Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Brian Tracy
Read between
March 2 - March 8, 2025
The only limits on what you can accomplish are the limits that you place on yourself by the way you think and the actions you take.
I discovered that I could have just about anything I wanted if I was willing to work for it long enough and hard enough.
One day, I did two things that changed my life. First, I wrote down a list of ten goals that I wanted to achieve in the next twelve months.
The second thing I did to change my life was to ask myself, “What one skill, if I was absolutely excellent at it, would help me the most to increase my income?”
If you want to achieve a particular goal, your job is to find out what other people have done to achieve that goal and then do the same things over and over again until you have mastered those same skills and achieved the same results. This law, or the Aristotelian principle of causality, is perhaps the most important law ever discovered.
Aristotle’s first major law was the Law of Causality. The Bible’s Old and New Testaments explain this in terms of sowing and reaping or cause and effect. This rule says that everything that happens, happens for a reason or a series of reasons.
The Law of Action, as Albert Einstein defined it, states that nothing happens until something—or someone— moves. Nothing happens until you take action, until you do something, often different from what you are doing today. You’ve heard the old saying, “The more you do of what you’re doing, the more you’ll get of what you’re getting.”
To succeed greatly, you must constantly think in terms of specific actions you are going to take immediately. All successful people are intensely action oriented. If it doesn’t work, try again and again, or try something else. As Shakespeare wrote, “Take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”
The Law of Compensation states that you will always be compensated in equal or greater measure to your contribution.
the Law of Compensation, which says that whatever you put in, you get out, especially in your work and relationships.
“Always do more than you are paid for. Go the extra mile. There are never any traffic jams on the extra mile.”
According to the Law of Control, you feel positive about yourself and your life to the degree that you feel you are in control.
When you are living in harmony with your most important values, you feel genuinely happy. When you compromise your innermost values and convictions, you feel stressed and unhappy. Living congruently with your most important values is a major key to personal success.
The Law of Responsibility says that you are responsible for your life and for your responses to every situation.
Viktor Frankl, in his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
One of the miracles of human psychology is that as soon as you accept responsibility, you stop blaming others and you simultaneously short circuit all your negative emotions.
The most powerful positive affirmation that you can use to become a completely positive person is to say “I am responsible.”
The Law of Financial Independence is simple: money is essential for freedom.
One of your major goals in life should be financial independence. The real key to freedom is for you to have enough money so you never worry about money again.
One of the keys to financial independence is for you to continually look for opportunities to offer goods and services that people want, need, and are willing to pay
Your job is to acquire as much money as you honestly can and then use it to enhance the quality of your life and the lives of those you care about.
Identify one area of your life where self-limiting beliefs may be holding you back. Create the opposite belief, and hold it in your mind until it becomes your automatic way of thinking in this area. The very best belief is that you are destined to be a big financial success.
The Law of Thinking says that you become what you think about most of the time.
In medicine, they say that an accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Look at the most important parts of your life—your family, your health, your work, your financial situation—and observe the cause-and-effect relationships between what you think, say, feel, and do and the results you are getting. Be honest with yourself. Focus on the lessons, and let the rest go.
“For every worry under the sun, there is a remedy or there is none. If there is a remedy, hurry and find it. If there is not, never mind it.”
If you could wave a magic wand to make your life perfect, how would your life be different from today? What would be the first step you could take to create your perfect life?
The Law of Belief states that whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.
William James of Harvard said, “Belief will help create the fact.”
You do not necessarily believe what you see, but rather you see what you already believe.
Extract every lesson you can from every setback. Write them down. Review them regularly. Resolve to learn from every mistake. Don’t pay for the same problem twice.
anything others have done, within reason, you can probably do as well. You just need to learn how.
“What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?”
The Law of Expectations states that whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.
According to the Law of Attraction, you are a living magnet: you invariably attract into your life the people, situations, and circumstances that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts and emotions.
The Law of Correspondence says that your outer world is a reflection of your inner world and corresponds with your dominant patterns of thinking.
There is only one thing in the world you can control, and that is the way you think. When you take complete control over your thinking, you take control over all the other aspects of your life at the same time. By thinking and talking about only what you want, and by refusing to think or talk about what you don’t want, you become the architect of your own destiny. You create your own future.
The Law of Goal Setting states that you can achieve whatever goals you set for yourself if you are willing to work hard enough and long enough.
Your ability to set and achieve goals in every area of your life is a miracle of human life.
Perhaps the two most important words in setting and achieving your goals, and for gaining success in general, are the words clarity and focus. First, you must be absolutely clear about what it is you want.
The good news is that each time you start and complete a task, you get a burst of positive hormones, such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and especially endorphins. These are often called “nature’s happy drugs.” They give you a natural high and are completely healthy. They give you a burst of feeling of well-being and personal power. They make you feel like a winner.
Step 1: Decide Exactly What You Want
Step 2: Write It Down
Step 3: Set a Deadline
Step 4: Make a Checklist
Step 5: Organize Your List by Sequence and Priority
Step 6: Take Action on Your List
Step 7: Keep Going
First, take a spiral notebook or a pad of paper, and write the word “Goals” and today’s date at the top of the page. Then, write down ten goals that are in the present, positive, and personal tense. You can write more than ten, if you like, but for now, concentrate on selecting the first ten goals that come to your mind and write them down. Remember, these goals are not engraved in stone. You can add to them, subtract, rewrite, or redefine them as you like over time.
Second, choose your most important goal. Ask yourself this question: “Which one goal on this list, if I were to accomplish it in twenty-four hours, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?”
Third, use the twenty-answer method. Turn to a new page, and at the top, write the words “The twenty answer method.” Ask yourself the question, “What can I do starting today to achieve my most important goal?”
