Brian Tracy: Principles of Self-Discipline Every High Achiever MUST Master!

When you hear this Brian Tracy speech, it's easy to get caught up in the surface-level wisdom. Philosophy, history, self-discipline. But here's the truth: the real game isn't just about understanding those principles. It's about confronting your fears and limitations head-on. It's about that moment when you realize that everything holding you back—your doubts, your habits, your excuses—is all self-imposed. You've trained yourself, just like Speedy the Rat, to go down the same tunnel, day after day, expecting different results. Now you might be thinking, "Yeah, but that's just how life is." Wrong. Life is exactly what you make it. You're not stuck in that tunnel. You're not confined to the script society handed you. You have the power, right now, to break free and create a new path. The greatest limitation is not your circumstances, but your belief that those circumstances define you. They don't. You do. The difference between those who achieve greatness and those who don't is not talent, luck, or intelligence. It's the willingness to confront the uncomfortable truths about yourself, to look at where you're stuck, and to make a conscious decision to change. It's about saying, I will not let this define me. I will be unstoppable. You see, every successful person has a story about breaking through their own limitations. They face fear, doubt, and failure, but they didn't stop there. They persisted. They reinvented themselves. They took responsibility for their lives and decided to rewrite their story. And here's the kicker. You can do it too, but it starts with a decision. A decision to stop living on autopilot, to stop settling for the fourth tunnel. You've got to start exploring new paths, trying new things, and pushing past your comfort zone, because that's where true growth happens. So ask yourself, what's the tunnel that you've been running down without question? And what would happen if you dared to turn around and find a new path? That's where your greatness lies. That's where you become truly unstoppable. I hope you enjoyed this special presentation with Brian Tracy from our friends at Netengeokonen. To learn more about them, check the website link in the description below. Believe.

Well, thank you very much for being here, and thank you for being here on video. I think you're going to enjoy what we're going to talk about. For time immemorial, going back to several hundred years before Christ, The greatest minds of all time have focused on answering the question, why is it that some people are more successful than others? All the work of Socrates was around the subject, how shall we live in order to be happy? What are the keys to wisdom and goodness in life? Plato also wrote about the same subject. How should we live? How should we organize our lives and our families and our societies? Aristotle. And all throughout history, the great philosophers and metaphysicians and mystics, the great religious teachers and preachers and The best writers have all looked at this question. What can we do in order to be happy, to be more successful, to have more of the things that we want? If I say, would you like to be financially independent? You say, of course. Would you like to be financially independent? Yes. Why aren't you? Why aren't you financially independent? You're making one of the best livings in the history of the world, living in the richest country in the history of the world. Why aren't you a little bit financially independent? And you know what you say? I can't. My bills are too high. My taxes are too high. My costs are too high. My this, my that, my The fact of the matter is there are people who come over here with nothing from foreign countries and save every single thing that they make and live on half of their income. And 10 years later, working at laboring jobs, they've got 20, 50, 100 people working for them and they're financially independent. Why? It's because they had no limitation. All of our limitations exist within our own minds, and the worst of all is we feel helpless. The second reason why people stay where they are is illustrated by the story of Speedy the Rat. Speedy the rat is put into a cage, and off the cage there are 4 tunnels. And Speedy is kept hungry, and in the mouth of the 4th tunnel down here, a little bit of cheese is put. Speedy is dropped into the cage, and Speedy is hungry. He goes, smells cheese around here somewhere, so starts doing a little search. Searches around a little bit, tries the 1st tunnel, 2nd tunnel, 3rd tunnel, finds the cheese at the 4th tunnel, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, eats the cheese and is happy. Take Speedy out, keep him out for 24 hours, he's hungry again. Put him back in. Now the cheese is in the mouth of the fourth tunnel. And Speedy goes, a little bit familiar. He does a search process, comes to the first tunnel, second tunnel, third tunnel. There's the cheese in the fourth tunnel. By the third or fourth day, you can put Speedy in the cage and he'll go right to the fourth tunnel and get the cheese. Once Speedy is conditioned, they take the cheese and they move it halfway back this tunnel, about 3 feet deep. This is a tunnel by which I mean about 3 feet or 3 inches around. And Speedy comes running in, rushes to the fourth tunnel, no cheese. Looks around, backs up, counts, goes and explores. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. Smells cheese net, fourth tunnel. Finally explores and finds the cheese. Well, in a couple of days, Speedy is conditioned to drop into the cage, go straight to the fourth tunnel, halfway back and get the cheese. And so then they move the cheese to the back of the fourth tunnel. And of course, in no time at all, Speedy is conditioned to go choo choo and get the cheese. Then they take the cheese and move it to the back of the second tunnel. Well, Speedy's put in the cage, goes straight to the fourth tunnel, straight to the back, comes out, looks up at the researchers, says, "Where's my cheese?" Not a happy camper. They say, "I don't know." Hmm. Speedy turns around, goes back to the back of the fourth tunnel, comes back. Hmm. Hungry. And when you're hungry, you know, you don't have much of a sense of humor, even if you're a rat. Turns around, goes back to the back of the fourth tunnel, comes back. Hmm. Now here's the moral of the story. Speedy has a rat brain the size of a pea. You, as human beings, have a 3-pound brain that is the most powerful organism ever conceived of in the universe. We cannot even conceive of anything more complex and more powerful than your brain. You can send thoughts across thousands of miles. You can think of a person and get them to phone you from across the country. You've done this many times before. Your brain is so powerful, it's scary. When it's properly used. But Speedy has a brain the size of a pea. And Speedy, with a brain the size of a pea, will eventually figure out that there's no cheese at the end of the fourth tunnel and will begin exploring the other tunnels and will eventually find it at the end of the second tunnel. But human beings, with this incredible brain, will keep going down the fourth tunnel forever. They will keep doing what they've always done. They will get into a rut, which we call a comfort zone. They will set a series of habits that are not serving their best interests, and they will keep on with those habits. And they'll keep doing things that no longer make them happy, that no longer give them any cheese, and they will keep doing them year after year. And we find that almost everybody today, all of us, too consciously and unconsciously, is held by these twin pillars, these twin bindings of helplessness on the one hand and habit on the other. Is that we try to free ourselves from feeling helpless and we fall right into an old comfort zone. Or we get out of the comfort zone, we get right back into feeling helpless. The only way that we can achieve our true destiny is to break the shackles that are holding us. And the answers to both of them are confidence and courage. Courage and confidence. The greatest single limitation on success in America, in the world today, is lack of confidence. It's not that we can't do it. We have capacities and abilities beyond anything that we have ever thought of in our whole life. You know, if you used your talents to the full for the rest of your life, you would never even use a fraction of what you're actually capable of based on all the research that's been done. We are right now functioning according to Stanford Brain Institute with about 2% of our brain power. 2%! The rest of it is this huge reserve of brain power which we're kind of keeping there in case we ever need a little, you know. We got so much of it, it's unbelievable. Well, so I said to myself, what is the key here? And you know what? There is a common denominator of helplessness and habit. And the common denominators are fear and ignorance. Fear and ignorance. We're afraid. We're afraid it might not work. We're afraid we might fail. We're afraid it might cost us something. We're afraid of criticism and embarrassment. We're afraid of failure and loss and limitation and lack and ill health and disapproval. We're so afraid. The things that we would do if we weren't afraid are literally beyond belief. And we're afraid of getting out of the comfort zone because of what they might say. What if we did something different? Changed jobs, changed careers, started a business, got into something else? What would they say? Do you know, I was listening to a psychologist talking the other day. He says nobody's ever been able to define who they are, but it's they out there. It's the great almighty they that's got us terrified. You know, it's a true statement. We say that when you're in your 20s, you don't care what people think. And when you're in your 30s, you're very sensitive to what people think. And then you get into your 40s, and in your 40s you realize the great truth is that no one was ever thinking about you at all. And that's the fact. Nobody ever thinks about us at all. And there we are. We're so terrified of doing what we really want to do because of what they might say or think. So we stay in that comfort zone. Now, all successful people are those who consciously are aware that the self-doubt that holds most people back is something that they are heir to as well. And they're alert and sensitive to it. Whenever it says, why don't you do this? Or why don't you do that? They have a tendency to say, well, I can't because of this, and I can't— wait a minute. There's a story of a little boy goes to school for the first time, and the teacher says, do you play a musical instrument? He said, I don't know, I haven't tried yet. If you ask an adult, do you play a musical instrument, what will the adult say? Nope, I can't. No, never could. Don't have— tone deaf. Don't have any musical ability at all. You know that every child has perfect pitch up to the age of 5? That every child has the ability to play classical music up to the age of 5? The Suzuki musical training systems have demonstrated that you can start teaching kids classical violin at the age of 3, just when they can barely move their hands. They can start to play. It's phenomenal. Yeah, most of us believe, I can't, you know, I don't have it, I can't do it. Our natural tendency is to sell ourselves short. Our natural tendency is to think of the reasons why we can't before we think of the reasons why we can. So the key to breaking ourselves out of the comfort zone and breaking ourselves loose of the shackle of helplessness his courage and confidence. We neutralize— the antidote to fear and ignorance is desire and knowledge. And the more we learn about what we want to do and be and have, the more we believe that we can do it. The more we believe that we can do it, the more willing we are to try. And the more willing we are to try, the more likely it is we will succeed. What is the first part of triumph? The first part of triumph is to try. Little simple one-liner. Now, this is what I found. What if somebody came to that elephant and said, Mr. Elephant, you don't have to stay here. You can do anything you want. You're the biggest animal in the world. That little thing can't hold you. All you have to do is pop loose and you can go. And he says, no, no, no. I've been stuck here for years. And every time I'm tied up, I stay here. Why? Well, because of this and because that's a habit. You know, I can't and I can't. I wish I would. I wonder, whoa, I'm too tall. I'm too short. I'm male, female, young, old, educated, uneducated. So what we say is, look, just try. Just try. The very thought. The very idea of trying something new or different is traumatic for most people. All right, I'll try it. All right. Pop! And the elephant thinks, my God, I've been tied up and made to work like a slave all these years, and that's what's been holding me? And the elephant gets mad and goes looking for its owner. Now what do you call an elephant that gets mad and goes looking for its owner? You call it what? A rogue elephant. That's right. Now each one of you has the capacity to be a rogue elephant. Because you know something? There's nothing holding us back except the limitations we have in our own mind. That elephant is in reality unstoppable. And the most important goal that you can develop, the most important quality or characteristic that you can develop for happiness and success, is to be unstoppable yourself. Is to think of yourself as unstoppable. And you know how you become unstoppable? It's by the basic psychological behavioral development principle of simply saying it to yourself. 'Cause whatever you say to yourself and believe over and over again, you start to believe as a reality. You start to walk it and talk it and act it. So what you say is, I am unstoppable. I'm unstoppable. I'm unstoppable. I don't care what it is. I'm unstoppable. Nothing will stop me. The greatest of all qualities to guarantee success is the absolute willingness to go at anything and refuse to stop until you achieve it. And you know something? The statistics show that 95% of the goals that you set for yourself you will achieve if you refuse to quit. So the starting point is just to simply say, I am unstoppable. Say it. Say, I am unstoppable. I am unstoppable. Now say it like you mean it. Get your thumbs out of your mouths and say it like you mean it. Say, I am unstoppable. I am unstoppable. Once more. I am unstoppable. I am unstoppable. Yes. Now from now on, whenever you see a barrier or wall or you think of anything you want to do or be, you say, wait a minute here. I'm unstoppable. Nothing stops me. And you know something? You will develop yourself to the point where nothing does. Cause and effect, going right back to what we talked about. Mental attitudes and personality are determined by things that we do, and there are certain things that you can do consistently every single day, and in so doing them, you'll build your self-confidence up and up and up to the point where you become unstoppable. And these are very simple things, and they're practiced by the most successful men and women— men and women who were so terrified they could not lead silent prayer in a telephone booth. At one time, and they built themselves up to the point where they're not afraid of anything by working on themselves. Just like a weightlifter builds up muscles, you can build up character, personality, and strength, and tenacity, and desire, and knowledge, and courage, and confidence by working on yourself. And so I'm going to give you now the 12 key principles practiced by all high-achieving men and women. Very easy to learn, very easy to practice, don't cost anything. As a matter of fact, what I would ask is that you try them just a little tiny bit. and you'll get results out of all proportion to the efforts you put in. The first of all, starting point of great accomplishment is to dream big dreams. Number 1, dream big dreams. Let your mind float free. All really exceptional men and women dream big dreams. They allow their minds to float. They, they think of what they could be and what they could do and what they really, really want. Here's an exercise for you. Take a piece of paper later on and Write at the top, "Dream List," and then make a list of all your dreams. If you're married, sit down with your spouse and say, "Honey, let's make a list of everything we'd like to be, do, or have in the rest of our lives." "But what about this, and what about that?" No, decide what's right before you decide what's possible. Don't decide, "Well, we can't afford this, and we couldn't do that." Ah, stop, stop, stop. That's helplessness. That's habit. That's these old negative habit patterns holding you back. Before you even decide what you want, most people are figuring out why they can't have it. What you do is you say, wait a minute, if I had no limitations— and this is the key— you dream as though you had no limitations. Nothing's holding you back. Imagine you have all the time, all the money, contacts, all the education, influence. You have everything going for you in the whole world. And just simply decide, these are my dreams, and write them down. Project yourself into the future and say, where do I want to be in 5 to 10 years? If I could design a perfect life so my life was perfect in every respect, my relationships, my income, my work, my family, my health, my home, my car. What would it be? This is the starting point of great achievement, because what will happen is that if you can clearly define that target, you can hit it. You eventually always hit the targets that you set for yourself, but you can't hit a target that you can't see. So allow your mind to float freely. Allow yourself to engage in what is called blue sky thinking. Blue sky thinking means you just simply Imagine you have the whole blue sky above you and no limitations, and then you write it down. And then you think and ask yourself this question: What one great thing would I dare to dream if I knew I could not fail? What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? Imagine you were absolutely guaranteed of success in any one thing, big or small, long-term or short-term, in the whole world. What would it be? And write it down. Now, if that doesn't make your heart pound a little bit faster, then maybe somebody should nudge you with their elbow, uh, because you're probably not alive or awake. The fact is that when you start dreaming big dreams, you know what happens is your self-concept goes up, your self-esteem goes up. The very fact that you allow yourselves to dream big dreams causes you to feel better about yourself, see yourself better, think of yourself better, and it starts the process of making yourself unstoppable. You become unstoppable. People with big dreams that are absolutely committed to are unstoppable human beings. It's people with little dreams and no hopes and no plans beyond tomorrow and next week, these are easy people to stop. But people that have big dreams to make wonderful lives for themselves, they're phenomenal. The second key is to develop a clear sense of direction, develop clear goals, and make plans for their accomplishment. You see, if you have big goals, they motivate you, they stimulate you, they excite you, they enthuse you. If you have no goals at all, you just go around in circles. What we have found is that goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. You have big goals, and the more you work on the goals and the more you feel yourself progressing toward them, the better you feel, the more positive you feel, the more momentum you develop, and the more you feel yourself to be unstoppable. You see, without goals, you're easily stopped because you don't know what you want. H.L. Hunt, the great oil billionaire, was once asked his secrets of success, and he said there's basically two requirements for success in America. Only 2. He said, first of all, decide exactly what you want. Most people never do that. Second of all, he said, determine the price you're going to have to pay to get it, and then start paying it. Earl Nightingale said that happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. The very most dependable way to keep yourself positive and happy and motivated is to think about your goals and to work towards your goals every single day. Because when you work progressively, step by step, towards something that's important to you, you know what happens? You feel better and better, and you start to get results, and the results start to motivate you to go forward even more, and you get more results, and pretty soon you develop this wonderful feeling of self-confidence. You become unstoppable when you have big dreams. That's the cosmic or vision part of your life. And then goals, which are very set and specific, and you start moving toward fulfilling them, you feel fabulous about yourself. 80-90% of unhappiness in our society today is because people don't have goals. Whenever you meet an unhappy person, here's a test question. Just say, well, you're unhappy about this and your job and your family and your health and everything else, but tell me, what are your goals? Do you know what people will say? Uh, geez, what kind of a question is that? Most people have no goals. As soon as they have goals, they start to move forward. Now, here's the keys to setting goals. First of all, write them down. A goal that's not written is just a fantasy. A goal, a real goal, is a dream with a deadline. So take the goal and write it down, and then set a deadline for the goal. Now, when do you want to accomplish it? And then make a plan to accomplish it. Write down everything you can think of that you'll have to do to get the goal, and then organize the plan by priority. What should you do first? What should you do second? And so on. And then get started. It's the most incredible darn thing, but there's amazing how many people say, I'd like to be financially independent. Well, why aren't you? To show me your financial independence bank account. Show me your savings account and your plan for how much you're going to put in each week, each month, each year, and where you plan to be in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. Oh, I don't have any of that. I just want to be financially independent. Shut up. Fact of the matter is that once you start moving toward the accomplishment of a goal, the most remarkable darn things happen. Once you have your goal, make a commitment to it. You see, we either develop good habits that make our lives wonderful, or we develop bad habits that undermine our success. And if we develop habits of setting goals clearly and making plans and setting deadlines and taking taking action and then committing ourselves wholeheartedly to their accomplishment and refusing to stop because we're unstoppable, then we must ultimately achieve the goal. I've been studying this subject for 30 years. I never met anybody who could set a very clear goal for themselves and make a plan and work on it and keep on working on it who didn't eventually achieve their goal. In fact, if you think about your whole life, there wasn't anything that you ever wanted long enough and hard enough that you didn't eventually get. You always get what you want long enough and hard enough. So what we do is set our sights high. Number 3 is accept complete responsibility for yourself and everything that happens to you. I used to be asked on radio and television, why are some people more successful than others? And I used to think it was goals was the starting point. But you know what the real starting point is? To accept that if it's to be, it's up to me, is that nobody's going to do it for me. You know, they say that the mark of maturity is when you finally realize that no one is coming to the rescue. No one's coming to the rescue. That the difference between the mature person and the immature person is the mature person accepts that they're totally responsible for their own life, that they are where they are and what they are because of themselves. Now, this is a hard thing to accept, but you have decided exactly every single part of your life today. You've decided your income and your home and your health and your weight. You've decided your bank account and your car. You've decided your job and your future. You've decided every single part of it. Why? It's because you're free to choose. Freedom is a very, very wonderful thing. Tremendous upside, tremendous downside too. But freedom means that nobody imposes anything on you. So where you are and what you are is a result of all of your choices and decisions up to now. If you want to change any part of your future, then you simply change your choices and decisions in the present. The first thing to choose, the first thing to change, is to decide what it is that you want. But second of all is to decide that If I'm going to get it, it's up to me. We've said over and over again, see yourself as the president of your own life, the president of your own career, the president of your own personal corporation. Because in reality, all of us are self-employed. The worst mistake anyone can ever make is to ever think that they work for someone else but themselves. No matter who signs your paycheck, we all work for ourselves. Do you want a raise in pay? No problem. Go to the washroom next time you get a chance and negotiate with your boss in the mirror. And your raise will become effective as soon as you do. It's very simple. I've never met an employer who was not willing to pay a person more money if they will produce more value for the company. And the amount of value we produce is always up to us. So always say, I am responsible. I am responsible. I am unstoppable, and I am responsible for my own life. If I don't like something, it's up to me to change it. No excuses, no blaming. Never complain, never explain. If you're not happy with something, change it. Not willing to change it? Shut up. Right. But the fact is, we're responsible. Number 4, do what you love to do. This is very important. These are the 4. This, this, this, in terms of becoming unstoppable, is fabulous. Because if you do what you love to do, you will be like an irresistible force of nature. Do what you love to do and commit to becoming very good at it. All of our research indicates that the odds against there being another person like you are more than 50 billion to 1. In the entire history of humanity, there will never be two people like you. Never be two people with the same face. Never be two people with the same even blood composition exactly. Never be two people with the same outlook, the same talents, abilities, capacities. Never be two people just like you. And that every single person or let us say 95% or more of the population, are born with the capacity to do something remarkable with their lives. And the starting point of personal greatness is when you say to yourself, what wonderful thing am I going to do with my life? Why am I here? I have this one life, this precious, precious life. And as you know, this life is not a rehearsal for something else. This is the real one. You say to yourself, What am I going to do with my life? Why am I here? What are my unique talents and abilities? Look back into your life and ask yourself, what is it that you've done in the past that you most enjoyed? What is it that you've done in the past that comes easy to you but which may be difficult to others? What subjects did you do the best at in school? What are the things that interest you the most? What are the things you like to read about and talk about and learn about? What are the things that hold your attention? What are the things that are indicators that This is where you should be focusing all your talents and abilities. Whatever it is, find it, and then commit yourself to becoming excellent at it. You see, it's not possible for us to be happy unless we know we're good at what we do. A person who's not very good at what they do feels inferior when they're with people who are good at what they do. We've all had this experience, by the way, being around people who are at the top of their field when we're not. We feel just a little bit kind of overawed, like they're— we're standing in the shadow of their light. Knowing that we're good at what we do makes us feel unstoppable. Yes. So if you are dreaming big dreams and you have clear goals and you accept total responsibility and you're doing what you love to do and you're getting better and better at it— and remember, excellence is a journey, not a destination. It's not a goal at which we arrive any time in life. We just keep working and keep working and keep working. There's a story about Ted Williams when he was the top baseball player in America, one of the highest paid best batting averages, so on. At the end of a doubleheader, everyone had gone home, the park was empty, and the park maintenance man was out cleaning up. And way out there with an automatic ball machine, there was a batter just slugging away at the balls. And he came out and he looked at him, he said, geez, he said, you're Ted Williams. He said, yes. He said, pleased to meet you. He said, what are you doing here? All the other ballplayers are back at the hotel and having parties and everything else. He said, He said, "Well, I'm practicing." He said, "But you're the best baseball player. You're the best hitter in all of America." He said, "You don't need to be out here." And he said, "Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is?" Because he's always concentrating on getting better, and of course it pays off. In the final analysis, all the people really care about is how well did you do the job. Did you do a good job or not? We always pay top dollar for the people who are the best. If we have and we can afford it, and we have an illness or a child that has an illness, we say, who's the best? Who's the very best? We want the best. We want the best in every field. There's no market for mediocrity. The two metaphors for American life are sports and business. In both sports and business, the only thing we care about is the very best excellence, top quality champions. And that's our job too. And nobody can do it for us. It's an inside job. The fifth key to becoming unstoppable is to dedicate yourself to serving other people. It was well written not long ago that nobody ever built a statue to a person for what they got, but only for what they gave. Is that your rewards in life will always be determined by the value of your service to other people. And so you have to look around you and say, what rewards am I getting right now? And there's two types of rewards, by the way. There's financial rewards, and there are— or tangible rewards, and there's intangible or emotional rewards. But all of your life satisfaction and true happiness and true rewards will come from serving other people. In fact, we are here— Albert Einstein was asked in the latter years of his life, what's the purpose of human life? And he said, after some thought, he said, well, we're here to serve others. What other purpose could there be? We're here to serve others. What other purpose could there be? Here's the interesting thing that I found out, is that you're only truly happy and only truly liberated and only feel wonderful about yourself and your life when you can lose yourself in doing something that you feel enriches and uplifts and enhances the life of other people. Every successful executive in every small and large company loses themselves in their work. Tom Peters, after writing In Search of Excellence, said if you threw away the whole book, you'd have to keep one principle: it's an obsession with customer service. A friend of mine who teaches total quality management said, you know, you can take all the books and put them aside, and total quality management means just one thing: is find out what your customer really wants and give it to them. And give it to them at a good price and give it to them at a good quality, but that's all it is. Total quality life means dedicating ourselves to serving people that we care about. And if you're not happy with your work, you know what it means? It means that the people you're serving may not be the right people for you. It doesn't mean that it's not bad work or that it's not good work. It just means that it may not be right for you. So therefore, you should You should love the work that you're doing. You should tremendously enjoy the results that you get for other people. And if you don't, it just means that there's something else that you should do. But you'll never be happy, and you'll never be fulfilled, and you'll never be unstoppable until deep in your heart you absolutely love serving the people that you serve. And the men and women who have dedicated their lives to service throughout human history are the ones that we admire the most. Albert Schweitzer, when he was alive, Mother Teresa today, probably the most respected person on the globe because she's dedicated her whole life to service. So think about it, who do you want to serve? And then become very good at serving whoever it is. Uh, number 6, uh, develop a workaholic mentality. That means that you have to work hard, hard, hard to be successful. You, you can't just sort of drag along. We say in our society you work 40 hours for survival and everything over that each week is for success. If all you work is 40 hours, you just survive. You just sort of tread water in a steady stream that's moving down, and you tread water and you maybe just hold your place, and you pray to God you don't get laid off because then you just go downstream so fast financially it's unbelievable. But when you're working hard, hard, hard, doing something you care about, achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams and serving and helping people that, that you want to help you become unstoppable. You become irresistible. We know that in America today we have been sold a bill of goods. The bill of goods is that you can have a great life at 40 hours a week, and maybe 38 or 37 or 35. And the fact of the matter is, in 25 years of searching, I've never found a single successful person who works 40 hours a week. The number of successful people in America working 40 hours a week or less is somewhere between zero and none. There aren't any anywhere. And yet we're told, well, if you can't do it in 40 hours, it's not worth doing. The average work week for successful Americans is between 50 and 60 hours. Many work 70 and 80 and 90. They work 6 days a week, uh, 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, or 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. Very few people successful on 5 days a week. Very, very few people. I, I'd love to meet one. They're Rare. Maybe they're in the Smithsonian, but, but they're very rare people. The fact is that successful people, especially during the important years of your life when you're building your estate, work 6 days a week. And here's the most important principle is work all the time you work. When you do work, work. We've been brought up with this post-World War I, World War II affluence where people could get a job and sort of and do the job and get a good salary and life was fine. And those days are gone forever. The fact is that the average person working today wastes fully 50% of their time fooling around. They waste it socializing, they waste it on telephone calls, they waste it on lunches and coffee breaks, they waste it reading the newspaper. And then when they do work the other 50% of the time, they do what's fun and easy. They work on low-value tasks. They spin their wheels. But the successful people are those who work all the time they work. So if you're going to work 8 or 9 hours a day, and let's say you have family, so you can't work more than that, Then be sure that when you do work, you put more of yourself into the work, because there's nothing that makes you feel more powerful than to know that you're on top of your work and you're making progress and you're getting things done. One of the reasons why so many people are out of balance today is because they waste so blasted much time at work, and then they have to take the work home. Remember the story of the fellow kept bringing a briefcase full of work home, and his daughter was asking his wife, Mommy, how come Daddy always brings a briefcase full of work home and works at night instead of spending time with the family? And she says, well, honey, he doesn't get his work done at the office, so he has to bring it home and work on it. She said, well, why don't they put him in a slower class? When you waste your time at work, what you're saying is, I should be put in a slower class. And sooner or later, you'll be put in a slower class. That always happens. It's called unemployment, downsizing, and things like that. Number 7 is be an unshakable optimist. Be an unshakable optimist. This is wonderful. In other words, always look for the good in every situation. We know that a positive mental attitude is a foundation of a healthy, happy life. A positive mental attitude, an attitude of absolute confidence and determination that you can and be and do whatever you want, it goes hand in hand with all great success. The work on positive attitude concludes this, that how you feel about yourself is based on 2 or 3 factors. First of all, it's the way you look at situations. If you look for the good in other situations and other people, you always find it. You always have a tendency to find what you do look for. If you look for the valuable lesson in every setback— and every single day you can have setbacks and obstacles and difficulties and disappointments— so just look for the valuable lesson. The most important of all is the work done at the University of Pennsylvania which concludes that we are optimists to the degree to which we control our explanatory style. Explanatory style means the way we interpret things to ourselves. If you interpret things to yourself in a positive way, you're going to be positive. If you interpret them in a negative way, you're going to be negative. So superior people are consciously taking everything that happens to them and looking for a positive way to put a twist on it. Here's an example. My friend Wayne Dyer says Would you like to have a happy childhood? Because he says it's never too late to have a happy childhood. You can have a happy childhood whenever you want. How do you do it? What you do is you turn around and you look back and you reinterpret the events that were so upsetting at the time as being events that were positive and helpful, and they built your character, and they taught you what you didn't want and what you wanted more of. They gave you direction to change, and so on. In other words, if you take the time and you have some fun, you can take any negative situation you've ever had and you can turn it around and you can find something good in it. And by so doing, you become a positive person. You take control of your thinking, you take control of your personality. And the more optimistic you become in the achievement of your goals, the more unstoppable you become. Can you imagine a negative person as unstoppable? Negative people are stopped cold every time they turn around. But optimistic people have this momentum that drives them over any obstacles that come along. So talk to yourself positively all the time. Say, I like myself, I feel terrific, I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel wonderful. The more you talk to yourself in a positive way, the better you feel. Now, the 8th key to becoming unstoppable, developing unshakable self-confidence, is to be impeccably honest with yourself and others. What we have found is that truly successful people are absolutely honest and objective with themselves and their worlds. They practice the highest of integrity. There's nothing that so undermines your confidence and so weakens your resolve than feeling inside that you're not doing or saying the right thing. Shakespeare said, "To thine own self be true, and then it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Now, internal integrity, being true to yourself, being true to the very best that is in you, is the starting point. But the outward expression of it is doing what you do in a quality way. You see, the work that you do with your hands, the work that you choose to hand in, the work that you choose to represent, that would be a symbol of you, is a mark of your true level of integrity. A person who has a high level of integrity does excellent work. A person with a low level of integrity does whatever they can get away with. Person says, well, I'm a very honest person. As long as you don't give me a temptation. And the fact of the matter is, you can ask people, you say, an honest person? Yes, I am. Well, what if you could steal $1 million and nobody would know? Well, tell me about it. So basically, you're just a thief looking for an opportunity, because a truly honest person, a person of high character, is a person that would not compromise their integrity for anyone or anything. Once you decide to be true to yourself, Then the next extension, aside from your work, is to live in truth with others. Living in truth with others is one of the hardest and most challenging things we ever do, but it's also one of the great builders of your soul or destroyers of your soul, because almost all of our problems in life talk back. Almost all of our problems in life come with hair on top. They come with two legs. And you find that men and women who are truly together as human beings are completely honest and direct with other people. If they're not happy with the situation, they say, I'm not happy with this situation. That doesn't mean you go and punch somebody in the face when you're not happy. It just means you say, I'm not happy with this situation. I'd like to find a way to rectify it. And if the other person isn't willing to work with you to make you happy in the situation, you don't want to be in that situation anyway. It's absolutely amazing how many people stay in situations where the other person couldn't give a damn whether they were happy or not. And then they try to make the situation work, and they ask me for advice on how to make the situation work. And I say, I'm sorry, I can't help you. The fact is that if you live in truth with others, it means that you're perfectly honest with other people. And when you're perfectly honest with other people, you feel better about yourself. You feel stronger inside. Here's the key: set peace of mind, the greatest of all human goods, as your highest goal. Set peace of mind as your highest goal and make everything else you do fit underneath it. Refuse to compromise your peace of mind for anything. And you know what? If you do, you'll probably never make another mistake. If you said peace of mind is my highest goal and you say everything that I do or don't do from now on is either going to give me a sense of inner peace or I'm not going to do it. It takes tremendous courage to do this, but if you do it, you feel terrific about yourself. You feel powerful inside. You feel so good about yourself. You feel so focused and so light and so happy. But if you compromise your peace of mind, it's like kicking the chair out from under you psychologically. Physically and emotionally. So just refuse to compromise your peace of mind. Refuse to do it if you don't feel good about it. Listen to your inner voice. And number 9: Develop a reputation for speed and dependability. In a survey of 104 chief executive officers a couple of years ago, they asked them, "What qualities would most put a person onto the fast track for promotion in your company?" And they almost unanimously answered, "The ability to set priorities and get the job done fast." The ability to pick what's important and then to get on with it and get the damn job done. You know, today time is the currency, this key source of value of the '90s and beyond. And today we value people who do things for us fast. Today, as a matter of fact, they have what is called queuing theory. When there's a queue and you people join the queue, they say— and they estimate this all the time— how long a queue will a person join before they walk away and not buy any? It used to be 7, then it was 6, now it was 5, then it's 4. You know what queuing theory today is? It's 3. Person will walk— if there's 3 people in line, if that line is not moving, forget it, I won't buy it, I'll get it somewhere else. That's why they have to have people on almost like, uh, alert when people start to approach checkout counters or desks in banks. They watch because as soon as there's 3 people, they better get up there or those people walk away, change their accounts. We, we don't even know we want it till today, now we want it yesterday. Isn't that right? When you sell products or services, it may take you 2 or 3 months to get the order, and now they want it last week, and they're very insistent it be delivered immediately, or they'll buy it from someone else. It's, it's, it's the most incredible thing. So therefore, get a reputation for having a sense of urgency. Get a reputation for having a bias for action. Get a reputation for fast tempo. Move fast, move quick. If a person asks you a question, don't say, well, I'll get back to you next week. Get back to them now, quickly, as fast as you can. Develop a bias for action and say to yourself over and again, do it now, do it now, do it now, do it now. And if you add this like a rocket behind everything else, you become unstoppable. Now, number 10: Concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time. Pick the most important thing that you have to do and concentrate single-mindedly on doing that and only that until it's done. The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most valuable use of your time and to stay with it without diversion or distraction until it's done gives you a tremendous sense of power and confidence and self-esteem. Working on low-level tasks, by the way, is a real downer. You can work on them all day. At the end of the day, you feel tired and depressed and negative, and you have low self-esteem because in the back of your mind, you know you're not accomplishing anything. But if you just pick one thing, the most important thing— and by the way, All success is preceded by single-minded concentration on a single task for a long period of time before it's accomplished. There are no successful people who have not developed the ability to concentrate without diversion or distraction on the one thing. Andrew Carnegie, who became the richest man in America, said that the ability to do this and learning this one secret, the ability to concentrate on the highest value task was what was more dependent, more responsible for his fortune than anything else. And he paid $64,000 to a management consultant for that one idea, and I just gave it to you for nothing. Number 11: Oh, never consider the possibility of failure. Remember that in order to be successful, you have to fail a lot. Thomas J. Watson, the founder of— senior— the founder of IBM, was once asked by a young man, how could I be successful faster? He said, simply said, double your rate of failure. If you want to be successful faster, fail more often. You see, there's a law of probabilities that says it's more— the more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. The less you fail, the less likely you are to succeed. Peter Drucker says you would never hire a person who has not had some major failures in life because they haven't learned anything. So the key is, if you want to be successful, don't be afraid of failure. Has anybody here ever failed, by the way? Have you ever failed? Yes. Did failure hurt you? No. Failure makes you strong. There's an old saying that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Failure has made you strong. Failure has developed your character. There's an old saying that the north wind made the Vikings. The cold of the north wind coming out of the north that they had to row against made them the most formidable fighting force in the world. It's failure that makes us strong, but it's the fear of failure that kills us. And the way that you deal with the fear of failure is, once you've decided what your dreams are and what you want to do, act as if it were impossible to fail. Imagine it were impossible to fail. Say, by gum, I can do that and start to think of all the benefits of achieving that goal and then act boldly. Confront your fears. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. Do you know that the ability to confront the fear of failure and overcome it and to move towards your fears rather than away from them is the one guarantor that you absolutely become unstoppable? If you do it over and over again, you develop the habit of courage. When you develop the habit of courage, eventually you find you're not afraid of anything. When you're not afraid of anything, your whole world opens up for you like a sunrise on the horizon. Everything becomes possible. You look around, a person says, what about this? What about that? I can do this. I can do that. I can do this. I can do that. You get to the point where you're willing to do anything except jump out of an airplane without a parachute. Because as they say, if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is probably not for you. Number 12. Number 12 is resolve to persist until you succeed. In the final analysis, there are two parts of courage. Remember, Winston Churchill once said that courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it all others depend. Courage is defined as the ability to act and to go forward in the face of uncertainty, is to face the fact that you may not succeed. It's the willingness to take chances and to take risks. The future belongs to the risk-takers. The future belongs to people who are willing to take the risks necessary. The second part of courage is persistence. It's the willingness to endure. It's the willingness to hang in there. Once you've started and you have begun, there is a period between when you begin and when you get some result. And in that period, most people break and run. Most people fall apart. They cannot stand not knowing, so they rush back to their comfort zone. This is basically true in all the psychological work that's been done. But what you have to do is be willing to persist in the face of adversity, even though there is no guarantee of success. And here's the wonderful thing: when you persist, your self-esteem goes up. Each time you force yourself to stay in there, your self-esteem goes up. You like yourself more, you respect yourself more, you feel more confident, you feel better about yourself. In fact, in the ultimate end, you don't even mind losing because you've persisted. But here's the second thing: persistence is self-discipline in action, and self-discipline is the foundation quality of a great personality. Everything we've talked about really depends upon our having the discipline to do it. And self-discipline means the willingness to do what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. Do what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. And if you can persist, you develop the habit of persistence. If you develop the habit of persistence, pretty soon you get to the point where nothing will stop you, and you become Unstoppable. In other words, everything we've talked about is that you build your own character. You create yourself in the image that you imagine for yourself. And your goal must be to become absolutely unstoppable in anything you do. Your goal must be to set big dreams and to set goals and to take responsibility and, by gum, to make anything out of your life that you want to make out of. To be, have, do anything that you want, because there's no limits. At least there's no limits that you will ever reach or I'll ever reach in our lifetimes. Let me leave you with this little poem, and it's called "Don't Quit." And this poem is something you've all heard. It was written by someone named Anonymous, so we don't have to pay royalties for its use. And it says, when things go wrong, as they sometimes will, when the road you're trudging is all uphill, when the funds are low and the debts are high, and you want to smile but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must, but don't you quit. For life is queer with its twists and turns, as every one of us sometimes learns. And many a failure turns about when he might have won had he stuck it out. So don't give up, though the pace seems slow. You may succeed with another blow. Success is just failure turned inside out. It's the silver tint of the clouds of doubt. And you never can tell how close you are. It may be near, but it seems so far. So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit. It's when things seem worst that you must not quit. And if you don't quit, and if you keep on keeping on, then you must, you will become Unstoppable. Yes, thank you very much.

To watch another amazing Brian Tracy speech, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

Not long ago, I was doing a seminar for 110 sales managers who supervised more than 1,000 salespeople doing millions of dollars worth of business per month and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business per year. And I gave this exercise.