Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

By Brian Tracy; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003

When you read this book, you will
unlock your full potential for
success and achievement. Brian
Tracy shares with you time-tested
techniques that you can use to
take complete control over your
life. Here you will learn to
program and reprogram your
self-concept so that you will be
able to positively and effectively
empower yourself.
seek improvement and channel
the changes to achieve a more BOOK OF THE WEEK:
satisfying and meaningful life.
Truly, there are no limits to what
you can achieve. When you
commit yourself to excellence
and never give up, you will
achieve the desires of your
heart.
read the summary

This book will take you to a

journey of self-assessment
towards positive change.
Espousing the principle that you
become what you think about
most of the time, the author
encourages you to take a closer
look at your inner-self so you can

INSIDE THIS SUMMARY:

– The Big Idea – Put People First
– Change Your Thinking – Think like a Genius
– Change Your Life – Unleash Your Mental Powers
– Dream Big Dreams – Supercharge Your Thinking
– Decide to Become Rich – Create Your Own Future
– Take Charge of Your Life – Live a Great Life
– Commit to Excellence

Published by BestSummaries.com, 3001-91, 11010 NW 30th St., Suite 104, Miami, Florida 33172 © 2008 BestSummaries.com. All rights reserved.
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Chapter 1: Change Your Thinking
Self-Concept
Each person develops a bundle of beliefs regarding
oneself, starting at birth. Self-concept then
becomes the master program of your
subconscious. It determines what you think, feel,
say and do. This also means that changes in your
outer life must first begin with a change in your self-
concept.
First Impressions Last
By the age of three, a child's belief would have been
locked in. Those locked-in beliefs become a
fundamental part of the way you view yourself in
relation to your world. If your parents raised you
with overflowing encouragement, love and support,
you will grow up with a belief that you are a good and
valuable person.
You are Born Unafraid
A child is born with no fears. All fears are taught to
the child in the process of growing up including the
two major fears adults develop: the fear of failure or
loss and fear of criticism or rejection. The former is
reinforced if you are continually criticized and
punished when you try something new and
different. The latter is learned in early childhood
when parents express disapproval when you do
something they don't like or don't do something that
they expect. As a result of them being displeased,
they become angry and withdraw the love and
approval that you need as a child.
Change Your Beliefs
Avoid having self-limiting beliefs of any kind. Self-
limiting beliefs cause you to feel limited or deficient
in a particular area. They are seldom true but if you
accept them as valid estimates of your ability, they
become true for you.
To unlock your potentials, you need to challenge
your self-limiting beliefs. Begin this process by
imagining that, whatever your self-limiting beliefs
are, they are completely untrue. Imagine that you
have no limitations. You could achieve anything
you want in life. Imagine that your potential is
unlimited.
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
Control Your Inner Dialogue
Just as you become what you think about, you also
become what you say to yourself. The most
powerful words you can repeat to yourself,
especially if you are feeling uneasy or tense are
the words, “I like myself! I like myself! I like
myself!” Those words are so powerful and
positive that they are immediately accepted by
your subconscious mind as a command. You will
notice that your body language will improve. Your
face becomes more positive and cheerful and you
become warmer and friendlier
Talk to Yourself Positively
Your self-talk, your inner dialogue, determines 95
percent of your emotions. When you talk to
yourself, your subconscious mind accepts these
words as commands and as a result your
behavior, self-image, and body language changes
to fit a pattern consistent with those words. You
must refuse to say anything about yourself that
you do not sincerely desire to be true because you
deserve the best, you deserve to be successful.
Chapter 2: Change Your Life
Choose Your Thoughts
Positive thoughts empower you and make you feel
stronger and confident. Negative thoughts on the
other hand disempower you. Whenever you think
or say something negative, you give your power to
become a better person away. Between positive
and negative thoughts, which one will you
choose?
The Law of Substitution says, “Your mind can hold
only one thought at a time, positive or negative.
You can substitute a positive thought for a
negative thought whenever you choose.”
Deliberately think about something positive to
cancel out negative and unhappy feelings.
Starve Your Negative Emotions
Negative emotions have all been learned
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beginning in childhood. The good news is what has
been learned can be unlearned. Negative emotions
exist only because you give it life; you continually
think of things that make you angry or unhappy.
You can change it by applying the Law of Emotion: A
stronger emotion will dominate and override a
weaker emotion, and whichever emotion you
concentrate on grows and becomes stronger. If you
don't feed your negative emotions, it will die away
completely.
Stop Justifying
Justification is what you do when you rationalize or
create a reason for your anger and unhappiness.
You keep yourself in a cycle of how badly you were
treated or how dreadfully the other person behaved
by talking about it all the time. You act as if you are
entitled to your anger.
Think of reasons not to justify your negative emotions
because they do you no good. Negative emotions
simply undermine your happiness and self-
confidence, making you weaker and less effective in
other areas of your life.
Don't Take it Personally
Identification or attachment occurs when you take
something personally or when you become attached
to a person or thing. When you become so
emotionally involved in a person, thing or situation, it
affects your emotions and reasons in a negative way.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Author: Brian Tracy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
Date of Publication: 2003
ISBN : 0-471-44858-3
No. of Pages: 270 pages
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
You need to separate yourself emotionally from a
situation, this process is called disidentification.
You can practice detachment from any person or
situation that makes you feel angry or upset. This
does not mean however that you need to
passively accept anything that happens to you.
Instead, this process encourages you to keep
your mind and emotions under control. Use your
mind to objectively assess the situation and then
make better decisions to resolve it.
The Opinions of Others
Inward considering occurs when you become
overly concerned with the way people are treating
you. You feel that all their actions are an attack on
your personality or character. However, this is
seldom the case as 99 percent of the time, people
are wrapped up in their own thoughts about
themselves. Only one percent of their emotional
energy do they make available to everyone else
in the world, including you.
Set Your Own Sails
The author suggests a rule he has learned from
experience: Never do or refrain from doing
something because you are concerned about
what people might think about you. The fact is
that nobody is even thinking about you at all. You
need to plan accordingly because you are in
charge of your key life decisions. You can take
the opinions of others into consideration, but you
have to make your own decisions.
Chapter 3: Dream Big Dreams
Great Success Requires Long, Hard Work
When Michelangelo was commissioned by the
Medicis to create a statue for the main square in
Florence, it took him two years to find a slab of
marble from which he would carve his
masterpiece. It also took him two solid years of
work to create the rough outline of the statue and
an additional two years were spent polishing and
sanding before the work was complete. When it
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was unveiled, the crowd was amazed at the beauty of
the statue. When Michelangelo was asked how he
was able to create his masterpiece, he said that he
saw the David complete and perfect in the marble
and all he did was to remove everything that was not
the David.
You are a Masterpiece
You are a like a great masterpiece enclosed in a
marble but the marble that covers you is the marble of
small, limited thinking and excessive worry about
loss or failure. To realize your full potential you need
to break out from the confines of limited thinking. You
need to remove all negative beliefs that hold you back
from becoming a true masterpiece.
Dream Big Dreams
Visualize your goals with as much vividness and
clarity as possible. Visualize your goals intensely
and create within yourself that same feeling that you
would have if you had already achieved your goals.
Replay a picture of your goal frequently as if you had
realized it already.
The Seven Steps to Achieving any Goal
1. Decide exactly what you want
2. Write down your goals
3. Be willing to pay the price
4. Make a detailed plan
5. Take action on your plan
6. Do something every day
7. Never give up
Chapter 4: Decide to Become Rich
Millions of Millionaires
There are more than five million millionaires today in
the US. Most of them are self-made. They are men
and women who started with little or nothing, often
broke or deeply in debt, who gradually accumulated
enough money on their way to becoming financially
independent. Remember that what they have done,
you can do as well.
Get Rid of the Myths
Dispel the myths in your mind if you want to improve
your chances of success. One myth is that you have
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
to have a great education to become rich.
Another myth is that you have to start off with a lot
of money. None of these are true. In fact, in the
Forbes 400 richest men and women in America,
the high school dropouts in the group who made
it to list were worth $300 million on average more
than the university graduates on the list.
The Common Denominator Among
Millionaires
The most important quality that self-made
millionaires attribute to their success is the habit
of hard, hard work. Self-made millionaires work
much harder than the average person. They
start earlier, work harder, and stay later.
According to studies, self-made millionaires
work an average of 59 hours per week; some
work considerably more when they are just
starting out.
Work All the Time You Work
Use your time well at work and focus on results.
Avoid time-wasting social activities. If you are
determined to succeed greatly, you must work all
the time you work. You need to put in the hard
work because there are no shortcuts to lasting
success.
Look For Ways to Add Value
If your goal is to become wealthy you need to
understand how wealth is created. Wealth is
created through value-adding activities. In your
job, you should continually seek out ways in
order for you to add value to your boss, your co-
workers, your customers, and to everyone else
around you.
Take Action Right Where You Are
The key to success according to Theodore
Roosevelt is “do what you can, with what you
have, right where you are.” Focus on the present
moment and on your current situation. Don't
wait for things to turn out right because you have
the power to make things right, right now.
Produce More Value
Successful people are more productive than
unsuccessful people. Successful people have
better habits and they dream bigger dreams.
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They work from written goals and they focus on
becoming better and better at what they do. They
focus on results and get the work done. Above all,
they are constantly looking around them for
opportunities to add value to everything they do.
You too can be successful if you follow those
characteristics.
Chapter 5: Take Charge of Your Life
Neutralize Your Fears
Fear is your greatest enemy. Fear and self-doubt
hold you back from dreaming big dreams and
achieving them. The less you know about
something, the more fearful you become. However,
there is an antidote to fear and ignorance. Welcome
desire and knowledge into your life.
The Law of Belief
Whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your
reality. Your belief about something and the
emotions that go with it has a greater impact on your
behavior and on everything that happens to you. If
you absolutely believe that you are destined to be a
great success and you hold that belief no matter
what happens, then nothing in the world can stop
you from becoming that great success.
Law of Attraction
When you change your thinking about yourself and
your possibilities, you will attract into your life the
forces necessary to turn those big thoughts and
ideas into real-life experiences.
Take Charge of Your Life
You have complete control over your mind. This
power and control is all you need to create a
wonderful life for yourself. If you focus on
something, you have the ability to steer your
thoughts towards a destination of your own
choosing. This will enable you to overcome all
obstacles on your road to personal success.
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
Chapter 6: Commit to Excellence
One of the most powerful ways for you to change
your thinking about yourself is to commit yourself
to excellence. You need to make the decision right
now to be the best in what you do. Even the
process of thinking about it changes your mind-set
and improves your personality. You must,
however, resolve to overcome any obstacles, pay
any price, and go the distance to achieve a high
level of excellence.
Develop the Winning Edge
The principle behind the “winning edge” concept
says: Small differences in ability can lead to
enormous differences in results. The small
difference in ability when coupled with consistency
adds up to an enormous difference in results.
Your starting point towards personal excellence is
to identify the key result areas of your job. Once
you have defined them, evaluate your current
performance and set a standard. Improving on
your performance will enable you to move ahead
in the race. Once you have gained the
momentum, you can get better and better with
continuous learning and practice.
Develop Your Area of Excellence
Competitive advantage is a critical factor in
determining success. A company's competitive
advantage or unique selling proposition
determines its rate of growth, level of sales,
profitability, and survival. You are no different.
You must develop an area of uniqueness and use it
to your advantage so that you can rise to the top of
your field.
Leave Nothing to Chance
Don't leave anything to chance. Once you
recognize an opportunity, do something to make it
happen. You can become what you want by
developing your talents and abilities.
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Chapter 7: Put People First
Develop Your Own Network
Your network is composed of the number of people
you know both directly and indirectly. Notice that the
most successful people in society are those who
know the greatest number of other successful people.
What they do is they organize their lives to meet these
successful people deliberately and not by accident. If
you want to be successful, you too should apply the
principles of creative networking in your life.
Be a Joiner
Join clubs and organizations to develop more
friendship. Circulate yourself in groups, clubs, and
associations that contain members who can be of
assistance to you. Your strategy is to get involved in
the committees that are most active and important to
the organization. Once you get in, volunteer to do
work that needs to be done and do the work well.
Soon enough people will notice your competence and
take note of your skills.
Be Selective in Your Choices
Select the kind of people you spend your time with.
Instead, carefully build and maintain high-quality
relationships. As much as possible, avoid negative
people who might hold you back on your way to
success. Choose your relationships with care.
Seek Out a Mentor
The right mentor at the right time can save you from
countless mistakes and years of hard work. At each
stage of your life and career, you can benefit from the
wisdom and advice of someone who knows what you
are going through. Your mentor can help you avoid
pitfalls that might sidetrack your career or hold you
back.
Chapter 8: Think like a Genius
Knowledge is the Great Resource
There is no limit to the amount of value that you can
create because there is no limit to the amount of
knowledge that you can acquire. In your current
station in life right now, you can start on improving on
your ability to perform. Remember that knowledge
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
grows exponentially, so the more knowledge you
take in the more things you will end up knowing.
Avoid the Intelligence Trap
You need to avoid the intelligence trap. This
occurs when you presume that you know
everything already and you stop acquiring new
knowledge. You have become complacent and
you have stopped learning and growing in your
area of specialization.
Think About the Future
Keep your eyes open and watch for trends.
Study the changes taking place around you
today. Any of these changes may be indicative of
a trend that could lead on to fortune and success
for you. Be open, awake, and alert to these
changes.
No-Limit Thinking
You need to continually feed your mind with new
ideas so you can change your thinking. There is
no limit to the knowledge that you can acquire.
The only limits that exist in this world are the
limits that you set for yourself.
Chapter 9: Unleash Your Mental
Powers
Unlock the Floodgates of Your Mind
To unlock your brainpower you can use two
powerful methods: mindstorming and
brainstorming. The process of “mindstorming” is
often called the “20-idea method.” This is how it's
done. On the top of a blank page, write your
current problem or goal in the form of a question.
Make the question as specific as possible. You
then discipline yourself to generate at least 20
different answers to that question. Once you
have 20 answers written out, select at least one
that you are going to take action on immediately.
You can then perform the 20-idea method on that
new idea, generating 20 different ways to put that
idea to work.
Brainstorming is done with a group and is the
best way to generate as many ideas in the
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shortest possible time. Here are the six steps to
brainstorming:
1. Assemble the group. Four to seven is the
ideal number of people.
2. Do not permit criticism or ridicule. Do not
evaluate the ideas during the session.
3. Set a specific time limit. Ideal length is 15 to
45 minutes.
4. Select a leader for the group. Leader
should encourage everyone to contribute.
5. Select someone to keep track of ideas.
He/she writes down the ideas as they are
generated.
6. Be punctual. Start and stop the
brainstorming session exactly on time.
Ideas Energize You
Generating a lot of ideas will help you achieve your
goals. The more ideas you generate, the more
energy and enthusiasm you will have.
Chapter 10: Supercharge Your
Thinking
Positive Mental Attitude
Research shows that a positive mental attitude is
closely associated with success. People who are
generally cheerful and optimistic about their work
and personal lives go through life easier. A positive
attitude will also help you respond constructively to
stress.
Five Steps to Personal Power
ŸŸIdealize. Here you look at each of the key
areas of your life and imagine how it would look
like as you want it to be. In short, you should
imagine your perfect future and design your
perfect life. Imagine the kind of person you
would become without your self-limiting beliefs.
ŸVerbalize. When you verbalize your goals in
the form of positive affirmations, make your
statements simple and practical. Use
affirmations that are immediately accepted by
your subconscious mind as commands.
Examples include “I like myself,” “I'm the best,”
or “I love my work.”
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
ŸVisualize. This is a powerful tool in helping
you achieve your goals. Successful people
visualize the things that they want. When
you visualize, you send a command to your
subconscious mind. The subconscious
then coordinates its words and actions to be
consistent with the picture.
ŸEmotionalize. This requires that you
create the feeling that would go with the
successful accomplishment of your goal.
This is where you can make idealizing,
verbalizing, and visualizing work for you
because emotions are an energy source.
Emotions will drive you toward your goal.
ŸRealize. This is where you achieve your
goals and the most important part of the
process. Be aware that every goal takes a
certain amount of time to materialize. It is
important that you develop an attitude of
calm, confident expectation.
Chapter 11: Create Your Own
Future
Dealing with Disappointments
Research shows that successful people respond
to disappointment differently from unsuccessful
people. Dr. Zaleznik concluded that the way you
deal with disappointment is a good predictor of
how you will achieve success in life. Successful
people deal with disappointment by taking it in
stride. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand,
allow disappointment to stop them.
Look Into the Future
You should practice crisis anticipation in
everything you do. Think of the negative things
that might happen to you later in life and how you
could respond to them. You can do this by
extrapolating from your current life. When you
look into the future, you will be able to minimize
reversals and maximize opportunities. You will
soon feel confident if you have developed
alternative courses of action to some of the worst
things that could happen in the future.
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Think About Your Goals
You can bounce back from failure if you put the
negative situation in its proper perspective. When
you have clearly defined goals in your mind, you can
develop and maintain a clear sense of direction.
When you go astray, you know how to get back to the
right track because your goals are clear in your head.
Thinking about your goals empowers you and makes
you a more positive and confident person.
The Deciding Factor
Decide in advance that nothing can stop you from
achieving your goals. When you make this decision,
you will be ready no matter what happens.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Guard your
integrity as a sacred thing. Nothing is at last
sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
You are Ultimately Self-Made
Everyone is a self-made person. Work on the
development of your character and strive to
become a better person. Never allow yourself to
become complacent at any level of
accomplishment. Keep on improving and raise
the bar on yourself. Soon enough, excellence
will truly manifest in every aspect of your life.
Just the way you want it.

Chapter 12: Live a Great Life

Law of Correspondence
This law states that your outer world is a reflection of
your inner world. Whatever you are on the inside, you
will soon see the results of it on the outside. Your
outer world will always be a reflection of your inner
world.

Integrity is Essential
Aristotle, writing over 2000 years ago, insisted that
only a life based on values such as integrity, honesty,
courage, generosity, persistence, and sincerity would
lead to happiness and personal fulfillment. When you
have integrity, you will live and act consistently with
your values. It is important to make integrity your way
of living.

Always Do Your Best

Honesty and integrity on the inside are expressed as
quality and excellence in your work on the outside.
Never take on a task unless you are willing to do it in
an excellent manner.

Face the Truth

Face the truth about your work and your
relationships. Do not play games with yourself and
strive to preserve the integrity of your own mind.

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