Living with a clear goal

Building a Positive Self-Concept

SELF-ASSESSMENT

by Brian Tracy

Part One

1. Do I have peace of mind?
2. Do I spend my time and energy worrying about money?
3. Am I in control of my life?
4. Do I have abundant energy and good health?
5. Do I plan my life?
6. Do I understand how to achieve my full potential?

SUMMARY

Why are some people more successful than others? Why do some people make more money, have more friends, enjoy better health and derive greater satisfaction from life than others do? The purpose of The Psychology of Achievement is to help you unlock your personal potential to achieve anything you really want in life.

Let's define what we mean by success. There are basically six requirements for success. The first requirement is peace of mind - freedom from fear, freedom from anger and freedom from guilt. The second requirement for success is good health and a high level of energy - if we do not have our health or energy, we don't get very much satisfaction from life. The third requirement for success is loving relationships - long-term, intimate, mature relationships with other people. The fourth requirement is financial freedom - we cannot enjoy life if we're worried over not having enough money. The fifth ingredient is commitment to worthy goals and ideals - man's need for meaning and purpose is the greatest single drive in human nature. The sixth requisite for success is a feeling of personal fulfillment or self actualization - a feeling that we are becoming everything we are capable of becoming.

The second principle is the law of accident, which says there is no way that we can control what happens to us, that everything just happens by accident. Unfortunately, whether or not they realize it, the vast majority of men and women live their lives by the law of accident. They have no goals beyond the short term, they make no plans, they don't really feel they're in control of their own destinies, and they just hope that somehow things will work out.

Opposed to the law of accident is the law of cause and effect, which says that for every effect in our lives, there is a specific cause. We have the ability to control the causes and change the effects to anything we want. Our thoughts are the primary causes of the conditions or effects in our lives, and if we wish our lives to be different in the future, we have to change our thinking in the present.

The law of belief says that whatever we believe with feeling becomes our reality. Our beliefs form a screen through which we see the entire world, and we never allow any information that is inconsistent with our beliefs to pass through the screen. Even if we have beliefs that are totally inconsistent with reality, because we believe them to be true, they become true for us.

To get maximum performance from ourselves, we have to understand the basic underlying principles, or laws, of our being. Once we understand how we work, we have to make an effort to apply what we have learned to achieve far higher levels of accomplishment in our day-to-day lives.

Let's begin by discussing the basic rules, or laws, for operating the human machine. The law of control simply says that we feel good about ourselves to the degree to which we feel we are in control of our lives, and that we feel out of harmony with ourselves to the degree to which we feel we are controlled by circumstances or by other people. All control begins with taking control of the thoughts we hold in our conscious minds.