Use PROVEN SUCCESS Methods... START With THESE! | Brian Tracy | Top 10 Rules

Before I start, I'm going to take a vacation to a beautiful place called Someday Isle.

Use proven success methods. Problem unsolved is merely a goal unachieved. Time management is the sun, and everything that I do is the planets in orbit. Boy, that's pretty obvious, yes, but it's the most obvious answers that we overlook.

You become what you think about most of the time.

And my natural response, ah.

Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.

The rule is Form good habits and make them your masters.

This—

you're only as young or as old as your dreams.

He's a motivational speaker and author.

He's chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International.

He's consulted for over 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5 million people.

He's Brian Tracy, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

Most people have good, great goals. I want to increase my income and lose weight and get out of debt and be thin and happy and healthy and have a wonderful family. But then, then they decide, but before I start, I'm going to take a vacation to a beautiful place called Someday Isle. And in my estimation, 80% of the population lives on Someday Isle. Someday I'll lose some weight, and someday I'll read that book and listen to that program and join the, the Yes Network. And someday I'll get out of debt. Someday I'll increase my income.

But it's always Someday Isle.

If you want to be a great success, there's one simple rule: is vote yourself off the island for life. If you decide you're going to do something, do it. You know, they've done dozens and dozens of studies over the years. They find that there's one major difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. As successful people launch, they start, they get on with it, they just do it. Unsuccessful people get the same ideas and the same information, but they've always got an excuse for not starting.

If you want to be successful in starting a business, then you study what people have learned. And everything that people have learned, they've written down or or shared in seminars or put onto audio programs is— I learned this from a very wise man named Kop Kopmeyer, who spent more than 50 years studying success. And he had developed more than 1,000 success principles that he had derived out of something like 6,000 books. And when I met him, I asked him the question you would ask: Of all these 1,000 principles, because I had studied it all, which is the most important principle of all? And he said, Brian, he said, it's simple. He said, use proven success methods. He said, learn from the experts. He said, Brian, you'll never live long enough to learn it all for yourself. So what I find is that successful people are those who learn from others who've gone before them. Unsuccessful people try to make it all up, like a cook going into the kitchen, taking ingredients out of the cupboards, throwing them all in a bowl, and wondering why it doesn't taste good. This is why people's sales careers, why 80% of salespeople are functioning well below their potential, only 20% make all the money, why 20% of businesses in any industry make all the profits, why 20% of the professionals in any service make 80% of the money, and so on. It's because they follow proven success principles, proven recipes, proven formulas, proven combinations, and they just do them over and over again until they master them. Then they can do more and more of them, faster and faster, easier and easier, at a higher level of quality. And all that translates into greater results. Make a list of 10 things, 10 goals that you'd like to accomplish in the next year or so, and ask this question: If I could only accomplish one goal on this list, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on my life? If you could only accomplish one goal in life, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life? Now, for most people, especially when you're maturing in your career, when you're growing up, the biggest goal is money. If you had money, then you could buy a house, home, car, family lifestyle, and so on. So that's quite normal. For other people, it may be a health goal. For business owners, maybe a business goal. For People with relationship problems, maybe a relationship goal. But ask yourself, if you could achieve one goal or resolve one problem— and remember, a problem unsolved is merely a goal unachieved— which one would it be? And write that down and make that the major and definite purpose of your life. Make it the central organizing principle of your life. When I was a young man, I had a revelation that changed my life. I had read articles and sometimes books on time management over the years and made some lists and set some priorities and things like that. And I always felt, however, that my life was the sun and that all the different factors of my life were like planets that orbited around my life. And whether that was physical fitness or socializing or work or time management, they were all planets in orbit. What changed my life was when I realized that time management is the sun And everything that I do is the planets in orbit. Everything we do in life revolves around time because time is life. Time is the substance of our life. It's that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your time management.

That everything we have or are or ever will be will be a direct result of how we use our time. And the wonderful thing is we're always free to choose how we use our time.

There's a process which has made more people rich than any other single process of goal achieving. And it's to take your major goal, and structure it as a question. If your goal is to earn $100,000 a year, then you write, how can I earn $100,000 in the next 12 months? That's an open-ended question, not how can I earn it at my job or doing a specific thing, just an open-ended question. How can I earn the amount of money? And then you discipline yourself to write 20 answers to the question, and the 20 answers are all the different things that you could think of. To earn $100,000? Work longer, work harder, upgrade my skills, get a new job, take a part-time opportunity. Whatever it happens to be, write down everything you can think of, but force yourself to write at least 20 questions or 20 answers to the question. The 20-question method called mindstorming forces you to dig deep, deep into your mind where you will find all your answers. And it may be call a person, read a book. Let me give you an example. We had a young fellow, entrepreneur, 35 years old. He'd built a successful business. He'd worked about 10 years to do it, and he, for 2 years, wanted to sell his business so he could take a year off and travel, enjoy his money. And so for 2 years, he just sort of floundered around like a fish on the dock, wanting to sell his business. Nobody offered to buy it. He suggested it to people, people were not interested, and so on. And in this exercise that they put him through, his 20th answer, and often it's the 20th answer that is the breakthrough, was buy a book on how to sell your own business. And it just went off like a flashbulb in his mind. At the break, he got up, it was a downtown hotel, got up, went down the street to a major bookstore, went and found, he was amazed at the number of books that had been written on how to buy and sell a business. So he bought 2 or 3 books, 2 months later he had restructured, packaged his business, sold it completely, satisfactorily, and took a year off. He said, but it was just a single idea, it was a breakthrough idea, but it was so simple, just get a book on the subject. And you think, boy, that's pretty obvious, yes, but it's the most obvious answers that we overlook.

Now the starting point of becoming a millionaire is to remember the greatest discovery of all of human life, which is that you become what you think about most of the time. If you sincerely want to be rich, to achieve all your financial goals, and to retire as a self-made millionaire, one of the smartest things you can do is to develop the habits of thinking and acting that have enabled others to become self-made millionaires. What is so hard about this to understand? Most people are thinking of how little money they have.

They worry about being broke.

They worry about lack and poverty. They're worried about the prices of everything, and they're wondering why they're not flourishing financially, because they're thinking about poverty and lack rather than prosperity and abundance. Now, these habits of financial success are learnable, as all habits are, by practice and repetition. In other words, you can program yourself to think like self-made millionaires. And remember, it has to start on the inside before it ever comes true on the outside.

Now here's an important point: nothing works the first time. When you try something new, it probably won't work. When you try something new several times, it probably won't work. And the turning point in my life came when I would hear good ideas, and I was so eager to be successful in selling, I would run out and try the ideas, and they wouldn't work. I'd try a way of getting an appointment or answering an objection or closing a sale, it wouldn't work. And my natural response, ah, And I think, just to be disappointed, and then I realized nothing works, at least the first few times. So I decided I would try a new idea 5 or 10 times before I passed judgment on it. I would not just try it once and quit like most people do, and that changed my whole life. It was a turning point in my life because I realized from then on, if you've got a good idea and you've got a good goal and you want to double your income and improve the quality of your life, and you have to try new things in order to get new results, it's not going to work the first time.

So you say, well, that didn't work.

Try something else and try something else and try something else. Now, if you try, only two things can happen. What are they? Succeed or fail. If you succeed, you do more of it. If you fail, you learn from it, get smarter, and try it again. So you cannot lose by taking action. You can only lose by not taking action.

The natural tendency when we hear or learn something great is we want to convince everybody else of it. All right, and you see this— people who quit smoking suddenly want there to be no smoking in the world. People who adopt a religion or a political philosophy want everybody to join. Uh, the next day But the very best thing, as I mentioned earlier in our seminar, is that you must teach men at the school of example, for they will learn at no other. So what you need to do is be an example, and be an example for an extended period of time. Give yourself 2, 3 months, maybe a year of being the new person. When you go on a diet, don't insist that everybody else go on a diet the next day. Actually go on the diet. Stay on the diet, lose the weight, achieve the level of financial fitness, and attract people so they come to you and say, what is it that you're doing, or what is it that you're reading, or what is it that you have that makes you different? Only then, when they reach out, do you offer it to them. The flip side of this is that in the main, people don't change. You can change, and you'll find it much easier to change if you're with positive people. Very hard to change with people who don't want you to change, who want you to be the person that you were. But in the main, people don't change. So sooner or later in life, you're often going to have to make some hard choices. In the short term, be the person— as Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. Be the kind of person that you want to see. And if that does not bring people around, then be prepared to go to the next step. Be prepared to walk away.

Well, Aristotle said that 95% of everything you do is the result of habit. So the rule is: form good habits and make them your masters, rather than allowing bad habits to form. In fact, the other rule says this: is that good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with. Now, one of the turning points in my life and my studies of psychology was the discovery that all habits are learned and can be unlearned. Actually, you don't actually unlearn a habit, you simply replace a bad habit with a good habit that has more powerful power and impact. And how do you develop a good habit? You develop a habit by repetition. Almost everything you do from the time you get up in the morning is habit. So start to think about yourself, what would be the best habits to have? Good question. What age should one give up on their dream? Never. Goethe said this, Henry Ford said this, Rockefeller said this. You're only as young or as old as your dreams. And as long as you still have dreams and visions and goals, they keep you young. It's the most amazing darn thing. One of the great stories is the story of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Harlan, and Harlan was taught by his mother a special recipe down south in the United States on how to make chicken. When he grew up, he got a job as a short order cook in a small café, and he asked his boss if his boss would be interested in this chicken recipe. And his boss said, "Sure, throw it together, see what the people say." Turned out that everybody liked this special chicken recipe with all these secret herbs and spices. Well, for the rest of his career, right up till he was 65 years old, He either worked in little cafes or sometimes he owned a little cafe. When he was 65, he had a little cafe and he was making his chicken and he had people coming from all around to eat his chicken. And the highways department built a highway past his little restaurant, his little chicken place, and put him out of business. They cut off the road so nobody could get to it. About the same time, he received a Social Security check, his first Social Security check at the age of 65. And he became angry. He said, I'm 65 years old, but I'm not ready to give up on my dreams. What do I have to sell? And he realized the one thing that had kept him going all those years, the mainstay of his little career, was his mother's recipe of 17 or 18 herbs and spices. So he put them together in little bags, one bag per chicken, and he put his pots and pans in the back of his old car and he started driving up and down the eastern seaboard going from café to café to café to ask them if they would pay him 5 cents a bag for his magical combination of herbs and spices. He called on more than 1,000 restaurants, sleeping in his car week after week, and finally He came across a little restaurant in Toronto that agreed to pay him 5 cents a bag for his herbs and spices. This is back in the '60s. And because of exchange controls, they had to give the money to the Red Cross. That was the beginning of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Empire. He began to sell this recipe more and more. People began to put it on their signs. A major corporation came along and said we could make a real business of this. So they embraced him, they built the franchise, they made him one of the best-known people in the world. When he died some years later, he was worth more than $50 million because he never gave up on his dreams. So I don't know if you're 65 and broke and living in your car with pots and pans with no money, but wherever you are, you never give up on your dreams.

Thank you so much for watching. We made this video because Fritch Jr. Jean-Baptiste asked us to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want us to profile next, leave it in the comments below and we'll see what we can do.

And please let us know which one of his top 10 rules that you like the most. Please leave a comment below, we will join in a discussion.

Thank you guys for watching, continue to believe, and we'll see you soon.

Bye!

We say that in zero-based thinking, you ask this question: Is there anything that I am doing today that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into again today if I had to do it over?

We call this a KWINK analysis—knowing what I now know, KWINK.

In times of rapid change, there are always areas in your personal and business life that, knowing what you now know, you wouldn't get into again today if you had to do them over.

Your willingness to ask and honestly answer this question is the key to remaining flexible and quick on your feet in times of turbulence. How can you tell if you have a zero-based thinking situation in your life or business?

Simple— stress.

Whenever you experience ongoing chronic stress about any person or situation, you should ask yourself, if I was not now in this situation, knowing what I now know, would I get into it again today? This is a great question. Now here's another question for you: what percentage of the time do you think that you will turn out to be wrong? Well, the answer according to the American Management Association is about 70%. 70% of your decisions will turn out to be wrong in the fullness of time. It's amazing how many people will stay in a bad situation or continue with a bad course of action because of their unwillingness or inability to admit that they made a mistake or that they were wrong in the past. But remember this: when you made the decision, it was probably a good decision based on the situation at that time, but now the situation has changed. Now you have to evaluate your situation based on the current reality.

Recognize that everything that you achieve in life is going to be with the help or support or cooperation of other people. So always think, what is it that other people want and need from me? How can I help other people so they'll want to help me back? If you're in sales, top salespeople think about their customers all the time. They think about who their customers are and what their customers want and how they can help them the most and how they can help them even more today. In their relationships, Successful people are very focused on the most important people in their worlds, both personal and in business. If you've made a mistake or something has happened in the past that's unfortunate, you can cancel it out by simply saying the magic words, 'I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible.' If someone has hurt you or you've had a difficult experience in your childhood, you can say, 'Well, I didn't do anything.' Yes, but you're responsible for how you respond today. A Nobel Prize-winning study of the evolution of civilizations came up with the term responseability. It's your ability to respond effectively with the ups and downs and negative events of life. It's the key measure of your ability to be successful and happy in the future. And what you do is you say, whenever you feel negative or unhappy about anything, you say, wait a minute, I'm responsible. I'm responsible for my life. I'm responsible for what happens. I can't change the past, so I'm not going to spend a second worrying about the past. I'm going to become so busy working on my future and my goals that I don't have time to think about the past.