The Psychology of Success - Brian Tracy

Hi, I'm Brain Tracy, welcome to the phenix seminar on psychology.

of success.
Have you ever wondered why some people are more successful than others? because
some people make more money, are happier, have better jobs, better relationships,
better health and seem to get more out of life?

When I was 15 years old this issue began to concern me, I have spent more than 25
years, traveled in 80 countries, had 30 different jobs and by my calculations I have
spent 30,000 hours of study trying to find answers to the question of why some people
are more successful than others?
You know something, I have found out that it is one of the most studied subjects
worldwide. That today there is more information about it than ever before. That today
we can say, with complete certainty, that success is as predictable as the sun rises in
the east and sets in the west.
Today you can achieve more success, faster than you ever thought possible if you do
two basic things:

 Number 1: make the decision to surpass all levels of your previous

achievements decide to succeed and achieve your goals whatever they may be.

 Number 2: learn how to do it.

Since we developed it several years ago, more than 150,000 men and women have
followed this seminar, in one way or another. Many have told us that it is like having a
new opportunity in life. One gentleman told us that for him it was like a blank check
for the future. We are going to show you, over the next few hours, the most important
things that have been found out, that have been discovered and rediscovered. They
have been there for four thousand years of history, science, religion, metaphysics,
psychology, philosophy and all the esoteric fields of knowledge have reached the
conclusion that we are going to present to you in this seminar. Even if you only use
some of what you learn during this seminar, you can dramatically improve your results.

Well, when studying the subject of success, one of the things we have to do is to put
aside certain preconceived ideas. I originally believed that if you want to be successful,
you have to be particularly intelligent or have had a wonderful education, have an
outstanding physique or good contacts or good luck. These points have been the
subject of a thorough study, there is no relationship between success and intelligence,
education, luck, contacts and physical appearance. They help in certain cases, but
there is no direct relationship. Success is based on other things.
Before I go any further, let me talk about what we mean by success. When we look at
the differences between animals and humans, we see that animals are endowed with
what is known as survival instinct. Animals struggle to get enough food, to find a place
to sleep, to reproduce their species, and then go into hibernation, die, or both.
The human being has what could be called "the instinct of success", this means that
human beings have within them an impulse that leads them to success. That it is as
natural for you to achieve success, if at all, as it is to breathe. That success, that drive
to be, to have and to do more in order to develop your human potential, is an
absolutely essential part of our being that makes us never satisfied as long as we live.
We always want more, we always want to be more, we always want to do more. The
question that arises is why so few people achieve success in life?

Let's talk about what constitutes the success instinct. I have studied this issue for years
and according to my findings success can be broken down into seven categories. There
are seven ingredients of success and if you have these seven, everything you desire in
life can fall into one of the categories.
Let's see what we are talking about:
 Number 1: the starting point for success, throughout human history, the main
thing has been serenity. Serenity means that one is satisfied, at peace, that one
enjoys tranquility within oneself. To a large extent serenity means freedom; if
you are free, especially from fear, free from fear, free from stress, free from
anxiety, free from need, free from lack, free from negative emotions, free from
 the feeling of guilt, and so on, serenity is the first and most important
ingredient of success because if you achieve everything else in life and you do
not achieve serenity, you will not even be able to enjoy the rest.

 The second ingredient for success: health and energy. Health and energy
means that we are healthy, we are free of disease, pain, disorders, etcetera.
But we also need energy, we need vitality and today we know, as a result of
extensive research in medicine and psychology, that there is a very close
relationship between serenity and energy. Between 80 and 90 percent of all
disorders suffered by the human body, including most of the reasons that cause
premature death, are related to an alteration of serenity. Psychosomatic
medicine is based on the discovery that the psyche, the mind, makes the soma,
the body, sick. Therefore, as we strive for higher levels of serenity we
automatically achieve better levels of health and energy.

 The third ingredient for success is emotional relationships. An affective

relationship means that we have the capacity to establish long-term affective
relationships with other men and women. It means that we can give ourselves
to love and be loved and the capacity to establish affective relationships is an
essential part of what a human being is. It is an essential characteristic of our
nature and as we study affective relationships you will see that most of the
problems we face in life, 85% of our problems as they say, produce a reaction.
Eighty-five percent of all the successes you achieve in your life will be
determined by how well you get along with others. The quality and quantity of
our relationships is a true indication of how we are doing as human beings. And
as you know, problems in our relationships from early childhood to the end of
our adulthood produce disturbances in our health and energy, in our serenity.
If our affective relationships are stable, our health and energy are generally
stable and we enjoy serenity. how are affective relationships measured? One of
the simplest rules you can use is this how much you laugh, because you will
find that the first thing that happens in a happy relationship and one of the first
 things to disappear when a relationship starts to deteriorate is laughter.
Laughter, since it is an absolutely spontaneous expression of life, is the true
sign of a healthy personality and a healthy relationship, as you know from your
own experience.

 Let's look at the fourth ingredient for success: economic freedom. Economic
freedom means that they have enough money to not have to worry about
money. There are those who often say: "well, success depends only on money
and I am not interested in money", but the fact is that money is important. It
costs money to buy clothes, books, go to school, have medical care, travel and
have all the good things in life. And all of us, to get to a point where we know
we have the ability to earn enough money so that money doesn't worry us, we
have to become able to occupy our minds with other things, with higher things;
our relationships, our health, the improvement of our minds, the expansion of
our emotional and spiritual life. We all need to have the ability to earn more
money and most people unfortunately do not consider that they give enough
money. In this course you will learn how you can earn almost as much money
as you want, throughout your life, if you are willing to make the necessary
effort and pay the necessary price.

 The fifth ingredient of success is worthy goals and ideals. You are worthy of my
ideals. Sometimes when we talk about ideals we mean values. We know that
values reside at the very core of the human being. One's values determine
virtually everything that happens to one. Worthy goals and ideals give us
meaning, significance and purpose. Dr. Victor Franco, the founder of
logotherapy, concluded, after a lifetime of research, that as human beings we
need meaning and purpose. You have to know that you are doing something
important, you have to know when you get up in the morning, because you get
up. You need to believe in what you do, you need to be committed, involved,
dedicated, you need enthusiasm in life. Therefore, it is very important to have
worthy goals and ideals, worthy ideal goals consistent with one's values.
Unfortunately, we have seen that perhaps 80 percent (or more) of people have
 few, if any, values. They have no sense of direction. They merely pay for life, to
do what others want them to do. This is a major problem that contributes to
unhappiness.

 The sixth ingredient of success is: knowing yourself, understanding yourself,

self-knowledge, self-understanding. What does this mean? Well, it means that
you know and understand who you are, because you do what you do. What
makes it work. It also means that one is honest with oneself, that one has the
character and courage to face oneself honestly and directly. As Shakespeare
said, "warts and all." You have the honesty to see your strong points and your
white points, if you will, you are honest and upright enough to study yourself in
order to understand perfectly why you do what you do, what makes you tick.
And by the way, in this seminar we are going to give you a lot of information
about why you are the way you are and how you can change for the better, if
you are not happy with yourself.

 The seventh ingredient of success is actually a result and a sense of personal

satisfaction. It is a sense of personal satisfaction that Abraham Maslow called
self-actualization. Self-realization is the feeling that one is becoming all that
one is capable of being, self-realization means that one feels that every day one
is getting closer to achieving one's inherent possibilities. Self-realization occurs
as a result of worthy methods and ideals, of having affective relationships, of
having a high level of knowledge and understanding of oneself, which generate
health and energy, serenity, affective relationships and so on.

What is interesting is the tragedy that the vast majority of men and women today
achieve so little. On a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of human potential, the average person
functions well below his or her capabilities; on a scale of 1 to 10 the average person
scores perhaps 2 or 3 on most of these scales. 84% of those currently in the workforce
are underemployed in the sense that their work is not fully utilizing their skills and
potential. Eighty percent would prefer another type of work. In a study of married
couples, we found that 38 percent of couples would prefer to be married to someone
else. We have also found that in our society most people after a lifetime of well-paid
work, become bankrupt. They are retirees who depend on a pension. Only 1% become
rich. Only 5 percent become financially independent, 15 percent have some savings
and 80 percent are financially dependent on someone. The average savings, the life
savings of a retired couple in the U.S. or Canada today, represents less than $60,000
after earning between half a million and a million dollars over an average working life.
What is the reason for this? The first reason is that we came into the world without an
instruction manual. Throughout the entire process of our education, we are never
taught anything about success. My personal opinion is that there should be a course
on success at each and every level in all schools, colleges and universities. We come
into the world as a computer, imagine a computer, imagine buying a wonderful,
sophisticated computer, taking it home, unpacking it, setting it up, and it turns out that
it doesn't have an instruction manual. They have to get this computer to work without
any help. Imagine a combination lock, you have been given a beautiful combination
lock that gives access to a safe that contains everything you could possibly want and
you don't know the combination. We come into the world without an instruction
manual and spend our whole lives trying to figure out how to do things.
For the key to success is, first of all, what we call "understanding", learning how to do
things right. And this course is an instruction manual for success. You will be able to
get more out of yourself as a result of this course than you could ever imagine at this
time.
The second ingredient is that it requires "effort". There are many people, as you know,
students all their lives, who study and study non-stop but never make the necessary
effort. In the middle is the multiplication sign.

Understanding x Effort = Results

What we are going to do in this course is to dramatically increase your understanding.

We will give you the tools you need to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your
efforts so that you not only do the right things, but also do the right things that will
dramatically increase your results.
Many people have followed this course and have been able to earn more money in the
following year than they earned in the previous five years. Many people have followed
this course and have been able to make more progress in 1 or 2 years than they have
made in the rest of their previous life. It is not uncommon for a person to follow this
course and double or triple their income in a few weeks or a few months, simply by
applying some of these principles. And do these principles work? These principles
represent the basis for success and achievement in an adult's life. Every successful man
or woman applies them to some extent, every successful man or woman uses them
consciously or unconsciously.
In the program of this seminar what we have done is to develop them all together to
elaborate a system very similar to the process of learning anything. If you accept it, if
you use it, if you apply it systematically, if you put it into practice and work with it
consistently (even for a short period of time) you will see absolutely marvelous
changes take place. I assert that one can be, have or do anything one wants in life. You
can grow, develop and achieve your full potential. You can earn more money, achieve
great serenity, have more health and energy, better relationships, financial security, a
sense of personal accomplishment, a total feeling of inner peace, simply by following
the content of this course. So please follow me, let's go there and start exploring all
that they are capable of. Let's see what they can do in the future.