A Balanced Life

According to psychologist Sidney Jourard, fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from your personal relationships. Your interactions and the time that you spend with the people you care about will be the major source of the pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction that you derive daily. The other 15 percent of your happiness will come from your accomplishments. Unfortunately, many people lose sight of what is truly important, and they allow the tail to wag the dog. They sacrifice their relationships, their major source of happiness, to accomplish more in their careers. But one’s career, at best, can be only a minor source and a temporary one, at that of the happiness and satisfaction that everyone wants.

There is no perfect answer to the key question of how to achieve balance in our lives, but there are a number of ideas that can help you to be and have and do more in the areas that are important to you. These ideas often require changes and modifications in the way you think and use your time, but the price is well worth it. You will find that by reorganizing your life in little ways, you can create an existence that gives you the highest quality and quantity of satisfaction overall. And this must be your guiding purpose. The ancient Greeks had two famous sayings: “Man, know thyself” and “Moderation in all things.” Taken together, those two ideas are a good starting point for achieving the balance that you desire. With regard to knowing thyself, it is very important to give some serious thought to what you really value in life. All trade-offs and choices are based on your values, and all stress and unhappiness come from believing and valuing one thing and, yet, finding yourself doing another. Only when your values and your activities are congruent do you feel happy and at peace with yourself.

So knowing yourself means knowing what you really value, knowing what is really important to you. The superior man or woman decides what is right before he or she decides what is possible. The advanced human being organizes his or her life to assure that everything that he or she is doing is consistent with his or her true values. It is essential for you to organize your life around yourself, rather than to organize yourself around the demands of your external world.

The second quote, “Moderation in all things,” is a wonderful and important dictate for successful living. But, at the same time, you know that you can’t really be successful in any area by being moderate in that area. Peter Drucker once wrote, “Wherever you find something getting done, you find a monomaniac with a mission.” You know that single-minded concentration on a goal or objective is absolutely necessary for achievement of any kind in a competitive society.

So what’s the solution? Over the years, I have worked with tens of thousands of men and women who have spent a lot of time and effort struggling to achieve balance in their lives. I have found that there is a simple formula; it is simple in that it is easy to explain, but you need tremendous self-discipline and persistence to implement it in your life.

The formula revolves around a concept of time management, or what you might want to call life management. Time management is really a form of personal management in which you organize your 24 hours a day in such a way that they give you the greatest possible return of happiness and contentment.

The key to time management, after you have determined your values and the goals that are in harmony with those values, is to set both priorities and posteriorities. The importance of setting priorities is obvious. You make a list of all the things that you can possibly do and then select from that list the things that are most important to you based on everything you know about yourself, about others and about your responsibilities. The setting of posteriorities is often overlooked. It is when you carefully decide which things you are going to stop doing so that you will have enough time to start doing something else.

The greatest single shortage we experience in America today is that of time. We suffer from what has been called “time poverty.” Men and women everywhere feel that their biggest single challenge is that they simply do not have enough time to do all the things that they have to do or want to do. People today feel pressured from all sides and are under an inordinate amount of stress. They feel overworked, fatigued and incapable of fulfilling all the responsibilities that they have taken on.

The starting point to alleviate this time poverty is to stop and think. Most people are so busy rushing back and forth that they seldom take the time to think seriously about who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. They engage in frantic activity, instead of thoughtful analysis. They get so busy climbing the ladder of success that they lose sight of the fact that the ladder may be leaning against the wrong building.

When my wife, Barbara, and I started our family, we were faced with a common dilemma: how can we balance the demands of work and home with the finite amount of time we are all given?

Here’s the answer I discovered: The key to success in a busy society is to devote your time to only two areas during the period of time when your family needs you, when your children are between the ages of birth to about 18 to 20 years. During this period of time, you need to curtail virtually all of your outside activities. You need to focus on two major areas your family and your career as I have done over the years. You need to place your family’s needs above all else and then organize your work schedule so that you can satisfy those needs on a regular basis. Then, when you work, you must concentrate single-mindedly on doing an excellent job.

Most people are time wasters. They waste their own time, and they waste your time as well. To be successful and happy, you must discipline yourself to work all the time you work. The average employee works at about 50 percent of capacity. Fully 80 percent of people working today are underemployed in that their jobs do not really demand their full capacities. Only 5 percent of workers surveyed recently felt that they were working at the outside limits of their potentials.

But this is not for you. You must resolve to work all the time you work. You must decide that from the time you start in the morning until the time you finish in the evening, you will work 100 percent of the time. Even if no one is watching you, you should be aware that everyone is watching you. Everybody knows everything. In every company, everyone knows who is working and who is not. Your job must be to work all the time you work. If people come by and want to chat, you simply smile at them and say, “Could we talk about this later?” Tell them that you have to get back to work.

Have a written list, and work on your list every day. Write down everything as it comes up, and add it to your list. Set priorities on your time, and be certain that you are working on the things that are most important to your boss and to your company. Refuse to get drawn into the time-wasting activities of the people around you. Work all the time you work.

Remember that to be successful, you must become a monomaniac with a mission. This is true today, and it has always been true in our competitive society. To be successful at your job, you must work fast and efficiently and nonstop all the time you are on the payroll. You must become an expert at time management. You must become so efficient and effective that you get twice as much done as anyone else. In this way, you will advance your career at the fastest rate possible, and you will also be on top of your job most of the time, and it will be unnecessary for you to take work home for the evenings and weekends.

Then, when you have finished your work, you can devote your full attention to your family and to the other important people in your life. The Bible says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” One of the meanings of this is that if you are thinking about your work while you are with your family, or if you are thinking about your family when you are at work, you end up accomplishing far less in each area. However, if you are on top of your work, when you come home you can devote yourself single-mindedly again, like a monomaniac to your relationships and to enhancing the quality of your interactions with the most important people in your life.

The key to a happy family life is communication. And it is not quality of time but quantity of time that counts. Quality moments those little moments that are precious and important come unbidden and, usually, unexpectedly. They arise during the process of spending a large quantity of uninterrupted time with one or more people. You cannot dictate those moments in advance. You cannot decide to have quality time. You do not go to it. It comes to you.

There are a variety of ways to extract the greatest amount of quality and happiness from your relationships with the members of your family. Perhaps the most important is to spend unbroken time with your spouse on a daily basis. Of course, you should spend time together talking after the children have gone to bed, but you should also seek out and utilize small segments of time during the morning and early evening during which you can communicate and interact. One of the most important things that couples can do is spend the first 30 to 60 minutes after work debriefing each other and discussing the day’s activities.

Your children also have a tremendous need to communicate with you. In fact, in my research on how to raise super kids, I found that the one factor that was more important than any other was the amount of one-on-one time that the parents spent with the children. When parents don’t spend a lot of time with their children individually, they send a message to their children that they are not very valuable or important. Children then react by experiencing feelings of inferiority, lowered self-esteem, and negative self-images, and this is expressed in poor grades and behavioral problems. But when the parents take the time to sit down with their children and ask questions and listen to what is going on in their minds, the children tend to feel a deep sense of value and importance that is manifested in self-confidence, happiness, and good relationships with others.

The key is learning to use your time better. You cannot get more hours out of each day, but you can put more of yourself into each of those hours. Turn off the television and spend time talking with the members of your family. Never read newspaper of books when a member of your family wants to communicate with you. Put the reading material aside. Concentrate single-mindedly on the most important people in your world. Everything else can wait.

In regard to your work and family, continually ask yourself, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Consider if what you are doing today will matter a week or a year from today. Sometimes, we become preoccupied with small things that are not really important in the long run. But what is important in the long run is the quality of our home life.

You don’t have to be a superman or superwoman to properly balance the demands of your work and the needs of your family. You must, however, be more thoughtful, be a better planner, use your time more effectively, and continually think of ways to enhance the quality of your life in both areas. If you set this as a goal and resolve to work toward it every day, you will gradually become far more efficient, far more effective, and a far happier human being. And that’s the most important thing of all.

Working Well With Others

A 20-year study at Stanford University examined the career paths of thousands of executives to determine what qualities they either had or developed that enabled them to move ahead the most rapidly. Researchers concluded that there were two primary qualities that, more than any others, were indispensable for men and women who were promoted to positions of great responsibility.

The first quality was the ability to function well in a crisis. It was the ability of the executive to keep his or her cool when the company or the department faced serious challenges or setbacks. It was the ability to calmly analyze the facts, gather information, reach conclusions, make decisions, and then mobilize the other people to respond effectively and solve the problem.

However, this quality, the researchers found, could be tested only in a real crisis. It was not possible to create a phony crisis to tell how well an executive would perform.

The second quality that was identified among the fast-trackers was the ability to function well as a member of a team. This tendency toward cooperation rather than confrontation was evident early in a person’s career. It was the primary quality that senior executives looked for and rewarded the most. The ability to be a good team player inevitably led to greater and greater opportunities to function as a member of more and more important teams. In fact, teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the height of your capabilities, or make the money that you want, without becoming very good at it.

You can make the decision to be an excellent team player in everything you do at work and at home. Your aim should be to seek out every opportunity to demonstrate your ability to contribute to the success of a group of people in accomplishing large objectives. And you can start right where you are.

Let’s start off with the definition of team. A team is two or more people who combine their talents and abilities to accomplish a specific goal or series of goals. A team, by definition, is made up largely of equals, men and women who are different only in their areas of skill and who are peers when they sit down together as a work group.

In this sense, you and your spouse are a team. You and your coworkers make up a team. When you volunteer in any charitable organization, all the people you work with are members of a team. If you have a social circle and you plan activities together, you are functioning as a team.

A team is formed to take advantage of the power of synergy. Synergy means that the total is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, let’s say that four individuals working alone will produce four units of work; when they are combined as a team, the four individuals may produce five or six or eight or even 10 units of work. Many jobs simply cannot be done by one person working alone, whether it’s carrying a heavy box or carrying out a major corporate project. A team needs to be formed whenever the task at hand is greater than the capacity of any individual working alone.

Over the last few decades, the concept of teamwork has evolved rapidly. We came out of World War II with a “command and control” mentality. Most of the heads of American corporations, large and small, had been military officers, of various ranks, during the war. They brought their training into the workplace. Their approach to management was the hierarchy or pyramid style, with the president at the top, the senior executives below him, the junior executives below them, and so on, all the way down to the workers and support staff who made up the base of the pyramid. The orders traveled in one direction: downward. Information filtered up slowly. People were expected to do their job, collect their paycheck and be satisfied. However, two forces have converged to transform this approach to management dramatically. First is the rapid rate of change and the increasing complexity of even the smallest business operation due to the advent of the computer age. Everyone has critical skills and knowledge that are necessary to many other people if the job is to get done on time and to an acceptable standard of quality.

For example, in our office, our receptionist has been promoted to the position of “front-office manager.” Some years ago, when I started in business, the job of the receptionist was to answer the telephone and direct the callers to the appropriate people. Today, however, her job is far more complicated and, therefore, more important. Since she is the first contact that most customers have with our business, her personality and temperament are extremely important. The prospective client who telephones begins forming an impression of us the instant that the telephone is answered. Then, because our companies are doing so many things, she must tactfully ascertain exactly how the caller may be best served and who is the best person in the company to direct the telephone call to. In many cases, there are requests for further information, and follow-up telephone calls go through our front-office manager. Her ability to handle these calls effectively, to direct calls to the right people, to take accurate messages, and to act as the core person in a network of communications, makes her job so important that it is essential that she sit in on all staff meetings and be aware of everything that is going on.

Your job in your company also requires that you know a lot about what is going on everywhere else, as well as be thoroughly conversant with what you do. And the fastest and most accurate way of keeping current with what is going on is to develop and maintain a network of contacts, an informal team of people within your workplace who keep you informed and who you keep informed in turn.

The old methods of command and control now exist only at the old-line companies, many of which are fighting for their very survival. Today, men and women want a high degree of participation and involvement in their work. They want an opportunity to discuss and thoroughly understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. People are no longer satisfied to be cogs in a big machine. They want to have an integral role in achieving goals that they participated in setting in the first place.

Being a team player is no longer something that is optional. Today, it is mandatory. If you want to achieve anything of consequence, you will need the help and cooperation of lots of people. Your main objective is to structure everything you do in such a way that, because you are constantly cooperating and working well with others, they are continually open to helping you achieve your goals as well. Now, the major reason why teams do not function well, and why people end up not making their full contribution to the success of the teams, is lack of clarity. All the studies of team building and team development focus in on the importance of everyone’s being absolutely clear about what the team is trying to accomplish. This can be in the form of a goal or objective handed down by senior management, or it can be the result of discussion and participation by the various team members. In any case, everyone must know what is to be done, to what standard, by what deadline, and what the roles and responsibilities of each team member will be in the achievement of that goal.

One of your key concerns is to be absolutely clear about exactly what is expected of you. If for any reason you are not sure, bring it up and ask about it until you have no doubt whatsoever. Then get busy, do exactly what is expected of you, and do it well.

Remember, in all your interactions with your team, your role is to be supportive and helpful. Your role is not to challenge, criticize or argue, but to look for solutions and for opportunities to help other people make their maximum contribution as well. When you sit in on a team meeting, you are “onstage.” Everyone is watching you. The best team players I have ever seen are those whose comments to the other members of the team are in the form of suggestions on how things can be done better. The best team members are always offering to help other people after the meetings to get on top of some aspect of their work. This focus on collaboration and cooperation is seen by everybody and marks you as a person to be both liked and respected. Many men and women have kicked their careers into the stratosphere by taking on a small responsibility and doing such a good job with it that they came to the attention of important people both inside and outside their organizations.

For example, some years ago, the chairman of a conglomerate for which I worked asked me if I would set up the importation and distribution of the Suzuki motor vehicles into Western Canada. Even though I knew nothing about automobile importation, I jumped on the opportunity with enthusiasm. For the next three months, I threw my whole heart into learning everything I could about the importation and distribution of foreign automobiles. In the following two-and-a-half years, we imported and sold more than $25 million worth of vehicles, through 65 dealerships, all of which I had set up from scratch. Then one day, I got a call from the president of another billion-dollar organization. He offered me three times my current salary if I would take charge of his $275 million development business. He told me later that the determining factor of the offer he had made me was my proven ability with Suzuki to put together a team to achieve successful financial results. And it will be the same for you.

Continually look for opportunities to get onto teams and to make valuable contributions. Volunteer for additional assignments. Focus on high-priority tasks, and finish what you start on time. Do excellent work. And remember that, as Confucius said, “He who would be master must be servant of all.”

Transforming Bad Habits

Your habits have been developed from early childhood as the result of things that you have chosen to do, or not to do. Your entire life is the result of your past choices and decisions. And like all of us, you probably have some bad habits that have held you back from your true potential. But here’s the good news: Since you are always free to choose, you can make new choices and decisions today that will determine what happens to you in the future.

One of your main objectives in life is to develop new habits and make them your masters, while at the same time overriding and setting aside old habits that may be interfering with your progress. You have two major types of habits. You have habits that revolve around your desires and you have habits that revolve around your fears. The habits that revolve around your desires for health, happiness, financial independence, and success are life-enhancing. They are the habits that have brought you the success you enjoy today. The habits that revolve around your fears, on the other hand, act as brakes on your potential. They hold you back. They interfere with your success. They trip you up on a regular basis. They cause you to sell yourself short and settle for far less than your potential.

Dr. Martin Seligman, in his book, Learned Optimism, wrote about the chief psychological phenomenon of modern life. He called it “learned helplessness.” Based on his 25 years of research, he discovered that virtually every person has one or more areas where they feel helpless and unable to do something that they really want to do.

Seligman’s research demonstrated how animals can be trained to feel that they are helpless. In one example, he put a dog into a cage with a glass wall in the middle that separated the dog from a bowl of food. The dog was hungry and tried to get at the food but kept banging his nose on the glass. After several hours, Seligman removed the glass. And what happened then? The dog, who was still hungry, sat only a few inches away from the food and never even attempted to eat it. The dog had learned to feel helpless. The had become so convinced that he was incapable of getting to the food that even when the obstacles were removed, he just sat there with his stomach growling.

There are dozens of experiments like this. In every case, it is clear that animals, and human beings for that matter, learn to feel helpless. They develop habits of thought that hold them back from reaching their full potential.

If someone were to tell you that you could learn to type 30, 40, or 50 words per minute by taking a typing course and practicing an hour each day for the next few months, you would shrug your shoulders and say, “Of course!” Everybody knows that you can acquire a particular physical skill by learning how it is done and then repeating it over and over again until it becomes automatic.

But when it comes to mental habit patterns, most people are a little baffled. They don’t realize that you can learn mental habit patterns by following exactly the same process that you would use to learn physical habit patterns. And mental habit patterns will have a far greater impact on your life and happiness than any physical habit pattern ever could.

Once you have recognized the old, negative habit patterns that do not serve your purposes, you can determine what new habit patterns you would like to adopt. Begin this process by looking around and determining the people that you admire the most, both living and dead. Ask yourself: What qualities do they have? Which of their characteristics do you most wish to have for yourself? Then make a plan to incorporate those ideal habits into your own character and personality.

You know that you can shape a piece of clay into any desired form. You can also shape your own character and personality by simply deciding to do so. I won’t say that it is easy. Changing your beliefs and attitudes about yourself is one of the most difficult undertakings you will ever face. But it is definitely possible and achievable if you dedicate the necessary time and effort.

How long does it take to develop a new habit pattern? It depends on how complex the habit pattern is. You can develop a simple habit pattern in 14 to 21 days. For example, if you want to begin getting up half an hour earlier so that you can plan and organize your day, it might take just two to three weeks to develop the habit. If you want to develop a new habit pattern of behavior that does deeper into your character, it might take several months or even a year or more. The most important point is that, no matter how long it takes, the end result is achievable if you are really determined.

The habits of success have been studied by the great thinkers and philosophers for at least 2,500 years. After personally studying the subject for more than 30 years, I have found that the very best people have the very best habits. Based on these findings, I have identified seven habits that you need to develop if you want to perform at your very maximum in everything you do.

The first is goal orientation. You need to become a habitual goal setter, and dedicate yourself to working from clear, written goals every day of your life.

The second habit you need to develop for success is result orientation. Result orientation is made up of two practices. The first is the practice of continuously learning so that you become better at what you do. The second practice is that of time management, which means setting very clear priorities on what you do and then concentrating single-mindedly on the most valuable use of your time.

The third major habit you need to develop is that of action orientation. This is really the most important habit for material success. It is the ability to get on with the job and get it done fast. Fast tempo in whatever you do is essential to your success. You need to overcome procrastination, push aside your fears and launch 100% toward the achievement of your most important goals. The fourth habit you need is people orientation. This is your decision to cultivate within yourself the habits of patience, kindness, compassion, and understanding. Virtually all of your happiness in life will come from your ability to get along well with other people. And getting along well with other people is based on a set of habits that you have learned, or failed to learn, from childhood. But it is never too late to become a wonderful human being in your relationships with other. The more you practice being a truly excellent person in your relationship with others, the more you will internalize those qualities and actually become that person.

The fifth habit you need for great success is health orientation. This means that you must make a conscious effort to eat the right foods in the right proportions. You must exercise on a regular basis, continually using every muscle and joint of your body to keep it young and fit. And finally, you must have regular habits of rest and recreation that will enable you, in combination with diet and exercise, to live a long, full life. Remember, your health is the single most important thing you have, and it is completely dependent upon the habits you develop with regard to the way you live.

The sixth habit is an orientation toward honesty and integrity. In the final analysis, the character you develop as you go through life is more important than virtually anything else. Honesty means that you practice the “reality principle” in everything you do. You are completely objective with yourself and with the world around you. You set very clear values for yourself and you organize your life around your values. You develop a vision for yourself and then you life your life consistent with your highest ideals. You never compromise your integrity or peace of mind for anyone or anything. This attitude of honesty will enable you to enjoy all of the other success habits that you are developing.

The seventh habit, the one habit that guarantees all the others, is that of self-discipline. Your ability to discipline yourself, to master yourself, to control yourself, goes hand in hand with success in every area of life.

My favorite definition of self-discipline comes from Elbert Hubbard. He said, “Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” Every one of these habits, goal orientation, result orientation, action orientation, people orientation, health orientation, honesty, and self-discipline¾can be developed. The following is a seven step method you can use to internalize any habit or group of habits that you want to make a permanent part of your character and personality.

1. Decide clearly on the new habit. Write it down as a goal in the form of a present tense, personal, positive affirmation. For example, if you want to develop the habit of self-discipline, you write, “I am an extremely well-disciplined individual in everything I do.”

2. Repeat your affirmation as often as possible, and with as much enthusiasm and conviction as possible. The more times you repeat this command, the more likely it is that your subconscious mind will ultimately accept it and begin to adjust your thoughts, words, and behaviors to be consistent with it.

3. Visualize yourself as if you already had the new habit pattern. Imagine yourself as already being exactly the person that you want to become in the future. Remember, your subconscious mind is activated and programmed by mental pictures. All improvement in your life and character begin with an improvement in your mental pictures. Use visualization on a regular basis in conjunction with your positive affirmations.

4. Emotionalize the affirmation and the visualization. Take a few minutes each day to actually experience the feeling of being the excellent, outstanding human being that you have decided to become.

5. Launch into your new habit with conviction. Assume the role, acting as if you had been hired to perform this role in a movie or play. The more you behave exactly as if you already had the habit, the more you actually become the person that you desire to be.

6. Tell others that you have decided to develop this habit. When you tell others, you motivate and encourage yourself. You also force yourself to consistently act in accordance with your new resolutions because you know that others are watching.

7. Continually review your progress on a day-to-day basis. When Benjamin Franklin developed his own process for character formation, he would review his behavior every single day to see if he was living consistent with the values that he had determined were important. You can do the same thing. At the end of every day, do a brief recap of your behavior during the day relative to the values and habits you are trying to develop. Give yourself points when you are strong, and be patient with yourself when you slip from time to time.

The most important keys to developing new habit patterns are patience, determination, and persistence. When you begin to change yourself, you will find that it is not particularly easy. But it is possible if you continue to work at it.

You can take complete control over the shaping of your character and personality, and everything that happens to you in the future, by making the decision, right now, to define and develop the habits that will lead you to great success. And when you develop the habits possessed by other successful people, you will enjoy an equal, if not greater, level of success.

The Value of Mentors

Benjamin Franklin once said, “There are two ways to acquire wisdom; you can either buy it or borrow it. By buying it, you pay full price in terms of time and cost to learn the lessons you need to learn. By borrowing it, you go to those men and women who have already paid the price to learn the lessons and get their wisdom from them.”

This is the essence of the mentor-protégé relationship. By going to people who are ahead of you in the personal or professional arena, and by opening yourself up to their input, advice and guidance, you can save yourself the many months (maybe even years) and the thousands of dollars it would cost to learn what you need to learn all by yourself.

Kop Kopmier, the famous success authority, said that one of the most important secrets of success is to learn proven success methods. He once told me that perhaps the fastest way to get ahead was to study the experts and to do what they do, rather than trying to learn it all yourself. In fact, he mentioned that no one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

The mentors you choose should be people you respect, admire and want to be like. The advice you seek should be guidance regarding your character and personality and specific ideas on how you can do your job better and faster. Remember, you can’t figure it all out for yourself. You have to have the help of others. You have to find men and women who will guide you and advise you on the road of life, or you will take a long, long time getting anywhere.

There are two vital aspects to look for in a mentor. The first is character and the second is competence.

Character is by far the most important. Look for a mentor who has the kind of character you admire and respect. Look for a person who has high degrees of intelligence, integrity, judgment and wisdom. The more you associate, even in your mind, with men and women who are advanced in the development of their character, the more you will tend to pattern them and to become like them.

The second thing you look for in a mentor is competence. This means that the person is extremely good at what he or she does. A good mentor in your career is one who has the knowledge, skills and abilities to move ahead far more rapidly than his or her peers. The impact of a mentor on your life is dependent on two additional factors. The first is your degree of openness to being influenced by another person. Openness is so important because many people, especially young people, are extremely impatient, always looking for shortcuts. When they get advice that another person has spent many years learning, they often try to add their own variations and improve on it without ever having mastered the original instruction in the first place.

Remember, when you open yourself up to guidance and input from another person, concentrate first on understanding and learning exactly what that person has to teach you. Afterward, you can modify and change that lesson to suit your changing circumstances.

The second factor that determines the influence of a mentor on your life is the willingness of the mentor to help you in every way possible to achieve your personal goals. We know that the more emotionally involved someone is in our life, the more susceptible we are to being influenced by that person. When you consciously and deliberately seek out a mentor, you must look for someone who genuinely cares about you as a person and who really wants you to be successful in your endeavors.

So, for a good mentor-protégé relationship, you must be wide open to the influence and instruction of the other person, and at the same time, the mentor must be genuinely concerned about your well-being and your ultimate success. These are the two essentials.

Your ability to choose your mentors, in written form, on audio and video, live at seminars, and (even better) in person, can be a crucial step toward achievement in all areas of your life. So here are twelve steps you can take to build successful mentor-protégé relationships:

1. Set clear goals for yourself in every area of your life. Know exactly what it is you want to accomplish before you start thinking of the type of person who can help you accomplish it.

2. Determine the things you have to do in order to achieve your goals, the obstacles you will have to overcome and the roadblocks you will have to surmount.

3. Identify the areas of knowledge, skill and expertise you will have to acquire in order to overcome the obstacles standing between you and your goals.

4. Look around you and select the most successful people in the areas in which you will need the most help.

5. Join the clubs, organizations and business associations these people belong to. You can find out this information if you ask.

6. Once you have become involved in these organizations, become actively involved and volunteer for responsibilities. This will bring you to the attention of the people you want to meet faster than anything else.

7. Work, study, and practice continually to get better and better at what you do. The very best mentors are only interested in helping you if they feel it is going to be of value. You will have no problem attracting people to you when you develop a reputation for being an up-and-coming person in your field.

8. When you find a potential mentor, don’t tackle him or her or make a nuisance of yourself. Instead, ask for ten minutes of his or her time, in person, in private. Nothing more. Remember, most mentors are busy people, and they may be opposed to someone trying to take up a lot of their time. It’s not personal.

9. When you meet with a potential mentor, express your eagerness to be more successful in your field. Tell him or her that you would very much appreciate a little guidance and advice to help you move ahead. Ask for an answer to a specific question, or for a specific book or audiotape recommendation, or for a specific idea that has been helpful to him or her in the past.

10. After the initial meeting, send a thank-you note and express your gratitude and appreciation for his or her time and guidance. Mention that you hope to meet again if you have another question.

11. Each month, drop your mentor a short note telling him or her about what you are doing and how you are progressing. There is nothing that makes a potential mentor more open to helping you than your making it clear that the help is doing you some good.

12. Arrange to meet with your mentor again, perhaps on a monthly basis, or even more often if you work closely together.

Over the course of your life and career, you will have many mentor-protégé relationships. As you grow and develop, you will move on to mentors who can give you the kind of advice that is most effective for your current situation.

The most wonderful thing about this process is that successful people are very open to helping other people who want to be successful. This is especially true if you are willing to be a mentor to others who are younger and less experienced than you. The more open you are to helping other up the ladder of success, the more open will be to helping you.

The fastest way for you to succeed is by piggy-backing on the good advice and counsel of men and women who have already spent years learning how to succeed. When you do this on a regular and systematic basis, you will open up doors of opportunity and possibilities for you that today you cannot even imagine.

When you practice positive self-talk, and keep your words and your mental pictures consistent with your goals and dreams, there is nothing that can stop you from being the success you are meant to be.

The Rejuvinating Power of Relaxation

Most successful people can be characterized as having very high levels of energy. Since energy is the fuel with which everything is achieved, there seems to be a direct relationship between energy levels and levels of accomplishment. It is hard to imagine a tired, burned-out person achieving much in life. On the other hand, energetic, positive, forward-moving individuals seem to get and enjoy far more of the things life has to offer than does the average person.

We have been led to believe that there is basically one kind of energy. We supposedly replenish this energy by sleeping at night, and during the day, we use it up again. It is as though we are machines powered by batteries, and each night we recharge our batteries for seven or eight hours. However, there are some problems with this view of energy. The biggest problem is that it does not deal with the fact that there are actually three different kinds of energy, each of which is necessary for maximum performance.

The three main forms are physical energy, emotional energy, and mental energy. Each of these energies is different, but they are interrelated, and they depend on each other.

Physical energy is raw energy, coarse energy, bulk energy, what we call “meat-and-potatoes” energy. Your physical energy is what you use to do physical labor. It is the primary energy applied by men and women who earn their livings by the sweat of their brow.

Physical energy is an unrefined form of energy. People who work at hard physical jobs usually eat large quantities of food and burn up this food energy in the course of their working day. At the end of the day, they are physically tired, and they spend the evening and night replenishing themselves with food and rest so that they can get up and work again the next day. This is the situation of more that three quarters of the world’s population.

The sad fact is that if you use up all your energy in physical work, you have no energy left for higher purposes.

For example, imagine that physical energy is bulk energy, and if you do hard, physical labor, you require 1,000 units of physical energy from food and rest each day to do your job and perform your natural functions. If you use up your entire 1,000 units by the end of the day, you will be too tired, emotionally or mentally, to do much more than sit around and watch television during the evening. However, if you do not use up all your physical energy, thanks to laborsaving devices, machinery, automation, computers, and so on, the remainder of it will be available for higher purposes.

The second form of energy is emotional energy. This is the energy of enthusiasm and excitement. This is the energy that lends sparkle to the life of an individual. This is the energy that is necessary for feeling love, happiness, and joy. Largely, it is your emotional energy that makes life enjoyable for you. In fact, almost everything you say and do is determined in some way by an emotion, either positive or negative.

And here’s the important point. Positive emotions give you energy, while negative emotions deplete your energy. When you are excited and happy and are interacting with people you love and enjoy, you sparkle with energy and enthusiasm. When you are angry or depressed, or negative for any reason, you feel tired and frustrated and, eventually, burned out.

To continue the example of energy units, if it takes 1,000 units of physical energy to operate your body and you do not do physical labor, that physical energy can be refined in your body to produce 100 units of emotional energy. Emotional energy is a far more refined form of energy, and it is absolutely essential to healthy emotional functioning.

We all have had the experience of exerting ourselves so hard physically, perhaps playing a sport, that we were emotionally flat. We were unable to become angry or excited about anything. We were completely tired out. However, in our knowledge-based society, most of us do very little physical labor. Our kitchens are full of appliance to help us do the work of preparing our food. We drive cars to work. We take elevators up to our offices. There, we sit in chairs for most of the day. And we have to force ourselves to take a walk or exercise at the gym just to keep our bodies in motion. Because of this knowledge-based lifestyle, we have much more energy available to fuel our emotional centers.

If you do not consume all your energy units in the expression of negative emotions, such as fear, doubt, anger, and resentment, your emotional energies are conserved. If your energy is conserved at one level, your body continues to refine it into higher and better energy. 100 units of emotional energy thus conserved will be refined by your body into 10 units of mental energy.

Mental energy is the energy of creativity, of problem solving and decision making. You use mental energy to make sales, write reports and proposals, plan your day and your week, and learn new subjects. Your level of mental energy is a major determinant of the quality of your life.

The reason why most people fail to realize their potential in life and work is because they burn up their energy at the emotional level, or the physical level; therefore, they have very little energy left over for mental activities. Most people burn up their emotional energy through the expression of negative emotions. Negative emotions are like a fire that burns up their energy so quickly that they have very little left with which to think positively and constructively. In fact, one five-minute uncontrolled outburst of anger can burn up as much energy as an average person would use in eight hours of work.

You’ve probably heard someone described as “shaking with anger.” When a person is shaking with anger, it is an indication that he has burned up the glucose or sugar-based energy in his system, and he is actually weak from his angry outburst.

Another characteristic of very successful people is that they keep themselves calm much longer than the average person does. They are more relaxed, more genial, and more in control of their emotions. They are very aware that expressions of negative emotion deprive them of the energy they need to be effective in the more important things they do. They don’t allow themselves to become upset or angry over little things, or even over large things. They remain objective and detached. They stand back and refuse to take things personally. They do not allow themselves to get drawn into arguments or other people’s problems. They save their energy for more productive purposes.

One of the most important things you can do is to consciously and systematically build up and conserve your energy so that you have it available to use to create the kind of life that you sincerely desire. If you want to do really well financially, which requires mental energy, you get help in doing the things that require higher quantities of physical energy. You delegate physical work. At the same time, you preserve your emotional energy by keeping positive most of the time. And you use your mental energy carefully and skillfully by being well organized and clearly focused on your key tasks. You don’t waste your energy on low priorities.

The whole purpose of physical relaxation is to allow yourself to recharge your emotional and mental batteries. You don’t engage in physical relaxation so much to relax your physical body, because you likely don’t work that hard with your body anymore. The aim of rest and relaxation is more to build up your mental and emotional energies and thereby improve the overall quality of your life.

Here are some techniques for relaxing physically that are used by the most successful and highest paid people in America.

First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through.

During this time off, do not catch up on reports, organize your desk, prepare proposals, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, engage in physical exercise, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days.

Second, take one four-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality.

Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You’ll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left.

If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don’t continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break.

Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your physical body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves.

Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy at the physical level. This energy will then be available to you in the form of emotional and mental energy that you can apply to higher purposes.

Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your moth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have.

You can get the very most out of your time off by getting lots of sleep, take a nap whenever you feel like it, engaging in light physical exercise, such as walking or cycling, eating healthy foods, and limiting your alcohol consumption. Let yourself go, completely, just as if you had parked yourself in a garage and hooked yourself to a battery charger. Let your mind, your emotions and your body rebuild themselves so that you will be ready to perform at your best when you go back to work.

The key to achieving the success you desire is to be positive, alert, and clearly focused on your work and your objectives. Being at your best mentally requires being at your best emotionally as well. High levels of positive emotional energy depend on your remaining calm, positive and optimistic about yourself, the people around you, and your work. Refuse to express negative emotions, either to yourself or others. Resolve to be cheerful, and refuse to be knocked off course. Play your own game, and remember: Less can be more.

The Power of Positive Self-Talk

Perhaps the most powerful influence on your attitude and personality is what you say to yourself, and believe. It is not what happens to you, but how you respond internally to what happens to you, that determines your thoughts and felling and, ultimately, your actions. By controlling your inner dialogue, or “self-talk,” you can begin to assert control over every other dimension of your life.

Your self-talk, the words that you use to describe what is happening to you, and to discuss how you feel about external events, determines the quality and tone of your emotional life. When you see things positively and constructively and look for the good in each situation and each person, you have a tendency to remain naturally positive and optimistic. Since the quality of your life is determined by how you feel, moment to moment, one of your most important goals should be to use every psychological technique available to keep yourself thinking about what you want and to keep your mind off of what you don’t want, or what you fear.

Arnold Toynbee, the historian, developed what he called the “challenge-response theory” of history. In studying the rise and fall of 20 major world civilizations, Toynbee concluded that each civilization started out as a small group of people – as a village, as a tribe or in the case of the Mongol empire, as just three people who had survived the destruction of their small community. Toynbee concluded that each of these small groups faced external challenges, such as hostile tribes. In order to survive, much less thrive, these small groups had to reorganize themselves to deal positively and constructively with these challenges.

By meeting each of these challenges successfully, the village or tribe would grow. Even greater challenges would be triggered as a result. And if this group of people continued to meet each challenge by drawing upon its resources and winning out, it would continue to grow until ultimately it became a nation-state and then a civilization covering a large geographical area.

Toynbee looked at the 21 great civilizations of human history, ending with the American civilization, and concluded that these civilizations began to decline and fall apart when their citizens and leaders lost the will or ability to rise to the inevitable external challenges occasioned by their very size and power.

Toynbee’s theory of civilizations can be applicable to our life as well.

You are continually faced with challenges and difficulties, with problems and disappointments, with temporary setbacks and defeats. They are an unavoidable and inevitable part of being human. But, as you draw upon your resources to respond effectively to each challenge, you grow and become a stronger and better person. In fact, without those setbacks, you could not have learned what you needed to know and developed the qualities of your character to where they are today.

Much of your ability to succeed comes from the way you deal with life. One of the characteristics of superior men and women is that they recognize the inevitability of temporary disappointments and defeats, and they accept them as a normal and natural part of life. They do everything possible to avoid problems, but when problems come, superior people learn from them, rise above the, and continue onward in the direction of their dreams.

Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania has written a fascinating book based on his 25 years of research into this subject. It’s titled Learned Optimism. In this book, Dr. Seligman explains the basic response patterns of both positive and negative people. As a result of his many years of work in cognitive therapy, and the use of exhaustive testing, he finds, quite simply, that optimistic people tend to interpret events in such a way that they keep their minds positive and their emotions under control.

Optimists develop the habit of talking to themselves in constructive ways. Whenever they experience an adversity, they immediately describe it to themselves in such a way that it loses its ability to trigger negative emotions and feelings of helplessness.

Dr. Seligman says that are three basic differences in the reactions of optimists and pessimists. The first difference is that the optimist sees a setback as temporary, while the pessimist sees it as permanent. The optimist sees an unfortunate event, such as an order that falls through or a sales call that fails, as a temporary event, something that is limited in time and that has no real impact on the future. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees negative events as permanent, as part of life and destiny.

For example, let’s say that the optimistic salesperson makes 10 calls on likely prospects, and every one of those calls is unsuccessful. The optimist simply interprets this as a temporary event and a matter of averages or probabilities. The optimist concludes that, with every temporary failure, he is moving closer to the prospect who will turn into a sale. The optimist dismisses the event and goes on cheerfully to the 11th and 12th prospects.

The pessimist sees the same situation differently. The pessimist has a tendency to conclude that 10 unsuccessful sales calls is an indication that the economy is terrible and that there is no market for his product. The pessimist generalizes and begins to see the situation and his career as hopeless. While the optimist just shrugs it off and gets on with the next call, the pessimist becomes discouraged and loses heart and enthusiasm for the hard work of prospecting.

The second difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the optimist sees difficulties as specific, while the pessimist sees them as pervasive. This means that when things go wrong for the optimist, he looks at the event as an isolated incident largely disconnected from other things that are going on in his life.

For example, if something you were counting on failed to materialize and you interpreted it to yourself as being an unfortunate event, but something that happens in the course of life and business, you would be reacting like an optimist. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees disappointments as being pervasive. That is, to him they are indications of a problem or shortcoming that pervades every area of life.

If a pessimist worked hard to put together a business deal and it collapsed, he would tend to assume that the deal did not work out was because the product or the company or the economy was in poor shape and the whole business was hopeless. The pessimist would tend to feel helpless, unable to make a difference and out of control of his destiny.

The third difference between optimists and pessimists is that optimists see events as external, while pessimists interpret events as personal. When things go wrong, the optimist will tend to see the setback as result from external factors over which one has little control.

If the optimist is cut off in traffic, for example, instead of getting angry or upset, he will simply downgrade the importance of the event by saying something like, “oh, well, I guess that person is just having a bad day.”

The pessimist has a tendency to take everything personally. If the pessimist is cut off in traffic, he will react as though the other driver has deliberately acted to upset and frustrate him. The pessimist will become angry and negative and want to strike out and get even. Often, he will honk his horn or yell at the other driver. There is a natural tendency in all of us to react emotionally when our expectations are frustrated in any way. When something we wanted and hoped for fails to materialize, we feel a temporary sense of disappointment and unhappiness. We feel disillusioned. We react as though we have been punched in the “emotional solar plexus”.

The optimistic person, however, soon moves beyond this disappointment. He responds quickly to the adverse event and interprets it as being temporary, specific and external to himself. The optimist takes full control of his inner dialogue and counters the negative feelings by immediately reframing the event so that it appear positive in some way.

Napoleon Hill, who, prior to writing his best-selling books on success, interviewed 500 of the most successful people in America, concluded that “Contained within a setback or disappointment is the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit.” And this is one of the great secrets of success.

Since your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, either positive or negative, if you deliberately choose a positive thought to dwell upon, you keep your mind optimistic and your emotions positive. Since your thoughts and feelings determine your actions, you will tend to be a more constructive person, and you will move much more rapidly toward the goals that you have chosen.

It all comes down to the way you talk to yourself on a regular basis. In our courses of problem solving and decisions making, we encourage people to respond to problems by changing their language from negative to positive. Instead of using the word problem, we encourage people to use the word situation. You see, a problem is something that you deal with. The event is the same. It’s the way you interpret the event to yourself that makes it sound and appear completely different.

Even better than situation is the word challenge. Whenever you have a difficulty, immediately reframe it and choose to view it as a challenge. Rather than saying, “I have a problem,” say, “I have an interesting challenge facing me.” The word challenge is inherently positive. It is something that you rise to that makes you stronger and better. It is the same situation, only the word that you are using to describe it is different.

The best of all possible words is the word opportunity. When you are faced with a difficulty of any kind, instead of saying, “I have a problem,” you can say, “I am faced with an unexpected opportunity.” And if you concentrate your powers on finding out what that opportunity is-even if it is only a valuable lesson-you will certainly find it. As the parable says, “Seek and ye shall find, for all who seek find it.”

One of my favorite affirmative statements, which I use to deal with any unexpected difficulty, is this: “Every situation is a positive situation if viewed as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery. Whenever something goes wrong, immediately neutralize its negative power by quickly reciting this statement.

If you are in sales, and your method of prospecting is not generating the results that you desire, you can view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery. The adversity you are facing may be meant to indicate to you that there is a better way to approach this task. Perhaps you should be prospecting in a different place, or with different people, or using a different script or a different method. Perhaps your difficulty is simply part of the process of developing the persistence and tenacity that you need to become successful in any kind of market. The difference between the winner and the loser is that the winner faces and deals with the adversity constructively, while the loser allows the adversity to overwhelm him.

The hallmark of the fully mature, fully functioning, self-actualizing personality is the ability to be objective and unemotional when caught up in the inevitable storms of daily life. The superior person has the ability to continue talking to himself in a positive and optimistic way, keeping his mind calm, clear and completely under control. The mature personality is more relaxed and aware and capable of interpreting events more realistically and less emotionally than is the immature personality. As a result, the mature person exerts a far greater sense of control and influence over his environment, and is far less likely to be angry, upset, or distracted.

The starting point in the process of becoming a highly effective person is to monitor and control your self-talk every minute of the day. Keep your thoughts and your words positive and consistent with your goals, and keep your mind focused on what you want to do and the person you want to be.

Here are five ideas you can use to help you to be a more positive and optimistic person:

First, resolve in advance that no matter what happens, you will not allow it to get you down. You will respond in a constructive way. You will take a deep breath, relax and look for whatever good the situation my contain. When you make this decision in advance, you mentally prepare yourself so that you are not knocked off balance when things go wrong, as they inevitably will.

Second, neutralize any negative thoughts or emotions by speaking to yourself positively all the time. Say things like, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!” As you go about your job, say to yourself, I like myself, and I love my work!” Say things like, “Today is a great day; it’s wonderful to be alive!” According to the law of expression, whatever is expressed is impressed. Whatever you say to yourself or others is impressed deeply into your subconscious mind and is likely to become a permanent part of your personality.

Third, look upon the inevitable setbacks that you face as being temporary, specific and external. View the negative situations as a single event that is not connected to other potential events and that is caused largely by external factors over which you can have little control. Simply refuse to see the event as being in any way permanent, pervasive or indicative of personal incompetence of inability.

Fourth, remember that it is impossible to learn and grow and become a successful person without adversity and difficulties. You must contend with and rise above them in order to become a better person. Welcome each difficulty by saying, “That’s good!” and then look into the situation to find the good in it.

Finally, keep your thoughts on your goals and dreams, on the person you are working toward becoming. When things go wrong temporarily, respond by saying to yourself, “I believe in the perfect outcome of every situation in my life.” Resolve to be cheerful and pleasant, and resist every temptation toward negativity and disappointment. View a disappointment as an opportunity to grow stronger, and about it to yourself and others in a positive and optimistic way.

The Keys to Self-Acceptance

Psychologists today generally agree that your level of self-esteem, or how much you like yourself and consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person, lies at the core of your personality. Your level of self-esteem determines:

your level of energy and the quality of your personality how much you like other people and, in turn, how much they like you your willingness to try new things and to venture boldly where perhaps you have never gone before the quality of your relationships with others-your family, your friends and your coworkers and how successful you are in your business, especially if you are in sales.

But before you begin enjoying the wonderful effects of high self-esteem in your life, you have to learn to accept yourself unconditionally. And even before you achieve self-acceptance, there are other steps you have to take.

Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people. As a child, you have an overwhelming need for love and approval and acceptance from the important people in your life. A developing child requires this emotional support the way roses need rain. Healthy personality growth is absolutely dependent upon it. A person grows up straight and strong and happy to the degree to which he receives an abundance of nurturing in his formative years, prior to the age of five.

Someone once said that everything we do in life is either to get love or to compensate for the lack of love. Almost all of our problems, as both children and adults, can be traced back to “love withheld.” There is nothing more destructive to the evolving and emerging personality than being unloved or unaccepted for any reason by someone whom we consider important.

As adults, we always strive to achieve what we felt we were deprived of in childhood. If you grew up feeling, for any reason, that you were not totally accepted by your parents, you will be internally motivated throughout your life to compensate for that lack of acceptance by seeking it in your relationships with other people. To the growing child, perception is reality; reality is not what the parents feel toward the child, but what the child feels that the parents feel. The child’s evolving personality is shaped largely by his perception of how he is seen and thought about by his parents, not by the actual fact of the matter. If your parents were unable to express a high degree of unconditional acceptance to you, you can grow up feeling unacceptable-even inferior and inadequate.

It’s quite common for a youngster to grow up in a household where he or she feels a lack of acceptance by one or both parents, especially the father. When the young person becomes an adult, the psychological phenomenon of “transference” takes place. The individual goes into the workplace and transfers the need for acceptance from the parents to the boss. The boss then becomes the focal point of the individual’s thoughts and feelings. What the boss says, how the boss looks, his comments and everything that he does that implies a feeling or an opinion about the individual is recorded and either raises or lowers the individual’s level of self-acceptance.

Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted by the important people in your life. Just as the Law of Correspondence says that your outer life tends to be a reflection of your inner life, your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. However, if you believe, rightly or wrongly, that other people think poorly of you, your level of self-acceptance will plummet.

The best way to begin building a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your motivation. Toward this end, I’d like to introduce what is called the “Johari window” and explain its effect on your personality.

The Johari window provides a view into your psyche. According to this theory, your personality can be divided into four quadrants, like a square divided into four smaller squares.

The first part of this window is the box in the upper left-hand corner. It represents the part of your personality that both you and others can see. This is the open part of your personality. The lower left-hand box of this window into your psyche represents the part of your personality that you can see but that others cannot see. It is a part of your inner life.

The upper right-hand box of this window represents the parts of your personality that others can see but of which you are unaware. You have somehow blocked these parts from your consciousness.

Finally, the lower right-hand box represents that part of your personality that is hidden from both you and other people. It’s the deeper, subconscious part of your personality that represents urges, instincts, fears, doubts and emotions that are stored away below a conscious level, but that can exert an inordinate impact on the way you behave, often causing you to feel and react in certain ways that sometimes even you don’t understand.

One of your goals is to develop a fully rounded personality, to become a fully functioning human being with a sense of inner peace and outer happiness.

A measure of your maturity is often manifested in the way you treat different people. When you are at your very best and your self-esteem is at its highest, you’ll find that you are genuinely positive and friendly toward everyone, from the taxi driver to the corporation president. When your personality is completely together, you treat everyone with equal respect.

The way to move toward a higher level of personality integration and, therefore, a higher level of peace and personal effectiveness, is to expand the area of your personality that is clear to both you and others. And you do this through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

The second part of personality development follows from self-disclosure, and it’s called self-awareness. Only when you can disclose what you’re truly thinking and feeling to someone else can you become aware of those thoughts and emotions If the other person simply listens to you without commenting or criticizing, you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are and why you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the Buddhists call “detachment.” You can stand back from yourself and your past and look at it honestly. You can “disidentify” from the intense emotions involved and view what has happened to you with greater calmness and clarity.

Now we come to the good part. After you’ve gone through self-disclosure to self-awareness, you arrive at self-acceptance. You accept yourself for the person you are, with good points and bad points, with strengths and weaknesses, and with the normal frailties of a human being. When you develop the ability to stand back and look at yourself honestly, and to candidly admit to others that you may not be perfect but you’re all you’ve got, you start to enjoy a heightened sense of self-acceptance.

One of the keys to happiness is to “live in truth” with yourself and others. And one of the ways to live in truth is to stop trying to be perfect and to see yourself honestly, as you really are. Attempts to achieve needless perfectionism, and an intense, often unconscious desire to impress people with how good you are, are real time wasters and energy killers.

There is a joke that cuts to the heart of this issue: “When you are in your 20s, you are very concerned about what people think about you. When you are in your 30s, you don’t really care that much about what people think about you. And when you get into your 40s, you discover the real truth: Nobody was even thinking about you at all.” A valuable exercise for developing higher levels of self-acceptance involves doing an inventory of yourself. In doing this inventory, your job is to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. The real difference between optimistic people and pessimistic people is that optimists are always looking for the good in every situation, the opportunity in every problem, while pessimists are always looking for the down side and the problem in every opportunity. When you honestly analyze yourself during this inventory, you will be amazed at how extraordinary you really are and how incredible your potential is for accomplishing the things that you really desire.

Begin your inventory by recalling your accomplishments. Think about all the things that you have achieved over the course of your lifetime. Make a list of them. Think of the subjects you passed and the grades you received. Think of the awards and prizes you won. Think of the people you have helped and the kind things that you have done for others. Think of the adversities that you have triumphed over. Think of the goals that you have set and achieved. Look at the material parts of your life; think about all the things that you have managed to acquire as the result of hard work and disciplined effort.

Now, to increase your level of self-acceptance, think of your unique talents and abilities. Think of your core skills, the things that you do exceptionally well that account for your success in your profession and in your personal life right now. Think of the results that you have achieved by applying yourself to the challenges of your world. Think of your earning ability and your ability to accomplish your goals. Think of your ability to make a contribution to your company and to your family and to the world around you. Think about all the things that you have to offer to your world.

Finally, to boost your level of self-acceptance, think about your future possibilities and the fact that your potential is virtually unlimited. You can do what you want to do and go where you want to go. You can be the person you want to be. You can set large and small goals and make plans and move step-by-step, progressively toward their realization. There are no obstacles to what you can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind.

Here’s an important fact to keep in mind when it comes to self-acceptance. What we work for more than anything else is respect. The British author E. M. Forster once explained, “I write to earn the respect of those I respect.” Almost everything that we do, or refrain from doing, is somehow associated with gaining, or at least not losing, the respect of the people whom we respect the most. And only when we feel that we are respected by those we respect do we accept and like ourselves to a great degree.

One way to raise your level of self-acceptance, then, is to pick a role model, someone you admire and look up to and want to be like, and then pattern your life and your work after that person’s. Many businesspeople have become top executives by selecting a role model who had already reached the top and then patterning their lives along the same lines. Everything you do that you feel is consistent with what someone you admire would do increases your level of self-acceptance.

A second way to assure a higher level of self-acceptance is to develop good work habits and to work efficiently and effectively toward the accomplishment of high-value results. The most respected people in any organization are those who can get the job done. Your level of self-efficacy, in other words, your belief in your ability to do what is expected of you, has an incredible effect on how much you accept yourself as a good and valuable person.

A third way to increase your level of self-acceptance is to be very aware of your image and the way you appear to people. If you want to be respected and admired by others, you need to act like a person who is worthy of respect. And remember, everything counts. Everything you do or don’t do can either contribute to or take away from your image and the impression you are making on others. When you know that you look absolutely excellent on the outside, your level of self-acceptance shoots up.

A fourth way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to take complete responsibility for the various parts of your life. Refuse to make excuses or to blame other people. Never complain; never explain. Volunteer for assignments and responsibilities, and then carry them out without comment.

The key to achieving a feeling of mental well-being is having a sense of control, a sense of self-determination and internal mastery. This sense of self-control is tied directly to your willingness and ability to accept full responsibility for every part of your life. When you criticize others, or you make excuses for things that you did not do well or complete on time, you actually feel more negative about yourself, and your sense of self-acceptance declines. When you take charge of every part of your life, you feel terrific about yourself, and your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes up. A fifth way you can build up your level of self-acceptance is by interpreting events in a positive way. Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania calls this your “explanatory style.” He concludes that high-performing men and women have a tendency to talk to themselves in a positive way and to explain things that are happening to them and around them in a way that allows them to stay optimistic.

Look for the silver lining in whatever cloud may be hanging over your head right now. Look for the lesson or opportunity in each obstacle or setback. Look for reasons to excuse others and let them off the hook, rather than becoming angry or upset. Play mental games with yourself to keep your thoughts on the things you want and off the things that you fear or that make you unhappy.

A sixth way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to become a habitual goal setter. Write down clear goals and a plan for what you want to accomplish and then work your plan every day. Develop of clear sense of direction for your life. Work on track and on purpose. Know exactly who you are and where you are going. Each step that you take toward the accomplishment of a predetermined objective raises your self-esteem and improves your level of self-acceptance at the same time.

Finally, a seventh way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to practice the Law of Indirect Effort, or reverse effort, and realize that everything you do or say to another person rebounds and causes the same effect on you. Whenever you are warm and friendly and courteous to another, you improve your own level of self-respect and self-acceptance. Whenever you do something nice for another person, you tend to feel better about yourself. Whenever you do or say anything that causes another person to like himself more, you find yourself liking yourself more as well.

One of the great riches of life is the self-acceptance that leads to self-esteem and maximum performance. By being aware of and practicing these recommendations, you can increase your self-acceptance to the point where you can confidently move forward toward the realization of your full potential.

The Journey to Happiness

The key to happiness is both simple and complex. It is the sum total result of more than 2000 years of philosophy, psychology, speculation and discussion about the meanings and sources of happiness. From Aristotle in 340 BC through to the modern thinkers, speakers and writers of today, this key to happiness has hardly changed at all. It is the same for virtually all men and women, in all countries and situations and in all walks of life.

The key to happiness is this: dedicate yourself to the development of your natural talents and abilities by doing what you love to do, and doing it better and better, in the service of a cause that is greater than yourself.

This is a big statement and a big commitment. Being happy requires that you define your life in your own terms and then throw your whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish in order to develop yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for the rest of your life. In Edmund Rostand’s play “Cyrano de Bergerac”, Cyrano, is asked why he is so intensely individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and judgments of others. He replies with these wonderful words, “I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.”

Your happiness likewise depends upon your ability to please at least yourself in all things. You can only be happy when you are living your life in the very best way possible. No one can define happiness for you. Only you know what makes you happy. Happiness is an inside job.

Now, there is a good deal of confusion on the subject of happiness. When I was growing up, I was told by older relatives that my happiness was irrelevant. I was reminded again and again that it was selfish for me to set my own happiness as a goal and to strive toward it. I was told that I was here on earth to make other people happy and that if I got a little happiness on the way through, I should consider myself lucky.

Many people fool themselves into thinking that by giving up their own personal happiness, they can make someone else happy, usually members of their family. But this way of thinking is completely confused. You can’t reap where you haven’t sown. Just as you cannot make someone else healthy by being sick, you cannot make someone else happy by being unhappy. People who think that they are unhappy so that others can be happy are deluding themselves. They are rationalizing their own dissatisfaction by somehow pretending that it is noble to be miserable.

Study after study shows that the best thing you can do for the people around you, especially the members of your family, is to be a happy person. If you want to raise happy children, be a happy parent. If you want to have a happy spouse, be a happy husband or wife. Only happy people can make other people happy.

A very important point on the subject of happiness is whether or not you feel that you “deserve” to be happy. The question of deservedness is one of the most fundamental and confusing issues that we have to deal with throughout life. Most of us have been brought up with vague feelings of guilt and uneasiness. Deep down inside, we often don’t feel that we deserve to be truly happy. In fact, these feelings of guilt and inferiority can lead us to sabotage our own happiness when we finally do achieve it.

A starting point for enjoying happiness is for you to accept that you deserve all the happiness you can honestly attain through the application of your special talents and abilities. The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you will feel of the good things in life. And the more deserving you feel, the more likely it will be that you will attain and hold on to the happiness you are working toward.

Another key is to make happiness the organizing principle of your life. By doing this, you can compare every possible action and decision against that standard of happiness to see whether it would make you more happy or less happy. Soon, you will discover that almost all of the problems of your life come from choices that you have made, or are currently making, that do not contribute to your happiness.

Of course, there are countless times where you will have to do little things that don’t make you happy on the path toward those larger things that make you very happy indeed. We call this paying the price of success in advance. You must pay your dues. For example, if you want to enjoy the good life of success, prestige, respect, and inner satisfaction that comes from successful selling, you must often get up early, make cold calls, prospect with rude or indifferent people to find business, and stay later than anyone else. Sometimes these interim steps don’t make you happy directly, but the happiness you achieve from attaining your goals is so great that it wipes away the temporary inconveniences and dissatisfactions you had to endure in order to get there.

As Earl Nightingale said, “Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” You only feel really happy when you are moving, step-by-step, toward the accomplishment of clearly defined goals that you feel will enhance the quality of your life.

Since you can’t be truly happy until you are clear about your inherent possibilities, it’s very important that you take some time on a regular basis to analyze yourself and identify your strengths and weaknesses. There is an old saying: “Success leaves tracks.” You can often look back in your life, and look around you today, to identify who you really are and what you should really be doing with your life. One of the best ways to do this is to ask yourself two powerful questions.

The first question is my favorite: “What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?”

Imagine that you are absolutely guaranteed success in the pursuit of a particular goal, big or small, short term or long term. Imagine that you had all the money, all the time, all the education, all the contacts, all the resources and everything else that you could possibly need to achieve any one big goal in life. What would it be? This is a very important question because when you remove the limitations from your thinking, you often get a very clear idea of exactly what you should be doing with your life.

All successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose. And step-by-step realization of their ideal makes them genuinely happy. The second question you can ask yourself is this: “How would I spend my life if I learned today that I only had six months to live?” If you could only do one or two things before your time on earth was over, what would they be? Where would you go? Who would you spend your time with?

Often, when you think about only having a short time left, you become very clear about exactly what it is that you should be doing with your life.

Both of these questions assess your values. They go right to the very heart of the person you really are. They give you indications of your natural talents and abilities, of what is really important to you.

You get indications of your heart’s desire, the key to your happiness, throughout your life. The things that you did with the greatest joy and happiness between the ages of 7 and 14 contain the seeds of what you should be doing as an adult if you want to fulfill your full potential and become everything you are capable of becoming. Think back to your early teenage years. What did you most enjoy doing? What kind of people did you most enjoy associating with? What sort of things did you most enjoy learning about? What sort of activities did you most enjoy engaging in?

Dr. Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” said that you can divide the things you do in life into four categories. The first category consists of the things that are hard to learn and hard to do. An example in this category for many people is mathematics. Many of us struggled with math in school, and still struggle with bookkeeping, accounting, financial statements, and tax returns as an adult. If you find mathematics hard to learn and hard to do, this is the sort of activity for which you are clearly not suited. No matter how much of it you do, or how good you get at it, you will never achieve any lasting satisfaction or happiness from it. The next category consists of things that are hard to learn but easy to do. Riding a bicycle and driving a car are hard to learn but easy to do once you’ve practiced enough. Tying your shoes is another example. These are seldom the sort of activities where you feel terrific about yourself when you engage in them. They do not demand your best.

The third category consists of things that are easy to learn but hard to do. Physical labor falls into this category. Digging a ditch with a shovel or chopping wood with an ax are easy to learn but they are hard to do. And they never get any easier.

The fourth category is the key. These are things that are easy to do and easy to learn. You seem to have a natural proclivity for them. When you are engaged in this sort of activity, time flies. The things that are easy to learn and easy to do for you are the sort of things that you should be doing with your life. They indicate where your natural talents and abilities lie. It is engaging in these activities with your whole heart, and committing yourself to becoming better and better, that will give you all the joy, satisfaction, and happiness you could want in life.

Everyone has an area of excellence. Everyone has something that he or she can do in an outstanding fashion. It may take weeks, months, and even years for you to develop yourself in that area so that you can really perform in an extraordinary fashion, but you will be strongly attracted to that sort of activity from the beginning. You will enjoy reading about it and talking about it and thinking about it. You will find yourself admiring people who are outstanding in that area. You will look longingly at that field and wonder what it would be like to be in it and to be successful at it. And that is very often your heart’s desire. That area of activity, the area where you can become excellent, is probably what you were put on this earth to do.

There is a direct correlation between the feeling of growth and the feeling of motivation or personal power. It is when you are growing progressively, becoming better and better at something that is important to you, that you really feel alive and in touch with your world. And remember, excellence is not a destination; it’s a lifelong journey.

So resolve to persist until you succeed. The first part of courage is the resolve to launch in faith toward your objectives; the second part of courage is your willingness to endure in the face of the inevitable disappointments and setbacks along the road.

Happiness is not an accident. Happy people are those who deliberately do the things that invariably lead to happiness. Happy people are those who know what they want and then throw their whole hearts into using their unique talents and abilities to make a contribution to the world in the achievement of their goals.

You were put on this earth with a special purpose, programmed with unique talents and abilities that have not yet been fully tapped and utilized. When you focus all of your energies on unlocking your true potential, you can claim your ultimate birthright: happiness.

The Discipline of Reading

Some things in life are optional, and some things in life are mandatory. Taking your next vacation to the Caribbean is optional. Building a personal library and becoming an excellent reader is mandatory. It is no longer something you can choose to do or not do. It is absolutely essential and indispensable for your success.

A great many people do not read very much. Fifty-eight percent of adult Americans never read a nonfiction book from cover to cover after they finish school. The average American reads less than one book per year. In fact, according to a Gallup study of the most successful men and women in America, reading one nonfiction book per month will put you into the top 1 percent of living Americans.

It takes regular, persistent reading and studying for you to improve, to move to the front of your field. It is not optional.

There are a variety of reasons why people don’t read as much as they should. One is that probably 50 million Americans have been graduated from high school with poor reading skills.

Another reason why people don’t read is because they have not been told how important reading is. Lifelong learning, lifelong reading is the minimum requirement for success in any field today. If you are in sales, management, service, administration or any other field that relies on the written word to convey information and data, your ability to read well is absolutely critical to your success.

Some people don’t read because they are simply lazy. They are surrounded by so many distractions, especially television, radio, socializing and other activities, that they just never get around to doing any serious reading. They are so busy and caught up in day-to-day activities and amusements that they put off reading and then never get around to it. If continued, this pattern could have devastating consequences.

Another reason why people don’t read is that they probably are not working in the right field. One of the best tests for compatibility with your work is your desire to read and learn more about it. If you are doing the job that is right for you, you will naturally be eager to read everything that you can possibly find about your field. You will want to get better and better. You will be hungry for new knowledge. You will be determined to become excellent. And every single bit of new information motivates and stimulates you and makes you excited about learning even more.

However, if you are in the wrong field, you will look upon reading about it as drudgery. If the reading and studying is a required condition of your job or profession, you will do it, but only under duress. You will want to get it over with, like a visit to the dentist. If, for any reason, you are not eager to learn more about what you are doing, it could very well be that you are wasting your time and your life in the wrong field.

In one 22-year study of self-made millionaires, the researchers found that one of the common characteristics of those special men and women who went from rags to riches was that they were absolutely fascinated by their work. They didn’t think so much about making a lot of money. They were more concerned about becoming better and better at what they did. Their work absorbed them completely. In almost no time at all, because of their commitment to reading and self-development, they were paid more and more. And once they reached a high level of income, their fascination with their work still continued. Instead of drawing extra money from their business and spending it frivolously, they reinvested it in themselves and in their career. As a result, they became more and more proficient and wealthier and wealthier. Then, one day, they opened their eyes, looked around and found that they were worth more than $1 million. And the continuous learning, the nonstop reading, was the key ingredient.

Some years ago, a young man came to me and asked for advice. He had been graduated from high school without the ability to read. He told me that reading a whole paragraph actually made him tired. His problem was that he was working at a dead-end job at minimum wage, and he had been there for two years. He was living in a small apartment on a limited budget. All his friends from high school, none of whom could read either, were in pretty much the same predicament. They all were working at low-level, low-skill jobs with no future. He had been out of school for two years and had made no progress. What advice could I give him?

I told him that he had to learn to read, and read well. He said he didn’t like to read, and he wanted to be successful at something that didn’t require reading. I told him that this was not a matter of choice. The only jobs that didn’t require reading were the kinds of jobs that he and his friends were already doing. And even they soon would be surpassed by younger, more eager people with better educations.

Much to his credit, he thought about this for a while and then accepted the fact that he had to become a good reader. He began taking community-college courses in remedial reading. Eventually, he applied for entrance to a technical institute, and he managed to get in by the skin of his teeth. Because of his poor high-school education, it took him almost three years to complete a two-year program in biomedical engineering. He stuck in there and worked hard, and he finally came up with a degree.

A small company hired him as a sales representative, to call on hospitals and clinics in a rural territory. It wasn’t much, but he took it and ran with it. He continued to read and studied sales and communications. He started at $22,000 per year, and within two years, he was up to $30,000 per year. In his third year, he was hired away by a rival company and paid $40,000 per year. Two years later, an international company heard about his success in the marketplace and hired him at more than $50,000 per year, with a company car, an expense account and substantial benefits.

In seven years, he went from being a semiliterate, minimum wage worker to a highly paid biomedical technical representative working for an international corporation. And he was back in the big city with a town house, a new car, a wife, children, and a great life. The interesting thing was that as he went around to renew his old friendships, he found that most of the people he had graduated with were still working at dead-end jobs.

Seven years seems like a long time in the course of a life, but it passes in a flash when you are busy doing something you enjoy and getting continually better at it.

The last great obstacle to regular reading and continuous learning is that most people have been brought up with what we might call the old paradigm, the outdated way of viewing education. It’s likely that as you grew up, education was looked upon as something that was done to you by other people. For the first 18 years of your life, you went off to school and education was done to you as though you were a passive object. Even when you went to college, you signed up for the courses that were recommended, you learned the subjects that were required, and you took the exams that were given. When you came out, you were the product of an education. It was almost as though the education had “just happened” to you, while you merely went along and did your share at the right time.

However, after you finish school, you are responsible for your education. From that moment onward, you are responsible for buying your books, planning your courses of study, learning your subjects and continually upgrading your skills. It’s not the responsibility of anyone else. You are in charge. It’s all up to you.

Many people think that it’s up to their company to educate them if they need additional training. Well, if your company provides training, you should take every minute of it that you can get. But if it doesn’t, and most companies don’t, you are still solely responsible for maintaining and increasing your value through continuous reading. There is no other way.

Let me share with you some ideas that helped me to go from high-school dropout and dishwasher, working in the kitchen of a small hotel, to chief operating officer of a $265 million company. These are practices of most of the successful men and women in America. Their cumulative effect on the quality of your life can be amazing. First, if you are not a good reader, make the decision, right now, that you are going to go any distance, pay any price, overcome any obstacle and spend whatever amount of money it takes to become an excellent reader. If you do not know how to read particularly well, stop everything else that you are doing outside your work and dedicate yourself to reading. Spend every spare minute reading as if your future depended on it, because it does.

It may take a week, a month or a year to become a better reader. It may take even longer. But it doesn’t matter. Your becoming an excellent reader will kick open doors of opportunity for you that you cannot now imagine.

Second, if you are already a good reader, or when you become a good reader, learn to speed-read. The Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics program is probably the best that has ever been developed. Also, many communities throughout America offer speed-reading classes. Speed-reading is like touch-typing. In typing, you can use the hunt-and-peck method all your life, or you can learn how to do it right and increase your speed to 50 or 60 words per minute. In reading, you can take your speed from 50 or 60 words per minute up to 300, 400, 500 or even 1,000 words per minute, with no loss of comprehension. Speed-reading courses are absolutely essential to the success of really ambitious men and women today.

Third, build a personal library. Although public libraries are extremely helpful for research, you should buy your own books. People often ask me what books they should buy. To decide this, you can use the Law of Relative Importance. Buy the books that are most important to your life at this moment. The key word here is relevant. Adults learn best when what they are studying is extremely relevant to their needs, their work, their life, and their present situation. If you read material that is not relevant to what you are doing, you will find it difficult. You will not be drawn to the material, and you will forget most of it as you go along. But when you read material that is both relevant and applicable to your work, your mind sparkles with all kinds of ideas on how you can use this new information to be more effective. The prospect of learning new methods and techniques that you know will improve your life is both exciting and highly motivating.

Next, in building your own library, ask the most successful people in your field what books they would recommend. Then, go straight to the bookstore and buy them.

One of the marks of the professional, and professionalism is a state of mind, is that he has a library in his field. If you are in sales, you should have a library of sales books. You should be reading at least one hour per day in sales, one book per week, 50 books per year. You should be a consistent, persistent student of your craft. You should know more about the field of selling than anybody within 500 miles does. You should set a goal to become so knowledgeable about your field that you would be able to give advanced classes in your profession within a few years. With this idea as your guiding star, you will find yourself learning and remembering far more than you would if you were just browsing through the material.

Should you buy hardcover books or softcover books? I recommend that you purchase any book, of either kind, that can help you. Some books cost $20 to $30. The average person complains that he can’t afford such a book. The superior person recognizes that the information contained in that book can save him a year or two of hard work. Remember, it may take an author 10 to 20 years to learn his subject. It may take him two to three years to write a book on it. It then may take one to two years to get the book published. By paying a few dollars for a book, you probably are getting the results of 20 or 25 years of effort by one of the smartest people in your field.

Never scrimp on your education. It is one of the most damaging things you could ever do.

Get some good bookshelves, and begin categorizing your books by subject. Have a section on sales. Have a section on management. Have a section on family and child raising. Have a section on personal motivation and success. If you like novels, have a section on fiction, or on history.

Organize your sections in alphabetical order, either by the title of the book or by the author. You don’t have to make it too formal or structured. The point is to set up your library in such a way that you pretty well know where each book is, you know whether or not you have a book, and you know where to go to get a piece of information when you need it.

Once you’ve bought a book, read it with a red pen in hand, underlining and making notes at every key point you find. If you read a book twice, use a different-color pen to underline points you may have missed the first time.

I have books that I have read 10 or 20 times and that look like rainbows from page to page. They are literally covered with all kinds of colors and marks. Needless to say, the information and ideas in those books has soaked so deeply into my psyche that I can recite much of the material in my dreams.

You need to read an hour or two each day just to keep current with your field. You need to read newspapers, magazines, newsletters, correspondence and other materials. But you don’t get ahead with regular reading. You must invest in the future while you keep current with the present. If you want to get ahead, you must read things that give you new ideas and insights, not merely things that confirm what you already know.

Becoming a proficient and persistent reader may not be easy to do so, but it’s certainly possible. The future does belong to the competent. Those who know more will always win out over those who know less. The more you read, the better you get. The more you learn, the easier it is for you to learn. And the more you challenge your mind, the smarter you get.

The Courage to Take Action

Perhaps the greatest challenge that you will ever face in life is the conquest of fear and the development of the habit of courage. Winston Churchill once wrote, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.” Fear is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of mankind. When Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was saying that the emotion of fear, rather than the reality of what we fear, is what causes us anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. When you develop the habit of courage and unshakable self-confidence, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for you. Just think—what would you dare to dream, or be, or do, if you weren’t afraid of anything in the whole world?

Fortunately, the habit of courage can be learned just as any other success skill is learned. To do so, we need to go to work systematically to diminish and eradicate our fears, while simultaneously building up the kind of courage that will enable us to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life unafraid.

Syndicated columnist Ann Landers wrote these words: “If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’” This is the kind of attitude that leads to victory.

The starting point in overcoming fear and developing courage is, first of all, to look at the factors that predispose us toward being afraid.

As we know, the root source of fear is childhood conditioning that caused us to experience two types of fear: the fear of failure, which causes us to think, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t”; and the fear of rejection, which causes us to think, “I have to, I have to, I have to.”

Based on these fears, we become preoccupied with the idea of losing our money, or our time, or our emotional investment in a relationship. We become hypersensitive to the opinions and possible criticisms of others, sometimes to the point where we are afraid to do anything that anyone else might disapprove of. Our fears tend to paralyze us, holding us back from taking constructive action in the direction of our dreams and goals. We hesitate, we become indecisive and we procrastinate; we make excuses and find reasons not to move ahead. And finally, we feel frustrated, caught in the double bind of, “I have to, but I can’t,” or, “I can’t, but I have to.”

Fear is also caused by ignorance. When we have limited information, we tend to be tense and insecure about the outcome of our actions. Ignorance causes us to fear change, to fear the unknown and to avoid trying anything new or different. But the reverse is also true. The very act of gathering more and more information about a particular subject causes us to have more courage and confidence in that area. There are parts of your life where you have no fear at all because you feel knowledgeable and completely capable of handling whatever happens.

Another factor that causes fears is illness or fatigue. When we are tired or unwell, or when we are not physically fit, we are more predisposed to fear and doubt than when we are feeling healthy and happy and terrific about ourselves.

Once we’ve recognized the factors that can cause fear, the second step in overcoming fear is to sit down and take the time to objectively identify, define and analyze your own personal fears. At the top of a clean sheet of paper, write the question, “What am I afraid of?”

Now, before you begin, I need to make an important point: All intelligent people are afraid of something. It is normal and natural to be concerned about your physical, emotional and financial survival. The courageous person is not a person who is unafraid. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear¾not absence of fear.”

It is not whether or not you are afraid. We are all afraid. The question is, how do you deal with the fear? The courageous person is simply one who goes forward in spite of the fear. And here’s something else I’ve learned: when you confront your fears and move toward what you are afraid of, your fears diminish and your self-esteem and self-confidence increase.

However, when you avoid the thing you fear, your fears grow until they begin to control every aspect of your life. And as your fears increase, your self-esteem, your self-confidence and your self-respect diminish accordingly.

Begin filling out your list of fears by writing down everything, major and minor, over which you experience any anxiety. The most common fears, of course, are the fear of failure and the fear of rejection.

Some people, compelled by the fear of failure, invest an enormous amount of energy justifying or covering up their mistakes. And some people, compelled by the fear of rejection, are so obsessed with how they appear to others that they seem to have no ability to take independent action at all. Until they are absolutely certain that someone else will approve, they refrain from doing anything. Once you have made a list of every fear that you think may be affecting your thinking and your behavior, organize the items in order of importance. Which fear do you feel has the greatest impact on your thinking, or holds you back more than any other? Which fear would be number two? What would be your third fear? And so on. With regard to your predominant fear, write the answers to these three questions:

1. How does this fear hold me back in life? 2. How does this fear help me, or how has it helped me in the past? 3. What would be my pay-off for eliminating this fear?

Some years ago, I went through this exercise and concluded that my biggest fear was the fear of poverty. I was afraid of not having enough money, being broke, perhaps even being destitute. I knew that this fear had originated during my childhood because my parents, who grew up during the Depression, had continually worried about money. My fear was reinforced when I was broke at various times during my 20s. I could objectively assess the origins of this fear, but it still had a strong hold on me. Even when I had sufficient money for all my needs, this fear was always there.

My answer to the question, “How does this fear hold me back?” was that it caused me to be anxious about taking risks with money. It caused me to play it safe with regard to employment. And it caused me to choose security over opportunity.

My answer to the second question, “How does this fear help me?” was that, in order to escape the fear of poverty, I had a tendency to work much longer and harder. I was more ambitious and determined. I took much more time to inform myself on the various ways that money could be invested. The fear of poverty was, in effect, driving me toward financial independence.

When I answered the third question, “What would be my pay-off for overcoming this fear?” I immediately saw that I would be willing to take more risks, I would be more aggressive in pursuing my financial goals, I could and would start my own business, and I would not be so tense and concerned about spending too much or having too little. I would no longer be so concerned about the price of everything. By objectively analyzing my biggest fear in this way, I was able to begin the process of eliminating it.

You can begin the process of developing courage and eliminating fear by engaging in actions consistent with the behaviors of courage and self-confidence. Anything that you practice over and over eventually becomes a new habit. So let’s focus on some of the areas where you can practice to develop the habit of courage.

The first and perhaps most important kind of courage is the courage to begin, to launch, to step out in faith. This is the courage to try something new or different, to move out of your comfort zone, with no guarantee of success. John Ronstadt, a professor at Babson College who taught entrepreneurship for 12 years, conducted a study of those who took his class and later became successful. He could only find one quality that they had in common: their willingness to actually start their own business in the marketplace. He calls this the “Corridor Principle.” He said that as these individuals moved forward, as though proceeding down a corridor, doors opened to them that they would not have seen if they had not been in forward motion. It turned out that the graduates of his entrepreneurship course who had done nothing with what they had learned were still waiting for things to be just right before they began. They were unwilling to launch themselves down the corridor of uncertainty until they could somehow be assured that they would be successful¾something which never happened.

The future belongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers. Life is perverse in the sense that, the more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire. One way to get the courage to begin, from which everything else flows, is to plan and prepare thoroughly in advance. Set clear goals and objectives, then gather information. Read and research in your chosen field. Write out detailed plans of action, and then take the first step.

The second kind of courage is the courage to endure, to persist, to stay at it once you have begun. Persistence is a form of courageous patience, and it is one of the rarest types of courage. Courageous patience is having the ability to stand firm after you have taken action and before you get any feedback or results from your actions. When you plan your work and work your plan through patient persistence, even in the face of disappointment and unexpected setbacks, you will build and develop the quality of courage within you.

Whenever you feel fear or anxiety, and you need to bolster your courage to endure, switch your attention to your goals. Create a mental picture of the person that you would like to be, performing the way you would like to perform. There is nothing wrong with thoughts of fear as long as you temper them with thoughts of courage and self-reliance. Whatever you dwell upon, grows . . . so be careful.

The last type of courage is the courage to conquer worry—a form of negative goal-setting. It is dwelling upon, talking about, and vividly imagining exactly what you don’t want to happen. If you worry long enough and hard enough about something, you are going to attract it into your life. The great tragedy is that even if the situation you are worrying about does not materialize, your health and your emotions will suffer just the same. And the fact is that most of things that people worry about never happen.

The only real antitode to worry is purposeful action toward a predetermined goal or solution. Since the conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, when you get busy doing something to resolve your problem, you will not have the time or the mental capacity to worry. And before you know it, your worrysome situation will have been resolved.

The mastery of fear and the development of courage are essential prerequisites for a happy, successful life. With a commitment to acquire the habit of courage, you will eventually reach the point where your fears no longer play a major role in your decision-making. You will set big, challenging, exciting goals, and you will have the confidence of knowing that you can attain them. You will be able to face every situation with calmness and self-assurance. And the key is courage.

Next Page »