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Live A Great Life
The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the things we have done and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.
—H. G. Wells
The Law of Correspondence is perhaps the most important of all laws in determining your success or failure in life. As we’ve dis- cussed in previous chapters, this law says that your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. It says that whatever you are on the inside, you will soon see the results of it on the outside. When you change your thinking, you change your life.
This law applies to everything you do. Your inner world of knowledge and preparation will determine your outer world of in- come and career success.Your inner world of personality develop- ment will determine your outer world of friendships and relationships.Your inner attitudes toward health and fitness will de- termine the condition of your physical body.Your inner beliefs and expectations will determine your outer attitudes and your behav- iors toward other people.Your outer world will always reflect your inner world.
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■ HAPPINESS IS THE SUPREME GOAL
Aristotle, perhaps the greatest of the philosophers, wrote more than 2,300 years ago that the ultimate aim of all human action is happi- ness. He concluded that everything a person does is to achieve hap- piness of some kind. Sometimes they are successful, and sometimes they are unsuccessful, but happiness is always the target each per- son aims at.
He concluded that every act is merely an interim step in the di- rection of happiness. For example, you want to get a good job.Why? So you can earn good money. Why? So you can get a comfortable home and a nice car.Why? So you can have good relationships and a nice family. Why? So that you can have a satisfying home life. Why? The final answer, the ultimate goal, is so that you can be happy. Everything that you or anyone else does is aimed at happi- ness, however you define it and however successful you are at achieving it.
■ THE ROLE OF GOODNESS
One of Aristotle’s greatest insights on the subject of happiness was his conclusion that “Only the good can be happy, and only the vir- tuous can be good.”
This is one of the most important observations in the history of human thought and experience. “Only the good can be happy, and only the virtuous can be good.”
What I have found in my many years of research into philoso- phy and psychology is that only people who are genuinely good inside can be happy for any period of time. And in my years of study of the foundation qualities of self-confidence, I have found that only men and women with clear, positive values are able to develop the kind of unshakable self-confidence that makes it possible for them to deal effectively with anything that happens to them.
The fastest way for you to build or to regain your self-confidence is to become absolutely clear about your deepest values and con- victions, and then begin to live by them.The solution to almost all
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human problems is a return to values. In many ways, your unhappi- ness and stress are caused by your drifting away from doing and saying the things that you know are right.
■ INTEGRITY IS ESSENTIAL
The most important single quality for success is the quality of in- tegrity. Aristotle insisted that only a life based on values such as in- tegrity, honesty, courage, generosity, persistence, and sincerity would lead to happiness and personal fulfillment.
I used to think of integrity as only one of the key values, equal to and separate from the others.Then one day a wise and wealthy man pointed out to me that integrity is really the value that guarantees all the others. Integrity is the foundation value on which all of your other val- ues are based. Having true integrity means that you always live and act consistently with your values. If you lack integrity, you will compromise your other values at the slightest temptation.
■ CLARIFY YOUR VALUES
In our strategic planning sessions, both for corporations and for in- dividuals, we start off by asking people to define and clarify their values.You must do the same in your own personal strategic plan- ning. What are your values? What is it that you believe in? What do you stand for? What will you not stand for?
Your ability to clearly define your values is the starting point of your developing the kind of character that causes people to want to be associated with you and which will lead you inevitably to enjoy- ing a good life.When you have a fine and noble character, rooted in solid, life-affirming values, you will be a genuinely good person. As a result, you will be happy inside, no matter what is going on around you.
■ ORGANIZE YOUR VALUES
Once you have defined your values, you should organize them in or- der of priority.To start, you need only three to five key values to cre- ate a foundation for your character and personality. These are the
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values that you personally consider to be more important than any others. The order in which you arrange your values is terribly im- portant as well. This ranking of values largely determines the kind of person you are, and the kind of life you live.
Everything you do is the result of a choice.You are constantly making choices of one kind or another, to do one thing or to do something else.This ability to make choices distinguishes you from all other creatures. Each choice you make is based on your primary values at that time. Each action is based on what you consider to be the most important value at that moment of choice.
■ ACT ON YOUR VALUES
When you choose, your higher-order values always take precedence over your lower-order values. Every act you take, every decision you make, is based on your dominant value at that time.You can do only one thing at a time, and you always have to choose what it is going to be.You always choose what is most valuable to you at that partic- ular moment.
How can you tell what your values are? It’s simple.Your values are only and always expressed in your actions. It is what you do rather than what you say that tells you, and others, what you value most. Especially, it is what you do under pressure, when you are forced to choose, that reveals your true values and beliefs about yourself and the world around you.
■ THE DETERMINANT OF PERSONALITY
Both your choice of values and the order of your values are critical in determining your personality and your life. Here is an example. Imagine that two people have each been through a values clarifica- tion exercise and settled upon the same three values. Only the order is different.
Person A has decided that his top three values, in order of im- portance, are first, family; second, health; and third, career success. This person is saying that he puts his family ahead of his health and career, and his health ahead of his career.This means that if he has
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to choose between family and career, family comes first. If he has to choose between health and career, health comes first.
Person B has the same three values, except that his values are in a slightly different order. His first value is career success. His sec- ond value is his family, and his third value is health.
This means that Person B will put his career ahead of his family if he has to choose. He will put his career and his family ahead of his health if he has to choose.
■ THE BIG QUESTION
Now here are some questions for you.Will there be a difference be- tween Person A and Person B? Will there be a small difference or a large difference? Would you prefer to be friends with Person A or with Person B? Would you be able to tell Person A from Person B if you met them socially or in business?
The answer is that Person B, who chooses career success as his primary value, will be a totally different human being from Person A, who decides that his family is most important to him.The order of family, health, and career is a life-enriching organization of val- ues. A person who lives his life consistent with these values will be a far happier person than a person who places his career ahead of his family and especially ahead of his health. This is why you must se- lect both your values and their order of importance with care.Your values and their order determine your whole life.
■ INTEGRITY IS A WAY OF LIVING
Once you have determined your values, your level of integrity can be measured by how rigidly you adhere to them. A value is not something that you compromise when it is convenient. Either you have it or you do not.Your choice of values and your resolution to live by those values form your character and your personality.
Throughout history, great men and women have been men and women of character. They have been people who lived on the basis of high and noble values.They have been honored and respected for the values they stood for and represented.
One of the great problems in our society today is the phenome-
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non of “situational values” or “situational ethics.” These are the re- sult of people changing their ideas of right and wrong depending on the situation, and often the temptation of the moment.What is even worse is when they fool themselves into believing that they are peo- ple of character when they are really only people of convenience.
■ WHAT YOU DO UNDER PRESSURE
Situational values are demonstrated when people say they believe in one thing, but they do another.They say that they believe in telling the truth, but then they lie when it is convenient, or excuse the lies of another. An individual is defined by what he or she does, not what he or she says.
Some people are confused by their emotions. They believe that if their intentions are sincere, their actions don’t matter. They feel that if they wish or hope something, it is the same as actually doing it. But it is only what you actually do when you are forced to choose, especially under pressure, that tells you who you really are inside.
It is vital to your success and happiness that you are impeccably honest with everyone you know and deal with, both in your personal life and in your career. There is nothing that will earn you the sup- port of people faster than for you to develop the reputation of being a person of character and integrity. At the same time, there is noth- ing that will damage your reputation and sabotage your career faster than for you to get the reputation of being the kind of person that others cannot trust or rely on.
■ BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
Honesty means that you are always true to the very best that is in you. As Polonius says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Being true to yourself is the starting point of developing a great character.This begins with your always living in truth with yourself. You do not delude yourself or play games with your own mind.You don’t try to believe things that are completely impossible.You don’t
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hope and pray that things would be different than they are.You deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it were.
■ ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Every job bears the signature of the person who did it. Being true to yourself means that you always do your very best at whatever job or responsibility you take on. Honesty and integrity on the inside are expressed as quality and excellence in your work on the outside.You can tell what you are made of on the inside by the amount of time and attention that you put into doing the very best job possible at everything that is given to you to do. Don’t take it on unless you are willing to do it in an excellent fashion.
Integrity means that you are always truthful, straightforward, and honest with everyone in your life. Just as you are true to your- self, you are true to others as well.You live in truth with others, at home and at work.
If you ask people whether they are honest, almost everyone will say that they are. Most people do not lie, cheat, steal, or engage in dishonest behaviors of any kind. But being truly honest means that you are honest with everyone in your life.This means that not only do you never lie; you never live a lie.You never stay in a situation that is wrong for you or in a condition that undermines your in- tegrity or makes you unhappy.You never compromise your integrity by biting your lip and refusing to say what you truly think and feel.
■ YOUR HIGHEST GOAL
One of the hallmarks of the truly honest person is that they set peace of mind as their highest goal. Once you have set peace of mind as your primary aim in life, you organize your other goals and activities around it. Being truly honest means that you refuse to compromise your peace of mind for anything or anyone.You only do and say the things that you feel to be right in every situation.
Honesty and integrity mean that you listen to yourself and that you trust your inner voice.You listen to your intuition and you let it guide you to do and say the right things at the right time.When you are disturbed or unhappy, you sit quietly by yourself in solitude,
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waiting and listening for the guidance that always comes.When you get an idea or insight into the right thing to do, you put it into ac- tion.You trust your higher mind. This is the key to living in truth with yourself and others.
■ THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR OWN MIND
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance,” said, “Guard your integrity as a sacred thing.” He went on to say, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Truthfulness is the indispensable requirement for the develop- ment of character, and the development of character must be a cen- tral aim of your life. Aristotle said, “The purpose of education is the development of the character of the young.”Today, in the United States, many young people have not been brought up with a clear sense of right and wrong. Many people have been told that values are rela- tive. Many people have been told, for example, that if they like to shoplift, then that particular value is just as good as a person who believes that shoplifting is wrong.
This form of value relativity leads down a blind alley. It leads to failure, frustration, and unhappiness. The fact is that values are not relative.There are values that are life-enhancing and there are values that are life-destroying. If a value is positive, living by it improves the quality of your life and your relationships with others. A negative value hurts your relationships and detracts from the quality of your life.You can easily tell the difference, because living by a positive value makes you feel happy, and practicing a negative value makes you feel unhappy.
■ FACE THE TRUTH
Living in truth means that you face the truth about yourself and the world around you. You face the truth about your work and your relationships. You look yourself directly in the eye and you live consistently with your innermost convictions.You do not play games with yourself or wish and hope that things could be differ- ent than they are.
Integrity means that you accept that your world can only get
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better when you get better. No one is going to come along and change things for you. If you want things to change, you are going to have to make the changes yourself.
Integrity means that you accept that your marriage gets better only when you become a better spouse. Your business gets better only when you become a better manager or executive.Your sales re- sults and customers get better only when you become a better sales- person. Your financial life improves only when you become more intelligent and disciplined about money.
■ ACCEPT PEOPLE THE WAY THEY ARE
Especially, honesty means that you accept people the way they are, not demanding that they be the way you want. You do not go through life wishing, hoping, and expecting that people will change and be different so as to suit you. One of the basic principles of hu- man life is that, with few exceptions, people don’t change.
In fact, under pressure, people not only do not change, but they become even more of what they already are inside. If a person has a difficult personality, under pressure he will become even more diffi- cult. If someone is stubborn or inflexible, when she is put under pressure she will become even more stubborn and inflexible. If a person is slightly dishonest, when he is subjected to pressure or temptation he will become totally dishonest. People don’t change.
■ BUSINESS AND COMPETITION
Honesty in our fast-moving world also means that you see the world of business and competition as it is, not as you wish it were, espe- cially with regard to the explosion of information and technology. Many people think that they can make a token effort to keep up with the growth of knowledge in their field and the growth of tech- nology in their work. But this minimum effort is not acceptable to the honest person. The truly honest person realizes that today you have to run just to stay in the same place. The truly honest person realizes that knowledge is doubling in every field every two to three years, and this means that your knowledge has to double every two to three years as well.
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Jack Welch, the past president and CEO of General Electric, once said, “If the rate of change outside your organization is greater than the rate of change inside your organization, the end is in sight.” This principle applies to you as a person as well. If you are not con- tinually learning and upgrading your skills, you are in danger of be- coming obsolete.
■ WHAT ARE YOU WORTH?
All over the country today, people are being laid off or fired by the thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, each year. In many cases, these people have allowed their levels of knowledge and skill to decline to the point where their companies could no longer af- ford to keep them on the payroll.
Many of them were not completely honest with themselves. They did not continually upgrade their knowledge and skills so they could continue to add more and more value to their companies. They hoped that the dramatic changes taking place in the national and international economies would not affect them. And as a result, they got caught in the layoffs when the market for their products or services slowed down.
It takes the average white-collar professional two to seven months to find another job, usually taking a pay cut of 14 to 40 per- cent. Some people get laid off from highly paid jobs and never make that kind of money again. And if they don’t get busy upgrading their knowledge and skills, it can happen again.
■ FOCUS ON ADDING VALUE
Honesty means that you accept that your income is totally deter- mined by your ability to contribute value to your company and, through your company, to your customers. An individual must gen- erate three dollars of bottom-line profit for every dollar of salary or income that the person earns from the company. If you are not cur- rently generating three dollars of profit or cost savings to the bot- tom line for your company, your job is a prime candidate for outsourcing, downsizing, or eliminating. Honesty means that you
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accept this as a fact and then do everything in your power to main- tain and increase your value.
True honesty means that you never expect to get out more than you put in.You never expect to get something for nothing.You don’t gamble or buy lottery tickets, which in a way is an act of dishonesty. It is an attempt to get something that you have not earned. The truly honest person never attempts to get rewards without working, or to get rich quick or easy.
In the United States today, millions of people are attracted to the quick fix. If they are employees or executives, they want new and bet- ter jobs, and they want them immediately. They are always looking for shortcuts, and as a result they are always frustrated and unhappy. They hope that problems that have taken many months and years to develop can be solved with a silver bullet of some kind.They are impatient and they want immediate results. But being an honest person requires that you resist the temptation of the quick fix in any part of your life.
■ TRUST IS THE GLUE
Relationships are central to a happy, healthy, satisfying life. All rela- tionships are based on trust. Trust is the glue that holds relation- ships together. You can have all kinds of problems and disagreements with another person, but as long as the trust and re- spect are still there, the relationship can endure. But, if anything ever happens to the trust, the relationship can fall apart quickly, like a house of cards collapsing.
All business relationships are based on trust. All relationships that involve money are dependent on the word of the borrower or the creditor. All relationships with your bankers, your suppliers, your customers, your staff, and everyone else in your financial world are based on that critical element of trust.
Men and women of high integrity are fastidious about the levels of trust that they have built and maintained.They are careful about their credit, and about their financial commitments and arrange- ments. They always keep their word. They are careful about their banking relationships, their credit cards, their bills, and any money that they owe at any time.
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■ A TALE OF TWO BANKRUPTCIES
Some years ago, two people I knew well, in two different businesses, were forced into bankruptcy because of the economic downturn. But the outcomes of their bankruptcies were completely different.
The first of my friends had been meticulously careful about all of his bills and finances throughout his career. He had always paid at least the minimum amounts on his charge cards. If ever he had a financial problem, he went to the person affected and rearranged payments and interest.When he was finally forced into bankruptcy, by a massive and unexpected financial default over which he had no control, he had no choice but to go to court, give up all his assets, and walk away penniless.
But within a week, people were approaching him and offering him money, loans, offices, credit cards, a place to live, and a new car. One of his previous business associates, quite wealthy, mailed him a blank check already signed, saying, “Just fill in the amount you need and let me know for my records; I have complete faith in you.” Aside from removing a great burden of debt from him, his bankruptcy hardly affected him at all.
The second businessman, however, had a completely different experience. When he started to have financial problems, he con- tinually misled and deceived his creditors, people who had trusted him. He neglected to make payments he had promised, and wrote checks that he couldn’t cover. He avoided his creditors when they phoned, and he eventually changed his telephone number. He moved and didn’t tell anyone his new address. He treated people who had trusted him by lending him money as if they were stupid. When he finally went bankrupt, no one wanted anything to do with him. It will take him years to recover, if he ever does. He can’t even get a credit card; he now has to pay cash for everything.
■ THE KEY TO SALES SUCCESS
In sales, trust is the foundation of all relationships. A person will not buy from you until he or she trusts you completely. All top sales- people invest a good deal of time building high-quality, trusting
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relationships with their clients before they ever attempt to sell their products or services.
An association to which I belong commissioned a $50,000 sur- vey of customers last year. Since most of our organizations sell forms of training and consulting services that are somewhat similar, they wanted to find out what caused a purchaser to buy from one company and not another.
One of the questions they asked the customers was what they were most concerned with in making a buying decision. More than 80 percent of the respondents to the survey said that the honesty and integrity of the salesperson was more important than any other factor.
When they asked them what they meant by honesty and in- tegrity in a salesperson, the customers replied that this meant that the salesperson put their interests first.They believed that the sales- person would keep his or her word.They believed the salesperson’s claims about the product.They believed that the salesperson would do what he or she promised, and that the company would fulfill any commitments that the salesperson made. They had a high level of confidence in the word of the salesperson and in everything that he or she did or said in interactions with them.
An interesting fact that came out of this survey was that the quality of the product or service was hardly mentioned. When cus- tomers were asked about their concerns over product quality, they replied that they felt that most products or services at a particular level were fairly similar and would achieve the results offered. The key to the sale was how they felt about the character of the salesper- son, and through the salesperson, the company itself.
■ TRUTHFULNESS IS THE KEY TO CHARACTER
The real essence of character, and the most recognizable expression of honesty and integrity, is truthfulness. If you are completely truth- ful with yourself and others, you will almost always be viewed as a person of high character.
In our society, men and women of character seem to attract op- portunities. Doors are opened for them wherever they go. They are
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introduced to people who can help them. Money and other re- sources are made available to them.This is why the most important quality you can instill in your children is a sense of honesty and the habit of truthfulness in everything they do or say.
■ PARENTS AND CHILDREN
I have four children. Each of my children has been brought up hav- ing the importance of truthfulness drummed into them from an early age.Today, all four of them are adamant truth tellers.They are completely honest. I can ask them any question and they will always tell me the truth.
When they were growing up, I made them each a promise. I said, “You will never get into trouble with me for telling the truth.” And I kept my word. When they did something foolish, as all chil- dren do, I would listen to their stories without judging or criticizing and then ask, “Well, what did you learn?” They soon learned that they could always tell the truth and never suffer criticism or disap- proval.They loved it.
Sometimes they fool around, but all I have to do is ask them for the truth and they will always give it to me, whatever it is. I’m very proud of them. It is absolutely amazing how much better relation- ships are between parents and children when they absolutely trust each other.
■ HUSBANDS AND WIVES
What is true for communications between parents and children is even more important for husbands and wives. One of the best defin- itions of love that I have ever heard is by Ayn Rand: “Love is a re- sponse to values.”
You love another person because he or she represents values that you respect and cherish. The other person embodies qualities that you admire. In short, you love another person for his or her character. All else will change or fade away over time, but character remains.
Truthfulness and honesty between couples requires fidelity and straightforwardness between the two at all times. If a couple is ide- ally suited, they absolutely trust each other and are each other’s best
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friends. There is no one that they would rather talk to or express themselves more honestly with than the other. Character, integrity, and honesty are the foundation qualities of a loving relationship, and are more important than anything else.
■ THE UNIVERSAL MAXIM
There is a wonderful test that you can give yourself on a regular ba- sis to measure whether an act is good or bad, right or wrong. It is simple and you can use it throughout life. It is based on the Univer- sal Maxim of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, postulated more than 200 years ago. He said that you should live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
In other words, before you make a decision or take an action, imagine that everyone else was going to do exactly the same thing. Imagine that your decision was going to become a law for yourself and everyone else.This is the true test of whether your decision is a good one. It is the true test of a value or behavior.What kind of so- ciety would we have if everyone lived and behaved exactly the way you do?
Many of the problems in our society would not exist if this test were applied regularly in debates over public and social policy. Gov- ernments would be slower to approve certain actions in the areas of crime, education, welfare, and business if there was a likelihood that everyone would engage in those actions.
■ SET HIGH STANDARDS FOR YOURSELF
Here are some questions that you can ask yourself on a regular basis: First, ask yourself, “What kind of a world would my world be if everyone in it were just like me?” Just imagine! If everyone in the
11 Chapter
Create Your Own Future
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the promptings of a brave and determined spirit.
—Mark Twain
There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.
—Orison Swett Marden
Every successful person has experienced countless temporary set- backs, obstacles, and even outright defeats, in the course of his or her life. But it has been the ability to respond positively and con- structively to these defeats and to bounce back that ultimately has assured success. This quality of bouncing rather than breaking will determine your success as well.
Dr. Abraham Zaleznik of the Harvard Business School did a study some years ago on the role that disappointment plays in life. Many people had researched and written on motivation and its rela- tionship to success. But Zaleznik was the first person who looked at the other side of the coin.
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■ THINKING AHEAD
If you are a normal, intelligent person, you will organize each area of your life to avoid failure and disappointment as much as possible. You will think ahead and anticipate what could go wrong. You will then take the necessary precautions to guard against setbacks and problems.You will weigh and balance differ- ent options. You will select the course of action that offers the greatest likelihood of success.
Nonetheless, no matter how well you think and plan, things will not always turn out the way you expect. Murphy’s Law says: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Of all the things that can go wrong, the worst possible thing will go wrong at the worst possible time and cost the most amount of money.” Cohen’s Law then adds: “Mur- phy was an optimist!”
Therefore, disappointment comes unbidden. Disappointment comes in spite of your best efforts to avoid it. Disappointment is in- evitable and unavoidable. As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, you are going to experience disappointments in life. And the more goals you set and the more things you try, the more difficulties and problems you will have.
■ THE ONE THING YOU CAN CONTROL
What Dr. Zaleznik discovered was that successful people respond to disappointment differently from unsuccessful people. His conclu- sion was that the way you deal with disappointment is an extremely good predictor of whether you will achieve success in your field, or in life overall.
Since you can’t always avoid disappointment, no matter what you do, the only thing that matters is how you deal with the disap- pointment when it comes upon you, unwanted and unexpected. Do you let it overwhelm you? Do you blow up, become angry, and blame or attack other people? Or do you roll with the punches, and respond effectively?
Successful people deal with disappointment by taking it in stride. Unsuccessful people allow disappointment to stop them. Successful people recover and continue forward. Unsuccessful peo-
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ple often quit and go back. Motivational speaker Charlie Jones says, “It’s not how far you fall but how high you bounce that counts!”
■ THE TRIGGER OF NEGATIVITY
Most negative emotions are triggered by frustrated expectations. You wish, hope, or plan for something to happen in a certain way, and when it doesn’t, you react with impatience and anger. This is quite normal. If you care about a result, you are going to be hurt if you don’t achieve it.
The challenge is that emotions are triggered instantaneously. For this reason, you can have very little control over your emotions and reactions at the moment that something happens to you. It is too late. When the disappointment occurs, you will react instinc- tively and habitually, depending on your previous experiences. When things go wrong, it is too late for you to think of fine and no- ble thoughts.You simply react.
Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, once wrote, “Circum- stances do not make the man; they only reveal him to himself,” and to others, for that matter. It is not the adverse situation that builds your character so much as it reveals your character as it exists at that moment.
■ PREPARE IN ADVANCE
One of the best ways to change your thinking, and your life, is to prepare for disappointment in advance. Set yourself up to bounce back quickly by practicing mental prepreparation.
Mental prepreparation enables you to prepare internally for the inevitable disappointments of life and work, even though you do not know what they are or when they will come.This is one of the most powerful of all thinking techniques that you can use to gain and keep control of your emotions, assuring that they are primarily pos- itive and constructive, no matter what happens.
In mental prepreparation, you begin with the premise that you are going to face all kinds of problems and difficulties when you de- cide to accomplish anything worthwhile in life. In fact, if you set a big, challenging goal for yourself, one that forces you out of your
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comfort zone, you are going to meet with countless obstacles and difficulties that you cannot now imagine.
This trial by endurance seems to go with the territory. Every time you try to be or do something more or different, problems of all kinds will arise in your path. If you are not prepared in advance, they can discourage you and drive you back into your comfort zone. Instead of waiting for the inevitable problems to occur, you mentally prepare for these inevitable difficulties before they happen. You say to yourself: “Today I will face all kinds of ups and downs, diffi- culties and setbacks, but I will not let them get me down. Once I start to- ward my goal, I will be unstoppable!”
■ PRACTICE CRISIS ANTICIPATION
In business consulting, we teach a way of thinking called “crisis an- ticipation.” I encourage decision makers to look six months to a year into the future and ask the question, “What are some of the negative things that could happen that would derail our plans? Of all of them, what are the very worst things that could happen?”
We then make a list of all the different setbacks or unexpected emergencies that could occur that would threaten the enterprise. For example: A competitor could come out with a new product or service that was better and/or cheaper than ours. Interest rates could go up. Government could place new taxes and regulations on our activities. Costs of fuel or raw materials could increase. A key person or persons within the organization could depart for some reason. A key customer or customers could leave and go to a com- petitor. Competitors could cut their prices below costs in order to take business away. The economy could tip into recession and the overall market could shrink dramatically.
In each of these cases, the ability of the company to respond quickly and effectively could determine its very survival.These pos- sible reversals and setbacks should be thought through in advance. The best rule is “no surprises!”
Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands has one of the most complete forward planning processes of any company in the world. It has developed over 600 scenarios to deal with problems that might occur around the world in areas where it has oil and gas op-
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erations. As a result, the company is seldom surprised by anything that happens. It is never caught off guard. It always has a backup plan ready to go. It has also become one of the most continuously profitable and successful companies in the world. Thinking ahead really pays off.
■ LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
What works for large and small corporations can work for you as well.You should practice crisis anticipation regularly in everything you do. Look down the road of your life, like a traveler, and imagine some of the negative things that might happen and how you could respond to them.You will be amazed at how much more positive and confident you will feel when you have already developed alter- native courses of action to some of the worst things that could hap- pen in a particular area.
For example, what would you do if you lost your job today? The idea of losing one’s job is a major fear for most people, affecting 37 percent of the working population according to one study. I re- ceived a letter recently from a gentleman who told me that his fear of losing his job, which he recognized was completely irrational, was so great that it was paralyzing him. It was actually holding him back from doing the kind of work that he had to do in order to keep his job. His fear and his lack of alternatives were actually increasing the likelihood that he would be laid off.
■ YOUR NEW JOB
Sometimes I ask people in my audiences, “What is your next job go- ing to be?” For most people this question comes as a surprise.They have not even thought about what their next job is going to be. But we know that the world of work is changing at a rapid rate.The fact is that you have already changed jobs several times. It is virtually in- evitable that you will change jobs again, and perhaps sooner than you expect.What is your next job likely to be?
When I explain that each person must be preparing for his or her next job, it is a new idea for most people.They either have not thought about it or don’t want to think about it. But the only
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question is this: “What level of knowledge, skills, and ability will you require at your next job in order to continue to earn the kind of money that you want to earn in the future?”
If you don’t think about this question in advance, you may be forced to think about it when your time has run out and the ques- tion is forced upon you.
■ YOUR NEW CAREER
After audience members have thought about what their next job is going to be, I then ask the second question, “What is your next career going to be?” What entirely new field, industry, business, or line of work are you going to be in 5 to 10 years from now?
According to employment experts, a person starting work to- day will have an average of 14 or 15 full-time jobs, each lasting two years or more, over the course of a working lifetime. He or she will also have as many as five different careers, in completely dif- ferent fields, each of which will require new kinds of knowledge and different skills.
Much of what you know about your current work will be obso- lete within five years. Because of rapid changes taking place in every area, your existing store of knowledge, information, ideas, and skills will be of little value.These will have no relevance or application to the job market and the economy of the future.You will need new knowledge and skills if you want to survive and thrive in an increas- ingly competitive society.
This is why Peter Drucker said, “The only skill that will not be- come obsolete in the years ahead is the ability to learn new skills.”
■ CONTINUALLY THINK AHEAD
You probably recall the famous comment by hockey star Wayne Gretzky.When he was asked by a reporter for the secret of his suc- cess on the ice, he replied by saying, “Most players are pretty good, but they go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be.”
This observation is directly relevant to you. Where is your puck going to be three to five years from now? Where is your puck going to be 10 years from now? Taking a long-term perspective on your
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work life enables you to make better decisions in the short term. As strategic planner Michael Kami says, “Those who do not think about the future cannot have one.”
Look into your future and begin to imagine and anticipate some of the twists and turns that might occur. If you lost your job today, how would you react? What would be your first thought? The great majority of people, when they think about losing their jobs, go into a form of panic.They have no idea what they would do.
However, in my work with many thousands of successful people, I have found that they have one particular attitude in common. They all know with complete assurance that if they lost their jobs they could walk across the street and get another job tomorrow. They are so good at what they do, and so confident in their abilities, that job loss to them would be merely an inconvenience.They have lots of options.
As I mentioned in Chapter 6, there is a way to determine how good you are in your field.What is the number of job offers you get on a regular basis? Just as a store or restaurant can measure its suc- cess by the number of customers or patrons it attracts, you can measure how valued and respected you are for what you do by counting the number of people who want to hire you and use your services. How are you doing?
■ EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Sometimes I ask audiences what they would do if their entire indus- try disappeared overnight.They shake their heads and they say that can’t possibly happen.Then I point out that the defense industry in California literally collapsed in the early 1990s and over 400,000 highly competent defense engineers and executives, with many years of education and experience, were rendered obsolete. Their jobs were not only gone; they were gone forever. Each of these thou- sands of competent, capable men and women were forced into the position of going out into the marketplace, developing new skills, and going to work in entirely new fields.
The collapse of the dot-com mania wiped out more than 90 percent of the Internet jobs and companies that had sprung up across the country.The collapse in the telecom sector led to layoffs
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of many thousands of workers. The decline in recent years of the frantic investment activity that had been seen during the 1990s trig- gered the layoffs and firings of tens of thousands of people in the fi- nancial services industries. It goes on and on, and will continue. Only the names of the industries will change.This rapid shift in jobs and industries is going to happen more and more often to more and more people.
■ YOUR FINANCIAL LIFE
The world of finance and investments is constantly changing. The markets are increasingly volatile. The old philosophy of “buy and hold” is no longer relevant to the world of today, and tomorrow. If you have money invested, you should be thinking continually about what might happen if your investments went bad and you lost all your money.You should always be preparing against the worst pos- sible outcome of a particular investment.
There is a direct relationship between how much time you in- vest in thinking about and planning your financial life and how likely you are to become financially independent. According to Dr. Thomas Stanley’s interviews with thousands of self-made million- aires, they share a common characteristic: they spend far more time thinking about financial matters than the average person.
The average adult, even though he or she worries about money much of the time, spends only two to three hours per month actu- ally thinking about his or her finances, usually at bill-paying time. The average affluent American, in contrast, spends 20 to 30 hours per month thinking about his or her money. As a result, they make far better spending decisions and more intelligent investments than the majority. They become increasingly skilled in money matters, and eventually pull ahead of their peers.
■ THE STRATEGY OF NAPOLEON
The French general Napoleon dominated the continent of Europe for almost 20 years. He led his armies to victory in dozens of bat- tles, and lost only three battles in his entire career. He lost almost 600,000 men when he invaded Russia, failing to anticipate the
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cold of the Russian winter. Greatly weakened from the Russian campaign, he subsequently lost the battle of Leipzig, which led to his being exiled to the island of Elba. And finally, he lost at the battle of Waterloo due to a series of miscommunications with his field generals.
It is often forgotten that he won many other battles, small and large, and is considered to be one of the three greatest military ge- niuses of history. (Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan were the other two.) Napoleon had developed a quality that helped him to achieve victory, which you also can develop. It is called extrapolatory thinking.This is the ability to think and plan several moves ahead in whatever you are doing. This way of thinking involves your consid- ering every possible event that could occur, and then making provi- sions for them, well in advance.
Napoleon personally felt that his thoroughness and depth of preparation, carefully considering every detail, were his key to vic- tory.This quality was demonstrated by his phenomenal ability to ar- rive onto the field of a potential battle and then to think through every single possible twist and turn of the battle to its logical con- clusion—before the first shot was fired.
Once he had completed his preparations, he could take his posi- tion at his command center to direct the battle. No matter what news he received from any part of the battlefield, he was always ready with an immediate response. Many people thought that his quickness of response under fire was because he was a brilliant thinker, which he was, but that was not the secret of his success. His secret was that he had thought through every possible eventuality, in advance.
■ EXTRAPOLATE FROM THE PRESENT
This ability, to think through every major situation in your life in advance, is a way of thinking that you can learn with practice.The better you become at anticipating future events based on current facts, the better your life will be.You will be able to minimize re- versals and maximize opportunities. Thinking this way will give you an edge over others who simply react and respond to what- ever happens.
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If you work for a company, you should be thinking through the worst possible things that could happen in the next six months to a year that could affect your job and your security. If you own the company, you should identify the worst possible things that could affect the survival and health of your enterprise. You and your spouse should discuss possible problems and difficulties that might occur in your family life, and then make plans to guard against them.
■ TAKE NECESSARY FINANCIAL PRECAUTIONS
You often read about people who failed to insure properly and consequently lost their cars, their homes, and sometimes all of their possessions. They failed to look into the future and ask what the consequences to their life would be if a fire occurred in their home or if they had a traffic accident and they were not suffi- ciently insured.
One of the smartest things that you can do to preserve your fi- nancial well-being is to develop a regular savings program.Your goal should be to save 10 percent and more of your income, off the top, each month, from each paycheck or income source. There are few things that will give a greater sense of confidence and control than for you to know that you have a cash reserve set aside in the event of an unexpected emergency. In contrast, there is nothing that will cause you more stress and tension than to be living on the edge of your financial resources, unable to deal with a financial emergency or a need of any kind.
W. Clement Stone once said, “If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.”
■ LIVE WITHIN YOUR INCOME
Your ability to save money and to discipline yourself to live within your income is a key measure of your ability to succeed in life. If you do not have the internal self-control to refrain from spending everything you earn, this suggests that you probably don’t have the discipline necessary to succeed in other areas of your life. Although
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the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, it is far more likely that the lack of money is the root of all evil.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of saving your money and building up a cash reserve is that it enables you to take advantage of oppor- tunities when they arise, as they always do. In the movie Field of Dreams, a profound idea was expressed: “If you build it, they will come.” In the financial world, this means that if you accumulate money through hard work and saving, you will attract into your life opportunities to invest that money to earn even more.
■ BECOMING A MONEY MAGNET
The Law of Attraction is very powerful in monetary matters.When you save even a small amount of money and put it in a bank ac- count or a carefully chosen mutual fund, you create a certain force field of energy around that money. This energy somehow begins to attract even more money into your life. As your savings and invest- ments grow, the magnetic power of your money grows even stronger. The more money you accumulate, the more money that will be attracted to you, and the more opportunities you will have to accumulate even more.
When you think about your money and the pleasure it gives you to have money in the bank, you increase the energy field around your money and you attract even more. This force field becomes even more powerful when you love your money. When you think about your growing financial reserves with intense happiness, you intensify the energy around your money and you attract even more. When people say that it takes money to make money, they are right in two special ways. First, your ability to save money and build up a nest egg is a measure of whether you have the ability to earn even more money and whether you can be trusted with money. Sec- ond, when you put together even a small amount of money, you will attract opportunities to accumulate an even larger amount.
■ A SUCCESS STORY
A participant came up to me at a seminar recently and asked if I re- membered him. I told him that unfortunately I spoke to too many
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people each year to remember all of them. He reminded me that he had attended my two-day seminar about six years before. He was quite shy so he waited at the lunch break until everyone had left. He then told me about a most remarkable series of events that had hap- pened to him since the seminar.
When he came to my seminar, he was a used car salesman. He had two children and was in his early thirties. He was earning an av- erage income and was up to his neck in debt. He was living in a rented house with his family.
At the seminar, he decided that his biggest source of worry was the fact that he was in debt and had no money in the bank. So he set a goal to get out of debt and to save $30,000 over the next five years. This was a huge goal for him, considering his circumstances and his past. He had not been out of debt since his teens.
■ TAKING ACTION
Nonetheless, in faith, he wrote down his goal, made a plan, and be- gan working on it every day.This decision activated his mental pow- ers. Because of the Law of Correspondence, the Law of Attraction, and the Law of Subconscious Activity, among others, things began to change for him far faster than he had imagined. He actually achieved his financial goal in only three years. He was out of debt and had $30,000 in the bank.
One day, his boss, the owner of the dealership, called him in and asked him if he was interested in a business opportunity. He was quite flattered and asked his boss to explain. His boss said that he had observed how much better he had become as a sales- man, and he had also heard that he had saved up some money from his income.
This salesman was shy and cautious, and asked his boss what he had in mind. His boss told him that he had been approached by the automobile manufacturer in Detroit and asked to recommend someone who would be interested in opening a new car dealership in the same city in a growing part of town. The boss said he was willing to recommend him, and back him in this dealership. He would go in with him as a full partner if he were willing to put in his money as well.
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The final outcome of this story was that his boss helped him set up the new dealership; he helped him with all the purchasing, in- ventory, parts, service department decisions, and staffing. After two years, his boss sold the half share back to him, so he ended up own- ing the dealership 100 percent.
Then he said to me, “And today, I’m a millionaire.” He said, “Six years ago I was a used car salesman, and today I am a million- aire.” He was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. He said if he had not taken that advice from the seminar and begun saving his money and getting out of debt, he would not have been in a position to take advantage of that opportunity when it came along. He said, “Taking your seminar probably saved me 20 years of hard work, and maybe even a lifetime.”
This story applies to your life as well. One of the most impor- tant actions that you can take to remain positive and optimistic is to prepare mentally, financially, and physically in advance. Think through what might possibly happen and make plans to prepare for opportunities. Make plans and put aside reserves to minimize or es- cape the consequences of a financial setback. This way of thinking, of planning ahead in every area, is a mark of the superior individual.
■ TWO MAGIC QUESTIONS
Here are two questions that you can ask to turn failure into success. I call these the magic questions because of the incredible power they have to improve your life.You can ask them and benefit from them after every experience.
The first question is, “What did I do right?” No matter what you do, or how it turns out, whether it is a success or a failure, you should do an instant mental replay of the event and assess every- thing that you did right in that situation.
Even if it turns out badly, or was a complete failure, there were always things that you did that were correct. If you can isolate the positive parts of your performance and write them down, you will be preprogramming your mind to repeat the things that you did right in the next similar situation.
The second magic question is, “What would I do differently?”This is an excellent question because it forces you to think positively
214 CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE ➤
about what happened and how you could do better. Ask yourself, if you had to do it over again, how would you change or improve your performance or behavior in that situation? What would you do more of or less of?
Be sure to write down your answers.This ensures that you cap- ture them before you forget. Each time you try something new or different, immediately sit down with a pad of paper and answer those two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?” Both of these questions are positive and they both re- quire positive responses.Your answers prepare you, consciously and unconsciously, to do even better next time. Both sets of answers keep you focused on improvement rather than regret.
■ POSITIVE VERSUS NEGATIVE THINKING
Both winners and losers examine how they performed after an im- portant event. But underachievers almost invariably rehash the mis- takes they have made, the expenses they have incurred, and the failures they have experienced. High achievers, in contrast, those who think positively about themselves and their lives, are constantly reviewing the best parts of their performance and making plans to repeat those actions the next time.
When you think about what you did right and what you could do differently next time, your mind will be completely positive.Your creativity will be stimulated.You will see all kinds of opportunities and possibilities for improvement that you would have missed com- pletely if you allowed yourself to feel sorry for yourself after an un- successful event.
■ BUSINESS AND SALES
If you are in business, you should ask these questions regularly of yourself and your key staff: “What did we do right?” and “What would we do differently next time?” Remember, most things you try will be unsuccessful the first few times. By asking these questions, you extract the greatest value possible from the situation. Treat
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every experience as an opportunity to learn something that can help you next time.
If you are in sales, use this method after every sale. Immediately after a sales call, successful or not, ask the magic questions. This quick review will dramatically increase the speed at which you learn and grow as a sales professional.
Make this instant replay a part of your life. Use this method re- peatedly so that it becomes automatic. No matter how disappoint- ing the setback or difficulty may be, you will soon be preprogrammed to learn the most from the situation and to extract every kernel of good that you can possibly get from it.
When you combine this method with mindstorming—forcing yourself to generate 20 answers to each question—you will be ab- solutely astonished at the number of great ideas and insights for growth and improvement you will come up with. These ideas will dramatically increase the speed at which you become one of the best in your field.
■ THE EDISON APPROACH
Thomas Edison, the greatest inventor of the modern age, was con- vinced that experimentation was simply a process of elimination. He therefore kept accurate records of every experiment. Once he had decided that an invention was possible, he dedicated himself to eliminating the ways that wouldn’t work until the only method left standing was the one way that would work. As a result, he became the greatest inventor of the modern age and one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country.You should do the same.
From now on, each time you try and fail, shrug it off as a learn- ing experience that just moved you one step closer to success. As Henry Ford once said, “Failure is merely an opportunity to more intel- ligently begin again.”
■ YOUR RECOVERY RATE
When you experience a disappointment of any kind, your natural reaction is to feel stunned emotionally.You feel as though you have
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