HENRY Ford once said: “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what it is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” Brian Tracy on his part believes that the great question for success is what determines what you think about most of the time? Why is it that some people think thoughts that are positive, constructive and success-oriented while others think thoughts that are negative, pessimistic and which lead inevitably to failure and underachievement?
Many successful people have been interviewed over the years and asked the question, “What do you think about, most of the time?” Their answers are simple and consistent, and yet so profound that they can be life changing. In short, successful people think about what they WANT, and how to GET IT most of the time.
Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, think and talk about what they DON’T WANT most of the time, and WHO IS TO BLAME for their problems and difficulties. As a result, they attract more and more of what they do not want, and what makes them unhappy into their lives. “The laws are neutral. Whatever you think and talk about most of the time eventually comes into your life.”
Psychologists over the years have sought for the reasons for happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, achievement and underachievement. They have all concluded, one way or the other that the way your mind is programmed from early childhood plays a decisive role in almost everything you think, feel and accomplish as an adult.
Your master programme
Tracy has personally read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on psychology and the functioning of the human mind. Perhaps the discovery for him was when he learned about the role of the self-concept in human performance and behaviour. Margaret Meade, the Anthropologist, called the self-concept, “the most important breakthrough in the understanding of human potential in the 20th century.”
Tracy postulates that your self-concept is the “master programme” of your subconscious computer. “It acts as your mental operating system. Every thought, feeling, emotion, experience, and decision you have ever had is permanently recorded on this mental hard drive. Once recorded, these impressions then influence the way you think, feel and behave from that point onward.” Your self-concept precedes and predicts your levels of effectiveness in every area of your life. You always act on the outside in a manner consistent with the way that you feel and think about yourself on the inside.
Your comfort zone
Whatever your self-concept, very soon becomes your “comfort zone.” Your comfort zone then becomes your greatest single obstacle to improved performance. “Once you get into a comfort zone in any area, you will strive and struggle unconsciously to remain in that comfort zone, even though it may be vastly below what you are truly capable of achieving in that area.”
The key to achieving your full potential and to enjoying the very best that is possible for you in every area of life is for you to raise your self-concept in that area. It is for you to develop new habits of thinking about what is possible for you. The way that you accomplish more on the outside is by changing your thoughts and feelings about your potential in that area on the inside.
Your perfect future
The first part of your self-concept is your SELF-IDEAL. This is the ideal image or picture you have of yourself, as if you were already the very best person you could possibly be. Your self-ideal is made up of your wishes, hopes, dreams, goals, and fantasies about your perfect future life, combined with the qualities and virtues that you admire most in yourself and in other people. Your self-ideal is a composite of the very best person you could imagine yourself being, living the very best life you could possibly live.
Develop positive role models
In one study conducted some years ago, the researchers found that many men and women who accomplished great things later in life had been avid readers of the biographies and autobiographies of successful people when they were younger. It seems that you have a natural tendency to identify with the hero or heroine in any story that you read, watch or hear about. When you continually immerse your mind in the stories of men and women who have accomplished wonderful things with their lives, you unconsciously identify with those characters and actually absorb their values, virtues and qualities into your own personality.
David McClelland in his book ‘The Achieving Society’ explains how role models have an inordinate effect on shaping the character and personality of the young. One of his conclusions was that the men and women who are the most admired, and held up as models in society during the formative years of the young person, have an inordinate influence on the character and the aspirations of that person when they grow to adulthood.
By the same token, young people who have positive role models around them when they are growing up are much more likely to become men and women of quality and character as adults than young people who have no role models, or even worse, negative role models, as often occurs today.
Your values shape your personality
The values you choose to live by, and the way you define those values, shape and influence your personality and achievements as much or more than any other single factor. When you take the time to think through and develop absolute clarity about the key values and qualities that you admire the most, and wish the most to incorporate into yourself, you begin to shape and direct your whole personality, and determine the results you achieve in the future.
As you think about your values, and reflect upon how you could incorporate them into your life and behaviours, you become a different person. As a result, you attract different people and opportunities into your life. Your outer world soon begins to mirror your inner world. You start to move more rapidly toward the achievement of your most important goals, and your goals begin to move rapidly toward you. It all begins with you taking complete control of the formation and development of your personal self-ideal.
How you see yourself
The second part of your self-concept is your SELF-IMAGE. Beginning with the work of Dr Maxwell Maltz, and his book, Psycho-Cybernetics, we learn that the way you see yourself on the inside largely determines how you perform on the outside.
If you see yourself as positive, popular, productive and successful on the inside, that is exactly how you will act on the outside. The way you behave on the outside will largely determine the results that you get. The results that you get will reinforce your self-concept, in either a positive or negative way, and will set you up to repeat the same behaviours in the next similar situation.
Your self-concept is often called your “inner mirror.” This is the mirror that you look into prior to engaging in any performance, or entering into any event of importance. If you see yourself as confident and successful prior to a situational encounter, that is how you will perform in the actual situation. If you have a poor self-image, if you see yourself as not being particularly popular, confident, or attractive, your negative self-image will cause you to feel clumsy, awkward and inadequate in subsequent situations.
One of the most important habits that you develop is the habit of feeding your mind with positive pictures and images of yourself performing at your very best prior to every situation of importance. Take a few moments and imagine yourself as if you were outstanding at what you were about to do. Hold that picture in your mind for as long as you possibly can. Later, when you find yourself in that situation, your subconscious mind will remember the picture and give you the words, actions and gestures that correspond exactly to the picture that you created a short time before.
BY CAPT SAM ADDIAH (RTD)
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