Making The Most of Change

To deal with change, perhaps the most valuable quality you can develop is flexibility. Form the habit of remaining open-minded and adaptable to new information and circumstances. When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, instead of becoming upset or frustrated, practice looking into the change or reversal for the opportunity or benefit it might contain.

Superior men and women are invariably those who remain calm and keep their wits about them in the midst of unexpected turbulence. They take a deep breath, they relax, and they assess the situation objectively. They keep themselves calm and unemotional by asking questions and seeking information when things don’t work out as they expected. For example, if someone doesn’t fulfill a commitment, or if a sale is canceled, or fails to go through, they keep their minds clear and steady by asking questions, such as “What exactly happened in this situation?” They deal with change by focusing on getting the facts before reacting. They develop the ability to cut through the confusion and ask questions such as “Why did this happen? How did it happen? How serious is it? Now that it has happened, what are the various things we can do?”

Robert Fritz, in his book The Path of Least Resistance, makes a clear distinction between effective people and ineffective people. He says that ineffective people have a tendency to be in a reactive-responsive mode of behavior much of the time. Instead of consciously and deliberately choosing their courses of action, they react to what is going on around them, and they respond to their emotions, sometimes blowing up and sometimes becoming depressed. They ride an emotional roller coaster. And the very best they can hope for, in this mode of behavior, is to get back to even, where they were before they became upset.

The superior person, according to Robert Fritz, concentrates his attention on his “future vision.” Whenever an unexpected change or setback occurs, the superior person immediately focuses his mind on where he wants to be at a future time. This future vision is something that he has planned and given a lot of thought to, so it is fairly easy to conjure up at a moment’s notice.

Since your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, when you deliberately insist upon thinking about your goal or your future vision, your mind immediately becomes calm and positive, and you feel in control. Superior people always choose the future over the past. They always ask, “What do we do now?” rather than lose time and energy by looking around for someone to blame or criticize. They keep themselves performing at their best by thinking and talking about a desired future state.

There is a little poem, “Two men looked out through prison bars./ One saw the mud; the other saw the stars.” You can greatly improve your ability to deal with change by focusing your attention on the future, and by seeing the glass as half-full rather than half-empty.

The critical issue in dealing with change is the subject of control. Most of your stress and unhappiness comes as a result of feeling out of control in a particular area of your life. If you think about the times or places where you feel the very best about yourself, you will notice that you have a high degree of control in those places. One of the reasons why you like to get home after a trip is that, after you walk through your front door, you feel completely in control of your environment. You know where everything is. You don’t have to answer to anyone. You can relax completely. You are back in control.

Psychologists call this the difference between an internal locus of control and an external locus of control. Your locus of control is where you feel the control is located for a particular part of your life. A person with an external locus of control feels that he is controlled by forces outside of himself. Most people feel that they are controlled by their boss, or their bills, or their relationships, or their childhood experiences, or their external environment. When a person has an external locus of control, he or she feels a high degree of stress. And with an external locus of control, a person is very tense and uneasy about change of any kind. Change represents a threat that may leave the individual worse off than before.

On the other hand, the person with an internal locus of control enjoys a high degree of self-determination. He feels that he is very much in charge of his life. He plans his work and works his plan. He accepts a high degree of responsibility, and he believes that everything that happens, happens for a reason, and that he is the primary creative force in his life.

Since the only thing over which you have complete control is the content of your conscious mind, your ability to deal with change begins with your taking full, complete control over the things you think. As Thomas Huxley said, “Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.” Since change is inevitable and continuous, it is how you think about what is happening to you that is most important in determining how change affects you, and whether you use it to your advantage or let it work to your disadvantage.

In his book Celebrations of Life, Rene Dubos says that we fear change more today than ever before, and for less reason. The reason you fear change is because you are afraid that you will be worse off as a result. No one fears change that implies improvement. For example, if you learned that you were going to have to change your life-style because you had just won a lottery, this is not the kind of change that you would avoid or anticipate with dread. It is change that implies unpleasant surprises that you fear and become anxious about because it causes you to feel that you have lost a certain amount of control in that part of your life.

Your aim is to become a “change master,” to embrace change, to welcome change, and to ride the tides of change. You do this by taking control of the direction of change in your life and assuring that it is predominately positive and toward improvements you desire. Boat builders know that the deeper the keel of a sailing vessel, the more stable it will be in storms, squalls and gusts of wind. The same holds true for you. The deeper your keel, or the stabilizing factors in your life, the less likely it is that you will be blown over, or off course, when unexpected change occurs.

You can deepen your keel and increase your stability by setting big goals for yourself and making clear, written plans for their accomplishment. Goals enable you to control the direction of change. With goals, change becomes planned and deliberate, instead of random and haphazard. Goals assure that the changes that take place in your life are primarily self-determined and self-directed. With clear, specific goals, the changes that take place will tend to be positive and move you toward something that you want to achieve, rather than blow you off course.

For example, if you are in business or in sales, you will experience a continuous series of large and small disappointments and setbacks. That is the nature of the game. They are inevitable and unavoidable. Some things work out, and some things don’t. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. In spite of your best efforts, unexpected and unpredictable events will derail your best-laid plans. This endless process of change and setbacks begins when you first enter into the world of work, and it continues for the rest of your life. Problems, changes are like the rain¾they just happen.

But if you set clear goals for your work, for your family life and for your personal development, then no matter what happens, you can concentrate your thinking on your goals and take a long-term view of your current circumstances. You can, in effect, rise above the challenges of the moment, and keep your eyes on the guiding stars of your life and your most cherished dreams.

If you are in sales, and you are working toward a series of sales goals, you will be developing a wide range of prospective customers. You will be working simultaneously on customers who are both short-term and medium-term, as well as large and small prospects.

Meanwhile, you will be working on yourself, to become better and more knowledgeable in your field. You will have plans and engage in activities with the important people in your life. With clear goals, you will be multidimensional rather than one-dimensional. A setback or disappointment in any one part of your life will be quickly offset by the fact that you are busy in many other areas, and you simply won’t allow yourself to invest too much emotional energy in one particular thing that doesn’t work out to plan.

With a clear idea of where you’re going and what you want to accomplish, you develop resilience, which is the ability to bounce back rather than to break. You develop what is called the “hardy personality” and become the type of person who is resistant to the negative emotions that affect people who have no goals or direction. The first step in dealing with any change is simply to accept the change as a reality. Acceptance is the opposite of rejection or resistance. Acceptance keeps your mind calm and positive. As William James said, “The starting point in dealing with any difficulty is to be willing to have it so.” The minute you accept that a change has occurred, and that you can’t cry over spilled milk, you become more capable of dealing with the change and turning it to your advantage. One of the best ways to deal with the worry that is often generated by unexpected changes is to sit down and answer, on paper, the question: “What exactly am I worrying about?”

In medicine, it is said that accurate diagnosis is half the cure. When you sit down and define a worry situation clearly on paper, it suddenly becomes less stressful to you, and it will often resolve itself. In any case, when it is clearly defined, you have diagnosed it, and you can now do something about it.

The second step is to ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen in this worry situation?” Much worry and stress comes from the refusal to face what might happen as a result of your difficulty or problem. When you clearly define the worst possible outcome, and write it down next to the definition of the problem, you will find that, whatever it is, you can handle it. Often your worries will begin to evaporate as soon as you have clearly determined the worst that might happen as a result.

Now decide to accept the worst possible outcome should it occur. Mentally resolve that, even if the worst possible consequences ensue from this situation, it will not be the end of the world for you. You will accept it and carry on. In fact, it could probably be a lot worse. The very act of accepting the worst possible outcome completes the cycle of eliminating from your mind the stress and anxiety associated with the situation.

You are now ready for the third step in dealing with change, and that is to adjust your behaviors and actions to the new situation. Ask yourself, “What are all the things I can do to make sure that the worst possible outcome does not occur?” Sometimes we call this “damage control.” In the business schools, this is an important part of decision making, and it is called the “mini-max regret solution.” What can you do to minimize the maximum damage that can occur from an unexpected change or setback? As you begin thinking of all the things you can do, you are adjusting your mind to the new information and preparing to take steps to deal with the change effectively.

The final part of this four-step method for dealing with change is to improve on the existing situation. Often, a change signals that your plans are incomplete or that you might be heading in the wrong direction. Serious changes, which seemingly create real problems, are often signals that you are on the wrong track. There is an old saying, “Crisis is change trying to take place.” If, instead of resisting change, like a pine tree that snaps in a strong wind, you bend with change, like a willow tree, you will often find that the change is a healthy and positive step toward achieving your goals. W. Clement Stone, the founder of Combined Insurance Company of America, is famous for his attitude of being an “inverse paranoid.” He is convinced that everything that happens is part of a conspiracy to help him to be more successful. Whenever something unexpected occurs, he immediately says, “That’s good!” and then looks into the situation to find out exactly what is good about it.

If you look into any change, you will always find something good and beneficial for you in the change. Look for the valuable lesson contained within every setback. What is the hidden advantage that you can turn to your benefit? Is this change a signal that, if properly responded to, will save you a much bigger change or problem in the future? Since your mind can hold only one thought at a time, as I mentioned, if you force yourself to look for the positive aspect of any change, you’ll keep your mind clear, and you’ll keep your attitude optimistic and confident.

Viktor Frankl said that the last great freedom of man is the freedom to choose his attitude under any given set of circumstances. You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

The mark of a superior person is what is called “tolerance for ambiguity.” This simply means that you have the capacity to deal effectively in a rapidly changing situation. The higher up you go¾the greater your income and responsibilities, the higher your status and position¾the faster the rate of change will be around you. At every stage, it will be your ability to function with calmness, clarity and quiet assurance that will mark you as the kind of person who is going places in life. In the final analysis, your ability to perform effectively in a world of ongoing change is the true measure of how well-developed a person you really are. And the keys are to accept change, to adjust to change, to improve upon change, and then to move on to the next situation. As you continue to do this, you will have such a wonderful feeling of self-control and self-determination that your whole life will be bright and positive, and so will your results.

Making Strong Connections

In his book Frames of Mind, Dr. Howard Gardner made the revolutionary statement that individuals possess several forms of intelligence. He concluded that we are all intelligent in a variety of different ways, and even if we didn’t receive great grades in school, we can still be extremely intelligent in other areas. Two of these areas are intra-personal intelligence and inter-personal intelligence.

Intra-personal intelligence is defined as how well you get along with yourself. If is how well you know yourself, understand yourself, and are clear about your strengths and weaknesses, your values, opinions, goals, and dreams. People with high levels of intra-personal intelligence are extremely aware of who they are, and who they are not. This enables them to be honest and objective with themselves, and as a result, they are more honest and objective with others.

Intra-personal intelligence is the foundation upon which another intelligence, inter-personal intelligence, is built. Inter-personal intelligence is an ability to communicate, negotiate, interact, persuade, and influence other people. People who are successful in all businesses requiring active interaction with other people, such as salespeople, managers, counselors, consultants, and lawyers all have a high degree of inter-personal intelligence.

You can increase your intelligence in any area by learning and practicing in that area. And perhaps the most important intelligence you can consciously and purposefully develop is your inter-personal intelligence. That’s because forming and maintaining relationships is vital to both your professional success and your self-image-your intra-personal intelligence.

Our personalities are largely shaped by the way people react to us. Our only indication as to who we are at a young age is the way people treat us. If people treat us with kindness, respect, and good humor, we eventually conclude that we are pretty good people who deserve kindness, respect, and proper treatment.

Psychologists have identified three basic social needs that we all have: inclusion, control, and affection.

The first, inclusion, is the need to feel that we belong, that we are included in families, work groups, social groups, business organizations, and professional associations. We need to feel wanted, accepted, and important.

The second social need we have is the desire for control. Psychologists have concluded that the basis for a positive mental attitude is a sense of control. We are happy to the degree to which we feel we have a certain amount of control over our life. We are unhappy to the degree to which we feel out of control. Most stress is caused by being out of control of some part of our life that is important to us.

The third social need we all have is the desire for affection. It is hard to live without the knowledge that someone cares about us. Sometimes, just knowing that even one single person, somewhere, cares about us is enough to give meaning to our entire lives.

In publishing circles, there is an expression: a work in progress. This is a book that has been scheduled for publication but which is not yet complete; the author is still working on it, at one stage or another. Each of us is a work in progress. Each of us is born and grows up immature and inexperienced in the ways of the world. Over time, and with a lot of hard knocks, we develop a greater depth of character and personality. And all of our lessons are learned in the crucible of human contact.

There are certain parts of your personality that will remain completely untouched and undeveloped unless and until you enter into deep, meaningful, intimate, emotional relationships with people you love and who love you in return. It is only then that you develop the depth of personality that makes you a more interesting and complete individual.

On the wall of my fist Karate Dojo was a sign that said, “The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.” I think that is the ultimate aim of life as well as the perfection of the character of its participants. And it is hardly possible for you to become everything you are capable of becoming without the lessons that come through relationships with people for whom you care deeply, and who, in turn, care deeply for you.

Relationships can be extremely complicated, but to build and maintain quality relationships requires only a few basic principles. Let me give you seven.

The first is the principle of trust. All relationships are ultimately based on trust. To build trust, you always keep your word. You remain consistent and dependable in everything you say and do. You become the kind of person who is utterly reliable in every situation. You never do or say anything that can shake this fundamental foundation of trust upon which your relationships are built.

The second principle is respect. Taking time to deliberately express your respect for the uniqueness of an individual makes him or her feel very valuable and important. By demonstrating that kind of respect, you build and enhance the quality of your relationship. The third principle for success in relationships is communication. In communicating well with another person, time is the critical factor. The value of a relationship can increase for both you and the other person depending on the amount of time that you invest. When you take the time to focus on the important issues of a relationship, you open the channels of communication. And when you listen attentively, calmly, quietly, and with total attention, you demonstrate the respect you have for the other person, and you deepen the level of trust between you.

The fourth principle is courtesy. When you say “please” and “thank you” on a regular basis to the people in your life, you make them feel better about themselves and about what they are doing. You raise their self-esteem. And alas, it is often with the people we care about most that we are the least courteous and polite. Emmet Fox once wrote, “If you must be rude, be rude to strangers. But save your company manners for your family.”

The fifth principle is caring. The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance. The kindest thing you can do is to refrain from criticizing, condemning or complaining to them or about them. Think of yourself as a people-builder rather than a people-basher. Catch them doing something right. Always look for ways to make people feel more valuable, more respected, and more loved. The three most powerful words in any relationship are the words, “I love you.” Repeat them as often as possible and in as many different ways as possible to the most important people in your life.

The sixth principle is a combination of praise and appreciation for everything that others do for you, both large and small. When you express your appreciation to another person for something they do for you, they feel better about themselves, and they want to do more of it. And there is a kickback effect that causes your own self-esteem to go up, exactly as if you yourself had been praised.

The seventh principle for success in relationships is simply helpfulness, especially with those people with whom you live. Your constant willingness to step in and do little things to alleviate the burdens felt by your spouse and children is always appreciated and respected. This willingness to share, to contribute, to help each other is an important facet of lasting relationships.

Perhaps the most important thing you ever do in life is build and maintain long-term, happy, healthy, fulfilling relationships with other people you love and who love you. When you make everything else secondary to this central purpose, you will find yourself enjoying happiness and rewards in exponential proportion to the efforts you put in.

Maintaining a Positive Attitude

When I was 21 years old, a friend of mine and I decided to go off to see the world. Many of our friends were going to Europe and hitchhiking around with rucksacks. We decided to be different and go to Africa instead. It never occurred to us to ask why no one else was going to Africa. We found that out later, much to our great regret. To get to our destination in Africa, we had to cross the Sahara Desert. Starting from London, we rode bicycles across France and Spain. The labor was excruciating, the progress was slow, and the pleasure was nonexistent.

In Gibraltar, we sold our bicycles and invested our last few dollars in an old Land Rover. We crossed from Gibraltar to Tangier and made our way through Morocco, over the Atlas Mountains, and into Algeria. We were on our way in Africa. Still, there was one obstacle between us and the greenery we were anxious to see, and it was that darn, old desert.

Our Land Rover broke down many times, but we finally got it repaired and set off to cross the Sahara. We had no idea how serious and how difficult this adventure was to be. As we moved south across the desert, we encountered endless problems, any one of which could have finished our trip and, probably, our lives. It was during this desert crossing that I learned one of the most important lessons in my life about attitude.

The French, who had controlled Algeria for many years, had marked a path across the desert with black, 55-gallon oil drums. The drums were spaced exactly five kilometers apart. As we drove and came to an oil drum, the next drum, which was five kilometers ahead, would pop up on the horizon, and the last oil drum, which was five kilometers behind, would fall off the horizon, as if shot in a shooting gallery. Wherever we were, we could always see two oil drums at a time – the one we had just left and the one we were headed toward. To cross one of the greatest deserts in the world, all we had to do was to take it “one oil barrel at a time.” We did not have to cross the entire desert at once. We had to cross it only one oil barrel at a time, and that would be sufficient.

For me, the Sahara crossing was a metaphor for life. In order to maintain a Positive Mental Attitude under all circumstances, all you really have to do is to take it one step, one oil barrel, at a time. As Thomas Carlyle said, “Our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

A Positive Mental Attitude is indispensable to success and achievement. You can build and maintain a Positive Mental Attitude by focusing on doing what lies clearly at hand, by taking the step that appears immediately in front of you. That will automatically lead to the next step, and the next, and so on, and eventually, you will find yourself at your goal.

But there is much more to a Positive Mental Attitude than this. You can have a positive attitude that immediately disappears in the face of adversity, or you can have an attitude that is so strong that no matter what happens to you, you are able to remain positive, cheerful and optimistic.

The factor of self-confidence is what determines how positive your attitude really is. And self-confidence is based on your belief in yourself and your ability. It is based on faith, or knowing that things are going to work out well in the long run, no matter how distressing they appear to be in the short run.

Let me give you an example. A friend of mine was called by the Internal Revenue Service and told that he was to be the subject of a tax audit. The IRS officer wanted all his tax receipts and returns for the past three years brought in for examination. My friend’s first reaction was panic. He immediately became anxious and afraid of all the things that could happen.

However, he caught himself and began to apply his mind to keep his attitude calm and positive. First of all, he thought: Have I done anything that is unacceptable under the existing tax law? As he thought, he realized that he had made every effort to file accurate tax returns. He then asked himself who else should be involved in the audit. As he thought, he realized that his accountant, who had prepared his tax returns, should be involved in explaining them. Now he was calm and collected. He phoned his accountant and apprised him of the situation. The accountant explained to him that every year, the IRS audits a certain percentage of tax returns at random. The fact that the IRS had chosen to audit him had nothing to do with whether or not his returns were accurate. It was simply routine procedure. The accountant also explained that if my friend wanted to send him, the accountant, to the meeting with the IRS agent, my friend didn’t need to appear.

Now my friend was completely relaxed. He gathered the necessary documents and turned them over to his accountant, who had had ample experience in dealing with the IRS. The accountant sat down with the IRS agent and went through everything, from beginning to end. When it was over, the IRS agent thanked the accountant and said that, based on the tax returns, everything was in perfect order, and there would be no need for a reassessment or for any additional payments or penalties. The audit was over, and life went on.

Right from the beginning, you can choose to be positive and constructive in dealing with any adversity. You can sit down and think through the situation and then begin to deal with it one oil barrel at a time.

Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. We are all faced with four obstacles that tend to get in the way of our maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude. These obstacles are fear, worry, anger and doubt.

When things are not working out the way we had expected, our immediate response is to become fearful and uneasy. We are afraid that we will lose our money, waste our effort or forfeit our emotional or physical investment in what we have done. If we are not careful, we start thinking of our potential losses rather than focusing on our potential gains.

Fear triggers worry, and we begin to use our power of imagination to create all sorts of fanciful but negative images that cause us unhappiness and insomnia and make us unable to perform effectively. Fear and worry create anger or what has been called the “victim complex.” Instead of moving constantly forward in the direction of our dreams, we begin to react and respond, and to blame other people and other situations for our problems.

Surrounding these negative emotions is the mental quality of doubt. Doubt forms the fertile breeding grounds for the other negative emotions. Therefore, to eliminate these obstacles to positive thinking, you need to systematically use your mind to get rid of the weakening emotion of doubt.

How do you do this? It is simple. The only real antidote to fear, worry, anger and doubt is positive action toward the achievement of some worthwhile ideal.

Psychologists tell us that the key to dealing effectively with life is what they call the “cognitive control method.” The cognitive control method says that you can really think about, and concentrate on, only one thing at a time, either positive or negative. Successful people are no different from you or me. They have one outstanding characteristic, however. They consciously choose to think about what they want, rather than what they don’t want. And, as a result, they are continuously taking action toward their goals, rather than spending their time thinking and worrying about the inevitable challenges and difficulties that face them every day.

Dr. Karl Pribram, the respected neuropsychologist, has found that human beings have holistic mental pictures stored within their brains. His discovery was that the “law of attraction” is alive and well and working within the mind of every human being. Dr. Pribram discovered that any visual image, imagined in complete detail, sets up a force field of energy that begins to attract into your life the people, ideas, things and even circumstances that are consistent with that image.

If you visualize a positive outcome, if you think about it and see it and feel it and sense it in every respect, you begin to exert a powerful magnetic force that brings the desired goal or outcome into reality. In effect, you control your life and your destiny by the vivid mental images that you hold in your mind on a continuous basis. You are the architect of your personality and character. Your goal, your desire, is to be as successful, happy and prosperous as you possibly can be in every aspect of your life. Therefore, the systematic and purposeful development of a Positive Mental Attitude is something that you need to work on every hour.

There are six things you can do to assure that your attitude is the very best it can be, under all circumstances.

First, whatever challenges you face, focus on the future rather than on the past. Instead of worrying about who did what and who is to blame, focus on where you want to be and what you want to do. Get a clear mental image of your ideal successful future, and then take whatever action you can to begin moving in that direction. As the New Testament says, “Let the dead bury the dead.” Let the past take care of itself, and get your mind, your thoughts, and your mental images on the future.

Second, whenever you’re faced with a difficulty, focus on the solution rather than on the problem. Think and talk about the ideal solution to the obstacle or setback, rather than wasting time rehashing and reflecting on the problem. Solutions are inherently positive, whereas problems are inherently negative. The instant that you begin thinking in terms of solutions, you become a positive and constructive human being.

Third, assume that something good is hidden within each difficulty or challenge. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a major proponent of positive thinking, once said, “Whenever God wants to give us a gift, he wraps it up in a problem.” The bigger the gift you have coming, the bigger the problem you will receive. But the wonderful thing is that if you look for the gift, you will always find it.

Fourth, assume that whatever situation you are facing at the moment is exactly the right situation you need to ultimately be successful. This situation has been sent to you to help you learn something, to help you become better, to help you expand and grow. One of the affirmations I have learned to use continually is this: “Every situation is a positive situation if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.” That is a wonderful affirmation. You cannot say it without thinking positive thoughts, feeling positive emotions, and seeing positive actions that you can take.

Fifth, in every challenge, look for the valuable lesson. Assume that every setback contains a lesson that is essential for you to learn. Only when you learn this lesson will you be smart enough and wise enough to go on to achieve the big goals that you have set for yourself. Again, since you can think about only one thing at a time, if you are busy looking for the lesson, you cannot simultaneously think about the difficulty or the obstacle. And, surprise, surprise, you will always find the lesson, if you look for it.

Finally, the sixth way to keep your mind positive all the time is to make a list. Whenever you have a goal that is unachieved, a difficulty that is unresolved, or a problem that is blocking you from getting where you want to go, sit down with a pen and paper and make a list of every single thing that you could possibly do to resolve the situation. The more you think on paper, the more you will take control over your conscious mind. When you are writing down possible solutions, your mind will be positive, all the time. As you write, you are taking advantage of the power of visualization, and all kinds of insights and ideas will pop onto the page in front of you. By the time you stand up, ready to take the first step that you see, you will be happy, eager, and enthusiastic about getting on with achieving your goals.

A Positive Mental Attitude is indispensable to your success. You can be as positive as you want to be if you will simply take actions consistent with achieving your goals rather than actions that cause you to feel the negative emotions of worry, doubt, anger and fear. If you do what other successful people do, if you use your mind to think, to exert mental control over the situation, you will be positive and cheerful most of the time. And you will reap the benefits enjoyed by all successful people.

Learning From Your Mistakes

There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.

On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed. As a result, people with a benevolent worldview are able to deal constructively and effectively with mistakes and temporary setbacks. When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you are the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.

Two of the most common ways to handle mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?

The fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision—and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision—that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful. In life, the quality of “intellectual honesty” is one of the most respected qualities possessed by individuals, especially leaders. When you are intellectually honest, you look at your world and deal with your circumstances as facts and realities, rather than hoping, wishing, and praying that they could be different. And the minute you begin to deal straightforwardly with life, you become a far more positive, creative, and constructive person. You become far more effective in overcoming your obstacles and achieving your goals. You became far more admired and respected by other people, and far more capable of achieving the critical results that are expected of you. On the other hand, the unwillingness to face the fact that you are not perfect, that you have made and will continue to make mistakes, is a major source of stress. One of the great teachings of history is the principle of non-resistance. Non-resistance means that when the wind blows, you bend like a willow tree rather than snap like a pine tree. You remain flexible, fluid, and open to new ideas, new information, and new inputs. You accept that, in a period of rapid change, nothing is written in stone.

The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.

Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that they have made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition. By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.

Approach every mistake you make as a special learning experience, sent to teach you something valuable and necessary for your success in the future. Become an “inverse paranoid,” a person who is convinced that there is a vast conspiracy in the world to make you successful. Play with the idea that there are a series of guardian angels out there who are acting on your behalf. These angels are regularly planning “learning experiences” to enable you to grow as a person so that you can reach and achieve the great heights that are meant for you.

Whenever something happens of an adverse nature, immediately counteract your natural tendency toward disappointment and frustration by saying, “That’s good!” Then, get busy looking into the situation to find out what is genuinely good about it. You must believe that difficulties come not to obstruct, but to instruct. If you look within any problem situation that you face, or any mistake that you have made, you will find that it contains the lessons and ideas that can be invaluable to you in the months and years ahead. In many cases, learning from mistakes with small costs and consequences will actually prepare you to avoid larger mistakes with huge costs and consequences.

Every day, all day long, you have problems in your work. In fact, if the problems did not exist, your job would not exist either. A powerful way to change your thinking is to realize that solving problems is what you are paid to do. Your job is to be a problem-solver, no matter what your title might be. All day long, you deal with problems and mistakes caused by you and others. The more of them you can spot and redirect before the consequences are felt, the more valuable you will become and the more you will be paid.

Whenever one of my children make a mistake of any kind, I stop them, get their attention, and ask, “What have you learned?” I have asked them this question since they were two or three years old. Now, whenever they make a mistake of any kind, they know I am going to ask the question so they are ready with the answer. I always tell my children that as long as they learn from a mistake, and establish a rule or guideline for future action, they are growing and becoming smarter as they move through life.

In both your personal and professional life, there are seven steps you can take to deal with almost any mistake you make. The first step is to approach the mistake with a positive, constructive frame of mind, using the techniques outlined above.

The second step is to define the mistake clearly. Exactly what happened? Write it down. Think on paper. The more clearly you can write about it, the more clearly you will understand the mistake and its possible corrections.

The third step is to examine all the known causes of the mistake. How did it happen? Why did it happen? What were the critical variables that triggered the mistake? Any attempt to pass over a mistake without identifying how it occurred in the first place will leave the roots of that mistake in the ground, to grow up again in the future. The fourth step is to identify all the possible ways of mitigating the mistake. What are all the different things that you could do to minimize the cost of the mistake, or to solve the problem that has arisen? The more ideas you have, the more likely it is that you will come up with the approach that will prove most effective.

The fifth step is for you to make a clear, unequivocal decision about how to handle the mistake. Decisiveness is a characteristic of high performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all. Even the most effective leaders make mistakes, but then they quickly make decisions to offset those.

The sixth step is to assign specific responsibility for taking the steps necessary to mitigate the mistake within a certain time frame. Who exactly is going to do what, and when, and how, and to whom will they report? The failure to assign or accept responsibility to achieve results before a specific deadline will leave the situation open-ended, and it will often get worse as a result.

Finally, the seventh step in dealing with mistakes is to take action. Intense action orientation is a characteristic of the top two percent of the population.

The only guarantee in life is that most of the decisions you make and conclusions you come to will eventually prove wrong. How you deal with these situations is the chief determinant of your success or failure.

Mistakes and problems are good. Without them there would be no opportunities for greatness. When you take every challenge that life throws at you, accepting it as an inevitable part of the growing experience, you can turn it to your advantage in every way possible. Almost every mistake you make contains a hidden treasure that you can apply to your life to forge a future that is extraordinary and worthwhile.

Increasing Your Value

We are living in an economic age for which most people are largely unprepared. Massive shifts in economic activities and incredible dislocations of businesses and industries are taking place all over the country. Being either an employer or an employee today is like being a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

Your goal is to organize your life in such a way that you enjoy a good income, a high standard of living, and that you are the master of your economic destiny rather than a victim of changing economic times.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, America and Americans entered into a golden age that had never existed before and will never exist again. Those of us who grew up during this golden age developed a particular way of looking at the world that was greatly influenced by what was going on in America at the time. We developed certain assumptions about our lives and about business in general, and we have a hard time giving them up. But give them up we must if we are going to survive in the economy of the future.

At the end of World War II, America and American industry dominated the world. We had not only abundant natural resources but also advanced technology, an intact industrial base, most of the money in the world, an advanced educational system, millions of competent workers, and a fully integrated system of roads, schools, hospitals, cities, and farms. It was said that America got rich by coming late into two world wars, and it was certainly true in the late ‘40s and ‘50s.

Meanwhile, the rest of the industrialized world, in both Europe and the Far East, was bombed to rubble. Our industrial and economic competitors had been ravaged by war. For this reason, anything that American factories produced found a ready market, both nationally and internationally. The economy took off. There was good-paying work for everyone. The ‘50s became an age of expanding prosperity, tremendous job security, and opportunities for all.

In this economic environment, anyone could get a job. Not only that, but there were plenty of low-skill jobs that paid high salaries and benefits for average work. A working person in America could have a nice house, a car, maybe two cars and eventually a motor home, a boat, and all the other trappings of the good life.

After a few years of this robust, expanding economy with opportunities and jobs for all, Americans began to accept the good life as their birthright. People began to feel that because they were born in America, they were entitled to the good life, whether or not they worked hard. The Unions took full advantage of this mind-set and negotiated ever higher wages and benefits from American manufacturers. The increased costs of the products and services were simply passed on to the customers. Since the rest of the industrial world was still rebuilding, the only products to buy were American products. And since American consumers were also workers who were making good wages, as prices went up, sales also went up.

But by the ’60s, the world was already changing. Our industrial competitors, especially Germany and Japan, had begun to rebuild and to manufacture and export products. Competition for the good life began to emerge all over the world. The pace began to pick up, slowly. The average American wasn’t aware of it, but the golden age was coming to an end.

In the ’70s, America began to be flooded with high-quality products from all over the world. American companies and American working people had become complacent with their captive markets and had let their quality deteriorate. Low-price, high-quality products coming in from Japan, Germany and other countries began to take sizable chunks of the market. The affected industries cried out to government for protection, which was just another way of selling higher-priced goods to captive customers. And it didn’t work. By the ’80’s, we were in a real race. Everyone in the world wanted to enjoy the same living standards Americans had. And people were willing to work long hours and produce high-quality goods and services in order to achieve those living standards.

We lost our advantage in natural resources. We lost our edge in technology. And we lost our edge in capital. Today, any change in economic policy anywhere, in any country, instantly causes capital to flow in or out of the affected areas. Countries can not even control the value of their currencies.

The one edge that America maintained is that we have the most productive workforce in the world. America and Americans produce more goods and services per capita than any other country. But there is a race on, and we are in it, and if you want to be employed in a good job for the indefinite future, you must get in and start competing as you have never done before.

Your job is an opportunity to contribute a value to your company in excess of your cost. In its simplest terms, your job is as secure as your ability to render value in excess of what it costs to keep you on the payroll.

If you want to earn more money at your current job, you have to increase your value, your contribution to the enterprise. If you want to get a new job, you have to find a way to contribute value to that enterprise. If you want any kind of job security, you must continually work at maintaining and increasing your value in the competitive marketplace.

And here’s a key point. Your education, knowledge, skills and experience all are investments in your ability to contribute a value for which you can be paid. But they are like any other investments. They are highly speculative.

Once you have learned a subject or developed a skill, it is a sunk cost. It is time and money spent that you cannot get back. No employer in the marketplace has any obligation to pay you for it, unless he can use your skill to produce a product or service that people are ready to buy, today.

Whatever job you are doing, you should be preparing for your next job. And the key question is always: Where are the customers? Which businesses and industries are growing in this economy, and which ones are declining?

I continually meet people who ask me how they can increase their income when their entire industry is shrinking. I tell them that there are jobs with futures and there are jobs without futures, and they need to get into a field that is expanding, not contracting. There are three forms of unemployment in America: voluntary, non-voluntary, and frictional. Voluntary employment exists when a person decides not to work for a certain period of time, or not to accept a particular type of job, hoping that something better will come along. Non-voluntary unemployment exists when a person is willing and able to work but cannot find a job anywhere. Frictional unemployment is the natural level; this includes the approximately 4 or 5 percent of the working population who are between jobs at any given time.

However, there are always jobs for the creative minority. You never have to be unemployed if you will do one of three things: change the work that you are offering to do, change the place where you are offering to work, or change the amount that you are asking for your services.

If there is no demand for your particular skills and experience, you will have to learn to do something else and provide skills that are in demand at the time. Employers don’t care about your past. They care only about your future and your ability to contribute value to their customers.

You can change your location. Sometimes you will have to move from one part of the country to another, from where there are few jobs to where there are more jobs. Many people transform their entire lives by moving from an area of high unemployment to an area of low unemployment.

The third thing you can do to get back into the work force is to lower your demands. Remember, because your labor is a commodity, it is subject to the laws of supply and demand. If you ask too much, people will not hire you, because customers will not pay your demands in the price of the product or service that your organization produces. It is not the employer who is forcing this downward revision in wage requirements; it is the customer, through his or her buying behavior.

There is a small, creative minority in America who are never unemployed. No matter what happens, they always have a job, sometimes two jobs. If they lose a particular position in one place, they find another position doing the same thing, or something else, somewhere else. They are fast on their feet. They move quickly and they don’t accept unemployment as an option. And they always have jobs. There are always jobs to be done. Even in the worst economy, there are always problems to be solved and consumer needs to be met. For this reason, all long-term unemployment is ultimately voluntary.

There are more opportunities for you to fulfill your dreams and aspirations in the American economy than have ever before existed, or than exist anywhere else in the world. You can be, have, or do anything that you can dream of by preparing yourself for better and better jobs. It is never crowded at the top. There are no traffic jams on the extra mile. Your job is to get good, get better, and then make yourself indispensable.

Getting Your Ideas Across

Over the years, I’ve learned that fully 85 percent of what you accomplish in your career and in your personal life will be determined by how well you get your message across and by how capable you are of inspiring people to take action on your ideas and recommendations.

You can be limited in other respects by education, contacts and intelligence, but if you can interact effectively with others, minute by minute and hour by hour, your future can be unlimited. I an going to share with you some ideas, techniques and skills that you can use to accelerate your progress toward power communication. But first, there are two major myths about communication that must be dispelled.

The first myth, which many people believe, is that because they can talk, they can communicate with others. Men especially, according to the research, think that by speaking louder and faster, they’re more effective in dealing with people. Many people think that because they have the gift of gab, because they have no problem talking to others on any subject that comes to mind, they’re good communicators.

Often, exactly the opposite is true. Many people who talk a lot are often poor communicators even terrible communicators. Many people in sales and business think that being able to string a lot of words together in a breathless fashion makes them excellent at getting a message understood by others. However, in most cases, those people are seen as boring or obnoxious, or both.

Let me say this slowly and clearly: The ability to talk is not the same as the ability to communicate. As I will discuss later, the ability to communicate is the ability both to send and to receive a message. The ability to communicate is the ability to make an impact on the thoughts, feelings and actions of someone. Many people who consider themselves excellent talkers are not very effective at all in this regard.

So let’s dispel the first myth, the myth that talking is equal to communicating. Don’t allow yourself to become complacent. The ability to talk to one or more persons is only the basic requirement for communication. It’s the starting point. It’s the jumping-off place. Effective communication is something else again.

The second myth about effective communication is that it’s a skill that people are born with. Either you have it or you don’t have it. If you’re not extroverted, gregarious and outgoing, you don’t have what it takes to be a good communicator.

Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Communication is a skill that you can learn. it’s like riding a bicycle or typing. It takes time and practice, over and over. But if you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life, as you will soon see.

Communication requires both a sender and a receiver. The process of communication happens rapidly, and this same process takes place whenever two or more people exchange ideas. First, the sender thinks of an idea or image that he or she wishes to convey to the receiver. The sender then translates the idea or image into a form, or words, either written or spoken. Those words constitute the basic message that is transmitted to the receiver. The receiver catches the words, like a baseball player catches a baseball, and then translates the words into the ideas and pictures that they represent in order to understand the message that was sent.

The receiver then acknowledges receipt, and replies by translating his or her ideas and pictures into words and transmitting them to the sender. When the message has been sent and the receiver has acknowledged receiving it by transmitting a response that the sender receives, accepts and understands, the communication is complete. If this sounds complicated, it is. Probably 99 percent of all the difficulties between human beings, and within organizations, are caused by breakdowns in the communication process. Either the senders do not say what they mean clearly enough, or the receivers do not receive the message in the form in which it was intended.

An enormous number of factors can interfere in any communication, and every one of them can lead to a distortion of the message in some way. Probably every problem you’ll ever have will be somehow associated with a failure or breakdown in the communication process. Let me explain. According to Albert Mehrabian, a communications specialist, there are three elements in any direct, face-to-face communication: words, tone of voice and body language. You’ve probably heard that words account for only 7 percent of the message, tone of voice accounts for 38 percent of the message, and body language accounts for fully 55 percent of the message. For an effective communication to take place, all three parts of the message must be congruent. If there is any incongruency, the receiver will be confused and will tend to accept the predominant form of communication rather than simply the literal meaning of the words.

Very often, you will say something that you feel is innocuous to a person and he will be offended. When you try to explain that you felt the words you used were inoffensive, the person will tell you that your tone of voice was the issue.

The third ingredient of communication, body language, is also very important. The way you sit or stand or incline your head or move your eyes, relative to the person with whom You’re communicating, will have an enormous effect on the message received.

For example, you can dramatically increase the effect of your communications by leaning toward the person You’re speaking with. If You’re sitting down, this is easy. If You’re standing up, you can accomplish the same effect by shifting your weight forward onto the balls of your feet and leaning slightly toward the person You’re talking to. When you make direct eye and face contact with the person, combined with focused attention, you double the impact of what You’re saying.

In fact, one of the easiest ways for you to break off a conversation, almost like knocking a needle off a phonograph record, is by just turning away from a person and looking into the distance when he is speaking. That will usually abruptly cause the person to stop speaking. He will feel that he’s just been abandoned in the middle of the conversation.

So your choice of words is important, but even more important is your tone of voice and your body language. The better you can coordinate all three of those ingredients, the more impact your message will have, and the greater will be the likelihood that a person will both understand it and react the way you want him to.

you’ve heard the saying that God gave man two ears and one mouth, and in conversation, you should use them in those proportions. Truer words were never spoken. The best communicators are excellent listeners. The worst communicators are continuous talkers. In fact, often the most important part of the message is the part that is conveyed by the pauses you make between thoughts and ideas. The message is conveyed in the silence that takes place during the lulls in conversation. All master communicators have learned to be comfortable with silence. Remember that a person can absorb only a certain amount of information, as ground can absorb only a certain amount of water. If you pour too much water onto the ground, it will form into puddles instead of soak in. A person’s mind is very much the same. If you don’t give someone an opportunity to absorb what you’re saying, by pausing and waiting quietly and patiently, he will be overwhelmed by the continuous stream of thoughts and ideas, and often will distort the message and miss the point.

One of the most vital requirements for effective communication, especially with important messages, is preparation. Preparation is the mark of the true professional. The late Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant of the University of Alabama football team was famous for saying, “It’s not the will to win but the will to prepare to win that counts.” In all communications, the will to prepare in advance of talking and interacting with people is the key to achieving maximum effectiveness.

In high school and college debating, where the individuals and teams are judged on the effectiveness of their ability to get their ideas across and to win their points, they’re taught to prepare exhaustively. Especially, they’re taught to prepare the debate from the point of view of the opposition before they prepare their own arguments. Lawyers were taught to do this in law school. Before they go into court, lawyers think through every possible piece of evidence or information that favors the opposing party. They then prepare their arguments in such a way as to undermine what they think the opposing party will present as its strongest point.

Remember that in communicating, people do things for their own reasons, not for yours. Everyone’s favorite radio station is WIIFM, which means “What’s in it for me?”

The more important the communication, either in business or personal life, the more important it is to prepare for it. Think through where the other person is coming from. What is his or her point of view? What are his or her problems or concerns? What is he or she trying to accomplish? What is his or her level of knowledge or information about the subject under discussion?

The best communicators do not use a lot of words, but they choose their words carefully, in advance. People appreciate straight talking. Avoid the tendency to dress up your message and sugarcoat it. When you have a question or a concern, or you want something, come right out and say it without confusion or distortion. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel and how much more positively someone will respond to your message.

In getting your point across, perhaps the most important word of all is the word ask. The most effective people are those who are the best at asking for what they want. They ask questions to uncover real needs and concerns. They ask questions to illuminate objections and problems that people might have with what They’re suggesting. They ask questions to expand the conversation and to increase their understanding of where people are really coming from.

You get your message understood by getting out of yourself, by putting your ego aside, and by focusing all of your attention on the other person. You get people to do the things you want them to do by presenting your arguments in terms of their interests, in terms of what they want to be and have and do. You prepare thoroughly in advance of any important conversation. You think before you speak, and you think on paper. You can say almost anything if you say it, or ask it, pleasantly, positively and with courtesy and friendliness.

The ability to communicate is a skill that you can learn by becoming genuinely interested in people and by putting their needs ahead of your own when sending a message or asking them to do something for you. When you concentrate your attention on building trust, on the one hand, and on seeking to understand, on the other hand, You’ll become known and respected as an effective communicator everywhere you go.

Generating Energy

You may have a thousand different goals over the course of your lifetime, but they all will fall into one of four basic categories. Everything you do is an attempt to enhance the quality of your life in one or more of these areas.

The first category is your desire for happy relationships. You want to love and be loved by others. You want to have a happy, harmonious home life. You want to get along well with the people around you, and you want to earn the respect of the people you respect. Your involvement in social and community affairs results from your desire to have happy interactions with others and to make a contribution to the society you live in.

The second category is your desire for interesting and challenging work. You want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, you want to really enjoy your occupation or profession. The very best times of your life are when you are completely absorbed in your work.

The third category is your desire for financial independence. You want to be free from worries about money. You want to have enough money in the bank so that you can make decisions without counting your pennies. You want to achieve a certain financial state so that you can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not you have enough money to support your lifestyle. Financial independence frees you from poverty and a need to depend upon others for your livelihood. If you save and invest regularly throughout your working life, you will eventually reach the point where you will never have to work again.

The fourth category is your desire for good health, to be free of pain and illness and to have a continuous flow of energy and feelings of well-being. In fact, your health is so central to your life that you take it for granted until something happens to disrupt it.

The common denominator of these four goals, and the essential requirement for achieving each of them, is a high level of energy. The achievement of even a small amount of success in any one of these areas requires the development and expenditure of energy. Energy is a critical fuel and the one ingredient without which no other accomplishment is possible.

The aim of strategic planning for corporations is to find ways to organize the business to increase ROE, return on equity. ROE refers to the return on the capital invested in the enterprise. By shifting resources from areas of lower value to areas of higher potential value, the ROE in the business an be increased. In personal strategic planning, the aim is similar. It is also to increase ROE, but in this case, ROE stands for return on energy. All the work on personal development, self-improvement, goal setting, and time management is aimed at helping you to increase your return on energy, or as my friend Ken Blanchard calls it, “your return on life.” You are continually organizing and reorganizing your time and your resources so that you can get the very most pleasure, satisfaction, and rewards from the time and energy you put into your activities on a day-to-day basis.

Whereas companies have financial capital, you have human capital. Your human capital is composed of mental, emotional, and physical energy. The more energy you have to invest, and the more intelligently you invest it, the greater will be your rewards.

It is not the amount of time that you spend at your work or on your relationships that matters. Rather, it is the amount of yourself that you put into the time. If you have gone to bed late, gotten up early, and gone to work tired, you may be physically present for eight hours, but the quality and quantity of work that you can accomplish during that period of time is compromised. You’ll achieve only a small percentage of your potential productivity compared with what you can accomplish when you are fully rested and filled with enthusiasm.

In every area of your life, it is the quality of the time that you put into your activities that determines the rewards and satisfaction that you receive from them; this depends upon your energy level.

Building and sustaining your energy level is imperative. Since your energy is central to everything you accomplish, you should be very sensitive to things that either build or deplete it. Here are six keys to building and maintaining a high level of energy and vitality:

Proper weight. Carrying extra weight on your body is like carrying a pack loaded with bricks on your back – uphill. Excess weight tires you out. It taxes your heart, your lungs, and your muscles. Extra weight forces your body to burn up more energy than it normally would just to maintain life and proper functioning.

On the other hand, losing weight will increase your energy level almost immediately. Your self-esteem will go up. You will feel healthier and happier. As you lose weight, you will feel a greater sense of power and personal control. When you reach your ideal weight, you will be more effective in everything else you do.

Proper diet. The foods you eat have a tremendous impact on your energy level throughout the day. Changes in your diet can make you feel fresher, more alive, more alert, and filled with greater vitality than you can imagine.

The way to live to a ripe, happy, healthy old age is to shift the proportions of food you eat so you are consuming more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products. When you get used to eating highly nutritious foods, you’ll be less willing to eat foods that are not particularly good for you.

Proper exercise. The more regularly you exercise, the more energy you have, the better you feel, and the longer you will live. Regular exercise enhances your digestion, reduces the number of hours that you need to sleep, and increases your vitality in the physical, mental, and emotional realms.

There are three basic types of exercise: flexibility, strength, and endurance.

Flexibility exercises, such as yoga, require gentle stretching of all your muscles and the articulation of each of your joints each day. The more you stretch your muscles on a regular basis, the more relaxed, coordinated, and looser you will feel.

Strength exercises include calisthenics, weight lifting, and other exercises that build your muscles.

But perhaps the most important are endurance, or aerobic, exercises. One of the keys to long life and good health is aerobic exercise at least three times per week for a minimum of 30 minutes per time. You can achieve aerobic fitness by walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing, or cross-country skiing. The important thing is that you exercise at least three times per week – and many people say five times per week – for the rest of your life. This will affect your levels of health and energy in everything else you do. Everything counts.

Proper rest and recreation. On average, you need seven to eight hours of good, solid sleep each night. Some people can get by on less. But you should plan and organize your evenings so that you are “early to bed and early to rise.” Remember, nature demands balance in all things. If you are going to work hard during the day, you must take time off to rest and recuperate in the evenings and on the weekends. The more balance you have between work and recreation, the more energy you will have and the more productive you will be.

Proper breathing. By breathing, I mean deep diaphragmatic breathing, where you fill your lungs to the count of 10, hold to the count of 10, and then exhale to the count of 10. If you do this seven to 10 times, two or three times per day, you will be amazed at how much fresher and more relaxed you feel.

Proper attitude. Positive Mental Attitude seems to go hand in hand with great achievement and success in every walk of life. The more positive you are, the more energy you have. The more positive you are, the happier you are. The more positive you are, the more positive are the people and situations you attract into your life. The more positive you are, the easier it seems for you to get the cooperation of other people. The more positive you are, the more effectively you perform.

On the other hand, negative emotions drain your energy, enthusiasm, and vitality. They tire you out and depress your immune system. Bouts of fear, anger, doubt, resentment, or guilt will be manifested in your physical body.

Keep your energy level high by always looking for the good in every person, in every situation. Seek the valuable lesson in every setback or adversity. Look for the equal or greater benefit that comes out of every disappointment. Be a perennial optimist. Be cheerful and positive. Be helpful and supportive. Be a source of encouragement and inspiration. Be the kind of person everybody looks forward to seeing and talking to.

Every success is the result of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of tiny efforts that nobody may ever see or appreciate. These tiny efforts, sacrifices, and disciplines accumulate to make you an extraordinary person.

Everything that you do counts in some way. Nothing is neutral. Everything either helps you or hurts you. Everything either adds up or takes away. Everything either propels you toward your goal or moves you away from it. Everything counts.

With regard to your levels of health and energy, everything that you do, or don’t do, will have an impact on how you feel and how you perform. And the results of all these activities are cumulative. People who are healthy and energetic in their 50s and 60s were engaging in positive health habits in their 20s and 30s. People who live a long, healthy, happy life into their 80s are people who began planning for it and disciplining themselves in their 30s and 40s. Everything counts.

Forging Your Self Confidence

A young woman wrote to me recently, telling me that her whole life had taken a different turn since she heard me ask the question, “What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?” She wrote that, up to that time, this was a question she had never even dared to consider, but now, she thought of nothing else. She had realized, in a great, blinding flash of clarity, that the main thing separating her from her hopes and dreams was the belief in her ability to achieve them.

Most of us are like this for most of our lives. There are many things that we want to be, and have and do, but we hold back. We are unsure because we lack the confidence necessary to step out in faith in the direction of our dreams.

Abraham Maslow said that the story of the human race is the story of men and women “selling themselves short.” Alfred Adler, the great psychotherapist, said that men and women have a natural tendency toward feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Because we lack confidence, we don’t think we have the ability to do the kind of things that others have done, and in many cases, we don’t even try.

Just think: What difference would it make in your life if you had an absolutely unshakable confidence in your ability to achieve anything you really put your mind to? What would you want and wish and hope for? What would you dare to dream if you believed in yourself with such deep conviction that you had no fears of failure whatsoever? Most people start off with little or no self-confidence, but as a result of their own efforts, they become bold and brave and outgoing. And we’ve discovered that if you do the same things that other self-confident men and women do, you, too, will experience the same feelings and get the same results.

The key is to be true to yourself, to be true to the very best that is in you, and to live your life consistent with your highest values and aspirations.

Take some time to think about who you are and what you believe in and what is important to you. Decide that you will never compromise your integrity by trying to be or say or feel something that is not true for you. Have the courage to accept yourself as you really are-not as you might be, or as someone else thinks you should be-and know that, taking everything into consideration, you are a pretty good person. After all, we all have our own talents, skills and abilities that make us extraordinary. No one, including yourself, has any idea of your capabilities or of what you might ultimately do or become. Perhaps the hardest thing to do in life is to accept how extraordinary you really can be, and then to incorporate this awareness into your attitude and personality.

In developing unshakable levels of self-confidence, your self-esteem and self-regard are important starting points, but they are not enough. People have tried positive thinking and wishing and hoping for years, with only mixed results. To develop the deep-down kind of self-confidence that leads to victory, you need positive knowing, not just positive thinking.

Lasting self-confidence really comes from a sense of control. When you feel very much in control of yourself and your life, you feel confident enough to do and say the things that are consistent with your highest values. Psychologists today agree that a feeling of being “out of control” is the primary reason for stress and negativity and for feelings of inferiority and low self-confidence. And the way for you to get a solid sense of control over every part of your life is to set clear goals or objectives, to establish a sense of direction based on purposeful behavior aimed at predetermined ends.

Being true to yourself means knowing exactly what you want and having a plan to achieve it. Lasting self-confidence comes when you absolutely know that you have the capacity to get from where you are to wherever you want to go. You are behind the wheel of your life. You are the architect of your destiny and the master of your fate. Instead of being preoccupied with the fear of failure and loss, as most people are, you focus on the opportunity and the possible gains of achievement. With a clearly defined track to run on, you become success-oriented, and you gradually build your confidence up to the stage where there is very little you will not take on.

Another essential way to build your self-confidence, through positive knowing rather than just positive thinking, is to become very good at what you do. The flip side of self-confidence is “self-efficacy,” or the ability to perform effectively in your chosen area.

You can raise your self-confidence instantly by the simple act of committing yourself to becoming excellent in your chosen field. You immediately separate yourself from the average individual who drifts from job to job and accepts mediocrity as the adequate standard. Some years ago, a young man named Tim came to one of my personal-development seminars. He was shy and introverted. His handshake was weak and he had tremendous difficulty making eye contact. He sat in the back of the seminar room with his head down, taking notes. He seemed to have few friends, and he didn’t socialize very much during the breaks. At the end of the seminar, he told me that he was in sales and hadn’t been doing very well up to that time. But he had resolved to change, to go to work on himself, to overcome his shyness and to become very good at selling for his company. He then said good-bye, and I wished him the best of luck as he went on his way.

A year later, he came back to take the seminar again. But this time, he was distinctly different. He was calmer and more self-assured. He was still a little shy, but when he shook hands, his grip was firmer, and his eye contact was better. He sat toward the middle of the seminar room, and he interacted quietly with people around him. At the end of the seminar, he told me that he was starting to move up in his sales force and had had his best year ever. He was determined to do even better in the year to come.

About 14 months later, Tim came back to the seminar. This time, he brought five people from his company, all of whom he had convinced to come to the seminar, and he had offered to pay their tuition if they weren’t satisfied. He walked right up to me and shook hands firmly, looking me straight in the eye with a strong, self-confident smile. He asked if I remembered him, and I told him that I remembered him very well. He said that he had brought something that he wanted to show me. He took out of his pocket a letter from the president of a national corporation-one of the biggest companies in the country-personally congratulating him for the outstanding job he had done in sales in his territory in the past year.

It turned out that Tim had gone from number 33 to number one out of 42 salespeople. His income had risen from $26,000 a year to $98,000, and he had increased his sales volume at a faster rate than any other salesperson in the country had. He was still quiet, but he had a wonderful air of power and purposefulness about him. He had taken the steps and paid the price to build himself into a fine young man. He had made the decision to do whatever was necessary to overcome his shyness and to develop the kind of personality that he admired in others. He was, and is, in every sense of the word, a self-made man.

Perhaps the most wonderful result of developing high levels of self-confidence is the positive impact that your personality will have on your relationships. There are two mental laws that are always operating and that determine much of what happens to you in your interactions with people. The first is the law of attraction, which says that you will inevitably attract into your life people who are very much like you. The second law is the law of correspondence, which says that your outer world of relationships will correspond perfectly, like a mirror image, to your inner world of personality and temperament.

In combination, these laws simply say that as you change in a positive direction, you will find yourself surrounded by people who are very much like the new person you are becoming. As you get better, the quality and quantity of your relationships will get better. You will meet nicer, more self-confident, more interesting and enjoyable people. You will find yourself getting along better with members of the opposite sex, including your spouse. You will find yourself doing better at your job, or even in a new job, and getting along better with your boss and your coworkers. Your attitude of confidence and calm assurance will make you more attractive to people. They will want to be around you, to open doors for you, to make opportunities available to you that would not have arisen when you didn’t feel as terrific about yourself as you do now.

Often, people lack self-confidence in their relationships with others because they judge themselves poorly in comparison. Sometimes you become self-conscious of what you are doing and saying, and sometimes you are afraid that people will not like you or accept you the way you want them to. Well, there is an important mindset that you can adopt to improve your ability to get along well with others in a more relaxed and confident fashion.

It’s important to remember that no one can affect your thoughts or feelings unless there is something that you want from him, or something that you want him to refrain from doing. As soon as you begin to practice detachment and decide in your own mind that there is nothing that you want or expect from another person, you will find that his ability to shake your self-confidence is greatly reduced. The people who are the most successful in human relationships are those who practice a calm, healthy detachment from others, and although they are friendly and engaged in the conversation, they don’t allow the behaviors of others to determine how they think and feel about themselves.

As you can see, it is our fears and doubts that, more than anything else, undermine our self-esteem and self-confidence and cause us to think in negative terms about ourselves and our possibilities. As Maslow said, we begin to “sell ourselves short” and see all the reasons why something might not be possible for us. We magnify the difficulties and minimize the opportunities. We become preoccupied with the possible losses we might suffer and the possible criticisms we might endure. Our fears and doubts paralyze us, preventing us from acting boldly, lowering our self-confidence and causing us to think and talk in negative terms. In fact, this probably describes the great majority of mankind. Most people are so preoccupied with their fears that they have time for little else, and this preoccupation manifests itself in much of what they say and do.

The only real antidote to doubt and worry and fear and all the other negative emotions that sabotage our self-confidence is action. Your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, positive or negative. When you engage in systematic, purposeful action, using and stretching your abilities to the maximum, you cannot help but feel positive and confident about yourself.

Act as though it were impossible to fail. Act as though you already had a high level of self-confidence. And continually ask yourself, “What one great thing would I dare to achieve if I knew I could not fail?” Whatever your answer, you can have it if you can dream it, and if you have the self-confidence to go out and get it.

Finding Your True Calling

In my courses on time management, I point out that the very worst use of time in life is to stay at a job for months and years for which you are completely unsuited. There are a great number of people who spend their whole lives doing something during the week so that they can somehow find something enjoyable to do on the weekends.

In every case, these are men and women with very little future before them. They look upon their jobs as a form of drudgery, a penance they have to pay in order to enjoy the rest of their lives. And because of this attitude, they will seldom advance or be promoted. They will stay pretty much at the level they are, moving from job to job, and always wondering why other people seem to be living the good life while they feel like they are living lives of quiet desperation.

People who are not successful and happy in their work are those who have not taken the time to sit down and deal honestly and openly with themselves. They have not looked deep within themselves to find the inner treasures of talent and ability that they have demonstrated throughout their lives. They are content to do work that other people design and to achieve goals that other people have set.

Over time, people who are not following their true callings begin to feel helpless. They feel that there is nothing they can do to change things. Their income only rises enough to meet their expenditures, and they worry about money all the time. The future looks to them to be very much the same as the past. But this is not for you. Your aim in life is to become everything you are capable of becoming, to enjoy full self- expression of your talents and abilities. Your job is to develop yourself to the point where every day is a source of joy and satisfaction, and you have so many interesting things to do that you do not have enough time to do them. Your job is to continually hold up a mirror to yourself and refuse to work at anything that is not an expression of everything that is good and capable within you.

Success comes from being excellent at what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance and below-average rewards and insecurity for below-average performance.

But excellence is a journey, not a destination. You never really get there. You can never relax. The market is always changing and what constitutes excellence today will be different tomorrow and very different next year and the year after.

All really successful and happy people know in their hearts that they are very good at what they do. If you are doing what you really love and enjoy, if you are following your true calling, you will know because of your attitude toward excellence.

When you have found your true calling, nothing but the best will do for you, and you will go any distance, pay any price, overcome any obstacle to develop yourself to the point where you are really good at your occupation.

When you find your true calling, you will have a continuous desire to learn more about it. People who are not driven to learn more about their fields are people who are in the wrong jobs. And if a person is in the wrong job and not constantly learning and growing in their field, their value and their employability is diminishing with each passing day.

When you find your true calling, you will be determined to join the top 10 percent of people in your field. You will be willing to pay any price that is necessary to rise to the top. You will be willing to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. You will take additional courses on the evenings and weekends.

You will see technology as an opportunity to do your job better. You will be interested in the various learning programs that you can install on your computer that can help you learn better and faster. You will be hungry for new knowledge in your quest to move upward in your chosen field.

A simple test as to whether or not you are in your true calling is this: If you are doing the job that is meant for you, that uses your unique talents and abilities, you will automatically admire those who are at the top of your field. You will look up to them and want to be like them. They will be your role models and you will pattern your work and activities after them. You will want to meet them, talk to them, read their books, and listen to their talks. The very best people in your chosen field will become the examples that give you guidance, both spoken and unspoken, on your upward journey.

Throughout the years, I have been continually asked by people what they can do to be more successful. In almost every case, they are working in jobs that they don’t like, for bosses they don’t particularly respect, producing or selling products or services to customers they don’t care about. And many of them think that if they just hang in there long enough, the clouds will part and everything will get better.

But the fact is that you are where you are and who you are because you have chosen to be there. Nobody can help you or change your situation for you. The economic goal of your company is to hire people at the very lowest cost so that they can serve customers at the very lowest cost in a competitive market. For this reason, no one has any obligation to pay you any more than you are getting. If possible, they would like to pay you less.

The one thing I tell people over and over again is that they must become very good at doing what they are doing if they want to move up. And if they don’t have the inner desire to be very good at their jobs, it means they are probably in the wrong jobs.

The great tragedy is the number of people who do their job in an average or mediocre fashion with the idea that, when the right job comes along, they will really put their heads down and do a good job. But for some reason, the right job never comes along. They are always passed over for promotion and advancement. They are always the last ones hired and the first ones laid off.

If you’re still not sure about your true calling, ask the people the closest to you. Ask them, “What do you think I would be the very best at doing with my life?” It is absolutely amazing how people around you, including your spouse, your best friends, and your parents can see clearly what you should be doing when often you cannot see it yourself.

Remember, you are put on this earth to do something wonderful with your life. You have within you talents and abilities so vast that you could never use them all if you lived to be a thousand. You have the natural skills and talents that can enable you to overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you could ever set for yourself. There are no limits on what you can be, have, or do if you can find your true calling, and then throw your whole heart into doing what you are made to do in an excellent fashion.

Exercising Your Influence

Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the support and respect of your customers, bosses, coworkers, colleagues and friends. The ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most important people in your community.

Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement of your goals and the solving of your problems.

You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the persuading.

The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.

President Eisenhower once said that, “Persuasion is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, and to like it.” You need always to be thinking about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your objectives. People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses.

Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action. The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a “Robinson Crusoe” of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs. By doing this, you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks to himself or herself completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she will never be rich or successful.

The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage. Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in rather than doing everything yourself. There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfill your full potential in our society: other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge, and other people’s money.

You leverage yourself through other people’s efforts by getting other people to work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won’t work for very long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby freeing you up to do higher-value work.

One of the most important laws of economics is called “Ricardo’s Law.” It is also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn for accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or outsource that part of the task.

For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250 day year, you need to make $50.00 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50.00 per hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of your work, like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters, or filling out expense forms, that is not valued at $50.00 per hour, you should stop doing it. You should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to do it for you. The more lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the more time you will have to do tasks that pay you higher amounts of money. This is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you need to become one of the higher paid people in your profession.

Management can be defined as “getting things done through others.” To be a manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

The second form of leverage that you must develop for success in America is other people’s knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?

It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country. With on-line computer services that access huge data bases all over the country, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don’t be afraid to ask, even if you don’t know the individual personally.

The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive abilities, is other people’s money. Your ability to use other people’s money and resources to leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability to buy and defer payment, to sell and collect payment in advance, to borrow, rent or lease furniture, fixtures and machinery, and to borrow money from people to help you multiply your opportunities is one of the most important of all skills that you can develop. And these all depend on your ability to persuade others to cooperate with you financially so that you can develop the leverage you need to move onward and upward in your field.

There are four “Ps” that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception. The first “P” is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

The second “P” is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

The third “P” is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job. The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

The fourth “P” of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge and other people’s money. The development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the most powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors for you in every area of your life.

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