Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement by Brian Tracy

more selective with your friends and your social activities.You will spend time only with people you enjoy, people you can learn and benefit from. But, as the old saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

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    ■ STEP TWO: WRITE DOWN
    YOUR GOALS
    Write your goals down on paper. There is something quite incredible that happens between the brain and the hand. When you take a paper and pen and write down your goals, you activate the Laws of Expectation, Attraction, and Correspondence simultaneously.
    You intensify your belief and deepen your conviction that your goals are possible for you. The very act of writing down your goals gives you a sense of control and personal power. Written goals increase your resolve and determination to do whatever is necessary to achieve them.
    The speed at which you will begin to achieve your goals after you have written them down is nothing short of miraculous. The very act of writing out your goals increases the likelihood of your achieving them by as much as 10 times—1,000 percent!
    Many thousands of my graduates have written or come back to tell me about the amazing things that have happened in their lives that started immediately after they began putting their goals in writing.
    ■ STEP THREE: BE WILLING
    TO PAY THE PRICE
    Determine the price you are going to have to pay to achieve your goal. Make a list of everything that you are going to have to do if you want to make your goal a reality.
    Are you going to have to start each day’s work a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later? Write it down. Are you going to have to upgrade your knowledge and skills, and take additional courses? Again, write it down. Are you going to have to change jobs, change industries, or change careers in order to achieve everything that is possible for you? Write it down.
    The Law of Cause and Effect is the iron law of the universe. For everything that you want, there is a price that must be paid. This price must be paid in full and in advance . The Law of Sowing and Reaping is not the Law of Reaping and Sowing. You have to put in ccc_tracy_3_40-51.qxd 6/23/03 2:47 PM Page 48
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    CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE
    before you get out . You have to give before you receive . You have to pay the price before you enjoy the reward.
    Your willingness to do whatever you need to do, pay whatever price is required, go whatever distance is necessary, and make whatever sacrifice is demanded is the measure of how badly you really want your goal.
    Many people sabotage their own success by deciding that they want a particular goal, and although they are willing to pay a high price for it, they are not quite willing to pay the full price that the goal demands. This is like wanting to win in a poker game but not being willing to match the final bet made by the other player. You end up losing the whole hand, just as by failing to make a total commitment people end up losing the entire goal.
    ■ STEP FOUR: MAKE A DETAILED PLAN
    Make a plan, in writing. Remember, the ability to develop written goals and create plans for their achievement is the master skill of success. A plan begins with your making a list of all the things that you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. Once you have made your list, you can add new items as they occur to you.
    You then organize your list in terms of priority and sequence.
    What are the most important things on the list that you will have to do to achieve your goal? What are the things that you will have to do before you do something else? Which items on your list are dependent on your completing other items first ?
    A plan of action gives you a track to run on. It increases your level of belief and intensifies your desire for the goal. You gradually become convinced that your goal is actually possible and achievable