Factors of Risk in Selling
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 28, 2009
The Critical Factor: Risk
The critical factor in selling today is risk. Because of the continuous change, rapid obsolescence, and an uncertain economy, the risk of buying the wrong product or service has become greater than ever before.
One of our powerful needs is for security, and any buying decision that represents uncertainty triggers the feeling of risk that threatens that security.
There are four main factors that contribute to the perception of risk in the mind and hear of the customer. Read the rest of this entry »
Riding Out the Storm
Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 4, 2008
Our world is in financial turmoil today.
The chickens have all come home to roost. Millions of smart people world-wide became convinced that they could make quick, easy money without contributing or adding value of any kind. Since it is ultimately impossible to get something out of nothing, the house of cards eventually had to come crashing down.
In 1977, the Jimmy Carter administration passed the Community Reinvestment Act, designed to harass banks into making unsafe loans in poor neighborhoods populated by people who could not afford to buy a house. Eventually these loans became known in the industry as "Ninja Loans."
This meant, "no job, no income, no assets, no money and no credit rating." When Clinton came into power, he fired up the Community Reinvestment Act and threatened banks with lawsuits and fines if they did not make loans to people that they knew could not, or would not pay them back. So called "Community Organizers" and other individuals and groups began holding demonstrations in bank lobbies to bully banks into providing these loans so that more and more people with no credit rating could buy homes that they could not afford and agreed to paying off debts that they had no money to cover.
These "Ninja Loans" began growing in the 1990’s and when interest rates dropped dramatically after the dot.com explosion in 2001, more and more people, including millions with good credit ratings, began demanding these "Ninja Loans" as well.
What to do? The banks, in all good conscious, could not make bad loans. They were forbidden by law to issue mortgages to people who couldn’t repay them. So the federal government stepped in with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government mortgage lending organizations, to "guarantee" these loans, actually converting them into a form of "cash reserve" that banks and other financial institutions could use to inflate their assets.
As you may know, banks have what are called "reserve requirements." This means that they must have one dollar of cash on hand for every ten dollars that they lend to consumers or corporations. This is called "leverage" and is the reason why banking can be an extremely profitable industry.
Banks and other financial institutions found that they could package hundreds and thousands of these mortgages, some good, but mostly bad, into packages that obscured the fact that they were lending far more than the unlined properties were actually worth. This so called "securitization" of mortgages, backed extensively by the federal government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, became treated as cash reserves for banks all over the world. Since the yield on these "securitized loans" was substantially higher than the banks could earn in the process of normal banking business, banks and financial institutions world-wide began buying these "government guaranteed notes" and adding them to their reserves.
Then the impending disaster began. These financial institutions began to lend against these shaky sub-prime securitized notes, leveraging them by ten times and more. When Lehman Brothers went broke, they were leveraging these underline sub-prime assets as much as 40 times. To put it another way, for every dollars worth of sub-prime mortgage assets they had, they were extending 40 dollars in loans to more and more people and corporations who were then using the money to bid up real estate and assets and corporate stock prices. This was very much like a reverse pyramid with the dollar on the bottom and forty dollars on the top. When the dollar on the bottom shrunk to 50 cents, the banks had to reduce their leverage by ten times and twenty times the shrinkage of their "assets." As we see today, this led to financial collapse of multi-billion dollar financial organizations.
The Bush administration attempted on sixteen different occasions to reign-in in the out-of-control lending of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which eventually reached as high as $1.5 trillion in "government backed loans." Time and time again, the supporters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, all of whom received huge political campaign donations from these organizations, fought back the federal regulators and refused to reign-in the out-of-control lending. The result is the financial meltdown that we are experiencing today.
What is to be done? If there is any good news, it is the fact that there have been financial panics and crashes since the first founding of the first bank shortly after the successful American Revolution. In every case, the smartest and best brains in America have gotten together to solve the problem and return the situation to some semblance of normalcy.
This financial crisis is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Nonetheless, is it not as bad because the experts are far more knowledgeable about what works and what doesn’t work in getting the country out of a financial panic.
The process is messy. Every day people like Henry Paulson and others are announcing different ideas and plans to bail out banks, corporations and institutions. The most important factor is that the economy receive enough government backing to stabilize, very much like a small ship that has been hit by a squall and is listing over, taking on water and threatening to sink. This will not happen.
What can you do? In any storm, you have no choice but to "batter down the hatches." You should cut all discretionary spending and build up cash reserves in any way possible. Make a decision today to get out of debt and stay out of debt. Start paying down your high interest credit cards and be prepared to take a hit in your standard of living. This will mean eating at home more often, spending less on Christmas presents and discretionary expenses, and concentrating intensely on financial liquidity and solvency.
The biggest lesson of this financial crisis is that we have lived beyond our means for far too long. The United States Government has been borrowing 500 billion dollars per year from overseas to give the American voting public benefits and goodies that it is not willing to tax them for. The American public themselves have become like pigs at a trough, demanding ever more money and benefits from the federal government without being willing to pay for it. All of this debt is being passed onto our children and grandchildren.
The average American family now owes $450,000 as their share of the national debt. A child born today starts off with a personal debt of almost $200,000 that will have to be taken out of his standard of living in the form of reduced wages and interest payments for the rest of his or her life.
Here is the bottom line: Government must live within its means. Government should be able to manage 100% of it’s expenditures on 90-95% of its income, and use the balance to pay down the national debt.
Personally, you should make a decision today to live on 90% of your income or less, and save/invest the other 10% for financial security and financial independence. You should never again go into debt. You should never again live beyond your means. You should never again spend money that you don’t have on the off-chance that you might enjoy a financial loophole by flipping a property sometime in the future. Remember, "Hope is not a strategy." The entire population has been on the equivalent of a financial drinking binge and is now going to suffer the effects of a long and painful hangover. But at the end, with what we have learned, each of us should be able to put our financial house in order, budget appropriately, live within our means, and go on to build a solid financial estate in the years ahead.
Brian Tracy
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- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
Neutralizing Your Two Major Fears
Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 1, 2008
The Greatest Obstacle to Success
The fear of failure is the single greatest obstacle to success in adult life. Taken to its extreme, we become totally pre-occupied with not making a mistake, with seeking approval for security above all other considerations. The experience of the fear of failure is in the words of "I can’t", "I can’t." We feel it in the front of the body, starting at the solar plexus and moving up to the rapid beating of the heart, rapid breathing and a tight throat. We also experience this fear in the bladder and in the irresistible need to run to the bathroom.
The Fear of Rejection Holds You Back
The second major fear that interferes with performance and inhibits expression, is the fear of rejection. We learn this when our parents make their love conditional upon our behavior. If we do what pleases them, they give us love and approval. If we do something they don’t like, they withdraw their love and approval-which we interpret as rejection.
The Roots of Type A Behavior
As adults, people raised with conditional love become preoccupied with the opinions of others. Many men develop Type A behavior which is characterized by hostility, suspicion and an obsession with performance to some undetermined high standard. This is expressed in the attitude of "I have to, I have to," and is associated with the feeling that "I have to work harder and accomplish more in order to please the boss" who has become a surrogate parent.
The Most Common Trap
More than 99 percent of adults experience both these fears of failure and rejection. They are caught in the trap of feeling, "I can’t, but "I have to," "I have to," but "I can’t."
The Key to Peak Performance
The antidote to these fears is the development of courage, character and self-esteem. The opposite of fear is actually love, self-love and self-respect. Acting with courage in a fearful situation is simply a technique that boosts our regard for ourselves to such a degree that our fears subside and lose their ability to effect our behavior and our decisions.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to increase your self-esteem and self-confidence and overcome your fears.
First, realize and accept that you can do anything you put your mind to. Repeat the words, "I can do it! I can do it!" whenever you feel afraid for any reason.
Second, continually think of yourself as a valuable and important person and remember that temporary failure is the way you learn how to succeed.
The Science of Self-Confidence Training Kit
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
The Law of Investing
Posted by Brian Tracy on Nov 21, 2008
This is one of the most important of all the laws of money.
The Law of Investing - investigate before you invest. This is one of the most important of all the laws of money. You should spend at least as much time studying a particular investment as you do earning the money to put into that particular investment.
Check Every Detail
Never let yourself be rushed into parting with money. You have worked too hard to earn it and taken too long to accumulate it. Investigate every aspect of the investment well before you make any commitment. Ask for full and complete disclosure of every detail. Demand honest, accurate and adequate information on any investment of any kind. If you have any doubt or misgivings at all, you will probably be better off keeping your money in the bank or in a money market investment account than you would be speculating or taking the risk of losing it.
Money is Easy to Lose
The first corollary of the Law of Investing is: "The only thing easy about money is losing it." It is hard to make money in a competitive market but losing it is one of the easiest things you can ever do. A Japanese proverb says, "Making money is like digging with a nail, while losing money is like pouring water on the sand."
The Best Rule of All
The second corollary of this law comes from the self-made billionaire, Marvin Davis, who was asked about his rules for making money in an interview in Forbes Magazine.
He said that he has one simple rule and it is, "Don’t lose money." He said that if there is a possibility that you will lose your money, don’t part with it in the first place. This principal is so important that you should write it down and put it where you can see it. Read it and reread it over and over.
Time Equals Money
Think of your money as if it were a piece of your life. You have to exchange a certain number of hours, weeks and even years of your time in order to generate a certain amount of money for savings or investment. That time is irreplaceable. It is a part of your precious life that is gone forever. If all you do is hold on to the money, rather than losing it, that alone can assure that you achieve financial security. Don’t lose money.
Be Smart About Investing
The third corollary of the Law of Investing says: "If you think you can afford to lose a little, you’re going to end up losing a lot."
There is something about the attitude of a person who feels that he has enough money that he can afford to risk losing a little. You remember the old saying, "A fool and his money are soon parted." There’s another saying, "When a man with experience meets a man with money, the man with the money is going to end up with the experience and the man with the experience is going to end up with the money." Always ask yourself what would happen if you lost one hundred percent of your money in a prospective investment. Could you handle that? If you could not, don’t make the investment in the first place.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:
First, think back over the various financial mistakes you have made in your life. What did they have in common? What can you learn from them? Accurate diagnosis is half the cure.
Second, invest only in things that you fully understand and believe in. Take investment advice only from people who are financially successful from taking their own advice. Play it safe. It’s better to hold onto your money rather than to take a chance of losing it, along with all the time it took you to earn it.
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
Wall Street Journal
Posted by Brian Tracy on Oct 29, 2008
Article about the upcoming elections
Dear Readers,
Usually, I send out a message talking abut my current experiences.
However this time, in response to numerous requests for my ideas on the upcoming election on November 4, I’ve decided to send to you someone else’s opinions.
This summarizes the best economic thinking on the subject.
Enjoy!
>>>
Wall Street Journal
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
The nearby table shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.
- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.
Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.
The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.
The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman’s Web site for a not-so-brief target list.
The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.
Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.
The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.
Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.
The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.
Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress — Democratic, naturally.
Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.
Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar’s ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.
It’s always possible that events — such as a recession — would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn’t turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama’s agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton’s was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore’s BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.
In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today’s left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.
W. Carl Wood, Senior Financial Management Analyst
Treasury Relations and System Support
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
P. O. Box 442
St. Louis, Missouri 63166-0442
>>>
Vote with your conscience. Now you know what we’re dealing with.
Best regards,
Brian
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals fater than you ever imagined!
The Causes of Money
Posted by Brian Tracy on Oct 24, 2008
Never Worry About Money Again
You must aim to reach the point where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. The good news is that financial independence is easier to achieve today than it has ever been before. We live in the richest country at the richest time in all of human history. We are surrounded by more wealth and affluence than ever before. Your job is to get your fair share.
Financial Success Is Not An Accident
The Law of Cause and Effect applies to money as much as to any other subject. This law says that financial success is an effect. As such, it proceeds from certain, specific causes. When you identify these causes and implement them in your own life and activities, you will get the same effects that hundreds of thousands, and even millions of others have gotten. You can achieve whatever level of affluence you really want if you will just do what others have done before you to achieve the same results. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.
Your Beliefs Determine Your Success
There is perhaps no other area where universal laws are more in evidence than in the acquiring and keeping of money. In America today, there are several million men and women who have started with nothing, or deeply in debt, and achieved financial independence. Their attitudes and behaviors have been studied in great depth. We now know the keys to wealth creation better than ever before. And what we know is that your most cherished beliefs on the subject of money will be the primary determinants of how much you acquire and how much you keep over the course of your working lifetime.
Your Primary Aim in Life
Your primary aim in life should be the achievement of your own happiness. However, happiness is something that exists naturally in the absence of fears, doubts and negative emotions. One of the factors that most deprives you of happiness is worry about money. And, by the way, when we talk about money worries, we’re not referring to your having too much. The problem is virtually always that people feel that they have too little money and their lives are suffering as a result.
Build a Financial Fortress
Perhaps the greatest single fear, the one that causes you more distress and unhappiness than anything else, is the fear of failure. In the area of money, you experience this as the fear of poverty and the fear of loss. Since one of the deepest needs of human nature is security, any threat to your security, real or imaginary, can cause you tremendous stress.
The The Way to Wealth System will help you become financially independent!
You can only free yourself from the fears of poverty and failure by achieving a specific level of financial worth and then by building a fortress around it so that you are safe and impregnable. This achievement of financial independence is a key responsibility of adult life. No one else will do it for you.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to implement the Law of Cause and Effect in your financial life:
First, begin today to implement the causes of financial success in our society. This requires that you spend less, save more, invest carefully and strive toward financial independence.
Second, study other people who are financially successful who have started from little or nothing. Find out what they did to become financially independent and discipline yourself to do the same things.
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
Creating Your Own Security
Posted by Brian Tracy on Oct 21, 2008
The rate of change is not only faster than ever before, but it is discontinuous.
Throughout most of human history, we have been accustomed to evolution, or the gradual changing and progressing of events in a straight line. Sometimes the process of change was faster and sometimes it was slower, but it almost always seemed to be progressive, from one step to the other, allowing you some opportunities for planning, predicting and changing.
Today, however, the rate of change is not only faster than ever before, but it is discontinuous. It is taking place in a variety of unconnected areas and affecting each of us in a variety of unexpected ways. Changes in information processing technologies are happening separately from changes in medicine, changes in transportation, changes in education, changes in politics and changes in global competition. Changes in family formation and relationships are happening separately from the rise and fall of new businesses and industries in different parts of the country. And if anything, this rate of accelerated, discontinuous change is increasing. As a result, most of us are already suffering from what Alvin Toffler once called, “future shock.”
You can’t do very much about the enormity of these changes, but the one thing that you can do is to think seriously about yourself and your basic need for security and stability. In no area is this more important than in the areas of job security and financial security. You must give special attention to your ability to make a good living and provide for yourself in the months and years ahead.
Above all, to position yourself for tomorrow, you must think continuously and seriously about your work today, your earning ability , and the work that you will be doing one, three, and five years from today. You must plan to achieve your own financial security, no matter what happens.
Charles Kettering said that you should give a lot of thought to the future because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life. One of the greatest mistakes that people can make, and the one with the worst long-term consequences, is to think only about the present and give very little thought to what might happen in the months and years ahead.
When our grandfathers started work, it was quite common for them to get a basic education and then go to work for a company and stay with that same company for the rest of their working lives. When our parents went to work, it was more common for them to change jobs three or four times during their lifetime, although it was difficult and disruptive.
Today, with increased turbulence and change in the national and global economy, a person starting work can expect to have five full-time careers between the ages of 21 and 65, and 14 full-time jobs lasting two years or more. According to Fortune Magazine, fully 40 percent of American employees in the 21st Century will be “contingency” workers. This means that they will never work permanently for another company. They will continue to move as needed, from company to company, from job to job, earning less money than full-time employees and accruing very few, if any, benefits in terms of health care and pension plans.
Imagine what your job will look like five years from today. Since knowledge in your field is probably doubling every five years, this means that fully twenty percent of your knowledge and your ability in your field is becoming obsolete each year. In five years, you will be doing a brand new job with brand new skills and abilities. Ask yourself, “What parts of my knowledge, skills and work are becoming obsolete? What am I doing today that is different than what I was doing one year ago and two years ago?” What are you likely to be doing one year, two years, three years, four years and five years from today? What knowledge and skills will you need and how will you acquire them? What is your plan for your economic and financial future?
We are now in the knowledge age. Today, the chief factors of production are knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge to achieving results for other people. Your earning ability today is largely dependent upon your knowledge, skill and your ability to combine that knowledge and skill in such a way that you contribute value for which customers are going to pay.
The Law of Three says that you must contribute three dollars of profit for every dollar that you wish to earn in salary. It costs a company approximately double your salary to employ you in terms of space, benefits, supervision, and investment in furniture, fixtures, and other resources. For a company to hire you, they have to make a profit on what they pay you. Therefore, you must contribute value greatly in excess of the amount you earn in order to stay employed. To put it another way, your earning ability must be considerably greater than the amount you are receiving, or you will find yourself looking for another job.
To position yourself for tomorrow, here is one of the most important rules you will ever learn: “The future belongs to the competent.” The future belongs to those men and women who are very good at what they do. Pat Riley, in his book The Winner Within, wrote that, “If you are not committed to getting better at what you are doing, you are bound to get worse.” To phrase it another way, anything less than a commitment to excellent performance on your part is an unconscious acceptance of mediocrity. It used to be that you needed to be excellent to rise above the competition in your industry. Today, you must be excellent even to keep your job in your industry.
The marketplace is a stern task master. Today, excellence, quality, and value are absolutely essential elements of any product or service, and of the work of any person. Your earning ability is largely determined by the perception of excellence, quality, and value that others have of you and what you do. The market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. It pays average rewards for average performance, and it pays below average rewards or unemployment for below average performance. Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive. It’s not personal. It’s just the way our economy works.
To earn more, you must learn more. You are maxed out today at your current level of knowledge and skill. However much you are earning at this moment is the maximum you can earn without learning and practicing something new and different.
And here’s the rub. Your accumulated knowledge and experience is becoming obsolete bit by bit, day by day. The knowledge in your field is doubling every three to five years. That means that your knowledge must double every three to five years just for you to stay even.
The solution to the dilemma of unavoidable change and restructuring is continuous self-development. Your personal knowledge and your ability to apply that knowledge are your most valuable assets. To stay on top of your world, you must continually add to your knowledge and your ability. You must continually build up your mental assets if you want to enjoy a continuous return on your investment. And only by building on your current assets do you stop them from deteriorating.
By engaging in continuous self-improvement, you can put yourself behind the wheel of your own life. By dedicating yourself to enhancing your earning ability, you will automatically be engaging in the continuous process of personal development. By learning more, you prepare yourself to earn more. You position yourself for tomorrow by developing the knowledge and skills that you need to be a valuable and productive part of our economy, no matter which direction it goes.
Moving Upward and Onward
Posted by Brian Tracy on Sep 29, 2008
Don’t Sell Yourself Short
It’s not what you have but what you do with what you have that will determine your success or failure. Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist said that the story of the human race is the story of people selling themselves short. He said people have a tendency to settle for far less from life than they are truly capable of. Many people are spinning their wheels in careers where they should be moving rapidly onward and upward. Here’s how you can put your career on the fast track.
Choose Your Parents Carefully
Someone once said that the key to success was to choose your parents carefully. That may be partially true but it is even more important to choose your job or career with great care. The choice of a job or occupation for which you are ideally suited comes before anything else. If you try to work at something you don’t enjoy or don’t believe in, you’ll never be happy, and you’ll never be successful.
Be the Best At What You Do
Which leads us to the next point. If you want to reach the stars in your career, you have to become excellent at what you do. You have to pay any price, go any distance, spend any amount of time necessary to "be the best." Extraordinary rewards only go for extraordinary performance; average rewards for average performance; below average rewards, insecurity and failure for below average performance. And here’s a vital key, you are being paid today exactly what you’re worth - no more, no less. If you want to earn more, you must increase your worth, your value to others.
Move onward and upward with The Universal Laws of Success and Achievement.
The Key to Motivation
The reason why choosing the right career, why doing what you love to do is so important, is because unless you really care about your work, you will never be motivated to persist at it until you become excellent. And until you become excellent at what you’re doing, you can’t move ahead.
The Key to Peak Performance
The antidote to these fears is the development of courage, character and self-esteem. The opposite of fear is actually love, self-love and self-respect. Acting with courage in a fearful situation is simply a technique that boosts our regard for ourselves to such a degree that our fears subside and lose their ability to effect our behavior and our decisions.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to be more successful in your career.
First, set high standards for yourself and recognize that anything that someone else has achieved, you can probably achieve as well. There are no limits.
Second, select one key skill area that is important in your job and resolve to become absolutely excellent in that area. Start today to get better and better.
The Universal Laws of Success and Achievement
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined!
Fortune Favors the Brave
Posted by Brian Tracy on Sep 3, 2008
Boldness is a necessary part of courage but it must be a boldness based on an intelligent assessment of the potential risks and rewards.
The wonderful nature of boldness is that, properly directed, it builds the habit of courage in the person who practices it.
Act Boldly in Every Situation
In my experience, any virtue translated into action leads almost invariably to positive results. This applies to integrity, persistence, courtesy, love and courage. I’ve always liked the advice of an old man to his grandson. “Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.”
Take a Leap of Faith
Perhaps the most obviously important part of courage is the courage to step out in the face of uncertainty. Every great venture in the history of man has begun with faith and a giant leap into the unknown.
General Douglas MacArthur said, “There is no security in life, only opportunity.” The creed of Frederick The Great, one of history’s most successful leaders was, “Audacity, audacity-always audacity.”
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Launch With No Guarantees
A 12-year study of successful entrepreneurs conducted by Babson College concluded that the only thing they had in common was the willingness to launch, to step out in faith. Once they had started, they learned the lessons they needed to succeed. Many of them ending up successful in completely different businesses from where they started.
Dare to Go Forward
Dare to go forward. Successful companies are invariably those that continue to research, develop, experiment and introduce new products and services - even during the deepest recessions. Successful executives are those who are continually stretching themselves to move out of the comfort zone, to face the twin fears of failure and rejection and to move forward in spite of them.
Action Exercises
Here are two ways to develop greater boldness in your work and personal life.
First, just do it! Step out in faith! If you think of some action you can take to improve your life, give it a try. You may be surprised.
Second, when in doubt, act with audacity. Audacity may get you into trouble but even more audacity will get you out. Go for it!
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See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Helping you achieve your personal and business goals faster than you ever imagined
Increasing Your Value
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 21, 2008
Your goal is to organize your life in such a way that you enjoy a good income, a high standard of living, and that you are the master of your economic destiny rather than a victim of changing economic times.
Contribution is the Key
Your job is an opportunity to contribute a value to your company in excess of your cost. In its simplest terms, your job is as secure as your ability to render value in excess of what it costs to keep you on the payroll. If you want to earn more money at your current job, you have to increase your value, your contribution to the enterprise.
Add Value Every Day
If you want to get a new job, you have to find a way to contribute value to that enterprise. If you want any kind of job security, you must continually work at maintaining and increasing your value in the competitive marketplace.
And here’s a key point. Your education, knowledge, skills and experience all are investments in your ability to contribute a value for which you can be paid. But they are like any other investments. They are highly speculative.
Knowledge and Education Are Sunk Costs
Once you have learned a subject or developed a skill, it is a sunk cost. It is time and money spent that you cannot get back. No employer in the marketplace has any obligation to pay you for it, unless he can use your skill to produce a product or service that people are ready to buy, today.
Prepare For Your Next Job
Whatever job you are doing, you should be preparing for your next job. And the key question is always: Where are the customers? Which businesses and industries are growing in this economy, and which ones are declining?
Where is the Future?
I continually meet people who ask me how they can increase their income when their entire industry is shrinking. I tell them that there are jobs with futures and there are jobs without futures, and they need to get into a field that is expanding, not contracting.
Learn proven strategies and techniques for greater achievement with Create Your Own Future.
Never Be Without A Job
There are three forms of unemployment in America: voluntary, involuntary, and frictional. Voluntary employment exists when a person decides not to work for a certain period of time, or not to accept a particular type of job, hoping that something better will come along. Involuntary unemployment exists when a person is willing and able to work but cannot find a job anywhere. Frictional unemployment is the natural level; this includes the approximately 4 or 5 percent of the working population who are between jobs at any given time.
Three Keys to Lifelong Employment
However, there are always jobs for the creative minority. You never have to be unemployed if you will do one of three things: change the work that you are offering to do, change the place where you are offering to work, or change the amount that you are asking for your services. You should consider one or more of these three strategies whenever you are dissatisfied with your current work situation.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, look around you at your current job and find ways to create added value every day. There’s always something more you can do.
Second, identify the kind of work you want to be doing in the future and then make a plan to develop the knowledge and skills you will require to do it well.
See Also
- Brian Tracy International
Increasing Your Value
