Maximum Achievement

by Brian Tracy

  One of the most powerful ways to change your mental habits and the future direction of your life is for you to go on a twenty-one-day Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) diet. For twenty-one days you keep your thoughts, words and actions consistent, all day, every day, with the goals you want to achieve and the person that you would like to become.

  You need to stay on this diet for twenty-one days for two reasons. First, it takes an adult between fourteen and twenty-one days to develop a new habit of thought, a new “neural groove” in the brain, like a cow path across a pasture. Sometimes you will notice definite changes in yourself and your results much faster. But usually, habits that have taken a lifetime to form take longer than a few days to change or override.

  The second reason you need to practice these methods for twenty-one days is for you to learn patience and persistence. It takes twenty-one days of calm, patience and warmth for a hen to hatch an egg. If a hen, with a brain the size of a pea, can discipline itself to sit on an egg for twenty-one days without seeing any change at all, then it is probably not too much to ask you to persevere patiently for the same period of time before expecting to see any changes. Patience in self-development is the key.

  The wonderful thing about your self-concept is that it is in a continual state of evolution. You are continually evolving and growing and developing in the direction of your dominant thoughts. If you change your dominant thoughts about yourself for any period of time, your self-concept and your beliefs will begin to change and evolve in that direction as well.

  The reason the self-concept of most people does not change appreciably over time is that they continue to think about the same things in the same way day after day, year after year. William James wrote, “If I see myself today as I was in the past, my past must resurrect itself and become my future.”

  But when you set big, exciting goals for yourself and the person you want to be, and then think about these things every day, you take full control of your mental evolution and the direction of your life. You become what you think about.

  SEVEN WAYS TO CONTROL YOUR MENTAL LIFE

  There is a series of actions you can take every day to saturate your mind with positive influences and to assure that you are continually bombarding yourself with suggestions that are consistent with the person you want to become.

  Think about yourself, in a casual and relaxed way, as the person you would like to be, with the qualities you would like to have. Begin imagining what life would be like, what your home would be like, what your work would be like, what your health would be like, and the standard of living that you would most enjoy. Allow yourself to fantasize and luxuriate in the daydream and in the feeling of achieving your goals. This activity is the first signal that a new direction is being programmed into your subconscious computer.

  1. Visualization

  The first of these actions is visualization. This is perhaps the most powerful technique of self-image modification available to mankind. Your visual images become your reality. They intensify your desires and deepen your beliefs. They increase your willpower and build your persistence. They are enormously powerful.

  There are four elements of a visualization. An increase in any one of them will accelerate the rate at which you create the physical equivalent of that mental picture in your life.

  The first of these elements is frequency. How often you visualize a particular future event, goal or behavior has a powerful impact on your thinking, feeling and acting. People who accomplish extraordinary things visualize their desired results continually. They think about what they want to accomplish all the time. They replay the ideal image of their futures over and over, like projecting a slide on the screen of their minds. In fact, the frequency with which you visualize not only tells you how much you want to realize that picture but also intensifies your desires and your belief that it is achievable.

  The second element in visualization is vividness. This refers to the clarity with which you see something in your imagination. There is a direct relationship between how vividly you can see a desired goal or result and how rapidly it appears for you.

  You have often had the experience of thinking about something you wanted. Your first thoughts were vague and fuzzy, but as you thought about it more and more, and perhaps gathered information, your mental picture of what you wanted became clearer and clearer. Finally, when you could close your eyes and see it in complete detail, it materialized in your world. This is the way you achieve most goals.

  Successful people are very clear about what they want, and of course, this refers to the clarity of their mental pictures. Unsuccessful people are unsure of what they want to be and do. Their fuzzy mental pictures are too vague to motivate them, or to activate the various mental laws to work in their behalf.

  The third dimension of visualization is intensity. This refers to the amount of emotion that you combine with your mental pictures. When you intensely desire something, when you are excited and enthusiastic about your goals, or when you have a deep faith that you will realize a goal that you are working toward, whatever it is occurs much faster. Increasing the amount of emotion with which you accompany your visualizations is like stepping on the accelerator of your own potential. This is perhaps why Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

  Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, are usually unmotivated and unexcited about what they are doing and where they are going. They have a general attitude of pessimism that keeps them functioning at a low level of energy. They tend to be more passive and accepting of things as they are, rather than being excited about things as they could be.

  The fourth part of visualization is duration. This refers to the length of time you can hold the picture of something you want in your mind. The longer you imagine a desired future event, the more likely it is to appear. Whenever you can, you should get actual pictures of things or conditions you desire and look at them repeatedly, until they are accepted as commands by your subconscious mind. Your self-concept soon changes to be consistent with your new visual commands.

  Do you want a new car? Then go to the dealership and take it for a test drive. Bring the brochures home, cut them up and put pictures of the car wherever you can see them. A friend of mine started doing this when he was broke and driving an old car. He test drove a new BMW every weekend. He even put a picture of the car he wanted on his steering wheel so he could imagine he was already driving the car of his dreams. And within one year, he had started a new job, learned a new set of skills, increased his income and was able to buy the car.

  When you combine the elements of frequency, vividness, intensity and duration with your visualizations of anything you want to be, have or do in the future, you actually supercharge yourself and accelerate your movement toward it. You unleash your hidden powers to succeed and tap resources that enable you to accomplish things beyond anything you’ve ever done before.

  Most successful people have developed this ability, through practice, to create clear, vivid mental pictures of themselves being the persons and doing the things they really want. And since your external performance is always consistent with your internal image or picture, if you see yourself as an excellent parent, spouse, executive or salesperson, you will feel more relaxed, confident and capable in that role. If you see yourself as awkward or clumsy in any role, you will feel tense and uneasy whenever you find yourself in that particular situation.

  A PRACTICAL APPLICATION

  For example, most people are terrified of public speaking, of standing up in front of an audience. If this is a fear of yours, here is how you can overcome it by using mental programming techniques with creative visualization.

  First, you begin to think about how your life would be different if you were an accomplished public speaker. You think of how much more confident you would feel, and how much more you would be respected and admired by others when you gave an excellent talk. You then create a clear mental picture of your
self speaking to an audience. Recall an occasion when you were speaking to your friends, or members of your family, at a party, for example. See yourself relaxed and happy. Get the feeling of calmness, confidence and pride that goes with this image of effectiveness.

  Each time you think of yourself speaking in public, recall this positive mental picture and see yourself as calm, relaxed and in control, with the people in your audience responding to you in a positive, supportive way.

  To accelerate your self-image modification, you purchase books on public speaking and, as you read, you think of yourself doing what the author is describing. Perhaps you listen to an audiocassette program that instructs you on how to prepare and organize a talk. It tells you how to design the opening, the body of the talk and the closing. Perhaps you attend seminars and meetings and watch other speakers. As you do, you imagine yourself up there speaking to the audience. Over time you gradually find your fear diminishing and your desire to speak increasing.

  Does this process work? It certainly does! It has worked for more than 3 million members of Toastmasters International since that organization was formed in 1923.

  The Toastmasters process was designed for men and women who felt their careers were being held back because of their fear of speaking to groups, giving group presentations or even speaking up at meetings.

  At a typical Toastmasters meeting, everyone gets an opportunity to stand up and speak, if only for a few seconds. The audience is made up of others who also want to be able to speak on their feet. They are positive and supportive of one another. When a member goes home, he has a mental image, or picture, of a positive speaking experience. And every time he goes to a meeting and speaks, that image is reinforced.

  Here’s a remarkable discovery: Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one that you vividly imagine. Every time that you recollect, remember and re-experience an event in your conscious mind, your subconscious mind accepts it and stores it exactly as if you had just repeated it.

  What this means is that, if you have just one positive experience, in any area of your life, and you think about this positive experience over and over, you actually program yourself to do it again. And if you haven’t had such a positive experience yet, you can imagine or create one in your mind and dwell on that. Your subconscious won’t know that you made it up.

  The power of visualization works with negative experiences as well. One negative experience, dwelled upon repeatedly, will de-motivate and discourage you in that area. So choose your thoughts and your mental pictures with care.

  If you’ve had even one positive experience of speaking well before a supportive audience, you can recall and relive that experience whenever you think of public speaking. This process of repeated visualization enables you to actually program yourself for self-confidence and excellent performance in speaking in the future.

  If you have a mental picture of yourself as fit and healthy, in a slim, trim body, and you visualize that picture over and over, your subconscious mind will gradually begin to adjust your appetite, your metabolism and your desire for exercise and healthy living. The excess weight will fall off and stay off. You will be “thinking thin,” and it is the only known method for permanent weight loss that seems to work.

  If you find yourself lacking confidence in any situation, cancel the negative thought by repeatedly visualizing yourself as calm, confident and relaxed when you’re in that situation. Recall a situation in which you had a terrific time with a group of other people. Whenever you feel nervous around others, change your mental picture and think instead of a previous positive experience. Eventually, your subconscious mind will transfer the positive feeling associated with the positive situation over to the situation that usually causes you to feel tense and uneasy. Your fears will gradually diminish and disappear.

  Use visualization to flood your mind at every opportunity with pictures of your ideal life. One way of doing this is to create a “treasure map” to look at. Design a poster for your wall with either your photograph or a picture of the goal that you wish to achieve in the center. Then cut out pictures, headlines and quotations from magazines and newspapers and paste them all over the poster. Create a powerful visual representation of the ingredients that symbolize success and achievement for you.

  Take some time each day to stand in front of this poster and drink in the images, letting them soak into your subconscious mind. In each important area of your life, dwell upon your success experiences, real and imagined. Recall and relive them vividly. If you are in sales, for example, and you have had a successful sale, dwell on that sale repeatedly. Think about it vividly in every detail as often as you can. Each time you dwell on a success experience, your subconscious records it as though you are having yet another success experience of the same kind.

  Using visualization, you can convince your subconscious mind that you are repeating the success experience over and over. Your subconscious mind will then make your words, your actions and your emotional responses fit a pattern consistent with the images of success that you have supplied to it.

  The mistake that most people make is that they dwell upon and vividly imagine their failure experiences, what went wrong and how they goofed. Then they are surprised when they feel tense and anxious the next time they are in a similar situation.

  All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. Your mental pictures trigger thoughts, feelings, words and actions consistent with them. Visualization activates all the mental laws, including the Law of Attraction, drawing people and resources into your life to help translate your images into your realities.

  2. Affirmations

  The second technique of mental programming is the use of affirmations. Affirmations are based on the three “P’s.” They art positive, present tense and personal. Affirmations are strong statements or commands from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind. They override old information and reinforce new, positive habits of thought and behavior.

  The affirmation “I like myself” is positive, present tense and personal. When you repeat it continually, it is eventually accepted as a valid description of the reality you desire. You actually begin to feel better about yourself in everything you do. This affirmation soon overrides old data you may have taken that is inconsistent with high self-esteem.

  With affirmations, your potential is unlimited. Strong, affirmative statements, emotionalized and repeated with conviction, often bring about immediate personality changes. You can increase your enthusiasm, boost your courage, assert control over your emotions, and build up your self-esteem by repeating statements that are consistent with the person you want to be.

  One of the most powerful influences on your subconscious mind is what you say to yourself and believe. Affirmations like “I can do it!” or “I earn $XXX per year” or “I weigh XXX pounds” can bring about lasting changes in your self-concept and in your results.

  All change is from the inner to the outer. All change begins in the self-concept. You must become the person you want to be on the inside before you see the appearance of this person on the outside.

  Your subconscious mind is very literal, and the simpler the command, the more impact it has on your thinking. For example, a powerful affirmation I use regularly to condition my mind is, “I believe in the perfect outcome of every situation in my life.”

  This affirmation makes you feel calm, positive and relaxed in dealing with any difficulty. It is a wonderful antidote to worry. “I believe in the perfect outcome of every situation in my life.” It is an excellent antidote to worry.

  It is also simple, clear and in the present tense. Your subconscious mind responds only to this type of command, to affirmations and mental pictures that are presented in the “now,” as though the goal or quality already existed.

  For example, instead of saying, “I am not going to smoke anymore” (both negative and in the future tense), you would say, “I am a no
nsmoker.”

  This is a way of “telling the truth, in advance.” This is how you convince your subconscious mind that the condition you desire already exists. Your subconscious then makes whatever changes are necessary, internally and externally, to align your inner world with your desired outer reality.

  We have had a variety of interesting experiences with people quitting smoking. One of our graduates repeated, “I am a nonsmoker,” several times a day for two months. Simultaneously, he visualized himself as a nonsmoker. Over that time, he gradually found himself reaching for a cigarette less and less often. By the end of the two months, he was down to one cigarette a day, and he finally quit and had no further desire to smoke even two years later.

  Another seminar graduate did the same thing. He repeated, “I am a nonsmoker,” over and over, but nothing happened. He continued to smoke two packs a day. He affirmed and visualized himself as a nonsmoker every single day, patiently trusting that the process of mental reprogramming would eventually work.

  At the end of eight weeks, he woke up one morning, reached for a cigarette, lit it and almost choked. He said that he thought he had gotten hold of a “rotten” cigarette, whatever that is. He tried a second cigarette and a third. Each one of them made him retch. He suddenly realized that he had programmed himself into believing that smoking was a totally distasteful habit. He never touched a cigarette again.

  You cannot change habits overnight. You must be patient and persistent in affirming and visualizing, confidently believing and expecting that, when you are ready, the desired changes will occur, and not before.

  3. Verbalization

  The third technique is to verbalize, to affirm aloud, with others, or alone, in front of a mirror. Standing in front of a mirror and saying very clearly and emotionally, “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!” is a powerful way to build up your confidence for a coming challenge. Anything that you say aloud with conviction and enthusiasm has double the impact of an affirmation that you make quietly to yourself.