Brian Tracy answers Facebook questions about common personal-development obstacles: fear of success (reframed as fear of failure), building self-belief when unsupportive people surround you, and combating negativity and fear of rejection. He emphasizes using short affirmations ("I can do it","I like myself","I am responsible"), accepting full responsibility, setting clear written goals, daily reading of positive material, and taking concrete actions. The tone is motivational and prescriptive, offering repeated mantras and behavioral prescriptions aimed at reprogramming self-belief.
Chapters
Hi, there. Throughout the year, I've received a lot of questions from my friends on Facebook. So we've decided to sit down and answer these questions and let me give you my thoughts and insights and experiences, and they may be helpful to you. And questions from one person may be a question that you might have asked yourself. So let's get started.
Tremaine from Facebook asks, how can I get past the fear of success?
Well, Tremaine, this idea of fear of success is. Is actually really fear of failure. Nobody is afraid to succeed. If I said to you, how would you like to make a whole lot of money easily and guaranteed, win the lottery, receive an inheritance, nobody's afraid of that. What we're afraid of is we're afraid of failing in the attempt to be successful. And this comes about mostly from destructive criticism. In childhood, we get a lot of destructive criticism, which builds up this feeling of, I can't or I'm not good enough. So the way that you counter this fear of failure, fear of success, any fear that's holding you back is you counter it with the opposite words. And the opposite magic words in every language are the words, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Whenever you think of anything that causes you any concern, just say to yourself, I can do it. I. I can do that. I can do anything. I can do anything I put my mind to. I've raised all four of my children by repeating this to them over and over again for 20 years. You can do it. You can do it. You can do anything you put your mind to. Those are the magic words that eventually undercut and erode and wash away any fear that may be holding you back?
Emmy from Facebook asked, how do you create a strong belief in yourself when the people around you, like your family, do not support you?
Well, how do you create a strong belief in yourself? The starting point is for you to have very clear goals and to know in your heart that whatever goals you can write down and plan to accomplish or achieve are probably capable for you. You can probably accomplish them. The other thing is for you to accept complete responsibility. And the words are, I am responsible. This means no excuses, no complaining, no blaming anybody else for your situation, and no criticizing. From now on, you just say, I am responsible for my own life. If there's something that I want to do or change, then it's up to me, and I can do it. And when you start to accept full responsibility, you start to feel powerful. When you start to feel powerful, you become more positive. When you become More positive, you feel a tremendous sense of personal empowerment. So the magic words that I've always taught in my seminars is to say over and over again, I like myself. I like myself and I am responsible. I like myself and I am responsible. I can do anything I put my mind to. And you repeat those over and over as affirmations and you program them deep into your subconscious mind. At a certain point, you override all the negativity from your environment.
Deanville from Facebook asked, how can you fight the negativity in yourself?
Well, everybody starts off with two major the fear of failure and the fear of rejection. The fear of failure comes from early childhood experiences where you're told, don't stop that, get away from there, don't touch that. And as a child, you grow up believing that you are small and weak and, and inadequate and not capable of accomplishing the things you want to accomplish. The way you overcome the fear of failure is you say, I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. Now, the fear of rejection is caused by a hyper concern for the opinions of other people. In William Glasser's work on what they call the fully functioning person, he had a wonderful line. They said, fully functioning people, these are the top 10% of people never complain and never explain. They never defend themselves, is they do it or they don't do it, but they never feel that they have to explain themselves to anyone else. If someone doesn't like it, they say, and your point is? And they just don't care. And your job is to reach the point where you say, I like myself, I like myself. I'm responsible for my own life. And if someone doesn't like what I do or don't do, that's their problem, it's not my problem. And if you repeat this to yourself over and over again, you can actually reprogram yourself and cancel out and override all the previous programming that's generating these fears that you experience in your adult life. So just try it repeatedly. One more thing is set clear written goals for yourself and work on them every day. And then simultaneously read for 30 to 60 minutes each day in something positive, motivational and inspirational. Something that builds you up, what we call mental protein, that makes you feel positive about yourself, and eventually you reach the point where you actually cross a divide. And from that point on, you'll be positive for the rest of your life. Now, I've given you a couple of ideas. So the most important thing that you can do is to take action. So what one action are you going to take? As a result of these key ideas that I've just given you. Whatever it is, jot it down and let me know. Remember, one action that you take that you would not have taken in the absence of this discussion can change your life forever.
