A motivational talk by Brian Tracy outlining the "Four D's" required for financial independence: Desire, Decision, Determination, and Discipline. Tracy presents statistics on retirement outcomes, argues that most people fail due to lack of a firm decision and procrastination, and advises self-assessment (scoring 1–10) on each D to guide improvement.
Lets talk now about the 4D's of financial success. More than 80% of self made millionaires in America and worldwide began with nothing. Or in many cases, far less than nothing. I can certainly relate to that, because when I was growing up and right into my early 30s, I never had any extra money with which to start a fortune. It seemed to me that there was always enough, if not more than enough bills to absorb every penny I earned. I was always in debt, and even if a great business opportunity did come along, I wouldn't have been able to do anything with it. As I began studying financial success and self made millionaires, I noticed that almost everyone around me was in pretty much the same boat. The idea of becoming really wealthy was a distant dream with very little possibility of coming true. You may be in the same situation today with more bills than money or assets. The statistics are a little scary. Of 100 people who reach retirement age, according to insurance industry statistics, only one will be wealthy. Four out of the hundred will be financially independent. Fifteen will have some savings put aside and the other 80 will be dependent on pensions, still working or broke. And this after a lifetime of well paid work in the most affluent society in human history. Now, why does this happen? There are two main reasons why people retire poor. First, they never decide to retire rich. They wish and hope and pray, but they never make a firm, unequivocal decision that they're going to do it. Second, even if they do decide to retire rich, they procrastinate until it's too late. They always have some good reason for putting off the process of saving and investing and building a financial estate. So if you sincerely want to beat the odds to achieve financial independence and retire wealthy, there are four critical steps that you must take, all starting with the letter D. The first step is desire. You must want it badly enough to make an unshakeable commitment and to be willing to make sacrifices of all kinds. The more intense your desire, the more likely it is you will overcome all the obstacles between you and your financial goals. The second D in this formula is decision. You must make a decision right now to do whatever is necessary and be willing to pay any price, go any distance in law to achieve your goal. This decision is the turning point in your life. The third D for mastery is determination, which is to keep at it until you succeed in spite of all the problems and obstacles you will experience. And the fourth D is discipline. It's the discipline to master yourself, to develop the habits necessary for achieving financial independence. Those are the four desire, decision, determination and discipline. And you can measure how successful you're going to be in the future by measuring how well you're doing in each of those on a scale of 1 to 10. So give yourself a grade. How intense is your desire? On a scale of 1 to 10? How intense is your decision making capability? Scale of 1 to 10? How determined are you to be successful? Scale of 1 to 10? And how strong is your self discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? And wherever you're weak, just go to work and bring up your score. Your whole life will change as a result.
