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The only wise thing to do is fire Mr. Defeat. You don’t need him. You don’t want him around telling you that you can’t, you’re not up to it, you’ll fail, and so on. Mr. Defeat won’t help you get where you want to go, so boot him out.
Thinking success conditions your mind to create plans that produce success. Thinking failure does the exact opposite. Failure thinking conditions the mind to think other thoughts that produce failure.
Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier—certainly no more difficult—than small ideas and small plans.
Looking and looking and looking for an illness often actually produces illness.
Cecil now realized that how old we are is not important. It’s one’s attitude toward age that makes it a blessing or a barricade.
When you beat down your fears of age limitations, you add years to your life as well as success.
Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. It’s too late only when you let your mind go negative and think it’s too late. Stop thinking “I should have started years ago.” That’s failure thinking. Instead think, “I’m going to start now, my best years are ahead of me.” That’s the way successful people think.
People who rise to the top in any occupation—business management, selling, law, engineering, acting, or what have you—get there because they have superior attitudes and use their good sense in applied hard work.
Mr. Success receives a setback; he learns and profits. But when Mr. Mediocre loses, he fails to learn.
The old “it’s-only-in-your-mind” treatment presumes fear doesn’t really exist. But it does. Fear is real. Fear is success enemy number one. Fear stops people from capitalizing on opportunity; fear wears down physical vitality; fear actually makes people sick, causes organic difficulties, shortens life; fear closes your mouth when you want to speak.
action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear.
To think confidently, act confidently.
Confident action produces confident thinking.
Sitting up front builds confidence. Practice it. From now on make it a rule to sit as close to the front as you can. Sure, you may be a little more conspicuous in the front, but remember, there is nothing inconspicuous about success.
People who use difficult, high-sounding words and phrases that most folks have to strain themselves to understand are inclined to be overbearing and stuffed shirts. And stuffed shirts are usually small thinkers.
The price tag the world puts on us is just about identical to the one we put on ourselves.
Practice adding value to people. As you move higher and higher in the world of success, more and more of your job becomes “people development.” Ask, “What can I do to ‘add value’ to my subordinates? What can I do to help them to become more effective?” Remember, to bring out the best in a person, you must first visualize his best.
Practice adding value to yourself. Conduct a daily interview with yourself. Ask, “What can I do to make myself more valuable today?” Visualize yourself not as you are but as you can be. Then specific ways for attaining your potential value will suggest themselves. Just try and see.
Don’t let concern with trivia keep you from speaking successfully in public.
General Electric uses the slogan “Progress is our most important product.”
Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking.
Note this also: Top-level leaders in all walks of life spend much more time requesting advice than they do in giving it. Before a top man makes a decision, he asks, “How do you feel about it?” “What do you recommend?” “What would you do under these circumstances?” “How does this sound to you?”
Broadcasting good news activates you, makes you feel better. Broadcasting good news makes other people feel better too.
A diploma or degree may help you get a job, but it will not guarantee your progress on the job. “Business is interested in competency, not diplomas.”
C. When an Argument or Quarrel Seems Inevitable, THINK BIG. Successfully resist the temptation to argue and quarrel by: 1. Asking yourself, “Honestly now, is this thing really important enough to argue about?” 2. Reminding yourself, you never gain anything from an argument but you always lose something. Think Big Enough to see that quarrels, arguments, feuds, and fusses will never help you get where you want to go.
Think, “I can do better.” The best is not unattainable. There is room for doing everything better. Nothing in this world is being done as well as it could be. And when you think, “I can do better,” ways to do better will appear. Thinking “I can do better” switches on your creative power. Think Big Enough to see that if you put service first, money takes care of itself. In the words of Publilius Syrus: A wise man will be master of his mind, A fool will be its slave.
