Sales Profitability Assessment — Learn how to double, or even triple, your sales by taking this complete Sales Skills Assessment ». Re-train your brain and unlock your true potential! Learn more here ». Your Privacy is Guaranteed. We will never give, lease or sell your personal information. But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.
Your ability to think long term is a developed skill. As you get better at it, you become more able to predict with increasing accuracy what is likely to happen to you in the future as the result of your actions in the present. This is a quality of the superior thinker. But because you acted without carefully thinking or doing your homework, the consequences of your behavior turned out to be far worse than if you had done nothing at all.
Every person has had this experience, and usually more than once. But successful people do them anyway because they know that this is the price they have to pay if they want to enjoy greater success and rewards in the future. First, you eat the main courses and clean your plate; only then do you have dessert.
What kind of appetite for healthy, nutritious food would you have afterward? With all that sugar in your stomach, how would you feel? Would you feel re-energized and eager to do something productive?
Or would you feel tired and sluggish and ready to write off the day as largely finished? You get the same result when you go for a drink or two after work and then come home and turn on the television. Perhaps the worst part of all is that, whatever you do repeatedly soon becomes a habit. And a habit, once formed, is hard to break. The habit of taking the easy way, doing what is fun and enjoyable, or eating dessert before dinner becomes stronger and stronger, and it leads inevitably to personal weakness, underachievement, and failure.
The Habit of Self-Discipline Fortunately, you can develop the habit of self-discipline. The regular practice of disciplining yourself to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not becomes stronger and stronger as you practice it.
You refuse to make excuses. Bad habits are easy to form, but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with. When the habits of self-discipline are firmly entrenched in your behavior, you start to feel uncomfortable when you are not behaving in a self-disciplined manner. The best news is that all habits are learnable. You can learn any habit you need to learn in order to become the kind of person that you want to become.
You can become an excellent person by practicing self-discipline whenever it is called for. Every practice of self-discipline strengthens every other discipline. Unfortunately, every weakness in discipline weakens your other disciplines as well. To develop the habit of self-discipline, you first make a firm decision about how you will behave in a particular area of activity.
You then refuse to allow exceptions until the habit of self-discipline in that area is firmly established. Each time you slip, as you will, you resolve once again to keep practicing self-discipline until it becomes easier for you to behave in a disciplined way than to behave in an undisciplined way. The Big Payoff The payoff for developing high levels of self-discipline is extraordinary!
You see yourself and think about yourself in a more positive way. You feel happier and more powerful as a person. The development and maintenance of the habit of self-discipline are a lifelong task, an ongoing battle.
It never ends. The temptation to follow the path of least resistance and the expediency factor lurk continually in the back of your mind. They are always waiting for an opportunity to pounce, to lead you astray into doing what is fun, easy, and unimportant rather than what is hard, necessary, and life-enhancing. The development of self-discipline is your guarantee that you will eventually overcome all your obstacles and create a wonderful life for yourself.
The ability to practice self-discipline is the real reason why some people are more successful and happy than others. How This Book Is Written In the pages ahead, I will describe the twenty-one areas of life in which the practice of self-discipline is vital to fulfilling your full potential and achieving everything that is possible for you. This book is divided into three sections for greater ease of use.
In the seven chapters of Part 2, you will learn how to achieve vastly more than ever before in the areas of business, sales, and personal finance.
You learn why and how self-discipline is essential to becoming a leader in your field, to operating a business more profitably, to making more sales, investing more intelligently, and managing your time for maximum results.
Finally, in the seven chapters of Part 3, you will learn how to apply the miracle of self-discipline to your personal life.
You will learn how to practice self-discipline in the areas of happiness, health, fitness, marriage, children, friendship, and the attainment of peace of mind. You will learn how to enhance the quality of your life and your relationships in every area. In each chapter, I will to show you how you can incorporate higher levels of self-discipline and self-mastery into everything you do.
In the pages ahead, you will learn how to take complete control over your own personal and professional development and how to become a stronger, happier, more self-confident person in every area of your life that is important to you.
You will learn how to break old habits that may be holding you back and how to develop the habits of self-reliance, self-determination, and self- discipline that will enable you to set and achieve any goal. You will learn how to take complete control over your mind, your emotions, and your future.
When you master the power of self-discipline, you will become unstoppable, like a force of nature. You will never make excuses for not making progress. You will accomplish more in the next few months and years than most people accomplish in a lifetime. You will learn how to develop greater self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. You will learn the essential disciplines required for personal greatness and how to build them into your own character and personality.
This question has occupied some of the very best minds throughout human history. More than 2, years ago, Aristotle wrote that the ultimate aim of human life is to be happy.
Begin with your own personal definition. How do you define success? If you could wave a magic wand and make your life perfect in every way, what would it look like? Describe Your Ideal Life If your business, work, and career were ideal in every way, what would they look like?
What would you be doing? What sort of company would you work for? What position would you have? How much money would you earn? What kind of people would you work with? And, especially, what would you need to do more or less of to create your perfect career? If your family life were perfect in every way, what would it look like? Where would you live, and how would you be living? What kind of a lifestyle would you have? What sort of things would you want to have and do with the members of your family?
If you had no limitations and you could wave a magic wand, in what ways would you change your family life today? If your health were perfect, how would you describe it? How would you feel? How much would you weigh? How would your levels of health and fitness be different from what they are today? Most of all, what steps could you take immediately to begin moving toward your ideal levels of health and energy? If your financial situation were ideal, how much would you have in the bank?
How much would you be earning each month and each year from your investments? If you had enough money that you never had to worry about finances again, how much would that be? What steps could you take, starting today, to create your ideal financial life? And the biggest thing that holds you back from moving in the direction of your dreams is usually your favorite excuses and a lack of self-discipline.
Join the Top 20 Percent In our society, the top 20 percent of people earn 80 percent of the money and enjoy 80 percent of the riches and rewards. Your first goal in your career should be to get into the top 20 percent in your chosen field.
In the twenty-first century, there is a premium on knowledge and skill. The more knowledge you acquire and the greater skill that you apply, the more competent and valuable you become.
As you get better at what you do, your income-earning ability increases—like compound interest. Unfortunately, the majority of people—the bottom 80 percent—make little or no effort to upgrade their skills.
It is only the top people in every field who are committed to continuous improvement. Because of this increasing disparity of productive ability, based on knowledge, skill, and hard work, the top 1 percent of people in American today control as much as 33 percent of the financial assets.
Starting with Nothing Interestingly, almost everyone starts out the same in life—with little or nothing. Almost all fortunes in America and worldwide are first generation. This means that most individuals started with little or nothing and earned everything they own in their current lifetime. The wealthiest people in America are almost all first-generation multibillionaires. Why have these people been able to achieve so much when so many have achieved so little?
In their book, The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko interviewed more than millionaires and surveyed 11, more over a twenty-five-year period. They asked them why they felt they had been able to achieve financial independence when most of the people around them, who started at the same place, were still struggling.
Success is possible only when you can overcome the natural tendency to cut corners and take the easy way. Lasting success is possible only when you can discipline yourself to work hard for a long, long time. As I mentioned in the Introduction, I started my own life with no money or advantages. For years, I worked at laboring jobs, at which I earned just enough to get from paycheck to paycheck. I had never heard that before. I decided then and there that I was going to be in the top 20 percent.
This decision changed my life. It was the Law of Cause and Effect, or sowing and reaping. It also says that whatever you are reaping today is a result of what you have sown in the past. Success Is Predictable Success is not an accident. Sadly, failure is not an accident either. You succeed when you do what other successful people do, over and over, until these behaviors become a habit.
In either case, nature is neutral. Nature does not take sides. What happens to you is simply a matter of law—the law of cause and effect. You can look at yourself as a machine with a default mechanism.
Your default mechanism is the almost irresistible attraction of the expediency factor and the path of least resistance that I described in the Introduction.
In the absence of self-discipline, your default mechanism goes off automatically. This is the main cause of underachievement and the failure to realize your true potential. When you are not working deliberately, consciously, and continuously to do, be, and have those things that constitute success for you, your default mechanism is at work.
You end up doing those fun, easy, and low-value things in the short term that lead to frustration, financial worries, and failure in the long term. The Secrets of Success The great oil man, H. First, decide exactly what it is you want in life. Second, determine the price that you are going to have to pay to get the things you want. And third, and this is most important, resolve to pay that price. Successful people are willing to pay the price, whatever it is and for as long as it takes, until they achieve the results they desire.
Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone wants to be healthy, happy, thin, and rich. But most people are not willing to pay the price. Occasionally, they may be willing to pay part of the price, but they are not willing to pay the whole price. They always hold back. They always have some excuse or rationalization for not disciplining themselves to do everything that they need to do to achieve their goals.
Pay the Price How can you tell when you have paid the full price of success? There it is! You can always tell how much of the price of success you have paid by looking at your current lifestyle and your bank account. By the Law of Correspondence, your outer world will, like a mirror, always reflect the person you are and the price you have paid on the inside.
There is an interesting point about the price of success: It must always be paid in full—and in advance. Success, however you define it, is not like a restaurant where you pay after you have enjoyed your meal. Instead it is like a cafeteria, where you can choose whatever you want, but you must pay for it before you eat it. You will never live long enough to learn it all for yourself. Learn from the experts. Read their books. Listen to their audio programs. Attend their seminars.
Write to them or approach them directly and ask them for advice. Sometimes, one idea is all you need to change the direction of your life. Let me give you an example of what I mean: Some years ago, I was referred by a friend to an excellent dentist. I learned later that he had a superb reputation. He told me that he attended every major dental conference that he could. When he was there, he attended every session, listening to dentists from all the over the country, and all over the world, discuss the latest breakthroughs in dental technology.
One week, at great sacrifice in time and money, he attended an international dental conference in Hong Kong. At that conference, he sat in on a session given by a Japanese dentist who had discovered a new technology in cosmetic surgery that improved the appearance of teeth and enabled people to look handsome or beautiful indefinitely.
He returned to San Diego and immediately began using the new technique in his practice. Soon, he became excellent in this area and developed a national reputation.
Within a couple of years, people were coming to him from all over southwestern United States for this treatment. Because he had developed this expertise, he could raise his fees again and again. Eventually, he had made so much money that he was able to retire at the age of fifty-five, financially independent and able to spend the rest of his life with his family, traveling and fulfilling his dreams.
The point of this story is that, by continually seeking out ideas and advice from other experts in his field, he came across a new technology that helped him become the leader in his field and saved him ten years of hard work in order to reach the same level of financial success.
This could happen to you as well, but only if you become a lifelong student of your craft. It is like bathing, brushing your teeth, and eating.
It is something that you need to do continuously, every day. Once you begin, you never stop until your life and career are over and you have achieved all the success you desire.
Not long ago, I was giving a seminar in Seattle. Just before the break, I encouraged people to buy and listen to my audio programs on sales, time management, and personal success. At the break, several people came up to me to ask me questions about the seminar content. You should tell people that they only work for a certain period of time, and then they stop working. I bought all your programs and began listening to them.
I read every day in sales. And you were right, over the next three years, I tripled my income and became the top seller in my company. But then my income flattened out and has not increased at all over the last two years. The fact is that your materials stop working after a certain point. Ever since I started my new job, my income has remained flat. He then stopped. A shocked look came over his face.
I stopped doing it. When I changed jobs, I stopped reading in sales. I stopped listening to audio programs. I stopped attending seminars. I stopped doing it! You begin to decline. Your body and your muscles become softer and weaker. You lose your strength, flexibility, and stamina. In order to maintain them, you must keep working at them every day, every week, and every month. Become All You Can Be There is an even more important reason for you to practice the self-discipline that leads onward and upward to the great successes that are possible for you.
The practice of self-discipline enables you to change your character , to become a stronger and better person. The exercise of self-discipline has a powerful effect on your mind and emotions, developing you into a different person from the one that you would have been without self-discipline.
Imagine yourself in a chemistry lab. You mix a series of chemicals in a Petri dish and put it over a Bunsen burner. The Bunsen burner heats the chemicals to the point at which they crystallize and become hardened. But once you have crystallized these chemicals using intense heat, they cannot be transformed back into liquid form.
In the same way, your personality begins like a liquid: soft, fluid, and formless. But as you apply the heat of self-discipline, as you exert yourself to do what is hard and necessary rather than what is fun and easy, your personality crystallizes and hardens at a higher level as well. The greatest benefit you enjoy from exerting self-discipline in the pursuit of your goals is that you become a different person.
You become stronger and more resolute. You develop greater self-control and determination. You actually shape and strengthen your personality and transform yourself into a better person.
You become better, stronger, and more clearly defined. You develop higher levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. You move yourself up the ladder of human evolution and become a person of higher character and resolve. Success Is Its Own Reward The wonderful thing about the achievement of success is that every step in that direction is rewarding in itself. Each step you take toward becoming a better person and accomplishing more than you ever have before makes you feel happier, more confident, and more fulfilled.
In the next chapter, I will explain how you can become the truly excellent person you are capable of becoming. Action Exercises: Take out a pen right now and write down your answers to the questions below. If your work life and career were ideal, what would they look like? What one discipline could you develop that would help you to achieve it?
If your family life were ideal, what would it look like, and what one discipline would help you the most to make it a reality? If your health were perfect in every way, what disciplines would you have that make it possible? If your financial situation were ideal today, what one discipline would you have that would help you the most? What one skill could you develop that would help you to realize more of your goals?
If you could wave a magic wand and be completely disciplined in one area, which one discipline would have the greatest positive impact on your life? Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself and be lenient to everyone else. Your ability to develop a reputation as a person of character and honor is the highest achievement of both social and business life.
Each time you have chosen rightly and acted consistently with the very best that you know, you have strengthened your character and become a better person. The reverse is also true: Each time you have compromised, taken the easy way, or behaved in a manner inconsistent with what you knew to be right, you have weakened your character and softened your personality. The Great Virtues There are a series of virtues or values that are usually possessed by a person of character.
These are courage, compassion, generosity, temperance, persistence, and friendliness, among others. We will talk about some of them in Part 3 of this book. Coming before all these values, however, is the most important one of all when determining the depth and strength of your character: integrity. It is your level of integrity, living in complete truth with yourself and others, that demonstrates more than anything else the quality of your character. In a way, integrity is actually the value that guarantees all the other values.
When your level of integrity is higher, you are more honest with yourself and more likely to live consistently with all the other values that you admire and respect. However, it takes tremendous self-discipline to become a person of character. And it takes both self- discipline and willpower to resist the temptation to cut corners, take the easy way, or act for short- term advantage. All of life is a test, to see what you are really made of deep, down inside.
Wisdom can be developed in private through study and reflection, but character can be developed only in the give and take of daily life, when you are forced to choose and decide among alternatives and temptations.
The Test of Character It is only when you are under pressure—when you are forced to choose one way or another, to either live consistently with a value or to compromise it—that you demonstrate your true character. Every choice you make is a statement about your true values and priorities. At each moment, you choose what is more important or of higher value to you over what is less important or of lesser value.
The only bulwark against temptation, the path of least resistance, and the expediency factor is character. The only way that you can develop your full character is by exerting your willpower in every situation when you are tempted to do what is easy and expedient rather than what is correct and necessary. The Big Payoff The payoff for becoming a person of character, for exerting your willpower and self-discipline to live consistently with the very best that you know, is tremendous.
When you choose the higher value over the lower, the more difficult over the easy, the right over the wrong, you feel good about yourself. Your self-esteem increases. You like and respect yourself more.
You have a greater sense of personal pride. In addition to feeling excellent about yourself when you behave with character, you also earn the respect and esteem of all the people around you. They will look up to you and admire you. Doors will be opened for you. People will help you.
You will be paid more, promoted faster, and given even greater responsibilities. As you become a person of honor and character, opportunities will appear all around you. On the other hand, you can have all the intelligence, talent, and ability in the world, but if people do not trust you, you will never get ahead.
People will not hire you, and if they do, they will dehire you as soon as possible. Financial institutions will not lend you money. Furthermore, since the people you associate with have a major effect on your attitude and personality, you make or break your entire life with the quality of your character—or the lack thereof.
You learn values in one or all of three ways: instruction, study, and practice. Teach Your Children Values. One of the chief roles of parenting is to teach children values. This requires patient instruction and explaining values to them over and over again as they are growing up. Once is never enough. The value—and the importance of living by that value—must be explained. Parents must not only give illustrations but also contrast the adherence to a value, especially that of telling the truth with its opposite, that of lying or telling half-truths.
Children are very susceptible to the lessons they receive from the important people in their lives as they are growing up. They accept what you say as their parent as a fact, as absolute truth. They absorb what you say like a sponge. You write your description of values on their souls, which are like wet clay, so that what you write becomes a permanent part of the way they see the world and relate to life.
Your children watch you and strive to emulate the values that you not only teach and preach, but also practice. And they are always watching.
The Rockefeller family children were famous for being taught financial values at an early age. Even though their father was one of the richest men in America, the children were given tasks and chores to perform before they received their allowances. They were then instructed on how to spend their allowances: how to save, how much to give to charity, and how much to invest. As a result, they grew up to become successful businessmen and statesmen, unlike children who had grown up in wealthy homes who were seldom disciplined in money matters.
Study the Values You Admire. You learn values by studying them closely. For example, in military training, soldiers are continually told stories of courage, obedience, discipline, and the importance of supporting their fellow soldiers. The more they hear these stories, discuss them, and think about them, the more likely they are to behave consistently with these values when they are under the pressure of actual combat.
The core virtue of character is truth. Whenever you tell the truth, however inconvenient it may be at the time, you feel better about yourself and you earn the respect of the people around you. Much of your character is determined by the people you most admire, both living and dead.
Who are they? Looking over your life and history, make a list of the people whom you most admire, and next to their names, write out the virtues or values that they most represent to you.
If you could spend an afternoon with anyone, living or dead, what one person would you choose? Why would you choose that person? What would you talk about during your afternoon together? What questions would you ask, or what would you want to learn? Consider this as well: Why would that person want to spend an afternoon with you? What are the virtues and values that you have developed that make you a valuable and interesting person?
What makes you special? Practice the Values You Respect. You develop values by practicing them whenever they are called for. We develop values by repetition, by behaving consistently with a particular value over and over again, until it becomes a habit, and locks in so that we come to practice it automatically.
Men and women with highly developed characters behave in a manner consistent with their highest values, and they do so without thought or hesitation. There is no question in their minds about whether or not they are doing the right thing. The Structure of Personality The psychology of character involves the three parts of your personality: your self-ideal, your self- image, and your self-esteem.
Your Self-Ideal. Your self-ideal is that part of your mind composed of your values, virtues, ideals, goals, aspirations, and your idea of the very best person that you can possibly be. In other words, your self-ideal is composed of those values that you most admire in others and most aspire to possess in yourself. They have complete clarity about the values they believe in and what they stand for. They are not confused or indecisive.
They are firm and resolute when it comes to any decision in which a value is involved. On the other hand, weak and irresolute people are fuzzy and unclear about their values. They have only a vague notion of what is right or wrong in any situation. As a result, they take the path of least resistance and act expediently. They do whatever seems to be the fastest and easiest thing to get what they want in the short term, giving little to no consideration or concern about the consequences of their acts.
The Evolution of Character. In biology, life forms are categorized from the least to the most complex, from single-celled plankton all the way up the increasingly complex spectrum of life to the human being.
Similarly, human beings can be organized along a spectrum as well, from the least to the most developed. The lowest forms of humans are those with no values, virtues, or character. These people always act expediently and take the path of least resistance in their search for immediate gratification.
At the highest levels of development of the human race, however, are those men and women of complete integrity, who would never compromise their honesty or their character for anything, including the threat of financial loss, pain, or even death.
George Washington is famous for his honesty, which was demonstrated in the story in which he admitted that he had cut down the cherry tree. At the other end of the societal spectrum, however, are those societies characterized by tyranny, thievery, dishonesty, and corruption.
Each of these are, without exception, both undemocratic and poor. Trust Is the Key. Trust is the lubricant of human relationships. Where there is high trust among and between people, economic activity flourishes and there are opportunities for all. On the other hand, where there is low trust, economic resources are squandered in an attempt to protect against thievery and corruption—or these resources are not available at all.
These documents lay out the rules by which Americans agree to live. They create the structure of our government and guarantee our rights.
But they assume that our elected representatives will be men and women of honor, committed to protecting and defending those rights. They attempt to assure that only men and women of character can thrive and prosper over the long term in our economic, political, and social system.
They aim to assure that, in most cases, only men and women of character can rise to high positions in society. Although our system is not perfect, and people of questionable character occasionally rise to positions of prominence, it is seldom for very long.
The basic demand of Americans for honesty and integrity eventually leads to the exposure and censure of dishonest people. The demand for men and women of character continues unabated. The second part of your personality is your self-image. This is the way we see and think about ourselves, especially prior to any event of importance.
People always tend to behave on the outside consistently with the way they see themselves on the inside. When you see yourself as calm, positive, truthful, and possessed of high character, you behave with greater strength and personal power. Other people respect you more. You feel in control of yourself and the situation.
You see and think about yourself in a better light. You feel happier and more confident. Your behavior and outward performance then reflect this increasingly improving inner picture you have of yourself as the very best person you can possibly be. People tend to accept you at your own evaluation of yourself, at least initially. If you see and think of yourself as an excellent person who is possessed of high character, you will treat other people with courtesy, grace, and respect.
In turn, they will likewise treat you as a person of honor and character. The third part of your personality is your self- esteem. This is how you feel about yourself, your emotional core. The more you see yourself as a valuable and important person, the more positive and optimistic you will be.
When you truly consider yourself to be important and worthwhile, you will treat other people as if they are important as well. Your self-esteem is largely determined by how consistent your self-image, which shapes your personal behavior, is with your self-ideal, or your vision of the very best person you can possibly be. Whenever you act consistently with who you consider an excellent person to be, your self-image improves and your self-esteem increases.
You feel happy about yourself and others. In stock [PDF] Goals! Read Online Download. Description Reviews 2 Goals! Hot No Excuses! Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. Recent Downloads Hot No Excuses! Hot Eat That Frog! No Excuses!
0コメント