Become The Person Who Attracts Success - Brian Tracy

many years ago I started off poor I started off broke I started off pretty stupid I started off having failed out of high school and I drifted for a long time I've done a good deal of traveling when you are older you call your traveling your drifting days traveling uh and I've done a good deal of traveling and over the years I began to study the subject of success and I had one simple idea that came upon me and my late teens and I think it was the most important idea that I've ever had and

it was simply this that if you study successful people and you do what they do you'll be more successful and if you study unsuccessful people and you avoid doing what they do then you will not be a failure and one of the things I found that if you study success you begin to internalize success principles and if you practice proven success principles and if you do what successful men and women have done throughout history that you will be successful too and it's such a remarkable Discovery but it has been worth a fortune to me and

what I want to talk to you about tonight is some of the principles that I've discovered in over 20 years of research I serve as a consultant to over 200 corporations and I have been a personal consultant to the Presidents of3 billion plus corporations I have studied successful men and women I have read biographies and autobiographies I have looked at the characteristics and principles of them I've studied philosophy and economics and religion and psychology and metaphysics and I've come to 10 key qualities now there may be more and there may be less but I find

that each of these 10 qualities that successful men and women have starts with the letter C and the interesting thing about these qualities is first of all with them success is predictable and without them failure is predictable that if you have these 10 qualities there's nothing in the world that can stop you from being an outstanding success and if you lack sometimes even one of these qualities that can be enough can be the weak Link in the chain that Dooms one to a life of underachievement and failure the second principle that I discovered with regard

to these qualities is that they are all habit patterns of mind and that nobody starts off with them and that you can learn them and that you can develop them with practice and the third thing that I found is that if you will practice these principles until they become habits until they become automatic for you then nothing can stop you so let's talk about these principles they start with the letter c each one of them there's 10 principles the first principle starts with the letter c it says Clarity and Clarity is the starting point of

all success it means Clarity of thinking it means thinking clearly and it extends from thinking clearly to a series of other things with regard to Clarity it means the ability to determine exactly what it is that you want to be have or do in life and the more I study successful men and women the more I find that every single one of them the top 5% are very clear about where it is they're going and what it is they want to accomplish and when I look at unsuccessful men and women or men and women who

seem to be unhappy and floundering I find that almost invariably they have a very very limited sense of direction sometimes no sense of direction at all you see we as human beings are goal-seeking organisms we only function at our very best when we're working toward accomplishing something that is important to us and in my estimation 80 to 90% % of all the unhappiness hostility violence psychosomatic illness alcoholism drug addiction and so on in our society is caused by people having no sense of direction they don't know where they're going as they say if you don't

know where you're going any road will take you there I remember the analogy the fellow goes up to the edge of the woods and he sticks his rifle into the woods and he closes his eyes and goes blam blam blam blam blam puts his rifle down turns to his friend says boy I sure hope something good runs into that now if you understand this principle this principle is terribly important you can be the most talented the smartest the best educated person with the most valuable contacts and all the advantages in life but if you are

not focused it doesn't do you any good at all I wrote in an article for the Wall Street Journal that if you do not have clear specific goals for your life you are doomed forever to work for people who do and that seems to be the case and yet only 5% of people have goals so the the key starting point with regard to Clarity is to know where it is you're going and what it is you want to be and what it is you want to have and what it is you want to do because

in America in the Most Blessed society and all of human history you can have anything in the world that you want if you can decide what it is that you want the second key with regard to Clarity is decisiveness be decisive I've never met a successful person who was indecisive and I've never met a failure who is decisive be decisive develop the characteristic and quality of decisiveness we know that the reason why we are indecisive is because we're afraid of making a mistake but the terrible thing is that the way that we think becomes a

habit and the habit of indecisive can condemn us to failure we can be talented and intelligent and ambitious but if we cannot make the hard decisions in our life and if we cannot make decisions readily then what happens is we always have to work for people who do make decisions readily now the interesting thing about decisions is that about 80% of decisions should be made the first time they come up 80% of decisions should be made the first time they come up and if you make decisions every single time they come up sooner or later

you will develop the habit of decisiveness you'll be very clear about what it is you want and it's easy to make decisions if you know what it is you want to accomplish one of the major reasons why people are indecisive in my experience is they have no idea what they want to accomplish it's almost like they come to the crossroads but they don't know which direction to go 80% of all decisions should be made the first time they come up and I read a management consultant's report on decisions he said the thing to do about

decisions is to make a decision and if that doesn't work make another decision and if that doesn't work make another decision and if that still doesn't work you're probably in the wrong field anyway but the interesting thing is that if you make a decision you gather momentum and the difference between successes and failures is not that successful people make right decisions it is that successful people make their decisions right in other words on they once they have made a decision they make it come out right anybody who's ever started a business knows that when you

start a business you start off with a whole bunch of ideas which the market promptly tells you are completely wrong uh and you probably lose your shirt or most of it and you have to revise every single decision that you have but the desire to survive economically the threat of losing your shirt is a great motivation to learn quickly and to make decisions so make decisions the third Point under Clarity is to have a vision for yourself and a vision for your life the key to having a vision is to have a dream they say

in the song you've got to have a dream if you want to make a dream come true and you can fulfill your dreams all the great movers and shakers throughout all of history have been dreamers they've been people with dreams they've been people with visions all leaders have Vision in the Book of Solomon it says where there is no vision the people perish and the metaphysical meaning of that is that where people lack Vision they perish inside because they lose the excitement and the thrill of life and what most people do because of negative experiences

because of fear of failure and so on is they if they have a vision at all they tone it down so it's so small and so safe that it doesn't turn them on it doesn't excite them and they wonder why life isn't exciting a beautiful line I read not long ago said if the best way to predict the future is to created which means to have a vision and even though the vision is in the air or the sky then build a foundation under your dreams and when you see men and women who rise from

poverty and obscurity to fame and Renown you invariably see someone who had a vision of what they could be and have a do that was far beyond what they were every one of us has had an experience at one time when we were small we had a vision of being growing up and having our own cars and As We Grew Older we had a vision of having our own homes and our own families and As We Grew Older we had a vision of traveling and going to Europe we fulfill all our Visions the wonderful thing

is this is that we always tend to achieve our goals the problem is that our goals are set so low that even when we do achieve them they don't turn us on they don't fill us with enthusiasm so Dream Big Dreams if you like and focus on results not activities this is the key be clear about the results that you're trying to accomplish this is one of the keys of Peak Performance by the way all Peak performers are result oriented all losers or Underachievers tend to be activity oriented and in activity orientation what they do

is they work very very hard sometimes they work frantically sometimes they work longer hours than you do but they lose sight of the results Ben Trigo the Strategic thinker said very worst thing in the world is to do very efficiently what need not be done at all and many of us and many of us work very very hard to do very efficiently what need not be done at all anybody who's ever had employees will tell you that you every single day you come across your employees doing something very diligently but it's completely irrelevant to the

success of the business so focus on results here's a key question to ask yourself when in your working life I think it's one of the most important key questions I'll give you two number one is what results are expected of me what results are expected of me not what activities but what results or what outputs what am I supposed to produce in my job a second question you can ask yourself is why am I on the payroll why am I on the payroll many people especially in sales they make the mistake of thinking that shuffling

cards and uh reading through their sales literature and organizing their multiple listings and having coffee with the other people and reading the newspaper advertisements that they placed last week that this is all part of selling no selling is when you're face to face with a real life Prospect who is willing and able and capable of buying a product everything else from that is self- delusion what results are expected the results that are expected of us in selling are sales and the only time that we are working is when we are doing something that contributes directly

to that result isn't that true of course but of course why do we do the other things I've come to the con ition that the reason why we do the other things is because they are fun and easy rather than hard and necessary I think the major reason why people fail in life if I can pass this on which wasn't part of this but major reason why people fail in life is because of the expediency factor that we always do and we always take the fastest and easiest route to get the things that we want

but the fastest and easiest route in life is almost always the route to failure it's short-term gain for long-term pain we do what is fun and easy today instead of what is hard and necessary and then we have to do what is hard and necessary at the end of our life when it's too late and you'll find that the willingness and the ability to discipline yourself to be clear about what it is you want to be clear where you're going to be clear about the results that you're expected to accomplish and then to only work

on those results the ability to discipline yourself to do that is absolutely critical for Success it is not possible to conceive of a person being successful who is not capable of disciplining themselves to do what is hard and what is necessary rather than what is fun and easy and when especially when it it comes to managing your time when it comes to looking at what you should do on a day-to-day basis focus on results not activities now let me give you a method which has helped me write out your goals all goals have to be

in writing by the way if you don't have your goals in writing uh then they're not really goals at all they're merely wishes and as they say wish is merely a goal without any energy behind it um have your goals in writing write them out very specifically and clearly and then do this every single morning rewrite your major goals in the first person singular as though they already existed rewrite your major goals every single morning now this should take you about 2 to four minutes maybe five you can do it all in a paragraph for

instance if your goal is to earn $50,000 a year every single morning right I earn $50,000 a year if your goal is to be excellent in real estate say I am an excellent salesperson in my field if your goal is to weigh a certain number of pounds if your goal is to enjoy a certain kind of Life write down your major goals in the first person singular as though they already existed today every single morning and then every single evening take about 5 10 minutes instead of watching television just before you turn on the television

say wait a second I've got to review my progress and sit down and review what you've done in the course of the day and say what have I done right today what have I done right that's moved me toward my goals and second question is what would I do differently if I had today to do over again those those four steps by the way writing rewriting your goal each morning reviewing them in the evening and asking yourself those two questions what did I do right what did I do that moved me toward my my goals

today and what would I do differently if I had the day to live over if you'll ask yourself those two questions in the next 30 days you'll accomplish more than you accomplished in the last six months this is the most incredible method I've ever seen I learned it some years ago just rewrite your goals every morning because every time you write your goals down you're programming them into your subconscious mind when you program them into your subconscious mind you set up a field of vibration within your brain and this Law of Attraction based on this

field of vibration attracts into your life people and circumstances that harmonize with your dominant thoughts everybody here has had the experience of starting to read about a subject think about a subject become interested in a subject and suddenly you started to attract into your life books magazines articles conversations people opportunities to expand on that subject you had that experience before what you do is you create a force field which we cannot explain scientifically but it is a field of vibration that goes out from you and attracts back into your life everything that you need to

realize your dominant goals and everybody's had the experience of writing down their goals at the beginning of the year and opening up the envelope at the end of the year and finding that 80% of the goals have been accomplished have you ever had that experience absolutely remarkable isn't it the only problem with goals is that we don't set enough of them and we don't set them highly enough you can have anything you want imagine you could have anything that you want anything that you can hold in your mind on a continuing basis you can have

anything that you are crystal clear about wanting and are willing to pay the price to get you can have so Clarity is the key be clear about what you want be clear about what you have to do to get it be clear about your vision be clear speak walk talk and act with Clarity and that's the final point with regard to Clarity is I have seen many men and women who have tripped themselves up by being beaters around the bushers if you like they are very careful about whatever they say and by the time they

say it people have gone home for lunch um and one of the keys to success is to be very straight and to be very clear be very precise interesting one of the reasons why people do not speak to the point is for fear of offending others that true for fear of offending others interesting study they did last year they asked a great number of Executives male and female they said if you had to tell a person something unfortunate with regard to their career that was going to affect their lives and this is something that you've

known for a long time how would you go about breaking the news to them and each of the person described the strategy they would take they would set up the timing right they would start off with a talk about uh talking about subjects that they had in common they would close the door and keep out the noise anyways they went around and round and they're all circuitous roots how they would get to the point and then they reversed the question they said how would you like to be informed of this same subject and every single

one of them said i' like to be informed in a straightforward way i' like somebody to tell me straight the news you see all of us want to be dealt with in a straightforward way because we know we can take whatever it is but we think that everybody else is too fragile so what we do is we foot and Tippy Toe around and and avoid giving them the news and we finally do get the news to them sometimes causes more problems than is necessary so be straightforward be clear in your language be clear in your

actions let people know exactly where you stand let people know exactly what you said and what you mean very very important and it takes practice by the way uh every single one of these habit patterns every single one of these qualities has to be learned by practice the second letter of the 10 is competence and this is a discovery that I made a couple of years ago and it just staggered me because I've been studying success for years and then there's the book in search of excellence and then there's uh the pursuit of excellence and

then there's uh refining excellence and losing excellence and and all the Excellence books and I sat down and looked at this whole concept of excellence and I saw something that I hadn't noticed it's almost like something brought to the surface of your mind I noticed that every single man or woman that I had studied who had achieved any kind of success in any field whatsoever had done it after they had made a commitment to becoming excellent in that field and I began to look and I began to compare and I began to talk to people

and I speak to thousands of people virtually every month I found that and never found a single person who was successful who was not excellent at what they did that competence the commitment to becoming excellent in your chosen field is an indispensable prerequisite for Success that if you are not good at what you do you haven't got a chance in our competitive Society unless you win the lottery that success is predictable if you commit yourself to becoming excellent it does a whole lot of other things within your mind but if you commit yourself to becoming

excellent it changes everything about you and only the top 5 or 10% are excellent you've heard the rule the 8020 rule the Paro principle that the top 20% of sales people make 80% of the sales at the bottom 80% of sales people make 20% of the sales you know you know what the difference the ratio is there the ratio is the difference between 16 to one that the average income of people in the top 20% is 16 times the average income of the people in the bottom 80% now let me ask you a question does

it mean the people in the top 20% are 16 times better than the people in the bottom 80% 16 times more experience do they work 16 times the number of hours do they have 16 times the number of years of education are they 16 times more handsome are they 16 times anything you know that it's not humanly possible to be twice as smart as somebody else unless you're looking at very very unintelligent people and very very brilliant people it's is really not humanly possible on average for us to even be twice as smart as anybody

else but 20% of these people are making 16 times the average of the rest credential insurance company did a study some years ago and they put the thousands of agents that they have throughout the United States into their computers and compared their income and it came out the 8020 rule worked 20% of the sales people were doing 80% of the business well they had all the data on the computer so they ran it through one more time they said what's the average income of the top 20% of the top 20% compared to the bottom 80%

now for those mathematicians among you that works out to the top 4% what was the average income they found the top 4% were earning on average 32 times the average of the people in the bottom 80% so they said said this is interesting and they ran through one more time they found that the top 20% of the top 20% of the top 20% Which is the top 8% that's good top Point 8% were earning on average 54 times the average of the people in the bottom 80% what they found is that in every state and

in every major city where they had an office with a large number of Agents working out of it there was one agent who was selling the same product at the same price to the same people with the same competition under the same circumstances into the same set of difficulties in the economy who was earning 50 times the amount of the average adult that there were 50 agents in the office and one person was earning more than all of them put together isn't that amazing and one of the things they found is that the key to

this was that each one of these agents had made the commitment to become excellent early in their career they didn't say I'm going to go into this and I'm going to earn a living they said I'm going to go into this and I'm going to be the best and they read every single book written by the top agents and they went to every single seminar and they listened to every single tape and they spent every single hour they could with other successful people learning what they needed to know to be successful you must commit yourself

to Excellence you must commit yourself to becoming the best and the wonderful thing is that Excellence is a journey it's not a destination you never get there complacency and satisfaction are the key enemies of Excellence but once you commit yourself to becoming excellent the whole world opens up for you a very important point of Excellence is just means simply this do your best every time out and always strive to do it better do your best every time out and always strive to do it better remember it's usually the last 5 or 10% of any job

or project that makes all the difference and what we do is we get to 90% done and then we start to drag our heels we start to put the paperwork aside we start to think of excuses we start to do what is fun and easy rather than what is hard and necessary the second point with regard to Excellence is this is that if you are not excellent in your field you don't go anywhere you're locked in place I had a young man come up to me at an employment seminar not long ago and he said

there's no opportunities in sales he said I just got laid off and I said young man I said if you were good in your field you would not have been laid off because good sales people are the rarest people in our society and he just said well I said have you ever studied sales he said well I don't need to study sales I said why not he says well I just do what comes naturally I said I rest my case selling is an art selling today is a profession selling is a science that in order

to be good in selling you have to study it and study it and study it and you have to study it more than the person next door who's also determined to become excellent excellent yields opport Excellence yields opportunities because when you become good you open up it's almost like the the Red Sea of opportunity opens up in front of you when you become excellent you come to the attention of people and people try to get you and they give you more responsibilities and more opportunities and you know when you put on the your business card

that you're the top person in your particular field people like to buy from the best salespeople in their fields and by the way you can tell how excellent you are at any time any time of your life you can tell how excellent on you are very simple measure how many job offers have you had this month interesting question how many job offer how many people called you up and said I want to hire you away from where you are and I'll pay you more and give you a better deal because excellent people get job offers

every month some of them get job offers every single week if you're not getting job offers the market is telling you this is what they think of your level of confidence very very important and if you're going to do anything at all the only time you're going to get any joy out of it if you is if you do it well you see when we do something well it gives us a feeling of self-esteem and pride we feel like a winner but if we do things in an average way it doesn't give us anything you

notice that it doesn't give us anything we do it in an average way it doesn't give us anything but if we do it in a really exceptional way it makes us feel wonderful about ourselves that's why the companies that have committed to Excellence are not hundreds of percent better in any given area what they are is they are one or two% better in a hundred different areas and that's the key you see you don't have to be a Quantum Leap different from somebody else you just have to be a little tiny bit different in the

critical areas that make a difference and you get you can achieve that simply by making it a goal setting it as a goal and working on it you can become anything that you want to become the harder you work the better you get the harder you work the better you get you know in our society there's a lot of controversy over why should I work so hard for my job the fact of the matter is that less than 5% really succeed that's less than 5% of the population really succeed at life of 100 people working

today only one will be wealthy when they retire four will be financially independent 15 will have some savings 8 80% will be broke and dependent upon Charities and pensions only one or 2% of people in each generation really makes it in life and every single study those people who make it are those who work hard hard hard and if you think that it's hard to be successful try being a failure try coming to the end of the trail with no money dependent upon pensions and you don't know what hard is until you try living like

that but if you work hard the average self-made millionaire in America Works 12 to 13 hours a day works about 60 to 65 hours a week I'll tell you this with regard to hard work that you in our society you only work 8 hours a day for survival everything over8 hours is for success and if you're only working 8 hours a day you're in trouble if you're only working 8 hours a day you better have a rich uncle or you better have somebody else who's going to take care of you because eight hours a day

only gets you survival in our society because it's so competitive that somebody else is working nine they've got an edge on you somebody else is working 10 they've got a bigger Edge on you every hour over eight that you invest is an investment in your future is an investment in your success and if you put in the hours over eight whether it's studying or reading or working if you put in the hours it will pay off and it will pay off in Spades it's like throwing seed in the ground when you throw a seed in

the ground the plant that comes up is not just one seed it's hundreds of seeds there's a crop that you put in but you must put the seed in the ground first the market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance it pays average rewards for average performance it pays below average rewards for below average performance and I talk to men and women all over America who are unhappy and they're sad and they don't like their work and you know why it's because they're not good at what they're doing let me give you a couple of

key points is first of all you'll never have a feeling of self-esteem and self-worth you'll never feel wonderful about yourself until you know that you are good at what you're doing number two is if you do not love your work enough to want to be the best at it get out of it the way you would get out of a burning house do not stay at a job that you do not love because is is the high road to fail dissatisfaction frustration and unhappy the next letter C stands for concentration concentration I think that the

ability to focus and concentration are the two keys to success in life that the ability to focus clearly and know exactly what it is you want to accomplish and the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on accomplishing that one thing without diversion or distraction are the keys to success it's the number one key to Effectiveness is to be able to sit down and look at your work and use the 8020 rule say to yourself which is the 20% of the number of things that I have to do that account for 80% of the value of my work

and always work on the top 20% you see in life there's never enough time to do everything but there's always enough time to do the important things instead of doing what is fun and easy which is what most people do you know what they do they make a list of everything they have to do and then they start at the bottom of the list and they work on the irrelevant things at the end of the day they haven't got anything done successful people Peak performers concentrate on the top items and remember anything other than working

on the top items on your list is a waste of your time time and time management is not just time management time management is life management you can do anything you want with your life if you'll manage your time properly we all have the same 24 hours a day and the ability to concentrate concentrate concentrate to discipline yourself to use willpower and perseverance to concentrate on one thing at a time is a quality of all success nothing great has ever been accomplished without the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time always concentrate

on the best use of your time here is my favorite time management question which I give to you for free it's simply this before you start anything ask yourself what is the what is the most valuable use of my time right now make a list and say what is the most valuable use of my time right now when you get into your car say what is the most valuable use of my time right now when you leave the house or leave the office say what is the most valuable use of my time right now ask

yourself that question over and over and over again repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until it's driven into the subconscious mind as a command and whenever you have a temptation to do something that is small and irrelevant that command will go blam what is the most valuable use of your time right now and you woo and it'll push you into doing what is the most valuable use of your time and whenever you're working on the most valuable use of your time you feel great you get concentrated effort is a source of energy and

enthusiasm it makes you feel wonderful when you're working on something important and it makes you feel nothing when you're working on something irrelevant develop a sense of urgency a sense of urgency is a quality that is possessed by only 2% % of the population 2% of the population do things fast 2% of the population have a bias for Action in in Tom Peter's wonderful book in search of Excellence he says all the excellent companies have a bias for action and all of the companies that do not classify or do not Comm into the Excellence category

do things when they get around to it you call them up and you have a problem or a complaint you hear from them three or four weeks later but the excellent companies you call up with a problem or complaint and bang there's somebody back to you in 2 minutes if you ever want an experience call IBM call hulet Packard and say I'm having a problem uh getting some information I'm having a problem with my PC they won't let you off the phone until they've taken care of you you call the other companies they'll say it's

not my job they say the guy who takes care of that isn't here when will we be back I don't know can you take a message I don't have a pencil You Know youve spoken to those people and then they can't understand why they're struggling you know that 80 20% of the companies make 80% of the profits in every industry interestingly enough so develop a sense of urg get the reputation as the person who does things fast develop a reputation for Speed and dependability and your future will just open up in front of you imagine

if you own a company and you had two people in the company and both of them were reasonably well talented both of them were doing reasonably well except one person had a sense of urgency and did things fast and every time you give them something to do they took it and they ran with it like a ball player catching a fumble and running for the goal line the other person got to it after lunch or maybe next Monday or no rush weeks almost over Thursday afternoon and so on which one would you give additional responsibility

to which one would you promote which one would you spend money training which one would you send to places where you needed help it's always the person with a sense of urgency I can tell you this that the sense of urgency for me has been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as a consultant I have been able to save my clients sometimes millions of dollars by acting fast when they've given me a project to take care of whereas if I had acted even a day later it could have cost a fortune and if you'll develop

that that habit of working fast working fast that sense of urgency act now do it now do it now do it now in selling especially somebody calls you up and has a question get back to them now somebody has a problem get back to them now somebody needs something move on it quickly if you have to forego coffee breaks or lunch or something else move fast if you develop that reputation for Speed it will be worth a fortune to you takes a little while but it's a habit most people just sort of shuffle through life

you know they get to it when they feel like it but all the excellent people all the high performers have a sense of urgency and finally complete each job that you start get on with the job and stay with it till it's 100% finished [Music]