THE POWER OF SELF-DISCIPLINE FOR REMARKABLE SUCCESS IN LIFE

SELF-DISCIPLINE AND PERSONAL EXCELLENCE

You are your most valuable asset. Your life, your potential, and your possibilities are the most precious things you have. Thus your great goal in life should be to fulfill that potential and become everything you are capable of becoming.

Your ability to learn, grow, and fulfill your potential is unlimited. Today, people are graduating from high school and college in their seventies, learning new subjects and developing new capabilities. Your ability to learn and remember can continue throughout your life if you keep your brain alive, alert, and functioning at its best.

Your most precious financial asset is your earning ability. Your ability to work is your primary source of cash throughout your life. You could lose your home, your car, your bank account, and everything you own, but as long as you have your earning ability, you can earn it all back and more in the months and years ahead.

Your Biggest Investment

Most people don't realize this. They take their earning ability for granted. But it has taken you your entire life to develop your earning ability. Every bit of education, experience, and hard work that you have invested in learning your craft and developing your skills has gone into building this asset.

Your earning ability is very much like a muscle. It can increase in strength and power year by year as the result of regular exercise. Likewise, the opposite is true, too: If left alone or ignored, your earning ability, like your muscles, can become weaker or even decline because you have simply failed to upgrade it continually.

In other words, your earning ability can be either an appreciating or a depreciating asset. An appreciating asset is something that grows in value and cash flow every year as the result of continual investment and improvement. A depreciating asset, on the other hand, is something that loses value over time and finally reaches the point at which it is “written off,” being of little or no further value. The choice is yours as to whether your earning ability is increasing or decreasing month by month and year by year.

You Are the President

See yourself as the president of your own “Personal Services Corporation.” Imagine that you were going to take your company public on the stock market. Would you recommend your company as a growth stock, continually increasing its value and earning ability each year?

Or would you describe your company as one that has leveled off in the market place, that is not really going anywhere in terms of increased value and income? Would you recommend stock in “You, Inc.” as an excellent investment? Why or why not?

What Got You Here

Won't Get You Any Further

Some people are actually losing value each year,declining in earning ability, because they are not continually upgrading their knowledge and skills. They don't realize that whatever knowledge and skill they have today is rapidly becoming obsolete. It is being replaced by new knowledge and skills that, if you don't have them and someone else does, you will be in danger of being overtaken by your competition.

Join the Top 20 Percent

In Chapter 1, I mentioned that the 80/20 rule applies to income: The top 20 percent of people in our society earn and control 80 percent of the assets. According to Forbes,Fortune,Business Week,the Wall Street Journal, and the IRS, by many estimates the top 1 percent of Americans control as much as 33 percent of the assets. The most interesting discovery in income inequality is that most millionaires,multimillionaires, and billionaires in America are first generation. They started with little or nothing and earned all their money by themselves in one lifetime.

In America, there is a high level of income mobility, which means you are able to move from the lower levels of income to the upper levels. Almost everyone who is in the top 20 percent today started in the bottom 20 percent. From that point, they began to do something different with their time and their lives, and as a result, they put themselves squarely onto the upward escalator of financial success.

No Limits on Your Potential

The average income increase in America is about 3 percent a year, just about the same as the rate of inflation and cost of living increases. People whose income is increasing at 3 percent a year seldom get ahead. They have a job, which can also be thought of as an acronym for

“Just Over Broke.”

But the fact is that no one is better than you, and no one is smarter than you. If someone is doing better than you are today, it is simply proof that he has learned how the Law of Cause and Effect applies to his work, and he has begun doing the things that other successful people have also done. The application of the Law of Cause and

Effect to your personal life is “learn and do.”

The achievement of personal excellence is a decision you make or that you fail to make. But in the absence of a commitment to excellence in your chosen field,you automatically default to average performance or even mediocrity. No one becomes excellent accidentally or by just going to work each day. Excellence requires a definite decision and a lifelong commitment.

The Keys to the Twenty-First Century

Knowledge and skill are the keys to the twenty-first century. Becoming the best person you can possibly be and moving to the top of your field require the application of self-discipline throughout your life. Mental fitness is like physical fitness: If you want to achieve either, you must work at it all your life. You can never let up. You must be continually learning and growing every day, week, and month throughout your career (and in other areas of your life) if you're going to join the top 20 percent and stay there. To earn more, you must learn more.

Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “The fact that some have become wealthy is proof that others may do it as well.”

What others have done, you can do as well if you learn how. Everyone who is at the top was once at the bottom. Many people who come from average or poor families with average incomes or who grow up in average circumstances have gone on to become some of the most prominent people in their fields. And what hundreds of thousands and even millions of other people have done, you can do as well. The philosopher Bertrand Russel once wrote that “the very best proof that something can be done is that someone else has already done it.”

Ordinary into Extraordinary

Very often,you see people who don't seem to be as intelligent or as talented as you are who are nonetheless accomplishing remarkable things with their lives. There is nothing that will make you angrier than to see someone who seems to be dumber than you doing better than you. How can this be?

The answer is simple: At a certain point in their lives, they realized that the key to success was personal and professional growth. It was a dedication to lifelong learning.

The good news is that almost every important skill is learnable. Every business skill is learnable. Everyone who is proficient in any area of business was at one time completely ignorant in that area. Every sales skill is learnable. Every top salesperson was once a beginning salesperson and unable to make a call or close a sale. All moneymaking skills are learnable as well. Almost every wealthy person was once poor. You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself.

Make a Decision

The starting point of your moving upward and onward toward becoming one of the most competent,most respected,and highest paid people in your field is simple:

Make a decision!

It is said that every major change in your life comes about when your mind collides with a new idea, and you then make a decision to do something different. You make a decision to complete your education, upgrade your skills, or get into a good college. You make a decision to start a new business. You make a decision to take a particular job or start a particular career. You make a decision to invest your money in a particular way. And, especially, you make a decision to be the best in your field.

Many people say that they would like to be happy, healthy, thin, and rich. But (as discussed in Chapter 3), wishing and hoping are not enough. You have to make a firm, unequivocal decision that you are going to pay any price and go any distance in order to achieve the goals you have set for yourself. You have to make that decision and then burn your mental bridges behind you. From that minute on, you resolve to continue working on yourself and your craft until you reach the top 20 percent or beyond.

Follow the Leaders,

Not the Followers

When you decide to be one of the best people in your field, look around you and identify the people who are already at the top:

·What characteristics do they have in common?

·How do they plan and organize their days?

How do they dress?

How do they walk, talk, and behave with other people?

What books do they read?

How do they spend their spare time?

Who do they associate with?

·What courses have they taken?

What audio programs do they listen so in their cars?

These are just a few of the questions you should ask in order to find out what successful people are doing that you might also need to do. After all, you can't hit a target that you can't see.

Your selection of the right role models can have an enormous impact on your future. Dr. David MacLelland of Harvard and author of The Achieving Society concluded that your choice of a “reference group” can determine as much as 95 percent of your success and achievement in life. Your reference group is made of the people who you feel are “just like me.” Your natural tendency is to adopt the attitudes, styles of dress, opinions, and lifestyles of the people with whom you identify and associate most of the time.

The Answers Have All Been Found

Here is a great discovery:All the answers have been found. All the routes to success have been discovered. Everything that you need to learn to move to the top of your field has already been learned by hundreds and even thousands of other people. And if you ask them for advice, they will give it to you. Successful people will have their phone calls held, cancel other appointments, and put their work aside to help other people be successful. But you must ask, and then you must follow their advice once they give it to you.

If you can't ask them directly, read their books and attend their talks and seminars. Listen to audio programs created by successful people. Sometimes you can send them emails and ask for advice. Learn from the best.

Set High Income as a Goal

If your goal is to be in the top 20 percent of moneymakers in your field, the first thing you need to do is find out what the people in the top20 percent are earning today. This information is available. Just ask around. Check industry statistics. Go onto Google. You can find this information if you look for it.

Once you know the income target at which you are aiming,write it down as your goal. Make a plan to achieve this level of income, and work on it every day. Never stop until you reach it.

The secret to high income in business and sales is quite simple: learn and do. Like jacking up a car, you improve one notch at a time. Each time you learn and practice a new skill, you ratchet up your earning ability and it locks in. As long as you keep increasing your earning ability, you keep ratcheting up to a higher level, from which you seldom decline.

Use the 3 Percent Formula

to Invest in Yourself

To guarantee your lifelong success, make a decision today to invest 3 percent of your income back into yourself. This seems to be the magic number for lifelong learning. According to the American Society for Training and Development, this is the percentage that the most profitable 20 percent of companies in every industry invest in the training and development of their staff. Decide today to invest 3 percent of your income into yourself in order to make yourself an appreciating asset, to continually increase your earning ability.

If your annual income goal is $50,000, resolve to invest 3 percent of that amount, or $1,500, back into yourself each year to maintain and upgrade your knowledge and skills. If your income goal is $100,000, resolve to invest $3,000 per year back into yourself to ensure that you reach that level of income.

Three Simple Steps

to Become the Best

Becoming one of the top people in your field requires discipline and application more than anything else. There are three simple steps that you can follow to become the very best in your field:

1. Read sixty minutes in your field each day. Turn off the television and the radio, put aside the newspaper, and read material about your field for one hour each day before you start working.

2. Listen to educational audio programs in your car. Start them and stop them as you listen, so you can reflect on what you have just heard and think about how you can apply the ideas to your work.

3. Attend courses and seminars in your field regularly. Seek them out. Take online courses in the convenience of your own home, courses that enable you to upgrade your skills and give you important ideas that you can use to be even more successful.

The power of compound learning, like compound interest, is quite amazing. The more you learn, the more you can learn. The more you learn, the better your brain functions, and the smarter you get. Your memory and retention rate improve. The more you learn, the more relationships you find between something you learned at one time and something you learn at another time.

Never stop learning and growing.

The Achievement of Mastery

How long does it take to achieve mastery in your field? According to the experts, the acquisition of “mastery” requires about seven years, or 10,000 hours of hard work. It takes seven years to become a master salesperson. It takes seven years to become a successful businessperson. It takes seven years to become an excellent diesel mechanic. It takes seven years to become an excellent brain surgeon. It seems to take seven years, or 10,000 hours of hard work, to get to the top of any field. So you might as well get started. The time is going to pass anyway.

The starting point of your achieving mastery is for you to commit to excellence. I have never met a person who made a decision to get into the top 20 percent in their field who did not eventually achieve it. And I never met a

person who got there having not made that decision. Making the decision and then following it up with continuous, purposeful, disciplined action is essential.

Talent Is Not Enough

As I mentioned earlier, according to Geoffrey Colvin in his bestselling book, Talent Is Overrated, most people learn how to do their job in the first year, and then they never get any better. They just coast in their jobs. But the only direction you can coast is downbill.

Many people will work away at a job for many years and never rise above the average. They will do their job from eight to five, but they never lift a finger to upgrade their skills. They will not invest any time learning their craft unless their company pays for the extra training and gives them the time off to take it.

The average person does only an average job, and as a result, he earns an average income and worries about money all his life. He never realizes that often there is only a thin veil that separates the average person from the excellent person. The fact is that “if you're not getting better, you're getting worse.” No one stays in the same place for long.

Two Hours Each Day

Will Get You to the Top

It has been calculated that all you need to invest is about two extra hours per day to move from the average to the

superior. Only two extra hours each day will move you from worrying about money all your life to being one of the highest paid people in your field.

People immediately ask,“Where am I going to get an extra two hours each day?”

It's simple: Take a piece of paper and do the following simple calculation:

Calculate the number of hours in a week: 7 days times 24 hours equals 168 hours.

If you deduct forty hours for work and fifty-six hours for sleep, you have seventy-two hours left over.

If you deduct three hours per day (twenty-one hours) for getting ready for and traveling to and from work, that leaves you fifty-one hours of spare time to do with as you please.

If you invest two hours per day back into yourself,fourteen hours per week, you still have thirty-seven hours left over. That's an average of more than five hours per day of free time.

All you need to do is devote two hours each day to move you from average performance to superior performance at whatever you choose to do.

Form the Habit of

Continuous Learning

The best news is that when you begin reading personal or professional development literature, listening to audio programs in your car, taking additional courses, and upgrading your skills in the evenings and on the weekends rather than watching television, you soon get into the habit of continuous learning. In no time at all, it will become automatic and easy for you to learn, grow, and upgrade your skills every day and every week.

The average adult watches about five hours of television each day. For some people, it is seven or eight hours. They turn on the television first thing in the morning and watch it until they leave for work. They turn it back on as soon as they get home from work. They then watch television until 11 or 12 o'clock at night,going to bed without enough time to get a good night's sleep. They then get up in the morning, drink coffee, and watch television for as long as they can before they go off to work once more.

You Can Be Rich or Poor:

It's Your Decision

Your television set can make you rich or poor. If you watch it all the time, it will make you poor. Psychologists have shown that the more television you watch, the lower are your levels of energy and self-esteem. At an unconscious level, you don't like or respect yourself as much if you sit there hour after hour watching television. People who watch too much television also gain weight and become physically unfit from sitting around too much.

Your television can also make you rich but only if you turn it off. When you turn off your television, you free up time that you can then use to invest in becoming a better, smarter, and more competent person. When you leave your television off when you are with your family, you will find yourself talking, sharing, communicating, and laughing more often. When you leave your television off for extended periods of time, you break the habit of watching television and you will hardly miss it at all. Your television can be an excellent servant, but it's a terrible master. The choice is yours.

Increase Your Income 1,000 Percent

There is a simple seven-step formula you can use in order to increase your productivity, performance, output, and income by 1,000 percent over the next ten years. It works for everyone who tries it. It is simple:

First, answer this question: Is it possible for you to increase your overall productivity, performance, and output by 1/10 of 1 percent (1/1000th) in an entire working day? Your answer will probably be “yes.” If you were to manage your time a little better, and work on more valuable tasks, you would quite easily increase your output by 1/1000th in a day.

Having done this for the first day, could you increase your output by 1/10 of 1 percent the second day? And the answer, of course, is “yes.”

Having increased your performance by 1/10 of 1 percent on Monday and Tuesday, could you continue to do it for Wednesday,Thursday, and Friday? And again,the answer is “yes.”

One Half of 1 Percent Per Week

One tenth of 1 percent times five days per week equals one half of 1 percent per week. Is it possible for a normal, intelligent, hardworking individual to increase his or her output by one half of 1 percent (1/200th) in a single week? Of course it is!

Having done this for the first week, could you keep up the same pace of personal improvement the second week? Of course you could!

Could you get one one-thousandth of 1 percent better five days a week for an entire month? If you could, this means that you would be one half of 1 percent better per week multiplied times four, or 2 percent more productive in an entire month.

There are thirteen four-week months in a year (4 x 13 = 52). Having become 2 percent better in a month,could you repeat that in the second month? In the third month? The fourth month? And so on?

Seven Steps to the Top

Here are the seven steps in the 1,000 percent formula:

Step 1:Arise Two Hours Before Your First Appointment, or before you have to be at work. Invest the first hour in yourself by reading something educational, motivational, or spiritual. As Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The first hour is the rudder of the day.”

When you get up and invest the first hour in yourself, you set yourself up mentally to have an excellent day.You will be more positive, alert, creative, and productive all day long when you start your day by investing the first hour in yourself.

If you read in your field one hour per day, that will translate into about one book per week. One book per week will translate into about fifty books per year. Since the average adult reads less than one nonfiction book per year, if you were to read fifty books in your feld each year, do you think that would give you an edge in your profession? Do you think that it would move you ahead of virtually everyone else in your business? Of course it would!

If you read ffty books per year for ten years, this would be 500 books that would help you improve your productivity,performance, and income. At the very least, you would need a bigger house just to hold your books. And you would be able to afford it!

Reading one hour per day in your field will make you a national authority in three to five years. This alone can give you your 1,000 percent increase over the course of your career.

Step 2:Rewrite Your Goals, Every Day. Get a spiral note-book and rewrite your major goals in the present tense every morning before you start out, without looking back at what you wrote the previous day. This writing and rewritingis the process of programming instructions into the guidance mechanism of your mind.

When you rewrite your ten goals each morning, you will continually see and think of opportunities to achieve those goals all day long. You will become more focused, channeled,and directed.You will be more purposeful and determined.And you will achieve your goals much faster than if they were merely wishes floating around in the back of your mind.

Writing and rewriting your goals each day can give you your 1,000 percent increase in income over ten years.

Step 3:Plan Every Day in Advance.Make a list, and set priorities on your work before you start off. Your ability to set priorities and to choose the most important thing that you can be doing at every moment is the key to or-ganizing your life and doubling your productivity.(We will talk in detail about time management techniques in Chapter 12.)

Working on your top priorities can increase your in-come by 1,000 percent over ten years, and it is probably impossible to achieve without it.

Step 4: DisciplineYourself to Concentrate Single-Mindedly on One Thing.Choose the most important thing that you can do each day. Then, start on it first thing and then work on it until it is 100 percent complete.Your ability to focus and concentrate, when you develop and hone it into a habit, all by itself, will enable you to double your productivity, performance, and output in the next month-and it will give you your 1,000 percent increase over ten years.

Step 5: Listen to Educational Audio Programs in Your Car.The average businessperson who drives spends 500-1000 hours per year behind the wheel of a car. When you turn your car into a “university on wheels” or a “mobile classroom,”you get the educational equivalent of one to two full-time university semesters as you drive around.

Many people have gone from rags to riches by simply listening to educational audio programs in their cars as they drive from place to place. You could do the same. This alone could give you your 1000 percent increase.

Step 6: Ask Two Magic Questions After Every Call or Event. First, ask yourself, “What did I do rigbt?”Then, ask yourself, “What would I do differently?”

The first question, “What did I do rigbt?” forces you to think through and recall all the correct things that you did in that last mèeting, presentation, or event, even if it was not successful. Write them down.

The second question, “What would I do differently?”forces you to think through all the different ways you could improve your performance in a similar situation. Write these ideas down as well.

In both cases, by reviewing your performance,by thinking about what you did rigbt and what you would. do differently, you program yourself to perform even bet-ter the next time. This is one of the fastest and most pow-erful exercises in personal growth and development I have ever discovered. This process dramatically speeds up the rate at which you move into the top 20 percent.

Step 7:Treat Every Person You Meet Like a Million-Dollar Customer. Treat each person you meet and work with, both at home and in the office, as though he or she is the most important person in the world. When you treat people as if they are valuable and important, they will return the favor by treating you as if you are valuable and important as well. They will want to be associated with you, work for you, buy from you, and introduce you to their friends.

You begin treating people like million-dollar customers by starting at home, with the members of your family. Re-member,they are the most important people in your life. So when you start your day well, first thing in the morn-ing,by making the members of your family feel important and telling them that you love them, you will be more positive, relaxed, and happier for the rest of the day.

Fully 85 percent of your success will be determined by how much people like and respect you, especially in business and sales. Never miss an opportunity to treat people well.

When you practice these seven steps each day for a month, you will see changes and improvements in your life, work, and income that will astonish you. After a month of regular practice, you will have formed a new habit of continuous personal improvement that can carry you onward and upward for the rest of your life.

Be the Best!

Lifelong personal development and the commitment to personal excellence require tremendous dedication, discipline, and willpower. The greatest payoff is that every time you learn and apply something new, your brain releases endorpbins, which make you feel happier and more excited about your future.

Every time you learn and apply something new, you will have a greater sense of personal power. Your self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride will increase. You will feel very much in control of your earning ability, which is one of the most important parts of your life.

In the next chapter, we'll talk about the importance of courage, of overcoming the fears and doubts that hold most people back. It is often the case that we know what we need to do,but we lack the courage to take the risks that accompany trying anything new.Instead, we make excuses for inaction.