Brian Tracy: Habits That Will Make You Successful Beyond Belief

Many years ago, I started off poor. I started off broke. I started off pretty stupid. And over the years, I began to study the subject of success. And I had one simple idea that came upon me in my late teens, and I think it was the most important idea that I've ever had. 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 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 have studied successful men and women. I've 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, if you have these 10 qualities, there's nothing in the world that can stop you from being an outstanding success.

So let's talk about these principles. The first principle is clarity. 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 five percent, are very clear about where it is they're going and what it is they want to accomplish. 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. As they say, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. 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 five percent of people have goals. So, 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.

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 indecisiveness 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 percent 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. And the difference between successes and failures is not that successful people make right decisions; it is that successful people make their decisions right.

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. The best way to predict the future is to create it, 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 and 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 grown up and having our own cars. And as we grew older, we had a vision of having our own homes and our own families. 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.

The second letter of the ten 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 the pursuit of excellence and then there's finding excellence and losing excellence, 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 I 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. And only the top five or ten percent are excellent. 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 this: do your best every time out and always strive to do it better. Excellence yields opportunities. Because when you become good, you open up. It's almost like 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. You see, when we do something well, it gives us a feeling of self-esteem and pride. We feel like a winner. But when we do things in an average way, it doesn't give us anything. 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 percent better in a hundred different areas. 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 can achieve that simply by making it a goal, setting it as a goal.

In conclusion, clarity, decisiveness, and competence are three key principles that can contribute to your success. Having clarity of thinking, knowing what you want to achieve, and setting clear, specific goals are essential. Being decisive and making decisions promptly can help you move forward and avoid the habit of indecisiveness. Lastly, committing to excellence and continuously improving your skills and abilities in your chosen field can open doors of opportunities and set you apart from the competition. These principles, along with the other qualities mentioned earlier, can empower you to become an outstanding success. So, embrace clarity, decisiveness, and competence as you pursue your goals and aspirations.

And working on it, you can become anything that you want to become. The harder you work, the better you get. The average self-made millionaire in America works 12 to 13 hours a day, about 60 to 65 hours a week. I'll tell you this: with regard to hard work, in our society, you only work eight hours a day for survival. Everything over eight hours is for success. And if you're only working eight hours a day, you're in trouble. If you're only working eight hours a day, you better have a rich uncle or someone else who's going to take care of you. Because eight hours a day only gets you survival in our society. It's so competitive that somebody else is working nine. They've got an edge on you. Somebody else is working ten. They've got a bigger edge on you. Every hour over eight that you invest is an investment in your future, in your success. And if you put in the hours over eight, whether it's studying or reading or working, 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 next letter "C" stands for concentration. Concentration, I think, is the ability to focus, and concentration are the two keys to success in life. 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, nor do they make a list of everything they have to do, and then they start at the bottom of the list and 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. And time management is not just time management. Time management is life management. You can do anything you want with your life if you 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. Develop a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency is a quality possessed by only two percent of the population. Two percent of the population do things fast. Two percent of the population have a bias for action. As Tom Peters said in his wonderful book "In Search of Excellence," all the excellent companies have a bias for action. And all the companies that do not classify or do not come into the excellence category do things when they get around to it. You call them up with 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 a complaint, bang, there's somebody back to you in two minutes. So develop a sense of urgency. 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. And if you'll develop that habit of working fast, that sense of urgency, act now, do it now, do it now, do it now. In selling, especially, if 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.

The next "C" is common sense. You can train your mind to have common sense. You can train your mind to think things through before acting. In my experience, action without thinking is the cause of every failure. Action without thinking is the cause of every failure. And common sense comes from taking the time to think things through before you act. Listen to your intuition. Your intuition is one of the best guides that you possibly have. Learn from your setbacks. This is one of the characteristics of high-performing men and women. Every single time they have a problem or a difficulty, they sit back, they dissect it, and they learn everything possible from it. They try to develop general principles from each setback. They say, "What is the valuable lesson I can learn?" So take a look at everything that has happened to you. Take a look at the very most difficult experience you're in right now, and ask yourself, "What is the most valuable lesson I can learn from this experience?" And believe me, if you look for the lesson, seek and ye shall find. It doesn't say, "Seek and occasionally you might find something." It's seek and ye shall find. If you look for the valuable lesson or the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit in every difficulty, you will find it.

The next "C" is creativity. Tap your creative potential. Accept the fact that every single human being is a genius. And all successful men and women are creative. They're creative in that they respond to their world differently. They ask questions. They're flexible. They're curious. You know what the hallmark of creativity is? Curiosity. And I find that the smartest people, the ones that have the greatest education and the most experience, are the ones who ask the most questions. They ask questions almost as if they were children. But they never stop asking questions. They're very open and flexible. And they have the ability, once they learn a new piece of information, to drop what they're doing if the new information contradicts it and do something else. Do you know what most people do? Most people keep on doing what they're doing until they run into a wall. As they say, "The more you do what you're doing, the more you'll get of what you've got." Remember, 80 percent of everything that we are doing today in our general business will be different five years from now. Eighty percent of the products that we use, the food that we eat, the cars we drive, the music we listen to, the movies we go to, even the streets we drive on, 80 percent of everything will be new in five years. That's how rapidly things are changing. According to the research, all you need is an idea that's 10 percent new to start a fortune. If you want to be wealthy in life, if you wish to become very wealthy, if you wish to become even a millionaire, you can do it if you're willing to pay the price. But most people become millionaires by offering a good or service that people use all the time. And they offer it just a little bit better. They do it just a little bit faster. They put a little bit more grace or finesse into what they're doing. They handle it, they wrap it, they are more polite. The restaurant that has people coming back to it may have food that's only 5 percent different, but it's the way the people handle it that's so different. You can do anything you want in life. All you have to do is find an idea that's 10 percent new. And you'll find that if you flood your mind, read magazines, read books, ask questions, ask why people are doing things the way they're doing.

The next is consideration. Consideration is based on the fact that the quality of your relationships with other people, more than anything else, will determine your success in life. How well you get along with other human beings, your quality of interaction will determine your happiness, your success, your achievement, your wealth, and anything else. And that's very, very true. Develop the people skills that you need to be successful. Take courses in communications. Take courses in effective listening. Take courses in public speaking. You know, one of the most important parts of communicating to get along well with others is the size of your vocabulary. You've probably heard that before. The size of your vocabulary, your ability to express yourself orally, your ability to stand on your feet, your ability to write effectively and get your point across to others will have a tremendous impact on your life. Because you cannot imagine a successful person who cannot communicate effectively with other people.

Consistency means that dependable, steady, predictable work is always vastly superior to spurts or flashes of brilliance and genius. There's a law of accumulation in the universe. If I can pass this on, a law of accumulation that says that even though you do a hundred things or a thousand things that you don't see, eventually they accumulate and they gather a force of their own. That every single great accomplishment in life is the result of thousands of minor accomplishments that nobody ever sees. But every single great success was at one time a failure. And they failed and failed and failed and failed over and over again. And all great successes are a story of failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, outstanding success. "Boy, ain't he lucky?" Isn't that right, boy? "He was lucky. He sure had the right connections."

The next "C" is commitment. I found that the ability or the willingness to make a complete commitment to a job, a commitment to a relationship, a commitment to a profession, to make a commitment is one of the hardest things that human beings do. And yet, no success is possible without commitment. Who is it that Emerson said, that every great achievement is the triumph of enthusiasm? That the ability to commit yourself enthusiastically, wholeheartedly, 100 percent to what you want to do is the starting point of all achievement. That if you cannot commit yourself wholeheartedly, it probably means that it's not right for you. And that all of us in life seek for something that we can commit ourselves to. Alan Cox, in his book "The Achievers" which came out last year, found that the executives in the corporations that he studied who achieved the very most in the shortest period of time had found the proper niche for themselves and had lost themselves in their work. Dr. Shirelli Blotnik's study of self-made millionaires, 83 out of 1,500 people became self-made millionaires over 20 years. He found that the one quality that they all had in common was that they picked work that they loved. They specialized in that work. They became very good in it. And they eventually began to be paid very well for it. And then they held onto the money.

Courage is the outstanding quality of all leaders. Courage means that you have the ability, you have the willingness to confront your fears.

Because what I found over the years is that brave people, courageous people, are not people who are not afraid; they're simply people who master their fears. They're simply people who face their fears, confront their fears, and Mark Twain said it many years ago. He said, "Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain." Now, fear and courage tend to be habits. If you are afraid and you give in to the fear and you back away, it becomes a habit to back away whenever you're afraid or unsure. If you're afraid and you force yourself to confront the fear, it becomes a habit to confront the fear whenever you find something that you're afraid of. And you'll find that most fears disappear when you confront them. Dare to go forward in your life, dare to go forward in the direction of fulfilling your potential.

I, when I was many years ago, I was a karate student. I was also a karate instructor, and I competed in three international championships. And one of the things that I learned from my best karate instructors, and I studied under six world champions, is they told me that when you fight, always move forward. Even if you're only moving forward half an inch at a time, just always move forward. They said when you're moving forward, 100% of your attention is forward. But if you're moving backward, even a half an inch at a time, half of your attention is always behind you and where you're going. So always move forward, always have it, dare to go forward. Whenever you have a choice of either staying still and playing it safe or moving forward, move forward. Not because you'll necessarily succeed every time, but because it reinforces and cements the habit of moving forward. And most people, when they have a choice of moving forward or staying playing it safe, play it safe. But I think General MacArthur, General Douglas MacArthur, said, "There's no security in life, only opportunity." Life is very perverse in a way because the more we seek security, the less we have it, and the more we seek opportunity, the more we have security.

In my experience, the fear of failure is the greatest single reason for failure in adult life. The fear of failure, the fear of making a mistake, of losing our money, our time, our effort, is what paralyzes us and holds us back. But the fear of failure is a habit which can be counteracted by the habit of courage. You know, the best quality in the world that you can develop, and I give it to you because I made it my life's habit to develop this quality, I hope I've got it, I don't know for sure, but the quality is to develop the quality of being unstoppable. Develop the quality of being unstoppable. Say to yourself that no matter what life throws at me, it'll never stop me. No matter how rough it gets, I will never quit, and nothing will ever stop me. Make the decision that you can be tired, you can be worn out, but nothing is ever going to stop you. That's a wonderful decision because then no matter what life throws at you, you pick yourself up and you say, "Okay, give it your best shot." As far as he says, nothing is going to stop you. It's a wonderful feeling, a wonderful feeling. It's the basis of self-esteem.

Well, the last "C" is confidence, and confidence comes as a result. You see, confidence comes as a result. You don't get confidence out of a bottle, you don't get confidence from a pill, you can't learn confidence in a motivational seminar. You only get confidence by doing certain things over and over again that build a solid foundation within your own mind that you can do whatever you need to do, that you have what it takes to be successful. Self-doubt is the great paralyzer of all activity. We all have self-doubt, and the way we overcome that self-doubt is by doing the things that we would normally back away from. As I can say, continue to move forward. Self-confidence begets great achievement. You cannot imagine a successful person lacking self-confidence. The wonderful thing is this, and I learned this from a very great man who died recently, is that if you persist until you succeed at achieving a goal that is important to you and you complete it, like a degree in school or you wrap up a sale or you make a career successful, you plug into your subconscious mind a success pattern. And then the subconscious mind, running on the basis of inertia, attempts to adjust your words, actions, and feelings to duplicate that success pattern. And that's why they say, "Nothing succeeds like success." That once you've been successful, you have a pattern set down which will enable you to apply that pattern to another part of your work, to be successful in that. And the more you succeed, the more this pattern of success is reinforced, and you'll finally reach the point where it's impossible for you to fail if you succeed enough times because you will have within you a self-adjusting mechanism that will guarantee your success.