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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
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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
10 Chapter
Supercharge Your Thinking
Each problem has hidden within it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.
—Joseph Sugarman
The way you think about yourself and your life determines almost everything that happens to you. Your primary responsibility is to take full control over your thinking and to keep your words and thoughts clearly focused on the things that you really want. Simul- taneously, you must refuse to think about the things that you don’t want. This simple formula is the real key to health, happiness, and personal prosperity.
This chapter is about “possibility thinking.” This is the process of looking at everything that is going on around you in terms of pos- sibilities and opportunities rather than as difficulties or problems. Your goal is to make this a habitual way of thinking, and, like all habits, it is learnable.You can develop it with constant repetition. Eventually, you will become a completely positive and constructive person in everything you do.
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■ POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
A positive mental attitude is closely associated with success in every area of life.The kind of people we like the most and want to associ- ate with tend to be people who are generally cheerful and optimistic about their work and personal lives. No one wants to spend time with a negative, pessimistic, complaining person.
Unfortunately, it is easy to slip into the habit of criticizing and complaining.We are bombarded continuously with negative infor- mation, from radio, television, newspapers, and magazines and in our daily interactions with others. It may not be easy to rise above the flood of negativity that engulfs you, but it is absolutely essen- tial to do so if you want to keep your spirits up and your mind clear and positive.
■ RESPOND CONSTRUCTIVELY TO STRESS
A positive mental attitude can be defined as a constructive response to stress. It doesn’t mean that, no matter what happens, you are happy and cheerful all the time. Having a positive mental attitude instead requires that you deal with the inevitable problems of your daily life in a more effective way than the average person.
Stress is inevitable. Problems are never ending. Failures and dis- appointments happen to everyone, all the time.The only thing over which you have any control is how you respond to these stressful events. If you respond in a positive, constructive way, you will main- tain a generally positive attitude.When your mind is calm and clear, you will be more creative and alert.You will be more likely to see more ways to solve your problems, and to keep moving toward ac- complishing your goals.
When you respond in a negative or angry way to a problem or difficulty, you trigger a series of nervous reactions that shut down the most creative parts of your brain. Instead of going into a “react and respond” way of thinking, you develop a “fight or flight” mentality.
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■ FIVE STEPS TO PERSONAL POWER
There is a five-step power process that you can use to keep yourself positive and to achieve your goals faster. This five-step process brings together several of the very best techniques ever discovered for permanent mind change. It contains and illustrates all of the key principles that you need to know to become a highly effective, posi- tive “possibility thinker” in your own life.
The five steps are: first, to idealize; second, to verbalize; third, to visualize; fourth, to emotionalize; and fifth, to realize. Let me explain how they work one at a time, and then, altogether.
■ IMAGINE YOUR PERFECT FUTURE
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to creating a wonderful life is “self- limiting beliefs.” Everyone has them, and some people have so many of them that they are almost paralyzed when it comes to taking action. A self-limiting belief is an idea you have that you are limited in some way, in terms of time, talent, intelligence, money, ability, or opportunity. As a result of these beliefs, most of which are probably not true, you hold yourself back from taking the steps necessary to create the kind of life you really desire.
The way you free yourself from these negative brakes on your potential is to change your thinking about who you are and what is truly possible for you.You put aside any thought of limitation and begin to idealize and imagine the kind of life that you want to have a week, a month, a year, and five years from now, as if anything was possible.
In idealization, you consider each of the key areas of your life and imagine what each would look like if that area of your life were exactly as you would want it to be, in every respect.
■ SHOW ME THE MONEY
Start with your income. How much do you want to be earning one, two, three, and five years from today? Look around you and ask, “Who else is earning the kind of money I want to earn, and what
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are they doing differently from me?” If you don’t know or you aren’t sure, go and ask them. Do your homework.
What knowledge, skills, and abilities would you have to have to be able to earn that amount? What kind of work would you, or could you, be doing to achieve that kind of income? What position will you have in your company? How high up will you have to be in your field or profession? If you are in sales, how much will you have to be selling, and to whom?
■ DESIGN YOUR PERFECT LIFE
Imagine your perfect lifestyle. If you had no limitations at all, how would you like to live, day in and day out? If you were financially in- dependent, what kind of home would you like to live in? What kind of car would you want to drive? What kind of life would you like to provide for your family? What sort of activities would you like to en- gage in throughout the week, month, and year?
How much time would you want to take off on vacation, and where would you like to go? What would you like to do? What sort of activities do you most enjoy? If you were forced to take a month off from work and you had all the money you needed, how would you spend that time?
■ FAMILY PLANNING
Involve your family in your design of an ideal lifestyle. Make this an ongoing part of your relationships.The more people get a chance to discuss a course of action, the more committed they will be to what- ever is finally decided.
Some time ago, a good friend of mine sat down with his wife and children to discuss the fact that he was working too much and not spending enough time with the family.They imagined how they would spend their time as a family if they had no limitations. Every- one contributed ideas, including the young children.
As a result of this exercise, they made some decisions about both time and lifestyle. They decided to move out of the city to a larger home with a bigger yard in the country. He reorganized his workweek so that he worked four days per week in the city, 10 to 12
Supercharge Your Thinking ➤ 183
hours per day, and then worked only three or four hours on one day in his office at home in the country. He ended up spending much more time with his family and getting far more satisfaction out of life.The best part was that both his results and his income actually increased with this new plan.
■ TURN YOUR IDEAL INTO REALITY
When you sit down and design your ideal lifestyle, you can then compare it to what you are doing today and notice the differences. You can then start thinking about how you could bring your real or current lifestyle closer to your ideal.
When you idealize your income and your lifestyle, you develop a vision for your life.You begin to practice a key quality of personal leadership.You begin projecting into the future and making plans to turn your future dreams into a current reality.
■ HEALTH AND FITNESS
You should idealize about your health, as well. Imagine your health was perfect in every way. How would you be different from today? Exactly how much do you want to weigh, and what level of fitness do you want to enjoy? How does that compare with where you are today? What steps will you have to take, and what changes will you have to make in your health habits in order to become the ideal per- son that you desire to be personally? This description then becomes your ideal future vision for yourself.
■ THE PERSON YOU BECOME
Create an ideal future self in terms of your personal and profes- sional development.What kind of a person do you want to be in the future? What additional knowledge and skills do you want to ac- quire? In what areas would you like to become absolutely excellent? What subjects would you like to master? What do you need to learn to move to the top of your field? What is your growth plan to get from where you are to where you want to go?
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■ YOUR MISSION STATEMENT
When you conduct personal strategic planning for yourself, you al- ways begin with a mission statement.This is clear definition of exactly what you want to be and accomplish at some future date. To de- velop your mission statement, you project forward and imagine that you have been completely successful in achieving all your goals in a particular area.You then describe your life and activities in this area exactly as if they were already true today.
For example, your personal mission statement could be some- thing like: “I am a happy, healthy, positive person who does excellent work, is paid extremely well, is highly respected by his customers and co- workers, and is deeply loved by his family.”
This kind of mission statement can then serve as an organiza- tional blueprint for your life.You can use it to make decisions by comparing what you are about to do to see if it is consistent with your mission. If it is not consistent with your mission, or with your ideal image of the very best person you could possible be, you would not do it.
■ A BENCHMARK FOR DECISION MAKING
I conducted a strategic planning session for a large corporation not long ago. The executives had more than 250 potential projects on their drawing boards. After we had defined the values, vision, and ideal mission of the company, they were immediately able to discard more than 200 of those potential projects. It was clear to everyone at the meeting that these projects were not consistent with who they were as a company and where they wanted to be in the future.This can work for you as well.
One of your problems today is that you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. You have too many things to think about.You are swamped by too many problems, possibilities, and opportunities. When you idealize and become crystal clear about what your perfect life would look like sometime in the future, you will immediately start to make better choices in your day-to-day
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activities.You will immediately begin eliminating activities that are not consistent with where you really want to end up.
■ A KEY TO HAPPINESS
A clear definition of your ideal, in any area of your life that is impor- tant to you, is the starting point of making better decisions in the present that will lead to greater success and happiness in the future. As you feel yourself moving toward the achievement of a worthy ideal, you will feel happier and more confident. The more progress you make toward a clear goal or set of ideal conditions, the more energy and enthusiasm you will have.
■ THE DEFINITION OF INTELLIGENCE
Some years ago, the Gallup organization interviewed 1,500 very successful men and women in a search for some of the common de- nominators of success. But when they asked them to define “intelli- gence,” they got an unexpected answer.
The top people in the survey defined intelligence not so much as IQ or good grades in school, but more as a way of acting. Intelli- gent behavior was defined as doing only those things that moved them toward their goals. They defined intelligence as the ability to systematically eliminate those time-consuming activities that did not help them to achieve their goals, or even worse, moved them away from their goals.
■ GET SMART
Whenever you are doing something that is moving you in the direc- tion of your own self-professed goals and ideals, you are acting in- telligently. This is true irrespective of your education or your IQ. This is why there are many people of average intelligence or who did poorly in school who are accomplishing far more than people with university degrees. These high achievers focus more and more of their time and energy on activities aimed at accomplishing only those goals that are most important to them.
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■ PUT IT IN WORDS
The second part of this five-step process is for you to verbalize clearly the person you want to be, the things you want to do, and the goals you want to achieve.You verbalize with positive affirma- tions. Because you can completely reprogram your subconscious mind with affirmations, by using them repeatedly you will find that your potential is unlimited.
The Law of Subconscious Activity says that whatever you repeat over and over to yourself in your conscious mind will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind. Once your subconscious mind accepts your conscious thoughts as commands, it passes them on to your superconscious mind, which then works 24 hours a day to bring those goals into your life.
With positive affirmations, you can take full control over the content of your conscious and subconscious minds.You can acti- vate all your mental powers. You can tap into a great universal mind that can help you to move more rapidly toward your goals of higher income, better health and relationships, and greater success in your field.
■ THE THREE Ps OF POSITIVE PROGRAMMING
A positive affirmation is phrased using the “three Ps.” This means that for maximum effectiveness, an affirmation should be personal, positive, and stated in the present tense.
Your subconscious mind is like a special computer. It can be ac- cessed and activated only with words and commands that are pre- sented in a specific language. It accepts only positive commands that are phrased in the personal, present tense, as though the goal has already been achieved. It knows no past or future tense.
My favorite affirmation is, “I like myself!” repeated over and over again in a spirit of complete confidence. When you repeat, “I like myself!” several times per day, you send this message deep into your subconscious mind. The more you like yourself, the higher will be your self-esteem. The higher your self-esteem, the better
Supercharge Your Thinking ➤ 187
you will perform in every area of your life.The more you like your- self, the better you will do, and the better you do, the more you will like yourself.
■ BECOME YOUR OWN CHEERLEADER
To improve your performance in your work, or in any other area re- quiring skill or ability, continually repeat the words, “I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best!” By talking to yourself as if you were al- ready the person you want to be sometime in the future, you be- come your own cheerleader.You will then find yourself doing better and better at whatever you attempt.
Another powerful affirmation you can repeat every morning be- fore you start off is, “I love my work!” Sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you won’t feel particularly excited about the com- ing day. But you can take control over your mind and emotions by repeating, “I love my work!” until it actually feels true.
Even better, you can start every day with the words, “I like my- self and I love my work!” This affirmation, repeated enthusiastically several times every morning, will rev you up and get you excited about getting to your job.
■ CONTROL YOUR SELF-TALK
Fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself. Dr. Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism says that your “explanatory style” is the critical factor in determining whether you are a positive or negative person.
Your explanatory style is defined as how you explain things to yourself. If you explain or interpret things to yourself in a positive way, you will be positive. If you explain them in a negative way, you will be negative.What Seligman concluded is that optimistic people, when something goes wrong, always explain the event or experience to themselves as though it were a temporary, specific situation, rather than a long-term, general condition.
Imagine that you make a sales call and the prospect is not in- terested in what you are selling. It didn’t work out. It was a waste
188 CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE ➤
of time. If you are a positive person, you will say something like, “Well, it’s just one sales call.” This makes it temporary. You will say, “The customer is probably having a bad day.” This makes it specific. You then say, “I’ll be more successful on the next call.” This focuses you on the future. When you dismiss temporary set- backs in this way, you keep your mind positive.You remain confi- dent and optimistic.
■ DON’T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY
When negative people experience problems, setbacks, or difficulties, they interpret them differently from confident, optimistic people. When they fail temporarily, which is inevitable, they immediately interpret this as a personal statement about their deficiencies. If the sales call is not successful, they say, “I must be a terrible salesper- son. The product is no good. Customers are not interested in what we have to sell. I’ll never succeed in this field.”
In other words, they overgeneralize and overdramatize a small failure rather than dismissing it as a temporary setback and going on to the next call.They interpret the experience negatively. It then has a negative effect on their self-image: “I’m no good.”Their work performance declines and they do even worse next time.
The good news, however, is that how you interpret an event is under your control. It is a matter of choice.You determine how you are going to feel and react by how you choose to explain a situation to yourself. Choose to put a positive spin on it, whatever it is.You are in charge.
■ MAKE IT SIMPLE
When you verbalize your goals in the form of positive affirmations, you should use words that your subconscious can easily understand and go to work on. Make your statements simple and practical. For example, “I like myself” is personal. “I’m the best” is personal and positive. And “I love my work” is personal, positive, and in the pre- sent tense.
These are the kinds of affirmations that are immediately ac- cepted by your subconscious mind as commands.They have an im-
Supercharge Your Thinking ➤ 189
mediate impact on how you think and feel about yourself.They in- stantly boost your self-esteem and self-confidence. To remain opti- mistic, you must be continually talking to yourself in terms of the way you want to be rather than the way things are at the moment.
In neurolinguistic programming, the way that you talk to your- self about what is happening to you is called your “interpretive style.” The way you interpret things is a key part of changing your thinking. The question is always whether you interpret things that are happening around you in a positive or negative way. Remember, the optimist sees the glass as half full while the pessimist sees the glass as half empty. Choose to be an optimist.
■ BECOME AN INVERSE PARANOID
The multimillionaire W. Clement Stone started off selling newspa- pers on the streets of Chicago at the age of 12. He went on to build Combined Insurance Company of America, and died recently at the age of 100 worth more than $800 million. He was a great inspira- tion to thousands of people, and was famous for his habit of being an “inverse paranoid.”
A paranoid is someone who believes that people are conspiring against him or her. An inverse paranoid, in contrast, is a person who is convinced that the world is conspiring to make him or her success- ful. An inverse paranoid insists upon interpreting everything that happens as part of a great plan leading to success. W. Clement Stone used to respond to every difficulty with the emphatic state- ment, “That’s good!” Then he would concentrate his attention on finding out what was good about the situation. And he always found something, even if it was just a valuable lesson.
If you change the definition of a problem to a situation, a chal- lenge, or an opportunity, your response to the problem will be posi- tive and constructive, rather than negative and angry. If you look at every problem as a potential opportunity, you will almost always find within the problem an opportunity or benefit that you can take advantage of.
Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “When God wants to send you a gift, He wraps it up in a problem.” The bigger the problem that you have, the bigger the gift—in the form of valuable lessons,
190 CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE ➤
ideas, and insights that it probably contains. Is the glass half full or is it half empty? It’s up to you.
■ YOU WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT
The third part of the five-part process of supercharging your think- ing is visualization.You already know how powerful this can be in helping you to achieve your goals. It is only when you learn to use visualization on every goal and activity that you will truly tap into its amazing power for good in your life.
As it happens, everyone visualizes, all the time.The difference is that successful people visualize the things they want, and unsuc- cessful people visualize the things they don’t want. Prior to every new experience, a successful person will take a few moments to re- call and relive a previous successful experience in that area. Unsuc- cessful people, in contrast, prior to a new experience will recall and relive a previous failure experience.
In each case, people are creating a predisposition to succeed or fail. When they visualize, they send a command to their subcon- scious minds.The subconscious mind then coordinates their words and actions in the upcoming situation so that they perform consis- tent with that picture.
■ IMAGINE A PERFECT OUTCOME
In visualizing, you project your mind forward and create a clear pic- ture of your ideal future goal.You imagine what it would look like if it were already achieved.You make your picture as vivid as possible. You repeat this mental picture over and over, as often as you possi- bly can during the day, and for as long as you can.
There is a direct relationship between how clearly you can see your goal or performance on the inside and how rapidly it comes into your reality on the outside.Visualization is one of the most pow- erful faculties available to you to become a possibility thinker, to change your thinking about your life and your future.With visualiza- tion, you can make your current dreams into future realities.You can change your thinking completely by changing your mental pictures.
Supercharge Your Thinking ➤ 191
■ PROGRAM YOUR MIND
There are three techniques combining verbalization and visualiza- tion that you can practice to achieve your goals faster.These are of- ten referred to as “mental programming techniques.” They are amazingly effective in preparing yourself and your mind for an up- coming event.
The first of these methods is what is called the quick program- ming technique. Here is how it works. Prior to any nonrecurring event of importance, like a sales call, a meeting, or an interview, you take a few moments to prepare mentally, like an athlete would warm up for a competition.
First, take a few deep breaths. This relaxes you and drops your mind into the alpha state. In this state, your subconscious mind be- comes highly receptive to any incoming command. Second, you vi- sualize the ideal outcome of the upcoming situation.You imagine it as turning out perfectly for you in every respect. For example, if you are making a sales call, visualize the client responding to you in a positive, receptive way. Especially, visualize the client signing the check or sales order at the end of the conversation.
One of my good friends has used this technique for many years to become one of the highest-paid people in his industry. He says it is absolutely amazing how many times the sales situation works out exactly as he visualized it before he went in.Try it for yourself and see.
➤ Affirm and Visualize The third and last part of the quick programming technique is for you to verbalize or create a positive affirmation that is consistent with your mental picture. A simple affirmation would be “This sales call goes extremely well and concludes satisfactorily for everyone involved.”This command instructs your subconscious mind to give you the words, feelings, behaviors, and body language consistent with achieving your goal of a successful sales call.
We teach this “quick affirmation” technique to applicants who are going on job interviews, speakers giving public talks, performers in the arts, and even to politicians. It is an extraordinarily effective technique, and it only takes a few seconds prior to each event.
192 CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE ➤
■ WRITE AND REVIEW YOUR GOALS
The second method you can use to bring about rapid internal changes to your thinking and your life is called the standard affirma- tion technique.This technique requires that you write out your major goals in the form of present, positive, personal affirmations on three-by-five index cards, one goal per card.You can work on 10 to 15 goals at a time using this method.
Carry these cards around with you. At the beginning of each day, take a few minutes by yourself to review each goal.
Take the first card and read it. Perhaps the first card says, “I earn $50,000 per year.” Read the card and let your eyes focus on the message so that it is imprinted on your subconscious mind. Then, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat the affirma- tion five times. As you affirm, visualize your goal as already achieved. See it. Feel it. Then open your eyes, relax, exhale deeply, and read the next card.
■ PREPARE FOR THE DAY
This entire exercise, with 10 to 15 goals, takes about 10 minutes. It programs your subconscious mind at a deep level, and prepares you to perform at your very best for the rest of the day.
If you practice this each morning before you start out and each evening before you go to bed, you will be absolutely amazed at how quickly your goals begin to materialize.
Your subconscious mind is the sending and receiving station for the power of attraction in your life. The more you feed your subconscious mind with words and pictures consistent with what you want to accomplish, the more you magnetize your goals.You become a living magnet. You begin to attract people, opportuni- ties, ideas, and resources into your life that make achieving your goals a possibility.
■ PRACTICE MENTAL REHEARSAL
The third mental programming technique that you can use to per- form better and achieve your goals faster is often called mental re-
Supercharge Your Thinking ➤ 193
hearsal. It is taught and used extensively in sports of all kinds. The process is both simple and powerful.
First, you sit or lie down, completely relaxed, with your eyes closed, and breath deeply until your whole body is calm and quiet.
Second, you clearly visualize an upcoming event, or a goal that you desire. You allow yourself to enter into the experience and see it clearly in your mind. You imagine yourself actually doing and saying the things you would if the upcoming situation is perfect.
One of the very best times to practice mental rehearsal is just before you go to sleep. By verbalizing and visualizing your ideal goals or activities for the coming day immediately prior to sleeping, you program your subconscious mind to work on those goals all night long. Then, when you wake up in the morn- ing, you will often have insights and ideas that you can use to make those goals a reality. It is an amazing technique and is ex- tremely effective.
■ PREPROGRAM FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE
You can use this technique to preprogram your mind for a variety of things. For example, let us say you have a problem that you are wor- ried about. Just before you go to sleep, turn this problem over to your superconscious mind and ask for a solution. Then, forget about it and go to sleep.Very often, when you wake up in the morn- ing the solution will occur to you. It will be crystal clear and perfect in every respect.
You can use this method of mental programming to assure that you wake up feeling positive and energetic.The process is both sim- ple and effective. Just before going to sleep, say to yourself, “When I wake up in the morning, I feel terrific!” Repeat this several times. Imagine yourself getting up the next morning feeling happy and full of energy. Especially when you go to bed late and you need to be at your best the next day, use this technique to wake up feeling re- freshed. It works every time.
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