Book Goals! by Brian Tracy

Take Charge of Your Life

“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is

what he makes of himself.” (Alexander Graham Bell)

When I was 21, I was broke and living in a small one-room

apartment, in the middle of a very cold winter, working on a

construction job during the day. I usually couldn’t afford to go out of

my apartment in the evenings, where at least it was warm, so I had a

lot of time to think.

One night as I sat there at my small kitchen table, I had a great

flash of awareness. It changed my life. I suddenly realized that

everything that happened to me for the rest of my life was going to

be up to me. No one else was ever going to help me. No one was

coming to the rescue.

I was thousands of miles from home with no intentions of

going back for a long time. I saw clearly at that moment that if

anything in my life were going to change, it would have to begin

with me. If I didn’t change, nothing else would change. I was

responsible.

The Great Discovery

I still remember that moment. It was like a first parachute jump.

It was both scary and exhilarating. There I was, standing on the edge

of life. And I decided to jump. From that moment onward, I accepted

that I was in charge of my life. I knew that if I wanted things to be

different, I would have to be different. Everything was up to me.

I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for

your life, you take the giant step from childhood to adulthood. Sadly

enough, most people never do this. I have met countless men and

women in their 40s and 50s who are still grumbling and complaining

about earlier unhappy experiences, and still blaming their problems

on other people and circumstances. Many people are still angry about

something that one of their parents did or did not do to or for themtwenty,

or thirty, or even forty years ago. They are trapped in the

past and they can’t get free.

Your Worst Enemy

The greatest enemies of success and happiness are negative

emotions, of all kinds. It is negative emotions that hold you down, tire

you out and take away all your joy in life. It is negative emotions,

from the beginning of time, that have done more harm to individuals

and societies than all the plagues of history.

One of your most important goals, if you want to be truly

happy and successful, is to free yourself from negative emotions, and

fortunately, this can be done, if you learn how.

The negative emotions of fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy, feelings

of inferiority, and ultimately anger, are mostly caused by four factors.

Once you identify and remove these factors from your thinking, your

negative emotions stop automatically. When your negative emotions

stop, the positive emotions of love, peace, joy and enthusiasm flow in

to replace them, and your whole life changes for the better,

sometimes in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.

Stop Justifying

The first of the four root causes of negative emotions is

justification. You can only be negative as long as you can justify, to

yourself and others, that you are entitled to be angry or upset for

some reason. This is why angry people are continually explaining

and elaborating on the reasons for their negative feelings. However,

if you cannot justify your negativity, you cannot be angry.

For example, a person is laid off from a job due to a change in

the economy and declining sales in the company. However, the

individual is angry with his boss for this decision and justifies his

anger by describing all the reasons why his being laid off was unfair.

He can even get himself so incensed that he decides to sue, or get

even in some way. As long as he continues to justify his negative

feelings toward his boss and the company, his negative emotions

control him and absorb much of his life and thinking.

However, as soon as he says, “Well, I’ve been laid off. These

things happen. It’s not personal. People get laid off all the time. I

guess I’d better get busy finding a new job.” His negative emotions

vanish. He becomes calm, clear and focused on the goal, and on the

steps he can take to get back into the workforce. As soon as he stops

justifying, he becomes a more positive and effective person.

Refuse to Rationalize And Make Excuses

The second cause of negative emotions is rationalization. When

you rationalize, you attempt to give a “socially acceptable

explanation for an otherwise socially unacceptable act.”

You rationalize to explain away or put a favorable light on

something that you have done that you feel bad or unhappy about.

You excuse your behavior or actions by creating an explanation that

sounds good, even though you know that you were an active agent in

whatever occurred. You often create complex ways of putting

yourself in the right by explaining that your behavior was really

quite acceptable, all things considered. This rationalizing keeps your

negative emotions alive.

Rationalization and justification always require that you make

someone or something else the source or cause of your problem. You

cast yourself in the role of the victim, and you make the other person

or organization into the oppressor, or the “bad guy.”

Rise Above the Opinions of Others

The third cause of negative emotions is an over concern or

hypersensitivity to the way other people treat you. For some people,

their entire self-image is determined by the way other people speak

to them, talk to them or about them, or even look at them. They have

little sense of personal value or self-worth apart from the opinions of

others, and if those opinions are negative for any reason, real or

imagined, the “victim” immediately experiences anger,

embarrassment, shame, feelings of inferiority and even depression,

self-pity and despair. This explains why psychologists say that

almost everything we do is to earn the respect of others, or at least to

avoid losing their respect.