GOALS
Part-8
How to Get Everything You Want –
Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible
By Brian Tracy
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
_________________________________________________
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Chapter-17
Activate Your Superconscious Mind
Chapter-18
Remain Flexible At All Times
Conclusion: Take Action Today
DEDICATION
To Rick Metcalf, a good friend, a great American, an extraordinary entrepreneur,
one of the best salesmen who ever lived, and an inspiration to everyone who knew him.
I only wish you could be here to read this book. You left us all too soon.
PREFACE
This book is for ambitious people who want to get ahead faster. If this is the way you think and feel, you are the person for whom this book is written. The ideas contained in the pages ahead will save you years of hard work in achieving the goals that are most important to you.
I have spoken more than 2000 times before audiences of as many as 23,000 people, in 24 countries. My seminars and talks have varied in length from five minutes to five days. In every case, I have focused on sharing the best ideas I could find on the particular subject with that audience at that moment. After countless talks on various themes, if I was only given five minutes to speak to you, and I could only convey one thought that would help you to be more successful, I would tell you to “write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans every single day.”
This advice, if you followed it, would be of more help to you than anything else you could ever learn. Many university graduates have told me that this simple concept has been more valuable to them than four years of study. This idea has changed my life, and the lives of millions of other people. It will change yours as well.
The Turning Point
A group of successful men got together in Chicago some time ago, talking about the experiences of their lives. All of them were millionaires and multi-millionaires. Like most successful people, they were both humble and grateful for what they had achieved, and for the blessings that life had bestowed upon them. As they discussed the reasons why they had managed to achieve so much in life, the wisest man among them spoke up and said that, in his estimate, “success is goals, and all else is commentary.”
Your time and your life are precious. The biggest waste of time and life is for you to spend years accomplishing something that you could have achieved in only a few months. By following the practical, proven process of goal setting and goal achieving laid out in this book, you will be able to accomplish vastly more in a shorter period of time than you have ever imagined before. The speed at which you move onward and upward will amaze both yourself and all the people around you. By following these simple and easy-to-apply methods and techniques, you can move quickly from rags to riches in the months and years ahead. You can transform your experience from poverty and frustration to affluence and satisfaction. You can go far beyond your friends and family and achieve more in life than most other people you know.
In my talks, seminars and consulting, I have worked with more than two million people all around the world. I have found, over and over, that an average person with clear goals will run circles around a genius who is not sure what he or she really wants.
My personal mission statement has not changed in years. It is: “To help people achieve their goals faster than they ever would in the absence of my help.”
This book contains the distilled essence of all that I have learned in the areas of success, achievement and goal attainment. By following the steps explained in the pages ahead, you will move to the front of the line in life. For my children, this book is meant to be a road map and a guide to help you get from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. For my friends and readers of this book, my reason for writing it is to give you a proven system that you can use to move onto the fast track in your own life.
Welcome! A great new adventure is about to begin.
INTRODUCTION
This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more opportunities for creative and determined people to achieve more of their goals than they can today. Regardless of short-term ups and downs in the economy and in your life, we are entering into an age of peace and prosperity superior to any previous era in human history.
In the year 1900, there were five thousand millionaires in America. By the year 2000, there were more than five million, most of them selfmade, in one generation. Experts predict that there will be another ten to twenty million millionaires created in the next two decades. Your goal should be to become one of them. This book will show you how.
A Slow Start
When I was 18, I left high school without graduating. My first job was as a dishwasher in the back of a small hotel. From there, I moved on to washing cars, and then washing floors with a janitorial service. For the next few years, I drifted and worked at various laboring jobs, earning my living by the sweat of my brow. I worked in sawmills and factories. I worked on farms and ranches. I worked in the tall timber with a chain saw and dug wells when the logging season ended.
I worked as a construction laborer on tall buildings, and as a seaman on a Norwegian Freighter in the North Atlantic. Often I slept in my car, or in cheap rooming houses. When I was 23, I was working as an itinerant farm laborer during the harvest, sleeping on the hay in the barn and eating with the farmer’s family. I was uneducated, unskilled, and at the end of the harvest, unemployed once more.
When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got a job in straight commission sales, cold calling from office-to-office and from door-todoor. I would often work all day long to make a single sale so that I could pay for my rooming house and have a place to sleep that night. This was not a great start at life.
The Day My Life Changed
Then one day, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down an outrageous goal for myself. It was to earn $1,000 per month in doorto-door and office-to-office selling. I folded up the piece of paper, put it away and never found it again.
But 30 days later, my entire life had changed. During that time, I discovered a technique for closing sales that tripled my income from the very first day. Meanwhile, the owner of my company sold out to an entrepreneur who had just moved into town. Exactly thirty days after I had written down my goal, he took me aside and offered me $1,000 per month to head up the sales force and teach the other people what it was that I was doing that enabled me to be selling so much more than anyone else. I accepted his offer and from that day forward, my life was never the same.
Within eighteen months, I had moved from that job to another, and then to another. I went from personal selling to becoming a sales manager with people selling for me. I recruited and built a 95 person sales force. I went literally from worrying about my next meal to walking around with a pocket full of $20 dollar bills.
I began teaching my salespeople how to write out their goals, and how to sell more effectively. In almost no time at all, they doubled and tripled and increased their incomes as much as ten times. Many of them are today millionaires and multi-millionaires.
It’s important to note that, since those days in my mid-20s, my life has not been a smooth series of upward steps. It has included many ups and downs, marked by occasional successes and temporary failures. I have traveled, lived and worked in more than 80 countries, learning French, German and Spanish along the way, and working in 22 different fields.
As the result of inexperience, and sometimes sheer stupidity, I have spent or lost everything I made and had to start over again - several times. In every case when this happened, I would begin by sitting down with a piece of paper and laying out a new set of goals for myself, using the methods that I’ll explain in the pages ahead.
After several years of hit and miss goal setting and goal achieving, I finally decided to collect everything I had learned into a single system. By assembling these ideas and strategies in one place, I
developed a goal setting methodology and process, with a beginning, middle and end, and began to follow it every day.
Within one year, following this blueprint for goal achieving, my life had changed once more. In January of that year, I was living in a rented apartment with rented furniture. I was $35,000 in debt and driving a used car that wasn’t paid for. By December, I was living in my own $100,000 condominium. I had a new Mercedes, had paid off all my debts and I had $50,000 in the bank.
Then I really got serious about success. I realized that this “goal setting” stuff was incredibly powerful. I invested hundreds and then thousands of hours reading and researching on goal setting and goal achieving, synthesizing the best ideas I could find into a complete goal setting and achieving process that worked with incredible effectiveness.
Anyone Can Do It
In 1981, I began teaching my system in workshops and seminars that have now reached more than two million people in 35 countries. I began audiotaping and video taping my courses so that others could use them. We have now trained hundreds of thousands of people in these principles, in multiple languages, all over the world.
What I found was that these ideas work everywhere, for everyone, in virtually every country, no matter what your education, experience or background may be when you begin.
Most of all, these ideas have made it possible for me, and many thousands of others, to take complete control over our lives. The regular and systematic practice of goal setting has taken us from poverty to prosperity, from frustration to fulfillment, from underachievement to success and satisfaction. This system will do the same for you.
What I learned early on is that any plan is better than no plan at all. And it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. All the answers have already been found. There are hundreds of thousands, and even millions of men and women who have started with nothing and achieved great success following these principles. And what others have done, you can do as well, if you just learn how.
In the pages ahead, you will learn twenty-one of the most important ideas and strategies ever discovered for achieving everything that you could ever want in life. You will find that there are no limits to what you can accomplish except for the limits you place on your own imagination. And since there are no limits to what you can imagine, there are no limits to what you can achieve. This is one of the greatest discoveries of all. Let us begin.
“A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. Confucius
CHAPTER 17
Activate Your Superconscious Mind
“The subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind.
With the utmost fidelity, it works to its final consequence
whatever the subjective mind impresses upon it.”
__________________________________________________________
Thomas Troward
Imagine that you had just moved into a new house and the previous owner, just before leaving, took you aside privately. He explained that there was a special room in the basement that contained a most amazing computer. You could program any goal or question into that computer and it would give you exactly the right answer for you at exactly the right time. It was absolutely infallible. It worked every single time. And every answer would turn out to be perfectly correct. Imagine what an incredible difference this could make in your life!
The fact is that you do have such a computer. It is available and accessible to you at any time. It is called your “Superconscious Mind.” It is the most powerful faculty ever discovered in all of human history, and you can tap into it any time you want.
Throughout this book, I have repeated that, “You become what you think about most of the time.” I also said, “Whatever you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis, you can have.” In addition, we discussed the Laws of Attraction and Correspondence, and the importance of absolute clarity in determining exactly what you want to be, have and do. In every case, I was referring indirectly to the power of the superconscious mind.
The Secret of The Ages
The superconscious mind has been known about and discussed for thousands of years, throughout all of human history. For most of this time, it was the secret knowledge of the mystics and sages. Access to it was guarded and only taught after many years of loyal study to the devotees of the mystery schools of the ancient world. Only in the last 100 years has the knowledge of the superconscious mind become more generally available, and then, only to a few people.
Three Minds In One
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychotherapy, wrote about the three minds, the “Ego, Id and Super Ego” in 1895 and based much of his work upon these three different elements of perception.
The Ego was described as the “I am.” It is the part of the mind that is alert and aware, that deals with the external world that analyzes, decides and takes action. We call this the conscious mind.
The “Id” of Sigmund Freud is the unconscious part of the mind, or what we call the subconscious mind. This is the vast storehouse of memories and feelings where all of our previous thoughts, decisions and experiences are gathered, and which functions automatically, both to operate our physical bodies and to keep our thoughts and feelings consistent with our past experiences.
What Sigmund Freud called the “Super Ego,” the third dimension of thought, was referred to as the “Oversoul” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alfred Adler, a student of Freud, referred to it as the “Collective Unconscious” and Carl Jung, who broke away from Freud, called it the “Supra Conscious.” Napoleon Hill referred to it as “Infinite Intelligence,” and reported that virtually all of the most successful people in America had used it continually throughout their careers and credited it with their most important breakthroughs and accomplishments.
Roberto Assagioli, the Italian psychologist, and others refer to it as the “Super Conscious Mind” or “God Mind.” No matter what you call it, it is a great universal power that you can access at any time to achieve any goal that you really want, as long as you desire it intensely, long enough and hard enough.
The Source of All Breakthroughs
All important breakthroughs, in all fields, throughout history, have been the result of superconscious functioning. Whenever you have suddenly originated a great idea or insight that solved a problem or resolved a dilemma, you have had a superconscious experience. Great scientific breakthroughs, like the discovery of DNA, or the breakthrough idea combining ceramics with electricity that led to the discovery of super conductivity, were superconscious in origin.
The great musicians tapped into and used their superconscious minds repeatedly in the creation of their compositions. Mozart could see an entire opera in his mind, note perfect, before he began writing. He would then transcribe the opera from his mental picture, without a single mistake, the very first time. It could then be played in public without revision. Nothing like this had ever been seen or experienced in all the history of music.
Beethoven created his greatest compositions after he went deaf. He could see and hear them in his mind before writing them down on paper. Steven Hawking, the physicist, was so crippled with Lou Gehrig’s Disease that he needs a special computer to produce one letter at a time. Nonetheless, by using his superconscious mind, he has become one of the best selling authors in the world with his book, “A Brief History of Time.”
The Greatest Inventor Of All Time
Thomas Edison patented 1093 devices at the U.S. Patent office, almost all of which were turned into commercial products during his lifetime. At his death in 1931, fully one sixth of the American workforce was employed in the manufacture and distribution of Thomas Edison invented products.
Edison used his superconscious mind continually throughout his entire career to solve unsolvable problems and achieve historic breakthroughs in electricity, motion pictures, sound recording and transmission, and hundreds of other areas. Although he was deaf, he would take regular naps during the day to access his superconscious mind for insights that led to his numerous inventions.
The Great Law
Whenever you see a great and inspiring work of art, read a piece of classic literature or a beautiful poem, hear an extraordinary piece of music or see a remarkable building or construction, you are witnessing the result of the superconscious in action.
The Law of Superconscious Activity, perhaps the most important mental law ever discovered, is this: “Any thought, plan, goal or idea held continuously in the conscious mind must inevitably be brought into reality by the superconscious mind.”
Just think! Anything that you really want to be, have or do is possible for you. If you can be absolutely clear about what it is and then access your superconscious mind on a regular basis, you will eventually achieve it. The only limits on what your superconscious mind can do for you are the limits that you place on your own mind and imagination.
The Right Operating Conditions Your superconscious mind operates best when you are in a mental state of calm, confident, relaxed expectation. Whenever you practice relaxation and solitude, completely letting go of all your cares, and sit quietly, or commune with nature, your superconscious mind begins to function.
Whenever you “go into the silence” and listen to the still, small voice within you, you begin to hear the whisperings of your super conscious mind.
Your intuition is the equivalent of that supercomputer in the basement of your new home. This is your connection and your contact with the superconscious mind. Sometimes your intuition will speak to you so loudly in the silence that the idea or insight it brings you will change your entire life.
The Greek scientist, Archimedes, had a superconscious flash of inspiration about the displacement of objects while sitting in his bath. He became so excited that he leaped from the bath and ran naked through the streets of Athens shouting “Eureka!”(“I have found it!”). This is how you often feel when you have a great idea or insight that solves a problem or moves you toward your goal.
Activating Your Superconscious
Your superconscious mind is stimulated by clear, written, specific goals, intensely desired, visualized regularly and constantly worked toward. Whenever you relax, visualize and emotionalize a specific result that you intensely desire, you stimulate your superconscious mind into giving you ideas and energy for goal attainment.
Sometimes, a superconscious inspiration can so energize and excite you that you will be unable to sleep or think about anything else. In that case, you should sit down and write out every idea and detail that comes to you. This will often free up your mind and enable you to go back to sleep.
Serendipity and Synchronicity
The super conscious mind explains two phenomena that you experience regularly throughout your life, serendipity and synchronicity. The more you use your superconscious mind, the more often you will enjoy these two wonderful experiences.
Serendipity is the process of, “making happy discoveries along the road of life.” Whenever you have a clear goal that you visualize continually, and that you are working toward each day, happy, unexpected events and experiences seem to occur in your life, each of which seems to help you to achieve your goals even faster.
You might come across an article in a magazine, or someone mentions something to you that you didn’t know before. You might even flip to a program on television that has exactly the idea or insight you need to solve a particular problem, or answer a key question. You will often have a setback or temporary failure that turns out to be exactly the right thing to happen to you at that moment.
Look For the Good
The interesting point is that, if you look for something good in every situation, you will always seem to find it. The very attitude of expecting good things to happen to you seems to trigger their occurrence, over and over again. If you calmly and confidently believe in the magic of serendipity, no matter what happens, you will have repeated serendipitous experiences that will help you to achieve your real goals in life.
Events Connected By Meaning
The second phenomenon that you will experience regularly is called “synchronicity.” This is different from The Law of Cause and Effect, the Iron Law of the universe, in a special way. The Law of Cause and Effect says that everything happens for a specific reason, and that there is a traceable cause for every effect.
With synchronicity however, the only relationship between two events that occur simultaneously is the meaning that you give to them by the goals that you have in different areas of your life.
Here is an example. You set a goal to double your income. But the following week, you either quit or get fired, completely unexpectedly. This initially looks like a real setback. But the next day in conversation, a friend asks you if you have ever thought of working in a particular field. As it happens, you had read several articles about that field over the past year, and you had thought of getting into it, but you did not know how to go about it. You decide to investigate further, identify a growing company, interview for a job, start work and one year later you find yourself earning twice as much as you were at your previous job, and enjoying it more.
You will notice that there was no direct cause and effect relationship between these separate events. They seemed to be disconnected in time and space. But they had one thing in common. They helped you to achieve the real goal that you had set for yourself, to double your income.
Two Ways to Stimulate Your Superconscious Mind
There are two ways for you to stimulate your superconscious mind into action. The first is for you to concentrate and work intensely on achieving your goal. Throw your whole heart into what you are doing. Think about it, talk about, write it, rewrite it and review it every single day. Do everything that you can possibly think of that can help you to attain that goal.
When you dedicate yourself to continuous, determined forward action toward the accomplishment of your goal, all sorts of serendipitous and synchronous events will happen to you and for you. People will emerge from unexpected places to help you. You will receive phone calls and offers of assistance. You will come across ideas and information that you would not have recognized before. You will have ideas and insights that move you even faster toward your goal.
The second way to stimulate your super conscious mind is to relax completely and get your mind busy elsewhere. For example, when you go on vacation, you often become so busy doing other things that you don’t think about your goals or problems at all. It seems that the more you can completely relax and let go, both mentally and physically, the more rapidly your superconscious mind will click into action and begin giving you the ideas and insights that you need. It seems that the harder that you “don’t try,” the faster your superconscious mind will work for you.
You should try both methods on every goal. First, work with singleminded concentration on the goal. Commit 100% of your energies to solving the problem. Then, if you have still not experienced the breakthrough you desire, get your mind busy elsewhere. Take some time off. Go on vacation. Engage in physical exercise, or go to a movie. Forget about it completely for a while. Then, at exactly the right time, your superconscious mind will function and the answer will appear.
Exactly The Right Answer
Your superconscious mind will bring you the exact answer you need, at exactly the right time for you. Therefore, when you receive a superconscious inspiration, you should take action immediately. Don’t delay. This is often time-dated information. If you get an inner urge to take an action or make a phone call, move on it quickly. If you have a hunch about something, follow up on it. It seems that the very act of moving on a superconscious flash will trigger additional superconscious insights and inspirations that will help you.
Three Special Qualities
A superconscious idea or solution has three qualities:
First, it will answer every aspect of the problem, or give you everything you need to achieve your goal. The answer will be complete in every respect.
Second, it will be a “blinding flash of the obvious.” A super conscious inspiration will feel natural, easy and perfectly suitable to the situation.
Third, a super conscious solution will give you a burst of happiness and excitement, even exhilaration. It will be one of those shining moments that you remember for a long time.
Whenever you get a superconscious solution, it will come accompanied by the energy, enthusiasm and motivation you need to take action immediately. You will have an irresistible desire to implement the solution right now. You will want to stop everything else you are doing to take action. And you will always be right.
Trust Is The Key Requirement
Your superconscious mind is the most powerful faculty you have. It is available and accessible to you at all times. You “dial in” to your superconscious mind by being absolutely clear about what you want and then by calmly and confidently trusting that exactly the answer you need will come to you at exactly the time you are ready for it.
The more you relax and trust in this great power, the better and faster it will function. It has been said that, “Men and women begin to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices.” When you make a regular habit of listening to your intuition and trusting your inner voice, you will probably never make another mistake. By tapping into your superconscious mind, you begin to bring your whole life into harmony with this great universal power. You will achieve goal after goal, and move forward faster and faster in everything you do. You will feel as though you are plugged into some kind of cosmic energy source that enables you to accomplish vastly more, and with much less effort, than ever before. Think back over your life and recall the times when your super conscious mind has worked for you. In the past, these experiences were random and haphazard. But by developing absolute clarity about your goals, and by reviewing and visualizing them regularly, you can make this superconscious power work for you consistently and predictably all the days of your life.
Activate Your Superconscious Mind:
Think back over your life and recall a time when you had a superconscious experience that solved a problem or enabled you to achieve a goal. Reflect on the process and think about how you can duplicate it.
Select your most important goal, your major definite purpose, and visualize it clearly, over and over, with complete confidence that it will materialize at exactly the right time for you.
Begin the daily practice of solitude and meditation. During this time, just let your mind relax and float from subject to subject until exactly the right answer to the right question pops into your mind.
Make it a practice to take action on a superconscious idea as soon as it comes into your mind. Don’t hesitate. Have complete faith that only the best can happen when you trust in this power.
Try to solve your problem with single-minded concentration, and it that doesn’t work, get your mind busy elsewhere. At exactly the right time, the ideal solution will emerge from your intuition or appear in your life.
Your superconscious mind works for you in direct proportion to your complete trust and confidence in it. Practice letting go on a regular basis and wait patiently until exactly the right answer comes to you, at exactly the right time.
CHAPTER 18
Remain Flexible At All Times
“When I have finally decided that a result is worth getting,
I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes.”
__________________________________________________________
Thomas Edison
It is in the nature of things that some people will be more successful and happier than others. Some people will make more money, have better lives, enjoy greater fulfillment and satisfaction, have happier relationships and contribute more to their communities. Others will not.
The Menninger Institute of Kansas City conducted a study not long ago to determine what qualities would be most important for success and happiness in the 21st century. They concluded, after extensive research, that the most important single quality that you can develop, in a time of rapid change, is the quality of “flexibility.”
The opposite of flexibility is “rigidity.” The opposite of flexible thinking is fixed or mechanical thinking. The opposite of approaching life with an open mind is to react automatically and predictably in every situation. The opposite of flexibility is an unwillingness to change in the face of new information or circumstances. The quality of flexibility is therefore essential if you want to be, do and have more than the average person.
The Speed of Change
Today, perhaps the most important factor affecting your life is the speed of change. We are living in an age where change is taking place at a faster rate than ever before in human history. And if anything, the rate of change is increasing, year-by-year.
Change today is not only faster, but it is also discontinuous, not following a straight line but starting, stopping and going off in unpredictable directions. Change is coming at us from all sides and in so many different ways that it is often impossible to anticipate what might happen next.
By its very nature, change is unpredictable, often forcing us to scrap our very best plans and ideas overnight as the result of a completely new and unexpected development coming from a new and unexpected direction. As a result, we have to remain flexible in our thinking and in our possible courses of action.
A Major Cause of Stress
Change causes enormous stress for people who are fixed or rigid in their beliefs about how things “should be.” They fall in love with what they are doing, with their current methods and processes, and are unwilling to change, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Don’t let this happen to you.
The only real question you should be asking about what you are doing is, “Does it work?” Is it achieving the end results desired? Based on the current situation, is this the best course of action? The only measure of the rightness or wrongness of a particular decision or course of action is its effectiveness in accomplishing the result desired, or achieving the goal you have set. Keep asking, “Does it work?”
Three Factors Driving Change
There are three factors driving change today, each of them multiplying times each other to increase the speed of change.
The first change factor is the explosion of information and knowledge, in every area of our lives. One new discovery or piece of information in a competitive marketplace can change the dynamics of your business overnight. A popular product or service, or major industry, can be rendered obsolete by a new product or service that achieves the same result faster, better, cheaper or easier than something else.
A critical news event, such as 9/11, a market shock, such as that caused by Wall Street revelations, a scandal in a political party or industry, can transform the thinking, actions, sales, and situation of an entire business or industry overnight.
For example, in 1989, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the Iron Curtain came down and the Cold War ended. The defense industry across America was severely shaken. Hundreds of thousands of highly trained and skilled men and women were laid off permanently. Entire industries were shut down and certain parts of the country were thrown into recession. The effects of change were overwhelming and unavoidable. Only the flexible were able to react and respond effectively.
Be Open To New Information
To remain flexible, you must be constantly open, alert to new ideas, information and knowledge that can help you or hurt you in your business, or in the achievement of your goals. One new idea can be enough to make or lose you a fortune. One idea can start you on the road to riches, or knock you off it. One piece of information, at the right time, can save you enormous amounts of time, trouble and money. Lack of that information can cost you a fortune.
All leaders are readers. It is absolutely essential that you keep current in your field. Read the magazines and publications put out by your industry. Read the best selling books in your field. Attend seminars and conferences. Join your industry associations and network with other people in your business. The power is always on the side of the person with the best and most current information.
The Tide of New Technology
The second factor driving change is the rapid growth and development of new technology. Every new piece of scientific or technical knowledge leads to a advance in technology aimed at helping people and companies get things done faster, better, cheaper or easier. And the speed of technological change is increasing every day.
The rule is that, “Whatever works is already obsolete.” A new piece of high-tech equipment put on the shelf is obsolete before it is unpacked. New technology today has a shelf life of six months before it is replaced by something that will do the job faster and cheaper. If you are not looking for ways to replace your product or service with something better, you can be assured that your competitors are staying up late at night looking for ways to do you one better and put you out of business.
Playing Leapfrog
Being in business today is like playing an endless game of leapfrog. You look for a way to leapfrog your competitor and serve your customers better, faster and cheaper. Your competitor then leapfrogs over you with a newer or better product or service. You quickly regroup and leap over your competitor with a new innovation or improvement. Your competitor then leaps over you, and the game goes on without end.
The same principle of accelerating obsolescence applies to your products, your services, your processes and especially to your sales and marketing strategies. It applies to your current advertising and methods of promotion. Whatever works, will soon stop working.
Either customers will become bored with it, your competitors will copy it, or it will no longer attract customers in the current marketplace.
Expect To Be Imitated
Not long ago, I hired an advertising agency and paid them $10,000 to develop an ad for me, which I then ran in a national newspaper. It was a powerful ad and drew a lot of good responses. We were walking around the office patting each other on the back until the following week, when a competitor came out with the identical ad that we had paid to have created, but aimed at selling his product rather than ours. Our response rate dropped by 50% and continued to fall. And there was very little that we could do.
You must be continually developing back-up plans for every aspect of your business, knowing without doubt that, whatever you are doing, it will soon stop working and will have to be replaced by something else that does.
Watch Out For the Comfort Zone
We spoke earlier about the “Comfort Zone” and how both individuals and organizations often fall into it and keep on doing the same things, over and over, whether they are working or not.
Sometimes the greatest danger to your long-term success can be short-term success. Success in any area can quickly breed complacency and a reluctance to change in response to the new realities of the marketplace. Don’t let this happen to you.
Competitive Pressures Are Unending
The third element driving change and requiring greater flexibility is competition. Your competitors, local, national and international, are more determined and creative today than they have ever been before. They are constantly looking for ways to take your customers away, steal your sales, reduce your cash flow and, if possible, put you out of business. They are aggressively selling their products or services using every argument and advantage they can possibly develop to undermine your position in the marketplace. Your competitors are aggressively using new information and technology to render you obsolete and to gain a competitive advantage.
Today, there are more companies, products, services and salespeople than there are customers or buyers for them. The competition is becoming tougher and more intense. If you want to survive and thrive in this market, you must become even more focused and determined yourself. Above all, you must be flexible.
Zero Base Everything Regularly
Earlier, I talked about the importance of “zero based thinking” in examining every part of your life and activities today. Zero based thinking is a vital tool in remaining flexible as well.
Continually ask, “Is there anything that I am doing today, that knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t get into again today, if I had to do it over?”
Look at every part of your life and business. Wherever you experience stress, resistance, or lack of success, ask the zero based thinking question. And if there is something that you would not start up again today, make plans immediately to get out of it and to channel your resources and energies where you can get better results.
Don’t let your ego cloud your judgment or your common sense. Be more concerned with what’s right rather than who’s right. You must be open to the fact that most of your decisions will turn out to be wrong in the fullness of time. Be prepared to be flexible, especially in the face of new information, technology or competition.
Three Magic Statements
There are three statements that you can learn to say, over and over, to remain flexible in turbulent times. Here they are:
The first is, “I was wrong.” Most people would rather bluff, bluster and deny rather than to admit that they were wrong. What makes the refusal to admit you are wrong even worse is when everyone around you already knows that you are wrong. You are the only one who is fooling anyone, and that one person you are attempting to fool is yourself. When you realize that you are wrong, the smartest thing you can do is to admit it quickly, solve the problem and get on with achieving the goal or result.
It has been estimated that as much as 80% of the time and energy of the key people in large companies and organizations is devoted to covering up the fact that they are wrong, and they don’t want to admit it. Many companies, small and large, have gone bankrupt because of a refusal or failure to admit an obvious mistake.
Admit That You Are Not Perfect
The second statement that you must learn to say to remain flexible is, “I made a mistake.” It is amazing how much time, energy and money is wasted because someone’s ego is so large that they will not admit they have made a mistake, even one that is obvious to everyone around them.
Once you say, “I was wrong” or “I made a mistake,” the issue is largely over. From then on, everybody can get on with resolving the problem or achieving the goal. But as long as a key person is unwilling to admit that he or she has taken the wrong course, everything comes to a stop.
We have seen this repeatedly in national politics where the failure of a single person to admit a mistake or blunder has led to tremendous waste of time and energy for everyone involved, and often, for the entire nation.
Adapt To New Information Quickly
The third statement you should learn to say quickly and easily is “I changed my mind.” If you get new information that contradicts the information upon which you made a previous decision, be prepared to admit candidly that, “I changed my mind.”
It is not a weakness or a character flaw to be wrong, to make a mistake or to change your mind. In fact, in a time of rapid change in the areas of knowledge, technology and competition, it is a mark of courage, character and flexibility to be willing to “cut your losses” quickly and practice the “Reality Principle” in everything you do.
Be willing to deal with the world as it is, rather than the way you wish it were, or the way that it might have been in the past. Face the truth, whatever it is. Be honest with yourself and everyone around you.
Remain Open to New Realities
Always be open to reevaluating your goals and objectives in the light of new information, technology or competition. Based on what you now know, is this the best course of action? If it is not, what else should you do? What else could you do?
If it is a goal, and the circumstances under which you made the goal have changed dramatically, be sure that you still want it badly enough to struggle and sacrifice for it. Be willing to drop it and set a new goal if you have changed your mind, or if the goal is no longer as important to you today as it once was.
In a time of rapid change, resolve to be the first to recognize and embrace change when it occurs. Expect it as part of the normal and natural course of events. Refuse to be surprised or upset when things do not work out the way you thought they would, or should.
Be Flexible In Your Relationships
Especially, be flexible with the important people in your life - your family, your friends, your coworkers and your customers. Be open to differing points of view and different ideas. Be continually willing to admit that you could be wrong, because you often are.
One of the characteristics of the best leaders is that they are good listeners. They ask a lot of questions and take in all the information possible before making up their minds or coming to a final conclusion. They also admit failure and cut their losses quickly when they make a mistake so they can move on to bigger and better things.
The Theory of Precession
There is another aspect of flexibility that you should bear in mind for the rest of your life and career. Buckminster Fuller, the scientist and philosopher, called it the “Theory of Precession,” which does not appear in any dictionary or encyclopedia. Dr. Robert Ronstadt of Babson College called it the “Corridor Principle.”
Napoleon Hill referred to this finding by the most successful people in America by saying that, “within every setback or obstacle there lies the seed of an equal or greater opportunity or benefit.”
What this means is that, when you set a new goal for yourself, you will have a general idea of the steps you should take and the direction you should pursue. But almost inevitably, as you start off, you will run into unexpected roadblocks that make it impossible to continue in that direction. However, by some miracle, just as you reach a wall, another door of opportunity will open along the corridor to success.
Because you are flexible, you will quickly take advantage of the new opportunity and begin moving in that direction, developing that new product or service, selling into that new market or customer base. But as you move down this new corridor, you will run into another obstacle or roadblock that might again block your progress. Just as you hit this new wall or obstruction however, another opportunity will open up for you and take you down a different corridor toward your goal.
This may happen several times, with several false starts. In almost every case, you will achieve your greatest success in an area very different from what you initially thought when you started out. You will achieve your greatest business and personal successes doing things that are very different from what you had initially planned. The key is to remain flexible.
Be Both Clear and Flexible
Here is the most important rule of flexibility: “Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it.”
Always be open to the influence of your superconscious mind. Remain sensitive to the possibility of serendipitous and synchronous events. Be open to ideas, inspirations and inputs from other people. In the New Testament, Jesus said, “You must become like a little child if you would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
One interpretation of these words is that you must remain open minded, flexible, calm, confident and curious if you want to be able to recognize new opportunities and possibilities as they open up around you on your journey toward your goal.
Resolve to remain flexible and open, no matter what happens. Remember, there is almost always a better way to accomplish any task, or to achieve any goal. Your aim should be to be alert and aware to what it might be, to find it and then to take action in that new direction as quickly as possible. This will insure that you inevitably reach your goal, sometimes in the most unexpected and surprising ways.
Remain Flexible At All Times:
Remain Flexible At All Times:
Regularly ask yourself the question, “What do I really, really want to do with my life?” and then make sure that your current goals and activities are in harmony with your answer.
Be completely honest and realistic with your life and goals. Resolve to see the world as it is, not as you wish it were, or could be. What changes does this practice suggest?
Be willing to admit, in each area of your life where you experience stress or resistance, that you could be wrong, or that you have made a mistake. Resolve today to cut your losses wherever possible.
If the situation has changed, or you have new information, be willing to change your mind and make a new decision based on the facts as they exist today. Refuse to persist in a course of action that does not make good sense.
Look into each problem or obstacle you face and seek the valuable lesson or benefit it contains. Should you change your direction or course of action based on new information or experience? If so, do it now.
Conclusion
Take Action Today
You have now learned perhaps the most comprehensive strategy for setting and achieving goals that has ever been put together in one book. By practicing these rules and principles, you can accomplish more in the coming months and years than most people accomplish in a lifetime.
The most important quality you can develop for lifelong success is the habit of taking action on your plans, goals, ideas and insights. The more often you try, the sooner you will triumph. There is a direct relationship between the number of things you attempt and your accomplishments in life. Here are the 21 steps for setting and achieving goals, and for living a wonderful life.
h2Unlock Your Potential – Always remember that your true potential is unlimited. Whatever you have accomplished in life up to now has only been a preparation for the amazing things you can accomplish in the future.
h2Take Charge of Your Life – You are completely responsible for everything you are today, for everything you think, say and do, and for everything you become from this moment forward. Refuse to make excuses or to blame others. Instead, make progress toward your goals every day.
h2Create Your Own Future – Imagine that you have no limitations on what you can do, be or have in the months and years ahead. Think about and plan your future as if you had all the resources you needed to create any life that you desire.
h2Clarify Your Values – Your innermost values and convictions define you as a person. Take the time to think through what you really believe in and care about in each area of your life. Refuse to deviate from what you feel is right for you.
h2Determine Your True Goals – Decide for yourself what you really want to accomplish in every area of your life. Clarity is essential for happiness and high performance living.
h2Decide Upon Your Major Definite Purpose – You need a central purpose to build your life around. There must be a single goal that will help you to achieve your other goals more than any other. Decide what it is for you and work on it all the time.
h2Analyze Your Beliefs – Your beliefs about your own abilities, and about the world around you, will have more of an impact on your feelings and actions than any other factor. Make sure that your beliefs are positive and consistent with achieving everything that is possible for you.
h2Start At The Beginning – Do a careful analysis of your starting point before you set off toward the achievement of your goal. Determine your exact situation today and be both honest and realistic about what you want to accomplish in the future.
h2Measure Your Progress – Set clear benchmarks, measures, metrics and scorecards for yourself on the road to your goals. These measures help you to assess how well you are doing and enable you to make necessary adjustments and corrections as you go along.
h2Remove The Roadblocks – Success boils down to the ability to solve problems and remove obstacles on the path to your goal. Fortunately, problem solving is a skill you can master with practice, and thereby achieve your goals faster than you ever thought possible.
h2Become An Expert In Your Field – You have within you, right now, the ability to be one of the very best at what you do, to join the top 10% in your field. Set this as a goal, work on it every day, and never stop working at it until you get there.
h2Associate With The Right People – Your choices of people with whom to live, work and socialize will have more of an effect on your success than any other factor. Resolve today to associate only with people you like, respect and admire. Fly with the eagles if you want to be an eagle yourself.
h2Make a Plan Of Action – An ordinary person with a well thought-out plan will run circles around a genius without one. Your ability to plan and organize in advance will enable you to accomplish even the biggest and most complex goals.
h2Manage Your Time Well – Learn how to double and triple your productivity, performance and output by practicing practical and proven time management principles. Always set priorities before you begin, and then concentrate on the most valuable use of your time.
h2Review Your Goals Daily – Take time every day, every week, every month to review and reevaluate your goals and objectives. Make sure that you are still on track and that you are still working toward things that are important to you. Be prepared to modify your goals and plans with new information.
h2Visualize Your Goals Continually – Direct the movies of your mind. Your imagination is your preview of your life’s coming attractions. Repeatedly “see” your goals as if they already existed. Your clear, exciting mental images activate all your mental powers and attract your goals into your life.
h2Activate Your Superconscious Mind – You have within you and around you an incredible power that will bring you everything and anything you want or need. Take the time regularly to tap into this amazing source of ideas and insights for goal attainment.
h2Remain Flexible At All Times – Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it. Be constantly open to new, better, faster, cheaper ways to achieve the same result, and if something is not working, be willing to try a different approach.
h2Unlock Your Inborn Creativity – You have more creative ability to solve problems and come up with new and better ways for goal attainment than you have ever used. You are a potential genius. You can tap into your intelligence to overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you can set for yourself.
h2Do Something Every Day – Use the “Momentum Principle of Success” by getting started toward your goal and then doing something every day that moves you closer to what you want to accomplish. Action orientation is essential to your success.
h2Persist Until You Succeed – In the final analysis, your ability to persist longer than anyone else is the one quality that will guarantee great success in life. Persistence is self-discipline in action, and is the true measure of your belief in yourself. Resolve in advance that you will never, never give up!
There they are, the twenty-one most important principles of goal setting and goal achieving ever discovered. Your regular review and practice of these principles will enable you to live an extraordinary life. Nothing can stop you now.
Good luck!
