Once upon a time there was a
woman, about 30 years old, married with two children. Like many people, she had
grown up in a home where she was constantly criticised and often treated
unfairly by her parents. As a result, she developed deep feelings of inferiority
and low self-esteem. She was negative and fearful, and had no confidence at
all. She was shy and self-effacing, and did not consider herself to be
particularly valuable or worthwhile. She felt that she was not really talented
at anything.
One day, as she was driving to
the store, another car went through a red light and smashed into her.When she
awoke, she was in the hospital with a mild concussion and complete memory loss.
She could still speak, but she had no recollection of any part of her past life.
She was a total amnesiac.
At first, the doctors thought it
would be temporary. But weeks passed and no trace of her memory returned. Her
husband and children visited her daily, but she did not know them. This was
such an unusual case that other doctors and specialists came to visit her as
well, to test her and ask her questions about her condition.
■ STARTING OVER
Eventually, she went home, her
memory a complete blank. Deter- mined to understand what had happened to her,
she began reading medical textbooks and studying in the specialised area of
amnesia and memory loss. She met and spoke with specialists in this field.
Eventually she wrote a paper on her condition. Not long afterwards, she was
invited to address a medical convention to deliver her pa- per, answer
questions about her amnesia, and share her experiences and ideas on
neurological functioning.
During this period, something
amazing happened. She became a new person completely. All the attention in the
hospital and afterword made her feel valuable, important, and truly loved by
her family. The attention and acclaim she received from members of the medical profession built her self-esteem and self-respect even higher. She became
a genuinely positive, confident, outgoing woman, highly articulate, well
informed, and very much in demand as a speaker and authority in the medical
profession.
All memory of her negative
childhood had been wiped out. Her feelings of inferiority were wiped out as
well. She became a new person. She changed her thinking and changed her life.
■ THE BLANK SLATE
The Scottish philosopher David
Hume was the first to propose the idea of the tabula rasa or blank slate.This
theory says that each per- son comes into the world with no thoughts or ideas
at all, and everything that a person thinks and feels is learned from infancy
on- ward. It is as though the child’s mind is a blank slate that every passing
person and experience leaves a mark on.The adult becomes the sum total of
everything he or she learns, feels, and experiences growing up. What the adult
does and becomes later is the result of this early conditioning. As Aristotle
wrote, “Whatever is impressed is expressed.”
Perhaps the greatest breakthrough
in the field of human potential in the twentieth century was the discovery of
the self-concept. This is the idea that each person develops a bundle of
beliefs regarding oneself, starting at birth. Your self-concept then becomes the master program of your subconscious computer, determining
everything you think, say, feel, and do. For this reason, all change in your
outer life begins with a change in your self-concept, with a change in the way
you think and feel about yourself and your world. The child is born with no
self-concept at all. Every idea, opinion, feeling, attitude, or value you
have as an adult you learned from childhood. Everything you are today is the
result of an idea or impression you took in and accepted as true.When you
believe some- thing to be true, it becomes true for you, whatever the fact may
be. “You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”
■ FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE LASTING
If you were raised by parents who
continually told you what a good person you were, who loved you, encouraged
you, supported you, and believed in you, no matter what you did or didn’t do,
you would grow up with the belief that you were a good and valuable person. By
the age of three, this belief would lock in and become a fundamental part of
the way you view yourself in relation to your world. Thereafter, no matter what
happens to you, you would hold to this belief. It would become your reality.
If you were raised by parents who
did not know how powerful their words and behaviour could be in shaping your
personality, they could very easily have used destructive criticism,
disapproval, and physical or emotional punishment to discipline or control you.
When a child is continually criticised at an early age, he soon concludes
that there is something wrong with him. He doesn’t under- stand why it is that
he is being criticised or punished, but he assumes that his parents know the
truth about him, and that he deserves it. He begins to feel that he is not
valuable or lovable. He is not worth very much. He must therefore be worthless.
Almost all personality problems
in adolescence and adult- hood are rooted in what psychologists refer to as
love withheld. The child needs love like roses need rain. When children feel
unloved, they feel unsafe and insecure.They think, “I’m not good enough.” They
begin to engage in compensatory behaviours to make up for this inner anxiety.
This sense of love deprivation is manifested in misbehaviour, personality
problems, bursts of anger, depression, hopelessness, lack of
ambition, and problems with people and relationships.
■ YOU ARE BORN UNAFRAID
The child is born with no fears,
except those of falling and loud noises. All other fears have to be taught to
the child as he or she grows up.
The two major fears we all
develop are the fear of failure or loss and the fear of criticism or
rejection.We begin to learn the fear of failure if we are continually
criticised and punished when we try some- thing new or different. We are shouted
at and told, “No! Get away from there! Stop that! Put that down!” Physical
punishment and the withholding of love, possibilities that scare us and make us
feel insecure, often accompany these shouts and criticisms.
We soon begin to believe that we are
too small, too weak, in- competent, inadequate, and incapable of doing anything
new or different. We express this feeling with the words, “I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t.”Whenever we think about doing something new or challenging, we
automatically respond with feelings of fear, trembling, and a churning stomach.
We react exactly as if we are afraid of getting a spanking.We say, “I can’t”
over and over.
The fear of failure is the
primary reason for failure in adult life. As the result of destructive criticism
in childhood, we hold our- selves back as adults. We sell ourselves short. We
quit before we even try the first time. Instead of using our amazing minds to
fig- ure out how to get what we want, we use our reasoning ability to create
reasons why we can’t, and why the things we want are not possible for us.
■ THE NEED TO BE LOVED
The second major fear that holds
us back, undermines our confidence, and destroys our desire for a happy life
is the fear of rejection, and its expression, criticism. This emotion is
learned in early childhood as the result of our parents expressing disapproval
of us whenever we do something they don’t like, or don’t do some- thing that
they expect. As a result of our displeasing them, they become angry and withdraw the
love and approval we need so much as children.
The fear of being unloved and
alone is so traumatic for a child that she soon conforms her behaviour to do
whatever she thinks her parents will approve of. She loses her spontaneity and
uniqueness. She begins to think, “I have to! I have to! I have to!” She
concludes, “I have to do whatever Mommy and Daddy want me to, or they won’t
love me, and I’ll be all alone!”
■ CONDITIONAL LOVE
As an adult, a child raised with
what is called “conditional love” (as opposed to unconditional love, the
greatest gift one person can give to another) becomes hypersensitive to the
opinions of others. In its extreme form, he cannot do anything if there is the
slightest chance that someone else may not approve. He projects his childhood
relationship with his parents onto the important people in his adult
life—spouse, boss, relatives, friends, authority figures—and tries desperately
to earn their approval, or at least not lose it.
The fears of failure and rejection,
caused by destructive criticism in early childhood, are the root causes of
most of our unhappiness and anxiety as adults. We feel, “I can’t!” or “I have
to!” continually.The worst feeling is when we feel, “I can’t, but I have to!”
or “I have to, but I can’t!”
We want to do something, but we
are afraid of failure or loss, or if we are not afraid of loss, we are afraid
of disapproval. We want to do something to improve our lives, at work or at
home, but we are afraid that we may fail, or that someone else may criticise
us, or both.
For most people, their fears
govern their lives. Everything they do is organised around avoiding failure or
criticism. They think continually about playing it safe, rather than striving
for their goals. They seek security rather than opportunity.
■ DOUBLE YOUR RATE OF FAILURE
The author Arthur Gordon once
approached Thomas J.Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, and asked him how he could
succeed faster as a writer.Thomas J.Watson, one of
the giants of American business, replied with these profound words: “If you
want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success
lies on the far side of failure.”
The fact is that the more you
have already failed, the more likely it is you are on the verge of great
success.Your failures have prepared you to succeed.This is why a streak of
good luck seems to fol- low a streak of bad luck. When in doubt, “double your
rate of failure.”The more things you try, the more likely you are to triumph.
You overcome your fears only by doing the thing you fear until the fear has no
more control over you.
■ YOUR MENTAL HARD DRIVE
Everything you know about
yourself, all your beliefs, are recorded on the hard drive of your personality,
in your self-concept. Your self-concept precedes and predicts your levels of
performance and effectiveness in everything you do. Because of the law of
correspondence, you always behave on the outside in a manner consistent with
your self-concept on the inside. All improvement in your life therefore begins
with an improvement in your self-concept.
You have an overall self-concept
that is made up of all your beliefs about yourself and your abilities. This
bundle of beliefs includes all the experiences, decisions, successes,
failures, ideas, information, emotions, and opinions of your life up to now.
This general self-concept determines how and what you think and feel about
yourself, and measures how well you are doing in general.
■ YOUR MINI-SELF-CONCEPTS
You have a series of
“mini-self-concepts” as well.These mini-self- concepts combine to make up your
overall self-concept.You have a self-concept for every area of your life that
you consider important. This mini-self-concept determines how you think, feel,
and perform in that area.
For example, you have a
self-concept for how healthy and fit you are, and how much you eat or
exercise.You have a self-concept for how liable and popular you
are with others, especially with members of the opposite sex.You have a
self-concept for what kind of a spouse or parent you are, for how good a friend
you are to your friends, how smart you are, and how well you learn.You have a
self- concept for every sport you play, and for every activity you engage in,
including how well you drive your car.
You have a self-concept for how
well you do your work, and for how well you do each part of your work. You have
a self- concept for how much money you make and how well you save and invest
it. This is a critical area. The fact is that you can never earn much more or
less than your self-concept level of income. If you want to make more money,
you have to change your beliefs about yourself relative to income and
money.This is an important part of this book.
■ CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS
In every case, if you want to
change your performance and your results in any area of your life, you have to
change your self- concept—or your beliefs about yourself—for that area. Fortunately, your beliefs are largely subjective. They are not always based on
facts. Instead, they are based largely on information you have taken in and
accepted as true, sometimes with very little evidence or proof.
The very worst beliefs you can
have are self-limiting beliefs of any kind. These are beliefs about yourself
that cause you to feel some- how limited or deficient in a particular area.
These beliefs are seldom true, but if you accept them as valid estimates of
your ability, they become true for you, exactly as if they were correct.
The starting point of unlocking
your potential, and accomplishing more than you ever have before, is for you
to challenge your self- limiting beliefs. You begin this process of freeing
yourself from self-limiting beliefs by imagining that, whatever they are, they
are completely untrue. Imagine for the moment that you have no limitations on
your abilities at all. Imagine that you could be, do, or have anything you
really wanted in life. Imagine that your potential is unlimited in any way. For example, imagine that you
could be earning twice as much as you are earning today. Imagine that you could
be living in a bigger house, driving a better car, and enjoying a more ex-
pensive lifestyle.
Imagine that you have the ability
to be one of the top people in your field. Imagine that you are one of the most
popular, powerful, and persuasive personalities in your social and business
world. Imagine that you are calm, confident, and unafraid of anything. Imagine
that you could set and achieve any goal you put your mind to. This is how you
begin changing your thinking and changing your life.
The starting point of eliminating
your fears, and releasing your potential, is to reprogram your mental hard
drive with new, positive, constructive, and courageous beliefs about yourself
and your future. Throughout this book, you will learn how to do this.
■ THREE PARTS OF YOUR
SELF-CONCEPT
Your self-concept has three
parts, like a pie divided into three wedges. Each is linked with each of the
others. All three elements together make up your personality.They largely
determine what you think, feel, and do, and everything that happens to you.
Your self-ideal is the first part
of your personality and your self- concept.Your self-ideal is made up of all of
your hopes, dreams, visions, and ideals.Your self-ideal is composed of the
virtues, val- ues, and qualities that you most admire in yourself and others.
Your self-ideal is the person you would most like to become, if you could be a
perfect person in every way. These ideals guide and shape your behavior.
Great men and women, leaders, and
people of character are very clear about their values, visions, and ideals.
They know who they are and what they believe in.They set high standards for
them- selves, and they don’t compromise those standards. They are men and women
that others can look up to and depend on.They are def- inite and distinct in
their interactions with others. In everything they do, they strive to live up
to their ideals.
■ THE WAY YOU SEE YOURSELF
The second part of your
self-concept is your self-image. This is the way you see yourself and think
about yourself. It is often called your “inner mirror.” It is where you look
internally to see how you should behave in a particular situation. Because of
the power of your self-image, you always perform on the outside consistent with
the picture you have of yourself on the inside.
The discovery of the self-image,
pioneered by Maxwell Maltz, is a major breakthrough in understanding human
performance and effectiveness. By visualising and imagining yourself
performing at your best in an upcoming situation, you send a message to your
subconscious mind.Your subconscious mind accepts this message as a command,
and then coordinates your thoughts, words, and actions so that they fit a
pattern consistent with the picture you created.
All improvement in your life
begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.Your internal images
influence your emotions, your behaviours, your attitudes, and even the way other
people respond to you. The development of a positive self-image is a vital
part of changing your thinking and changing your life.
■ HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF
The third part of your
self-concept is your self-esteem. This is the emotional component of your
personality, and is the most important factor in determining how you think,
feel, and behave. Your level of self-esteem largely determines much of what
happens to you in life.
Your self-esteem is best defined
as how much you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the better you
perform at anything you attempt. And by the law of reversibility, the better
you perform, the more you like yourself.
Your self-esteem is the “reactor
core” of your personality. It is the energy source that determines your levels
of confidence and enthusiasm. The more you like yourself, the higher will be
the standards you will set for yourself.The more you like yourself, the bigger
the goals you will set for yourself and the longer you will persist in achieving them. People
with high self-esteem are virtually unstoppable.
Your level of self-esteem
determines the quality of your relation- ships with others.The more you like
and respect yourself, the more you like and respect others and the better they
feel toward you. In your business life and career, your personal level of
self-esteem will be the critical factor that determines whether or not people
will buy from you, hire you, enter into business dealings with you, and even
lend you money.
The better your self-esteem, the
better you will be as a spouse and parent. High self-esteem parents raise high
self-esteem children. These children develop high levels of self-confidence
and associate with other high self-esteem children. High self-esteem homes
are characterised by love, laughter, and happiness for every- one who lives
there.
■ THE DETERMINANT OF SELF-ESTEEM
Your level of self-esteem is
largely determined by how closely your self-image—your current performance and
behaviour—matches your self-ideal—your picture of how you would perform if you
were at your very best.You are always comparing your actual performance with
your ideal performance at an unconscious level.Whenever you feel that you are
living up to your very best, you feel terrific about yourself.Your self-esteem
soars.You feel happy and fulfilled.
Whenever you do or say something
that is not in keeping with your ideals or the best of which you feel you are
capable, your self- esteem goes down.Whenever there is a wide separation
between the person you are in the moment and the ideal person you want very
much to be in the future, you feel badly about yourself.This is why you get
angry with yourself whenever you fail at something, or be- have badly in a
situation with other people.Your self-ideal continually reminds you of how
much better a person you can be.
■ THE CORE OF PERSONALITY
Psychologists agree today that
your self-esteem lies at the core of your self-concept and your personality.
Every improvement in any part of your personality or
performance boosts your self-esteem, and causes you to like and respect
yourself even more. The more you like yourself, the better will be your
self-image and subsequent performance, and the faster you will move toward
becoming more like your self-ideal.
The best news of all is that
there is an inverse relationship between your level of self-esteem and your
fears of failure and rejection. The more you like yourself, the less you fear
failure. The more you like yourself, the less concerned you are with the
opinions of others, and the less you fear criticism. The more you like
yourself, the more you make your decisions based on your own goals and
standards, and the less you care what others think or say.
■ CONTROL YOUR INNER DIALOGUE
Just as you become what you think
about, you also become what you say to yourself.The most powerful words you can
repeat to yourself, especially if you are feeling tense or uneasy about an
upcoming event, are the words, “I like myself! I like myself! I like myself!”
Whenever you say, “I like
myself!” your fears diminish and your courage increases. The words, “I like
myself!” are so powerful and positive that they are immediately accepted by
your subconscious mind as a command. They instantly affect your thoughts,
feelings, and attitudes.Your body language immediately improves, and you stand
straighter.Your face becomes more positive and cheerful.Your tone of voice
becomes stronger and more confident.You feel better about yourself, and as a
result, you treat everyone around you in a warmer, friendlier way.
You begin the process of changing
your thinking and changing your life by going to work on your
self-concept.You start by developing a clear, positive, exciting, and inspiring
self-ideal, consistent with the very best person you can imagine yourself
becoming.You develop a positive self-image by imagining your- self performing
at your very best in everything you do. Finally, you develop high and unshakeable
levels of self-esteem by loving and accepting yourself unconditionally as a
valuable and worth- while person.
■ EXAMINE YOUR BASIC PREMISES
Most of your thoughts and your
responses to the events and people of your life are determined by your basic
premises. These are the ideas, beliefs, opinions, and conclusions you have come
to as the result of inputs and experiences starting in childhood.They
constitute not only your self-concept, but also your philosophy of life. The
more adamant and convinced you are of your basic premises, the more they
predict and control everything you do, say, and feel.
If you believe yourself to be an
excellent person, loaded with talent and ability, friendly and popular, healthy
and energetic, curious and creative, and destined to have a wonderful life,
these basic premises will lead you to set goals, work hard, develop yourself,
treat others well, bounce back from adversity, and ultimately succeed.
Nothing will be able to stop you in the long run.
It is not what happens to you in
life that is important. It is only how you react to what happens. It doesn’t
matter where you’re coming from, either. All that really matters is where you
are going. And where you are going is limited only by your own imagination. And
since your imagination is unlimited, your future is unlimited as well. These
are the basic premises and beliefs you need to fulfil your potential.
■ DISSOLVING THE MYTHS
Unfortunately, there are several
myths that we accept as we grow up that can sabotage our hopes for success,
joy, and fulfilment later in life. Let’s look at these self-limiting beliefs
one at a time.
The first and worst is summarised
in the feeling, “I’m not good enough.”This is the basic premise that causes
feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.We assume that other people are better
than we are just because, at the moment, they are doing better than we are. We
feel that they must be worth more than us. Therefore, we must be worth less
than them. This feeling of worthlessness sits deep in the psyche and causes us
to sell ourselves short. We settle for less than we are truly capable of.
Rather than to fail at a new goal, we don’t set it in the first place.
The correct basic premise for you
to develop, or belief for you to have, is that not only are you
good enough, but you have the ability to be excellent in any area that is
important to you.You have unlimited potential to be, do, and have more than
you have ever achieved up to now. As William Shakespeare said in The Tempest,
“What’s past is prologue.” Whatever you have accomplished in the past is only a
hint of what you can do in the future.
■ TALK TO YOURSELF POSITIVELY
The most powerful words in your
vocabulary are the words that you say to yourself and believe.Your self-talk,
your inner dialogue, deter- mines 95 percent of your emotions.When you talk to
yourself, your subconscious mind accepts these words as commands. It then adjusts your behaviour, your self-image, and your body language to fit a pattern
consistent with those words.
From now on, talk to yourself
only in terms of what you want to be and do. Refuse to say anything about
yourself that you do not sincerely desire to be true. Repeat the powerful,
positive words, “I can do it!” over and over. Prior to any event of importance,
repeat the words, “I like myself!” Say, “I’m the best! I’m the best! I’m the
best!” again and again like you really mean it.Then, stand up straight and
strong, put a confident smile on your face, and do the very best of which you
are capable. Soon it will become a habit.
■ YOU DESERVE THE BEST
As the result of previous
destructive criticism, people accept an- other myth, or self-limiting belief.
It is that they don’t really believe that they deserve to be successful. This
deep inner feeling of undeserving is quite common among those of us who
started off with very little in life, or who came from families that had little
money when we were growing up. It can also be caused by people who told us at a
young age that to be poor is virtuous but to be rich is sinful.
If you have grown up feeling
undeserving of good things, for any reason, and you do achieve success in your
field, you may experience what is called the “imposer syndrome.”You will
feel that you are an imposer in your success, and that you are going to be
found out. No matter how successful you
become as the result of your hard work, you will have a nagging fear that it
will all be taken away from you.
If you feel like an imposer, you
will often feel guilty for achieving greater success than others. To escape
these feelings of guilt, many people engage in self-sabotage. They eat too
much, drink too much, take dope, ignore their families, engage in unpredictable
behaviours, and often throw their money away in extravagant living and unwise
investments.They feel deep down inside that they don’t deserve their success.
As a result, they often drive it away.
■ DEDICATE TO SERVING YOURSELF AND OTHERS
The truth is that you deserve
everything you can rightfully earn by doing an excellent job, and producing or
distributing products or services that improve people’s lives and work. In a
market society such as ours, all transactions are voluntary. People buy
something only if they feel that they are going to be better off as a
result.You can therefore be successful in the long run only by providing people with the things they want to improve their lives and work.The more and
better you serve other people, the more you both deserve and earn.
The word “deserve” comes from the
two Latin words,
” which means “from” and
“service” which means “to serve.” There- fore, the word “deserve” means “from
service.” The people who do the best in our society, with few exceptions, are
those who are serving other people better than someone else.Your whole focus
in your career should be on serving other people better. Then you will deserve every dollar you earn.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “The
very best way to help the poor is not to become one of them.” In our society,
the more financially successful you are, the more taxes you are likely to
pay.These taxes help pay for the schools, hospitals, roads, welfare, Medicare,
military expenditures, and all the important things that our society offers.You
can be proud to be financially successful. By making a lot of money, you make a
significant contribution to lots of people.You do well for yourself by doing
well for others.
Repeat the words, “I deserve
every penny I earn as the result of serving others with the products and
services they need to improve their lives. I am proud of my success.”
The preceding paragraph is a
statement of your real personality and character. It may not be true for you
100 percent of the time, but it is a good general description of who you really
are inside, and where you are going with your life. When you unconditionally
accept that you are a truly valuable and worthwhile person, you will express
it in everything you say and do. Over time, it will become true for you.Your
ideal will become your reality.
Repeat to yourself, “I like
myself and l love my life. I am a thoroughly good person in every way, and I
always do my very best at anything I attempt.”
■ THE MENTAL SOFTWARE STORE
Imagine that there was a store
that sold mental programming.You could purchase any self-concept, belief, or
attitude that you wanted and install it in your brain, and that is the person
you would be from then on. If such a store existed, and you could buy any set
of beliefs, what would you choose?
Here is a suggestion. Look around
you and find out what the happiest and most successful people in your world
have developed as their core beliefs, and then get the same set of beliefs for
yourself. Load them onto your mental hard drive and start running the same
programs they are running.
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