Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Brian Tracy
Read between
March 2 - March 8, 2025
Begin each day by taking out your spiral notebook and writing down your top ten goals in the present tense without referring back to the previous day. Discipline yourself to do this every day for thirty days. People have doubled and tripled their incomes with this exercise.
There are seven steps in the 1,000 Percent Formula. Here they are: Get up every morning by six o’clock. This is a common habit of self-made millionaires and billionaires. Read something educational, inspirational, or motivational for sixty minutes. One hour per day will translate into one book per week, fifty books per year. This alone will increase your income by ten times. Write out your top ten goals in the present tense in a spiral notebook. The habit of daily goal setting will also increase your income by ten times in ten years. Plan every day in advance. Make a list, set priorities on
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Resolve to make every minute count. Work all the time you work. Don’t play. Don’t waste time. Imagine that your boss is sitting and watching you. Anything that you would do differently if your boss was sitting there, do that all day long.
The Law of Creativity states that you are a potential genius; there is no problem you cannot solve and no goal you cannot achieve by using the power of your mind.
According to the Law of Exchange, money is the medium through which people exchange their labor in the production of goods and services for the goods and services of others.
The fourth corollary of the Law of Exchange says that money is an effect, not a cause. Your work or contribution to the value of a product or service is the cause, and the wage, salary, or earnings that you receive is the effect. If you wish to increase the effect, you have to increase the cause. And this is largely under your control.
To earn more money, you must add more value. You must increase your knowledge or skill, improve your work habits, work longer and harder hours, work more creatively, or do something that enables you to get greater leverage and results from your efforts. Sometimes, you have to do all these things together. The highest-paid people in our society are those who are continually improving in one or more of these areas to add greater value to the work they are doing.
Use the twenty-answer method to make a list of twenty or more things you can do to increase your value to the person or people who determine how much you earn. Then meet with your boss and review your list together. Ask your boss to select three things from your list that you could do differently or do more of to increase your value. This simple exercise could change the direction of your career.
The most successful people in any society, according to the Law of Time Perspective, are those who take the longest time period into consideration when making their day-to-day decisions.
People with long time perspectives are willing to pay the price of success for a long time before they achieve it. They think about the consequences of their financial choices and decisions in terms of what they might mean in five, ten, fifteen, and even twenty years from now.
The first corollary of the Law of Time Perspective says that delayed gratification is the key to financial success.
The second corollary of this law says that self-discipline is the most important personal quality for assuring long-term success.
The third corollary of the Law of Time Perspective says that sacrifice in the short term is the price you pay for security in the long term. The key word here is sacrifice. When you resist the temptation to do things that are fun and easy and instead discipline yourself to do the hard and necessary things, you develop the kind of character that virtually guarantees you a better life in the future.
One of the smartest things that you can do is to develop the habit of saving part of your salary with every single paycheck.
The first corollary of the Law of Saving comes from the 1926 classic book The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. It is to pay yourself first.
If you cannot save 10 percent just yet, start with 5 percent. But start. Many people start by saving 10 percent of their income and then move to saving 15 percent, 20 percent, and even more. And their financial lives change dramatically as a result. So will yours.
Begin today to put away 10 percent of your income. Set up a special account for this purpose, and treat your contributions with the same respect that you do for your rent or mortgage payments each month. They are not optional.
If you are in debt and 10 percent is too much for you today, start by saving 1 percent of your income and living on the other 99 percent. When you become comfortable living on 99 percent of your income, increase your savings rate to 2 percent. Over the course of a year, you will develop completely new habits regarding money.
The Law of Conservation states that it is not how much you earn but how much you keep that determines your financial future.
The amount that you keep after each year of work is called your return on life (ROL). This is your net profit per year of work. What is yours? What do you want it to be in the future? What one action are you going to take immediately to reach that goal?
According to Parkinson’s Law, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
The simplest application is that expenses rise to meet income.
By consciously violating Parkinson’s Law, you will eventually become financially independent. And if you don’t, you won’t.
Always carry sufficient insurance to protect yourself against an emergency that you cannot write a check to cover. Carry sufficient health insurance to provide for yourself and others in any medical emergency. Insure your car for liability and collision. Insure your life so that if something unfortunate happens to you, the people who are counting on you will be provided for.
This seems like a simple lifetime planning strategy, but it is remarkable how few people follow it and how many people end up at the age of sixty-five with very little put aside.
Set a goal today to accumulate an investment account that will enable you to live comfortably for twenty years after you retire.
The Law of Investing is to investigate before you invest.
Never let yourself be rushed into parting with your money. You have worked too hard to earn it and taken too long to accumulate it.
the only thing easy about money is losing it.
Think of your money as if it were a piece of your life. You have to exchange a certain number of hours, weeks, and even years of your life in order to generate a certain amount of money for savings or investment. That time is irreplaceable. It is a part of your precious life that is gone forever. If all you do is hold on to the money rather than lose it, that alone can assure you will achieve financial security. Don’t lose money.
Investing your money and allowing it to grow with compound interest will eventually make you rich.
“If he had just kept working and building up his reserves, in two years, he could have done anything he wanted.” I followed his advice for years, and it turned out to be true.
If you start early enough, invest consistently enough, never draw on your funds, and rely on the miracle of compound interest, it will make you rich. An average person earning an average income who invested $100 per month from age twenty-one to sixty-five and earned a compounded rate of 10 percent over that time would retire with a net worth of $1,118,000!
The momentum principle is one of the great success secrets. This principle says that it takes tremendous energy to overcome the initial inertia and resistance to self-discipline and financial accumulation. But once you get started, it takes much less energy to keep moving. Soon, it becomes automatic and easy.
Another amazing thing will happen. Because you are thinking continually and more intelligently about money—and as I’ve stated, you become what you think about—you will start to earn and attract more and more moneymaking activities into your life. As you begin to see yourself as a wealthy person on the inside, you will start to become a wealthy person on the outside.
The more positive emotions you associate with your money, the more money you will attract from the most amazing and unexpected sources.
The first corollary of the Law of Magnetism as it applies to money is that a prosperity consciousness attracts money like iron filings to a magnet. That is why it is so important for you to start accumulating money, no matter your situation. Put just a few coins into a piggy bank. Begin saving even a small amount of money. That money, magnetized by your emotions of desire and hope, will begin to attract more to you faster than you can imagine.
Take time every day, week, and month to reflect on your financial situation and look for ways to deploy your finances more intelligently. Read articles on financial accumulation and moneymaking regularly and at least one book on money each month. Take notes. Think on paper!
Long-term money is patient money. This is why most people do not achieve great financial success before the age of forty, and even fifty or later. It takes them that long to develop the knowledge and skills that enable them to recognize the right opportunities at the right time and to take advantage of those opportunities.
It is amazing and too common that so many people invest many years in their business or career and then quit or sell out just before they succeed greatly. This is why patience and persistence are considered such important qualities by most successful people. They attribute their ultimate success to having never given up, no matter how discouraged they were.
the quality of becoming unstoppable. This means that no matter what happens, you resolve, in advance, that you will never give up!”
“And what do you say to yourself? You say the magic words, ‘I am unstoppable! I am unstoppable! I am unstoppable!’
Take every opportunity to share this life-changing idea with others, especially your children, whenever it is appropriate.
The first corollary of the Law of Real Estate is that you make your money when you buy, and you realize it when you sell. This is very important. Purchasing a piece of property at the right price and under the right terms enables you to sell it at a profit.
Everything you do either adds up or takes away. Nothing is neutral. One of your main jobs in life is to be sure that everything you do builds and improves your reputation as an excellent person. The fourth corollary of the Law of Reputation is competence. There is perhaps nothing that will enhance your reputation more than becoming known for doing excellent work. In the final analysis, this will largely determine the amount of respect that people have for you, the amount of money you are paid, the speed at which you are advanced or promoted, and the quality of your life.
First, resolve to earn as much as you possibly can. Do everything possible to excel in your field so you are paid extremely well for what you do.
The second key to money is for you to hold on to as much as you possibly can. Remember, it is not the amount you earn but the amount you keep that counts in the long run.
The third key to money is for you to reduce and control your costs of living. Look for every opportunity to practice frugality in everything you do.
The final key to money, number four, is for you to invest it carefully and make it grow as rapidly as you can. Because of the miracle of compound interest, combined with dollar cost averaging, you can become wealthy in a few years by saving and investing 10 to 20 percent of your income every single month, off the top, as you go along.
