I finished this book in January 2016 (re-read in 2024). I recommend this book 9/10.
Why you should read this book:
Get the tools to take control of the mind. This is an excellent book helping you take control of how you want your life and how to deal with people and emotions.
Get your copy here.
🚀 The book in three sentences
Raise your standards and take control.
The power of the questions you ask yourself and insights on your emotions.
Operate your "Master System" by controlling your state and aligning it with your values.
📝 My notes and thoughts
How to create lasting change:
Raise your standards. Change your limiting beliefs. Change your strategy.
How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on?
"Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creates of men."— Benjamin Disraeli.
Will today be the day you demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start proclaiming. "This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I'm going to do. Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied!".
1. Decide what you want. 2. Take action. 3. Notice what's working or not, and 4. Change your approach until you achieve what you want. Deciding to produce result causes events to be set in motion. If you simply decide what it is you want, get yourself to take action, learn from it, and change your approach, then you will create the momentum to achieve the result. As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the "how" will reveal itself.
Three decisions that you make every moment of your life control your destiny. These, three decisions determine what you'll notice, how you'll feel, what you'll do, and ultimately what you will contribute and who you become. If you don't control these three decisions, you begin to sculpt your experience.
The three decisions that control your destiny are:Your decisions about What to focus on.Your decisions about what things mean to you.Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire.
I became an excellent public speaker because, rather than once a week, I booked myself to speak three times a day to anyone who would listen. While others in my organization had forty-eight speaking engagements a year, I would have a similar number within two weeks. Within a month, I'd have two years of experience. And within a year, I'd have a decade's worth of growth. My associate talked about how "lucky" I was to have been born with such an "innate talent.
The truth of the matter is that there's nothing you can't accomplish if: 1. You clearly decide what it is that you're absolutely committed to achieving, 2. You are willing to take massive action, 3. You notice what's working or not, and 4. You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.
A critical rule I've made for myself is never to leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization.
If we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid indulging in it at all costs. We can use this understanding to harness the force of pain and pleasure to change virtually anything in our lives.
Most of our beliefs are generalizations about our past, based on our interpretations of painful and pleasurable experiences. The challenge is threefold: 1. Most of us do not consciously decide what we're going to believe 2. Often our beliefs are based on misinterpretation of past experiences; and 3. Once we adopt a belief as if they're realities, as if they are gospel. In fact, we rarely, if ever, question our long-held beliefs.
Once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioned commands to our nervous systems, and they have the power to expand or destroy the possibilities of our present and future. If we want to direct our lives, then, we must take conscious control over our beliefs. And in order to do that, we first need to understand what they really are and how they are formed.
If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
No matter what happens in your life, you've got to be able to believe, "This, too, shall pass," and that if you keep persisting, you'll find a way.
So how can you create conviction? 1. Start with the basic belief 2. Reinforce your belief by adding new and more powerful references. For example, let's say you've decided never to eat meat again. To strengthen your resolve, talk to people who've chosen a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle: what reasons prompted them to change their diet, and what have been the consequences on their health and in other areas of their lives? In addition, begin to study the physiological impact that animal protein has. The more references you develop, and the more emotional the references are , the stronger your conviction will become 3. Then find triggering event, or else create one of your own. Associate yourself fully by asking, "What will it cost me if I don't?" Ask questions that create emotional intensity for you. For example, if you want to develop a conviction never to abuse drugs, make the painful consequences of drug abuse feel real to you by viewing films or, better yet, visiting a shelter to see firsthand the devastation wrought by drug abuse. If you've vowed to give up smoking, visit the intensive-care wing of a hospital to observe emphysema patients confined to oxygen tents, or view an X-ray of smoker's black lungs. These kinds of experiences have the power to push you over the edge and establish true conviction 4. Finally, take action. Each action you take strengthens your commitment and raises the level of your emotional intensity and conviction.
Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will either lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in a way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. I don't worry about maintaining the quality of my life, because every day I work on improving it. I constantly strive to learn and to make new and more powerful distinctions about ways to add value to other people's lives. This gives me a sense of certainty that I can always learn, that I can always expand, that I can always grow.
Finally, we can't get rid of a pattern without replacing it with a new one. So right now, write down the replacement for the two limiting beliefs you've just eliminated. What is their antithesis? For example, if you had a belief that " I can never succeed because I'm a woman, " your new belief might be, "Because I'm a woman, I have resources available to me that no man could ever dream of!" What are some of the references you have to back up this idea so you begin to feel certain about it? As you reinforce and strengthen this belief, it will begin to direct your behavior in an entirely new and more empowering way.
The first belief we must have if we're going to create change quickly is that we can change now. Again, most people in our society have unconsciously linked a lot of pain to the idea of being able to change quickly. On one hand, we desire to change quickly, and on the other, our cultural programming teaches us that to change quickly, means that maybe we never even had a problem at all. Maybe we were just faking it or being lazy. We must adopt the belief that we can change in a moment. After all, if you can create a problem in the moment, you should be able to create a solution, too! You and I both know that when people finally do change, they do it in a moment, don't they?
The second belief that you and I must have if we're going to create long-term change is that we're responsible for our own change, not anyone else. In fact, there are three specific beliefs about responsibility that a person must have if they're going to create long-term change: 1. First, we must believe, " Something must change"—not that it should change, not that it could or ought to, but that it absolutely must . So often I hear people say, "This weight should come off," "Procrastinating is a lousy habit," "My relationship should be better." But you know, we can "should" allover ourselves, and our life still won't change! It's only when something becomes a must that we begin to process of truly doing what's necessary to shift the quality of our lives. 2. Second, we must not only believe that things must change, but we must believe, "I must change it." We must see ourselves as the source of the change. Otherwise, we'll always be looking for someone else to make the changes for us, and we'll always have someone else to blame when it doesn't work out. We must be the source of our change if our change is going to last. 3. Third, we have to believe, "I can change it." Without believing that it's possible for us to change, as we've already discussed in the last chapter, we stand no chance of carrying through on our desires. Without these three core beliefs, I can assure you that any change you make stands a good chance of being only temporary. Please don't misunderstand me—it's always smart to get a great coach to support you in taking the proper steps to conquer your phobia or quit smoking or lose weight. But in the end, you have to be the source of your change.
Types of emotions and individual might feel in a week:
Stressed out. Frustrated. Angry. Insecure. Lonely. Bored. Miserable. Happy. Relieved. Loved. Excited. Joyous.
If you she children walking along the sidewalk after a rain, and there's a pothole in front of them, what are they going to do when they get to that puddle? They are going to jump in! They are going to laugh, splash around, and have a good time. What does an older person do? Walk around it? No, they won't just walk around it-they'll complain the whole time! You want to live differently. You want to live with a spring in your step, smile on your face. Why not make cheerfulness, outrageousness, playfulness and new priority for yourself? Make feeling good your expectation. You don't have to have a reason to feel good-you're alive; you can feel good for no reason!
Think of that view—the power of our focus—as being a camera lens. The camera lens shows only the picture and angle of what you are focused on. Because of that, photographs you take can easily distort reality, presenting only a small portion of the big picture. Suppose you went to a party with your camera, and you sat in one corner, focused on a group of people who are arguing. How would that party be represented? It would be a pictured as an unpleasant, frustrating party where no one had a good time and everyone was fighting. And it's important for us to remember that how we represent things in our minds will determine how we feel. But what if you were focus your camera on another end of the room where people were laughing and telling jokes and having a great time? It would be shown to have been the best party of all with everyone getting along famously!
Focus determines whether you perceive your reality as good or bad, whether you feel happy or sad. A fantastic metaphor for the power of focus is racing cars—a real passion for me. Driving a Formula race car can sometimes make flying a jet helicopter seem like a very relaxing experience! In a race car you cannot allow your focus to wander even for a moment from your outcome. You attention can't be limited to where you are; neither can it be stuck in the past or fixed too far in the future. While remaining fully aware of where you are, you have to be anticipating what's about to happen in the near future. This was one of the first lessons I learned when I started racing school. The instructors put me in what's called a "skid car"—an automobile that has a computer built into it with hydraulics lifts that can pull any wheel off the ground on a moment's signal from the instructor. The number-one fundamental they teach in driving is: Focus on where you want to go, not what you fear. If you start to skid out of control, the tendency, of course, is to look at the wall. But if you keep focusing on it, that's exactly where you'll end up. Drivers know that you go where you look; you travel in the direction of your focus. If you resist your fear, have faith, and focus on where you want to go, your actions will take you in that direction, and if you have too much momentum in the direction of the wall, then focusing on the problem just before the crash is not going to help you anyway.
One thing that's useful to know about all of this: when you change your focus, often you don't immediately change direction. Isn't that true in life as well? Often there's a lag time between when you redirect your focus and then your body and your life experience catch up. That's all the more reason to start focusing on what you want quicker and not wait any linger with the problem.
Make a picture of it in your mind, then imagine pushing that picture farther and farther away from your self. Stand above it and look down upon the problem with a new perspective. What happens to your emotional intensity? For most people, it drops, What if the image becomes dimmer, or smaller? Now take the picture of the problem and make it bigger and brighter, and closer. For most people this intensify it. Push it back out and watch the sun melt it. A simple change in any one of these elements is like changing the ingredients in a recipe.
For example, think of something that happened yesterday. Just for a moment, picture that experience. Take the image of this memory and put it behind you. Gradually push it back until it's miles behind you, a tiny, dim for far off in the darkness. Does it feel like it happened yesterday, or long time ago? If memory is great, bring it back. Otherwise, leave it there! Who needs to focus on this memory?
Think of one right now, one that happened a long time ago, Recall the imagery of that experience. Bring it forward; put it in front of you. Make it big, bright, and colorful; make it three-dimensional. Step into your body as you were then and feel that experience right now as if you were you're enjoying now? You see, even your experience of time can be changed by changing sub modalities.
The journey toward Niagara Falls begins when you don't control your states, because if you don't control your states, you won't be able to control your behavior. If there are things you need to accomplish but you can't get motivated, realize you're not in the appropriate state. That's not an excuse, though, that's a command! It's a command to do what ever it takes to change your state, whether it's changing your physiology or your focus. At one time, I put myself in a state of being pressured to write my book; no wonder I felt it was impossible! But then I had to find a way to change my state; otherwise, you would be reading this today. I had to be in a state of creativity, a state of excitement. If you want to go on a diet, it's not going to work if you're in a fearful state, or a worried state, or a frustrated state. You've got to be in a determined state in order to succeed.
You've got to realize that you must take conscious control of running your own mind. You've got to do it deliberately; otherwise, you're going to be in the mercy of whatever happens around you. The first skill you must master is to be able to change your state instantly no matter what the environment, no matter how scared or frustrated you are. This is one of the foundational skills people develop in my seminars. They learn how to quickly change their state from being afraid and "knowing" they can't do something , to knowing they can do it and being able to take effective action. Developing experiences lie this in which you change quickly gives you tremendous power in your life—something you can't fully appreciate until you really try for yourself. The second skill is that you should be able to change state consistently in any environment—maybe in an environment that used to make you uncomfortable, but in which you can now change your state time and time again, conditioning yourself until you feel good no matter where you are. The third skill, of course, is to establish a set of habitual patterns of using your physiology and focus so that you consistently feel good without any conscious effort whatsoever. My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel ton of pleasure and very little pain—and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain. Someone who's achieved a lot but is living emotional pain all the time, or is surrounded by people in pain all the time, isn't truly successful. The fourth goal is to enable others to change their state instantly, to change their state in any environment, and to change their state their whole life. This is what my franchisees learn to be able to do in their seminars and in their one-on-one work with people.
I really wanted to know what allowed successful people to achieve great things, while others with similar or better backgrounds disappeared over the falls of Niagara. So I asked myself, "What really makes the biggest difference in my life, in who I become, in who I am as a person, and in where I am going?" The answer I came up with was one I've already shared with you. "It's not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it's the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences".
Questions determine everything you do in life, from your abilities to your relationship to your income. For example, many people fail to commit to a relationship simply because they keep asking questions that create doubt: "What if there's somebody better out there? What if I commit myself now and miss out?"
Why don't you appreciate me? What if I were to leave right now—how would that make you feel? Compare this with "How did I get so lucky to have you in my life? What do I love about my husband/wife? How much richer will our lives be as a result of our relationships.
How did he do it? There were many factors, but one that virtually everybody agrees on is that in the mid-seventies, when New York City faced bankruptcy and most developers fretted over questions like "How will we survive if this city goes under?," Trump asked a unique question: "How can I get rich while everyone else is afraid?" This one question helped to shape many of his business decisions and clearly led him to the position of economic dominance he enjoyed. Trump didn't stop here. He also asked another great questions, one which would be a good to emulate before making any financial investments. Once he was convinced that a project had tremendous potential for economic gain, he would then ask, "What's the downside? What's the worst that can happen, and can I handle it?" His belief was that if he knew he could handle, the worst-case scenario, then he should do the deal because the upside would take care of itself.
To change your life for the better, you must change your habitual questions. Remember, the patterns of questions you consistently ask will create either enervation or enjoyment, indignation, misery or magic. Ask the questions that will uplift your spirit and push you along the path of human excellence.
If you instead ask, " How can I change my state so that I am feeling happy and am being more lovable?," You'll focus on solutions. Even if your brain initially responds, "There's nothing I can do,"
The challenge, as you may have guessed, is that most of us are on automatic pilot. By failing to consciously control the haibtaul questions we ask, we severely limit our emotional range and thus our ability to utilize the resources at hand. The solution? As we covered in Chapter 6, the first step is to become aware of that you want and discover your old limiting pattern. Get leverage: ask yourself, "If I don't change this, what is the ultimate price? What will this cost me in the long run?" and "How will my whole life be transformed if I did this right now?", interrupt the pattern (if you've ever felt pain, then been distracted and not felt it, you know how effective this is); create a new, empowering alternative with a set of better questions; and then condition them be rehearsing them until they become a consistent part of your life.
Ask yourself some empowering questions right now. What are you truly happy about in your life right now? What's really great in your life today? What are you truly grateful for? Take a moment to think about the answers and notice how good it feels to know that you have a legitimate reasons for you to feel great.
Conversely, if you're asked, " What's really great in your life?," and you keep focusing in the answer, you might find yourself feeling excellent immediately. If someone says, "You know that project really is great. Have you ever thought about the impact we've going to have because af what we've created here?, " you might become inspired by a project that seemed laborious. Questions are the laser of human consciousness. They concentrate our focus and determine what we feel and do.
You and I have that same power at our disposal every moment of the day. At any moment, the questions that we ask ourselves can shape our perception of who we are, what we're capable of, and what we're willing to do to achieve our dream.
The problem-solving questions:
What is great about this problem? What is not perfect yet? What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it? What am I willing to no longer do in order to make it the way I want it? How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it?
The morning power questions: Our life experience is based on what we focus on. The following questions are designed to cause you to experience more happiness, excitement, pride , gratitude, joy, commitment, and love every day of your life. Remember, quality questions create a quality life. Come up with two or three answers to all of these questions and feel fully associtaed. If you have difficulty discovering an answer simply add the word "could." Example: "What could I be most happy about in my life now?"
What am I happy about in my life now? What about that makes me happy? How does that make me feel?What am I excited about in my life now? What about that makes me excited? How does that make me feel? What am I proud about in my life now? What about that makes me proud? How does that make me feel? What am I grateful about in my life now? What about that makes me grateful? How does that make me feel? What am I enjoying most in my life right now? What about that do I enjoy? How does that make me feel? What am I committed to in my life right now? What about that makes me committed? How does that make me feel? What do I love? Who loves me? What about that that makes me loving? How does that make me feel? In the evening, sometimes I ask the Morning Questions, and sometimes I ask an additional three questions. Here they are: The Evening Power Questions: What have I given today? In what ways have I been a giver today?What did I learn today? How has today added to the quality of my life or how can I use today as an investment in my future?
What are some questions that would be useful for you to ask of yourself on a regular basis? I know two of my favorite are the most simple. They help me to turn around any challenges that may come up in my life. They are simply, "What's great about this?" and "How can I use this?"
There's a point at which you must stop asking questions in order to make progress. If you keep asking questions, you're going to be uncertain, and only certain actions will produce certain results? At some point, you've got to stop evaluating and start doing.
People with an impoverished vocabulary live an impoverished emotional life; people with rich vocabularies have a multi-hued palette of colors with which to paint their experience, not only for others, but for themselves as well.
If we want to change our lives and shape our destiny, we need to consciously select the words we're going to use, and we need to constantly strive to expand our level of choice.
You don't need any special reason to feed good —you can just decide to feel good right now, simply because you're alive, simply because you want to.
Six Steps to emotional mastery—Read chapter p.251
Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it's who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.
We don't have to feel negative about weeds. They're part of life. We need to see them, acknowledge them, focus on the solution, and immediately do what ever it takes to eliminate their influence from our lives. Pretending they're not there won't make things better; neither will becoming inflamed with anger by their presence nor devastated by fear.
In life, never spend more than 10 percent of your time on the problem, and spend at least 90 percent of your time on the solution. Most important, don't seat the small stuff...and remember, it's all small stuff!
Imagine playing tennis and hitting a poor serve. From your perspective, you blew it. From your opponent's perspective, it was a great shot—from him. From the line judge's perspective, the serve was neither good nor bad; it was simply "in" or "out" What often happens after hitting a poor shot? People start generalizing—and more often than not, in a dispowering way, "What a terrible serve" becomes "couldn't serve today to save my life." Their next few serves are likely to be equally underwhelming. Then the train of generalization picks up speed, moving from "I couldn't serve today to save my life." to " I never did have that great a serve." to "I'm really not such a hot tennis player." to " I never seem to be able to master anything." to " I'm a horrible person." It looks ludicrous here, spelled out in lurid detail, but isn't this the way it happens in so many areas of our lives? If we fail to take control of our evaluation process, it literally run wild and sweeps us into the spiraling pattern of self-recrimination.
If you and I are not clear about what's most important in our lives—what we truly stand for—then how can we ever expect to lay the foundation for a sense of self-esteem, much less have the capacity to make effective decision? Of you've ever found your self in a situation where you had a tough time making a decision about something, the reason is that you weren't clear about what you value most within that situation. We must remember that all decision making comes down to values clarification.
In our personal and professional lives, as well as on the global front, we must get clear about what is most important in our lives and decide that we will live by these values, no matter what happens.
We must live by our principles even when it "rains on our parade," even if no one gives is the support we need. The only way for is to have long-term happiness is to live by our highest ideals, to consistently act in accordance with what we believe out life is truly about.
It's hard to hit the target when you don't know what it is! Knowing your values is critical to being able to live them.
We must remember, then, that at any time we make a decision about what to do, our brain first evaluates whether that action can possibly lead to either pleasurable or painful states. You brain is constantly juggling, or weighing, your alternatives to see what the impact may be, based upon your value hierarchy.
If you're willing to take the bull by the horns, you have an opportunity to redirect your destiny. Ask yourself a new question: "What do my values need to be in order to achieve the destiny I desire and deserve?" Brainstorm out a list. Put them in order. See which values you might get rid of and which values you might add in order to create the quality of life you truly want.
As long as we structure our lives in a way where our happiness is dependent upon something we cannot control, then we will experience pain.
You began to design for yourself a hierarchy of values to refine and define the direction of your life. You need to understand that whether or not you feel like you're achieving your values is totally dependent upon your rules—your beliefs about what has to happen for you to feel successful or happy or experiencing love. You can decide to make happiness a priority, but if you rule for happiness is that everything must go just as you planned, I guarantee you're not going to experience this value on a consistent basis.
With faith, you can cling to your vision in the face of seeming failure. What if Thomas Edison had given up after his first failed attempt to make the electric light bulb? Or even after his hundred attempt? Luckily for all of us, he persisted beyond thousands of attempts. He could have taken each instance as a reference to back up a belief that his invention was not feasible. Instead, he chose to use each failed attempt as a reference for the belief that he was getting closer to a solution. remember, don't drive inst the past using your rear-view mirror as a guide. You want to learn from your past, not live in it—focus on the things that empower you.
Remember, it's the moments of our lives that shape us. It's up to us to pursue and create the moments that will lift us and not limit us.
As we develop new beliefs about who we are, our behavior will change to support the new identity.
You might ask, "Isn't my identity limited by my experience?" No, it's limited by your interpretation of you experience. Your identity is nothing but the decisions you've made about who you are, what you've decided to fuse yourself with. You become the labels you've given yourself. The way you define your identity defines you life.
Even after completing this exercise, you'll want to continue to refine your identity, expand it, or create better rules for it. We live in a dynamic world where ouridentities must continually expand on order to enjoy a greater quality of life.
Are you now the same person you were when you picked up this book?
While most people have to establish competence before they feel confident, I decide to feel confident, and that provides the sense of certainty to persist until I am competent.
Begin to ask yourself, "What more can I be? What more will I be? Who am I becoming now?" Think about your values and dream list, and commit to yourself that regardless of the environment, "I will consistently act as a person who is already achieving these goals. I will breathe this way. I will move this way. I will respond to people this way. I will treat people with the kind of dignity, respect, compassion, and love that this person would." If we decide to think, feel and act as the kind of person we want to be, we will become that person. We won't just behaving "like" that person; we will be that person.
You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.
The formula is simple and powerful. Ask yourself, "How can I add more value to any environment I'm in?" In your work environment, ask yourself the question, "How have I made or saved my company money in the last twelve months?" True contribution makes life richer, so don't limit yourself to adding value strictly for personal gain.
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