Socrates had the right idea when he said, “Know Thyself.”

But can you really know yourself better? Is it possible to read a book about you? Yes! You can learn a lot more about yourself by putting an assessment tool to work. It can be a powerhouse of insight to pinpoint what really makes you tick!

You’ve Got To Do This! In the final analysis, profile testing is one of the most valuable tools I’ve encountered for finding answers that lead to self-improvement, self-awareness and personal accountability. Once you get your mini-report, you can take advantage of a great special offer to get your 41-page personalized report with several additional learning tools at a substantial discount!

Get started now at: www.BrianTracyAssessments.com/assessment

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today.  His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area.  For more information, please go to www.briantracy.com or call 858-436-7300.

Accepting Yourself Unconditionally by: Brian Tracy

How Do Others Treat You?
Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people. Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel the important people in your life

accept you. 

Your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. The best way to build a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your feelings. 

Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

Understand What Makes You Tick 
The second part of personality development follows from self-disclosure, and it’s called self-awareness. Only when you can disclose what you’re truly thinking and feeling to someone else can you become aware of those thoughts and emotions If the other person simply listens to you without commenting or criticizing, you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are and why you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the Buddhists call “detachment.” 

Be Honest With Yourself 
Now we come to the good part. After you’ve gone through self-disclosure to self-awareness, you arrive at self-acceptance. You accept yourself for the person you are, with good points and bad points, with strengths and weaknesses, and with the normal frailties of a human being. When you develop the ability to stand back and look at yourself honestly, and to candidly admit to others that you may not be perfect but you’re all you’ve got, you start to enjoy a heightened sense of self-acceptance. 

Do An Inventory of Your Accomplishments 
A valuable exercise for developing higher levels of self-acceptance involves doing an inventory of yourself. In doing this inventory, your job is to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. 

Think of your unique talents and abilities. Think of your core skills, the things that you do exceptionally well that account for your success in your profession and in your personal life right now. 

Think About Your Future
Think about your future possibilities and the fact that your potential is virtually unlimited. You can do what you want to do and go where you want to go. You can be the person you want to be. You can set large and small goals and make plans and move step-by-step, progressively toward their realization. There are no obstacles to what you can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind. 

Action Exercises 
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, sit down with your spouse, or a good friend, and tell him or her about something that is troubling you and is still causing you unhappiness. 

Second, develop perspective on your problem by standing back from it and imagining that it was happening to someone else. What advice would you give to that person? 

Third, think continually about the good experiences and accomplishments you have enjoyed in the past. Remind yourself regularly that you are a pretty good person and you’ve done a lot of good things in your life.

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today.  His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area.  For more information, please go to www.briantracy.com or call 858-436-7300

Food for thought: W. Clement Stone authored the book, The Success System that Never Fails. He cited three necessary conditions:

Inspiration to action
Activity knowledge
Know how

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted your first bicycle? All your friends had a bike but you. You were determined to talk mom and dad into getting you one. Maybe you cut lawns or baby-sat to earn extra money. You were tired of walking everywhere while your friends rode. You were inspired to action!

So, mom and dad bought you your first bike. Dad explained the basics. “When you get on the bike, pedal hard to get momentum. If you fall to the left, then lean to the right. If you fall to the right, then lean to the left. Press on the brake to slow down or stop.” You were getting the activity knowledge!

So, what happened? You got on your bike and fell down! Again and again! Until finally, through experience and on-the-job training, you developed the knack or know how!

It was no time before you were doing tricks like riding with your arms folded – “Look mom, no hands!”

Okay, let’s get it on our level.

What will inspire us to action? More money? More freedom? Quit our job? Travel? Help our kids, parents, charity?

If we’re going to make presentations, then we have to know what we’re talking about, don’t we? We need to know our business inside and out. We need ongoing training because nothing ever stays the same.

Just like everything else we do in life, we will get better delivering presentations, answering objections, training new distributors, etc. The trick is to keep doing them. Motivator, Brian Tracy says, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.” He also said, “If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing in the world can stop you from eventually getting the same results that they do. And if you don’t, nothing can help you.”

Success to all!

You know, in order for you to get good at anything, you need belief and confidence that you can actually do whatever it is you are looking to do. Success in life starts with a positive view of YOU.

It's simple. If you don't buy you, believe in you, no one will. Having belief and confidence in you is critical. Some of you already have it, and some need to develop it. That's OK. We all start from different places.  

In the end, where you go in this business is all about YOU, the decisions you make and your patterns of belief.  Whether you're rich or broke, happy or sad, fit or unfit, is entirely up to you. It is much easier to make decisions that create a better life for you when you believe in you and feel good about you. Learn to like yourself. Have a positive view of you. Self is important. In order for you to impact others in a positive way, you must first believe in you.
 
Let's Look at You: Having a good, strong and healthy ego is GOOD! Am I saying you must have a BIG ego? Yes and no. Come on Todd. Stop messing with me here. I've heard that having a big ego is bad. I guess it all depends on your definitions. Let's not get semantics in the way here.

Folks, let's get our definitions of ego correct here. Ego means self-esteem. Self-esteem means to thing highly of.  Therefore, having a big ego simply means that you have big, healthy self-esteem. Now who doesn't want that? Call it what you will, but having a strong, healthy ego is very, very good. Now, there's a distinct difference between a Big Ego and being Egotistical or self-conceited which are not good character traits to display. It's good to have a strong, healthy ego, just don't let it get in the way of your success.
 
Self-traits you should have:

• Self-assertive: determined to assert oneself or claims
• Self-confidence: having confidence in ones abilities
• Self-control: control of oneself or one's behavior
• Self-defense: defense of oneself or one's reputation
• Self-determination: to have free will
• Self-employed: this is self-explanatory
• Self-esteem: good opinion of oneself
• Self-made: having risen from obscurity from one's own efforts
• Self-preservation: keeping oneself from death or harm
• Self-reliant: reliant on one's own abilities
• Self-respect: proper regard for one's dignity or standard of conduct
• Self-sacrifice: sacrifice of one's interests and desires to those of others
• Self-sufficient: capable of supplying one's own needs

Bottom Line: If you don't believe in you, if you don't buy you, people won't believe that you have the abilities to lead them where they want to go. In fact, you won’t even have a chance to lead them anywhere, because they probably won't buy your products or join you in the first place. 

You must also have both Belief and Faith in the following:  

• Your industry
• Your company
• Your products and/or services
  

Belief means to have trust and confidence in. Faith means having a belief in that which is not yet seen. How can you possibly expect to succeed if you are lacking faith and belief in this industry, your company, or your products and/or services? Let's look at the industry, your company and your products/services, and answer some very important questions to help you develop a higher level of belief:
   

The Network Marketing industry: Are people making money? If so, then you CAN do it too. With over 50 years of documentation, no one can discount the fact that people are making fortunes in this industry. It is totally documented.

Your company: Are people making money in your company? The answer is probably yes. Therefore, it is also documented.

Your products/Services: Do customers derive a benefit from the use of your products or services? If the answer is yes, then it is also documented. I certainly hope the answer is yes. Otherwise, why would you be with that company? Get rid of self-limiting beliefs now. Turn them into positive affirmations. 

If it is already documented and proven beyond a reasonable doubt, you have no reason, no foundation to base your lack of belief on. Since you know it is documented, work your business with a passionate belief about what it is that you are doing. 

You must also have Faith, that which is not yet seen, that if you do what is taught to you by experts in the field that have proven themselves, that have the documentation and the track record of success, that it will work for you if you are committed to the process and you apply yourself accordingly and consistently. 

Attitude determines your altitude. Sounds a little clichéd, but right on the money folks. A consistently positive, confident attitude towards the things you do in life will lead you to greatness. We all have good days and bad days.  It's how you react to them that makes the difference. Leaders stay consistent in their attitudes both in good times and bad. Remember, you attract who you are. So, if you have a consistently positive attitude, you will consistently attract positive people. Make sense?

As Norman Vincent Peale so wisely stated...Enthusiasm Makes the Difference! If you have not yet read his book, get it and read it NOW. Written in 1967, the principles of how enthusiasm impacts everything you do in life haven't changed. Being enthusiastic about what you're doing will help springboard you into the direction of success. How can you expect to attract people to your enterprise if you are not burning with enthusiasm? If you're not excited about your future, your potential, and your business, you will find it extremely difficult to attract people, the right people, the one's you really want, to your business. On the subject of Enthusiasm, Here's some Words of Wisdom from the oldest book out there. It basically says, get hot or get out. 

In Revelations 3:16 Jesus said, "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So, because you are lukewarm, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." I don't know about you, but that pretty much defines how important it is to get absolutely hot, and totally committed to whatever it is in life that you are pursuing. There's really no room at the top for those who are lukewarm. 
 
Make the decision right now to either get hot (meaning you are absolutely, positively IN the business) or get out.  Don't just hang out or spend time "dabbling" in this business. There is nothing this business offers for people who are lukewarm about their enterprise. If you are finding it difficult to get hot about it, just think of the pains in your life that initially the led you to this industry. If you can associate enough pain with where you were or are, then you will get hot quickly.

Human desire for pleasure far outweighs our tolerance for pain. The point I am making here is that you have to treat your business like a business, not a part time hobby. Work everyday as if you were leaving for vacation tomorrow. Isn't it amazing how much you can get done and how productive you are when you know you are leaving for vacation the following day?

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Todd Falcone is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and trainer. For more information, please go to www.toddfalcone.com or call 800-259-1177.

The Power of Positive Self-Talk

Here are five tips for turning your attitude into your best work and life ally.

By Brian Tracy

erhaps the most powerful influence on your attitude and personality is what you say to yourself and believe. It is not what happens to you, but how you respond internally to what happens to you, that determines your thoughts and feelings and, ultimately, your actions. By controlling your inner dialogue, or “self-talk,” you can begin to assert control over every other dimension of your life.

Your self-talk—the words that you use to describe what is happening to you and to discuss how you feel about external events—determines the quality and tone of your emotional life. When you see things positively and constructively, and look for the good in each situation and each person, you have a tendency to remain positive and optimistic. Since the quality of your life is determined by how you feel from moment to moment, one of your most important goals should be to keep yourself thinking about what you want and to keep your mind off what you don’t want or what you fear.

There is a natural tendency to react emotionally when our expectations are frustrated. When something we wanted and hoped for fails to materialize, we feel a temporary sense of disappointment and unhappiness. The optimistic person, however, soon moves beyond this disappointment. He responds quickly to the adverse event and interprets it as being temporary, specific and external to himself. The optimist takes full control of his inner dialogue and counters the negative feelings by immediately reframing the event so that it appears positive in some way.

The hallmark of the fully mature, fully functioning, self-actualizing personality is the ability to be objective and unemotional when caught up in the inevitable storms of daily life. The superior person has the ability to continue talking to himself in a positive and optimistic way, keeping his mind calm, clear and completely under control. As a result, the mature person exerts a far greater sense of control and influence over his environment, and is far less likely to be angry, upset or distracted.

The starting point in the process of becoming a highly effective person is to monitor and control your self-talk. Your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, either positive or negative. If you deliberately choose a positive thought to dwell on, you keep your mind optimistic and your emotions positive. Here are five ideas you can use to help you:

1. Resolve in advance that no matter what happens, you will not allow it to get you down. You will respond in a constructive way. You will take a deep breath, relax and look for whatever good the situation may contain. When you make this decision in advance, you mentally prepare yourself so that you are not knocked off balance when things go wrong, as they inevitably will.

2. Neutralize any negative thoughts or emotions by speaking to yourself positively all the time. Say things like, “I feel healthy!” “I feel happy!” “I feel terrific!” As you go about your job, say to yourself, “I like myself, and I love my work!” or “Today is a great day; it’s wonderful to be alive!” According to the law of expression, whatever is expressed is impressed. Whatever you say to yourself or others is impressed deeply into your subconscious mind and is likely to become a permanent part of your personality.

3. Look upon the inevitable setbacks that you face as being temporary, specific and external. View the negative situations as a single event that is not connected to other potential events and that is caused largely by external factors over which you can have little control. Simply refuse to see the event as being in any way permanent, pervasive or indicative of personal incompetence or inability.

4. Remember that it is impossible to learn, grow and become a successful person without adversity and difficulties. You must contend with and rise above them to become a better person. Welcome each difficulty by saying, “That’s good!” and then look into the situation to find the good in it.

5. Keep your thoughts on your goals and dreams, on the person you are working on becoming. When things go wrong temporarily, respond by saying to yourself, “I believe in the perfect outcome of every situation in my life.” Resolve to be cheerful and pleasant, and resist every temptation toward negativity and disappointment.

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today.  His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area.  For more information, please go to www.briantracy.com or call 858-436-7300