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

for you. You begin to see possibilities that you may not even have been aware of in the absence of a written plan.
    ■ STEP FIVE: TAKE ACTION
    ON YOUR PLAN
    Take action of some kind in the direction of your goal. Once you have set a goal, written it down, determined the price that you are ccc_tracy_3_40-51.qxd 6/23/03 2:47 PM Page 49
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    going to have to pay, and made a plan, you must take some action immediately. Even if you only make one phone call or collect one piece of information, be sure to do something . In the Bible it says,
    “Faith without deeds is dead.”
    There is something powerful in your willingness to take a specific action, in faith, in the direction of your goal, with no guarantee of success. Your action itself seems to trigger all kinds of other powers and forces in the universe. You activate the Law of Attraction to help you. When you take action, you demonstrate to yourself, and to others for that matter, that you are really serious about your goal.
    Until you have taken a specific, irrevocable action of some kind, you have merely engaged in an enjoyable exercise, like day-dreaming. You have put your key into the ignition but you haven’t turned it on.
    ■ STEP SIX: DO SOMETHING EVERY DAY
    Do something every day that moves you toward your most important goal. This is a vital success principle that generates energy and enthusiasm. For you to maintain your courage, confidence, and self-motivation, you must be doing something every single day that gives you a feeling of forward motion and progress. Your job is to build yourself up to the point where you genuinely feel unstoppable , and the only way that you can do this is by refusing to stop, by doing something daily.
    ■ STEP SEVEN: NEVER GIVE UP
    Resolve in advance that you will never quit once you have started toward your goal. No matter how many setbacks or obstacles you experience, make the decision that you will keep on picking yourself up and persisting until you eventually succeed.
    By deciding in advance that you will persist, no matter what the difficulty, you give yourself a psychological edge. When the difficulties do arise, you will be mentally prepared to plow through them rather than quitting. Your willingness and ability to persist are what will eventually guarantee your success.

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    CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE
    ■ SECRETS OF
    SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRES
    If money is your goal, remember that most of the people who are wealthy today started out with no money at all, or even deeply in debt. Almost everyone who is on the top today was once at the bottom. Almost everyone who is at the front of the line of life was once at the back of the line. Almost everyone who is wealthy today was once poor.
    Most of the five million millionaires in the United States are self-made. That is, they started out with nothing and worked their way up. Our world today has more than 300 self-made billionaires and multibillionaires as well. Many of these are people who started with little or nothing, and by changing their thinking, they unleashed their own inner potentials to achieve extraordinary financial results. And almost anything that anyone else has done, within reason, you can do as well. What are your goals?
    ■ THE POWER OF COMMITMENT
    One of my favorite quotations is from the mountain climber Charles Murray.
    Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is an elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment that one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
    All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidences and meetings and material assistance that no man could have