, say, "Look, will you defend me?" He says, "I'll try." What is he saying? He's saying, "Look, I've looked at the case, and from what I see, there's not much hope, but I'll take it on anyway. I'll try." And then they're the ones that try to get you to pay in advance, too.

Another set of words that you mustn't use, by the way, with regard to "I'll try." What you do is you say, "I'll do it," or "I won't do it." Not "I'll try." If ever, and in our business, we run a very, very active business, whenever we call somebody up and we ask them, "Can we get this or that?" They say, "Well, I'll try to have it to you by Friday," or "I'll try to get it done on time." We instantly know that they're telling us that they want off the hook. They're not going to do it. And so we never let anybody get away with "I'll try." We say, "It has to be done or not." And we want a guarantee. And if necessary, we'll go and pick it up. But whenever they say, "I'll try," what they're doing is they're sluicing you off. So be alert to that.

And the other words are, "I wish." "I wish," as they say, is a desire or a goal with no energy behind it. "I wish." What does "I wish" mean? "I wish" means that I would like to have something, but I know I never can. When you say, "I wish I could lose weight," what does it mean? The unspoken words are, "But I know I can't." Why can't you? Because of the excuses that you have, and the metabolism that you have, and the problem, and so on. There's always reasons because you have to go out and so on. "I wish I could quit smoking." "I wish I could get fit." "I wish, I wish, I wish." Whenever you use the words "I wish," you signal to the subconscious that this is something that you do not believe it's possible for you to achieve or acquire. The subconscious then completely discards it as a goal and gives you no energy, no motivation, no drive, no desire to accomplish it. So be very, very alert to victim language. Be alert to the expression, "Yes, but." "Oh, I do it." "Yes, but." Or someone says, "Why don't you do this?" You say, "Yes, but." The word "but," by the way, is the great eraser. When a person says, "You know, you could, you could certainly increase your income, or increase your output, or be a better person, or happier, or lose weight, or whatever else have happened to be," and you say, "Yes, but," what you're saying is you're erasing the whole statement that has gone before. You send a message to your subconscious that says, "No possibility. Make no effort. Focus no energy. Commit no capacity to the accomplishment of this goal."

So people who've been brought up feeling guilty have five qualities or five adult manifestations: One is they feel inferior, they feel inadequate, they feel like they don't deserve good things to happen to them. You're very alert to that. Number two is they run themselves down continually. They use destructive self-criticism. Number three is they use guilt and blame on themselves and on others. Number four is they're easily manipulated by guilt. Number five, they use victim language.

So let's go and say, how do we get rid of guilt? Isn't it amazing how this board just clears? Isn't that amazing? It's it's absolutely vanishing. We have a sort of a magic wand that we wave when I go over and sit on that desk. Okay. How do we rid ourselves of guilt?

Ridding yourself of guilt. Here's the process. It's got a few really critical steps. Number one, top of the list: eliminate destructive self-criticism. Eliminate destructive self-criticism. In other words, never say anything destructively critical about yourself. Just don't say it. Here's the basic rule: since your subconscious accepts whatever you say as true, as being a command, what you do is you don't say anything about yourself that you do not sincerely desire to be true. Don't say, "I'm fat. I'm tired." Don't say, "I can't," or "I have to." Don't say anything unless you want it to be true. Remember, the words that come after the word "I" are the words that your subconscious records as commands, except for when you say "I wish" or "I'll try." So eliminate destructive self-criticism. Only speak in positive terms about yourself. "I like myself. I like myself. I can do it. I will do it. I choose to do it." But not "I can't," or or so on.

Number two is refuse to be manipulated by guilt. Refuse to be manipulated by guilt. Because every time you allow somebody to manipulate you by guilt, you know what happens? You reinforce and make stronger the effect or the influence of guilt in your life. Now, when I grew up, I grew up in a family that was greatly influenced by negative religion. As a matter of fact, my mother, God bless her, had a black belt in guilt, and she did a superb, superb job on it. And it took me years to get over it. When I got married to Barbara, she'd also come from the same sort of family. So we have to come back and we have a beautiful response whenever one of the other of us falls back into old patterns. We say, "You're not trying to make me feel guilty, are you?" "You're not trying to make me feel guilty, are you?" That's a beautiful way to do it. Just say, "You're not trying to make me feel guilty, are you?" And refuse to let people manipulate you using guilt.

Number three is refuse to use guilt and blame and announce that you're not going to that you're not going to use it. Refuse to use it on other people. And make let your children and let your spouse say the same thing. "You're not trying to make me feel guilty, are you?" And just keep repeating it over and over again. I say, "Well," and sometimes they say, "Yes, I am." You say, "Well, it's not going to work. It's not going to work anymore." You see, guilt only works as long as you don't know that it's being used on you.

Number four is what we call the law of forgiveness. This is the most important of all. It's really the core. It's the guts of this whole session. The law of forgiveness simply says that you are mentally healthy to the degree to which you can freely forgive and forget grievances against you. That your ability to forgive others is the key determinant of your happiness and success in life. Your ability to to forgive others is the key way to eliminate guilt. Your willingness to forgive others and to let go of past grievances is the single most important determinant of whether or not you are a fully integrated, fully functioning adult human being. Because the tendency to blame and to hold grudges is a childlike, pathological tendency that is possessed by all people who are mentally ill. The ability to let go of grudges, to forgive freely, is the mark of the truly enlightened human being.

Now, you accept that as true. There's four people that you have to forgive. Number one is forgive your parents. Forgive your parents for everything that they've ever done that hurt you. Most of our research shows that almost all of our adult problems trace back to being unwilling or unable to forgive our parents. Something that they did that hurt us. Forgive them 100%. Write to them, telephone them, tell them, or at the very least, forgive them in your heart. But forgive your parents.

Number two is forgive others. Forgive everyone else. Forgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way for anything. Just let it go. Now, some people say, "Well, I can't forgive that person because what a terrible thing they did to me." Remember this: that forgiveness is perfectly selfish. Forgiveness has nothing whatever to do with the other person. It has only to do with your peace of mind and with your assuring your own mental integrity.

Number three, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for every wicked, senseless, brainless, fully stupid thing you ever did. Because every single person has done wicked, senseless, brainless, foolish, ridiculous things. But forgive yourself 100%.

And finally, the last part of this is, if you have done something to hurt someone else, go and apologize. It's amazing how many lives are ruined year after year by people who do not have the intestinal fortitude, the guts, the courage to go and say, "I'm sorry." One of the most important things in life is to develop character. We develop character to the degree to which we do things which are hard for us, to which the degree to which we do things which we know are right, even though they're difficult, and especially when they're difficult emotionally. And the key to getting rid of guilt, the key to being a totally fully functioning person, is to forgive others. Forgive people that you've been in relationships with. Forgive previous employers. Forgive friends who've hurt you. Forget. Forgive investments that went wrong. Forgive bosses that fired you. Forgive your parents. Forgive everybody. Develop an attitude toward life that you refuse to hold a grudge against anybody. Just repeat over and over again, "I forgive him or her for everything. I forgive him or her for everything. I forgive them for everything." And let it go. The key to freeing yourself from negative emotions is to absolutely refuse to carry any negativity forward. Remember, it's a perfectly selfish act. You can be as selfish as you want. The act of forgiveness frees you and liberates the other person and guarantees that you will move rapidly toward the fulfillment of your potential.

Session Eight: The Worry Buster. One of the great aims of life is to achieve your own peace of mind. And the reason why so few people have peace of mind is because they don't set it as an important enough goal. And if they do, they don't take the time to understand what stands between them and peace of mind. Now, we talked earlier about one of the major obstacles or major pairs of obstacles are negative habit patterns. The fear of failure, the fear of rejection. Those rob us of an enormous amount of peace of mind. We also talked about feelings of guilt, feelings of inadequacy, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of undeservingness, and so on. They also rob us of peace of mind. And I want to talk in this session about the last, if you like, key to this discussion on negative emotions: what we call negative imagination.

Now, the word negative imagination comes from an extensive body of literature that was written at the beginning of the century. But they found that negative imagination is something that we create in ourselves that causes us an enormous amount of of of stress and distress, if you like. Negative imagination creates fear. And one of the best definitions of fear that I've seen lately is what is called fantasized experiences appearing real. Fantasized experiences appearing real. In other words, these are experiences which we create in our minds and our imaginations, and we dwell upon them. And the more we dwell upon them, the more real they become to us. It's like I have three little children, and if I let them watch a scary movie, even if they insist upon it, they begin to feel that there are scary creatures under their beds and in their cupboards and so on. Is these fantasized experiences become real. And at one time, with little Michael, we couldn't get him to sleep in his bedroom at all because he was convinced that there were monsters in there.

What do we call negative imagination? Well, another word for it is worry. Worry is a sustained form of fear caused by indecision. Worry is a sustained form of fear caused by indecision. Now, what does that mean? It means that when we make decisions, we do away with worry. A study was done some years ago where many thousands of people were surveyed and asked what were they worrying about at the current time. And they accumulated it all up, and they found this is what people worry about: 40% of the worries that people had were things that never happened. When they went back later, they found that the things they were worried about would never happen. They were going to be late, or they lose the job, or they, uh, wouldn't work out on a date or relationship. The 30 next figure, 30% were things that were in the past that had already happened, and nothing could be done about. There were 12% of worries were worries about health, in most cases needless, needless worries. I thought that they had a pain or an illness or an ailment or something else. It didn't turn out to be true. 10% of the things people worried about were petty worries. They were worried about whether or not they had enough change in the parking meter, whether or not, um, someone would phone them, really irrelevant worries. Only 8% of the worries were about anything substantial at all. And of those 8%, half, or 4%, were totally outside the control of the person. They were worried about whether Red China would, uh, invade Northern Vietnam, and things like that. And the things that the person could have nothing to do about anyway. So basically, the research shows that as much as 96% of everything that we worry about, or more, is irrelevant. It never happens. It's not worth worrying about at all.

But where does worry come from? Well, worry comes from a worry mentality. As a matter of fact, if you were brought up in a family where your mother or father was a worrier, they worried all the time, then you're probably a worrier too. It's a, it's a conditioned response. You saw them worrying, you want to be like your mommy and daddy because they're the most important people in your world, so you worry too. And I've seen little kids four and five years old that are really good, accomplished worriers, and they, and their parents will sit together and worry and worry, even though there's nothing involved. But it's fantasized experiences appearing real.

Our job is to eliminate. And I'd like to give you two or three simple ideas that you can use. Number one, which is one of the most popular of all, is just simply this: it's live one day at a time. Live one day at a time. Is don't worry about might might happen tomorrow. Don't worry about what may happen a year from now or six months from now. Just do the very best you can right now. There's a beautiful line from Teddy Roosevelt. He said something to the effect that, "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, and don't worry about the rest." Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, and don't worry about the rest. Live one day at a time. Just worry about getting through today and taking care of today. And as the Bible says, "Let the tomorrow take care of itself. Sufficient unto the day are the are the cares thereof."

Number two key to dealing with worry, and I have an enormous number of challenges that I face in my business life, is get the facts. This is so important. Get the facts. Not the apparent facts, not the quick facts, not the facts that seem obvious, but get the real facts. Take the time to look into a situation and find out what the real truth of the matter is. I have found that most worry situations evaporate if you get enough facts. You hear that somebody has done something or not done something. You hear about a change in your business or your personal life, or change in one of your relationships. Find out. Call the person. Find, find from the right information source the answer, and you'll often find that the facts eliminate the worry. Most people who worry are people who would much rather worry than take the time to ask and find out what exactly is going on. Ask people. Do your research. Do your reading. Do your homework. Get the facts. One of the most important requirements, by the way, for your success in business or any other thing, any other field of endeavor, is to get the facts that you need so that your answers are accurate and up to date.

Now, the third method is what I call the worry buster. The worry buster is a word or an expression that came from one of our graduates. He said this expression literally saved his business and saved his mental health. It's one of the simplest of all techniques, and it is just dynamite. It consists of four steps. All right. Step number one is, when you have something on your mind, define it clearly in writing. Define it clearly in writing. Sit down, take the time to write it out and say, "What exactly is it that I'm worried about?" And sit down and write it out. "I am worried about this," and describe the situation exactly the way you see it. In medicine, they say that accurate diagnosis is 50% of the cure. Accurate diagnosis, defining it clearly in writing, is 50% of the cure.

Now, an important point here is, sometimes when you have seems to be an overwhelming problem, you have more than one problem. You have what is called a cluster situation, where you have two or three or four problems all together. If you define it clearly in writing, sometimes you can write it out, one, two, three, four, that there are several little problems that are all together that are worrying you. And sometimes, if you eliminate one of those difficulties, the rest of them evaporate. Sometimes one of a, one problem in a cluster of problems is the key, and all the others become irrelevant. So be alert to that. But define it clearly in writing.

Number two is, once you define it clearly, this is the key: determine the worst possible outcome. Determine the worst possible outcome. In other words, ask yourself, "What is the worst possible thing that could happen as a result of this situation left to itself?" If the worst happened, what would it be? Determine the worst possible outcome. Now, an interesting thing happens here. We find that in worry, we are not worried or stressed by the event. An event does not trouble us. What troubles us is anticipation of an event, and the resistance that we put up psychologically, wishing, hoping, praying that it doesn't take place. If psychologically, we determine the worst possible outcome in writing, and you say, "The worst possible thing that can happen is this," and we make it concrete, and we put it down on paper, you will find a remarkable thing. Your worries disappear. They just seem to evaporate. As soon as we define the worst possible outcome, the stress comes from not wanting to face what it could be. We talk about this later, but it's the psychological phenomena of denial. We deny. We don't want to put off. For instance, you have an investment, and the investment is getting worse and worse. So you have to say to yourself, "What's the worst thing that can happen with this investment?" And the worst thing is that you lose it all. Once you say, "I lose it all," suddenly you're not so worried about it anymore, because you know it just may happen.

The third step, or let me go back a second with regard to a relationship. Sometimes we're in a relationship that's very unhappy, and we say, "What's the

The worst thing that can happen here, the worst thing that can happen here is that you lose the relationship. The relationship disappears. Then you have to ask yourself, "Will that kill me? Will the loss of the investment kill me? Will the loss of the job kill me? Will the loss of the relationship kill me?" And the answer, of course, is no. You will recover from the loss of almost anything.

So, number three, by the way, there are many people who get and have the signs of cancer, but they won't go to a doctor because they don't want to know. The stress of not knowing actually exacerbates the course of the disease. And finally, when they do have to go to a doctor, it's gone so far the doctor can't save them. But the stress of not facing the possibility keeps them away from a doctor long past the point where a doctor could help them.

Number three is: Resolve to accept the worst should it occur. Resolve to accept the worst should it occur. This is not passive, and this is not fatalistic. Just say, "If nothing could be done and this were to happen, I will accept it." I have a saying which I use: "That which cannot be cured must be endured." What cannot be cured must be endured. So you say, "Well, all right, if this happens, I'll accept it, and I'll learn to live with it. I'm not going to let it break me. I'm not going to let it kill me."

And then, number four is: Begin immediately to improve upon the worst. Begin immediately to improve upon the worst. What does that mean? It means you now accept that it might happen, and you've now decided that you will live with it should it occur. And now you do everything you possibly can to work back and make sure that the worst doesn't occur.

In business, by the way, this is called the Minimax regret analysis. It's minimizing the maximum regret. In other words, it's saying, "What is the worst thing that can happen, and how can I minimize that maximum regret?" This Minimax technique is a tremendous technique because it clears your mind considerably. It's and one of the best ways to use it is this really neat method. Take a piece of paper, draw a line down the center and a line across the top, and then work down the page. On this side, write "WPO." I'm sorry, no, write, write on this page your definition. In other words, this is a clear definition of what's bothering you. On the top of this page, you write "WPO," worst possible outcome. And then you write one. And you say, "I'm worried about this," and you write it out clearly. And then you write, "One: The worst possible outcome is this." Two: "I'm worried about this." Two: "Worst possible outcome is this." And so on. You'll find that every single time you do this, the problem just evaporates. And most, not all, of course, but most of the stress or strain disappear as your mind goes clear. And with a clear mind, you can then deal with it effectively.

Now, the final point with regard to this whole idea of worry and negative imagination is, what is the antidote? What is the antidote to worry? What do you think it is? Well, it's simply this: it is purposeful action. The only real antidote to worry is purposeful action. Everything that gets you to the point where you can take purposeful action, where you can move, and as Shakespeare says, "take arms against a sea of troubles and by so doing, end them." Anything that gets you to the point where you can take purposeful action will eliminate the worry. Why? Because of what we call the law of substitution. You cannot be working on a problem or a situation and thinking and acting purposefully to resolve it and still worry about it simultaneously.

Worry almost always comes when you have too much time on your hands. Worry is a form of negative goal setting. Remember we talked about the law of concentration: "Whatever you dwell upon grows." Well, whenever you have a worry situation, what do you find yourself doing? What you find yourself doing is thinking about, talking about, dwelling upon, vividly imagining exactly what you don't want. By the law of expectations, "Whatever you expect will come into your life." "That which I greatly feared has come upon me," is what it says in the Book of Job. Or the law of attraction says, "You will attract into your life the people and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts."

The reason why we're taking a whole module to talk about worry is this: that there are some people who don't worry about anything. This method, by the way, of determining the worry worst possible outcome, the worry buster, is also a tremendous method for decision-making. When you go into any situation where you have to make a decision one way or another, the first question you should sit and ask, once you've analyzed it, is, "What's the worst thing that can happen?" I remember the great J. Paul Getty, who at one time was one of the richest men in the world, said that this method of determining the worst possible downside was used by him as a decision-making method into every business deal he went to. What, when, what he would do is he would say, "No, it's the worst thing that can happen," and then he would make sure that the worst didn't happen.

So, make the decision right now that you're going to eliminate worry. Fantasized experiences appearing real. That you're going to accept the worst possible outcome should it occur. And now get busy to everything humanly possible to take constructive action to eliminate the worry situation and do away with it. That's the key to eliminating the final of the worst of our negative emotions.

This is the end of side two. Please fast forward the tape to the end to queue up side one for your next [Music] listening. Brian Tracy presents Phoenix [Music] session nine: Programming your mind for success. Everything you are or ever will be is a result of what is going on inside your mind. This is the most awesome concept that I've ever discovered that anybody has ever discovered, that you can dramatically change the outer realities of your life by changing your inner attitudes of mind.

As William James said, we talked earlier about the various laws. The law of belief: that your beliefs do become your realities, that you actually see the world in terms of what you believe to be true about it. Beliefs create the actual fact. "As a man thinketh in his heart, or as a woman thinketh in her heart, so are they." We also know that the law of correspondence says that your outer world will always correspond with your inner world. That means that there is something in your inner world that corresponds to everything in your outer world. The great E.M. Bounds said this when he talked about the mental equivalent: "He said that everything in your outer life has a mental equivalent in your inner life. Anything that you want to see different in your outer life, you must first provide the mental equivalent internally."

And the Law of Attraction says that anything that you keep holding your mind on a continuing basis, you draw to you. That your dominant thoughts set up a force field of energy that draws into your life the people and circumstances that you need. I mention that because of this: many people say, "Well, how will I get a better job? Or a better relationship? How will I find the information I need? Or, uh, get the education and so on?" You don't have to worry about it. All you have to do is get it crystal clear in your mind, and you trigger into and get into the flow of these universal mental laws, and everything that you need will be brought to you exactly as you need it, exactly when you need it, and exactly in the form that you need it.

And we're going to talk in this session. We talked about self-concept before. We said that your self-concept is that bundle of beliefs inside that determines everything that happens to you. Your self-concept is the sum total result of every single piece of information that you've ever taken in about yourself or your world, accepted as true. It becomes part of your self-concept. And your self-concept is the corresponding inner mechanism that determines what happens to you. What does this mean? It means that all change begins with a change in the self-concept. All change begins by you taking in new information that changes your beliefs.

Now, beliefs are the hardest of all things to change because we defend them so vigorously. We have to be willing to give up some of our self-limiting beliefs. We have to be willing to look at our beliefs honestly. Remember, we talked about self-knowledge. We have to be willing to look at our beliefs honestly and say, "Do these beliefs serve me? Is this what I want to be? Is this what I want to do? Is this the best that I can have?" And you begin to question your beliefs and change your self-concept by taking in new information that develops a new self-concept.

And that brings us to a concept called the psychology of becoming. The psychology of becoming says that each one of us is in a continuous state of growth and change. That your self-concepts and your beliefs are changing all the time. For instance, when you were a child, you believed one set of things about the adult world. When you were a teenager, another. When you were in your early 20s, you believed another. And as we grow and evolve, we change our beliefs and our self-concept. We change our self-image. We change the way we see the world. So we're in this process of becoming all the time. It's going on. It's almost like this: it's like a tumbleweed. That you are evolving and changing and growing all the time, but always in the direction of your dominant goals, always in the direction of what you are thinking about the most intensely at the time.

For instance, an alcoholic or a drug addict is also evolving and changing in the direction of his or her dominant goals because that's what they think about all the time. And if you want to evolve and grow rapidly, you have to make those goals clear. You have to make them sharp. You have to make them intense. And you have to dwell on them all the time. Sometimes you see people who are very successful at an early age, but you'll find that those people had an obsession, a total preoccupation with a particular area or field for a long time. Whereas other people who may be much older have never had an intense feeling or have never dwelled on anything they want to accomplish.

Now, there are two obstacles to this psychology of becoming. Number one is called homeostasis. Now, homeostasis is the desire for consistency. It is a natural desire within the human mind to stay constant with what has happened in the past. If you like, we like to maintain the status quo. These are the people who say, "That's the way we've always done it. This is the way we do it around here," etc., etc. You must watch out for homeostasis because what it does is it causes your thinking to become rigid and inflexible.

And the other is called psychosclerosis. Psychosclerosis is simply a hardening of the attitudes. A hardening of the attitudes. People with psychosclerosis develop what is called fixed ideas. Fixed ideas lead to rigidity and an unwillingness to change. Both of these lead to getting stuck in the comfort zone. Remember, the natural tendency of all human behavior is for you to start doing something in a certain way and then get stuck in a comfort zone. You get stuck in a comfort zone in a relationship, even if you're not happy. In a job, even if you're not satisfied. And with a particular level of income, even if it's not enough. You have to fight the comfort zone because the comfort zone very soon becomes a rut. And they say that a rut becomes a grave. And the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth. Or another way that it's been put is that a grave is simply a rut, or a rut is simply a grave where the ends kicked out.

So, be very alert to that because the great majority of people in our society tend and evolve naturally to get into a comfort zone, to become very rigid defenders of the status quo, to become very hardened in their attitudes. They get into this comfort zone. They fall into this rut. And even if it would be good for them, they don't change.

This leads us to the two great powers that control everything that happens to you. And the first power is the Power of Love. The Power of Love is the power that shapes your personality and shapes your destiny. The Power of Love simply says that everything that we do is either to get love or to compensate for the lack of love. We said earlier that children's entire personality is formed by the quality and quantity of love that they get. And that all adult problems are as the result of love withheld, love withheld from our parents, and perhaps love withheld from people when we grow up.

The other power is the power of suggestion. Now, the power of suggestion works on us all of our lives. The power of suggestion is extremely strong. What it does is it begins working on us almost from the time that we're born, sometimes from before birth. And the power of suggestion shapes us. It means that every single thought you think, everything you hear, everything that you see, touch, taste, or smell, everything that affects you in any way has an effect on your personality. We say it this way: we say, "Everything counts." Everything counts. And especially when you become an adult, remember that everything counts.

Now, the average adult in America watches 20 to 25 hours of television every week. The average senior citizen watches about 7 hours of television. Average child watches three or four hours of television per day. Do you know that the average Chief Executive Officer of major American corporations watches less than five hours per week? Now, let me ask you a very simple question: Do you think there's a correlation between the number of hours that a person watches television and how successful they are in life? Do you think that the suggestive influences – books, magazines, tapes, courses, seminars, people, television programs, and so on – that you watch, listen to, read, associate with on an ongoing basis, do you think these suggestive influences are having any effect on your future?

Let me just put it this way: everything does count. And you have to ask yourself this question. I learned this many years ago: is ask yourself this question, "What is it that you want in life?" Once you've asked yourself what it is you want in life, then you can look at around your world and you can determine what is right for you and what is wrong for you. What does that mean? It means that everything that moves you toward what you want is right, and everything that moves you away from what you want is wrong. But everything counts.

Well, I have a good friend who goes on a diet on a regular basis. And every so often, I catch him eating cheesecake. And sometimes he's eating two pieces of cheesecake with lunch. And I say to him, "I said, 'I thought you were on a diet.' I said, 'I thought you only eat fresh fruits and vegetables and and natural foods.'" And he said, "Sure," he said. "Well," I said, "what about the cheesecake?" He said, "Well, I don't count that."

Do you know how many people sit at home and watch television three or four hours a night who want to be successful? Who read the comic strips and the sports pages? Who read junky magazines or nothing at all? Listen to the radio? Don't do anything with their time and their minds? They say, "But I want to be successful. I want to be more successful." I said, "Well, what about all these things that you're doing to waste your time?" They said, "Well, I don't count that." Unfortunately, nature counts everything.

So, this brings us to some laws that I want to share with you. The first law is the law of habit. Now, these are also mental laws. The law of habit is very similar to the law of inertia. The law of inertia says that a body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. It also says that a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by outside force. The law of habit says that in the absence of a specific decision on your part to change some aspect of your life, the natural tendency will be to go on the same way indefinitely. As a time management specialist once said, "The more you do of what you're doing, the more you'll get of what you've got." So you have to look at what you've got and look at what you're doing and saying, "Is this what you want?" You will go on indefinitely in the same direction unless you make a very concrete, specific decision to change.

Also, there's another law. It's called the Law of Emotion. And by the way, before I get into the law of emotion, let me say this: that about 95% of everything that we do is by habit. That the only major difference between successful people and failures is that successful people have success habits, and failures have failure habits. You've heard, for example, you've heard the old saying, "Early to bed and early to rise, they say makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Well, why is that? Why is it that so many successful people get up early in the morning? It's because they get a jump on the day. It's also because it forces them to go to bed earlier at night, so they don't waste the evenings when they're the tiredest and least productive. So you find that over and over again, successful men and women are early to bed and early to rise. They have a success habit. Why is it that people don't go to bed early or don't get up early? Because they're too lazy. They're too undisciplined. They don't have goals that they want badly enough. They do not have success habits. 95% of your success is going to be determined by the type of habits you develop. And if you have good habits, you're going to be successful in spite of anything else.

The law of emotion says simply this: it says that every decision that you make is based on emotion. Is it? We used to say over and over again that uh people are 90% emotional and 10% logical. Well, one of the great discoveries that I've made in the course of my research is the discovery that we are 100% emotional. That we're not even 99% emotional. Every single decision we make is an emotional decision. If somebody says, "Well, it's the logical thing to do," what it simply means is they have more emotion invested in that, even though it sounds logical.

The law of emotion says that every decision that we make is emotional. And it says this: it says the stronger emotion will dominate a weaker emotion. Stronger emotion dominates a weaker emotion. So, whichever emotion is stronger will be the dominant emotion and will determine what you do. All action is determined by the emotion that is predominant at the time. And with whatever the stronger emotion, if it is fear, fear will determine what you do. If it is desire, desire will determine what you do. The two major emotions that wrestle within us all the time are fear versus desire. World championship goes on over and over again. Your fears that hold you back, your desires that propel you forward.

Now, how do you turn this equation so that your desires win? It's very simple. You use the law of concentration. And you think about what you want all the time. You dwell on what you want all the time. You keep your mind fixed on your desires. You become totally preoccupied with what you want. And as we said before, your fears have a tendency to dwindle. But whichever thing you think about, if you think about your fears or you think about your desires, whichever one you think about, by the law of emotion, is going to determine your action. And your actions will determine your outcomes.

This brings us to another law, which is called the law of expression. And this law of expression is very interesting. This law of expression goes back many, many years and it predates even a quote from Aristotle, which says, "Whatever is impressed is expressed." Whatever is impressed is expressed. Whatever is impressed is expressed. Now, what does this mean? Let me go and sit down. Well, we get the board cleaned off. It means, it means simply this: that whatever is impressed into your psyche for any reason and from whatever source, whatever is mixed with emotion and dropped into your self-concept, will eventually be expressed as part of your personality, part of your reality.

It says, in effect, that you see the world through your self-concept. You actually see your concept of the world. You do not believe what you see; you see what you believe. Whatever has been impressed on your mind as a fact or as a truth or as a reality will then be expressed in your reality or expressed in your world because that is what you will see. If you believe that a certain type of people are good, then you will see goodness in those people. If you believe that members of a particular political party are fools, then all members of that political party will appear foolish to you, even the wisest and most intelligent. If you believe that there is opportunity everywhere, you will see opportunity everywhere. If you believe that you're in complete control of your own destiny, then you will see indications of that. If you believe that you are a popular, courageous, confident, influential person, then you will act in a manner consistent with it, and you will see it all around you.

I was reading a very interesting story not long ago about a young man who came from poor beginnings and had no self-confidence at all, but was convinced by a fortune teller that he was the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. Wonderful story, true story too. And, uh, he began to believe that he was the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. And he went to the library, and he studied Napoleon. He read all about Napoleon. And he began to walk and talk and act like Napoleon. He began to think like Napoleon. He began to imagine great plans like Napoleon would have imagined. He began to act with courage and confidence in the face of uncertainty, as Napoleon would have. Over time, he became absolutely convinced that indeed this person who was shy and retiring was truly the reincarnation of Napoleon. And as he did, his career improved. He was promoted. He was advanced. He changed the way he dressed. He spoke more confidently. And by the time he found out that he had been misled by the fortune teller, he was already an extremely successful businessman. Very interesting. Whatever is impressed and accepted becomes expressed.

And this brings us to another critical mental law. And it is this: it is what is called the law of reversibility. When I first learned about this law, I was so excited. I wanted to wrap it up and tie it up and not tell anybody. This is the first time in any form that I've ever explained this law to other people. The law of reversibility says simply this: is that if you achieve a certain level of success, a certain level of health, a certain quality of relationships, then that quality of relationships will create a subjective state. A subjective state means a feeling or an emotional state. In other words, if you win a prize, you will feel like a winner. If you fall in love, you'll feel like a lover. If you succeed in business, you'll feel like a success. The objective creates, in other words, the objective reality or the fact actually creates the subjective or the emotional state. Does that make sense to you? In other words, something happens, you feel great. You get the feeling.

However, the law of reversibility says this: if you can create artificially the subjective state, the feeling, the feeling will trigger the law of attraction and correspondence into motion and will draw into your life the people, circumstances, and opportunities necessary to create the objective that is constant with the subjective. And here is the method. It's so simple, it's astonishing. It is this: whenever you think of something that you really desire, imagine that you have it already. Imagine that you have it already. It sounds like a game, like children would play, but it is so powerful. That is, it is all-inspiring. And all I suggest you do is try it for a little while. Just imagine. Close your eyes. Drive it along. Think about it. Necessary. Stand. Relax. Do whatever you want, but just imagine that you've already accomplished it. And try to get the feeling. Get the feeling as though it were already a success. As though it were a past tense. As though it were already accomplished. That you don't have to worry about it again. You've already got the feeling. And if you will play that feeling over and over again, this law of reversibility will create this feeling. As you dwell upon the feeling more and more, the feeling will actually begin to change things inside you and outside of you, draw you toward your goal, and draw your goal toward you. And the objective will come into reality exactly at the right time and place. You don't even really have to worry about the process between the two or what the steps are. All you have to do is hold that feeling very, very intensely. And we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about mental programming methods.

Now, the next law is the law of practice. The law of practice is also called the law of repetition. But what it says is that whatever you do over and over again often enough becomes and you have it. You want to be a positive, exciting, enthusiastic person. You want to become wealthy and successful. What is it that you want in life? Whatever you want in life, if you will practice it over and over again, it eventually becomes a new habit. If you practice it by thinking about it, you see, a new habit takes about 21 days to develop. Takes about 21 days to develop a new habit. 21 days of repeating it over and over again.

Now, what we're going to ask you to do as a result of this course and a result of what we've talked about is we're going to ask you or suggest that you go on what we call a 21-day PMA diet. That means that for 21 days, we're going to ask you to do a very difficult thing. One of the most difficult things you'll ever do in your life is for 21 days. We want you to keep your mind on what you want and keep it off of what you don't want. Keep your conversation on what you want. Keep your conversation off of what you don't want. Keep your dreams, your imagination, your thoughts, your feelings, everything in your environment consistent with what you desire, and keep it off of what you don't want. Very simple. It's not very complicated. It's one of the most difficult things that you'll ever do.

Now, why do we pick 21 days? Well, a very good reason. Uh, you see, it takes 21 days for a chicken, that has a brain the size of a pea, to sit patiently, calmly, faithfully on an egg to hatch the egg. Now, we feel that if a chicken with a little brain like that can sit on an egg for 21 days without seeing any change, just in faith, just in faith for 21 days, it can sit there on that egg, then we could probably ask adults who have brains that are the size of three pounds, that have 12 to 20 billion cells and have the capacity to remember and retain all the knowledge known to man, if their brain could be tapped, we ask them to keep at it for 21 days. If you will go on a positive mental attitude diet for 21 days, keep your mind on it, the goal is to become what we call a purely positive person. A purely positive person. Because we know that if you're a purely positive person, if your conversations, your acts, and your relationships are purely positive, what we call a PPP person, and you practice that for 21 days, you will find that your life will change. That everything around you will change: your health, your relationships, your work, your opportunities, and everything else. It's simple, but it's not easy. If you can do it, if you can practice it, it will become a new habit. The very law of reversibility, the very law of emotion, the very law of habit that we talked about will actually begin to be changed.

Now, what are the four things you need in order to make this great change? Number one is you need desire. Desire is the starting point of all change. The most important question that you have to ask yourself in life is, "How badly do you want what you want? How badly do you want it? Or do you want it at all?" You see, there's an awful lot of people who want an awful lot of things, but how badly do they want it? If you want it so badly, if you want it with tremendous intensity of desire, there's really nothing in the world that can stop you from getting it.

There's an interesting story told about Socrates. And Socrates was talking to one of his students. And the student said, "I am hungry for knowledge. What can I do to increase my knowledge?" And Socrates said, "Knowledge is something that is readily available and easy to get if you want it bad enough." He said, "Oh, I'm sure I want it badly enough." And Socrates said, "Come with me." And he walked him offshore into the ocean and walked him offshore into the sea. And got about three or four feet. And Socrates, a very, very strong man, grabbed the young man and put his head under the water. And the young man began to struggle and struggle and struggle, and finally became incredibly frantic. And finally brought him up. And he said, "Now, what did you want while you were under the water?" And he said, "All I wanted was air." He said, "All I could think of in the whole world was air." He said, "When you want knowledge with the same intensity that you wanted that oxygen, you will get all the knowledge that you could desire." And when you want anything with great intensity, if you have the desire, you'll get it.

Now, the second step is decision. Over and over again, where I travel, I find that the major change in a person's life begins when they make a decision. I also find that the great majority of people are incredibly indecisive. Is that they're very reluctant to make decisions, to cut off their options. They are very, very reluctant to make a commitment of any kind. And in not making a commitment, they just drift. They unfortunately condemn themselves to living by the law of accident.

So, the next step is to make a decision. A very clear, unequivocal decision. Is that this is what you want, and you are willing to pay the price to get it. There's a very interesting little book called "The Ultimate Secret" by Michael Hernacki. And he said that the key to success, after he's studied many, many successful people, so the key to success is simply this: is be willing to do whatever is necessary. Be willing to do whatever is necessary. Be willing to do whatever is necessary. That means, once you've made the decision, be willing to go the extra mile. Be willing to do whatever is necessary. And the interesting thing is that you won't ever have to do everything that's necessary, but you must be willing to do it. And it's that unequivocal decision, that do-or-die, that complete, total, 100% commitment, that makes all the difference in your success.

Most people are unwilling to make the commitment. And if they do make the commitment, they hold themselves back. They say, "I want it, but I'm not willing to do this," or "I won't do that," or "I won't move. I won't go back to school. Uh, I can't sacrifice this," and so on. I've spoken to many parents, for instance, who have undergone great sacrifices so that the mother can stay home with the young children during their first three to five years. And people say, "Well, you're crazy. You need the money. You can't take trips. You don't have enough money to pay bills when you're not one of two people working." They say, "Yes, but our decision is to give our children the finest grounding and finest emotional basis possible, and we feel that the way to do it is for the mother to be home with the children." So they're willing to make the sacrifices. And of course, everybody has to make their decisions with regard to what sacrifices they want to make.

The third is determination. Determination means to back your plan with, if you like, iron willpower. Again, every single study that I've looked at, and I spent, in the course of my lifetime, I've spent almost 30,000 hours studying the subject of personal and corporate success, is that iron willpower is absolutely critical. Determination, the willingness to stick in when the going gets tough, the willingness to persist in the face of adversity. That kind of determination is absolutely critical to developing the new habit patterns of thought that will guarantee your success.

And finally, discipline. This is my big favorite. It's usually the only place in this course where I mention this, but discipline is the master key to riches. Discipline is the master key to riches. Discipline, the willingness to do what you know you should do, when you should do it, whether you like it or not, is the critical key to your success. Why is it that people fail in life? It's no miracle. It's no mystery. The reason people fail in life is that they're not willing to do whatever is necessary. They're not willing to pay the price. Half the time, most, three-quarters of the time, they don't know what they want. And the ones that do know what they want are not capable of disciplining themselves.

So, the next time you sit there watching the television, next time you drive along listening to the radio, instead of listening to an audio cassette program, you have to ask yourself quite honestly, in terms of the wonderful life that you are capable of enjoying, in terms of all the things that you want, is this moving you toward it, or is it moving you away from it? Because the truth of the matter is that everything that does not move you toward your goal moves you away from your goal. That nothing is neutral. That everything counts. That the sands of time are running. The clock, the meter is going right now. A very good friend of mine said, "Remember this: life is not a rehearsal for anything else. This is the real one." And the question you have to ask yourself is, "Are you serious about being and having and doing everything that's possible for you?"

If you go on a 21-day mental attitude diet, a PMA diet, if you will keep your thoughts on what you want for 21 days, if you will practice the law, develop new habits, practice repetition over and over again, practice the law of reversibility and visualize and imagine yourself as the person you want to be, and practice the law of expression, that whatever is impressed on your mind will be expressed in your reality, you will see dramatic changes start to take place in your life. And sometimes far faster than you can currently imagine. Believe me, I know. I have tried and practiced everything that I recommend to you. Thousands of my graduates have done it, and the results they have accomplished have been stupendous. They will be stupendous for you, too. And we'll talk about more of that in the next module.

Session 10: Changing your self-concept. All change in your life begins with a change in your self-concept. And that brings us back to what we talked about when we talked about the three ingredients of self-concept at the very beginning. We said that there were three parts: the self-ideal, the self-image, and the self-esteem, or how much you like yourself. And what I like to do now is I'd like to talk a little bit about what we call the self-ideal. Because the self-ideal is the person that you would most like to be. When you start thinking about changing your personality, improving your personality, improving the quality of your life, your inner and your outer life, you have to start off with a target. You have to start off with something to shoot for, something to aim at. So let's talk about this.

The self-ideal is a fundamental part of your personality. The self-ideal is a combination of all of the qualities of men and women that you have read about, studied about, associated with, or admired throughout your entire life. Your self-ideal is sort of like a role model for you, an internal role model. And this internal role model acts as a directional mechanism within your psyche that determines your words, actions, thoughts, behaviors, and so on. As a matter of fact, you are today, in many respects, the sum total composite of all the different men and women whose qualities and characteristics that you've ever admired. If you read a biography, an autobiography, a story about a person who has done something that you think is admirable, displayed uh qualities of intelligence or character or compassion or perseverance or persistence or courage and so on, if someone has done those things and you have to admire them, if you admire them, what happens is you have a tendency, unconsciously, even without your knowing it, to try to be more like them.

Now, there is a difference between the self-image, which is where you see yourself now, and your self-esteem, which is how much you like yourself. And there's a difference between your self-image and your self-ideal. The difference, distance between these two, the way you see yourself now and the way you would ideally like to be, has a major impact on your self-esteem. People who see themselves working progressively toward becoming more and more like the people they want to be have high self-esteem. People who see themselves as having an enormous, almost unbridgeable distance between the person they see themselves as now and the person they know they should or could be, usually have low self-esteem.

So, the starting point of change in the self-concept, to repeat, comes with defining clearly what it is you want to look like. Now, when I was about 17, 18 years old, I sat down with a notebook and I wrote out a description of the person that I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote out, and I wrote several pages. I described my personality and my height and my weight and how I would get along with people and so on. And many years later, 10, 15, 20 years later, after I had traveled around the world twice, after I'd been in 80 countries, after I had done a great variety of things, I came across those notes in an old suitcase. And I looked and I read them. And you know, the surprising thing was was that I had become, over the course of that time, the person that I had described in that notebook.

So, I suggest you, you start off by saying, "Who is it and what is it that you would like to look like one year, three years, five years from now?" Or let's put it this way. And here's a really good question: Name three men or women, living or dead, that you really admire, that you really feel are wonderful, fine, upstanding role models. And then ask, ask yourself the question, "Why is it that you admire them? Why is it that you like them? What is it about them? What are their qualities, if you like, that you consider outstanding?" Because those are the qualities, if you can identify them, that you'll begin moving toward accomplishing in your own life. Remember, we said that desire, discipline, determination, and decision are the keys to success, but also definition. You have to define clearly what you want to be.

I remember a wonderful story of a young fellow who decided he wanted to improve his life. And he was working for an insurance company. And he sat and looked around him. And he was number 28 out of 29 out of 30 people in an insurance company selling insurance. And he'd been there for several years, and his career was going nowhere. And he began looking about him, looking at this. And he said, "Now, who do I admire? Who would I like to be like? Who would my ideal be?" And he decided he wanted to be like the top salesman in the branch. And he started to look at the top salesman and the top one or two sales people in the branch. And he started to think about them, and think about what they did. And he spent time talking to them and getting advice from them. And over the course of the next few years, by using this process, by patterning himself after the people he admired, he became more and more like them. He dressed like them. He walked like them. He talked like them. He worked the way they did. He studied the way they did. And in time, he became not only the top salesman in the branch, the top salesman in the region, the top salesman in the division, eventually the top salesman in the country. And he became a marketing vice president for one of the biggest insurance companies in the nation, simply by establishing a self-ideal and then working progressively toward it.

Well, what are the stages? The first starting stage, as we say, of changing the self-concept, of changing your mind, becoming a new or a different person, is that the change must be perceived by you as being both desirable and necessary. In other words, you must see that if you were to make this change, it would be a worthwhile change. And in terms of what you want to be, have, and do, in terms of the future of your life, it's necessary that you make this change. If you want to get ahead.

I give you another example of a famous gentleman from a Fortune 500 corporation. Was promoted to president. Came up through engineering, left brain. Had no people skills at all. Was very, very concerned about this part of his personality. And that he didn't know how to get along with people. He preferred problems that didn't talk back. But he recognized that a change in his self-concept, a change in his ability to communicate effectively with others, was essential to his success. So he began taking courses on interpersonal communications. He began taking courses on relationships. For two solid years, he read books, listened to tapes, took courses, and became an authority within the company on human relations. And then put together a course of his own and went throughout the company as the president of the company and taught this course within his company, becoming at the things that he was teaching. In other words, he decided that to be very good with people was both desirable and necessary for himself, his company, and his future. And then he went about through the process of gradual defining the ideal and began working progressively toward it. In two years, he had rounded out his personality from being a lopsided, left-brain, linear, analytical person to being a totally rounded, fully functioning human being. One of the hallmarks of great leaders, one of the hallmarks of outstanding men and women, is that they're willing to make the efforts necessary to bring about the changes that are essential.

Now, the second stage, or the second step in changing your self-concept, is to begin thinking about yourself as you would ideally be. Begin thinking about yourself as your ideal person. For instance, if you wanted to be an outstanding person in human relations, you'd begin thinking about yourself as you would be as a human relations specialist. But let us say you want something very simple. Most people say that their major weakness is that they are too impatient, too intolerant, they get angry too quickly, irritable, so on. Maybe what you should do is start with something simple. Very important. To start with something simple because if you can change something simple, it proves to you that you can change something large.

So you begin thinking about yourself. Let us say that you tend to be a little bit impatient or short-tempered when you're tired, or a little bit irritable with your children or your spouse, uh, at the end of the day. So then you begin thinking about yourself as you would be if you were a warm, patient, kind, loving, tolerant human being. Begin thinking about yourself in the situations where you normally become cross and irritable, and begin thinking about yourself as being relaxed, positive, supportive, encouraging, unruffled. Begin thinking about yourself as the ideal. Think now, who do you know who has the type of personality? Now, it can be a television personality. It can be Bill Cosby, if you like. It can be somebody that you admire in sports. It can be.

Be somebody whose biographies or stories you've read doesn't really matter, but keep thinking about how would that person act in this situation.

One thing that many people do, who are many Christians, do is whenever they get into a difficult or stressful situation, they say to themselves, "I wonder how Jesus would act in this situation." I wonder how Jesus would act if they were dealing with a difficult person, or I wonder how Jesus would act if he were put in the same position I'm in. And what it does is, irrespective of your belief, what it does is it gives you a role model to pattern yourself after.

The great tragedy of many young people growing up in the inner cities today is that the role models that they have are not positive role models. The people who are the most successful sometimes in the ghettos, in the inner cities, are not admirable people who are working hard and building families and businesses. What they are is they're criminals who are engaging in criminal activities. So the role models that you choose have a critical effect on who you become.

So begin thinking about yourself as you would like to be, as you would like to be. Now, that's a starting point. Point because of the law of uh expression, whatever is impressed is expressed. If you begin thinking about yourself, you begin finding it's almost like turning the wheel of your personality. You begin to become a different person.

Now, the third stage, the third step, is you begin to visualize. Now, what does visualize mean? Well, there are thousands of books written on visualization. One of the most powerful of all human abilities is the ability to create clear mental pictures. You see, your subconscious, which is where all of your programming takes place, is activated by mental pictures combined with emotion. So when you create clear mental pictures, when you begin to dwell on a clear mental picture of the person that you would like to be, you begin to close your eyes or think about the person that you would like to be. The subconscious cannot tell the difference between a real experience, one that is actually happening to you, and one that you vividly imagine on the screen of your mind.

And this method of visualization, of creating a clear mental picture, and then remember we talked about the law of practice, which is the law of repetition, by practicing it over and over and over again. Imagine, for instance, that you wanted to become a proficient public speaker, simple as that. And let us say this is your, this is you, and this is your eyes, and here is your conscious mind, and here is your unconscious mind. Let us say you wanted to become a proficient public speaker. Well, if you went out and you gave a whole series of talks and you got positive response and people applauded and told you it was a good talk, and you did this over and over again, no matter how terrified you are of public speaking right now, if you did it often enough, gradually you would store up enough memories to the point where you would feel no uneasiness at all about speaking publicly.

Now, the reason I mentioned speaking publicly is that something like 54% of the American public would rather die than give a talk in public. They put the fear of public speaking ahead of the fear of death. It's one of the greatest of all fears in our society. However, no child is born as afraid of public speaking. No child is comes into the world with a fear speaking in front of audiences. As a matter of fact, every one of us gave our first public talk, stark naked, upside down, in front of a room full of strangers, if you remember that. And it's been downhill for most of us ever since.

If you have a series of external experiences, however, and all of those experiences are positive, then they're stored away as positive reports in the public speaking file. However, let us say that you have a tremendous feeling of anxiety about speaking, and that can come from a a hundred different reasons. But you begin to play on the screen of your mind, you have this continuous real projector. You begin to play on the screen of your mind a picture of yourself speaking effectively in front of a group. You begin to read about other people who speak effectively. You begin to read the books of successful speakers who tell how they did it and how nervous they were. You begin to take a course, and you begin to study, and you begin to learn how to do it. You begin to learn how to prepare and to outline a talk, and you begin thinking about yourself over and over again as capable of doing it.

The picture that you play on the screen of your mind is accepted by the subconscious as a real experience, as long as you vividly imagine it. And this is the key: it is the vividness of the picture. The more clearly you visualize it, the more frequently you visualize it, the more emotionally or intensely you visualize it, and the longer you visualize it, the more of an impact it has on the subconscious mind. So that you can, in many respects, actually become halfway or three-quarters of the way toward being a competent speaker, or being competent in almost anything, simply by visualizing and playing this picture over and over again.

By the way, I I use the example of speaking in public for for a very specific reason. Most of us are afraid of it. And what I found is that if you can use these methods of mental programming to eliminate one major fear that may be holding you back in life, you will prove to yourself forever that you can eliminate any self-limiting belief and overcome it and go on to accomplish what you want. I have given this advice to thousands of people. It's simply this: if you have an uneasiness with regard to public speaking, or any other fear, but public speaking for this example, make the decision right now to get over it.

Now, here's two ways that you can get over it. Toastmasters. Does this method work? Well, I'll guarantee you that it works. Toastmasters was set up in 1923 as an organization, a voluntary organization. Groups of men and women come together, small groups. They meet once a week, and they they have breakfast, lunch, and or dinner meetings. And at each meeting, each person has a chance to talk. People who are so terrified of public speaking, they could not lead silent prayer in a phone booth, after 10 or 15 weeks in Toastmasters are capable of standing up with one minute's notice and giving an ex extemporaneous talk in front of an audience of strangers. Toastmasters works. Why? It's because every single time a person stands up, they get positive feedback. They get correction. They get advice. They get applause. They get support. Eventually, what you is you build up a whole series of positive reports in your subconscious mind that says, when it comes to public speaking, it's easy.

If you want to be effective at selling, if you want to be effective at uh leading, if you want to be effective as a parent, if you want to be effective with other human beings, all you have to do is practice over and over again, and practice in your mind over and over until eventually you will find that when you think about whatever it is, the fear level will go down, confidence level will go up.

By the way, one other area that you can go to if you want to learn to be more capable speaking is Dale Carnegie. Dale Carnegie has a wonderful course. Is this called the Dale Carnegie course, which really helps people become proficient in public speaking. Over 10 to 14 weeks, you get an opportunity every single week to get up and speak in front of your peers.

The next is affirmations. Now, with affirmations, your potential is unlimited. Affirmations are the most powerful words that you can poss posibly say. Affirmations are based on what we call the 3 Ps. In that, with affirmations, we reprogram ourselves unconsciously. Affirmations are strong, positive, assertive statements that you say about yourself to yourself and believe. And they're based on the three Ps. And the Ps are: first of all, personal. All affirmations, all statements that you say to yourself have to be couched in the personal tense, the "I." If you say, "I like myself," "I like myself," "I like myself." When you say, "I like myself," it accesses the subconscious directly. Every single command that begins with an "I" opens the subconscious mind and says, "Valuable information coming down, prepare or get ready."

And also positive. All affirmative, all affirmative statements must be couched in the positive tense, because the subconscious mind filters out negatives and only takes the words that you, the the the positive uh expression. For example, if you didn't want to, if you wanted to quit smoking, you wouldn't say, "I don't smoke anymore. I don't smoke anymore." You would say, "I am a nonsmoker. I am a nonsmoker." The words "I am" are two of the most powerful words in mental programming. When you say, "I am," because only you can say "I am" about you in the whole world. Nobody else can use those two words with regard to you. And your subconscious recognizes it. When you say, "I am responsible. I am responsible," you can actually feel the impact of these words on your unconscious mind. You can feel the words "I am responsible" and feel their effect on your emotions.

Now, the third is that they must be in the present tense. Not "I will lose weight," or "I will quit smoking," or "I will get a better job." But "I have a better job. I weigh X number of pounds. I earn X number of dollars. I earn X number of dollars." Whatever it happens to be, you always praise it in the present tense, because the subconscious mind can only take language that is couched in the now.

This is very, very important. That when we are reprogramming the subconscious mind, when you visualize, it's in the now. When you affirm, it's in the now. When you think about yourself as you would like to be, it is always in the now. The subconscious mind is, by the way, it's very literal. So when you create affirmations, and you can create affirmations for every goal that you can imagine: "I earn X number of dollars. I weigh X number of pounds. I am a kind, loving human being. I am disciplined and industrious and fidus. I am a good driver. I am punctual. I like myself. I am responsible. I feel great. I feel happy. I have health. I have energy."

Interesting affirmation. If you repeat the affirmation over and over again, "I have health. I have energy. I have health. I have energy," you can actually build up your body's resistance to things like colds and flu. We'll talk about this a little bit later, but very often we get sick because we decide to get sick, or we get sick because we let our minds and B's coast. And we can actually drive a cold out of our systems by repeating the affirmation over and over again: "I have health. I am healthy. I am strong. I feel great. I feel wonderful."

So couch your affirmations in your visualizations. When you close your eyes, see yourself as though you had the characteristic quality right now. Speak in terms of having the characteristic or quality right now. And as we said before, with regard to emotion, imagine the feeling that would accompany the mental picture. Imagine the feeling that would accompany the words. When you say, "I like myself," you don't say, "I like myself." You say, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." Imagine when you when you say, "I I am responsive." You don't say, "I am responsible." You say, "I am responsible. I am responsible." In other words, emotionalize it. Wrap it up with emotion. Drive it into the subconscious mind like a detonator. And the effect that it will have on your personality and your on and on your feelings will be tremendous.

Now, again, with regard to affirmations, what I use is I use a series of index cards. And you can put your affirmations, your positive, present tense, personal statements on affirmations and review those affirmations over and over again. Every time you review them, every time you think about them, every time you repeat them and drive them into the subconscious mind, every time you impress them, you increase the potential for them to be expressed externally.

Now, one final thing is when you use affirmations, try to keep your daily words and actions consistent with your affirmations. Try to keep the things that you say when you're walking around and the things that you do consistent with the words that you say to yourself in private.

All right, the next thing that we do is what is called verbalization. Verbalization is speaking aloud. Speaking your affirmations aloud. Now, there's two ways that you can do this. Best to do it in private, but basically you increase the impact of a an affirmation by as much as 80% and even more when you say it out loud. If you say to yourself, "I like myself," but if you say, "I like myself," or "I feel terrific," or "I feel wonderful," or "I am responsible. I earn $50,000 a year." When I first learned about this process, my goal was to earn $50,000 a year. And I realized that the only way I could ever earn $50,000 a year was by repeating this over and over again. And surprisingly enough, when I began doing it, I was not making anywhere near $50,000. And I was very, very skeptical of whether or not it would work. I can only tell you from the bottom of my heart that it does work. So verbalize it.

Another thing that you can do is in front of a mirror. If you vis if you verbalize in front of a mirror, you have two impacts working simultaneously. You have the impact of what you can see, plus what you are saying, plus if you emotionalize what you are saying, you have three access points to reprogramming the subconscious working simultaneously. So you stand in front of a mirror. You can say in front of the mirror, you can say, "I feel terrific," or "I look great," or "I look great." Or you can say, "You look great." Because when we talk to ourselves in front of every, now you mustn't do this in a public washroom when there's other people around because they may think you're a little bit strange. But nonetheless, verbalization is a very important part of driving this message into the subconscious.

Remember, the key to this is whatever you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis, you can have. The only question is, can you repeat it long enough and hard enough, often enough to impress it permanently in the subconscious mind? Once you impress it permanently in the subconscious mind, it takes on a power of its own that will eventually bring it into your reality at exactly the right time and exactly the right way for you.

And this brings us to the next method, which is the method of assume the role. Assume the role. Assume the part. You see, one of the most important discoveries that we have made in behavioral psychology is this: is that if you feel a particular way, if you have the particular emotions, the feelings will lead to actions. We've talked about this before, that we act in a way consistent with our feelings. However, what we found is that most of us do not start off feeling motivated. Most of us do not start off feeling positive. Most of us do not start off feeling confident and capable of accomplishing our goals. Most of us start off feeling average to negative. However, if you will act exactly as if you had the feeling, the action will generate the emotion, just as the emotion generates the feeling. In other words, you can act your way into into feeling. This is very important. You can act your way into feeling.

Have you ever had the occasion where you are sitting comfortably, relaxed, and somebody says, "Come on, let's go and do this," or "Let's get up and do that"? You say, "No, no, no, I'm comfortable." Remember, you're into your comfort zone. Comfort is a great killer of human potential. You say, "No, no, no." They say, "Oh, come on, just get up and do a little bit." So you you get up just a little bit, and you move just a little bit. And as you begin to move, you start to get into the swing of it. And pretty soon, you get into it completely, and you're you totally forget about going back to the or the chair that you were in. Well, you can act your way into feeling. You can act your way into feeling almost anything. We call this, if you like, pretending. Pretend that you have the quality already. For instance, if you want to be courageous and unafraid, pretend that you're courageous and unafraid already. If you want to be confident, pretend that you have the confidence.

There's an old saying that says, "Fake it until you make it." Fake it until you make it. Remember, we talked about about the gentleman who was told that he was the reincarnation of Napoleon? That what he all he had to do was he had to act like Napoleon and realize that he had this cultural history behind him, that he had the decisiveness, the power, the courage, the genius, the brilliance, the tenacity, the foresight of one of the world's great leaders. Well, this acting, this pretending, this assuming the role, is a critical part of actually becoming that person.

If you want to be the finest salesperson in your organization, if you want to be a superb executive, if you want to be a tremendous technician, if you want to be an excellent medical professional, if you want to be the best mother or the best father, if you want to be excellent in athletics, there's an entire body of work today in neural linguistic programming and what is called the inner game of winning that says that if you want to be a better tennis player, for instance, what you do is you imagine that you were a championship tennis player. Imagine that you are Arthur Ash, or Jimmy Connors, or Chris Ever Lloyd, or U Maria Nevat, whatever her name is, Nevada, or one of the great tennis players. And play tennis exactly as if you were one of those. Play tennis as as though you were them, and in their body, and on the court. And you know what will happen is that judges and people observing a person doing this find that you will hit more accurately. You hit with more force. You are better. You are more confident. You're more capable.

Golfers, another example. If you want want to be a great golfer, is imagine that you are already a great golfer. If you want to be a great salesperson, imagine that you are already a great salesperson. And walk, talk, carry, act as though you had the part already. Dress the part. Dress. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, "Do I look the part of a great golfer? Do I look the part of the executive, the salesman, or the saleswoman, or whatever it happens to be that I would like to be?"

These four, we call this the VAVA VA VA VA VA. Actually, I should do it this way: VA A VA. These are the keys to rapid personality change. The V is for visualization. Visualize and play the picture of the desired person you would like to be over and over again until it is accepted by the subconscious as a reality. Remember, the subconscious obeys your conscious commands. If you command the subconscious, and you command the subconscious by the thoughts you hold in your conscious mind, by the thoughts that you dwell upon, the law of concentration. If you hold that thought in your mind on a continuing basis, eventually it clicks into the subconscious, and it takes on a power of its own.

The second is to affirm and affirm over and over again. There are many people who say that they would rather go without breakfast than go without their affirmations each morning. Speak to yourself positively. Use positive self-talk all the time. Remember, you talk to yourself at the rate of almost 1500 words a minute. Most people talk talk to themselves in terms of doubt and fear and worry and anxiety. Talk to yourself positively. "I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it." Just repeating, "I can do it. I can do it," over and over again, boosts your self-confidence and boosts your self-esteem. When you have nothing else to do, say, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." Because saying, "I like myself," or "I love myself," expands your ability and your capacity in every area of your life.

Also, verbalize. Speak out loud. Make sure the things that you say out loud are consistent with the person that you want to be and the things that you want want to do. Verbalize and say, "I like myself." Don't say aloud things that like, "I'm never on time. I can't lose weight. Uh, I can't quit smoking. I wish I could," and so on. But always speak in positive terms. Remember that you can almost double the force of an affirmation by speaking it loud. If you speak it really loud, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." You speak it really loud and really strong, it has double, triple, sometimes several times the impact.

And finally, assume the role. Pretend as though you already had the part. Assume the role. Imagine you've been hired to play the role of an extremely successful person in a Broadway play. And in this in this role, what you are going to do is you're going to walk, talk, and act as though you were the success, as though you were the role model, as though you were the ideal image of the perfect person that you want to become. And if you walk it, talk it, pretend it, visualize it, think it, and affirm it over and over again, that is the person that you become, as inevitably as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

And in the next session, I'll tell you more about how to incorporate these personality attributes into your character.

Session 11: The New Mental Diet

Back in the 1930s, a man named Gaylord Hower shocked the medical world by coming out with a series of claims and statements that said that everything that we ate in some way affected our body. He said that everything that you eat is translated into something and has a positive or negative effect. And he wrote a book called "The New Diet." Does it?

Now, in this session and the previous sessions, we've been talking about the new mental diet. And just as everything that you eat has an effect on your physical body, everything that you take into your mind has an effect on your mental body, on what's going on ins inside you, which determines what happens around you. When we were talking a little bit earlier, we said that the power of suggestion is one of the most important powers in your life. The power of suggestion says that everything that you take in, everything that you think about, everything that you read, everything that you listen to, all of your conversations, radio, television, newspaper, books, papers, magazines, everything that you allow to influence your thinking affects your subconscious mind, affects your attitudes, your expectations, your values, your beliefs, and ultimately your potential as a human being. In fact, the great difference between human beings is not intelligence, and not education, and not opportunity. It is what they are feeding into their minds on a regular basis.

Now, we also said, and it's the same thing, if you were to say, "Well, yes, I eat good food a lot of the time, but some of the time, or 50% of the time, I eat junk food. I eat food that's high in salt, high in sugar, uh low in nutrition, uh inert foods, dead foods, white flour, French grease, and so on. But it doesn't bother me. It doesn't have any effect on my body." You would know that that is nonsense, because everything counts. Everything counts. One of the marks of a truly honest person is that they accept reality. And reality is that everything that you do, mentally or physically, counts. And it's either positive, it's either helping you, moving you toward what you want to be and have and do, or it's negative, it's moving you away. But nothing is neutral. Everything counts.

So with regard to the power of suggestion, let's go on and talk about how we complete this process of reprogramming ourselves so that inside we are totally successful human beings, so that outside we will be totally positive, enthusiastic, successful human beings. Feed your mind the same way you would feed your body. Feed your mind carefully. If you were concerned about physical health and longevity, you would measure and calculate and look into the foods you eat. Look carefully into the mental foods that you eat, too. Because these mental foods, by a process, what we call the law of accumulation.

Now, the law of accumulation is both a mental law as well as a physical law. And what it says is that every single thing that you do, positive or negative, accumulates. That every single great achievement in life is the result of thousands of ordinary achievements, struggles, fallbacks, failures, minor disappointments. Every single big accomplishment is preceded by thousands of tiny little accomplishments. Every overnight success is preceded by years and years and years of working off Broadway. Every single great fortune. By the way, in studying self-made millionaires in America, do you know what we found? Is the average time that it takes to become a millionaire in America is over 20 years of hard work. In other words, we see a person who is wealthy, got a beautiful home, beautiful car, financially independent, but we don't realize that there are years and years and years of hard work, struggle, and sacrifice that preceded it. We see the person, we see the end result, and we say, "Isn't that person lucky?" Well, the fact of the matter is that there's no luck. There's just this long process of accumulation. And everything counts. Every single honest effort that you make toward becoming a better person accumulates like a snowball and has an effect. Every single time you do something that takes you away, that wastes your time, wastes your mind, wastes your thought, and so on, that has an effect too, and that accumulates.

Now, the great mistake that many people make is they go a little bit forward and a little bit backward. They do a few things that are good for their mind, and a few things that are crummy for their mind, and a few things that are good, and a few things that are crummy. And you know where they end up? Exactly where they started. The good offsets the bad. What you have to do is you have to put yourself on the side of the angels, so that your predominant intakes of mental food are positive and constructive and moving you in the direction that you want to go in.

So we feed your mind. Number one is read. Only reading is reading. Many people today don't like to read, but all leaders are readers. All leaders are readers. Read and try to read an average of 1 hour per day. We know that if you read 1 hour per day over the course of the day in something that builds your mind, something positive and constructive that builds your mind, not newspapers, not wasted things that just preoccupy your mind, but something that builds you and develops you. One hour per day can change your life. Research shows that 1 hour per day, in 2 to 3 years, you will be an authority on your subject. On studying any subject, from time management to nuclear physics, 1 hour per day will make you an authority. 3 to 5 years will make you an expert, and 5 to 7 years will make you an international authority, make you one of the most knowledgeable people in that field in the world, in just 1 hour a day, in any subject. And you can pick anything from medicine to uh molecular biology.

So read an hour per day. Recent study shows that the average adult in North America reads less than one book a year. That 58% of adults in the United States and Canada never finish a non-fiction book after they leave high school. When they leave high school, you know what they say? Or they leave university, they say, "Thank heavens, this is over. I'll never read another book as long as I live." And they can't understand why they stop growing. It is only reading that causes your mind to stretch and grow. Conversation is good, listening is good, courses and classes are good, watching videotape instruction is good, of course, uh, but only reading is reading. And there's no sub. People say, "Well, I'm not a good reader. I didn't learn to read well in school." Good. And set that as one of your goals to become an excellent reader. In one year of remedial reading at an evening course, you can be reading 3, 4, 500 words a minute and change your life.

In fact, according to uh the Gallup organization's poll on Who's Who in America, the great American success story, they found that the top people, the top 1% in this country, read an average of 12 non-fiction books per year. That means that you can join the top 1% in the nation by simply reading one book per month, one non-fiction book that develops your mind and expands your ability to think in a subject that interests you. One book a month will put you in the top 1% in a very short period of time. If you were to read 30 to 60 minutes each day, as I'll recommend later, 30 to 60 minutes each day would translate into a book per week. A book per week would translate into over 50 books a year.

Now, just imagine if you were to Read 50 books a year for the next 10 years. How many books would that be? That would be about 500 books, if you can work it out. Now, let me ask you a very simple question: Do you think that if you read one book a week for the next 10 years, in a world where the average person reads less than one book a year, do you think that would give you the edge? Do you think that would affect your life in any way? Do you think that would change your career and your income? Do you think it would change your environment? Do you think it would change everything that goes on around you? You bet your bippi it would. Because by the power of suggestion, by feeding your mind with new information, 500 books in 10 years will transform your life in such a way that you will never be able to recognize it.

Right, the next thing with regard to feeding your mind is listen to tapes. The discovery of audio cassette learning has been considered the greatest single advance in education since the discovery of the printing press, or the invention of the printing press. Audio cassette learning brings the finest minds in the world with their finest thoughts, thought out, scripted, edited, tightly compressed, and put together into your hands for a few dollars of tape. And you can walk, travel, jog with some of the greatest minds alive for only a few dollars. Listen to tapes in your car. You know, the average person who drives spends 500 to 1,000 hours a year in their car. 500 to 1,000 hours a year. The majority of those people sit there and listen to the radio. As they, we call radio, with all due respect to people in the radio industry, it's called chewing gum for the ears, uh, because it just goes on and on. 500 to 1,000 hours is the equivalent of 12 and a half to 25 40-hour weeks. You know what that means? It means that you are getting the benefit of, or could be getting the benefit of, as much as 12 and a half to 25 40-hour work weeks. Imagine if your company would send you away for 25 weeks to study every single year at no extra charge. Do you think that would affect your career and your earning capacity? That's the equivalent of one to two university semesters. Imagine if you were taking the equivalent of one or two university semesters of additional education every single year. Do you think that would affect your life? Yes, it would. So listen to tapes.

And finally, take additional courses. Become a lifelong student. And when I say take additional courses, the very best place to take courses is from people who are experts in their field. Try to avoid taking courses from people who've only got their education out of a textbook. Take courses from people who are experts. Take seminars. Seminars, for instance, like this seminar that you're attending. You can get more information in a one or two-day seminar taught by people who spent 10, 20, 30 years gathering and compressing the information than you can in an entire university course. So take additional courses. I recommend a minimum of four perom, one every 3 months. In a world where the average person never takes an additional course, 80 to 90% of people never take a course after they leave high school or university. If you take four per year, listen to tapes in your car, and read on a regular basis, and by the way, where do you get the time for reading? Just don't read so much newspaper. Simple as that. Just cut back on the newspaper a little bit and expand the amount of self-development reading that you do. Where do you get time to listen to tapes? Just don't listen to so much radio. I'm not saying don't listen to radio at all, but just don't listen to so much of it. Where do you get time to take additional courses? Instead of sitting around on the weekends, take a course. Instead of watching television the evenings, go and take a course.

But remember, the clock is running. If you want to get to the top of your field, if you want to be a leader, if you want to be a star in your field, knowledge is power. Knowledge today is more important than anything else. Knowledge is the great power in our society. And the more knowledge you have, the more practical knowledge that can be put to purposes that can help other people and benefit yourself and the people around you, the more knowledge you have, the more power you will have, the more self-esteem you will have, the more status, the more position, the more security, everything. The most insecure person in our society is the person who has stopped learning and growing, and they know it all.

Right, by the way, one other thing. According to the Harvard studies, one of the key to self-motivation is perpetual growth. As long as you're growing and learning and feeding your mind with new material, you will be continuously motivated, exactly as if you were taking psychological vitamins. As soon as you stop growing, you start stagnating. When you start stagnating, your self-esteem goes down, your energy level goes down, your health level goes down, you become prone to more diseases and so on and so forth. So as long as you're learning and growing, you'll be vital physically and mentally.

The next part of feeding your mind, uh, is what we call the reference group, or put it another way, get around the right people. Get around the right people. Now, getting around the right people simply means this: is that when we talked about the power of suggestion, we said that about 85 to 95% of all of the influences in your life, all the reasons you do anything, is because of suggestive influences around you. Not only physical suggestions, the weather, the heat, the cold, and so on, but also the emotional suggestions, the impact of the people you associate with. And the more you impact, the more you associate with people, especially people in your family, people in your close social circle, people that you work with, the more you associate with these people, the more of an impact they have on your thinking and on your future.

David McLellan found at Harvard University after 25 years. He found that the choice of a reference group was one of the key determinants of success or failure in life. Now, a reference group are the people that you identify with. Remember, we talked about identification. The people that you consider yourself to be one of. Just simple as that. Who do you identify with?

Well, let me give you an example. I was reading the story of a self-made millionaire not long ago. And he had started off as a young man when other kids were collecting baseball cards or football cards or hockey cards, he became fascinated with executives of Fortune 500 corporations. So he began reading his father's Business Week, Newsweek, Fortune Magazine, Wall Street Journal. And he began keeping fire on executives who were in the news. And he began to identify with those executives. He began to think about being in a Fortune 500 corporation. And he began to think about being an executive in a Fortune 500 corporation at a time when some people were thinking about being hockey stars or baseball stars. The interesting thing was that as he grew up, this directional mechanism, this role model, this reference group that he identified with, began to affect what he read in school, what he studied, uh, how much he applied himself, how hard he worked, what companies he went to work with, what company he went to work with when he came out of high school and university. And by the time he was 25 years old, he was an executive of a Fortune 500 corporation, one of the youngest executives of a Fortune 500 corporation in business history. But it's because he started at the age of 12 identifying with those.

Question: Who do you identify with? Now, whoever you identify with today, one of the things you have to ask yourself is, who would you like to be like? Who do you want to identify with? And then you start getting around the right people. The starting point of getting around the right people is to start to read the magazines that they read. If you want to be a successful person in business, read successful business magazines. You want to be a top salesperson, read successful sales magazines, marketing magazines, books written by top salespeople. If you want to be a successful executive, if you want to be a successful marketer, if you want to be a successful parent, then begin getting around these people through their writings, through their tapes, and through their courses.

The other thing is to seek them out and begin to associate with winners. As we say, fly with eagles. Now, let me make one point here that's absolutely critical. It is simply this: is that if you scratch with the turkeys, you can't fly with the eagles. That if you spend time with losers, you will be a loser yourself. That David McLellan of Harvard spent found that 99% of the failure rate in life could be attributed to associating with people who were going nowhere. Because we're so strongly influenced by the people around us, we talk like them, we walk like them, we take on their attitudes, their values, their beliefs, their expectations, even their self-concepts. If we associate with negative people, critical people, cynical people, lazy people, people who waste their time, we will become exactly like them. Every one of us has the tendency to be like a chameleon. We take on the colorings and the behaviors of the people around us. So it's very important that you make a decision what you want to be like, and you begin to associate with people who are like that. And especially get away from the losers, get away from the no-hopers, get away from the negative people, because these people will drag you down as surely as an anchor would drag you down if it was tied to your leg.

Many people come to me and say, "Well, I'm working for a negative boss," or "I'm in a negative relationship." And I say this: If you're working for a negative boss, you'll never realize your potential working for that boss. You'll never be happy, and you'll never accomplish everything you're capable of accomplishing. They say, "Well, if I'm in a negative relationship, what do I do?" I say, "You have to ask yourself this question: Do you want to fulfill your potential as a human being or not?" If you want to fulfill your potential as a human being, here's the facts. I'm not making the facts up, I'm just telling you. Here's the facts: but if you associate with losers, you'll be a loser. And it's been worked on for 25 years, and they can't find any exceptions to it. And I've spoken to thousands of people who've told me that coming to terms with this is one of the hardest things that they ever did, because sometimes it means that you have to say goodbye to family, say goodbye to friends, say goodbye to relatives, say goodbye to relationships. But if that is the fact, the better sooner you do it, the better. It's almost like taking out a rotten tooth. The sooner you do it, the less pain you suffer.

Now, with the next part with regard to reference group is this: it's what is called The Mastermind Alliance. And that is to pick one or two or more people in your environment whom you admire, who are positive, who are going places, who are ambitious, and start to get together with them at at least once per week for breakfast or lunch, just to talk. Get around them. There's something about the fertilization and the synergy of positive minds coming together, talking about your problems, talking about your challenges, talking about the future, talking about what's going on. Try to get together with a mastermind alliance once a week. We have found in the research that I've done, the research that Napoleon Hill has done, that associating with other positive people is one of the triggering influences to peak performance. It's one of the guarantors that you will become a great success. You can't do it by simply associating by yourself.

All right, now another way, another way to influence your mind, very, very important, is start each day right. Start each day right. Now, this is based on the fact that there are two times of the day when you are most suggestive, when your subconscious mind is most open to new information, and that is nighttime, before you go to sleep, just when you fall off to sleep, and morning. These are the two times when your conscious mind is most relaxed, and your subconscious mind is most alert. So you must use these times as what we call key programming opportunities to put new information into your mind.

And this is what I suggest you do, and it's very, very powerful. Before you go to sleep at night, feed your mind with a stream of messages consistent with what you want to be and have and do the next day. In other words, program yourself for the next day, the same way you'd program a computer. And what I do is I live down and I close my eyes and I say, "I wake up in the morning," present tense, "and I feel terrific. I wake up in the morning and I feel terrific. I wake up in the morning, I feel wonderful. I feel full of energy. I believe tomorrow is going to be a great day. I wake up in the morning and I feel terrific."

And then when you get up in the morning, the first thing that you say, the first thought that you program into your subconscious computer is, "I feel terrific. I feel terrific. I feel terrific. I feel terrific. I feel terrific." What you do is you get up and you say it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times. And you repeat it over. "I feel terrific. I feel terrific." You don't get up in the morning say, "Gez, I'm tired. Gez, I'm tired. Gez, I'm tired. Oh God, I'm tired." You get in the morning say, "I feel terrific." Somebody say, "How you feel?" You say, "I feel terrific." Even when you feel terrible, say, "I feel terrific." You see, your subconscious mind can't tell the difference between a real fact and one that you vividly imagine. And if you repeat, "I feel terrific," very loud, "I feel terrific," try it yourself. "I feel terrific. I feel terrific. I feel terrific." What happens? The subconscious mind believes it. Maybe you do feel terrific, and it will actually give you a surge of energy that will wake you up and clear your mind, even before you have coffee.

Now, the second thing that you do in the morning, this is number one. Second thing that you do to start your day off well is to read for 30 to 60 minutes. Get up early enough to read for 30 to 60 minutes in something that is motivational, something that is inspirational, something that is educational, something that uplifts your mind. What we call mental protein. Not newspaper, not magazine, not television, not radio. Get up in the morning, sit down, and read something really good for yourself. Read something that makes you feel really good about yourself and your day. I read spiritually oriented material every single morning. And with this is called, by the way, the golden hour. If you will do this, as a result of attending this seminar, if you will begin to read every morning for 30 to 60 minutes in something that uplifts your mind, this alone will be worth all the time you spend in a seminar. This habit of using the golden hour, the first hour in the morning, when your mind is wide open to new information, using it constructively, is one of the most powerful success techniques I've ever.

Found in my entire life, I've had hundreds of people come back to me and say, "This has changed their life." Just getting up a little bit early so you can sit and read quietly. You will become so addicted to using that golden hour that you will not be able to do without it. Even if you have to get up tired, even if you have to get up long before you have to go to work, get up and milk that golden hour. Fill your mind full of rich mental protein, beautiful thoughts and ideas. Uplift your mind and you'll find that your whole day will go better.

And the third step is, review your goals every morning. Review your goals every morning. Every morning, before you start out, review your goals. Just, just the same as if you were on a long motor trip or if you were at sea, you'd look at the map, you'd shoot the stars and the moon. In other words, you take a look at where you are and you would plot your destination and you would think about it. Because when you review your goals, you program them into your subconscious mind. Well, programming them into your subconscious mind by repeating them every day and using that wonderful technique, that golden hour. I learned this many years ago and I've been absolutely astonished. Those three points: wake up in the morning, it's got to feel terrific, read for 30 to 60 minutes, and write and review your goals every single morning. And the most remarkable thing that happens is, you start off every day supercharged. You start off every day feeling positive. You start off every day feeling energetic.

So, let's just review for a second, and I'm going to wrap up with two really critical points. We talked about the power of suggestion. Remember that everything counts. Everything that you read, everything that you listen to, everything that you watch on television, every magazine that you pick up, every conversation that you have, positive or negative, is affecting your subconscious mind, which is programming your future. Remember, your external world is a reflection of your internal world. Your external world is a reflection of your internal world. If there is negativity, concern, anxiety, fear in your internal world, then it's going to be reflected in your external world. So be sure that what you're taking into your mental diet is just as pure as what you would take into a physical diet if you wanted to sustain high levels of physical health and energy. Absolutely important. Feed your mind with books. Feed your mind with tapes. Feed your mind with positive conversations. Feed your mind with courses. Go and attend and listen to experts. Feed your mind with positive people. If one of the, uh, recommendations that one of the business philosophers says is, "Poor people should take rich people out to lunch." Why? Because taking a rich person out to lunch is an opportunity to learn from that rich person, to get information from that person that you could not buy at any price. Poor people should take rich people out to lunch. Get around the winners. Think about the winner that you want to be. And look around you in your world and say, "Who is like the person that I want to be?"

Here's another very important point in terms of mental programming. It's simply this: discard past labels. Discard past labels. Don't ever allow anybody to tag you with the way that you used to be. If you were late before, don't, don't allow anybody to say, "Well, you're always late." You say, "No. You say, 'In the past, I was late, but now I am punctual.'" You can't control your, your eating. "In the past, I overate, but now I eat sensibly and soundly." You're irritable and impatient. "No, in the past, I was, but now I am." These are the words: "In the past, I was." Past tense. "In the past, I was." Remember, the subconscious is listening. "But now I am." "But now I am." Blank, blank, blank, whatever it happens to be. "In the past, I didn't work very effectively, but now I am an effective worker." "In the past, I didn't manage my time well, but now I manage my time well." Now, if you make a mistake and you fall back, then what you do is, you just simply cancel the mistake by saying, "Well, next time I'll..." You show up late for an appointment. You say, "Well, next time I'll be on time." Etc. "Next time I'll..." Those are the words. You cancel every mistake. You refuse to carry past labels forward.

Underlining all this, teach others. Teach what you know to people who are interested. Teach what you know to people who are interested. Because remember, you become what you teach. You will find that the more you teach other people and share this information with other people, the more you internalize it yourself. You become what you teach. Does this material work? I can tell you, yes, it does work. Since I began to teach this material, since I began to lecture on it and tape on it, since I began to speak to hundreds and thousands of people, I have internalized all the things that we talk about in this course. And everything that I talk about here, when I first began teaching, I hoped it worked. I thought it worked. I sort of believed it worked. But now I know it works. Having taught it, I've internalized it. Having internalized it, I have seen examples of every single bit of this.

Back, everything that you do with confident expectations. An attitude of confident expectations is the mark of the truly healthy personality. Remember, we talked about the power of expectations. An attitude of confident expectations means that you confidently expect good things to happen. You have, have an attitude of positive self-excluders. Paranoid, as you know, a paranoid is a person who is convinced that the world is out to get him, that the whole world is conspiring to get him. An inverse paranoid is a person who is convinced that the world is conspiring to do him or her good. So become an inverse paranoid. Be absolutely convinced that the world has got a plot out there, it's plotting to do you good. It's plotting to somehow get good to you, whether you like it or not. That no matter what happens, look into it for the good. No matter what happens. This is the key to becoming an inverse paranoid. Look for the good. Expect the best and look for the good. Expect the best and look for the good. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the measure of a healthy personality is your ability to look for the good in everything around you, your propensity to look for the good. You have to ask yourself, how much of the time do you look for the good? How much of the time do you expect the bad? The degree to which you look for the good is the degree to which you are healthy as a human being.

And finally, remember this. The process of changing from where you are now, here's where you are, to here's your goal, this is where you want to go. The process of getting from here to here is progressive. But this is what happens when you begin to visualize and affirm and imagine and write and plan your new self. That is, say you want to earn $50,000 a year, and you began, you're currently earning $25,000 a year, and your goal is to earn $50,000 a year. What happens is this: you keep saying, you start to affirm and visualize over and over again, "I earn, or I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year." Your subconscious mind disbelieves it. But as you say it over and over again, your subconscious mind still disbelieves it. But as you repeat it, "I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year." The disbelief shrinks, and your disbelief gets smaller and smaller. Eventually, you actually overcome your own skepticism. And finally, you reach the position where you neither believe nor disbelieve. But as you keep repeating it and thinking about it and reading and studying it and saying over and over again, "I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year. I earn $50,000 a year." Eventually, you start to believe it just a little bit. Also, you start to get a slight increase in pay, and your salary goes to $26,000 a year. And then you get a bonus, and you find yourself earning $27,000, and so on. You find that the more you repeat it and affirm it and visualize it and plan for it and prepare for it, the more it comes into your life. And you just keep saying, "I earn $50,000 a year." And you begin to believe it more and more. And you believe it more and more. And as you repeat it and visualize it and affirm it and over and over again, your belief grows and grows and grows. And eventually, it gets to the point where you absolutely believe that you earn $50,000 a year. And if somebody were to wake you up at 3:00 in the morning, give you a check and say, "How much do you earn?" You say, "$50,000 a year." Even though, still at this point, you've never earned more than $27,000 in your whole life.

Now, this is the way all our beliefs change. We start off with where we are now. We look at where we want to be in the future. And we begin to feed our mind with new mental food consistent with where we want to be. As we feed our mind with that new mental food, we start off with a lot of disbelief and skepticism. As a matter of fact, your skepticism and disbelief is the biggest obstacle to your success. But as we repeat it over and over again, as we continue to work on ourselves and to work on the situation, we begin to believe more and more that it's possible. We begin to impress the possibility of it deeper and deeper into the subconscious. Now, in propaganda, this is called the big lie. The big lie theory was the discovery that if you repeated anything over and over again often enough, that even the most intelligent person would come to believe it. With regard to your life and to my life, this is called the big truth. The big truth is that you can be, have, and do anything that you want, if you want it badly enough and are willing to make the efforts. That anything that you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis, you can be, have, or do. You will become what you think about. Your only job is to make a very, very clear decision about the person you want to be, the things that you want to have, the goals that you want to accomplish. And then make sure that you feed your mind continuously, day by day, week by week, hour by hour, with words, pictures, images, ideas, thoughts, and information consistent with your goals and your ideals. Keep your mind on what you want. Keep it off of what you don't want. And everything is possible for you.

[Music] Brian Tracy [Music] Phoenix session 12. Software for the brain. What is the most precious resource in your life? Well, if you're like I am, your most precious resource is time. And according to all the recent studies that have been done lately, adults in America and Canada and other countries value time ahead of money in almost every instance. Now, as a result of what we've talked about in our previous sessions, with the fact that if you change your internal world, you change your external world, one of the things that begins to well up inside of you is impatience. If you believe that if you do change your internal programming, your external world will change to conform with it, then you're probably in a hurry to change that internal programming. And in this session, we're going to talk about how you can bring about rapid and permanent internal programming change. We call this session, "Software for the Brain."

Now, I don't know a lot about computers, but I do know this. I do know that a computer has a certain amount of utility as a piece of hardware, but what makes a computer work are the programs that you run in it. And the more sophisticated and complex and productive the programs, the more value is the computer. So, what we're going to do today is we're going to take the things that we talked about in terms of mental programming, visualization, and affirmation, and so on, and we're going to combine them into a series of techniques that you can use to multiply or to speed up the process at which your new thoughts and ideas are accepted by your subconscious mind and then go to work and attract them into your reality.

And the first technique we're going to talk about is what I call the written programming technique. It's one of the simplest of all, and yet it is so powerful that it's almost scary. Again, I've said this to many audiences, but I'll say it to you: if you just practice this one technique, it will be worth 10 times the time and price of this program. If it's all you learn is this one technique, it will have an astonishing difference on your results. When I first learned about this and applied it some years ago, I couldn't believe how effective it was. And all it requires to use is discipline plus one of these. Now, this is what I use. It's a spiral notebook. It costs, here, $1.99 at Walgreens drugs. All it has is line pages. And what you do is, you use this to write and rewrite your goals. It's very simple. You buy one for $1.99 and you use this as the basis of the written programming technique. Let me explain to you how it works.

Written programming technique is based on the fact that we learn or take in information three ways. We take in information auditorily, in other words, we hear the information or we speak the information. We take it in visually, we see the information. And we take it in kinesthetically, as we feel the information. Now, any one of these is a good way of learning or, if you like, bringing in information to the unconscious mind. However, the more of them you can combine simultaneously, along with some of the other mental principles and programming techniques that we've talked about, the more rapidly the information is accepted. Sometimes, if you combine information in the right way, it's accepted instantaneously as a permanent change in your unconscious programming.

Written programming technique is based on this, as are some of the other programming techniques which we'll talk about in the next few minutes. Written programming technique is based on the fact that when you write something down, it requires total concentration. Law of concentration. You cannot write accurately and correctly and think of anything else at the same time. So writing requires concentration. It also requires intensity. It also requires visual, because you can't write without looking. And when you do write, you have a tendency to what is called subvocalize. In other words, you say the words to yourself as you're writing. So even though you can't hear them with a conscious ear, you hear them internally. And kinesthetically, you move and you feel it. It requires tremendous mental, emotional, and physical energy to write. So written programming technique simply says this: that every single morning, without fail, you rewrite your major goals after you've done your reading. You rewrite your major goals. Now, this whole process, by the way, can take about two minutes, maybe five. You may get to the point, as I do, where you'll write 10, 20, 30, sometimes even an hour, but you just rewrite your major goals as positive, present tense, personal affirmations. In other words, your P, your goals could be: "I earn X number of dollars per month. I weigh X number of pounds. I am outstanding in my field. I do this. I achieve. I accomplish. I choose." And so on. Whatever you want to be, have, or do, you just write it out in a series of affirmations, one at a time. Now, you'll find, and we'll talk about goal setting later on, you'll find that as you write your goals over and over again, an interesting thing will happen: your more important goals will tend to be rewritten first, and they'll tend to become clarified and to become sharper and more distinct. And every single time you rewrite your major goals, you are driving them, you are impressing them deeper into the subconscious, which leads to the guarantee that they will be expressed in your reality. Every time you rewrite your major goals, you're programming them into your subconscious, and you're setting them as a directional mechanism, the same way you would set the directional mechanism on a guided missile, so that it will move you uniringly in the direction of accomplishing it.

Number two is, close your eyes. After you've rewritten your goals, close your eyes and visualize your major goal or goals of the day as accomplished. Visualize them as a reality. What would they look like? Now, a very valuable thing to do, by the way, is cut out clippings from magazines and books and put them in your notebook so that you can actually look at a picture. Do you want to earn, own a brand new car or a beautiful house or something like that? Well, then get a picture of it and make a very clear picture. So when you write out the goal, you can look at the picture and then close your eyes and feed that picture into your subconscious mind.

And then the third part, which is most important, is imagine the feeling of pleasure you would have. Imagine the feeling of pleasure you would have if you already owned it. Just imagine that it is already a reality. The way that you imagine that it's a reality is imagine that you are on a path toward your goal, and your goal is on a path toward you, and that there is a predestined time when you are ready and it's ready, when everything is ready, that you and the goal will meet. And that you cannot speed up the time. You can't make it go faster, and you can't make it go slower. But what you can do is continually repeat the picture and the feeling and the description over and over again. And at exactly the right time and place, it will meet. Someday, you'll probably write me a letter and you'll tell me how remarkably this has worked in your life, because it's worked remarkably in my life and the life of many other people.

Now, the second point, and let's, before we go on with this, let me give you a key point. It's called The Law of Relaxation. The Law of Relaxation is one of the most important mental laws. Well, the Law of Relaxation simply says this: that in the physical world, if you want to drive a nail, the harder you hit it, the more physical effort or energy you put behind it, the faster you accomplish something in the physical world. If you want to drive a car faster, you step on the gas, which causes the engine to work harder and propels it forward. However, in the mental realm, it's exactly the opposite. The Law of Relaxation says that in all mental working, effort defeats itself. In all mental working, effort defeats itself. What does this mean? It means that the harder you don't try, the better it works. Now, it's interesting. I'll give you a perfect example: relationships. You will notice that in any relationship of yours that works, the harder you try to make a relationship work, the more difficult it is. Because a relationship is basically a meeting of minds. And whenever you just relax and let the relationship flow, the relationship unfolds exactly the way it should. If ever you try to speed something up or slow it down out of its own time, you create a crisis, you create tension, stress, and anxiety. So anything that has to do with mental working, anything that has to do with minds, and all interactions between people have to do with minds, anything that has to do with goals and dreams and plans requires that you just relax and let it unfold. That's why we say, close your eyes, visualize, imagine, imagine the feeling, and just relax without making any effort. And the more relaxed you are, the more rapidly the idea is accepted by the subconscious mind.

Now, the next technique is what is called the quick affirmation technique or quick programming technique. Quick programming technique is used specifically before any non-recurring event of importance. Before any non-recurring, that means an event that happens only once. For instance, if you're going to be in a sports event, or if you're going to go into an interview for a job or a raise, or if you're going to make a sales presentation. By the way, all top salespeople use this quick programming technique. It's very, very powerful. What it does is, it has a temporary effect, but it sets you up psychologically, physically, mentally. It programs your self-concept and your subconscious to give you the words and actions and behaviors that are perfectly appropriate to the situation. All athletes use this, as we'll talk about in, in a second.

Now, how do you use quick programming technique? Well, let us say that you have a talk coming up. A good friend of mine just gave a, a very important talk to 2500 people, and he was very tense and worried about it. I said, "Look, this is all you have to do. Each time you think about this talk that's coming up, just close your eyes and use this technique." And just think like this: First of all, visualize the perfect outcome. Visualize the perfect outcome. In other words, visualize, if you could script what was coming up, the interview with your boss, the sales presentation. Visualize the perfect outcome. In other words, the perfect outcome for a discussion about a raise would be the boss giving you the raise. The perfect outcome of a sales conversation is the person signing the sales order. The perfect outcome of a job application is getting a job. In this case, my friend's situation, his perfect outcome was a standing ovation. So he visualized a standing ovation. That's what he programmed into his mind. He saw the entire audience rising to their feet in a standing ovation at the end of the talk. Then affirm the visualization. In other words, it could be as simple as, "This talk goes beautifully," or "This talk is extremely successful," or "I feel absolutely perfect going into this talk," or "This talk is a complete success." In other words, give an affirmation that is consistent with it and affirm the visualization. And then emotionalize it, or or imagine how you would feel if you experienced it. And release. And this is the key word. And then just release it as though it had already happened. Just let it go as though it had already happened, as though you were already past the event and the perfect outcome of the event has already occurred. As you release it and let it go, it drops like a computer card into the computer, and the subconscious computer goes to work on it. Powerful, powerful technique. And this technique is based on what is called mental rehearsal.

Now, mental rehearsal is a technique that is used by all peak performing men and women. It's used by all self-made millionaires, all outstanding salespeople, all top executives, all Olympic athletes, all world champions in any field. Use mental rehearsal. And mental rehearsal is the process of living the experience inside before you have it on the outside. That means before any event of importance, long-term or short-term, what top performers do is they recall and relive excellence. They recall and relive excellence. In other words, they think of the last time that they engaged in a performance like this and the satisfaction that they had, the pleasure that they had, the feeling of an excellent performance. And they take that feeling. It's almost like they have a screen here, and here's the screen. You take a split screen, and on this side of the screen, you recall the last time you did this in an excellent fashion. And on this side of the screen, you imagine the upcoming event. And then when you get this perfectly clearly in your mind, and you can see it with perfect clarity, that last triumph, that last success, the last sale that you closed, the last interview that went well, the last successful party or meeting or social engagement, then you transfer this into the new situation that's upcoming, and you transfer the feeling and the experience, and you overlay the two. So that as you anticipate the upcoming experience, you combine it with the feelings of success and pleasure and joy of the previous excellent experience. What that does is it programs the subconscious mind for you to go into that experience and engage in the same words, actions, and behaviors that got you the results of success and winning the last time.

Now, what is the difference between winners and losers? Major difference between winners and losers. Can you imagine what it is? Winners versus losers. It's simply this: we all engage in mental rehearsal. You, me, everybody. The difference between winners and losers is this: prior to every event, upcoming event, losers think of the last time they went into an experience like this and it didn't work out. They think of their previous failures. They vividly imagine and think about how embarrassed, humiliated, unsuccessful, how badly they felt. And the losers relive and recall failure and poor performance. The winners insist upon reliving and recalling excellence and success. So you can tell if you're destined to be a winner or a loser simply by looking at what you think about in each coming event. And if you just make the decision right now to think about what you desire, ask yourself, "Am I thinking about what I want to happen, or am I thinking about what I'm afraid will happen?" Remember, the natural tendency is to think about what you're afraid of, not what you desire. So force your mind, using the Law of Substitution. Take your mind off of what to fear and refuse to entertain it. There's a beautiful technique that I learned many years ago. Whenever you start to think about something that's causing you to be upset or anxious or or tense, just say this word very, very loud to yourself: say, "Stop." Stop. It's very much the same as knocking the side of a record player and joking the needle off the record player, or slamming on a tape recorder, or shouting at a person who's saying something. Just say, "Stop." And what it will do is, temporarily, it will stop your mind. And as it stops your mind, then switch your attention onto what you desire and insist upon thinking about what you desire. And every single time you find your thoughts drifting back to what you're afraid of, say, "Stop," and get your mind onto what you desire.

Here's a very simple, uh, diagram or graph. And it's like this: This is what you desire. This is what you fear. Now, here are you, on this slope, between what you desire and what you fear, going up or going down. This, however, is easy. The natural tendency of human nature is to focus on what is negative and to slide back into what they fear. What is the worst possible outcome? This requires effort. It requires a consistent effort to keep your mind on what you want. Now, most people are lazy. Most people are undisciplined. Most people are not willing to make the effort. So what they do is, they have a tendency to slide into thinking about what is the worst thing that can possibly happen. They slide into negativity. That's why the great majority of people today are negative, and very few people are positive. So be alert to that. Is that whenever you find yourself thinking about something that's coming up in advance, it's natural to be filled with doubt and fear. Are natural human tendencies for a variety of reasons that we talked about before. But the superior human being keeps their mind on what they want. The superior human being stops the negative thoughts. The superior human being concentrates on excellent performance.

Now, somebody will say, "Well, I've never done it before. How can I concentrate or how can I recall and relive excellence?" Easy. In your imagination, you can pretend and imagine that you've done this before. Pretend that you've already succeeded at this. Think about how you would act if you were a superb success in this area. Walk as though you were a success. In neurolinguistic programming, they find that there is a physiological state or way of walking, talking, and acting that is consistent with every emotional state. And that if you walk and talk and act the same way you would if you felt confident, as we said earlier, you'll actually feel the feelings of confidence that go with the behavior. Very important.

Now, here's another technique. It's called standard programming technique or standard affirmation technique. And this technique is done with cards, uh, index cards, or you can use a series of goals on a piece of paper. Very powerful technique. What you do with this is, here's the steps to standard affirmation techniques: One, you set your goals. You can set 10 to 15 goals. Your subconscious mind can work on 10 to 15 goals at a time. Of course, you have to have your goals in priority, but you don't have to worry about that. About 10 to 15 goals. Number two, you take twice daily, morning and evening. Twice daily, morning and evening. You take some time off where, number three, you can be with no interruptions. And then you write out your goals again in the form of positive, present tense, personal affirmations. Okay? Goals as positive, present tense, personal affirmations on cards. Now, many people advise that you use index cards so that you can slide the cards back and forth like this, um, and just put one on top of the other. And write your goal in very, very large, clear letters so that the subconscious mind can see the goal with crystal clarity. And then you sit down with the goals and you read the goal to yourself. Read the goal or the affirmation to yourself. Read, repeat. And then close your eyes. So let us say the goal is, "I earn $50,000 a year." So we say on the card, "I earn $50,000. I earn $50,000 a year." You read it. You repeat it. "I earn $50,000." And you close your eyes and repeat it three to five times. Repeat the goal, the goal, three to five times. And the number six, step number six is, visualize the outcome. In other words, if you earn $50,000 a year, what would be the outcome? Would it be a bigger car? Would it be a bigger house? Would it be a, um, uh, a trip to Tahiti? Would it be a different wardrobe? Would it be a Rolex watch? In other words, visualize the outcome, not the process so much as what the result would be. Or another thing that you can do, by the way, is you can visualize the work. Let us say that you are going to earn $50,000, and you imagine you will earn it in your existing profession. Then visualize yourself doing the work in such an excellent fashion that it will actually generate the income. And then step number seven is, imagine the feeling. Imagine the feeling that would accompany the accomplishment of your goal. Imagine the feeling. Close your eyes. And as you sit there with your cards, looking at your cards, imagine the feeling of satisfaction as though the goal is already accomplished. Imagine, imagine the feeling of pleasure. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment. Let us say that what you're going to do is you're going to give yourself a trip to Tahiti. You're going to go to the South Seas. You're going to lay on the beach. You're going to swim in the beautiful surf. You're going to soak up the sun and get this beautiful tan. Then start thinking about that. Another thing that you can do, by the way, is get brochures on Tahiti. Get a poster of Tahiti. Get a poster of a cruise ship. Get pictures of the things that you're going to do and have and enjoy that you associate. Because the more emotions you can associate with the accomplishment of the goal, the more rapidly the subconscious accepts it as an instruction, and the more rapidly you go to work on it.

Now, here's what I use, by the way. Here's what you can use. You can use cards like this, which are just index cards. These ones don't have any lines, but you can use cards with lines. And you just sit there and you just write out your goal. And as you read the goal, repeat it three to five times, imagine it, visualize it, see yourself doing whatever is necessary, visualize the outcome. And then just change the card and go on to the next one. The more relaxed you are when you do this exercise, because of the Law of Relaxation, the more rapidly the subconscious accepts it. Here's something else that you might want to get. It's one of these spiral cards with index cards throughout it that you can write a variety of different affirmations on. Carry it around with you and just flip. Write affirmations down whenever you think of something that you want. Write it down. And then just take some time every so often to review your affirmations.

Now, one file technique is what is called sports programming technique, which combines all the others. It's used by all top Olympic athletes. It combines mental rehearsal and relaxation. It's based on what is called autogenic conditioning, which means that if you want to become better at a sport, the technique is very simple. First of all, get some instruction in the sport. Learn from an expert. Study and learn what excellent performance in the sport constitutes. Second of all, before you go to sleep, or sitting in a very relaxed position, take several deep, deep breaths and relax your body. And then visualize perfect sports performance. Say you want to be a better skier. Very simple. What you do is, you learn how to ski. You look at films and pictures of people skiing excellently. And then you visualize yourself actually being the skier. You close your eyes and you do two types of visualization. The first type of visualization is where you look at yourself actually skiing. You look at yourself and you look at your performance. Look at yourself going down the slope. Look at yourself turning, putting in the poles, twisting, and so on. You look at yourself skiing beautifully. And watch yourself going, almost as though you were a spectator. The second part of the visualization is, you then shift your point of attention and you look at yourself from your own eyes and actually see yourself going down the slope.

Sports affirmation technique is used by all the major football teams, the basketball teams, the major figure skaters, the top golfers. Virtually all Olympic athletes train in their minds over and over again. For instance, skaters will sit down, close their eyes, put on their music, and then they will go through their entire skating routine in their minds while their music is playing. What happens is, of course, that in your mind, you never fall. So they program their minds over and over again. And this is based on a very simple fact: every time we visualize an action, we actually send measurable impulses of nerve energy to the legs, arms, muscles, and nerves that would control the muscles that we would use if we actually engaged in that action. If you want to be a better golfer, better skier, better tennis player, better baseball player, swimmer, better public speaker, better anything, you can use sports affirmation technique to bring about rapid programming changes. The key is this: repetition, visualization, relaxation, and clarity of your goals over and over again until they are accepted by the subconscious mind as facts, until they begin to become true in your reality. And if you stick with it, it will work for you.

Session 13. Rapid Learning Techniques. At the beginning of this seminar, we talked about human potential and about how the average person uses less than 10% of their potential. How Albert Einstein's brain was removed from his cranium when he died, and it was studied at Cornell University, and they found that he never used more than 15% of his mental potential in his entire lifetime. One of the great geniuses of this century. What does this mean, mental potential? Well, it means the ability to use our thinking capacity. It means the ability to activate the brain cells in what is called the neocortex, or the thinking brain of mankind. And one of the things that we're going to talk about in this session is how you can use your brain more effectively. And some of the things that have been done to help people develop and learn rapid learning techniques, or what we call whole brain learning, accelerated learning, or even super learning. One of the things that we know is that the average person really uses not much more than 1 or 2% of their thinking capacity. That we don't use 10%, because if you could use 10% of your brain, you could accomplish anything you could dream of on this Earth. Our role in this session is to show you how to use more of it.

We know some things about the brain. We know one thing with regard to intelligence: intelligence is not a matter of IQ. Intelligence is a way of acting and a way of thinking. When we look at people who are apparently extremely intelligent, we find one thing: we find that they are not much more intelligent than you or I, but they have developed their intelligence. So let's put it this way: intelligence is developed through effort. Intelligence is developed the same way that muscles are developed. A person who has an intelligence with regard to a business or a profession, a lawyer, or a doctor, or a business person, does not necessarily, is not necessarily a person who was born with that genius. It's a person who has developed it as a result of years and years of study and practice. So look upon intelligence like a muscle. IQ is malleable. IQ, or percentage points, or mental ability, is malleable over a broad range. Remember, we talked about the case of positive expectations, where one student's IQ jumped 25 points in the course of one school year. This is very, we've had many cases on record where IQ points, in other words, the total thinking ability of an individual, has jumped 10, 20, 30 points as a result of a particular way of learning or a particular way of studying. And we'll talk about some of these ideas. So IQ is malleable over a broad range. What I'm saying is that you are far smarter than you know. You are far more intelligent than you've ever given yourself credit for.

We also know that IQ is a matter of self-concept. There are many people who have been found to be extremely intelligent, but because they've been brought up in negative environments, have been convinced at an early age that they weren't particularly bright. One gentleman who was encouraged to leave school in the 10th grade because they felt he was a complete academic failure, was turned out later to have an IQ of 175. When he tried to enlist in the Army after he got out of the Army, he started six businesses and became a multi-millionaire by the age of 28 because they proved to him that he was brilliant. The reason he didn't pay attention in school was not because he didn't have the intelligence, but because he learned everything the first time it was mentioned, and he was totally bored. You find that many people are far smarter than they realize, but as a result of previous experiences, their self-concept has them functioning at levels far below their intelligence. And that is true for you in almost every single case.

Now, another important point is, learning ability is malleable. Learning ability is malleable. What does that mean? More malleable means it can be shaped, it can be bent. It's like a metal that can be bent and pounded. Learning ability is malleable in that you can learn to learn. Wonderful thing is, human beings are learning creatures. You can learn to learn whatever you want. And the more you learn, the more we have found the greater capacity you have to learn. Is that learning ability is like a muscle. The more you stretch it, the more you use it, the greater its capacity becomes. That the more you learn math, the more capable you are of learning history. The more you study philosophy, the more capable you are of learning psychology. That your capacity to learn expands as you learn any subject.

Now, there's another important point too with regard to learning. Is that if you want to earn more, you have to learn more. If you want to earn more, you have to learn more. This is one of the most important, simple, trite little expressions that you'll ever hear. Is that we live in a knowledge-based world, and your external world of earnings will be a direct reflection of the amount of useful knowledge that you take in. So if you're like me, you're probably impatient, and you probably would like to know how to learn more faster so that you can earn more faster. And that's what we're going to talk about.

Our third point, by the way, is, is a direct relationship between longevity and learning. Is that we find that the more active your mind is, the longer you live. That whenever you see cases of people beginning to develop senility in their early 60s, you see an example of a person who stopped reading a long time ago and started watching a lot of television. Senior citizens in America watch an average of 7 hours of television per day. And what it does is, it makes their mind very, very passive. Their brain begins to atrophy. Their reflexes, their intelligence, their ability to respond and to be alert to their environment begins to deteriorate. The longer you learn, the longer you study, the more active you keep mentally, the more energy you have, the more vitality, the healthier you are. In fact, if you look at the lives of the great creative men and women like Goethe, began the composition of the second part of Faust when he was 85. Grandma Moses started painting at the age of 75 and was still painting at the age of 100. Albert Schweitzer, whom I worked with in Africa, was still working a full day at the age of 91, when most of the people, if not all the people he had grown up with, had been in their graves for decades. So there's a, there, if, if for no other reason than the fact that you want to live forever, is you must become an active, intelligent learner. You must develop the capacity to learn. You must learn how to learn.

Now, a few years ago, back in the '50s, in Bulgaria, a man named Georgi Lozanov began some experiments that have had a tremendous, Laz, Lozanov had, had a tremendous influence on our thinking in the Western world in the last couple of decades. A tremendous book has been written on his work called "Superlearning," talking about the results of his experiments. And Lozanov began studying the fact that information was exploding at such a rate that nobody could keep current on their field anymore. That no matter what field you were in, tens, hundreds, even thousands of articles were being written every year that nobody could absorb the information. So he became preoccupied with the need to create a way for people to learn more rapidly. He called his system accelerated learning. We call it rapid learning. Some people call it super learning. It means the same thing. It means, "How can you take in more information at a faster rate?" And what Lozanov found was this: he began as a pioneer of whole brain research. He found that there are really two hemispheres of the brain, and the two hemispheres of the brain perform different functions. And that people who learn the very best are capable of harmonizing and using both hemispheres of the brain. If the left hemisphere is responsible for certain functions, the right is responsible for certain functions. He also found that there's a massive tissue that divides the brains called the corpus callosum. And that children, children up to the age of 5 or 6, learn at about 25 times the adult rate. And his thoughts were, "Would it be possible to recreate the conditions that exist in early childhood that enable children to learn at a fantastic rate of speed in adult life?" And so he found that in looking at the functions of the brains, he found that the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere were responsible for very different ways of thinking. Let me give you some examples. For instance, the left hemisphere is verbal. It thinks in terms of words. The right, pictorial. The the right hemisphere is pictorial or artistic. It thinks in terms of pictures. The left hemisphere is, um, analytical, whereas the right hemisphere is holistic. It sees all the facts and information. It, it sees the big picture, if you like. The left hemisphere is pragmatic. It's very matter-of-factual. The right hemisphere is intuitive and is the seat of intuition and feelings. Uh, the left hemisphere is concrete. It likes to see things that it can count, touch, taste, and feel. The left, I'm sorry, the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is abstract. It's responsible for abstract concepts, scientific concepts, artistic or philosophic concepts. The left hemisphere is linear, in that it sees things in an orderly row, and it is also sequential and likes to take things one thing at a time. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is musical and artistic, if you like, and, uh, spontaneous, and is responsible for humor. The left hemisphere is responsible for language, the stringing together of words in logical.

In order to make sentences, it's also responsible for math. The right hemisphere is responsible for dance and for poetry. And these two hemispheres, in order to work properly, have to be harmonized. But they have very, very different functions.

And when, as Lozanov did his research, he found another thing is that when he studied the way that people learned, he found that people learned at different levels of brain wave activities. And as a result of different things. For instance, he found that the brain functions at four different levels. And the first level is what is called the beta level. The beta level is 14 waves per second or above. The beta level is normal waking. This is, this is where you and I are whenever our mind is very active, very intense. Our brain wave activity, or what is called cycles, our brain wave activity is very frantic. This is where most of us spend most of our time. It's also the time where we learn the least efficiently, he said.

He found that below beta was the alpha level. The alpha level was 8 to 13 waves or cycles per second. And this was a more, if you like, modulated wave level. And he found that we have a tendency to learn in this stage. This is the, uh, deep relaxation stage. This is the stage that we're in when we're sitting deeply relaxed, when we're daydreaming, if you like, or prior to going to sleep. We drop into this level.

Just below the alpha level is what is called the Theta level. The Theta level is five to seven waves per second. The Theta level has, again, bigger waves. And this Theta level is where we just are ready, starting to drop into dreaming. It's called the, uh, the hallucinatory or illusionary area where we're starting to have dreams just before we fall asleep. Have you ever had the experience of being woken up just as you're falling asleep and being jerked out suddenly from this Theta level? You weren't into Delta, you weren't sound asleep. And you notice how jarring it is.

But what Lozanov found was the alpha-Theta level, this level in here, is where we do our best learning. And that when we are learning at this, at this level, our ability to learn is dramatically increased. And just below Theta is Delta. And Delta is 1/2 to four waves per second. And these are long waves, if you like. Now, of course, below half a wave per second, you are no longer working. As a matter of fact, the cessation of brain wave activity on an electroencephalogram is one of the clinical definitions of death.

Now, what was Lozanov trying to do? Was he said, would it be possible to bring people down from beta, where they're awake, into this alpha-Theta level and somehow activate the right and the left brains so that they work simultaneously? And he came up with a method using music, using music and relaxation. And he began his experiments back in 1965-66 in Bulgaria.

One of the most interesting experiments he started off with language. And the language he chose was the language of French. Now, if you were to take a French course at your local university as an adult, you would be expected, in a three-hour period, and three hours seems to be the ideal study period for a language, you'd be expected in three hours to learn approximately 25 to 40 words. And you'd be expected to have a retention level up until the final exam, with due study and so on, of about 80%. Uh, and maybe less.

As a matter of fact, what Lozanov found, he said that most of the ways that we learn in our society are so inefficient as to be deplorable. In that the average person who gets a university degree in our society after four years and $25 to $50,000 of expenses, forgets 80 to 90% of everything they learned at the university before the summer after the university. The final year is over. As a matter of fact, as much as 80% is lost in the first 30 days. It has been postulated by a couple of university professors, if you want to clear out most of the universities in the country, very simple, very simple way to do it is call everybody back 48 hours after final exams to rewrite without notice. And you would find that the traditional way of learning, which is to cram the brain with as much information as possible, and to rush into the exam room and regurgitate the information onto the exam, and then go back and recover and do it over again. This way of learning is so inefficient that almost all the information we take in that way is lost completely. That's why if you took a language course in school and then you ever went to one of the countries where they spoke the language, you found that you probably couldn't remember more than three or four words. And even those you had wrong.

Well, so Lozanov decided to use music and relaxation. And this is what he did. Under very closely controlled conditions, he brought in, uh, 60 students. These 60 students were drawn from a variety of occupations. None of them had any knowledge of French at all. They were very closely monitored and screened by, uh, people who were not favorable toward this experiment. So it's very rigorously controlled.

In 1966, he brought in these 60 people. And his, he felt that he would have to greatly increase the average level of learning in order to get approval for the establishment of his Institute of Sesty. Uh, the Institute of Sesty and Suggestopedia was subsequently set up in Sofia, Bulgaria.

What he found, what he did is he took these people. And we had 60 people. And his goal was to get them to 150 words per session, 100 to 150 words per session, with higher levels of retention. What they did is they brought them in, they played gentle, relaxing music, they turned down the lights, and they read them the words on cards with the French on one side, the Bulgarian on the other. And as they read them the words, the students repeated the words in a deeply relaxed state. And they brought them up to a state of full awareness and reviewed the words and then tested them on it.

They found from the very beginning, three sessions: first of all, review in aware state; second of all, listening to the words in deep relaxation; third of all, review in an aware state again. They found that from the very first session, they were getting 98% retention. In that, in testing at the end of each session, they were remembering 98% of what they learned. They conducted this experiment for six weeks. And every single student in the class got up to a 98% retention rate with no experience in the language at all.

Now, before they disbanded this experiment in '66, he called for volunteers and got 15 more. 15 of 15 of these students volunteered. And they said, "What, would it be possible to learn 500 words in one day?" Well, they came in on a Saturday. They worked all day. Cuz nobody in recorded history had ever learned 500 words in a day. And at the end of the day, they tested out at 98% retention on 500 words.

Now, an interesting point is that many of these people were suffering nervous disorders. As a matter of fact, 40% of them were drawn from the registers of psychologists and psychiatrists. And after this six-week learning period, learning 150 words a day, almost every one of them was completely better. That there was no stress in this type of learning. That it was very, very relaxing. That they found that it cleared their minds and they felt wonderful afterwards. As opposed to our current way of learning, which is so stressful and so tension, so, so tense and so competitive. They found that after this 500 words at the end of the day, everybody felt great. There was no stress, no fatigue, nothing.

Well, he said, "Let's see if we, it's possible to increase this before we disband the experiment." And he called back 12 of the students, the best learners, two weeks later. They got together to see if they could learn a thousand words in one day. A thousand brand new words in one day. The sum, the result of it was that at the end of the day, they were able to learn the thousand words and test out at 98%. Interesting.

Later on, about six months later, they brought these students all back to see how much of the language they had retained. With no opportunity to read in it, no opportunity to speak it. They found that they tested out at 69% recall without any review. And with one review, the entire class was back up to 98%. In other words, this method of music with deep relaxation, dropping into alpha-theta, and activating both brains had led to a dramatic increase in learning ability.

Now, in 1974, Lozanov, under controlled experiment, got the rate up to 1800 words in one day with 98% retention. In 1979, in a special experiment with selected students, Lozanov got the rate up to 3,000 words in one one day. In other words, by activating the brain and with still 98% retention. Now, this is a phenomenal thing. It's almost an, it's almost an unheard-of thing to believe.

But what Lozanov has found is that the learning capacity of the brain is infinite. That the capacity of your brain to learn and to take in information. For example, if you speak English well, you probably speak and use about 1,200 to 2,000 words in the course of your day-to-day life. All you need is 2,000 words to be functionally fluent in any language. The average English-speaking person uses less than 1200 words. As a matter of fact, some people, and especially as you go down the educational ladder, use sometimes less than 500 words in their entire language. But 2,000 words will enable you to read any newspaper, any magazine, watch any program, radio, television, except something of a technical nature.

What Lozanov proved was it's possible for a person to learn one language per day permanently. Now, this learning technology is beginning to change the way that we learn. It's beginning to revolutionize all of our understandings about language.

Lozanov has also developed many other techniques and understandings. He found that gentle classical music is a critical part of this learning. That Baroque music with 60 beats, Baroque, that slows down the heart rate and slows down the brain wave activity rate so that the body and the mind get into sync with the music. And the incoming information is critical. That you can learn technical subjects. You can learn medicine, philosophy, psychology. I have taken extended courses now in accelerated or optimal learning to learn these methodologies. And what I have found is that you can learn even without any of the science or technology. You can learn things very, very rapidly if you'll do two or three things.

Here are the keys to speeding up the way that you learn. Number one is: Define what it is you want to learn and need to learn in order to be more successful and more effective. You cannot learn something that you're not interested in. You cannot learn something that does not hold your attention. You cannot learn something that is boring. So make sure that what you're studying is important to you. So number one is to define it. And when you begin to study, define your purpose. Why are you learning this subject? Think it through, read it through, study it, and only study things with an aim in mind. Remember, you have to have a goal.

Number two is: You must have an intense desire to learn. You must have a desire. In other words, you cannot learn because somebody else wants you to learn.

Number three is: Always study when you can with classical music. Gentle classical music with no words. Gentle classical music of any kind, especially music from the classical period of Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Dvorak, Beethoven, uh, and, um, uh, uh, Stravinsky, for instance. These, these music, these composers have a classical 60-beat Baroque backbeat within their music. And if, if you play with classical music or even environmental sounds like the sounds of waves or the oceans, white music as it's called, you have that in the background. It relaxes the brain. It opens the left and the right hemisphere. And it allows information to come in through the left brain and be internalized into the right brain where it is stored in the seat of memory. So what you want to do is through music, you want to relax the corpus callosum, relax the brain, so that information can flow in through the left brain and into the right.

A fourth key point is space repetition. Space repetition is important. Now, some people say, "Why is it, or how is it, that I can give a seminar like this all day without notes?" And I sometimes do day after day after day of seminars without notes. I must have a great memory. I don't have a great memory. I just study all the time. And I use space repetition. And I review it over and over again.

There's another thing too, by the way, is that the more you learn, the more you learn. When you start to study, remember that it takes practice to learn how to learn. It takes practice, practice, practice. Is that the more you practice learning how to learn, the more likely it is that you'll learn. The first few days when you're studying a new subject, you'll find it takes tremendous effort.

Now, here's another important point, and that is variety. Variety of stimulation is critical. The number of different ways that you stimulate your mind, different books, different magazines, plays, different, different exposures to different conversations, different subjects, and so on. If you bombard your mind continuously with stimuli that challenges your mind, you will find that you'll develop the capacity to learn and remember more.

And number seven is: Remember this. It's called attention span. Is the time when you learn the most is at the beginning of a period of study and at the end of a period of study. What does this tell you? It tells you that instead of studying or reading for a long period of time, like this, say two or two or three hours, what you do is break it up and take several breaks. So that you have a series of breaks. And you'll always remember what you learn at the beginning of the break, at the beginning of the period, at the end of the period, the beginning and end. So the more breaks that you can take, the more variety that you can put into your studying, the faster you'll learn.

The key to remember this is that everything that you are or ever will become is going to be as a result of the information you take into your mind. The practical, usable information that you can take and use to bring about something, some kind of improvement in the world around you. If you want to earn more, you have to learn more. If you want to be happier, you have to learn more. If you want to realize your full potential as a human being, you have to learn more. Which means read, study, and learn how to learn. And if you'll do that, you'll be amazed at how much of your mental potential you can release.

Session 14: Progressive Relaxation with Music. The work of Georgi Lozanov in establishing the sciences of suggestology and suggestopedia, which is the application of the power of suggestion to the process of learning, also have applications with regard to you and I in terms of reprogramming our subconscious mind. You see, if we can learn a subject like French or English, if we can learn history or mathematics, if we can learn something very, very fast as a result of deep relaxation with music in a systematic, organized process, can't we also learn new belief systems? Can't we also learn new ideas, concepts, characteristics, qualities? Can we develop confidence, courage, the ability to earn more money, the ability to be better parents, better bosses, and so on, using the same techniques? Yes, we can.

Now, over the years and over the centuries, over all the course of mankind, great mystics, great leaders, great religious teachers, great philosophers and thinkers have found that by relaxing deeply, even without music, just relaxing deeply and meditating or dwelling on particular thoughts or ideas, whether it's a quality or a mantra or something else, deep relaxation and meditation on a particular thought enables us to internalize the thought. Let me talk about this for a second. The key is deep relaxation. Remember, we talked about the law of relaxation that says the harder that you don't try, the better it works. In all mental working, effort defeats itself. Therefore, whenever you present new information to your mind in a state of deep relaxation, it is accepted far more rapidly.

If you want to become a positive, outgoing, enthusiastic, wealthy, influential, successful human being, you must change your mental programming so that your internal programming, your beliefs, your self-concept, your essential fundamental convictions are consistent with what you wish to experience in the outside. And deep relaxation is the key. That relaxation is the key to the vault of riches. That relaxation is what unlocks your untapped potential. And most of our modern times have been spent on finding ways to do things harder, to force things, to drive things. But we're finding more and more as we study the history of man and the Eastern religions and the research that's been done in this field, that deep relaxation is the key. Even Harvard University has done experiments on relaxation and found that even one process of deep relaxation changes brain wave activity over that of people who don't.

Now, there are several ways. One is meditation. Well, what is meditation? Meditation is simply closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, dropping into Alpha. It's as simple as that. As you take a deep breath and close your eyes, you drop into Alpha. And your brain wave activity from here just goes here. When you sit on a park bench and and daydream, you're in a form of meditation with your eyes closed. Meditation is very, very healthy, restful, very refreshing. And many people have gotten into what is called Transcendental Meditation, which is really a systematization of the process of meditation where you take a mantra and you sit down, close your eyes, relax, and you repeat the mantra.

Now, what is a mantra? A mantra is merely a meaningless word. Uh, Dr. Herbert Benson at the, uh, Harvard University found that if you just repeat the word "one" over and over again, that'll be good enough in terms of closing your eyes, repeating the word "one" each time you exhale, you'll drop into a state of meditation in a matter of a few seconds, even if you've never done it before.

Now, meditation is very healthy. What does it do? It relaxes the whole body. It relaxes the mind. It integrates the personality. It causes you to feel more calm and more assured. It lowers your flash point, in that it causes you to be more self-assured and less likely to get angry, to get, uh, it causes you to sleep better at night, causes you to digest better, it causes you to achieve your goals better, and so on. So meditation or deep relaxation is an essential part of you achieving your potential. Sometimes people say, "I don't have the time to do this." Whenever you don't have the time, that's the time when you have to do it the most. Anything that takes you into a state of deep relaxation brings you down to the point where your mind can function in the levels of Alpha and can integrate your personality. There's a whole science called the science of psychosynthesis that says that meditation on any subject actually synthesizes and integrates and brings together the mind.

Well, what Lozanov also found that if you combined relaxation with music, and this is the second part, you can accelerate the process. That when you play gentle music when you are in a state of deep relaxation, you actually go deeper into relaxation. Your mind relaxes even deeper. And as a result, you function better. And if you combine, if you combine relaxation plus music plus informational input, or the input of words or ideas, that you can learn at an accelerated rate. You can bring about rapid and permanent behavioral changes.

On the market today, there's a great number of subliminal tapes where they play words hidden beneath the sounds of music or ocean waves or something like that. Now, there's a tremendous amount of research that shows that subliminal tapes work. Many of the subliminal tapes that are sold are not based on that research. They're based on on other principles. And I suggest you look at it very carefully before you buy them, because some of them are are completely useless, overpriced and useless. Some of them are are excellent.

But music plus informational input causes the conscious mind, which is the mind that says, "Wait a second, I'm not taking in that information," causes the conscious mind, the guard at the door of the subconscious, it causes it to relax and fall asleep. And when the subconscious mind falls asleep, the words with the music combined flow straight into the subconscious mind, change and revise all previous programming, and bring about permanent behavioral change. We call this the process of taped affirmation, which I'm going to explain in a second. But let me give you just a brief explanation with regard to musak.

There are many systems now that have been developed, musak systems, which play sort of neutral music as background music in offices, warehouses, and stores. In a Montreal experiment, in a Dominion Stores experiment some years ago, they took and they took and they put under the musak system a series of messages that said, "Do not shoplift. Shoplifting is bad. If you shoplift, you'll be caught and you'll be prosecuted. If you shoplift, when you're prosecuted, you get a criminal record. So shoplifting is something that you shouldn't do." And they repeated these messages over and over again, but they were inaudible to the human ear. The only thing shoppers could hear was music.

Now, this was a store that was in an area where there was a lot of shoplifting. They found that they played this for a period of two months. For two months, they played this message under the musak system. And in two months, the level of shoplifting dropped 50% in that store. They left it on for two months, and it stayed at that level. And then they put back the regular music. Over the course of the next two months, the level of shoplifting went right back up to normal.

They now, using this same process, by the way, where they will put musak, their sales messages. For instance, the sales organization, they will put a whole series of messages behind the musak. They'll tell everybody that they're there because they'll say, "You love to sell. You're a great salesperson. You love this product. You eagerly make calls. You are a good closer. You're a good prospector. You manage your time well." A whole series of messages like that, which will be played behind the musak system. And they will find that sales will go up 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%.

In some warehouse operations, they have systems where they'll have a musak system that says, "Do not steal from your employer. Do not pilfer from the warehouse," and so on. They'll find that theft and pilferage will drop 20, 30, 40% in a matter of a very short period of time.

Now, this brings us to what we call taped affirmation, which is progressive relaxation with music. Taped affirmation is absolutely wonderful. Taped affirmation is a way of putting your goals onto a tape with music and playing them over and over to yourself in a relaxed state so that they bypass the conscious mind, drop into the subconscious, and begin to come true in your reality. I began using taped affirmation several years ago. I'm, I have now thousands of graduates who use taped affirmation. I'll just tell you this is that every single goal I have ever put on a musical tape and played to myself over and over again has materialized in my reality. Every single one of them has come true. And some of them in a surprisingly short period of time. This is one of the most astonishing discoveries. Like taped learning is one of the most astonishing discoveries in education. Taped affirmation is one of the most astonishing discoveries in the whole process of goal setting and goal achieving. You can change your personality, achieve goals, increase your income, lose weight, quit smoking. You can do remarkable things with your life. And you can do it rapidly and permanently using this method.

Now, here are some of the keys to taped affirmation that you should understand. Number one is: A form of progressive relaxation with music. Progressive relaxation is a method of going through the body with words and relaxing each muscle group. So when you play the tape, you'll hear a voice that will count you down and be more and more relaxed. And each part of your body relaxes deeper and deeper and deeper. And you get more and more and more deeply relaxed. You'll find that all the tension is let out of your whole body. As your body completely relaxes, you'll find your conscious mind relaxes. And you drop into Alpha.

A second is that this is a form of what is called heterogenic conditioning. Now, heterogenic conditioning is means hetero means other, and genic means mind. So in this, we use the word "you." It's a conditioning process so that when you listen to the tape, it always says, "You like yourself very much. You really like yourself." Or, "You accept complete responsibility for your life." It uses affirmations that are very simple and clear, positive, present tense. But they're in the "you" case. Why? Because whenever we listen to another voice, even if you make your own tape with your own voice, you always use "you." Whenever we take in information with from another voice, we are accustomed from infancy to our parents or someone else saying, "You."

Now, there are some people who say that you're supposed to to put on the tape the words, "I earn," or "I weigh," or "I like myself." But whenever we listen to somebody else talking about themselves, it makes no impression on our subconscious. So when you make a tape that you listen to, it's always "you" taking the message in. When you speak to yourself, it's always "I." "I am." "I can." "I do."

A third point is that this is healthy. This is relaxing. And this is refreshing. You will find that if you play this tape, which is about 20 minutes, and we're going to give you this tape in a little while, uh, if you play this tape when you come home in the evening, if you play it in the middle of the day, it's better than a nap. It's better than taking a sleep. It's better than a steam bath. Because it will relax you. It will refresh you. And you'll feel healthy. And even if it does nothing else, it makes you feel great.

Our third or fourth requirement is that you do it twice daily. I, optimum is to do it twice daily, morning and evening, and do it on an empty stomach. The very best time to play this tape is in the morning before you have breakfast. And the evening after you come home, but before you have dinner. If you can only do it once a day, do it in the evening. It's better than a drink. It's better than a Valium. It's better than a Librium. It will refresh you, pick you up, smooth your personality, make you feel just great about yourself. So do it twice daily.

Number five is that we use relaxing, gentle music. Now, you can use almost any music you like. The slower, the more relaxing, the more classical music that you use. You can use Baroque. You can use the sound of the ocean. You can use gentle classical music from any piece that you like. Uh, but relaxing, gentle music in the background is what causes the mind to relax and relax and relax. You can use flute music. You can use guitar. You can use violin. You can use anything that is relaxing to cause you to calm and settle down. But not music or anything that has words to it.

Now, another characteristic of this is that, uh, the position that you use. We call this assuming the position. Is to sit erect, relaxed, relaxed, eyes closed. We call this assuming the position. And basically, the position is: you sit in a chair, you sit completely erect, you put your hands on your lap, not touching, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just listen to the tape. The tape is complete. All you have to do is put it on, and it will count you down into a state of deep relaxation, very much like this, into a state of deep relaxation. While you're in that state of relaxation, it will play a series of 10 affirmations, five each. And at the end of the 10 affirmations, it will then count you back out to a state of full awareness. The entire process takes 21 minutes maximum. Very simple. It's completely harmless. You don't have to worry about it.

Now, it's very important with regard to this position that you be sitting erect. Some people say, "Well, can I do it before I go to sleep?" But what happens if you try to do it in bed or laying down is one of two things: either you'll fall asleep, and when you fall asleep, the message stops going into the subconscious mind, or number two is you'll become so relaxed and refreshed that you'll wake up and you'll be unable to sleep. The best time to do this is not before you go to bed, unless of course you're having difficulty sleeping. We've had many people who've been going through stressful periods in their life who have found that by playing this sometimes five, six, seven times a day, they've been able to completely calm down, get over their insomnia, and sleep deeply for the first time.

So number seven is: Do it with no interruptions. Go somewhere where you can play it with, where there's no interruptions. If you're near, near a telephone, disconnect the phone or go away from the phone. There's nothing worse than playing this tape and having a telephone go off in the middle, or having somebody walk in on you. Sometimes people say, "Well, can I play it in my car?" I say, "Yes, you can play it in your car, as long as you drive your car with your eyes closed." People say, "Well, can I do it when I'm jogging?" Yes, if you jog with your eyes closed. Because if your eyes are open, this is critical. If your eyes are open, your, your eyes are bombarded with so much stimulation that you do not drop into Alpha. So it's important for to remember that. Remember, no interruptions. Do it twice a day. Do it on an empty stomach. Don't do it after drinking anything. Don't do it after eating anything. And, uh, don't do it after smoking anything stronger than a cigarette.

Now, what will happen as a result of this? This process takes just two things: it takes discipline, which is what most people lack, which is why most people fail, and it takes repetition. It's very simple repetition. What will happen? Well, the first time that you use this, you will notice a deep relaxation. As a matter of fact, many people have said they've relaxed more deeply with this tape than with any other process they ever tried. And these are people who've tried meditation and tried a lot of other things.

Second of all, you will find that in a very short period of time, about two or three days, you will find yourself feeling far calmer. You feel far more relaxed. You feel sort of good about yourself. And you find that your flash point, your levels of tension have dropped. Within a week, the people around you will know the difference. They'll say, "You're doing something different." Within a month, people who only know you marginally will notice that there is a difference in your personality. A good friend of mine who's a psychologist pointed out to me that the way that he first noticed the effect of this tape was that he used to get very, very tense in traffic. He'd be driving along in traffic and somebody would cut him off, or he'd be, uh, stuck in traffic, he'd get very, very angry. What he would do is he found when he played the tape, is he didn't get tense anymore. He would just relax. And, uh, found that he might get angry, but he'd be only angry for a few seconds, and he'd be calm again. So it's very, very healthy. By the way, you cannot play this tape and be a stressful type of person.

Now, how many goals can you work on? Well, you make your own tape. And you can work on 10 to 15 goals on your tape. When you write out the goals, what you do is you repeat at the beginning of each goal, which is a positive present tense affirmation, you repeat, "Yes, I agree," or "Yes, that's true." What this does is it reinforces the affirmation and drives it deeper into the subconscious. For instance, you're listening to tape. You close your eyes. The tape says, "You like yourself unconditionally. You really like yourself." And you say, "Yes, that's true. Yes, I agree." So when you say that to your mind, you're acknowledging to your subconscious that this is a true statement. Remember, in affirmations, the most powerful effect on your subconscious is what you say to yourself and believe. If a person were to say to you, "You sure look good today," and you say, "Yes, I do," notice how much better you would feel about that than if you say, "Ah, no, I don't. I, I look a little bit ragged." So always agree and accept it. Repeat it.

The, uh, number 11 important point on this is to do it over and over again until it becomes a habit. Put your own affirmations. Take your own affirmations with regard to your goals. Take your, for instance, if you want to lose weight, put your ideal weight on there. If you want to increase your income, put your ideal income on there. If you want to change your temperament, put your temper. If you want to be a better time manager, put better time management. If you want to be more creative, then put creativity on there. Do you want to have more energy? Then put energy on there. Do you want to sleep at night? Then put sleep at night on there. Anything that you desire in life, you can, you can accomplish using this method and using the instructions that we've given you.

If you want to make your own tape, it's very simple. Pick a piece of relaxing music. Play it on your record player. Put a cassette on a separate cassette recorder. And with the music in the background, read the script onto the cassette program. And then read your own affirmations and repeat each of them five times. If you'll do that and then read the whole script, then you have your own tape. And as you achieve your goals, what you can do is make a new tape and make a duplicate tape. The tape that we supply you with this program is good enough to last you for a long time because it's been developed over years of experimenting with other people. And we find that the 10 goals on this tape are the 10 most important. If you use this method of taped affirmation, in a very short period of time, you'll notice changes in your life, changes in your results, changes in your health, changes in your temperament, changes in your personality. And I repeat what I said before: I have never set a goal on taped affirmation that I have not accomplished, exactly at the right time, exactly in the right way. And it will work for you as it has worked for me. Good luck.

[Music] Brian Tracy Presents. [Music]

Session 15: Five Keys to Goal Setting. We started this seminar asking the question, "Why is it that some people are more successful than others?" And a friend of mine who's been working in this industry for many years told me a story that I think you'll enjoy and which I found very relevant. He said that he invited, as the deacon of his church, he invited a Jewish gentleman to come to his church, Christian church, and speak to the congregation on comparative religion, how the Jewish religion compared with the Christian religion.

Well, the Jewish gentleman came after several weeks. And he stood up and he began his talk. And he said, "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I've examined your books, and I've examined our books. He said, I've examined your basic teachings, and I've examined our basic teachings. And I've come to this conclusion," he said, "The Bible and the Talmud and all of our books say that the two great rules of life are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself." He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, all else is commentary. All else is commentary."

He said, "We've been working in the field of success for 25 years. And we sat down around the table, not too long ago, and we said, 'What is success? What are the determinants of success?'" And the unanimous conclusion was simply this, ladies and gentlemen: "Success is goals, and all else is commentary." Success is goals, and all else is commentary. And I don't think there's anything that you'll ever learn that is truer than that.

During the course of this seminar, we've talked about many different laws: the law of attraction, law of correspondence, law of belief, expectation, and so on. But you find that the only way to utilize all of those laws, or the easiest way to utilize all of those laws, is just to simply set a goal. When you set a goal, what do you believe in? A goal. What do you expect to happen? A goal. What do you attract into your life? People and circumstances in harmony with your goal. Uh, what, uh, does the law of correspondence affect? Your outer world will harmonize with your inner world with your goal. What do you concentrate on? Your goal. What do you plan in your subconscious? Your goal. What do you use for the law of substitution? A goal. A goal makes it possible for you to bring to bear all the laws of the universe to help to make you successful without even thinking about any of the laws. That's why in every single study of successful men and women, you find intense goal orientation.

And yet, even knowing that, even knowing that success is dependent upon goals, crucially dependent upon goals, we find that less than 5% of the population have goals at all. I once wrote a paper or article for a newspaper, and the quote they pulled out of the newspaper was: "Those who do not have goals are condemned forever to work for those who do." If you don't have goals for your life, you are condemned forever to help other people achieve their goals.

In fact, in 1953, one of the famous studies, in 1953 at Yale University, they did a survey amongst the graduating class of seniors. And they asked them, amongst other questions, "Do you have goals and have you made plans for their accomplishment?" They found that only 3% of the graduating seniors of one of the most favored classes that ever graduated from an Ivy League college in America had goals.

Well, they went back in 1973, 20 years later, and they asked them, amongst other things, "How much money are you worth today versus how much you were worth in 1953?" And they found that the 3% who had set goals at the beginning of their careers were worth more in financial terms than the entire other 97% put together. Now, this is a phenomenal accomplishment, but it is not unusual. As a matter of fact, every statistic that I've looked at in studying goal setting, and I have been a fanatic on the subject of goal setting for years, shows that only 3%, one in 30, has clear, specific, written goals with action plans for their accomplishment.

Now, let me say this is that the ability to set goals and the ability to make action plans for their accomplishment is the master skill of success. It is the master skill. It is the most important single skill that you can ever learn. And through the course of what we're going to talk about now, if you can learn to set and accomplish one major goal, it can be the most important thing that you ever discover. More important than math, more important than science, more important than computer technology, more important than sales skills, is the ability to set goals. Because once you have set goals, you trigger into force what is called the cybernetic goal-seeking mechanism of the brain.

The cybernetic goal-seeking mechanism is this mechanism that once you've programmed the brain or impressed the brain into your subconscious, you tend to move automatically and unerringly toward the goal, and the goal tends to move toward you. It's almost as if you set into motion a whole series of cosmic forces that cause you to move unerringly, even though you do not know where the goal is. And we'll talk about that, uh, and why that works a little bit later. It is to say that within you is a mechanism that will lead you unerringly toward what you want to accomplish, as long as you know what it is.

The great H.L. Hunt, the oil billionaire, was asked his secrets of success on a television program some years ago. And he said, "There's only two things you need to know to be successful." He said, "Number one," he said, "decide exactly what you want." He said, "Number two, determine the price you're going to have to pay, and then resolve to pay that price." But the problem is that most people don't know what they want. In our civilization, in our society, you can have anything that you want in life. But 95% of the population has either a vague idea of what they want or no idea at all. And by the time this session is over, I'm sure that will be changed a little bit for you.

Setting goals is the master skill of success. I think that goal setting should be taught in kindergarten and first grade and second grade, right up to every single year of school. There should be some module and some process of teaching young people to set goals. It would guarantee greater success, faster and easier in life than any other single skill that a person can develop. No matter how old you are, no matter where you are today, the sooner you learn to develop the master skill of success by practice and repetition over and over again until you become completely focused as a goal-achieving human being, the sooner you learn it, the faster you will accomplish great things in your life.

Now, an interesting point. Each of us has what we call a failure mechanism in life. The failure mechanism goes off automatically. The vast majority of people fail to live up to their potential. They fail to become everything they're capable of becoming, over 80%. And the failure mechanism is what we call the comfort zone. It's the tendency to fall into a comfort zone, to do what is easy, not to, to avoid making the efforts necessary to succeed.

Now, this failure mechanism goes off automatically from the time we are infants. We talked earlier about the pleasure principle. We always move toward what is pleasurable, what is easy, what is fun, what is enjoyable. And we move away from what is uncomfortable, what is difficult, what requires discipline, what requires effort, and so on. However, the only way to override this failure mechanism is by activating your success mechanism. And your success mechanism is triggered by a goal. Whenever you write out a goal, you override the failure mechanism. Whenever you think about a goal, you override the failure mechanism.

You see, when you set a goal, it releases positive energy. It builds up drive and desire. It gives you persistence. It gives you clarity of thought. It gives you intensity of purpose. And it moves you forward toward your objective. The only way you can break out of the comfort zone is by setting goals that are progressively higher than anything that you've accomplished. And all leaders in every study that I've looked at in the last few years make a habit, a conscious habit, of not getting stuck in a comfort zone. They're always aware. Natural tendency is to slide, to take it easy. So they're always setting goals that are just a little bit higher than they've ever accomplished before. They're always striving, always reaching out beyond anything they've done before. And that's what keeps them growing. That keeps them alive. It keeps them alert. It keeps them bright. And it keeps them successful.

Now, we know, by the way, that achieving goals is automatic. You have this cybernetic mechanism that once you've programmed a goal into your mind, you go off toward it automatically. The problem is not in achieving, in achieving goals. As human beings, you are a goal-achieving organism. The only time you're happy is when you have a goal. The only time that you are fully alive is when you're working towards something that's really important to you. To you, you need that sense of meaning and purpose, that sense of direction, that sense of significance in your life. The question is not why is it that people don't achieve goals, because achieving goals is automatic. The question is why is it that people don't set goals.

Now, I've heard for years, before I began working in this subject, "You're supposed to set goals. You're supposed to set goals." And yet, I talk to people who read the books and taken the course. They said, "Do you have written goals?" They don't have any written goals.

So I began to look into the psychology of goal setting, and I found that there are four major reasons why people don't set goals, even though they know they should. They know they're important. They've been told over and over again. Four major reasons. Until you understand these four reasons and how they work on you unconsciously, we can't go on to the next step. So let's talk about them.

Why don't people set goals? Number one reason why people don't set goals is they don't realize the importance of goals. They don't realize the importance of goals. Now, what does this mean? Well, it means that you and I are the products of our upbringing. You and I are the products of, uh, our parental influences, our brothers or sisters, our friends or family, and so on. If you grew up in a home where your parents did not emphasize goals, did not talk about goals, did not encourage you to set goals at an early age, do you know what happens? Is that you can grow up and you can become an adult and you cannot even be aware that there's such a thing as goals out there.

In the studies on who gets ahead in America, they found an interesting thing. They found that the conversation around the family dinner table is a major determinant of the character of the children who grow and come out of that home. That if the conversation around the dinner table is achievement-oriented, success-oriented, goal-oriented, then young people will grow up believing and working toward goals as naturally as they eat with a knife and fork or wash their hands after dinner. So people don't realize the importance of goal setting. Please understand that goal setting is critical. It is the vital skill of success. And the kindest thing that a person could ever do for their children is to help them set worthwhile and realistic goals from an early age, and then give them all the encouragement possible to accomplish those goals.

Second reason why people don't set goals. See if this applies to you. Is they don't know how. Surprisingly enough, and when I started studying this subject, I found that everybody said, "Set goals. Very important to set goals. Got to set goals. Got to have goals. Got to put a timeline on goals." But the fact is that there were no really good goal-setting methodologies. And in this course, I'm going to teach you a goal-setting methodology that is absolute dynamite, considered one of the best goal-setting methodologies anybody's ever seen. But if you don't know how to set goals, I can tell you how to set goals, tell you to set goals all day, and it wouldn't do you any good.

You can go through 12 to 15 years of school in our society and never get one hour on goal setting. Imagine, 12 to 15 years. I've taken a postgraduate degree in Business from a major university and never once did they spend one hour talking about how to set and achieve goals. Never once did they discuss the master skill of success. Well, after this course, you're going to know how to set goals, so that won't be a problem.

Now, the third reason why people don't set goals, and this is in order of increasing importance, is fear of rejection. The fear of rejection. We talked about before, one of the most profound and powerful fears in our life is the fear of being criticized or ridiculed by other people. And every one of us as children, when we were young, we said, "I want to do this. I want to be a fireman. I want to go here. I want to go there." And we had somebody say, "Ah, that's stupid," or "You can't accomplish that," or "Don't be silly," or "You're too small," and so on. And what we learned at a very early age is that if we talked about a goal or something that we wanted that was bigger than we were, the most important people in our lives would ridicule us and would criticize us and make us feel bad and small. So unconsciously, we made a decision: "If you want to get along, you've got to go along." So we don't talk about our goals. That way, nobody criticizes us.

Now, as adults, we fall into the trap, an unconscious habit. We fall into the trap of not setting goals at all, and not talking about goals, and not thinking about goals. Can then nobody can criticize you. And I will tell you this, that 80, 90% of the people around you, if you decide you're going to do anything from finding a new parking spot to finding a new job or a new marriage, they will tell you that it can't be done. They'll tell you all the reasons, and they'll line them up, and they'll try to discourage you from doing anything different than you're doing. So here's the key: keep your goals confidential. Keep goals confidential. Don't discuss your goals with anybody except that the great majority of people are threatened by anybody who has a goal. They're worried that it makes them feel inferior and inadequate because they don't have goals of their own. So only discuss your goals with people who also have goals of their own. Discuss them with the people close to you whose help you need to accomplish them. But just don't discuss your goals with people at random, and don't give them a chance to shoot the goals down.

Now, the fourth reason why people don't set goals. This is the top of the list. This is the worst of all. It's our old friend, our old enemy, if you like: fear of failure. The fear of failure is the number one reason why people fail in adult life. The fear of failure. The fear that "I can't. I might lose my money. I might lose my time. I might lose my investment. I can't. I can't." It causes us to become tense and stressed. It causes our heart to pound and our stomach to turn. This fear of failure is the number one reason why people underachieve and fail life, because the fear of failure holds them back from ever trying.

The reason why people fear failure is they don't understand failure. They don't understand this critical point. If you can understand this point, it can turn your whole attitude around. It's simply this: is that it's impossible to succeed without failing. That failure is an indispensable part of success. Failure is essential to success. That if you avoid failing, you cannot succeed. That every single great success in human history has been a failure up until the moment of their success. That the key to success is to fail and fail in a forward direction. Is to continue to learn from everything that goes wrong, to every setback, every obstacle, every disappointment. Step back and say, "What can I learn from this situation?" Use the law of substitution and derive a valuable lesson from every single failure. Remember we talked about, uh, the becoming an inverse paranoid, confident expectations. Every time something goes wrong, look into it and say, "Now, I wonder why this is happening to help me." And you'll find that in every single setback or disadvantage, as Napoleon Hill said in his book, there's a valuable lesson, an opportunity, or a benefit that you can find if you look for it.

Successful people, leaders, are people who never use the word failure. They never think of the word failure. Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, was once asked by a young man. He said, "Mr. Watson, what can I do to be more successful?" And Watson said, without hesitating, he said, "Double your failure rate." Double your failure rate. Why? It's because, let me put this down, it's because if you look at the life stories of successful men and women, if you look at the life story of a person like Thomas Edison, one of the greatest failures in history. Thomas Edison, in the course of his lifetime, patented 1,052 devices at the U.S. Patent Office. Over a thousand of those devices were actually turned into commercial products that made enormous amounts of money. Watson, or Edison, was also the greatest failure in the history of invention. He failed 177,000 times to come up with a plant from which natural latex could be drawn. He failed thousands of times in other experiments. Failed over 11,000 times in his attempt to come up with a filament for the electric light bulb. After he had failed 5,000 times, and it was in the newspaper, it was called "Edison's Folly," this attempt to somehow light the world with an incandescent light bulb. Everybody knew the world. People were supposed to light their way through the world with a kerosene lantern. A reporter came to him, a young reporter, said, "Mr. Edison, why do you persist in spending all of this time and money after you failed 5,000 times?" He said, "Young man, you don't understand how the world works. He said, 'I haven't failed at all. He said, 'I've just successfully discovered 5,000 ways that will not work.' He said, 'That puts me just 5,000 ways closer to the way that will work.'" It was over 11,000 experiments before he found the tungsten or the carbon impregnated filament that lit the first electric light bulb and changed the world.

Colonel Sanders went to over a thousand restaurants, a 66-year-old man, went to over a thousand restaurants to try to sell his recipe initially, before he found one restaurant that would pay him a five-cent a chicken royalty. But he kept on. Would you keep on after 100, 200, 500, a thousand people had told you no? Sanders did, and became one of the richest and most well-known and well-most respected men in America. So you have to understand that success and failure go hand in hand. That wherever there's a possibility for success, there's also the possibility for failure. There is nothing wrong with failing, as long as you learn from every lesson. And remember, if you have a certain number of failures that you have to go through in order to learn the lessons and gain the experience in order to achieve your great success, the sooner you do it, the faster you get on with it. The more mistakes you make, the more times you fall on your face and pick yourself up and learn from it, the faster you're going to achieve what you're capable of achieving.

All right, this brings us to the second part of goal setting, and these are what I call the five keys. Now, these five keys are five key parts of the process of goal setting for you to keep in mind on a regular basis. The first key, part number one, is this: is that the scariest thing in human life today is change. We know, however, that change is inevitable. That change is a part of progress. That there's no progress without change. That your life cannot even improve without change. We know that change is scary, and there's a natural tendency, what we call homeostasis. There's a natural tendency for people to resist change, to push it back, to avoid it, to dig in their heels, to get into that comfort zone. And as I've said before, the comfort zone is the greatest single enemy of human potential.

Change is scary unless it is goal-directed. Unless it is goal-directed. And this, this is the key, is that we can overcome this persistent unconscious fear of change by one simple technique: is by taking control of it. Remember, we said that the law of control is the critical law of human harmony. That you only feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. Well, goals allow us to control the direction of change. We know that life never goes on in a straight line for any period of time. Life is either getting better and improving, or life is getting worse and deteriorating. That just happens to be the fact. However, when we set goals, we can control the direction of change. And controlling the direction of change is the key to our success. So that all, everything that happens in our life is goal-directed. It is toward something that we want. It is toward improvement. It is in the direction of our highest ideals, rather than random. See, nobody fears change if it's in the direction of something that they want. The only change that we fear is fear is changed that leaves us worse off than we were before.

And this brings us to our second key concept in goal setting. It's what we call the area of excellence. Now, the area of excellence concept is very simple. What it says is that everybody has talents that rotate around the average. These are average talents. We are better at cooking, better worse at math, better at communicating, worse at selling, better at speaking, worse at history, and so on. We all have talents. But it also says that every one of us has talents somewhere that are in the exceptional range. That every single human being has an area of excellence in which they are extremely capable, if they can find it. That every single person, we'll talk about this earlier, has genius in some area. And one of the great jobs of adult life is to find your area of excellence and to throw your whole heart and soul into that area of excellence and into becoming very good in the area where you have unique gifts and abilities. For instance, three keys to your area of excellence. Three critical keys.

Number one is attention. Attention. The things that hold your attention are a very, very good indicator of where your area of excellence might be. What do you like to read about? What do you like to talk about? What do you like to think about? What do you like to study? What do you like to learn more about? Also, uh, interest. What are you interested in? What has held you or been a fascinating subject for you throughout your life? Sometimes we are programmed internally to be interested and drawn towards things that are the very best for us. And finally, absorption. What could you become totally absorbed in? What absorbs your attention completely when you're working at it, when you're thinking about it, when you're reading about it? It absorbs your attention completely. Attention, interest, and absorption are the three keys to finding your area of excellence. And one of the most important responsibilities of adult life is to find your area of excellence, because until you do that and commit yourself to it, you will never achieve your full potential. And everybody has an area of excellence.

Now, the next key, number three, area of excellence is number two. Next, next key is what we call Acres of Diamonds. And the Acres of Diamonds theory comes from a story about an old farmer who went off seeking diamonds in Africa, sold his farm, wrapped up everything, went off seeking diamonds, ran out of money, and finally died poor, impoverished, and alone. And meanwhile, back on his farm, the new owner went out and discovered some of the biggest diamonds in history. The Acres of Diamonds philosophy says that under your own feet right now, in almost all cases, is everything that you're looking for right now, contained within your own talents, your own abilities, your own experience, your own wisdom, your own knowledge, your industry, your family, your contacts. That somewhere right now, under your own feet, is the opportunity that you're looking for. You don't have to go across the world. You don't have to move to another city. You don't have to change. All you have to do is mine your own Acres of Diamonds.

But the interesting thing is that diamonds don't look like diamonds in their rough form. Diamonds, or opportunities, always come disguised as hard work. The reason why people are always looking somewhere else is because they don't recognize that your great opportunities always come disguised as hard work, and they take a tremendous amount of work and effort to develop and to realize. So look under your own feet for your Acres of Diamonds. Look into your own unique talents for your area of excellence. Absolutely critical to goal setting.

Now, the fourth is the importance of balance in life. In order to be truly successful, you must have balanced goals. You can't have just goals that are all money. You can't have goals that are all in any one direction. You need a balance of goals. And here are the three key areas. Number one is, you need personal and family goals. Now, your personal and family goals are the goals that more than anything else determine the quality of your emotional life, determine how good you feel about yourself and life. And your personal and family goals, you need about three to five. These are the reasons why. These are the "why" of your life. This is why you're alive in the first place, which is to achieve a life that is significant and important and pleasurable to you. And you must never sacrifice these for anything else.

The second set of goals are business and career goals. Now, your business and career goals are the way that you earn the wherewithal. They're the way that you fulfill your potential as a productive member of society. They're they're the way you make a contribution. These are the "what" goals. But remember, these are not as important as the "why." The natural tendency for us, if we're not careful, is we get so caught up in the "what," the business and career goals, that we forget the personal and family, which are the reasons why we started in the first place. And you need three to five goals in the business and career area.

And number three is the self-self-improvement goals. Now, self-improvement goals means that you look upon yourself as a do-it-to-yourself project. It means that you look into yourself as a person who has infinite capacity, but it has to be developed. And you need three to five self-improvement goals too. Now, your self-improvement goals are what we call the means. Self-improvement are the means to get the "what," which is the "what" you need in order to accomplish your "why."

One more point, and that's this, and it's point number five, and that is the need for a major definite purpose. A major definite purpose is the number one goal in life. And every single study that we have looked at, every single study I looked at in peak performance, high achievement, and so on, comes back to this very simple equation, this very simple factor, is that your life only begins to become great when you fix upon a major definite purpose. One goal, one mission, one goal that is bigger than any other single goal in your life. Now, it doesn't mean you can't have several goals. You can have 10 to 15 goals going. You can have two to 300 if you want. But you have to have one. If somebody were to wake you up in the middle of the night and give you a shake and say, "What is your major definite purpose?" you should be able to open your eyes and be able to tell them just like that.

Your major definite purpose must be measurable. In other words, you can't have a major definite purpose to be happy. My, I had one woman come up to me and she said her major definite purpose was world peace. And I said, "Well, your major definite purpose, in order for it to have any meaning for you, in order for it to give purpose and direction to your life, has to be under your own control. It has to be measurable. It has to be specific. It has to be tangible. It has to be something that you can do or have or be. It has to be something that when you've accomplished it, you can look at it and say, 'Here it is. It's achieved.' It can't be something nebulous, because setting a big, broad, unbounded goal is a way that we trick ourselves into setting no goals at all."

And with regard to your major definite purpose and your other goals, two points: you can have tangible and intangible goals. In other words, you can have qualitative goals that have to do with the quality of your life, and you can have quantitative goals or tangible goals that have to do with your income, weight loss, bigger car, bigger house, and so on. And you need a balance of those. And finally, you need short-term and long-term goals. Now, your short-term goals, ideally, are about 90 days for maximum motivation. Your long-term goals should be about two to three years for maximum motivation. And your major definite purpose or your major goals should be two to three-year goals, maybe shorter, maybe longer, broken down into 90-day periods.

That having been said, I'm going to give you a brief goal-setting exercise. I'm going to ask you seven quick questions. I'm going to give you between 30 and 60 seconds to answer these questions. And what I want you to do is write as quickly as you possibly can, the very first things that come to your mind. Now, the first question is this: Are you ready? Get out a pencil and paper, pencil, clean sheet of paper. Goal setting exercise. Here it is.

Question number one is: What are your five basic values in life? What five things do you value most in life? Number one. Question. You have 60 seconds to answer this question, counting right now. What things do you value most in life? Your home, your car, your family, your income, your job, your career, your spiritual development, your health, your wealth, your stereo set, your new hubcaps, your intelligence, your intellectual growth. What five things do you value most in life? 30 seconds. Write the first five things that come to mind. And once you've written the answer to this question, your five basic values, organize them in order of priority. What are the, what is the first one? What would be number one if you had to throw away the other four? What would be number two if you had to throw away the other three? What would be number three, and so on. Organize them in order of priority, number one through number five. Right. 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Question number two: Write your three most important goals in life right now. You have 30 seconds. What are your three most important goals in life right now? Counting. 25 seconds left. Write the first three goals that pop into your mind. If you can't think of anything else, write "money, money, money." But write the first three goals that pop into mind quickly. Okay, 10 seconds. This is an easy question. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Question number three: You have one minute. What would you do? How would you spend your time if you found today that you only had six months to live? How would you spend the last six months of your life if you only had six months to live? Write everything that you do in the last six months. Time is counting now. Write it as though everything you put on this list you can do in that last six months. But if you don't write it down, you can't do it. How would you spend your time? Who would you spend your time with? Where would you go? What would you do? What would you want to finish up? What would you want to start? Who would you want to see? What phone calls would you make? What bills would you run up on your on your charge cards? Okay, in other words, what would you do if you had six months to live? All right, 10 seconds. Write everything you can think of. Remember, if it's written down on this sheet in front of you, you can do it. If you forget to write it, you won't be able to do it. 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Question number four: What would you do? How would you change your life if you won a million dollars in the lottery tomorrow? If you became an instant millionaire, what would you do differently from what you're doing today? If you became an instant millionaire, what would you do differently? You've got one minute to write. Everything that you write, you'll be able to do with that million dollars. If you don't write it down, you won't be able to spend it. The million dollars won't be given to you. Interestingly enough, when most people are asked this question, the average amount that they can spend is about $200,000. They can't get their mind around a million. But what would you do differently? Good question. Would you continue working at the job you're working at if you won a million dollars? If the answer is no, it means you're in the wrong job for you, and you are wasting your life. Would you stay in the relationship that you're in? Would you continue spending your time the way you spend it? What would you do if you won a million dollars? All right, 5 seconds left. Write down everything you can think of. I had a farmer in one of my courses once. He said he'd just keep on farming till it was all gone anyway. Number five. Have to be a farmer to appreciate that.

Number five is: What have you always wanted to do but been afraid to attempt? Got 30 seconds. What have you always wanted to do in life but been afraid to attempt? 30 seconds. Write the first thing that pops into mind. Run for public office, give a professional talk, start a new relationship, start your own business. Half the population would like to start their own business, did you know that? Over half the population. But they don't do it because they're afraid of failure or rejection or something else. 10 seconds left. What have you always wanted to do but been afraid to attempt? This is a very revealing question. Write whatever comes down on the page. All right.

Question number six: What sort of activities in life give you your greatest feeling of importance? What sort of activities give you the greatest feeling of pleasure, self-esteem, happiness, joy, and fulfillment? What do you really like to do? Look back over your life and ask yourself, when have you been the happiest? 30 seconds left. 30 seconds to go in this question. When have you been the happiest in life? When have you been the most fulfilled? When have you felt the very best about yourself? When have you had the greatest amount of peace and personal satisfaction? What sort of circumstances? What were you doing at the time? Who were you doing it with? Where were you going? What were your goals? What were the circumstances, and so on? Very, very important question. All right, five more seconds.

And then here is the key question in determining your major definite purpose: Is this: Imagine that I could give you a pill that was a magic pill, and if you took this magic pill, you could accomplish any one thing in the whole world. And the question is simply this: What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? All right, 45 seconds. What one great thing? What one goal would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? You absolutely guaranteed of success. What would it be? 5 seconds.

Now, in almost every case, by the way, the answers to these questions will spring to your lips. Some people, however, have been able to go through this whole exercise and not been able to answer a single question. And there's nothing wrong with that. The whole purpose of this exercise is to help you begin crystallizing your goals, and especially your major definite purpose. Let's look at these goals. Let's look at these questions. And I suggest that you take this exercise every single month until you can pop out the answers to every one of these questions, and they begin to improve and crystallize.

Five basic values in life. We said that self-esteem is the key to peak performance. While self-esteem only comes when your goals and your values fit like a hand in a glove. That the most successful men and women in our society are people who know what they believe, who know what their values are, and they organize their time so that it's consistent with their values. And you'll find that most stress, most unhappiness, most irritability, most health problems, most burnout, comes from living a life that is inconsistent with your basic values. So always be asking yourself, "What are my values? What do I believe in?" And make sure that your outer life is consistent with your inner life. It's the key to peak performance, the key to self-esteem, the key to happiness.

Number two: What are your three most important goals in life? Whenever you're given only 30 seconds to answer that question, the three goals that the subconscious just pops to your mind will almost invariably be the three most important concerns or goals that you have right now. This is a very revealing question, and you can give it to yourself and give it to other people.

What would you do if you had six months to live? If you only have six months to live, it refers you back to your basic values. It tells you what you really value in life. And an important question is this: is that how much of your current life is consistent with what you would do if you only had six months to live? Would you spend more time with your family if you would? Are you spending more time with your family now? Remember, you never know when you only have six months to live.

What would you do if you became an instant millionaire? Perfect question. That simply asks you, what would you do if you had all the time and money in the world? What would you do if you had no fear of failure and no fear of rejection? What would you do if you were free to choose? If you had complete freedom to choose? The fact is that anything that you could write down as an answer to question number four, you can accomplish. You don't need a million dollars. All you need to do is set it as a goal and make a plan and start working toward it. You may not get it as fast as if you were a millionaire, but you'll get it nonetheless. Asking the question simply frees your mind.

Question number five: What are you afraid to attempt? That may tell you what the self-limiting belief or block is that's holding you back from achieving your full potential.

Question number six: What gives you your greatest feeling of importance? This is simply asking you what gives you a feeling of self-esteem. And this will lead you unerringly to your area of excellence, because you will always and only become excellent doing what gives you a tremendous feeling of importance.

And question number seven: What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? Let me just say this as we close: that whatever you wrote as an answer to that question, whatever you wrote as an answer to the question, "What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?" you can be, have, or do. The only question is, how badly do you want it? And are you willing to pay the price? Because if you are, and you're willing to pay the price and work toward it, you can accomplish everything on that list, and sometimes far faster than you can possibly imagine. The question is, how badly do you want it?

Session 16. 12 steps to go. Achieving. One of the wisest men I ever met gave me a success secret some years ago that made a real impression on me. And it was simply this: He said, "One of the most important things he found in 50 years of research was the need to use proven success methods." He said, "Your life is too short to try to reinvent the wheel or to learn it all by yourself." So the smartest thing that you can do is what is called creative imitation, which is to go out and find what other people have done that works, and do what they do until you get it to the point where you really know it well, and then improve upon it.

What I want to tell you about in this session is a proven success method. It's a 12-step method for goal setting and goal achieving, which I've taught to over 100,000 people. I've had many men and women come back to me and say they've accomplished more in a month with this program than they have in a year without it. I've had people who've accomplished more than two or three years than they'd accomplished in 10 or 20 years using this very simple methodology. It is a proven success method. I urge you to try it. I urge you to use it. Incorporate it into your life. Use it as an automatic process. And whenever you start thinking about your direction, your meaning, your purpose, where you want to go, sit down and work it through these 12 steps until it becomes automatic. Remember, the ability to set and set goals and to make plans for their accomplishment is the master skill of success, which can only be learned through practice and repetition, over and over and over again.

Now, let's go to the board and let's talk about these 12 steps. Step number one: Starting point of all success. And by the way, let me step back just for one second. We talked a little bit earlier about the importance of the major definite purpose, your major definite purpose, the major goal, the number one goal in your life. And many people come to me and write to me and phone me, and they say, "How do I pick my major definite purpose?" And the only solution I can give you is go through the seven-step goal-setting exercise, which we did in the previous session. And also, if you can't come up with it, then make it your major definite purpose to find your major definite purpose. Dwell upon your major definite purpose. Ask yourself, "What could it be? What should it be? What will it be? What ought it to be?" And keep running this over and over in your mind. Seek information, look, discover. And you will find that with the inexorability of a law of nature, that your major definite purpose will come to you, and it'll be so clear, so obvious, so right, and it will happen in exactly the right time. Well, this, that when we talk about the superconscious mind a little bit later. But for now, if you don't have a major definite purpose, make finding your major definite purpose your major definite purpose. And when you do find it, run it through this exercise the same way you would run something through a computer to get an answer at the bottom.

Step number one in goal setting is desire. And the more intense the desire, the more burning the desire, the more you want something, the more likely it is that you'll accomplish it. As a matter of fact, it's been said over and over again that burning desire is the starting point of all great accomplishment. Why is that so important? Well, burning desire is the desire that drives you ahead over all the difficulties, disappointments, temporary failures, obstacles. Because if your goal is worthy of you, you're going to fall on your face over and over and over again. You're going to make mistakes. It's going to cost you money. It's going to cost you time. It's going to cost you anxiety. As a matter of fact, if you're not lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling with your heart pounding at least three nights a week, you're probably not trying hard enough. So burning desire is the starting point of all great goal attainment.

Now, burning desire is always personal. It's always personal, which means that when it comes to setting goals, whatever the goal is, it has to be your goal. You cannot want a goal for someone else, and someone else cannot want a goal for you. When we talk about desire, make it first. Somebody says, "I want to get a raise at my job. That's my goal." That's setting a desire for your boss. I had a young man say to me, "I want to marry this particular girl." That's setting a goal for the girl. Only you can set goals for yourself. But be very certain that the goals that you do set are yours. That the goals that you do set are ones that turn you on, not goals that somebody else wants for you, or goals that you think you should do, or you ought to do, or they'd be good for you to do. Think through yourself and be perfectly honest. Be perfectly honest. Ask yourself, "What is it that you want?"

Now, interestingly enough, it takes tremendous courage to be perfectly honest and perfectly selfish in goal setting. But if you are not perfectly honest at this stage and asking yourself what you really want, what is it deep in your heart you really want to be, have, or do, if you're not honest at this stage, the whole rest of the process falls apart. If you are honest at this stage, it's like a rocket launch. You can go anywhere from there. You can go anywhere.

Step number two is belief. Remember we said before that your external world will always be a representation of your internal world, and that your internal world is made up of your beliefs, your convictions, if you like. Another word is faith. It's what you believe, or what you have faith in, deep down inside. There's a great, uh, talk by Reverend Ike where he talks about fascination, and he says that what you are fascinated by becomes your reality, because you are drawn toward it, and it is drawn toward you. What you believe in, what you have faith in, what interests you, what draws you, what fascinates you, is critical. And another word is conviction. You have to believe that it is possible for you to accomplish the goal. You have to believe that it is possible for you to achieve it.

For that reason, it's very important that you make your goal believable. Many people, when they learn these new ideas about goal setting, they make a mistake. They think, "Wow, wow, I'm going to go out and I'm going to make a million dollars in a year." And the fact of the matter is, is that a million dollars, if you're making whatever you're making now, to jump to a million dollars in most cases is so big that your conscious mind rejects it as being illogical, not acceptable, impossible. And if your conscious mind rejects it, it never gets to the subconscious mind. Remember, your subconscious mind can only accept as a command something that you totally believe in the conscious mind. So make it a believable and make it achievable. It's better to set a smaller goal at first and accomplish that, and then a larger goal, and accomplish that, and a larger goal, and accomplish that. For instance, two examples: If you want to lose weight, don't say, "I'm going to lose 20 pounds or 30 pounds." Lose 5 pounds. You see, 5 pounds, you can believe you can get your mind around 5 pounds. If you want to increase your income, increase your income by 50%. Question mark. Plus, increase your income by 50%. If you're earning $10,000 a year, say, "My goal is to earn $15,000 a year. I earn $15,000 per year." You can get your mind around 50%. That's less than 4% a month compounded. You can get your mind around 5 pounds. And as you begin to move your income up or begin to move your weight down, then adjust the goal and make it five more pounds, make it 50% more, and so on. But keep your goals believable. According to the work at Harvard University, your goals should have a 50/50 probability of success. 50/50 probability. And each goal should be aimed at what is called your next step, your next logical step on the road to accomplishment. So if you want to run a marathon and you've never run before, the first thing is to run a mile, and run a mile without pain, and then run two miles, and then run three miles. But to go from zero to running a marathon has been found to be a self-defeating exercise. It'll actually hurt you more than help you. Remember, in order for a goal to unlock the motivational capacity that lies within you, you must be able to believe that it's possible of accomplishment. So better to set it lower to start with and then raise the standard than set it so high that it defeats you right at the beginning.

Number three is: Write it down. Now, this is very important because most people don't write their goals down. Only 3% of the population have written goals. Only 5% have goals at all. Only 3% have written goals. And I venture to say that probably you don't have any written goals either. And if you do have written goals, you probably don't have them written out in any detail. Write the goal down. Remember the reasons why people don't set goals. One of the reasons why they don't write the goals down is that when you write a goal down, you make it concrete. Suddenly your subconscious wakes up and says, "Ha, you mean business." When you don't write it down, you are avoiding making a commitment unconsciously. The reason why people don't write their goals down is because of the fear of failure. The reason they don't write their goals down is they don't want to make a commitment to it. You see, if you never write it down, then nobody can ever tell you you didn't accomplish it. If you don't write it down, well, then you're not really locked into anything. You keep your options open, if you like, and you go on to fail and underachieve in life. All the successful people have written goals. And if you want to be successful, you really have no choice. So write the goals down. Make it concrete. Make a commitment. A 100% commitment to accomplishing your goal will do more to drive you towards your goal than you can possibly imagine.

Now, when you write it down, make it clear. Don't make it fuzzy. So don't say, "I want to be happy," or "I want to be rich." Make it clear. Make it specific. If you want to earn a certain amount of money, make it a specific amount of money. Make it after-tax dollars. If you want to start a business, make it a profitable business. If you want to get into a relationship, make it a happy relationship. But make it clear, specific, and use vivid words or vivid language, because the more vivid the language is, the more rapidly the subconscious accepts it. Emotional words like warm, exciting, powerful, loving, happy, dynamic. These are the kind of words that drive the goal into the subconscious mind. It's absolutely essential that it be a written goal. This is, by the way, where the winners part from the losers. Because the losers always have a reason not to write out their goals.

Number four: Ask yourself this critical question: Why do you want it? Why do you want it? This is one of the most important of all questions, because it will, as it will answer three things. First of all, it will make sure that it's your goal and not somebody else's. Second of all, it will intensify your desire, because the more reasons that you have, these are what is called your reasons why. Your reasons why, in most cases, are more important than the goal itself. The goals can change, the reasons why stay the same. Do you want it because it will make you happier, healthier, more popular? Do you want it because it will fulfill your deepest needs? It will give you a sense of meaning and purpose in life? Why do you want it? You see, if the more reasons you have to want something, and if you make a list of them, list the reasons, the more reasons you have, the more desire you'll have. Because reasons are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. Reasons are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. The more reasons you have for accomplishing something, the more likely it is that you're going to accomplish it. For instance, if you say, "Well, I like to earn $50,000 a year," or $30,000, or $100,000, doesn't matter. Person says, "Why?" And if you just say, "Well, just so that I can earn that kind of money," it has almost no motivating power. But if you say, "So I could get a car, so I could take care of my family, so I could take my wife or my husband on a trip, so I could buy things for my children, so I could change my wardrobe, get a different house, buy a different car." The more things that you list under there, the more likely it is that you're going to accomplish it. Because when you list your reasons, you intensify your belief, your faith, and your conviction that it's possible.

Number five, step in goal setting, is to analyze your position. Analyze your starting point. Now, this is important because in analyzing your starting point, you know what your next step is. When we say analyzing our starting point, what do we mean? Well, let me give you a couple of examples. In analyzing your starting point, you have to ask yourself, "What are your strengths? What are your basic strengths? And what are your basic weaknesses? What is it that you need to learn? What is it that you need to improve?" You see, before you accomplish any big goals, major efforts are necessary. Before you bring about any major change in your life, you're going to have to bring about major changes in you. Before you accomplish anything extraordinary, you're going to have to do a lot of ordinary things. So you have to ask this question. If, if you want to lose weight, what's the first thing you do? Is you weigh yourself. If you want to

Increase your income. The first thing you do is you figure out how much did you make last year? How much are you making right now? And then, if you want to increase your income and you're in the business of sales, then you say, "How many calls am I making on a daily basis? How many closes am I making? What is my average sales volume? Uh, what is my average sale? How many of those do I have to have? How much do I have to increase it?" And so on.

If you want to build a bigger business, you analyze your starting point and you say, "Where am I in the marketplace? How am I fixed with regard to capital resources? How am I fixed with regard to manpower? How am I fixed with regard to market opportunities and credit?" And you sit down and you do a very, very clear analysis, exactly the way a military commander would do a strategic analysis of his or her position before launching a major battle campaign. One of the big mistakes that people make in goal setting is they launch without taking the time to think through what their launching pad is. And when they find themselves driven back, if you like, or falling on their face, they don't have a found foundation underneath it.

So, those are the six starting points: Determine what it is that you desire. I'm sorry, the five starting points: Determine what it is that you desire. Believe that you can accomplish it. Write it down. Determine the reasons why. Analyze your starting point. And number six, set a deadline. Set a deadline. You see, a goal without a deadline is not really a goal at all. A goal without a deadline is an exercise in self-delusion. So, be very alert to that. Set a deadline on your total goal and then set many deadlines. Not many, but many. So, if you have a one-year goal, then set 12 one-month goals, or two six-month goals, four three-month goals, 12 one-month goals, and then four one-week goals. Set many deadlines.

And establish a reward schedule. This is one of the most important findings in psychology: is establish a reward schedule. Is that if you will give yourself a small reward, and we find that many, many of the most successful men and women that we've studied have little games with themselves. If, if it's nothing more than every three phone calls, they give them a Jelly Bean. Or every two appointments that they get, they give themselves a cup of coffee or a walk outside. It really doesn't matter what it is, but establish a reward schedule. So that every time you achieve a mini deadline for a mini goal on the path to your bigger goal, you give yourself a reward. And you'll find that people who have not been able to motivate themselves for years, if they have little rewards one after the other. You see, it's not enough to have a big reward at the end of the road. As human beings, we're almost like, uh, kids. We have to have a whole lot of little rewards on the way, a whole lot of little jelly beans on the way to the birthday cake or the birthday party. So, set yourself a reward schedule. It may be buying a new article of clothing. It may be taking a trip. It may be going out to dinner. It may be any, anything that you like. You can have little rewards for small achievements, medium-sized rewards for medium-sized achievements, big rewards for big achievements. And make sure that that why is there, because it intensifies the desire, it keeps up your excitement and enthusiasm, and it unconsciously reinforces you and drives you forward into the next action step.

Number seven. This is where we come down into the planning step. Step number seven is this: identify the obstacles you will have to overcome. Identify the obstacles. One of the things that we know is that obstacles equal success. Success means obstacles. That there is no success without obstacles. As a matter of fact, obstacles come to instruct, not to obstruct. Instruct versus obstruct. Remember this: every obstacle or difficulty that you meet on the way to your goal has come to instruct you in some way. So, identify the obstacles you're going to have to overcome on the way to your goal. One of the things that holds people back from great accomplishment is that they see that there's an enormous number of obstacles that they have to overcome. It's like the settlers coming across the Prairies a hundred years ago, saw those enormous, enormous Rocky Mountains and so, "How are they ever going to get through that massive mountain range of mountains?" Until some of the trappers and some of the scouts found that there were valleys that they could find that would lead them through the mountain. And all they needed was one valley through one set of mountains in order to be on the other side. So, look at, identify the obstacles and then list the obstacles. Ask yourself, "What are all the things that are holding you back from accomplishing the goal right now? Why aren't you at the goal right now?" You see, if there aren't any obstacles, it's not a goal at all. It's just an activity. So, what's standing between you and the obstacles? Also, be well, be grateful for obstacles, because it's obstacles that assure that there is success at the other end. Where there are no obstacles, where there are no difficulties, where there are no challenges to overcome, there's no possibility of success either.

Then, set priorities on your obstacles. In other words, look at them and say, "Of all the things that are standing between me and my goal, which one is number one? Which is the number one obstacle?" Imagine that this is you. Okay, hope you can see that that this is you, and here is your goal. Well, now, on the way to your goal, there's a road, and the road twists and turns. And on the way to the goal, there's a little few obstacles, and there's pitfalls, and there's deadfalls, and so on. But somewhere on the way to this goal, there's also what we call the rock. Now, your rock is your major obstacle. The rock is the major thing that is stopping you from achieving your goal and the quality and the quantity that you desire. One of the most important things that you can do is ask yourself, "What is your rock? What is the major boulder? What is the big obstruction that stops you from getting to from here to there?" Identifying the rock is one of the marks of the strategic thinker. And identifying the rock is one of the key things you do. Why? Because if you get rid of all of these other little obstacles on the way to the goal, the rock is still going to be there, and you're still not going to accomplish the goal. If you're not very careful, if you don't set priorities on your obstacles, you'll tend to work on a whole lot of irrelevant things and leave this rock undisturbed. However, the intelligent person focuses on the rock. The intelligent person says, "This is the major obstacle," and they go to work on that rock. And they work day and night. They work as long as is necessary. There's a beautiful expression that says, "Swarm all over it." When you have a major problem, a major obstacle, a major difficulty that's in your way, swarm all over it. Concentrate all of your effort and attention. Work at it day and night, week in and week out, to get rid of it. Because getting rid of that one obstacle will get you further towards your goal than getting rid of all of the other obstacles put together. So, in terms of your major definite purpose, what is your rock? What is your major obstacle? What's stopping you from going ahead? It could be internal. It could be lack of self-confidence. It could be self-doubt. It could be fear of loss. It could be a lot of things. That's quite normal. Or it could be external. It could be lack of money. It could be lack of information or knowledge. It could be lack of support from other people. It could be health. It could be a variety of things. But whatever it is, if you're determined to accomplish your goal, find out what it is and go to work to remove it.

Now, number eight is identify the knowledge you're going to require. Identify the knowledge that you're going to require. You see, we live in a knowledge-based society. There's no question about that. Is that no matter what it is that you want to accomplish, you're going to need more knowledge than you have now. The basic rule of life is that, to a greater or lesser extent, you have gone as far as you can go in your life at this moment with what you now know. That's why I've emphasized so strongly the need for in continuous self-development, reading, learning, taking in new information, because you need more knowledge. Now, there's two ways that you can get knowledge. You can go out and get original knowledge, which is to read, research, and find it yourself. Or you can get knowledge from other people. But in any case, identify the knowledge you require. What do you need to know? For instance, if you want to be successful in business, one of the things that you have to know is marketing and sales. If you want to be successful, you see, in your own business, the critical skill in entrepreneurial success is salesmanship. The critical skill in executive success is the ability to sell your ideas to others and to persuade others. So, maybe what you need, maybe the critical knowledge you need is persuasion skills. Or it could be the knowledge that you need has to do with the law, has to do with accounting, has to do with technology.

Two points: set priorities on your knowledge. You see, when you set priorities and you determine what's the number one piece of knowledge that you need, what's the one number one piece of knowledge that more than anything else can hold you back from accomplishing your goal? And you'll find that if you concentrate on the number one piece of knowledge, it's like the rock in terms of obstacles. The number one piece of knowledge, once acquired, will catapult you toward your goal. Whereas if you accomplish a whole lot of other knowledge, it won't help you at all.

Now, finally, and this is the, the last part with regard to knowledge, is ask your way to success. Ask your way to success. This is one of the pieces of advice by a great success counselor: is ask, ask, ask. What he said, and what every person who's ever studied this has said, is that this three-letter word, "ask," is the key to your success in life. Ask the people who have the knowledge. If you need, hire the lawyers, hire the consultants, hire the specialists, hire the accountants. Ask your way to success. Find other people who are in your field. Find people who have success. Find people who are experienced, and go to them and ask. Why is it that people don't ask? Very simple reason: most people are afraid of rejection. But the key to getting the things that you want in life is, first of all, you're going to have to learn it all yourself. Or second, you can ask other people. And surprisingly enough, if you ask other people, they'll tell you. If you ask successful people what they did right, they'll tell you. If you ask successful people for their advice, they'll tell you. As a matter of fact, I was studying the life of a self-made millionaire, and he said one of the keys to success in business is to become a negative thinker. And I thought that was astonishing, because I teach that you should be a positive thinker. And as I read on, what he said is, "By that, I mean is that once you come up with a great idea, take it to experts who can tear your idea apart, who can point out holes and weaknesses and flaws." Now, if you cannot plug the holes, weaknesses, and flaws, it probably means the idea isn't good enough. But if you are not willing to subject your idea to the scrutiny of critical people whose job it is to find fatal flaws in something, then the idea is probably not good enough. So, seeking out negative people, asking people their opinion, ask your way to success. Remember, in order to succeed, you need knowledge. You need more knowledge than you've got. You don't have very much time. You've got to get the knowledge the fastest, cheapest way possible. If necessary, buy the knowledge you require. Don't be cheap when it comes to knowledge.

Number nine, step in goal setting, is identify and ask yourself, "Who is your customer? Who is your your customer?" This means that you have to identify the people, the groups, and the organizations whose cooperation you require in order to be successful. Who are the people? Who are the groups? Who are the organizations? You see, in life, we have a very simple equation: is that everybody makes their living by satisfying or serving somebody. That you and I have a customer, and that we move ahead in life to the degree to which we satisfy our customers. So, we are all in the business of customer satisfaction. Now, if you work for a company, your customer may be your boss. If you're a salesperson, your customer may be your boss on the inside, and the person who buys your product or service on the outside. If you're a nurse, your customer is the head nurse. Whoever you are, there is somebody in your environment. If you have a business person, you have to expand. One of your customers is your banker. Another one of your customers is your staff, your employees. Another customer may be your family. But there are always people that you have to work with in order to accomplish your goals. Now, why should people work with you in order to help you accomplish your goals? There's only one way, and that is what we call the Law of Compensation. The Law of Compensation, which comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's wonderful essay called "Compensation," simply says that for every force in life, there's an equal and opposite force. We call it the law of sewing and reaping. But it says this: it says that you are always compensated in equal measure for what you do. In fact, it always says that you are compensated in more than equal measure. So, if you sow good, you reap more good than you sow. If you sow bad, you reap more bad than you sow. The Law of Compensation says that as long as you are doing good things for other people, other people will do good things for you. So, you ask this question, and this is everybody's favorite radio station, it's called WIIFM: "What's in it for me?" WIIFM: "What's in it for me?" If you want to be successful in life, the most successful people are what are called go-givers, as opposed to go-getters. Go-givers are people who are always asking, "What can I do to please my customers? What can I do to give value? What can I do to earn their cooperation and their help to accomplish my goals?" They're always trying to put themselves on the side of this Law of Compensation, knowing that if they put in, they'll get out. All the best companies in America, or Canada, anywhere in the world, are built on the Law of Compensation, built on the law of sowing good seed and reaping good harvests. All unsuccessful laws, or all unsuccessful individuals and companies, are built on the premise of taking as much as you can get, putting in back or as little as you can put in.

Now, a second law, which ties in with this, is what it's called The Law of Service. The Law of Service says that you will always be rewarded in life in exact proportion to the value of your service to other people, to your customer, whoever your customer or customers are. The Law of Service says that your returns will always equal your service. That if you want to increase the value of your returns, you have to increase the value of your service. But it also says this wonderful thing: is that the great satisfactions in life, the great joys that you will enjoy in life, will always come from serving other people. It'll always come from doing a good job, from contributing something of value to others. And the more work you do on yourself to increase the value of your contribution, the happier you will be, and the bigger your rewards will be. It also triggers the third law, which is The Law of Return. The Law of Return says that whatever you put in, in terms of service, you will get back in terms of return. And it brings us to one more law, again from Napoleon Hill, called The Law of Overcompensation. The Law of Overcompensation, to me, and to many people, is the key to success in life. And it simply says this: it says, "Always do more than you're paid for. Always put in more than you take out. Always go the extra mile. Always do more than you're paid for." You can never be paid more than you're getting now, until you do more than you're being paid now. And you put yourself on the side of the angels when you put in more and more than you're being paid for.

Number 10 is make a plan. Make a plan. And make the plan over and over. All successful men and women are successful planners. And how do you make a plan? Simple. A plan is a list of activities. In other words, you just identify from everything that we've talked about, what are the activities that you have to engage in to achieve your goal? And then you organize the list, just like a ladder. You organize the list in terms of priorities and in terms of time. What you have to do first, what you have to do second, what's more important, what's less important. And then you take action and get going on your plan. And continually revise the plan.

Number 11 is visualization. Visualization is worth all of the other 10. Visualization is create a clear mental picture of the goal that you desire. Create a clear mental picture. And then imagine or image the result. Get a clear mental picture and see your goal as already realized. See it as a reality. And play that picture over and over again on the screen of your mind. Play that picture on the screen of your mind until you can see it with perfect clarity. Design it, draw it out, do whatever is necessary in order to create that mental picture. And then think about that mental picture. Think about your goal as a reality over and over again. Repeat it until you impress it deeper and deeper and deeper into your subconscious.

Number 12 is back your plan with determination and persistence. Back your plan with determination and persistence. In the final analysis, the key to your success is your ability to hang in longer than anybody else. In all the studies that we've looked at of when, of peak performance, we find that the quality of persistence is to the character of a man or woman as carbon is to steel. That persistence is only necessary when the going gets rough. That persistence is only comes to the fore when everything falls apart around you and you feel like quitting. That persistence has no value at all when things are going well. Persistence only has value when you are willing to press on in the face of obstacles, difficulties, disappointments, falling on your face, losing your money, and so on. Uh, in the studies of self-made millionaires, we find that the average self-made millionaire in America has been broke or nearly broke 3.2 times. But irrespective of anything that they face, male or female, they kept on struggling. And that's one of the reasons why they became successful. We also know this, by the way, that in order for you to achieve great success, you have no choice but to be willing to face temporary setbacks, temporary defeats, temporary obstacles. Winston Churchill, in one of the great stories of human history, was asked, in speaking to a boy school, if he could summarize the lessons of his life in a few words. And he stood up and he said, "I could summarize the major lesson of my life in seven words." He said, and he stood there, leaning on his cane, and he said, "They are these words, young man," he said, "Never give up. Never, never give up." And I think that more than anything else, from every study I've read, that's critical. If you resolve in advance that once you have set off to achieve your goal, that you will never give up, that you will never quit, that nothing can stop you, that every single difficulty will just be a spur to drive you on, that you will become an inverse paranoid, and you look into every problem, and you look for the good in the problem, you look for the lesson that you can learn, you look for the way you can turn the situation to your advantage. If you keep on doing that, if you keep optimistic, if you keep this attitude of confident expectation going, you must, you will be successful. And finally, with regard to persistence, the iron quality that determines all your success, let me just say this: is that your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself. Your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself. And every time you persist in the face of adversity, your belief in yourself increases until it reaches the point where you become unstoppable on the road and on the pathway to your goals.

Session 17: Time Management Strategies. At the beginning of the seminar, we talked about mental laws and we talked about the Law of Control. We said that you feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your life, and you feel negative about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are not in control, or the degree to which you feel you are controlled by external events. Now, there's no place where this is more important as part of the discussion than in the subject of time management. Charles Hobbs, the time management specialist, has come up with a great definition of time management. He says, "Time management is the control of the sequence of events." That most of your stress in life comes from a feeling that you are out of control of the sequence of events. Now, all successful people practice good time management skills. All unsuccessful people do not. Period. That each one of us has 24 hours a day. You have 24 hours a day, and I have 24 hours a day. Yet, the top 20% of every graduating class, the top 20% of every industry, the top 20% of every social grouping, accomplish and achieve 80% of the rewards. Not because they have more talent, not because they have more skill, not because they have more ability or intelligence or education or opportunity or anything else. It's because they use their time better. We've talked throughout this course about keys to success. We said over and over again that one of the most important keys to success is self-discipline. Self-discipline. And we know that none of us have enough self-discipline. But self-discipline has a specific application. It means self-mastery. It means many things. It means keeping your mind on what you want and off of what you don't want. But it also means self-control. It means self-control in terms of time, in terms of controlling the sequence of events. If you cannot master your time, then the seeds of greatness are not in you. If you cannot master your time, then it's not likely that you'll ever accomplish what you are capable of accomplishing in life. In this session, I want to give you seven keys to time management. Now, I do entire one and two-day time management programs. I can speak for hours on time management without referring to a note. I have studied countless books. I've listened to all the tapes. I've been to the courses. I'm going to give you seven keys. If you will follow these seven keys until they become automatic, you can double your time efficiency in almost no time at all. So, without further ado, let's go on. But remember, time management is essential. We all have the same time. The only question is, what do we do with the time? And in that, and out of that, comes the stuff of life.

Starting point of time management, number one, which I've been repeating over and over again, is clear, specific goals. Clear, specific goals. Do you know how many people waste their time because they do not have clear, specific goals? They don't know what they're doing. At least 80% of all time wastage, or more, is because people aren't sure of what they're supposed to be doing. They're not sure of what they want to do. And if they work for a company, they're not sure of what the company wants them to do. As a matter of fact, the first thing I do when I go into a company is I say, "What you have to do is you have to clearly define the expectations of each person in each position." And you know, in most cases, they are not sure how to do that. Clear, specific goals. If you work for a company, if you work for a boss, the first thing that you should do is go to your boss and ask your boss exactly what he expects you to do. What are the most important things that you have been hired to accomplish? Clear, specific goals, defined in terms of outputs, in terms of results. What results do you want? In fact, when you set your goals, you should always ask yourself, "What outcomes do you desire?" rather than goals. Ask yourself, "What outcomes?" Now, what do I mean by outcomes? Well, here's a perfect example. A person says, "I want to be successful in my job." What does that mean? Well, what it means, the outcome that they desire is they want interesting, challenging work that pays well. And sometimes we find ourselves working at a job where it's not interesting or challenging, and we can't understand why we can't get any satisfaction out of it. Or a person says, "I want my relationship to work." However, what are they saying? What they're saying is the outcome I desire is I want to be happy in my relationship. And it doesn't matter who you're happy with. If the outcome is clear that you want to be happy in a relationship, that's very different from insisting upon being happy in this relationship. Another thing, people say, "I want to be rich." But you say, "What does rich mean? What would rich look like? What would your outcome be if you were rich? How much would it take to accomplish that outcome?" And then you start looking. You say, "Well, if I had a certain amount of money, I'd be able to do this. I'd be able to do this. I'd be able to do this." And sometimes you find that it's possible to achieve that outcome without accomplishing that kind of financial acquisition. Sometimes you find you cannot achieve the outcome you desire in life from the work that you're in. So, be alert to outcomes. Clear, specific goals, written down.

Step number two is clear, written plans. As we talked about before, clear, written plans. And organize your plans, if you like, in a list of activities, so that you know all the things that you have to do. These two alone, taking the time to plan, they say every minute spent in planning will save you five to fifteen minutes in execution and action. Action without planning is the cause of almost every failure. Action without planning is the cause of almost every failure. So, clear, written plans and clear list of activities to work on. As we talked about in previous sessions.

Step number three is make a list. All successful time managers work from lists. All unsuccessful people don't bother to write lists. Make a list for every day. Make a list for every week. Make a list for every month. Be a chronic list maker. When you have a series of things to do, the first thing you do is grab a piece of paper and write a list. Think on paper. All good time managers think on paper. They make a list of everything that has to be done. They don't try to carry it around in their minds. Consolidate all of your thinking. If you have to accomplish something, write down every single thing that you're going to have to do in order to accomplish it. And then begin working on your list. Call it a to-do list. By the way, the best time to make a daily list is the night before. Because if you make a list the night before, the subconscious goes to work on it while you're asleep. And in the morning, sometimes the subconscious has organized it, processed it, and gives it back to you and solves problems for you while you're asleep.

Step number four, once you've made a list, and this is the key to time management, is set priorities. You see, there's never enough time to do everything if you're living a busy life. But there's always enough time to do the important things if you can decide what they are. Setting priorities means using the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule says that 80% of the value of what you do comes from 20% of what you do. If you have a list of 10 things to do, that two of those things will be worth all the rest put together. Setting priorities means always looking at what is called the vital few versus the trivial many. The vital few versus the trivial many. The one or two things that you can do that make a real difference. Now, most people waste their time not because they're not working hard, or not because they're not busy, is because they're working on the trivial many. No matter how many of them they do, it doesn't make any difference. The truly successful people do few things. They do the right things. They do things one at a time, and they stay with them until they're complete. So, set priorities. A very simple time management system is what is called the ABCDE system. The ABCDE is very simple. A stands for top priority tasks, number one must be done. B is secondary priority tasks, things that should be done. C are not particularly important tasks, which could be done if you have enough time after you've done your A's and B's. And D is delegate, and E is eliminate. Then, what you do is you take and you list all of your A goals from your list. And then you write A1, which is the most important of all. And then you write A2, which is the second A goal, and so on. And then you begin to work. And you work on your A1. And you never work on an A2 or a B of any order until your A1 is complete. Very simple.

Now, here's the key question for time management. This can be worth a fortune to you. It's been worth a fortune to me. Ask yourself over and over again, repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until it rings in the back of your brain: "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" Every time before you start any new task, ask yourself this question. And then discipline yourself to do only what is the most valuable use of your time. Remember, Benjamin Franklin had a beautiful line. He said, "Do you value life? Then waste not time, for it is the stuff of which life is made." If you are not working on the most valuable use of your time, just exchange the word "time" for "life" and say, "What is the most valuable use of my life right now?" And remember, if you are working on a second-order priority, you are, relatively speaking, wasting your time and wasting your life.

Number five is concentration of power. Again, a beautiful word from Charles Hobbs. Concentration of power means that you do first things first, and second things not at all. Do first things first, and stay with them until they're complete. Surprisingly enough, in the studies of every effective man or woman whose lifestyle has been examined, we find they are always doing first things first. They do things one at a time, and they stay with them until they are 100% complete. They don't do a lot of things, but they do the most important things. They do them right, and they carry them through to completion. You know, one of the most valuable attributes of executive life is the ability to carry a task through to completion. So, once it's been assigned to you, the person who's assigned it to you never has to think about it again. Concentration and single handling. Single handling means once you've picked it up, don't put it down. Most of our time wastage comes from picking up things and putting them down, and starting them over, and putting them down, and starting them over, and putting them down. So, concentrate single-mindedly, 100%. Stay with it until it's finished. As in my estimation, the ability to concentrate is one of the most important abilities of success. Because no success is possible unless you can concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task.

Number six. Number six is overcome procrastination. It's not the thief of time, it's the thief of life. And the way that you overcome procrastination is by using affirmations. And the most powerful affirmation of all is, "Do it now." "Do it now." W. Clement Stone built a billion-dollar fortune by rehearsing, and then getting everybody in his company to say 50 times every morning, "Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now." Drive that. Impress that into your mind. When I first learned this simple technique, I used to find myself procrastinating, just like we all do. But the more I repeated this, "Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now," the more you repeat it, the more you find that eventually it works automatically. And it has a tendency to drive you to start a task when your natural tendency is to put it off or procrastinate. The most important quality that you can develop with regard to this is what is called a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency means that you get on with it and you do the job fast. We said earlier that time is your most precious resource. Time is the scarcest and most precious resource of accomplishment in our civilization. And that people who have a sense of urgency are always the most valued people in our society. Develop what is called fast tempo. Fast tempo is essential to success. Fast tempo is essential to success. What that means is that the harder and the faster you work, the more energy you have. The harder and the faster you work, the more drive you have. The more you get accomplished. The more you get accomplished. By the way, the more tasks you conclude, the more energy and self-esteem you have. Because every time you finish a task, you get a jolt of positive energy. Every time you procrastinate on a task, it tires you out and makes you depressed. So, whenever you find yourself procrastinating, say to me, say to yourself, "I have to develop a sense of urgency. I have to develop a sense of urgency. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now." And then work fast. Work fast. Work quick. You will find that if you will just pick up your tempo, you can get to a tempo that will enable you to go through more in two hours than the average person goes through in an entire day. In a study done by H. A. Business Journal amongst 104 chief executive officers of major American corporations, not long ago, they found an interesting thing. They asked them, "What qualities would put a person most rapidly onto the fast track in their corporations?" They said the two most qualities. 84% of them agreed the two most important qualities: number one, the ability to set priorities. Number two, is a sense of urgency to get on with it and get the job done.

And number seven, the seventh key to success, is balance. Keep your life in balance. Make sure that you take time every day to spend with the people who are close to you. Make sure that you take time every day to think through your values. What is it that you really care about? Why are you doing what you're doing? What is it that you believe in that is relevant? And who are the people that you love? Who are the people that you care about, and who care about you? Keep your life in balance. Don't let it get all work. Don't let it get all play. Don't let it get all anything. Keep your life in balance. Spend time with the people that you care about. Work hard when you work. Play hard when you play. Manage your time well. Control the sequence of events. And you can become anything that you want to become. Brian Tracy. [Music] Phoenix. And in the next module, I'm going to tell you why and how this works.

Session 19: Tapping Your Inner Genius. Another reason that I can say with complete confidence that you are a genius is that you have access to a mind that is far greater than anything that you could ever devise or develop on your own. Throughout all of human history, going back 4,000 years to the ancient Egyptian writings, there has been discussion of mankind having access to a greater mind. And this mind has been called things like the universal subconscious mind, or the, uh, collective unconscious, or the superconscious. Napoleon Hill calls it infinite intelligence. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "We lie in the lap of an immense intelligence, like a cork floating in the ocean," and that we have access to this intelligence at any time to bring us the answers we need and to solve the problems that face us. Carl Jung called it the superconscious mind, the mind that is above other minds. And we call it, for the purposes of this talk, we call it the superconscious. You have a superconscious mind which you use in a random and haphazard way all the time. As a matter of fact, your superconscious mind is the source of all inspiration. It's the source of motivation. It's the source of enthusiasm. It's the source of excitement. It's the source of hunches. It's the source of insights. It's the source of flashes of intuition. It's a source of creativity and innovation. It's the source of all brand new ideas or thoughts or information that come into the world. For instance, Mozart was able to hear in a single second, he was able to hear an entire concerto. An entire symphony would come into his mind complete in one instant, and all he would do was sit and transcribe it and write it out of his mind on the paper. They said that he used to write his music note perfect the first time. Beethoven came up with one of his great concerts, or his great symphonies, in a single instant, although it took him six weeks to write it down. The entire concert was perfect, complete in his mind in a second. Many of the great inventions, many of the great discoveries, many of the great breakthroughs in history, in literature, in art, in music, have been the result of a flash that has come in a moment of daydreaming, while asleep, while in the middle of a conversation. And you have access to this mind as well.

Let me tell you some of the characteristics of the superconscious mind. As I said, imagine you have your intelligence, which is your IQ, your knowledge, your experience, your wisdom, and so on. But in addition to that, you are a genius because you have access to this incredible mind that has every idea and every bit of intelligence ever known or available to the universe is available to you at virtually every instant of time. The discovery of the superconscious and your understanding of the superconscious can and will change your life. The superconscious mind, or superconscious capacity, makes your capacities unlimited. You are no longer restricted to what you know, what you can access, what you can do physically and mentally. You have an external source that you can draw on like an energy source to bring you answers to your questions and to move you towards your goals.

Now, one of the characteristics of the superconscious mind, for instance, that when it computes on a problem or a difficulty that you have, it has access to all data stored in your subconscious mind. It takes access to all data stored in the subconscious. That means everything that you've ever learned in your life, every bit of information you've ever read, every experience you've had, every conversation, every movie, television, radio, magazine, it's all stored in your subconscious mind permanently. As they say, we have permanent memory, but we have lousy recall. Every experience you've ever had in your life has been permanently stored. However, when the superconscious mind calculates or computes, it has access to everything you've ever learned. However, it can discriminate between valid and invalid data. In other words, when you, when the superconscious mind computes on a problem that you are working with, it will give you an answer that is based only on valid information. There are many things that you have in your mind which you can think to be true, but they're not true at all. You may have read them, you may have heard them, you may have surmised them or concluded that a certain thing was true, but the superconscious, in bringing you an answer, knows the difference between what is true and what is not true. Sometimes you'll come up with an idea or a solution that will seem to be inconsistent with what you thought was the truth, or what you thought was reality. But when you pursue it a little bit, you'll find that what you thought was true was not true, and your answer is correct.

Now, a second characteristic of the superconscious mind is it has access to data outside your experience. It has access to data outside outside your experience. That means that you can get answers outside your own experience. You don't have to know everything or have everything in your mind. That it has access to data. It can bring you ideas, information, and insights. For instance, with regard to this, we reckon in calculating that every single person has, on the way to and from work, about four ideas per year is the estimate done by one researcher. Four ideas per year, any one of which could make you a millionaire. You'll be driving along. How many times have you had the experience where you're driving along, or you're going about your day-to-day business, and you see the need for a product or a service, and you say, "Now, why doesn't somebody do that? Or why doesn't somebody make that or sell that?" And you say, "Well, must be a good reason," and you forget all about it. Then a year or two later, somebody comes out with that same product or service and makes a million dollars, and you say, "I thought of that. I thought of that a couple of years ago." The difference was that the person who came up with the idea may have come up with it the same time you did. Maybe you tapped into this energy source simultaneously, but that person had confidence or faith in their ideas, and you did not. There's a funny line from Groucho Marx, and Groucho Marx once said, "I would never join a club that would have a person like me for a member." Very often, we turn down our own ideas because there are ideas, we say, "That's my idea. It can't be any good." Listen to the ideas that come to you on a day-to-day basis, because very often, if one of your goals is to achieve financial independence, this mind will send you the ideas that you need to achieve financial independence.

Here's the third characteristic of the superconscious mind: is it functions on a non-conscious basis 24 hours a day. It functions 24 hours per day. When you are going about your normal business, that means that once you have programmed a goal or a problem or a difficulty or any question at all into the superconscious by thinking about it, dwelling upon it, getting it clearly defined in your mind, you can put it aside and go with the rest of your work. And what will happen is that it will compute and compute and work, and then it will bring you exactly the answer you need. We'll come to that in a second. In a second, the superconscious mind automatically and continuously solves every problem on the way to your goal. Automatically and continuously solves every problem. Put a line here. Solves every problem that's why you don't have to be able to see your goal. You only have to take the first step. And as you take each step and resolve the difficulty that is immediately facing you. In the Bible, there's a beautiful line that says this: "One thing I do, forsaking all others." If you just do one thing, the superconscious will resolve the next, and the next, and the next. You take them one step at a time, like a hurdler takes one hurdle at a time, like a journey is one step at a time. The superconscious mind will automatically and continuously solve every problem on the path to your goal, exactly as you meet it, and exactly in the way you require.

Now, the fifth quality of the superconscious mind is that it is capable of goal-oriented motivation. Sometimes people say, "Well, I'm not motivated." And invariably, when you talk to a person who is not motivated, you find that there's

Nothing that they want very badly. When you decide upon a goal or an objective, something you want to be, have, or do, the superconscious mind releases motivation. It is the superconscious mind that gives you the energy and the enthusiasm and the excitement that moves you toward it. But it pre-requires a goal that you intensely desire. That's why we talked so much about goals in this course: goal-oriented motivation. It releases ideas and energy for goal attainment.

The superconscious mind is a source of what is called free energy. In other words, you can actually tap into this energy. And when you're excited about a goal, it doesn't matter how physically fatigued you are. You seem to be able to tap into a source of energy outside yourself that can run you and propel you, sometimes day after day, week after week, on only a few hours sleep at night. Everybody's had the experience of being caught up and involved in something that's really important, really exciting, really driving, requiring tremendous commitment, and you just have energy flowing continuously. Nicola Tesla, the great electrical genius, was actually able to tap this free energy to run the electric lights and the electric uh appliances in his home in a way that we still don't understand.

But in order for, in order for goal-oriented motivation to be released by the superconscious, you must have clear, specific goals. This is the key. The goals must be clear. Clear, specific goals are what release this motivation. There's an old saying which is a little bit trite. It says, "Feeling listless? Make a list." What it means is, if you're feeling listless and you make a list of 10 things that you want to accomplish in the next year, you will find that just writing that list of 10 things will give you a jolt of energy, almost like a detonator going off.

Now, a sixth characteristic of the superconscious mind is that it responds to clear, authoritative commands. Responds to clear, authoritative commands. Now, what are clear, authoritative commands? Well, one example of clear, authoritative commands is positive affirmations. Whenever you use a positive affirmation, whenever you say, "I earn X number of dollars," "I weigh X number of pounds," "I like myself," "I am responsible," "I feel terrific." Whenever you use these commands and you emotionalize the commands, that's why they must be authoritative and they must be emotionalized. You drive this message from the conscious into the subconscious, and the subconscious accesses the superconscious. So, emotionalize your words. Use clear, authoritative commands. And every time you use a clear, authoritative command, it drives the idea deeper. It activates your superconscious abilities.

It also responds to decisiveness. It's very interesting. There's an expression which I like to share with you, and it's simply this: It is, "Get serious." I have met men and women all over the country over the last few years, and I noticed there's an interesting thing that successful people say when I ask them, "How did you come to become so successful? I mean, what was the turning point? Where, where did it change?" You know, the words they use over and over again are these: They say, "Well, I finally decided to get serious. I finally decided to get serious." You see, we talked earlier about desire and decision, that there's a lot of people have desires. A lot of people want things, and they want to be things, and they want things to change for them, they want things to be better. But they never make the decision to do something. They are going to make the decision, and they hope to make the decision, and they plan to make the decision, but they just haven't quite gotten around to it yet. And an important part of this is commitment. I can put this down here is that nothing great in life happens until you make a commitment. And a commitment means you decide to do one thing to the exclusion of almost everything else. You get serious. You make a total commitment. And when you take that, make that total commitment, when you become decisive, when you start using clear, positive words: "I will do it," "I do do it," "I can," "I shall," "I choose," "I want," "I earn," "I am." When you start using commands like this, you trigger the superconscious mind. And sometimes more can happen for you in a matter of a few weeks than it's happened for you in a few years. And many of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Number seven: The superconscious mind, in a way, is like a muscle. It grows in capability as it is used and believed in. It grows in capability as it is used and believed in. That means that you can actually get it to the point, as I have in my own life, as many of my graduates have, you can get it to the point where you're plugged into this superconscious mind continuously, and you just go with the flow of life. That all the things that you require, the answers that you need, the solutions, the people, the circumstances, will be drawn into your life in exactly the order, exactly the sequence that you require. And the people that you don't need, the circumstances that are old, the circumstances that have nothing to do with where you're going, they fall off as exactly as they are no longer needed. And the more you use it, the more you believe in it, the more you trust to it, the more rapidly and dependably and predictably it works.

Now, let me tell you this: In all my studying of the biographies and autobiographies of great men and women, I found one thing is that you only begin to become great as a human being to the degree to which you tap into and go with the flow of this superconscious energy. Other than that, life is always a struggle. But once you get into the flow of this energy, life seems to be on the downhill side. You seem to be going with the current.

An eighth characteristic is that the superconscious mind functions best, or operates best, with an attitude of confident expectations. Operates best with an attitude of confident expectations. You see, confident expectations is an attitude of positive emotion. When we talked about before, becoming an inverse paranoid, always looking for the good, always expecting the best, always believing, trusting, being absolutely convinced that something good is going to come out of everything that happens to you. This attitude of confident expectation seems to be what puts your the foot on the accelerator of the superconscious mind and bring things, brings things into your life and people and what you need into your life faster and faster and faster.

Another characteristic of the superconscious mind, uh, number nine, is that it operates best under two conditions. Operates best under two conditions. Uh, condition number one is when you are concentrating 100% of your time and attention on the problem. 100% concentration on the problem. And the other time when it works best is when you are concentrating 0%. When your mind is busy elsewhere. Those are the two things. But somehow, the superconscious mind does not function in between. So the key, or the solution, to activating the superconscious mind is to try consciously to solve the problem.

Now, here is a very simple way to do it. You start to solve the problem by: Number one, defining clearly what it is. Define your problem or define your goal. Write it down. Discuss it. Get it very clear in your mind. What is it that you're trying to achieve, avoid, or preserve? Number two is, do some research. Gather information. Look around. Read. Talk to people. Go to the library. Call people who know. Call experts or authorities on the subject. Get as much information as you possibly can. Almost all good decision-making comes from getting information. I've had experiences where I have had a clearly defined problem or situation, and as I'm thinking about it, I say, "Where can I get some information?" And bang, the name of a person you may not have spoken to for a year will pop into your mind. You pick up the telephone, you call them up, and you say, "Hi, I'm thinking of doing this or not doing this. What do you think about that?" And they have exactly the piece of information that you need to do it or not do it. Be very, very alert to that.

The third thing that you do is, you try consciously to solve the problem. Now that you've got the information, you've asked questions, you've done the reading and the research, you've got clear in your mind, you try as hard as you possibly can with your conscious mind to solve the problem. And if that doesn't work, then you simply turn it over to the superconscious mind, almost as though you are submitting it to a large computer. Turn it over to the superconscious mind and get your mind busy elsewhere. Get your mind busy doing something else and just get on with something else completely. For instance, we'll talk about this. You could work on another project, go for a walk, do physical exercise, go out for dinner. Get your mind busy elsewhere. And at exactly the right time, what will happen is that the answer will come to you. It'll just suddenly be there.

Which brings us to another characteristic of the superconscious, and it is, this is that the superconscious mind, and this is number 10, the superconscious mind brings you exactly the answer you require at exactly the right time for you. Brings you exactly the answer you require at exactly the right time. Now, one important point with regard to superconscious creativity is that when you get this answer at exactly the right time, you must act immediately. A superconscious answer is time-dated. That means that it may, if you get the answer on Thursday at noon, at 12:00, the answer may not be valid at 9:00 on Thursday. It may not be valid at 3:00 on Thursday. So when you get the answer, when it comes into your mind that this is what you should do, and you'll feel a very, very strong feeling of rightness about a superconscious solution, act immediately.

Sometimes you'd be working on a problem. Have you ever had this situation? You work on a problem, and and you get this feeling, "I should phone somebody." And you say, "I should phone so-and-so, but I'll do it later." And you do it later, the next day or the next week, and you call them up, and they say, "I wish you'd phone me last week because I had exactly the answer you needed, or I had the person, or I had the situation, or I had the job for you," and so on. So when you get this, I know a man who built a billion-dollar business. And he built a billion-dollar business by fully understanding what we're talking about here and doing just one thing. Very limited business acumen, but always followed his superconscious instincts. Whatever he felt was the right thing to do at any instant, he acted immediately. He immediately took action. And his action orientation was enough for him to open doors of opportunity, to get feedback and information, to self-correct, to draw to himself the people that he needed to, um, maximize the opportunities, and so on. And he went from selling cars to a billion-dollar business in less than 10 years, simply by following his superconscious intuition and following it continuously.

Now, another characteristic of the superconscious mind is that it will, um, bring you the experiences you need to be successful. It brings you the experiences you need to be successful. This is one of the most incredible things I've ever found in my life. Brings you the experiences you, you need to be successful. And it'll bring you a whole bunch of, uh, different experiences. Now, imagine that this is you here, all right? And let's say that you decide that you want to increase your income by 50% a year for the next 5 years. Let us say, over the course of your lifetime, you decide you want to become financially independent. Well, now, you normally, if you're working at a job or in a field, your line of sight, as they say, is that you will somehow find a way to do it in your existing field, within your existing experience and knowledge. However, once you have set this clear goal in your mind, once you had this idea of what your goal or your star is, as you start off, you'll often find that your life will go into an almost like a crazy obstacle course. It'll seem to go through a whole series of, of convolutions, over and over. And very often, you will find, a year, two years, 5 years, you will find your goal in a totally different place, doing something totally different, something you never expected.

In studying self-made millionaires in America, we find that almost half of them made their fortunes doing something totally different from what they started off doing. Is, as they moved down the road of life, they found there was an insurmountable obstacle or barrier in that direction. The market collapsed, the technology changed, the interest rates went up. It didn't matter what it was. And they found that they had to change course and change direction, and they had to go over a hurdle. Now, imagine that you're running a race, and you have to go over a hurdle. And each one of these hurdles, big hurdles and small hurdles, when you look back on it, and look back on anything that you've ever accomplished that's required a tremendous amount of, of time and effort, and as you look back, you will say, you will see that a whole series of different things happened to you that looked like setbacks at the time. But in retrospect, you say, "Wasn't it good that that happened? Because if that hadn't happened, then this wouldn't have happened, and this wouldn't have happened, that wouldn't have happened," and so on. And you'll find that your whole life is a series of remarkable coincidences that initially look like difficulties or setbacks, but in retrospect, they contained within them valuable lessons that you needed to learn in order to achieve the goals that you've achieved.

Perfect example in relationships. When we start going out with members of the opposite sex, and we're growing up, we have a lot of relationships that don't work out. Trial and error. We experiment. We learn what it's like to get along with other people and not to get along. And we think at the time that relationships are not working out, that this is a terrible situation. It's very emotionally stressful. But then, when we finally find a relationship that's right for us, we look back and we say, "Boy, wasn't it good that we had all those difficult problems? Because if we hadn't, we'd have never reached the point where I am now, which is being in the relationship that you wanted." I think the way they say it is, "You have to kiss a lot of horny toads before you meet the handsome prince," uh, or princess. So each time we go over one of these lessons, we learn a valuable. Each time we go over one of these hurdles, we learn a valuable lesson.

Now, let me tell you this, too, is that very often your greatest success comes just before, or just after, I'm sorry, your greatest failure. In Napoleon Hill's study of over 500 successful men and women, he found that almost every one of them had faced their greatest failure, the point where they felt they should have quit. There was no point in going on. Everybody else told them it was ridiculous. At that point, they persisted a little bit further, and wham, they made the greatest success. You notice Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of the century, was broke, or nearly broke, many times. Henry Ford went bankrupt almost three times, uh, in the course of building his fortune. Many of the most successful men and women have fallen on their faces over and over, over and over again, until they have finally arrived where they wanted to arrive.

Now, what does this mean? It means that you have to adopt the attitude that every single time you run into a roadblock, every single time you fall down, every single time you lose some money, you lose some emotion, you lose some time as a result of a temporary setback, you have to believe that this has been sent to you as a valuable experience that is moving you toward accomplishing your good. And here is a very, very simple technique that you can use, and I call it the movie technique. All right? Now, imagine that you go to the movie, and you get there, and you're very, it's very, very late, all right? And you get in, and they let you get in, even though it's toward the end of the picture, and the new picture is going to be starting in a little while. And you go in, and you watch the last 10 minutes. So we call this the last 10-minute technique. All right? You watch the last 10 minutes. You see how the movie ends. You see how everything comes together. You see how the hero advances. You see how everybody achieves. You see how it all falls together, and everybody ends up happy, and so on. Now, having seen the last 10 minutes, you then sit through the whole movie. However, now you sit through the whole movie, and you see the, uh, the danger, the drama, uh, the tragedy, the unhappiness, you see the misunderstandings, and so on. However, you see, as you watch the movie, you know how it ends. You know that there's a happy ending, because you've seen the last 10 minutes.

Now, this is the critical attitude. As you look at the difficulties that you face on a day-to-day basis, have this attitude that these are just what happens, but in the last 10 minutes, everything comes out right, and you achieve your goal. So take a look and take this philosophic attitude toward every difficulty as, "This is, this is part of the movie, but I know that in the last 10 minutes, it's all resolved." Just pretend that you already know the end of the picture, and that pretending will make the movie come out exactly as you desire, and probably better for, for you.

Number 12: The superconscious mind makes all your words and actions, makes your words, what you say, and your actions, and their effects. And this is the critical word, and their effects. In other words, the result of your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept and your dominant goals. Fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept and your dominant goals. What does that mean? That means that the subconscious mind, which is a mechanical part of your thinking, makes your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept. If you feel good about yourself, your words and actions will be consistent with that. If you feel negative or tired or fatigued, your words and actions will be consistent with that. However, the superconscious mind, once you have planted it with a very clear goal or set of instructions, will make your words and actions, and the effect of those words and actions, conspire together to bring you toward your goal.

You've all had experiences where, in the middle of a conversation, you will, something will just pop out of your mouth, and you'll just say it, and you never thought to say it, and it will turn out to be exactly the right thing to say in that situation. It may be in a, in a date with a member of the opposite sex, it may be in a business meeting, maybe on a sales call, but you'll find that you'll just naturally say exactly the thing or the words that are appropriate for the situation. And you'll find that if you just trust to this, and you have this feeling that you should say something, or let me tell you this also, every so often you'll be in a conversation where you're planning to say something, you're planning to bring out a particular point, you're planning to make a particular presentation, but something inside you will be saying, "No." It'll be blocking it, or the other person will keep saying things that stop you from making this. What you do then is, the superconscious mind is telling you, "Don't say this because it's not consistent with your ultimate aims and desires." So whenever you feel that you're, you're not sure whether or not you should say something or bring something up, the best rule is, don't do it at all. Just hold off, and you'll find out it was the best thing to do.

Now, there's two words, by the way, that which are very popular today. One is called serendipity. Serendipity is the process of making happy discoveries. It's found that there are certain people who have the capacity to always find the things they need, the people they need. They find the book they need, the, the particular spice they need, the particular piece of cloth or furniture, and so on. But they're always stumbling across the things that they need. And there, this is called serendipity, or serendipitous behavior. The interesting point is, when we've discovered people, when we, when we, we've studied people who have this serendipitous, uh, capacity, we find that the discoveries that they make are all consistent with goals that they have set. In other words, you only find things when you're looking for things. That people don't make happy discoveries unless they are looking for something to contribute toward their goal, their goals.

And there's another word called synchronicity. And synchronicity is the process or the coincidence of events where two or three things that are totally unrelated happen simultaneously. And we call this synchronicity, or or synchronizing of events. And the interesting and only factor in synchronicity is that all three of the events conspire together to help you achieve your goal. Now, there's some interesting work done on synchronicity. It says that there is a higher order, or a higher organization of events, where events are organized on the basis of meaning. And the meaning that they have, the significance that they have, is defined by you and what your goals are. So very often, you'll get a phone call, read a book, hear about an article, and visit a person, and all of those simultaneously will come together to bring you what you're after. Be very alert to these two happenings.

Now, number 13 is, the superconscious mind contains all monitor circuits. Contains all monitor circuits. That means that you can pre-program the superconscious mind, and it will work for you. Two ways that people pre-program the superconscious mind all the time is parking spaces. Many people find that by confidently expecting there to be a parking space wherever they're going, there always is. That you can pre-program your mind, sometimes 10 out of 10, 20 out of 20, to get a parking space, even on a busy street, even in a busy shopping center. And if, if you get there and they're all full, you'll find that somebody is holding your space, and they back out just as you arrive, just as you pull up. You'll find that their tail lights will go on, and they'll back up, not one car earlier, not one car later, but exactly where you are. I, thousands of people come back to me and say that after learning this, they get parking spaces wherever they want. The key is, you must believe that it works. If you don't believe that it works, it doesn't work for you.

The second is, uh, waking up. There are many people who wake up with no, uh, alarm clock. Many people don't need alarm clocks at all. I haven't used an alarm clock for years. Why? You can just program your mind to wake up, almost to the minute, any given time. All you have to do is do this three times. You'll develop the habit for life. And by the way, this is something the alarm clock industry keeps quite secret, mind you, because nobody needs an alarm clock. You can wake up at any time. You can wake up with 3 hours sleep, or with 13 hours sleep. You can wake up in pitch black darkness. You can sleep for 20 minutes, or 2 hours, just simply by programming your mind. You can also program your mind to remember to do something, remember not to do something, uh, and so on.

And I'll tell you this so that you can write it down. It's what we call the law of superconscious activity. The law of superconscious activity. And it is this: is that because of the power of the superconscious mind, any thought, plan, goal, or idea that you can hold in your mind, your conscious mind, on a continuing basis, must be brought into reality by your superconscious mind. And any thought, plan, goal, or idea that you hold continuously in your conscious mind, and that you intensely desire or intensely fear, must be brought into reality by your superconscious mind, whether positive or negative, good or bad for you. If you can hold it continuously, if you can emotionalize it, if you can visualize it in your conscious mind, the superconscious mind will begin to organize the entire universe of experience around you to draw into your life the people and circumstances necessary to make that idea come true.

What we've been saying throughout this entire program is that your thoughts are extremely powerful. That your thoughts objectify themselves. That your thoughts become your reality. And it is this understanding of this superconscious capability that makes it a fact that your thoughts do become your reality. So keep your mind on what you want. Keep it off of what you don't want. Think continuously. Think nonstop. Think all the time, only about what it is that you want. And keep your mind completely off of the things that you don't want. The reason why so many people are unsuccessful and unhappy today is because they think continuously about the things that they don't want. The reason that a very few people, the elite, are successful, happy, prosperous, growing, and so on, is because they keep their mind on what they desire. And the Bible, it says, "The rich get richer, and the poor get poor." Or it says, I'm sorry, in the Bible it says, "From him who has, even that which he has shall be taken away, but to him who has, even more shall be given." The rich get richer, and the poor get poor. What do the rich think about? What do the rich dwell upon? What do the rich concentrate on? What do the rich attract to themselves? What is the law of correspondence with regard to the rich? It is, the rich are always thinking of production, affluence, money, wealth, and so on. What do the poor think about all the time? Yes, the poor think about poverty, lack, lack, loss, limitation, your health, how little money they have. And whatever you think about on a continuing basis, you draw into your life and you make into your reality because of this superconscious capability. No matter how big your goals are, no matter how far away they are, if you can hold them in your mind on a continuing basis, you can make them your reality.

Well, how do you activate the superconscious mind? Here is the most powerful of all. We call this the Master Method of Activation. It is called Solitude. You activate the superconscious mind with Solitude. Now, how do you use Solitude? We call this, "Go into the silence." Go and sit down quietly by yourself for 30 to 60 minutes. 30 to 60 minutes. Most people in our society have never sat quietly for 30 to 60 minutes in their entire lives. Yet, I will tell you this: this method works 100% of the time. That any problem that you have, any difficulty, any challenge, any goal that you want to accomplish, if you'll go into the silence and sit quietly, and then listen to the still small voice within. Listen to the still small voice within. The still small voice within. This is the key. You will find that at a certain point, probably at about 25 to 30 minutes, your mind will go completely clear, and then a flow of ideas will start to flow into your mind. You'll feel energy welling up inside you. And at a precise moment, as you sit there in complete silence, no cigarettes, no coffee, no music, nothing, just complete silence, at a particular moment, your mind will go clear, and wham, exactly the answer you need will come at exactly the right time. And if you will get up and go and carry out that answer, it will turn out to be exactly perfect.

There's a lot of things that you can do to stimulate the superconscious mind aside from solitude: visualization, affirmation, daydreaming, relaxing, classical music, natural environments, meditation, tape affirmation. All activate the superconscious mind. Now, there's three sources of a superconscious solution. Three critical sources. Number one is intuition. It'll come from inside you. Get a very, very strong feeling that this is the answer. Number two is, uh, chance encounters. You will meet people, or you will meet books, information, material, ideas that will give you the critical answers that you require. And number three is unexpected events. Unexpected events. Things will happen that are totally unexpected, either within your life or in your external environment. And if you look into them very closely, you find that very often they contain exactly the answer, exactly the insight that you're looking for. So be very alert to intuition. Be very alert to chance encounters. Be very alert to unexpected events.

Now, how do you tell a superconscious solution? This is, this is how you tell it. Number one is that when the answer comes, it will be 100% complete. It will answer every aspect of the problem. It will be, "That's it. That's the answer." It'll be so clear, and it will be simple. This is a wonderful thing. It'll be very, very simple. Number two, it'll be a blinding flash of the obvious. You'll say to yourself, "Why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I think of that? That's so obvious. It's so logical." A blinding flash of the obvious. Now, one other, one other key is the emotional component. Is that when you get a superconscious solution, that means exactly the right answer for you, it is always accompanied by a burst of joy and energy. Your self-esteem goes up. You feel positive. You feel happy. You have what is called a feeling of elation. You feel great. You say, "Wow, this is perfect. This is the answer." You get so excited, sometimes you have to run and go to the bathroom, but you want to call and tell somebody. You want to do something. A superconscious solution always comes with the energy necessary to implement it. For instance, if you get a superconscious solution just as you're going to sleep, or in the middle of the night, you will wake up with your heart pounding, and your mind racing, and your, and your, uh, your blood streaming, and you won't be able to get back to sleep again.

So let me conclude by saying this again: The law of superconscious activity. The most important single law that determines your destiny and everything that you do and everything that you'll ever accomplish is that any thought, any plan, any goal, any idea that you can hold continuously in your mind must be brought into reality by the superconscious. This is the reason for the greatness of every man and woman who ever lived, every great leader, writer, author, poet, or business person. And you can tap into this at will, simply by defining with crystal clarity exactly what it is you want, and then thinking only about what you want, keeping your mind only on what you desire, and keep it off of everything else until it comes into your reality.

Session 20: Creative Problem Solving Techniques. Remember when we talked about that survey that was done where they checked the IQ of a thousand people at random, and they found the difference in IQ between the least intelligent and the most intelligent was only two and a half times? And we talked about regard to income, how people earning $250,000 a year are not 10 times smarter than people earning $25,000 a year. Well, this subject has fascinated me for years, and I've put together courses which I've taught to major Fortune 500 executives and administrators, and I've come up with some really interesting ideas with regard to intelligence and IQ. And I'd like to just sort of impress upon you one thought, which is this: is that intelligence is a way of acting. Intelligence is not a matter of IQ. It's not a matter of education. It's not a matter of background, contacts, grades, or anything else. There are many extremely intelligent people who can't make a living. There are many people with extended university degrees who are unemployed. But there are also people who didn't finish high school who are running major corporations because intelligence is a way of acting.

What I found was that if you study the way intelligent people, which by which I mean people who can get the results they want, act, and you act, or you use your mind the way they use their mind, you will actually start to function with the same level of intelligence that they function at, irrespective of your IQ or anything else. So let's start off with this basic sentence: Intelligence is a way of acting. In other words, if you act intelligently, then you are intelligent. If you do not act intelligently, then you are not intelligent, irrespective of how smart you are or how well educated you are.

With regard to this, one of the studies that I conducted a couple of years ago was looking at some research on geniuses. What are the characteristics of geniuses? People who perform, by the judgment of their peers, at exceptional levels of intelligence. People who were over 140 IQ and going up, right to 150, 160, 170, 180, and so on. And I found that there are four keys to genius, and all four of these keys are learnable behaviors. If you learn the four keys, you can function at a level of intelligence that is double your level today. So what are the four keys?

Number one key to genius is clarity. Clarity is absolutely essential. As a matter of fact, I find over and over again, the reason people fail in life is because they don't know what they want. They're unclear about where they're going. Their goals are vague, their values are vague, their, their, their alternatives and their options are kind of fuzzy. Whereas all successful people have tremendous clarity. Imagine that you have a camera, and every single time you bring your camera into focus so that the subject is perfectly clear, you're on the beam. That means every single time somebody asks you, or you think about your goals, your goals should be particularly clear. That's what we've talked about. Write them down clearly, describe them, make them time-bounded, make them measurable, make them specific, use vivid language to accomplish them, because the more clear your goals are, the sharper your mind is in accomplishing or achieving those goals.

Another thing that you have to be clear about is, what are your problems? Remember we said, identifying the obstacles that stand between you and your goals, and finding out what are the big obstacles, what are the small obstacles, and being crystal clear. In medicine, what do you do? In medicine, you just simply go through a process of diagnosis until you find specifically the problem that's causing the ailment. And the more clear you are about the problem, the easier the solution is. The people who are unhappy and unsuccessful today are not people who are not intelligent or not capable, but they're very fuzzy about their goals, and they're equally fuzzy about their problems.

And finally, more important than anything else, is your outcomes. This requires more thought than either of the other two. What is the outcome you desire? Where do you want to be at the end of this process? In other words, what will it look like? What will it feel like? Not the process of getting there, but what is the outcome that you're after? And the focus on outcomes is often a superior focus than that of focusing on goals, because believe it or not, sometimes your goals may be wrong. Sometimes the problems may not be the right problems. But if you know what the outcome is, if you know what you want it to look like, if you know that you want a 3500-square-foot home that's modern, has all the amenities, and has a study for yourself and a family room for the children, and double garage, and so on, if that's the outcome you desire, then the neighborhood that you live in, the terms upon which you get the house, rental, lease, purchase, and so on, those can take care of themselves, long as you're clear about the outcome.

So the second key to functioning as a genius is concentration. Concentration. All geniuses, all highly intelligent people, are people who have the ability to concentrate 100% on one thing at a time, and concentrate on the most important thing. All non-geniuses, all people of limited intelligence, are people who try to do a whole lot of different things. They're all focused on a whole lot of different things, and because they can't bring their intelligence to bear like a fist on a single problem, they never seem to get anything really resolved. So the ability to concentrate, and we talked about that in time management, making a list of all your goals, or all the problems stand in your way, picking the one or two that are the most important, picking number one, and then going to work on number one, and staying with it single-mindedly till it's finished. Absolute key to genius, because the more you concentrate like a laser beam, the more you concentrate, the more of your intelligence is directed like that beam, that particle beam. More of your intelligence is directed on blasting the problem out of the way, or moving you towards your goal.

Now, the third quality of genius, which you can develop, is the ability to keep an open mind. You see, we find that people who are very intelligent tend to be open-minded in that they are willing to look at a variety of different approaches. They're willing to stand back from the situation. They're willing to ask a lot of questions. They're willing to ask questions like, "Why?" and questions like, "Why not?" and questions like, "What are our assumptions?" We're having this problem. What are our assumptions? Could it be that our assumptions are wrong? What if our assumptions were wrong? You know that, that, that errant assumptions lie at the root, root of most failures. I, some as shouldn't. What are your assumptions? We find when I go in and do research or, or consulting for large companies, or even small companies, you find that wherever they're having a problem in the market, there's an assumption that's wrong. Assumption is wrong with regard to the product, with regard to the service, with regard to the competition, with regard to the customer, or so on. So, what are your assumptions? Keep an open mind. Be flexible. Be fluid. Willing to be willing to look at a variety of different approaches. And then the fourth characteristic of all geniuses, surprisingly enough, is that they have a systematic method. They, or they have systematic methodology, if you like, or systematic methods of problem solving. They just don't run off half. Finally, once a genius has gone through a series of systematic methods, very often, as a result of this process of concentration, they just drop the subject out of their mind, and at a certain point, the superconscious will give them the answer that they're looking for. But prior to that, they go through systematic methods, if you like, of organized thinking.

Now, most people don't do this. What they do is, they throw themselves at a problem the same way a dog throws itself at a car going past, and they go, "Ruff, ruff," and they chase after the dog. Or they throw themselves after a blanket like a puppy does, and they tear the blanket round and round, and they throw it away. Intelligent people approach every problem logically, systematically, in an organized fashion.

So let's talk about three methods of creative thinking that you can use to, like a particle beam smasher, that you can use to smash through about 90, 95% of any problem that you'll ever face, any obstacle, anything that stands in your way. And the first is what I call mind-storming. Now, mind-storming is a very simple technique. It was developed many, many years ago. It can be done by yourself, or it can be done with other people. More people have become wealthy and successful using this technique than any other technique I've ever seen. I've used this myself for years, and it is absolutely devastating in how rapidly you can come up with great solutions to even the most complex problems. Mind-storming is often called the 20-idea method. The only thing that's necessary to use this 20-idea method is a piece of paper, a pen, and discipline. Why is it that people don't use this method more often? A, they don't know it. B, they're not disciplined enough to use it. But if you use this on a systematic basis, you will be astonished at the results from the very first time.

Well, the 20-idea method simply says this: Take a sheet of paper. Best time to do this is first thing in the morning. And write your major goal or objective at the top of the page in the form of a question. Let us say that you want to increase your income from $30,000 to $45,000 over the next 12 months. So what you do is, you might write at the top of the page, "What can I do to earn $45,000 over the next 12 months?" That would be the question. Or, let us say it's a time management question: "What can I do to get two more hours of productive time every day?" Or, let's say it's a health question: "What can I do to lose X pounds a month until I get down to my ideal weight?" You put that at the top of the page in the form of a question. And then you force yourself to write 20 different answers. You just keep forcing yourself to write 20 different answers. Now, the first three to five answers that you'll come up with are pretty easy. The next three to five are more difficult. The last 10 will be like squeezing blood from a stone, because your mind, if you haven't been using it on a regular basis, will be very slow to respond to this demand. Just like a muscle. If you went into a weight room and began to pump iron, your muscles would respond very, very slowly. But after a week, a month, two, three months, you could go in, and you could work out all afternoon. So put it at the top of the page and generate 20 answers. And then, at the end of this, pick one answer and implement it immediately. Just simple as that.

If you'll do this, this technique is so astonishingly powerful, it's amazing. You will come up with ideas out of your mind that absolutely astonish you. Things will come out on the paper underneath your pen that you never believed were in your brain. I have given this exercise to many groups of executives, and I found they've come up to me and said, "You know, sometimes it's the 20th answer that's worth all the other 19 put together." People come up to me and said that 20th answer, by forcing yourself to write 20 answers, that 20th answer sometimes is the answer they've been looking for for six months. So using this exercise, then take one and apply it immediately. Why? It's because that locks into the subconscious and the superconscious that you are serious about this process.

Well, if you were to do this 5 days a week, every morning before you start off, and you were to generate 20 ideas every single morning before you start off, and you were to do this times 50 weeks a year, taking two weeks off for, uh, holidays, and taking weekends off where you don't have to think at all, you would end up with about 5,000 ideas per year. If you were to take one idea per year, or one idea per day, times 5 days per week, times, yes, times 50 weeks per year, it would equal 250 ideas per annum that you would be applying in your life. In a world where the average person doesn't use one, do you think if you use this method on a systematic basis, it would change your results? Do you think if you use this method of creative thinking on a regular basis, you would start to see some progress or some changes?

The interesting thing is that if you use this method every day. Now, I, I must tell you quite honestly, personally, I cannot use this method for more than three days in a row. And the reason is that by the third day, I am coming up with so many ideas that I do not have enough time in the day to implement all the ideas. And they are good ideas. They are sound ideas. They are practical ideas. In many cases, they are superconscious solutions that pour out onto the page. They are insights that are worth sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands. And I've had ideas that have been worth tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars. I do consulting for corporations occasionally. I'll come up with an idea when I'm doing a consulting assignment for corporations with this exercise that will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to them, because it will be a unique distillation of a series of factors that suddenly crystallize, like a flash bulb catches the photograph with all the details. It'll suddenly crystallize in a superconscious this way, and bang, there will be the idea. So I strongly urge you to.

Use this method starting today. Take any goal, any problem, any difficulty. Write it in the form of a question. And try it once, and you will be astonished how effectively it works. As a matter of fact, I've come, had many people come back, hundreds of people come back from my seminars and say, "That idea changed their whole career, changed their whole business, changed their whole family life, changed many, many aspects of their life."

All right. Now, the second method that I want to teach you is a method that you can use by yourself, but you can also use it with groups. You can also use it as a sort of a form of group problem-solving. And it's a systematic method, part of which was was developed at Harvard University, and part of which was developed by a series of other creative thinkers and in think tanks, and which I've combined into one method. This method is absolutely amazing. It's like firing a cannon at tissue paper. I have never seen a problem that cannot be dealt with with this simple method.

All right. It's got about nine steps. Step number one, starting point is confident expectations. Confident expectations seems to open up the mind, relax the right brain, activate the superconscious, and seems to tune you in to solving a problem or difficulty at a higher level. So, confident expectations are very simple. Assume a logical solution whenever you're faced with any kind of difficulty. Assume a logical, workable solution. Say to yourself, "Well, there's a logical, workable solution here. No problem." As it says, what do they, what do the Australians say? Uh, "No worry, mate." Just say the same thing, "No worry, mate. No problem. There's got to be a solution here somewhere." This attitude of confident expectation seems to open up the creative mind and make it work far, far better.

Step number two, in order to keep your mind positive and optimistic, use positive language. Use positive language. Now, what do we mean by that? Well, there are certain words in the English language, or any language, that can raise or lower blood temperature, that cause us to be anxious or fearful, or happy or elated. So, word usage is important. Using the proper words is important. For instance, the word "problem." The word "problem" is a negative word. It has negative connotations. It causes us to become stressful and anxious and tense. It causes our minds to actually shut down. Instead, use the word "situation." "Situation" wonderfully enough is a neutral word. It's neither positive or negative. A problem is something you struggle with. A situation is something you deal with. Right? Problem equals struggle, setback, cost, difficulty, disappointment. But a situation is just something you deal with. And when you suddenly start describing things as situations, "Well, we have an interesting situation here. The car has been stolen." Well, this is an interesting situation. "Our house has burned down." Well, this is an interesting situation. That triggers your mind into dealing with it rather than being overcome by it.

Now, a better word, of course, is "challenge." And many, many companies and many individuals now only use the word "challenge" because it's positive. A challenge is something that you rise to. A challenge is something positive that you, woo, that you rise to. So, instead of calling it a problem, call it a challenge. "Hey, we have an interesting challenge here," or "We're facing some interesting challenges this year," or "It looks like we're going to have challenges that we didn't expect this year," or "We've come up with a pretty big challenge." But a challenge, described as a challenge, is something that brings out the best in you. Your mind starts to race to think you can deal with it. And best of all is the word "opportunity." The word "opportunity" is a very positive word. The word "opportunity" is something that you take advantage of. Now, the interesting thing is that in all of our research, we find that within every setback or difficulty, within every problem, within every situation or challenge, there is a hidden opportunity. There is something that you can learn. There's something that you can gain. There's an advantage. There's a benefit. There is something. And we know, because of the law of substitution, that if we are looking for the opportunity in any situation, we cannot at the same time think about what would cause us to become stressed and anxious. You cannot think of it as a problem and as an opportunity at the same time. The one thought, the positive thought, knocks out the negative thought. So, when we look at successful people, we find the successful people are those who keep their minds on what they want, and they look for the opportunity. They look for the challenge. They look for the positive part of any setback or difficulty. Remember, we talked about the superconscious mind. It's setbacks and difficulties very often come to us to tell us to change course or direction, to get onto the right track, to get to where we're going. So, instead of becoming frustrated or upset, let's look upon it as a great possibility and look into it for the advantage or benefit.

Now, the third step in dealing with any situation or challenge is to define it clearly. Define it clearly. Now, I use this method, by the way, all the time. I just simply take any goal or difficulty that I have, and I run it through this whole thing, and I run down, and I just go through the analysis, and I always come out at the end with a solution. Define it clearly. Think on paper. Do it in writing. Think on paper. All successful people think on paper. Unsuccessful people don't think on paper. Why don't unsuccessful people think on paper? Because they're too lazy to think on paper. Think on paper. Write it down. Say, "What is it that I'm worried about? What is the difficulty? What is the situation?" And define it clearly. Remember, we said before, a hallmark of genius is clarity. A hallmark of failure is fuzziness.

Number four is, ask yourself, "What are all the possible causes?" What are all the possible causes? The natural tendency in our impatient society is for us to, if we get to the point of defining the difficulty or the challenge, is to leap to a conclusion and say, "Let's do this." Instead, what a doctor does, for instance, is a doctor steps back and says, "All right, you have this pain, you have this difficulty, you have this ailment that's being manifested in these symptoms. Now, let's look at what all the possible causes may be. What do you eat? What do you drink? What is your lifestyle like? What sort of stresses exist in your life?" And so on. Sometimes you'll find that 50% of all of your difficulties can be resolved by defining them clearly. Another 25% of your difficulties can be resolved by determining the causes. Sometimes, if you can determine what the causes are, then you say, "Well, if that's the cause, then eliminate the cause. The situation is resolved."

The fifth step, if at this, if you have not resolved it at step three or step four, the next step is you say, "What are all the possible solutions?" What are all the possible solutions? Now, not just the logical solutions, but go beyond that. If you come up with a solution very quickly that seems like the logical solution, then ask yourself, "What if that didn't work? Then what else would we do?" Roger Von Oak says, "Always look for what is called the second right answer." Once you have one right answer, and you say, "Well, this looks like the answer to this difficulty," ask yourself, "What is the second right answer?" Very, very good exercise, because if the first solution doesn't work, you've already got a second solution already developed. So, you ask, "What are all the possible solutions? What is the solution? What's the opposite of the solution? What if we just did nothing? What if we did it twice as hard? What if we tried something else completely? What if we used lateral thinking instead of trying to dig this hole deeper, we went and dug another hole? What if we got out of this market completely? What if we got out of this, this job or this relationship completely, rather than trying to solve the job or the relationship? What if we went somewhere else and started over? What would be the second right answer?"

Now, here's a critical point. From this point onward, once you've gotten to number five, think and talk only about the solutions. Think and talk only about the solutions. You see, because of the law of concentration, because of the law of substitution, because of the Law of Attraction, what happens? Well, I'll tell you what happens. Most people talk about the problems all the time. They think about the problems. They worry about the problems. They vividly imagine the problems. They discuss the problems, and they have more and more and more problems. The law of substitution says if you think and talk about the problems, that's your mind is going to become preoccupied with negativity. The Law of Attraction says you think and talk about the problems, you're going to attract more problems into your life. The law of Correspondence says that the more you think and talk about problems, the more they preoccupy your mind, the more your external world is going to be characterized by problems. The difference between winners and losers, heroes and non-heroes, successes and failures is this: is that successful people, winners, are solution-oriented. They are solution-oriented. They think about the solutions. They talk about the solutions. They're always asking this question here. "Here is the big question: What, what do we do from here? What can we do from here?" In other words, they are always future-oriented, always oriented toward the future. Losers are always oriented toward the past. Losers always want to know, "Who did it? Who's to blame? Who's responsible? How do we cut our losses?" The winner always looks forward and says, "Where do we go from here? What do we do from here? What's the solution from here? How can we improve this situation? How can we adjust, adapt, modify?" And so on.

Once you get here, the next step is pretty simple. Number six is, make a decision. Make a decision. Now, any decision is better than no decision. 80% of all difficulties should be resolved and the decision should be made at this step, at this, at exactly the time that they come up. In other words, whenever you have a difficulty, now is the time to make 80% of your decisions. Indecision, by the way, indecisiveness is a major reason for failure. Indecisive people don't succeed in life. Being decisive is more important than being correct, because the more decisions that you make, the more feedback you get, the smarter you become, the more accurate your decisions become. The fewer decisions you make, the less feedback you get, the less learning takes place, the more poor, the poorer a decision-maker you become. So, make a decision. Remember, 80% should be made right now, and the others can be made simply by saying, "All right, I can't make the decision now. I need more information. I'll set a deadline. Thursday at noon, I'll make the decision, no matter what information I have."

Number seven, by the way, this is a great tension reliever. Great tension reliever. Make a decision. Indecisiveness is a major source of stress. Number seven is, assign responsibility. Assign responsibility. In other words, ask yourself this question. This is the big question: "Who is going to do it?" Who is going to do it? Very often, people will go through this exercise, they'll make the decision, they'll be happy, they'll be elated, distress and difficulty is gone, and then they all go back to work, and they come back to a meeting two weeks later, and nothing has been done because nobody has been assigned specific. And that's probably the word, assign specific responsibility. Who is going to do what, exactly? And that brings us to number eight. Set a deadline. Say, "I want this done by such and such a day." Well, let's agree that it's going to be done by such and such a day. Thursday, 12:00 noon. We will review it again. And of course, once you set a deadline, number nine is, take action. Launch. Do you know an interesting time management study I read recently? It says that 20% of the work, the first 20%, usually accounts for 80% of the value of the job. If you can launch it, they say, "Well, begun is half done." And number 10 is, inspect what you expect. Inspect what you expect. One of the most important rules of success in life is, once you have made an agreement that something is going to be done, inspect it. Check on it. Control it. Monitor it. Keep in touch. Uh, I have a good friend that says that delegation is essential, but not abdication. Make a decision. Once you have assigned somebody, you've asked somebody to do it, keep in touch with them. If it's important enough for you to have it done by that deadline, it's important enough for you to follow up and check.

All right. There's one final method of creative thinking which you can use with your husband or wife, with your co-workers, with your friends, with your associates. One of the most powerful methods ever developed, first written about by Alex Osborne in his book, Applied Imagination, in 1946, and it's called brainstorming. Now, brainstorming is terrific. I won't write it all out on the board, but I'll just give you the description of what you have to do to be a good brainstormer. Number one, the very best group for brainstorming is four to seven people. Uh, below four, you're not getting the, the potential synergy, and above seven, the group starts to get a bit unwieldy. So, four to seven people sitting together in a spirit of harmony.

Step number two is to clearly define the question. And the more simple and precise the question, and the more concrete the answers that you're looking for, the better the brainstorming exercise works. For instance, you could say, in a sales organization, you wouldn't say, "What can we do to increase sales?" because the question is very vague, it's fuzzy. Remember, clarity. What we would say is, "What can we do to increase our sales by 20% over the next 90 days?" Then everybody can bring their minds to bear on the question.

Now, the third step with regard to brainstorming is time. The best period for brainstorming is between 15 and 45 minutes. 30 is ideal. So, what you do is you say, "We're going to brainstorm this question: What can we do to increase our sales by 20% over the next 90 days?" And we're going to do it from 4:15 to 4:45.

Next step is idea generation. Now, this is really critical. Instead of generating ideas and then evaluating them, what you do is this. And this is what Osborne found. He said, "What blocks brainstorming is that you have the idea generation process, and somebody comes up with an idea, and somebody says, 'Ah, that wouldn't work. That's stupid. That's ridiculous. We tried that once before.'" And as soon as somebody says anything critical about an idea, everybody just shuts up. And so you sit there, and everybody becomes a little bit hesitant. Why? It's because when you criticize an idea, you trigger the deep-down fear of rejection that goes back to early childhood. So, what you do is you divide. You have idea evaluation, this section, and idea generation, separated by a wall of time. So that you put time between the two. And here you go for quantity of ideas. So, in a 30-minute session, say 30 minutes, you say, "Let's see how many ideas we can generate focused on how we can increase our sales by 20% over the next 90 days." And over here, you can take more time, and here you do, here you go for quality.

Now, what is the role of the leader in a brainstorming session? The leader is not to dominate. The leader is to stimulate. A good business person, by the way, will bring their staff or their associates in on a regular basis to stimulate them into brainstorming at least once per week. But don't dominate the conversation. Record all answers. Record all answers. Very often, somebody will come up with an answer in a brainstorming session which will be a superconscious solution. The superconscious solution may be so excellent that even the person who came up with it, and the people at the brainstorming session, are not aware that it is a brilliant breakthrough. But when you take the ideas and evaluate them later, or somebody else looks at the ideas, they may say, "That's what we're looking for. This is exactly right."

So, with regard to creative thinking, remember this. Let me repeat that. Intelligence is a way of acting. That you can function at at least twice the intelligence you're currently using by doing what geniuses do. Be clear about what you want. Concentrate single-mindedly on the goal, the problem, the situation, or the outcome you desire. Keep an open mind. Be flexible. And look at all possibilities. And then use systematic methods of problem-solving, like we've discussed. Try any one of these methods. Use them on a regular and systematic basis, and I can guarantee you, you will be astonished at how smart you really are.

This is the end of side two. Please fast forward the tape to the end to queue up side one for your next listening.

[Music]

Ran Tracy Presents

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Session 24: Developing a Success Personality

Andrew Carnegie, the great steel magnate, who accumulated a fortune of over $500 million at the beginning of this century, starting as a penniless immigrant, once said that, "I will pay more for the ability to get along with others than for any other single skill." And today, in our society, your ability to get along with other people, your social intelligence, is the most valuable, most precious single asset that you have. Not only in terms of your career, not only in terms of your marriage and your relationships, but in terms of your own mental well-being.

In this session, we're going to talk about developing a success personality. We're going to talk about developing the quintessence of mental health, which is a positive personality, a positive mental attitude, the kind of person that everybody likes to be around, the kind of person who is welcome everywhere. We said very early in this seminar that 85% of everything that you ever accomplish in life will be as a direct result of how well you get along with other people. That today, even the biggest companies in America are hiring on the basis of personality and attitude rather than on the basis of grades, proficiency, skills, and experience. Why? It's because if the person has the right personality, skills, they can learn anything else they need in order to be successful. But if the person has all the skills in the world and a lousy personality, there's no way that they can take the responsibility of changing it. So, 85% of our happiness in life, according to the research, comes from happy involvement with other people. Also, 85% of all of our problems in life come from unhappy involvement with other people. The other 15%, in case you're interested, comes from achievement. So, it is possible for us to get a certain amount of satisfaction in life from achievement, from success, from making money, building businesses and careers, and so on. But most of our happiness is going to come from our relationships.

So, in this session, we're going to show you how you can dramatically improve the quality of your relationships by doing some very, very simple things. We know with regard to your relationships that there is a direct relationship between how well you get along with other people and the health of your personality. In fact, everybody wants to have a more healthy personality. So, let's look at how you measure healthy personality. What are some of the simple measures? We've talked about several of them in the course of this seminar. Number one measure of healthy personality, of course, is how much you like yourself. How much you like yourself is the core of your personality. People who like themselves a lot have very healthy personalities.

Number two, measure of healthy personality is how much responsibility you accept. People who accept a lot of responsibility for themselves, who look upon themselves as being the key agents in their lives, people who refuse to blame other people, have very healthy personalities. Another example of healthy personality is how easily you forgive. One of the things we know is a direct relationship, one-to-one relationship, between how freely you forgive and forget when somebody hurts you, and how healthy your personality is.

Number four, measure of healthy personality is what is called positive expectations. The degree to which you look for the good in everything and everybody around you. People who have a propensity to look for the good are truly healthy people. And the fourth measure, or the fifth measure, of healthy personality is what we're talking about today: how well you get along with others. How well you get along with others. As a matter of fact, you really cannot have a healthy personality in isolation of your relationships with other human beings.

Wonderfully enough, there is a law of reciprocity in this. Is that the more you like yourself, the more you like others. The more responsibility you accept, the better you get along with them. The more you freely forgive and forget and refuse to hold grudges, the more it improves the quality of your relationships. The more you look for the good in people and situations, the better you get along with yourself and them. And the better you get along with other people, surprise, surprise, the more you like yourself. So, it's a wonderful series of reciprocal relationships.

And this brings us to an important law. One of the last laws we'll talk about, probably the last. It's called The Law of Indirect Effort. And the law of indirect effort simply says that in our relationships with other people, we have a tendency to get the things that we want indirectly faster than directly. Now, I can give you a very simple example. If you try to go after things directly in your relationships, often you'll be frustrated, often you'll be humiliated, you'll be embarrassed, and so on. Let me give you a couple of examples. For instance, if you want to impress other people, okay? You want to impress other people. Have you ever tried to impress someone else? You, some, somebody you thought was important or valuable, and you tried to impress them. They try to impress someone else. What you end up doing, what you end up doing is exactly the opposite. But the way that you impress other people is simply this: is be impressed by them. Be impressed by them.

If you want other people to be interested in you, what is the way? Using the law of indirect effort, what is the way that you get people to be interested in you? Is, of course, be interested in them. If you want people to like you, what's the best way? Is to like them. If you want people to respect you, what is the best way? To respect them. In every case, this law of indirect effort works in building our human relationships.

One final point. We've talked about some of the mental laws, and I'd like to just refer you to three. One is the law of sowing and reaping. The law of sowing and reaping says the quality of your relationships, what you are reaping in your relationships at any given moment, is a result of what you have sown in those relationships. What you are getting in your relationships has very little to do with the other person, or with fate, or with background, or or nature. What it has to do with is what you have sown. Is with what you have sown.

Law of Correspondence says that your external world will correspond to your internal world. As within, so without, especially in your relationships. And of course, the Law of Attraction says you always attract to you people who are very much like you are inside. If you want to change the quality of your relationships, the starting point is to change the quality of your relationships with yourself, and your external relationships will mirror that.

Now, when we talk about this, how well you get along with others, let's show a very, very simple graph. This is the graph of human personality, from the most introverted to the most extroverted, or if you like, from an indirect person to an outer-directed person. And the person who has a truly healthy personality can get along with a great variety of people, going from the median. And the median, of course, is the average personality, not introverted or extroverted. Now, we can superimpose on this, I guess this is the center. We can superimpose on this another graph. And this is the graph of self-esteem, from high self-esteem to low self-esteem. And we find a very interesting thing. And this graph is my own creation. We find that the graph is like this: that if you have a low level of self-esteem, say down here, you don't particularly like yourself, or you have feelings of inferiority or negativity, then the number of people that you can get along with will be limited to people who are pretty much in the middle of the spectrum, people who have, if you might, you might call them very easy to get along with, neutral, bland personalities. However, as you go up the ladder of self-esteem, as you like and respect and accept yourself more and more, the number of people that you can get along with expands. As your level of self-esteem goes up, you can get along with more and more people across this spectrum. If you like. And as you get to the point where you have high levels of self-esteem and self-acceptance, you find you can get along with almost anybody that you meet. And since, of course, the great business of life is getting along with as many people as possible, because the more people you can get along with, the more opportunities you have to live an interesting, fascinating, exciting life. Wonderful thing is, as your self-esteem goes up by working on yourself, the quality of your relationships with others expands.

So, what is the key to raising your own self-esteem? Wonderfully enough, because of the law of reciprocity, every single thing that you do that raises the self-esteem of someone else, raises your own self-esteem at the same time. That means you cannot do anything genuinely kind or generous to raise the self-esteem of other people without raising your own at the same time. If you want to have a truly healthy personality, then you use the law of reversibility. The law of reversibility, in one of its applications, is simply this: is that everything that you do to boost the self-esteem of others, boosts your self-esteem simultaneously. And so that, what we're going to look at in the rest of this session are what are some of the things that you can do to raise the self-esteem of other people and simultaneously raise your own, so that you become a healthier personality. And by the way, there's a direct relationship between happy involvement with other people and long life, health, energy, vitality, resistance to disease, longevity, and everything else. And the key, the key to raising the self-esteem of others is to make others feel important. Make others feel important. This is and always has been the key to successful human relationships. Uh, Mary Kay Ash has a beautiful little analogy. She says she imagines that every person she meets has a sign around their neck that says, "Make me feel important." Every person she meets has this sign. It says, "Make me feel important." And what she does is she responds to that sign. Make others feel important. Treat others well. Make them feel important, and surprisingly enough, you will feel important too. The reciprocal principle. Words.

Now, how do we make others feel important? Number one, top of the list, is eliminate destructive criticism. Eliminate destructive criticism. There is nothing that causes a person's self-esteem to go down faster than destructive criticism. Remember, it is destructive criticism in childhood that sets us up for fears of failure, fears of rejection, feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, undeserving, guilt, and everything else. And most of us are still struggling to get over those feelings because of the inadvertent remarks and comments that our parents made to us when we were young. So, eliminate destructive criticism. Never criticize anybody because it devalues them. It kicks the chair out from underneath their self-esteem and makes them feel terrible. Just doing that, making that one change in your life, eliminating destructive criticism, will make you a far more attractive person than you can possibly imagine. If you have a tendency toward criticism.

Number two is, be agreeable. Be agreeable. Be agreeable. That means don't argue. I remember when I was a young man, I was very fast-mouthed, if you like, and I used to win arguments. I used to win any argument. I would do my reading, I would do my research, and I would be excellent. I got to the point where nobody could beat me in an argument. You know something? I also got to the point where I didn't have anybody to argue with. I got to the point where nobody wanted to talk to me. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. I never got invited to anybody's house. People wouldn't play with me at school because I was always arguing. And even though I was winning, I was losing. So, don't argue. And the way that you avoid arguing is a very, very simple technique. It's this: it is try first to understand rather than to be understood. Use this law of indirect effort and try first to understand the other person's point of view. What is it that causes the other person to think and feel the way they do? If you disagree with them, the natural tendency of the immature personality is to try to overwhelm the other person with argument. However, the tendency of the mature personality is to take the time to try to understand why the other person thinks and feels the way they do. It could very well be that their reasoning is superior to yours. At the very least, there's a beautiful line that says, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." One of the most important principles in the development of human personality is the principle of non-resistance. The principle of non-resistance was, if you like, brought to a head by Mahatma Gandhi in India this year, or in, in this century, when he was able, if you like, to defeat the entire British Empire and take India out of the Empire and put it under home rule, simply by a process of non-resistance. Jesus said in the Bible, he said, the New Testament, he said, "Agree with thine adversary quickly." Now, there's several reasons for this. The number one reason is, the very best way to keep a positive mind, to be enthusiastic, to be liked, and to like other people, is not to get into arguments with them. To do everything possible to avoid an argument. When I first got married, I found that the natural tendency for people when they live together is to get into arguments because you disagree about times and things and so on. But I also found a neat little thing that has served me well, and that is to agree quickly. If, when you see an argument coming, back off from it. Agree and try to see the other person's point of view. The place to start with being agreeable and refusing to criticize is where, of course, it's at home. The interesting thing is, and E.M. Fox says it beautifully, he says, "If you must be rude, be rude to strangers, but save your company manners for your family." Naturally, we have a tendency to go out and be very polite to people that we've never seen before and will never see again, and then we come home and we criticize and complain and argue with the people that we love the most.

All right. The third principle in making other people feel important. Now, you don't criticize. Now, you don't argue. You've now a pleasant, positive personality. The third thing is acceptance. The third behavior. Now, acceptance satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious cravings. Remember, when we come into the world, what we want more than anything else is to be accepted by our parents, to be unconditionally loved and approved of and accepted by our parents. And when we grow up as adults, we still need that love and approval. And the way that we convey acceptance is very simply this: smile. Whenever you smile at another person, you convey acceptance. As a matter of fact, working interpersonal psychology and interpersonal dynamics suggests that when two people meet for the first time, and every subsequent time, the very first thing that takes place is a relationship of acceptance or non-acceptance occurs. It's conveyed by body language, by facial expressions, by tone of voice. But until that relationship is established, no other communication takes place. And you can trigger that relationship just simply by smiling and unconditionally accepting another person, no matter who they are.

Step number four is appreciation. Appreciation, like acceptance. Whenever you engage in any kind of appreciation, you raise the self-esteem of the other person. When you smile, by the way, so interesting research seems to suggest that when you smile, not only do you cause the other person to feel positive, but the smiling, the effort of smiling, actually triggers endorphins in the brain and gives you a generalized sense of well-being. And they say even an insincere smile is better than a sincere frown. So, smile. Force yourself to smile, and you will find that you can act your way into feeling like smiling, just by making a habit of smiling at other people.

With regard to appreciation, how do we express appreciation? We use the word "thank you" over and over again. Saying thank you to your spouse, saying thank you to your children, saying thank you to your co-workers and your subordinates, saying thank you to people in restaurants, saying thank you on a regular basis. When you feel it, expressing gratitude raises people's self-esteem like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day. And you'll find that the most powerful men and women, the most successful men and women, tend to be very gracious, and they tend to be very courteous. The television characterizations or caricatures of men and women who are powerful but who are peremptory and push people around are not very close to the real world, because people become powerful and successful to the degree to which they get the cooperation of other people. And people only have a tendency to cooperate with others if the others are the type of people that they like to work with. So, be gracious, be courteous, be appreciative. Say thank you. Thomas Carlyle once said that, "You can tell a big person by the way they treat little people." And that's very true.

Number five is admiration. Admiration means admiring the traits of another person. If the person is industrious, or punctual, or hardworking, or accurate, or admiring the possessions of another person. You see, we get emotionally involved and bound up in our characters and our personalities. And when somebody recognizes and acknowledges it and admires it, we feel tremendous. We get caught up in our possessions. We're proud of our homes, our cars. We're proud of our watches, our shoes. We're proud of our children. We're proud of our offices. And if a person says, "Boy, that looks nice," or "That's a great looking car," or "That's a beautiful house," or "This is a lovely living room," or "That's an excellent suit." Anything that we say, as long as it is sincere. I never say anything that's insincere because people are very, very smart. They can detect insincerity. Remember, Abraham Lincoln said, "Everybody likes a compliment." Everybody likes a compliment. I have worked with billionaires, and I have worked with very powerful and successful heads of large corporations and conglomerates. And I have found that saying something that I truly feel that is complimentary to them about themselves, their businesses, their work, and so on, is always responded to as positively, as positively as if you were admiring the trait or possession of someone who had low self-esteem. Sometimes people who have the highest self-esteem and success are the ones who are most in need of admiration and appreciation.

Now, the sixth thing that you can do to raise the self-esteem of others, and remember, every time you raise somebody else's self-esteem, you raise your own. Every time you increase the health of somebody else's personality, by the law of indirect effort, you increase the health of your own personality, is approval. Approval satisfies one of the deepest cravings of the human psyche, the, the craving to be valued, the craving to be valuable. In fact, one of the definitions of self-esteem is the degree to which an individual considers themselves to be praiseworthy. A person who considers himself to be praiseworthy has high self-esteem. So, so when you give approval or praise, it's been demonstrated, I think it was, uh, Napoleon, who said, "I have made an incredible discovery. Men will die for ribbons." In other words, he found that soldiers who would not give their life for any amount of money would risk their lives in battle for the praise and approval represented by the ribbons and the medals that he handed out. Keys to keys to approval. Number one is, be immediate. The closer the praise is to the thing that you praise, the more likely it is the person will repeat it. If you want your children or your employees to continue doing something, as soon as they do it, say, "Boy, that's a good job."

Number two is, be specific. Say, "Boy, you did a wonderful job on that lawn, that house, that letter, whatever it happens to be." The more immediate and specific the praise, the more rapidly it raises self-esteem, the more likely it is that the behavior will be repeated. And third of all, uh, be public with your praise. Whenever you give recognition in public, it doubles or triples the impact, because the effect of other people's opinions on our behavior is tremendous. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that we are who we are, and we do what we do, because of the way we think other people think of us. We're strongly affected by other people's opinions.

All right. Number seven is attention. Now, attention is one of the most powerful ways to raise self-esteem. Attention means listening. Why is attention and listening so powerful? Is because we always pay attention, attention to that which we value, and we always ignore that which we do not value. So, if you want to tell a person that you value them, that they are, in effect, valuable, pay close attention to them. Listen to them. Spend time with them. Now, here's some of the keys to attention. Number one is, listen attentively. Listen attentively. Listen without interruptions. Listen patiently. Listen closely. Number two is, pause before replying. Pause before replying. Don't interrupt. Let the person say everything that they have to say, and pause. Wait. Show them that you are really considering what they're saying. Number three is, question for clarification. Instead of rushing in to speak, question to clarify what the person has said, which is a way of telling them for sure that you're really listening. And here's the best of all questions: "How do you mean?" When you're listening to a person speak, and you want to fully understand, and you want to tell them that you're listening, say, "How do you mean, exactly?" and ask for them to explain to you clearly.

And finally, remember the boomerang. And the boomerang says simply this: it says that any genuine emotion expressed by you toward any other person is going to boomerang back on you. Just like the law of sowing and reaping, the law of cause and effect, the Law of Attraction, the law of Correspondence, says that any genuine emotion. Now, that's a genuine emotion. In other words, if you say something positive about someone else, it's going to go out to that person, and it's going to come back, and it's going to boomerang on you. So, say only good things when you talk about other people. Talk about them as though what you were saying was going to be printed in the paper. When you think about other people, send out positive thoughts and positive ideas. Think all the time about how you can make other people feel important. Treat other people as though they were the most valuable people in the world, because to them, they believe they are.

And the final rule with regard to superior human relations is what we call the Golden Rule Rule. Simply says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Like your neighbor as yourself. Treat your neighbor as yourself. Ask yourself in any situation, "How would I like to be treated in this situation?" Ask yourself, when you're in a difficult situation with someone, or an argument, or a disagreement, say, "If I, if the conditions were reversed, how would I like to be treated in this situation?" And here's something that you can do. Pick a role model. Pick the person that you admire more than anybody else in the world in terms of their personality. And whenever you're in a situation with someone else, pretend you are like that person. Many years ago, when I was traveling in Africa, I worked with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, one of the most beautiful men who ever lived. And so, very often, when I'm in a situation with other people, I think, "How would Albert Schweitzer act in this situation?" Or I think, "How would Jesus of Nazareth act in this situation?" And if you use that as your role model, and if you use the credo of making other people feel important as your guiding light, you will develop a success personality that will lead you to accomplishing everything that you want in life in a world filled with other people.

Session 25: Building Superior Relationships

One of the oldest cliches is that, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." Benjamin Disraeli, the great Prime Minister of England, once said that, "No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home." And when we started this seminar, uh, several sessions ago, we talked about the importance of the power of love, and that how you and I as human beings are love-tropic organisms, that everything that we do is either to get love or to compensate for the lack of love. And there's no place where this is more important than in the quality of the intimate relationships that we form with other people. In fact, one of the measures of mental health, according to Abraham Maslow, is your ability to enter into long-term, intimate, loving relationships with other members of the human race. And I want to talk in this session about some of the things that might help you, which have helped me, to enjoy a higher quality of loving relationship with your mate, or your spouse, or the person that is most important to you.

First of all, let's talk about the idea of the, of what makes a relationship successful. And I think that there are six keys that make a relationship successful. Six keys to successful relationships. Let me explain them to you one at a time.

Number one is, of course, similarities attract. Similarities attract. Similarities attract in almost all areas, but especially in the areas of values, in the areas of attitudes toward the critical things like children, like money. Do you know that, and like sex, for instance? That arguments over money are not one of the number one reasons why marriages break down. Young marriages break down, and probably older marriages too. Arguments over sex are number two. Arguments over leisure time, what we're going to do when we're not working, are the number three reason why relationships break down. So, similarities are very, very important. It's sort of like the, when, when you meet the person who is right for you, there will be a chemistry. They call it a right chemistry. It feels good. It feels right because you will be in accord or in harmony on almost all of the critical areas of life. We find that virtually all of your difficulties come from clashing with people who have different opinions and ideas from you.

Now, with regard to similarities, the most important part of you as a human being is your self-concept, your central belief system. And your central belief system with regard to your relationship to the world is summarized in your values. What you think is right, what you think is wrong, what you think is good, what you think is unacceptable. Your values are very important, and any clash with your values in life will be destructive to your mental health. Outside your values, you have your mental life. These are your ideas. They may be your political opinions, they may have to do with philosophy, and so on. They're not as important as your values because they change far more readily. Outside that, you have your emotional life, or your emotional temperament. You'll find that people with similar emotional temperaments seem to get along the best. And finally, on the outer ring, the least important is the physical, is the physical attraction, or physical similarity, or physical comparisons. However, there's a lot of research that shows us that people tend to marry people who look very similar to themselves. That the highest form of flattery is marriage. That we tend to be attracted to people who have facial features very similar to our own. That's why they say when people grow older, they start to look like each other. Well, if they examine the wedding photographs, they find that they started off looking like each other, and that's why they look like each other more when they grow older.

Number two key to successful relationships is that opposites attract. Opposites attract, but opposites attract in only one area, and this is important, and that's in temperament. You see, nature requires balance in all things, yin and yang, active and passive. So, nature requires that there be a balance in temperament. An extroverted person will

be most compatible with an introverted person. Two people who are equally introverted or extroverted will be most compatible. But here's a very simple test for relationships: male or female, male-male, female-female. It is what we call the conversation test. In any conversation between two people who are temperamentally suited, there will be the entire period of time allocated for conversation will be full of easy conversation, plus about 10% of easy silences. So that if a person, each person will have an opportunity to talk all they want to talk, and each person will have an opportunity to listen all they want to listen. And there'll be 10% of comfortable silences.

Now, you may have a person who gets all their talking done in 30% of the time, and you may have another person who gets all their talking done in 60% of the time, with that 10% gap. And these people will be very compatible. However, where you have problems in relationships is you have people who only like to talk 30% on the one side, and a person only likes to talk 30% on the other side. So you have big gaps of uncomfortable silence where neither has anything to say. Or the other example is where you have two people, each of whom have to talk 70% of the time. So you have a big clash over airtime. Everybody, there's always a clash over who's going to be able to speak the most. And you'll find that this relationship will be incompatible too. So opposites attract, but only in temperament. In all other essentials, similarities attract.

This brings us to number three. Number three key to success in relationships is commitment. Commitment is very important. And in order for a relationship to work, a person should have a total commitment to the relationship. Why? Meaning, which means 100%. And we'll talk about this a little bit later. But one of the most beautiful definitions of love in relationships that I ever read was from Dr. Scott Peck, where he said that love is the total commitment to the full development of the potential of the other. Love is your total commitment to the full development of the potential of the other person. And this, to me, lays to rest all the arguments over male-female, women's lib, and so on and so forth. Because if a person truly loves another person, they want that person to develop their full potential as a human being, and they will do everything possible to make that possible.

Commitment is really... I have a good friend named Charlie Jones who talks about divorce. He said the way to deal with divorce is very simple. He says, never consider it. He said, don't even think about it. Don't talk about it. Never even consider the possibility of divorce. He says, murder, yes, but never divorce. Now, maybe that's a little bit stringent. But the key to a successful relationship is the depth of commitment that each person has. Most dangerous thing in a relationship is when people start thinking in terms of, "Well, if it doesn't work out, I can go somewhere else. If it doesn't work out, we always get a divorce." Relationships like that almost invariably end in a divorce.

Number four, key to a successful relationship is similar self-concepts attract. Similar self-concepts attract. Now, this means when we talk about similar self-concepts, we talk about how much you like yourself, how much you value yourself. We talk about what you might call the happiness scale. The happiness scale means how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? That's the basic question. You will find that you will always be most compatible with a person who is just about as happy as you are. If ever you get involved in a relationship with a person who is unhappy, and you allow yourself to be diluted into believing that you're going to bring them up and they're going to be happy at your level because you're going to help them, you're entering into a fool's game. Because most people who are unhappy are quite happy being unhappy, and they have no intention of changing. There, as a matter of fact, the unhappiest relationships I've ever seen in my life are when a generally happy, positive person gets involved with a negative person and tries to bring them up to their level, because it never works. So ask yourself this: How happy is the person that you're thinking about getting involved with? And understand that it is very rare, except by tremendous effort, that people change their level of happiness.

This brings us to number five. Key to success in relationships is liking. Now, liking, which has to do with respect, is more important than being in love and more permanently satisfying. Because being in love, although it comes and goes, is a passing condition. Being in love is something that ebbs and flows. As a matter of fact, you can be furiously angry with your mate or with your spouse and still have an excellent relationship, and you can still never consider breaking up as long as you like and respect them. But if the liking and the respecting goes out of a relationship, the being in love or the infatuation is never enough to hold it together.

Now, here's a simple test with regard to liking. It's what I call the best friend test. The best friend test simply says that if you are ideally suited to your mate, your mate will be your best friend. That there will be nobody that you would rather spend time with. There will be nobody that you trust more. There will be nobody that you would be more open, honest, candid, and frank with than your mate or your spouse. Your spouse will be your best friend. It's the simplest measure of all, because you cannot force being best friends. Best friends just happens naturally when everything is right. On the other hand, if you are in a situation where you could not tell your spouse or your mate all a lot of the things that are important to you, where you talk to other people more than you talk to them, where you have a lot of secrets that you keep from them, or a lot of things that you keep inside yourself, then generally speaking, you are probably not involved with your best friend, and the prognosis for your relationship is not very good.

Number six, uh, requirement for happiness in relationships is communications. Now, communications, or communicating back and forth in a relationship, is the elixir that keeps a relationship alive. Without it, a relationship dies. Without it, the relationship has no possibility. And good communications in a relationship not only require speaking and listening, not only require trying to understand, give and take, but they require time, and they require a high quality and a high quantity of time. Very important quality and quantity of time. What my wife and I do on a regular basis is we will go on a trip. And sometimes we'll go on a trip to a place that takes three or four hours. And we'll leave the children with a housekeeper or someone else. And we will drive in that car, no radio, no tapes, for three or four hours and just talk. And we'll get some of the highest quality and quantity of talk and conversation. And so, if you use that analogy, what, what, what you might call a car trip analogy, which is uninterrupted conversation with your spouse over an extended period of time, you find the most remarkable things will happen. But if you're not spending a high quality and quantity of time with your spouse or your mate, the relationship is going to suffer. And many relationships will die as a result.

Now, two critical points with regard to this from my point of view as a man. Number one is, remember that men are not mind readers. One of the hardest things for women to understand is that men are not mind readers. They do not know what women mean or what women want them to think half the time. And it is not fair for women to expect men to know what is bothering them, or what they want, or what they need. And number two, remember this: that men are direct, women are indirect. What does this mean? Well, if a man and a woman are driving down the street and the woman is thirsty, she might say as they pass a McDonald's, she might say, "Honey, are you thirsty?" And he'll say, "Nope." He keeps on driving. What she was trying to say was, she was thirsty. Why don't they stop? Now, the man, on the other hand, if he saw the McDonald's and was thirsty, says, "I'm thirsty. Let's stop." So women tend to be indirect, and they get really angry when men don't understand what they were trying to say. So one of the best things that you can do in communications is be a little bit more direct, be a little bit more, um, a little bit more clear, a little bit more specific.

Now, an important point with regard to men. According to recent survey, recent study, it shows that men are 95% more likely to interrupt a woman in a conversation than a woman is likely to interrupt a man. And one of the best things that you can do in a relationship, you men out there, is take time to listen to your spouses. One of the gentlemen who went through my seminar said the most valuable thing he got from this part on human relations was, when you go home at night, before you, the man, the direct person, the extrovert, starts telling your woman all about everything that went on during the course of the day, ask her how her day has been. Ask her how her day has been unfolding. What has happened to her? How things going with her? Try doing that as a discipline, and you'll be literally astonished at what it will do for your relationship. And then listen without interruptions. Listen and pause before replying. Listen and ask questions for clarification. Listen and give positive feedback.

All right, now let's talk about some of the problems in relationships. Problems in relationships. Number one problem in relationship: lack of commitment. Now, lack of commitment is amazingly common. Because we live in a society today where it is considered clever to protect yourself by not making too deep a commitment to anybody. So what people do is they often get involved in relationships, but they only get involved up to their toes. Lack of commitment is often expressed in a trading relationship. A trading relationship is a relationship where one says, "You do your share and I'll do my share. You put in your amount, I'll put in my amount." And neither one of them wants to get in 100%. Neither one of them wants to run the risk of being rejected. So by both of them not running the risk of being rejected, they both end up being rejected. And the key to resolving this, as I said before, is for each individually to make a 100% commitment to this relationship and say that, "No matter what happens, I will never leave this relationship." Make that decision to get in, either get in or get out. Now, if you feel that you can't make the commitment, that will tell you something that's very important for you to know. If your spouse feels that he or she can't make the commitment, or mate feels that he or she can't make a commitment, that will tell them something too. But in either case, either get in or get out. It will relieve an enormous amount of tension and stress in a relationship.

Number two is trying to change the other or expecting the other to change. You see, when we try to change another person, you know what we're saying? We're saying, in effect, that you're not good enough the way you are. You don't come up to my standards. How many times do people enter into marriages with one or the other saying, "Well, I'll change him or her. As time goes on, they'll come, they'll shape up more into the model that I desire or I approve of." Whenever you try to change another person, and why do we try to change another person? We keep disapproving of the person they are and the things that they do. We keep asking them to be different. We want them to be more of this or less of that. Now, that great American philosopher, Flip Wilson, had a wonderful expression which he used to cover this, and it's simply this: He says, "What you sees is what you get." Don't enter into a relationship with the intention of changing the other person, because what you sees is what you get. People don't change unless they intensely desire to change and are willing to practice some of the things we talked about in this seminar. However, if you just stop trying to change the other person and accept them unconditionally, with unconditional love, acceptance, and approval, often they will bend over backwards to change for you. But there's something within every human being that resists being changed by another person.

Number three cause of problems or in relationships is jealousy. Now, jealousy has to do with the fear of failure. Why do, where, where does jealousy come from? It comes from deep down inside. We don't feel that we're good enough. It comes from this old feeling of low self-esteem. "I'm not good enough." This is something, by the way, that is rooted in our inferiority complex. Alfred Adler, the great psychologist, the disciple of Freud, said that the natural human condition is that of feeling inferior. The reason for that is because we grow up as children in a world of giants where we are made to feel inferior because we're so small. And that as adults, we are continually struggling against this inferiority complex. This feeling that "I'm not good enough" leads to feelings of jealousy. The feeling is that that other person could never love me unconditionally. Therefore, I'm not safe. I'm not okay in this relationship. And the way that you get over this feeling of jealousy is work on your own self-concept and say over and over again, "I like myself. I like myself." Or "I love myself." Because the more you boost your own self-esteem, remember there's an inverse relationship between these fears and how much you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the more your self-esteem goes up. The more your fears of jealousy, fears of rejection, fears of loss of love, and so on, go down. So be alert to jealousy. And remember, though, it has nothing to do with the other person. It has only to do with the person experiencing it. And I'll say one more thing is that it is not clever to make somebody feel jealous. It is not smart. It is not clever. It is not fashionable. It is just an unkind and cruel thing to do, especially if it is successful.

Now, number four is self-pity. Where does self-pity come from? Well, there's several sources. Almost invariably, self-pity comes from having had a parent who was very good at self-pity. So what we did is we imitated the parent. As we grow up, we find opportunities to experience self-pity ourselves. Self-pity is also rooted in low self-esteem. It's not liking ourselves very much. Now, what is the solution for self-pity? Very simple. Very simply this: get busy. Get busy. People who are busy, people who are working on something that's important, people who have a worthwhile purpose in life, do not experience self-pity. It is only people who are going around in circles, drifting, waiting for someone else, and so on. So you can overcome self-pity simply by working on your self-concept and set some goals. Set clear, specific goals and get going on them. Remember the law of substitution says you can't feel sorry for yourself. You can't even feel jealous. You can't even feel angry if you're busy working on goals that are important to you. Your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, positive or negative.

And then we come to number six. Number six is a major reason which sort of summarizes everything that we've talked about up to now as a major problem in relationships, and it is called incompatibility. Incompatibility means that you and the other person are not compatible. Now, this is very, very hard for us to accept because of fears of rejection and failure. We often stay in relationships long past the point where it's clear that we no longer have anything in common. And we do that for a variety of different reasons. One, we do that because we don't want people to think that we have failed. Another reason that we do it is that it's our comfort zone, and we don't want to go through all the difficulty of of leaving. But what happens is this: When two people meet, they're like two dinner plates. And what they have is they have areas where they are separate. Here's the man, here's the woman. They have areas where they're separate and different, and they have areas that they have in common. Now, as a relationship develops, sometimes these areas grow. And so when they finally get married, they find that they have an enormous amount in common. And sometimes they have areas out here that they have which are separate. As the French say, "Viva la difference," or, you know, "Long live the difference between men and women." However, especially in our 20s, as we grow and evolve and change rapidly, what can happen is that we can grow apart. And we can reach the point where the man and the woman now have a great gap between them. They have very little in common.

How can you tell when incompatibility has set into a relationship? Number one, the first thing that goes is the laughter. People stop laughing together. And the second thing that goes is the friendship. They don't look upon on themselves as friends anymore. They look upon themselves as sort of people that are forced together. Now, if incompatibility has set into a relationship, the natural thing to do, the best thing to do, is to try to patch it up. Try to find some kind of a bridge. Try to try to put it back together, if you like. Try to bind it together, especially if there's children and a lot of other things involved. However, please understand this: if incompatibility has developed, and incompatibility is the rule, you have to go through dozens and dozens of men or members of the opposite sex before you ever find one that you can settle down with. Incompatibility has happened. Accept it as a reality. Because if you do not, you're going to enter into the phenomena of denial, and the denial is going to cause tremendous stress and resistance and unhappiness.

Number two is, remember that if it has happened, no one is guilty. Just because you are no longer compatible with the other person doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the other person, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It means it's just incompatibility has set in. Remember, it just happens. It's like the rain. When it rains, nobody is guilty. It just happens. It is the most common phenomena in relationships is incompatibility. And one final point with incompatibility is this: In my experience, I find the major reason why people stay in relationships that they're no longer happy in, that there's no love, there's no music, there's no laughter, there's no future to the relationship, it's because of what others might say. It's because of what others might say. And this is really amazing to me, because whenever I speak to people, and I've been in the same situation, I've, I've never been through a marriage that didn't work out, but I was a bachelor for 35 years, and so I've been through relationships that didn't work out. And I've been amazed at how much social pressure there is created in our own minds to stay in a relationship that we don't enjoy because we think others will disapprove of us. We think that others will be upset. We think that others will be saddened. And the fact of the matter is, as everybody eventually finds out, is that nobody cares as much about your relationship as you do. And if you sacrifice your peace of mind for what you think others might say, you will never, never be happy.

Incompatibility is a reality. If it, you cannot repair it, if you cannot overcome it, then deal with it honestly. Deal with it graciously. Face it in a straightforward way. Deal with it in a respectful, dignified way, and find some way to resolve the relationship so that it doesn't hurt anybody more than it has to. Remember this with regard to loving relationships: that your objective, your responsibility, is to set joy and fulfillment in your relationships as your minimum standard. Set peace of mind, happiness, joy, fulfillment, tranquility. Make your home and your loving relationship the crown jewel of your emotional life, and settle for nothing less. Keep working at it. Keep striving. Keep chopping. Keep changing. Do whatever is necessary. But you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your life, you owe it to your character, your integrity, your peace of mind, your health, and your future to settle for nothing less than a relationship that is a joy to be a part of.

Session 26: How to Raise Super Kids. Perhaps the most permanent relationship that you ever enter into in life is that of bringing a child into the world. It outlasts many marriages. It outlasts jobs and careers. It outlasts money and locations and businesses. It lasts until one or the other of you passes on. And most of us come into this world without any idea of how to raise children. We come in without any basic parenting skills. And the great tragedy is that most people don't make any effort to pick up any skills. It's possible today for you to learn so much about how to raise happy, healthy, self-confident, wonderful, loving, vibrant, fulfilled children. There's so much information available on. And you know that about 80 to 90% of parents never bother to buy a book on the subject, or consult an expert, or even seek advice, except from their mother-in-law or from the person in the backyard. Very important. Today, in this session, we're going to talk about how to raise super kids. And I'm going to give you some key ideas that you can use. And I have three kids who I think are super kids. I have Christina, who is seven. I have Michael, who is five. And I have little David, who is 1 year old. And these kids are just great. And everything that I'm going to tell you, we use on them seven days a week. And I can promise you this: the law of sowing and reaping is true with children. What you sow in your children, you reap in your children. Everything that you put into your children, you're going to get out, positive or negative. But if you put good into your children, the wonderful thing is that they will blossom like flowers.

So this starts us off with a basic question: What is the role of parenting? What is the key role of parenting? The answer to that question, in my estimation, is very simple. The role of parenting, most important job that we enter into, the role of parenting is to nurture children. That's all. The role of parenting is to nurture children until they're 18 years of age, until they reach the age of maturity, and to build high self-esteem in those children. To build high self-esteem. In my estimation, this is the key role of being a parent. Nothing else is significant or important next to the building of self-esteem. Why is that? Because if you can raise a child to the age of 18 where they love themselves, they respect themselves, they unconditionally accept themselves, they consider themselves to be valuable and worthwhile and important young people, they're self-reliant, self-responsible, and capable of making their own decisions, that no matter what life can throw at them in the years to follow, you've set them off on a solid, rock-solid psychological foundation, and they can make their own way and make a wonderful life for themselves and other people. If, however, you give children everything else in the world, but you leave them without this self-esteem, if you leave them without this self-confidence, without this belief in themselves, without this conviction that they can do whatever is necessary to be successful, if you leave them anything except self-esteem, to that degree, you have not succeeded as a parent. So raising children and building high self-esteem in children becomes the organizing principle of parenting. The organizing principle means that you continually ask, knowing that everything counts, you continually ask, "Does this build self-esteem in my child? Is this situation, is this issue, is my response contributing toward building and nurturing this little human being that's been entrusted to me, or is it not?" Uh, with Christina, my first child, wonderful little girl, I have explained to her at a very early age that she came to me, as Khalil Gibran explains in his book, The Prophet, she came to Barbara and I from God, and that our job is to take care of her and to love her until she grows up, and that she doesn't belong to us, and we don't own her. And our job is not to shape her the way we want her to be shaped. Our job is to nurture her and discipline her and train her and give her every opportunity to grow and expand and develop. But our job is just to take care of her until she grows up. And she understands that very clearly, that we are there to nurture her and to build high self-esteem, and that she came from God. And she thinks of herself as being really, really special because, surprise, surprise, none of her friends have been told that. So these are the organizing principles that we use with our children.

Now, no parent is perfect. Parents make mistakes. Parents get tired. Parents get irritable. Parents shout at their kids. Parents spank their kids and punish their kids. But generally speaking, if we use the organizing principle of building high self-esteem in our children, these are the things to remember. Number one is, destructive criticism is extremely painful to a child. Destructive criticism sets children up for a lifetime of inferiority complex, low self-esteem, fears of failure and rejection. So never use destructive criticism on your children. Never run your children down. Never use destructive criticism on your children. Instead, do everything possible to build them up. That doesn't mean that you don't discipline them. It doesn't mean that you don't control them. But you never say, "You're a bad boy," or "You're a bad girl," or "You're a little brat," or "You're no good," or "You never tell the truth." You never say anything to your children about themselves that you do not want to become part of their personalities. Because remember, it goes straight past the conscious mind into the subconscious and it's programmed away and accepted as a truth because you said it, even in a moment of anger. So never use destructive criticism on your children. Children are very vulnerable to destructive criticism.

Number two, remember that lack of love, or love withheld, is the major reason for psychological, physical, and emotional problems in life. That children need love. And if you deprive children of love, and it is not, by the way, what you think inside, it is the child's perception. Everything is perception. Now, the child is pretty shallow at in the formative years. The child doesn't know that you really love the child unless you tell the child, show the child, demonstrate to the child over and over and over again. Many children have grown up and found themselves visiting psychiatrists and psychologists and trying to wrestle through the problem that they never believe that their parents love them. And if you talk to the parents, they say, "Well, of course I love my kids." They say, "Well, did you tell your kids?" "Well, no, I didn't tell them, but they know I love them." No, children don't know. As they say, they need the words.

Number three is, remember that children need a continuous flow of love and approval. Love and approval is the emotional, psychological lifeline that children have to have in order to grow. Just imagine that your children are on an intravenous, and this intravenous has the critical nutrients for the development of their personality. And the critical nutrient in that intravenous is the words and gestures of love and approval, and a continuous flow. And if you cut off the flow, it's like cutting off the flow of nutrients or cutting off the oxygen flow to the emotional brain. They need it every day. They need it every night. They need it morning, noon, and night. They need it continuously. When they're growing, they're very much like growing children need a lot of food. Got to have a lot of food because they're growing. They need a lot of emotional support when they're growing too.

A fourth thing to remember is children need praise. Praise is what grows children. As a matter of fact, they found that when you praise a child, their physiological system actually vibrates with new energy. They need encouragement. Remember, children are afraid because they're little kids in a big world. They need encouragement all the time. "You can do it. You can do it. Sure, you can do it. Go ahead, give it a try." Also, they need reinforcement. Sometimes they fall on their face. Sometimes they do it right. They need to be told, "Hey, you did a great job. That's wonderful." They need to be praised and reinforced. They need patience. Children need a lot of patience because they seem to be slow in learning. The kindest thing you can do for your children is to be patient, be supportive, also to be, um, uh, uh, loving, and also to be kind. Children need an enormous amount of kindness, and they need caring. They need tenderness. They need gentleness. They need, especially though, they need patience when they are the least patient, when they are the most exasperating, is when they need the most patience from you, the most kindness, the most understanding, the most compassion.

Now, the fifth point here is to tell your children you love them every day. Tell them you love them every day. I have been surprised. I've been surprised. Tell them you love them every day. How many parents don't tell their children that they love them? They say, "Well, now, a kid knows I love them." I've had arguments. They say, "Well, they know I love them. I don't have to tell them." The fact is that kids need to know. And the reason, of course, that we don't is why? It's because our parents never told us that they loved us. If we grew up in a household where our parents never said, "I love you," and "I care for you," and "I wish the very best for you," and they never gave us praise and encouragement, we'll grow up being very uncomfortable. But I'll tell you this, that if you'll tell your kids you love them on a regular basis, they'll tell you back, and they will teach you how to love. So learn to use the words over and over again.

Now, here's four behaviors that parents can use to tell their children that they really love them. Behavior number one is, the greatest gift that a parent can give to a child is called unconditional love. Make sure that the child knows that you love them 100% no matter what they do, no matter what happens, that nothing in the world can ever stop you from loving them 100%. It's absolutely critical. With my little girl and my little boy, I have a little game with them that I play with them called the Love Game. And I ask them, "How much do I love you?" And we go through a game. And they say, "Well, this much." I say, "Come on now. I say, this much." Come on. "If this much." And finally, they say, "This much." And I said, "Well, what about when I shout at you?" They say, "Well, you still love me this much." I say, "What about when I put you in your bedroom?" They say, "You still love us this much." I say, "What about when I shout at you and put you in your bedroom, make you stand in the corner?" They say, "You still love us this much, Daddy, because no matter what we do, you love us all the time." Now, that's the very kindest thing that you can ever convince your kids of. I do this to condition them. I do this because I want it driven so down deep into their subconscious mind that they are so totally loved that they can go throughout their life as little kids growing up and never, never, never question that their mommy and daddy really love them. Remember, the phenomenon of conditional love is what breeds the fear of rejection, which breeds feelings of inferiority and insecurity. Children, by the way, who are not brought up with enough love in their formative years, develop what is called a deficiency need, and they spend the rest of their lives, like Diogenes with his lamp, looking for an honest man. They spend the rest of their lives looking for the love that they were deprived of in childhood. Be very alert to that. You cannot give a child too much love in the formative years. You cannot love a child too much. You can give them buckets and buckets and buckets of love. Give them all the love they can absorb.

So number two way that you show your love is with eye contact. Children have emotional fuel tanks, and they drink in the love of their parents through their parents' eyes. And when you look at your child with love and you say, "I love you. I love you very much," the child just feels wonderful all over. So say, "I love you," but look them in the eye. Do you know that most parents only look their children in the eye when they're scolding them? That most children grow up today with a very distinct uneasiness about direct eye contact from adults. That in our society, direct eye contact is considered a sign of hostility because so many of us have grown up with our parents only looking at us when they're scolding us. And when they're speaking nicely to us, sometimes they just watch the television or read the paper. So look the child right in the eye.

The third is physical contact. Remember, children are very emotional and very visceral. They're very physical, and they need physical contact. They need to be hugged. They need to be kissed. They need to be embraced. They need to be patted. They need to be carried. And every single time that you hold your child with warmth and love, starting from infancy all the way up to when they become grown-ups, and you pat them on the back, or put your arm around them, or pat them on the head, physical contact, as it says in the song, "Touch my hair when you pass my chair." Little things mean a lot. Contact with your children is one of the ways that you tell them that you love them. Now, interestingly enough, in in studies that were done in the late '40s, they found that infants who were not held in hospitals and very, and embraced while they were being fed, actually began to atrophy, shrivel up, stop taking nutrition, and many of them died of a disease called marasmus, where they lacked that physical warmth and contact. So physical contact is absolutely essential to a child's healthy well-being.

And number four is focused attention. By the way, it's interesting, many, many fathers have this idea that if you give a child too much hugging, a male child, a boy, too much hugging, too much kissing at an early age, you'll make them effeminate. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. The more hugging, the more kissing, the more physical contact that a little boy has with his mother and father, and especially his father, the more masculine, the more self-assured, the more self-confident he grows up. The less he gets, the more insecure, the more angry, the more stressed he is. So remember that you can't give a child, male or female, more physical, too much physical contact. And focused attention means that you spend time with the child every day, just you and the child, walking, talking, listening. No television, no newspaper, no one else. Just a few minutes a day. That tells the child that the child is really valuable. You see, parents, children whose parents don't spend time with them alone are convinced that the reason mommy and daddy is not doing it is because there's something wrong with me. They don't know that the parents are busy or doing something else. They just feel that there's something defective about them, and that's why the parents don't spend the time with them. So be very careful. It's the perception of the child, not the reality.

All right, now the next, number six, is positive expectations. Positive expectations were found by Dr. David McClelland of Harvard University to be one of the best single determinants of peak performance as a young person. Positive expectations of the child by the parent causes the child to do everything possible to grow up and fulfill the parents' expectations. As a matter of fact, he found that there were two things: one was a democratic household. That in a democratic household, where the child was expected to contribute his or her opinion at an early age. And in a democrat, in a household where the parents said, in effect, "I believe in you. No matter what you do, I believe in you. I believe you're going to do well." That these two factors alone led children to becoming high achievers in their teens and in their early 20s, sometimes 10, 20 years ahead of children who were not brought up in democratic households where their opinions were contributed, were were solicited and and valued, and where their parents expressed negative expectations. Like, remember that you've heard many times, kid works hard, comes home with five A's and a B. First thing the parent says is, "What's this B?" Not, "Look how great the A's are," but "What's the B?" What this does is it completely demoralizes the child. So positive expectations are critical to the growth of a healthy personality.

Number seven is, teach your children to say, "I like myself," from an early age. Teach your children to say, "I like myself," from an early age. "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." You see, high con-, high self-concept children, high self-esteemed children, like themselves too much to get into trouble at school. They get better grades. They're more popular. They're better liked by their schoolmates and by their teachers. They have much less a tendency to use drugs. They have much more resistance to peer pressure. They don't get into trouble. They don't vandalize. So teach your children to say, "I like myself. I like myself. I like myself." With our children, we taught them as soon as they could talk to say, "I like myself and I love myself." "I love myself. I love myself." And they stand in front of the mirror, and they look in the mirror, and they say, "I love myself. I love myself." And they act like they love themselves. People come up to us on the street and they say, and this is great, they say to us, "Those kids aren't afraid of anything." Those kids aren't afraid of anything. And that was our great desire after we came from very negative childhoods and very destructively critical parents, we wanted our kids to grow up not to be afraid. So this is, these are the things that you do, the seven key things to cause your children to grow up and feel terrific about themselves.

Now, this brings us to an important point. Many parents who have been through our course at this point and earlier in this course feel very guilty and uneasy. They feel a little bit tense because they know they've shouted at their kids. They've been critical of their kids. They've hurt their kids. Their kids are sometimes having personality problems. Their kids are having problems with grades, schools, friends. Their kids have low self-esteem or feelings of inferiority. And the parents are uneasy and tense because they realize that they've done to their children what their parents did to them. And now they're looking at the, they now they're reaping the harvest, if you like. They're looking at their children and they realize that what your children are is more a result of what you have done and said to them than any other reason. So here is the solution to that. Absolutely amazing. It is possible for you to undo the past with this very simple technique. First thing you do when you go home from this course is you gather your children around you. You bring them around you, and you sit them down, and you apologize to them for all of your hitherto destructive criticism. You say to them, "I've been to a course. I understand the effect of destructive criticism, and I'm sorry for every single thing I ever said or ever did that caused you to feel bad about yourself, and I apologize. And I ask you to accept my apology." Now, this is the most incredible thing that a parent can do for a child. Because children want to love their parents, and they want their parents to love them. But it is the destructive criticism that builds a wall of distrust and fear and insecurity. And when you, as the parent, and only you can do it, when you, as the parent, apologize and say, "I'm sorry. Will you accept my apology?" The children feel suddenly liberated, like a great weight has been removed from them.

Now, why do you do this? Well, because the purpose is for you to accept 100% responsibility for everything guilt-producing that you've ever done or said to them. Accept 100% responsibility and say, "I am responsible. I'm sorry. I apologize. Will you accept my apology?" And your children will be absolutely amazed. We've seen children whose entire lives have been transformed. 15, 16-year-old children in reformatories and boys or girls' homes, problem children that have been in trouble for years, literally transformed overnight in personality. I had a couple of parents go through this course not long ago, and they went home, and they had a 16-year-old daughter. And there was no communication. She was withdrawn. She was shy. She did not talk to the parents. And her parents went home and sat her down and apologized to her. They realized that they'd been complaining and complaining and complaining. Do you know the average parent in America complains and criticizes their child eight times for every one time they praise the child? Eight times. Eight psychological lashes across the developing psyche or emotions of that child. They realized they'd gotten into a habit of criticizing and complaining. They went home and they apologized. And they said, she came down to breakfast the next day, and she was transformed. They said she was like, like, like a nightingale. She was happy. She was laughing. She was extroverted. She and her mother became tremendous friends. That she and her mother and her father began going out for dinner. I mean, it was just like, like a miracle. I saw a family once where the father had raised 10 children. He'd come from a negatively destructively critical environment, and he had been destructively critical of his all his children. Many of them had serious marital problems. Some of them had serious psychological problems, problems with with their spouses. The oldest one was over 30, the youngest one was 14. At the end of the seminar, they're all in there, all the children, all the spouses, the father and mother. At the end of the seminar, he got up in the room and turned around and went from child to child and said, "I apologize. Will you forgive me?" And as he went to each child, each child broke down in tears and started crying. And by the time that circle had been made, everybody in the room was crying. It was absolutely phenomenal, and the family was transformed overnight.

Then the next thing you do, so logical, so obvious, promise never to do it again. Promise never to do it again. Why? To make sure that it's clear. And then, finally, give them permission to remind you when you forget. Give them permission to remind you when you forget, because you will forget, or when you slip from time to time. And make it, let them say, "Daddy, is that destructive criticism?" Or "Mommy, is that destructive criticism?" And you say, "Yes, it is. You're right. I apologize." You will find that if you make it a game to abolish destructive criticism, this is your goal in your household. Do not allow destructive criticism in your household. Abolish destructive criticism. Do not allow anybody in your household to destructively criticize anybody else. Make it absolutely clear that you can argue, you can fight, you can disagree. All families do that. But nobody is allowed to devalue or run down the other person. Make it a game, and make sure that you catch each other, and get it to the point where a person says, "Is that destructive criticism?" Or a person can say, "I don't accept that." And if you made a mistake, you back off and you say, "I'm sorry."

Now, with my little kids, I learned this idea before my kids came along. With my little kids, what I said to them was, what I say to them is, "Do you forgive me? I'm sorry. I apologize. Do you forgive me?" And now, sometimes we'll have an argument. I'll send them to my bedroom, their bedrooms. And Michael will come to me. And he came to me the other day, and he said, "Daddy," he said, "I forgive you for sending me to my bedroom." And it was the cutest thing you could imagine. I said, "Michael, I'm sorry. Thank you very much. I apologize." And if you apologize all the time, you keep the decks open.

Now, one final point that I don't want to forget is this: is that in order to apologize to your children, you've got to get your ego out of the way. You have to put the mental health of your children ahead of anything else. When you apologize, it takes courage and character.

For you to apologize, it takes courage and character. It takes tremendous strength for an adult to apologize to a child. But when you lead by example, you build courage and character in your children. Do you know how many people spent half of their times, half of their life, trying to avoid admitting, "I was wrong. I made a mistake"? When you demonstrate courage and character to your children by saying, "I'm sorry. I made a mistake. We don't use destructive criticism in this house," you demonstrate to them that they too can demonstrate courage and character. They too can say, "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I made a mistake." They too can apologize when they say or do something that hurts someone else. And setting that example for your children sets them off on a foundation of high self-esteem, of high self-value, and enables them to spend their entire lives realizing their potential rather than compensating for their deficiencies. It is the kindest thing that you can do for a child, and I hope you do it for yours.

Session 27: Finding True Purpose in Life. Now we come to the final question: What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of your life? Why are you here? Why do you exist at all? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you have a life? Why are you on the earth? Is it simply to, uh, be born, to grow up, to work, to reproduce, to die? Or is there something else? In my estimation, there is something else, something far more important. In this session, I want to talk to you about my discoveries and my thoughts about what the true purpose of life is. The true purpose of life, in my estimation, is to find a mission. Some of the wisest men and women of this century and of previous centuries have looked at this whole idea of why a human being is put on this Earth, and they've come to the conclusion that we have put on this Earth to fulfill our potential by finding our true mission in life. E.M. Fox calls this your heart's desire. What is your heart's desire? Your heart's desire is something that is placed deep down inside you, maybe even before you're born, and it's something that calls to you and sings to you and lures you on throughout your life. And the reason that we say that only one or two or five out of a 100 people fulfill their potential in any given generation is because most people ignore the callings of this heart's desire. They push it aside, they ignore it, they pretend it isn't there. They get involved in bills and families and business and careers, and this tugs at them. Sometimes they don't get into it until later on in life, but every single person has the ability to establish for themselves a mission.

So then, let's look at the men, women who have affected mankind in the most positive and profound way throughout all of history, in our civilization, in our culture. The most powerful person was Jesus of Nazareth, a humble carpenter who preached for 3 years in Galilee and then died in Jerusalem, but has had more of an impact on more people in this world than any other man who ever lived, than all the other kings and all the other monarchs and dictators of history. One simple man who never wrote a word, never appeared on television, never cut a record, was the man who has had more influence than anyone else. And beyond Jesus, there was Buddha. The followers of Buddha, and interestingly enough, Buddha taught a very similar message to Jesus. He taught the message of universal love. He taught the message of the brotherhood of all mankind, that all of us are united in loving each other. And also Muhammad. And Muhammad has followers that number in the hundreds of millions. Buddha's followers number almost a billion. The followers of Jesus number probably two billion. And if you look down the people who have been affected by them, you have St. Francis of Assisi, has had a profound influence establishing The Franciscan Order. You have, in our day, you have Mother Teresa of Kolkata, having a profound influence. You have my mentor, Albert Schweitzer of Africa, Schweitzer. And you have people like Florence Nightingale and others.

What is the unifying theme of these people? A man named Ralph Waldo Trine wrote a wonderful book many years ago called "What the Whole World's a Seeking," what the whole world is looking for. And his conclusion, very wisely, that what the whole world is looking for, what you and I are looking for, is some mission that we can lose ourselves in, that somehow enriches and ennobles and benefits the lives of other people. In fact, we have found that we only become great to the degree to which we are, you are able to lose yourself in something bigger and grander and better than yourself. That's why selfish people, for instance, people who think only of themselves, are only to be pitied because they never have any joy or happiness or fulfillment. Now, Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer or some of these people, maybe they never made very much money, but the contribution that they made, the model that they set, the example that they set for us, has affected more people than perhaps all the people who may have made money throughout all of history. It's only when you find a mission in which you can lose yourself that you achieve true greatness in life.

From the time we began this seminar to now, we have been aiming it at this one simple conclusion: that the purpose of life, your purpose, your earthly purpose, is simply this: it is to develop and become a totally loving person. It is to look at the great models of mankind, and you'll find that the great models of mankind, the ones who have had an impact far beyond their times, Jesus and Buddha and Muhammad and the teachers and scholars of all the religions, have been those who have strived toward becoming totally loving toward other people. They have given their entire lives in service, and service is the word. How can you tell if you're a loving person? You can tell by the value and the quality and the quantity of the service that you give to others, unselfishly, from your heart, with no hope of reward. Now, by becoming totally loving persons, there's a very simple measure. We develop loving relationships. That's why we talk about how important it is with regard to our marriages. There are many people who want to go out in the world and develop loving relationships, but they haven't yet developed those beautiful loving relationships at home, with their spouses and with their children, with their close friends. So developing loving relationships is the highest order of human life. How can you tell? Because at any single time in your life, if you want to take stock of your assets, if you want to take stock of your accomplishments, your most precious resources, you will find that they will always be caught up in the people that you love and have loved, and the people who love you and who have loved you. That when you look back over the landscape of your life as an adult or as an older person, you look back, and you'll find that you won't remember the money that you made or the careers that you or the jobs that you have. What you'll remember is the people you loved and the people who loved you and the people who still do. So developing a high quality and quantity of loving relationships is the great business of life.

The people like Jesus and Buddha and Muhammad and St. Francis and others of this day and previous days are men and women who committed their lives to serving others, and they did it because they had this tremendous love to give away to mankind. Now, how do you become a totally loving person? It's not that complicated. It's not easy, but it is simple. Number one is accept yourself unconditionally. Accept yourself as a valuable and worthwhile human being. Don't be the type of person who doesn't feel that they're good enough. Just accept yourself unconditionally. Recognize that you were put here on this Earth for a specific purpose, a valuable purpose. That God doesn't make anybody extra. That God doesn't make no junk. That there is nobody on this Earth that is here for no reason. Everybody has a purpose, and your purpose is to find your purpose. Your purpose is to find your mission, the place where you can make a significant contribution. The second part of becoming a totally loving person is to accept total responsibility for everything that you are and everything that you become. Accept total responsibility, which means no blaming, no excuses, just get on with it. Number three is learn to forgive. Again, the key to the kingdom of heaven is forgiveness. The key to the kingdom of heaven, the key to all spiritual development, the straight gate, is forgiveness, the ability to freely forgive other people. No grudges, no anger, no frustration, no grudges. Just let go of all grievances against you. That's why it says in the Lord's Prayer, it says, "And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who who have sinned against us." Number four is feed your mind with loving thoughts. Feed your mind with loving, positive thoughts. Don't feed your mind with mental candy. Don't feed your mind with mental junk. Feed your mind with a kind of thoughts that are consistent with you becoming the very best person that you can possibly be. Number five is set noble goals and work toward them. Set noble goals and ideals to be the guiding lights of your life. Noble ideals and values. Say to yourself, "Are these the values? Are these the goals? Are these the ideals of the very best person that you could possibly be?" Number six is take good care of your body. Take good care of your body. Remember, the body is the temple of the soul. Take good care of your body. Put into it good food, give it good exercise, give it good rest, give it good nutrition. Take good care of your body. And number seven is practice the Golden Rule. Practice the Golden Rule. In that, practice kindness, patience, tolerance, more than anything else, tolerance of the diversity and difference of other people toward others. Love, understanding, compassion. Remember, everybody in the world is carrying a heavy load.

Now, as you practice these principles, you will start to become a more and more loving person. As you practice these principles, you will find yourself drawn almost inevitably, almost inexorably, you'll find yourself drawn toward your mission. You'll find yourself drawn toward the area of service. Now, believe me, one of the best areas of service in the whole world is the business world, because our free enterprise system is based on serving other human beings. But you can serve other people in any profession, in any capacity. You'll have an opportunity to give and to increase the quality and quantity of your service to others, to enhance and enrich and uplift the lives of other people. Remember, you're put on this Earth to do something for other people. The measure of how well you're doing as a human being is very simply this: is that you only have love to the degree to which you express love to others. You only have love to the degree to which you express love to others. In other words, you do not have love in isolation of other human beings. You cannot say, "I am a loving person" without having loving relationships as the proof, if you like. You can only have love to the degree to which you feel love for other persons. So the more you express love to other people, and that's why we are given families, and that's why we are given intimate relationships, and that's why children are sent to us to teach us to develop our breadth and depth and capacity for love in such a way that we could never learn otherwise. So we express love to others, and then once you develop love for yourself by accepting yourself unconditionally, practice giving your love away. Practice giving your love away. You see, an interesting thing about love is that love only grows by sharing. That love only grows by sharing. You cannot have any more love than you have right at this moment in your life, except to the degree to which you give it away to other people. So love only grows by sharing.

Now, the wonderful thing is that the more you give away, the more you have. The more you give love away, the more you have. So the more you give, the more you have to give. The less you give, the less you have to give. This is where the law, "the more you give, the more you have," you can never give it away. This is where the law of sowing and reaping comes in more than anything else. The law of compensation, in that you, if you give just a little bit of love away, just a little bit, it's enough because that alone will cause a flow to start coming back to you. If you give a little bit more, more will come back to you until you get onto the upward spiral of life.

Now, many years ago, I met a beautiful grandmother who had come up in a home where her parents had taught her to be kind and compassionate and loving to others. And when her parents died, she went back and met with her other brothers and sisters to divide up their possessions. And there was only one thing that she wanted. She'd married a very rich industrialist. The only one thing she wanted was a little plaque that hung over the fireplace of that loving home, home all the time she was growing up. And on the plaque was a little quatrain or little verse. And I, when she told it to me, I wrote it down, and I'll share it with you. And it said this:

"Only one life that soon has passed,

Only what's done with love will last.

Only one life that soon has passed,

Only what's done with love will last."

Now, if you understand that, you realize if you look back over your life, you'll find that only the things that you did with love have lasted. Only the things that were done with love have had any lasting value. And if you use that as your guiding, organizing principle in life, that only what's done with love will last, you will start to move and evolve more surely toward the stars. The opposite of love is fear. The opposite of fear is love. If fear is the great obstacle that holds us back from fulfilling our potential, love is the great doorway that kicks open all the possibilities of the universe for us. And if you will practice this: first of all, learn to love and accept yourself unconditionally. You are valuable. You are a valuable and worthwhile human being, no matter what happens. You are still a valuable and worthwhile human being. Love yourself unconditionally. Accept full responsibility for your life. Freely forgive others. Look for the best. Take care of yourself. Work on goals that are worthy of you. Set a mission that is challenging for you. And practice giving your love away to others, and you will develop more surely toward the stars. I wish you luck. I wish you success. I wish you love. Thank you very much. This is the end of side two. Please fast forward the tape to the end to queue up side one for your next listening.