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Increase Your Three Types of Energy

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 30, 2008

Most successful people can be characterized as having very high levels of energy.

Since energy is the fuel with which everything is achieved, there seems to be a direct relationship between energy levels and levels of accomplishment. It is hard to imagine a tired, burned-out person achieving much in life. On the other hand, energetic, positive, forward-moving individuals seem to get and enjoy far more of the things life has to offer than does the average person.

Physical Energy is Basic
We have been led to believe that there is basically one kind of energy. We supposedly replenish this energy by sleeping at night, and during the day, we use it up again. It is as though we are machines powered by batteries, and each night we recharge our batteries for seven or eight hours. However, there are some problems with this view of energy. The biggest problem is that it does not deal with the fact that there are actually three different kinds of energy, each of which is necessary for maximum performance.

The three main forms are physical energy, emotional energy, and mental energy. Each of these energies is different, but they are interrelated, and they depend on each other.

The Sweat of Your Brow
Physical energy is raw energy, coarse energy, bulk energy, what we call "meat-and-potatoes" energy. Your physical energy is what you use to do physical labor. It is the primary energy applied by men and women who earn their livings by the sweat of their brow.

The Source of Enthusiasm
The second form of energy is emotional energy. This is the energy of enthusiasm and excitement. This is the energy that lends sparkle to the life of an individual. This is the energy that is necessary for feeling love, happiness, and joy. Largely, it is your emotional energy that makes life enjoyable for you. In fact, almost everything you say and do is determined in some way by an emotion, either positive or negative.

Learn to gain more energy with Fit and Trim for Life

The Requirement for Creativity
Mental energy is the energy of creativity, of problem solving and decision making. You use mental energy to make sales, write reports and proposals, plan your day and your week, and learn new subjects. Your level of mental energy is a major determinant of the quality of your life.

Conserve Your Best Energies
The reason why most people fail to realize their potential in life and work is because they burn up their energy at the emotional level, or the physical level; therefore, they have very little energy left over for mental activities. Most people burn up their emotional energy through the expression of negative emotions. Negative emotions are like a fire that burns up their energy so quickly that they have very little left with which to think positively and constructively. In fact, one five-minute uncontrolled outburst of anger can burn up as much energy as an average person would use in eight hours of work.

Your job is to think continually about how you can stay calm and positive, and work smoothly and efficient, so you can have more mental energy to do the things that are most important to you in life.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, take time to identify the different ways that you either use up or deplete your levels of physical, emotional and mental energy. How could you improve in each area?

Second, be sure to get plenty of healthful, nutritious food so you can keep your physical energy at high levels. This is the key to all other energies.

Third, look for ways to conserve your emotional energies by being more relaxed and optimistic in the face of daily problems and disappointments.

The more energy you have, the happier and more productive you will be.

Fit and Trim for Life

The Law of Saving

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 27, 2008

Financial freedom comes to the person who saves ten percent or more of his income throughout his lifetime.

One of the smartest things that you can ever do for yourself is to develop the habit of saving part of your salary, every single paycheck. Individuals, families and even societies are stable and prosperous to the degree to which they have high savings rates. Savings today are what guarantee the security and the possibilities of tomorrow.

Start With Yourself
The first corollary of the Law of Saving comes from the book The Richest Man in Babylon by George Classon. It is to "Pay yourself first."

Begin today to save ten percent of your earnings, off the top, and never touch it. This is your fund for long-term financial accumulation and you never use it for any other reason except to assure your financial future.

Secure your future with help from The Unbreakable Laws of Money Package

Develop New Habits Regarding Money
The remarkable thing is that when you pay yourself first, and force yourself to live on the other ninety percent, you will soon become accustomed to it. You are a creature of habit. When you regularly put away ten percent of your earnings, you soon become comfortable living on the other ninety percent. Many people start by saving ten percent of their income and then graduate to saving fifteen percent, twenty percent, and even more. And their financial lives change dramatically as a result. So will yours.

Take Every Advantage
The second corollary of the Law of Saving says, "Take advantage of tax deferred savings and investment plans." Because of high and even multiple tax rates, money that is saved or invested without being taxed accumulates at a rate of 30% to 40% faster than money that is subject to taxation. Self-made millionaires, according to Dr Thomas Stanley’s book The Millionaire Next Door, are almost obsessive about accumulating their funds in assets such as real estate, self owned businesses and equities that increase in value without triggering tax liabilities.

Invest in company pension and retirement plans, 401(k) plans, IRA’s, Keough Plans, Roth IRA’s, Education Investment Accounts, stock option programs and whatever else has been approved by the IRS for long term financial accumulation. Make every dollar count!

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, begin today to put away ten percent of your earnings. Set up a special account for this purpose and treat your contributions to this account with the same respect that you do your rent or mortgage payments each month.

Second, become a lifelong student of money. Read the best books, take courses and subscribe to the most helpful magazines. Know what you are doing so you can always make intelligent decisions when you invest your funds.

The Unbreakable Laws of Money Package

Starting Small

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 26, 2008

How and why you can start your own business with little or no money by using sweat equity.

Everyone Starts Off Broke
I used to feel sorry for myself because I came from a limited background and I had no money. Then I found that nobody has any money. Everyone starts off broke. In fact, most successful people go broke or nearly broke several times during their lives. Don’t let this hold you back.

Practice, Practice, Practice
Transformational leaders empower others by keeping them "in the know," by keeping them fully informed on everything that effects their jobs. People want and need to feel that they are "insiders," that they are aware of everything that is going on. There is nothing so demoralizing to a staff member than to be kept in the dark about their work and what is going on in the company.

But if you are willing to put in the time to learn, remember about 95 percent of the working population in America have the ability to start and build their own businesses if they would only do it. Multi-level marketing is an excellent second income opportunity where you can learn vital business skills at low cost. Especially selling, organizing, making presentations, accounting, team building, negotiating, persuading, and communicating. 85 percent of what you need to learn to be successful in business you can learn from running a successful multi-level marketing business.

Learn the The Universal Laws of Success and Achievement

Roll Up Your Sleeves
Remember this, though. Leaders are always willing to do what is called dog work. They’re willing to render humble service. They’re willing to roll up their sleeves and plunge in. They never think of themselves as being too good for a job. There are an enormous number of people who are presented with second income opportunities who turn them down because they think that they’re too good to do something like that. But the people who are thinking that they are too good are the people who retire poor. You’ll find that leaders of all organizations are always willing to roll up their sleeves and to get in there.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do to put these ideas into action immediately:

First, remember that buying and selling things is the essence of all business. Look for opportunities to buy and sell things on your own account. Visit garage sales or hold a garage sale of your own. Visit swap meets and negotiate with people with things for sale. Make it a game to learn these skills.

Second, start in a small business of some kind. Look for a second income or multi level marketing opportunity where you can buy and sell on a small scale. Many people become wealthy starting off with virtually nothing in this way.

The Universal Laws of Success and Achievement

The Race Heats Up

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 25, 2008

The race for the presidency of the United States now boils down to John McCain versus Barack Obama.

This may be the most important election in our history, at least for each of us who are Americans today and who will be affected by the outcome.

In my book Something for Nothing, I wrote that the most powerful principle governing human behavior is the Expediency Factor. This E-Factor says that, “People strive to get the things they want the fastest and easiest way possible with little or no concern with the secondary consequences of their behaviors.”

Alexis de Toqueville, in his book “Democracy in America,” wrote that, “America will be a great country until the people learn that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. After that, it will be a war of all against all with each person striving to get the greatest amount of ‘free money’ possible.”

At about the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, a Scottish history professor by the name of Professor Alexander Tyler had this to say about “The Fall of the Athenian Republic” over two thousand years before.

“A democracy can not exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy (which is always followed by a dictatorship).”

Professor Tyler went further:

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;

2. From spiritual faith to great courage;

3. From courage to liberty;

4. From abundance to complacency;

5. From complacency to apathy;

6. From apathy to dependence;

7. From dependence back into bondage.

I do not personally believe that America and Americans will follow this sequence of history, but as professor Rufus Fears says, the first law of history is that “People do not learn from history.”

Today, one party and one politician is offering “free money” to all who desire it, in the form of government handouts, bail-outs, increased spending at all levels. This is all going to be paid for by raising taxes on “the rich.”

Since the top 50% of income earners in America already pay 96.5% of all taxes, and the top 10% pay 76% of all taxes, where is the money coming from? Americans believe that they can have energy independence without drilling for oil or gas, or finding new reserves.

Many Americans believe that they can have prosperity without working, wealth without extraordinary dedication, and the highest living standard in the history of man on earth by simply putting in an average day’s work.

Fortunately, there are men and woman who continue to push, pull and drive our society forward on the basis of innovation, risk-taking, hard work, courage, determination and persistence. The entire future of America depends on these people.

A person of character is one who never asks for or expects to get something for nothing. A person of character is one who does not encourage others to seek for or to enjoy rewards without working, knowing that this is the surest way to personal destruction.

2008 is shaping up to be a very interesting election season. Be sure that you vote for the person or persons who spouse the vision, virtues and values that you stand for and believe in, and which have made America great.

The Principle of the Objective

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 16, 2008

Learn from the Lessons of History

The concepts of military strategy have been studied and written about for more than 4,000 years, going back to the early works of General Sun-Tzu in China more than 2,000 years BC. These principles of strategy that have been developed and perfected over the centuries have direct applications and implications for strategic thinking, both personally and corporately.

Decide In Advance What You Want
The most important military principle is the Principle of the Objective. This principle requires that you decide in advance exactly what it is that you are trying to accomplish. What exactly is your objective? In my experience, fully 80% of all problems in personal and corporate life come from a lack of clarity with regard to objectives and goals.

Clarity Is Critical
Clarity of objective precedes all other elements in strategic thinking. Here are some questions that you can use over and over again to focus and clarify your objectives. The first question is, "What am I trying to do?" The second question is, "How am I trying to do it?" The third question is, "What are my assumptions?" And the fourth question is, "What if my assumptions were wrong?"

Question Your Assumptions
Having the courage to ask these questions, and to question your assumptions, both spoken and unspoken, is a key mark of the superior person. Sometimes individuals avoid questioning their assumptions for fear that they will have to change their minds or do something other than what they started out to do. However, false assumptions lie at the root of almost every failure. The only way that you can root out these wrong assumptions is by carefully analyzing them and discussing them, and then by demanding proof or evidence that these assumptions are still valid.

Project Forward In Your Mind
Another method for clarifying your objectives is for you to project forward and look backward. In other words, imagine that you have already achieved the objective that you are working toward. Project yourself forward in your mind and then look back to the present day, to the present moment. What do you see? What changes could you make looking back from this imaginary perspective of hindsight? This is a key peak performance thinking technique.

Think clearly with The Power of Clarity

Determine Why You Want It
The final part of clarifying your objectives revolves around your identifying the reasons why you want to achieve this objective in the first place. Why is it important? Is it still as important as when you started off? Is this objective more important than any other objective that you could be working on? It is essential that you be clear about the answers to these questions.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to apply the principle of the objective to your personal and business life:

First, take out a piece of paper and answer the question: "What am I trying to do?" What are your goals? What are your objectives? Why are you doing what you are doing in the first place? Is this the very best use of your time and energy?

Second, question your assumptions. What things are you assuming are true about yourself, the people around you and the situation? What if one of these assumptions turned out to be false? What changes would you have to make if you found that your most cherished assumptions were not based on reality, or were contradicted by facts?

The Power of Clarity

Trust Your Intuition

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 13, 2008

The Essence of Business Success

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.

Add Value in Some Way
The key to a successful business is to add value by bringing the product or service from another place to where you’re selling it, or by creating the product or service and selling it at a price higher than your total cost of production. You become wealthy by either selling a few products or services at high prices, or by selling many products or services at lower prices with smaller profits.

The Best Strategy of All
The best strategy, of course, is to aim to sell a larger volume with a smaller profit on each item. Most great fortunes in America have been made selling large quantities of products over a wide area, thereby broadening the market and reducing your dependency on just a few customers.

Go From the Known to the Unknown
Early in my business career, I learned another key rule for business success and it’s simply this. Start off in an established field and only experiment with new products or services out of your profits from your established business.

Learn the Way To Wealth System

Success Leaves Tracks: Follow Them
One reason many entrepreneurs fail is that they have grandiose ideas of being the first into the market with a brand new, untried, unproven product. Don’t you fall into this trap. As you begin to magnetize your mind with visual images of wealth and success, as you begin looking everywhere for profitable ideas, you will begin to attract into your life the people and opportunities you need to achieve your goals. I’ve learned from long experience that you must learn to trust your intuition, your gut feeling concerning any business decision.

Flood Your Mind With Ideas
Read every publication, explore every opportunity. Remain open to all ideas. But in the final analysis, trust yourself. Trust your inner voice to tell you the right thing to do. All great businesspeople become great by listening to their inner guide. It will never fail to lead you to your highest good and heaven help the person who refuses to listen to it.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to start a successful business by trusting your intuition before you make a final decision:

First, always remember that the key to success in business is your ability to add value to your customers by providing them with something they want and need at a price that enables you to make a profit. Keep your thinking focused on the benefit that your customer will enjoy from what you are offering.

Second, get all the information you possibly can. Speak to as many people as possible. And finally, sit down quietly by yourself and listen to your intuition before you make the final decision. This is the best investment of all.

The Way to Wealth System

Build Your Own Business

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 12, 2008

The high road to becoming a self-made millionaire in America is starting and building your own business.

But this is not as easy as it sounds. Most businesses started by inexperienced people fail. Probably the primary reason why people don’t start businesses is because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their money and for good reason. 99 percent of businesses started by people lacking business experience fail within the first two or three years.

Why Businesses Fail
And why is that? It’s because they don’t know how. They haven’t the slightest idea how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for a product or service, but they don’t know all the things that they need to know to run a successful business.

Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80 percent of businesses started by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what to do. They know how to purchase their products and their services. They know how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know how to sell and to market. They know how to manage their finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how.

Learn how with 21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business

Control Your Costs
The second reason that businesses fail, 46 percent, is because of poor cost control. They may be selling enough on the front end, but they’re losing so much on the back end that they go broke anyway. Sales and marketing, financing and cost control, both require experience. And if you’re serious about becoming financially independent, you have to learn how to do both of these.

Put Luck On Your Side
You must learn the skills you need to be successful. Business success is not a matter of luck. Business success is a matter of application. It’s a matter of ability. It’s a matter of experience and skill and intelligence, and wonderfully enough, you can learn what you need to know to be successful.

And you can start by learning through on-the-job training, which is called OJT. Most successful businesspeople become successful because they get all their training by working for someone else.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to make sure that your business succeeds greatly:

First, take the time to get the knowledge and experience you need in business by working for someone else where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Go to work in an area in which you are interested and learn everything you possibly can.

Second, read and study in business, especially entrepreneurial business, all the time. Read one or two business books per week and read every business magazine that is published on your subject. Never stop learning and growing.

21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business

The Way to Wealth

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 11, 2008

When I was growing up, my dream, and my fantasy was to be a millionaire by the age of 30.

I soon found out this is a common dream; everyone wants to be a millionaire by the age of 30.

Throughout my twenties, I traveled and worked all over the world, touching down in eighty countries on five continents. I worked at a variety of different jobs, from washing dishes and running barbed wire on a ranch all the way through to factory work, construction work and finally into sales and sales management. But by the time I reached the age of thirty, I was as broke as I was at the age of twenty.

Then, I really got serious. I began asking, “Why are some people more successful than others?”

In the Bible it says, “Seek and ye shall find, for all who seek, findeth.”

Whenever you start looking for the answer to an important question, you will start to find that answer, and sometimes in the most remarkable places.

My first realization was that I didn’t know anything about millionaires. For many years, I had dreamed of becoming a millionaire, but I didn’t know how people achieved that magic number, starting from nothing.

Over the next few years, I read everything I could find about self-made millionaires. I discovered that this type of person had been exhaustedly studied and researched, interviewed and questioned, and very definite profiles of people who become millionaires had emerged.

The bottom line is that fully 80% of self-made millionaires started off in sales or entrepreneurship. Most of them came from average or humbled beginnings. Many did not graduate from high school or go to college. Many were immigrants who arrived on these shores with no friends, no contacts, no money, limited education and no language skills. And yet somehow they went on to become millionaires within one generation.

What they all had in common was a combination of vision plus courage. They had a clear vision or dream of becoming financially successful, although most of them started out with no idea at all how they would achieve this goal.

Most importantly, they had the courage to step out in faith, into the unknown, risking the loss of time and effort, with no guarantee of success.

Most people who become millionaires achieve their wealth in a way that is completely different from the way that they first anticipated. In a thirteen year study at Babson College, they found that successful entrepreneurs and business builders had one quality. They were willing to “launch” toward their goal, and then make continual course corrections as they got feedback from their activities.

Today, there are 26 million businesses in the United States, and entrepreneurs are forming new businesses at the rate of about one million per year. Unfortunately, 95% of entrepreneurs earn less than $50,000 per year, no matter how many years they had been working, or how many hours they worked each week.

Why is this? Why is it that intelligent, ambitious, hard-working men and woman, who have the vision and courage to start their own businesses, struggle year after year, often earning less than they would if they took a salary job? Why does this happen?

The answer is simple. People who succeed in business and become millionaires are those who “know more” about their business and the market than other people do. People who become millionaires invariably focus and concentrate with laser like determination on mastering the essential skills necessary to build a profitable enterprise.

Fortunately, all business skills are learnable. You can learn any skill you need to learn to achieve any goal you set for yourself, as long as your goal is clear.

You can learn how to market and sell, how to negotiate and persuade. You can learn how to do costing and pricing for your products and services. You can learn how to select, interview and hire the key people you need to grow your business. You can learn how to borrow money from your bank and from twenty-five other sources used by successful business people.

You can learn how to do joint-ventures and form strategic alliances. You can learn how to correctly analyze a business opportunity before you get into it, thereby saving you enormous amounts of money and time.

Today, there are more opportunities for you to achieve financial success, and to become a millionaire, than have ever existed in history before. And even though the economy goes through ups and downs, fluctuating like the stock market, the overall trend is positive in more than 90% of cases.

Begin today. Set a goal to become financially independent and determine the exact amount of money that you want to have to achieve this objective. Sit down, make a plan. Set priorities. And then launch toward your goal with complete commitment and determination.

Resolve in advance that you will never give up. You will learn from every experience. You will study every aspect of your business so that you are considered an expert in your field. You will continually make new plans to replace the old plans that don’t work. You will except feedback and self-correct as you move forward. You will never give up.

If you will do these things, including reading my series, “The Way to Wealth” books one, two and three; there is nothing that can stop you from achieving your financial goals in the months and years ahead.

Good luck!

Transformational Leadership

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 9, 2008

Advancing Your Career

As your career advances, you move along the scale from employee, to supervisor to manager and finally, to leader. Managers, and some leaders, engage in what is called transactional leadership, the deployment and management of people and resources to get results.

Arouse Emotion In Others
However, at the highest end of the leadership scale, we come to what is called "transformational leadership." Transformational leadership is defined as leadership that arouses emotion, that taps into the emotional and spiritual resources of an organization. Transformational leadership empowers people to greatly exceed their previous levels of accomplishment.

Make People Feel Terrific
Empowerment is the key. Transformational leaders are those who can elicit extraordinary performance from ordinary men and women. The superior leader is like a catalyst in a chemical process that causes the other ingredients to work together in a superior fashion.

Become an outstanding manager with the Leadership for Results Package.

A Key Function of Leadership
Empowerment as a key function of leadership becomes even more important as the work force becomes dominated by members of the Generation X. These highly individualistic men and women are increasingly seeking higher meaning and purpose in their careers. They are not impressed by authority or hierarchy. If they don’t get the satisfaction they are seeking from their work, they will go somewhere else. And the better they are at what they do, the more readily they will leave one job for another.

Provide the Emotional Glue
Transactional leadership is essential to getting the job done but transformational leadership is what provides the emotional glue that causes organizations and the people in them to excel.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to become a transformational leader and empower your people.

First, get excited about your work. The more excited and committed you are to your work, the more excited and committed will be the people around you. The leader always sets the tone for the department or organization.

Second, continually encourage and praise the people who work for you. The better you make people feel about themselves and their work, the more empowered they will feel and the more committed they will be to your company.

Leadership for Results Package

Leadership for Results Package

Five Ways to Become Wealthy

Posted by Brian Tracy on Jun 5, 2008

The Five Roads to Financial Success in America and How to Choose Your Own

There are basically five ways that you can become wealthy starting with nothing in America based on over 25 years of research into American millionaires. Number one, you can inherit it. Less than 10 percent of wealthy Americans inherited any of their money, and it’s less and less every single year.

The Second Way
The second way that you can become wealthy is you can achieve it professionally. You can become a doctor or a lawyer or an architect or an accountant. You can become extremely good at what you do, be paid very well, and hold on to the money.

The Third Way
The third way you can achieve it is you can become a senior executive of a large corporation. You can be highly paid; you can have stock options and bonuses. And if you stay with the company long enough, for enough years, you can be paid enough to become wealthy.

The Fourth Way
You can win it. But only a tiny fraction of one percent of wealthy Americans got that way by winning their money some way or another. As a matter of fact, the odds against you winning the lottery are the equivalent of lightning striking twice in the same place. They’re millions and millions to one.

Learn the Way To Wealth System

The Best Way
The fifth way that you can become wealthy is you can start your own business and earn it all by yourself. Starting your own business has been and will always be the high road to becoming wealthy for most self-made millionaires. Entrepreneurship in America offers more opportunities and opens more doors than all other possibilities put together. This is why it has been said that if you have the ability to start your own business and you don’t do it, you are a fool. I’ll repeat that. If you have the ability to start your own business and you don’t do it, you’re a fool.

Where do you start?
You start by getting your finances under control. The very first thing you do is you make a decision to get your finances under control. Some years ago, a man named George Classon wrote a book called The Richest Man In Babylon. It’s a classic on financial success and what Classon said in that book was that the key to becoming wealthy is to pay yourself first. Take ten percent off your earnings, off your gross income every month and put it aside. Learn to live on ninety percent or less of your gross income. So the very first thing that you do is you begin to save your money.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put yourself onto the high road to personal wealth:

First, resolve today to begin saving your money a little bit at a time. Set a goal to save 10% of your earnings, to put it away and to never touch it. This will change your life.

Second, immediately register your own business or sole proprietorship. Open a bank account, get business cards and letterhead and create the corporate entity under which you can do business. Your business opportunities will appear far sooner than you think. If you build it, they will come.

The Way to Wealth System