If you have come this far in this book I must congratulate you, for your dedication to success places you among the top in our society. But having just read this book once is not enough. You need to read it repeatedly, write the ideas down and take action upon them. You see, I could give you the greatest strategies and techniques in the world, but if you are not going to use them they would be worthless to you.

To establish consistency with anything we do, we must make it habitual. It is not enough to know what to do, you must do what you know. Whatever you do over and over again will eventually become a habit. A new habit takes about 10-21 days of repetition to reach the point where you habitually think or act in a specific way. Until the habit is developed, you need the discipline to stay at it. Once you have decided upon a new habit, launch it strongly and never allow yourself to quit. If possible, take immediate action to acquire your new habit, and rehearse situations in your mind when your new habit will be needed or used.

Remember that wherever you are in life at this moment is largely the result of your own habitual ways of thinking and acting. More than 90% of everything we do is by habit, so if you take the time to develop successful habits, there is nothing that can stop you from reaching your goals.

And so it Begins…

When you put this book down you have two choices. You can either let this information stay in your mind until it fades and is forgotten, or you can take action and apply it to improve your quality of life. If you think you will decide later, you are fooling yourself, because failing to choose is also a choice. If you do not decide to act right now you have already decided to let things stay the way they are.

Do not let yourself get stuck in theory and learning. The real value only comes from application. If you are truly committed to improving your life, then here is what you should do next: look through this book again and create a list of all the habits that you consider valuable and want to develop. By habits I here mean any strategies, principles and techniques that you can take action on. Next, choose a couple of habits from this list that you feel are most needed in your life and write them down on a note in your own words as affirmations. Place the note somewhere where you can read it several times a day. Beside your note create a habit log where you can physically tick off the techniques you have done, strategies you have followed or principles you have reviewed every single day.

Now work on these habits exclusively every day for 30 days or until you are able to consistently apply them without any discipline or motivational techniques. When you are done internalizing the habits write down a few more from your list on another note. Place it next to the first one and then work to develop those habits as well for another 30 days. Continue doing this until you have mastered all the habits on your list. As a final summary to get you started, I will leave you with a list of what I consider to be the most important habits of success:

1. Habit of Goal setting – I set goals every week of the things I want and work on them every day.
2. Habit of Time management – I plan every day in advance and work single-mindedly on my goals from a prioritized list of tasks for the best use of my time.
3. Habit of Health – I drink plenty of water, exercise regularly and eat small, balanced meals.
4. Habit of Wealth – I spend less than I earn and invest the difference.
5. Habit of Growth – I look for ways to improve in everything I do and spend a period of time every day to learn more.
6. Habit of Optimism – I always look for the good in everything.
7. Habit of Acting – I visualize myself as the person I would like to become, and act as if that were true.
8. Habit of Courage – I overcome my fears and limitations by stretching myself beyond my comfort zone.

Having read this far, you may have already decided to change some aspects of your life. Sometimes awareness in and of itself can be life changing. However, more often than not creating real change takes more than just knowing what to do. This chapter contains a toolbox of psychological techniques to develop or remove habits, behaviors, beliefs and personality traits.

About Change

Do you want to improve your relationships, health and wealth? Self-improvement in all of these areas requires change. Not just new knowledge, but new habit patterns of thought and behavior. To improve your life you have to be willing to change aspects of yourself. If what you are doing right now is not getting you the results you want then something has to change, and nothing will change until you do. Many people hold a strong belief about their “one true self” – which is very limiting, because it allows them to justify their flaws and thereby hold themselves back from growth and development. The truth is that you can change virtually any aspect of yourself instantly with the right techniques. What takes time is getting yourself to the point where you finally decide to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Pattern Interrupts

When we find a behavior that works, we tend to get locked into it and repeat it automatically whenever a similar situation comes up. This is called a habit pattern and it is a series of mental or physical steps that we perform habitually. They simplify our lives immensely, letting us drive cars or perform complex skills without us even having to think about it, but some can also be limiting. Many of us run patterns that are unproductive – for example we may panic when we see a spider, are asked to take a test or make a speech. We may feel embarrassed to death if we make a mistake or if someone laughs at us, or else we can have specific thought patterns we go through whenever we are angry, worried, depressed or afraid, that spiral deeper and deeper into negativity.

To break a limiting or destructive habit pattern, you can use a pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is anything sudden and unexpected you do that totally defies the pattern and therefore breaks you out of it. Take a moment right now to think up your own enjoyable ways to break your limiting patterns and write down at least five of them. It can be anything to throw the pattern off. Something physical – such as a gesture, touch or a change in physiology – or something in your mind, such as a phrase in your mind’s ear or a visualization in your mind’s eye. Then, the next time you become aware that you are in or are about to start a limiting pattern, use one of these interrupts to stop it and to give yourself a choice in how to respond, instead of just reacting habitually. Each time you interrupt a pattern, it will become harder to get back into it and if you interrupt it enough times, eventually you will not automatically get into it anymore. What makes pattern interrupts even more powerful is that they themselves become habitual after you have used them for a while, so they will automatically interrupt your unsupportive patterns whenever they occur.

To demonstrate one use for pattern interrupts, find yourself a negative pattern that you do automatically, for example an addiction. Then, for the pattern interrupt take your index and middle fingers and start tapping the back of your hand. While you do this continually imagine yourself running your pattern and concentrate on the feeling you get from doing it. You will notice that the feeling of need grows weaker and becomes increasingly difficult to get back. Keep performing the pattern interrupt for a few minutes or until you are no longer able to get the feeling back even as you try. The pattern will now have been severely weakened. Keep throwing the pattern interrupt anytime the feeling of wanting to do the negative pattern shows up, and it will be broken faster and faster until it disappears completely. You have now got an extremely powerful technique that can give you back control over every aspect of your life – for example by helping you remove cravings, phobias, fears, anger, anxiety and addictions such as smoking or drinking, or anything else you feel out of control around.

Pattern Conditioning

Having a set of pattern interrupts is great for stopping unsupportive behaviors, but to create permanent change you have to replace them with new empowering patterns. It also requires you to convince yourself of the importance and urgency of the change, because the reason why you have not made the change already is that you have mixed emotions about it. Your pain and pleasure scale is weighted in the wrong direction. To deal with this let us look at a simple yet powerful 4-step technique for creating lasting change.

1. Decide specifically what it is you want to change and write it down on a piece of paper. Whatever it is you want to change about yourself, it always comes down to one of two things: either patterns of mind or patterns of body. Unsupportive patterns of mind include habitual states like excessive worry, attitudes such as pessimism, or limiting beliefs like “no one likes me”. Unsupportive patterns of body on the other hand are habitual behaviors such as overeating, smoking, gambling, arguing, complaining, making excuses, procrastinating or other bad habits.
2. Get extremely motivated to change by associating immense pain to not changing and massive pleasure to changing. Change is always a question of motivation, of pain and pleasure. The only way to change is to get absolutely convinced that it must happen right now. Ask pain inducing questions to link pain to the past, present and future of using this pattern. What has it cost you in the past, what is it costing you currently and what will it ultimately cost you in the future? What does it cost you physically, emotionally, mentally and financially? Vividly imagine the painful consequences, so intensely that you will think twice before ever doing this pattern again. Then, ask pleasure inducing questions. If you do change, how will that make you feel? How will your life improve? How much happier will you be? Try to find at least 10 strong reasons of why you must change and write them down on your paper. The key is to find both important and urgent reasons, so that you reach the threshold needed to make an absolute commitment to making the change right now.
3. Create a new empowering alternative and condition it. You cannot just stop a pattern, you have to replace it. All of your patterns are designed to get you out of pain and into pleasure. Once you quit your old pattern you need to come up with something pleasurable to take its place. Find a pattern that does not just empower you, but also enhances your life and write it down on your paper. Then condition it by rehearsing it over and over again to make it habitual. Any pattern of thinking, feeling or behaving that is consistently reinforced will eventually become a habit. A quick way to do this is by visualizing yourself vividly as you are about to begin your old pattern, but then see yourself doing your new empowering behavior instead. You want to condition your brain so that the beginning of the old behavior will trigger the new behavior. Rehearse this new alternative in your mind with emotional intensity at least 20 times, or until you can clearly see that this is how you will respond in future situations. If you are in a peak emotional state the pattern will become habitual with fewer repetitions. We want to establish a new habit pattern in a matter of minutes instead of months.
4. When you have the new pattern conditioned, be sure to test it out in a situation that would previously have triggered your old pattern. To keep the pattern conditioned you may need to continue linking pleasure to the new behavior overtime. You can for example set up a series of short-term goals with rewards as you reach each goal. It is also important to change your environment to support your new pattern and hinder the temptation to slip back into the old pattern, especially if that environment contains people that continually reinforce your negative habit. If you for any reason get back into the old pattern you can always cancel it by throwing a pattern interrupt. To automatically reinforce your commitment you can place your paper – which contains the old pattern, the new pattern and your reasons for changing – somewhere where you can see it every day, until you have successfully completed the change.

Visualization

The ability to form precise and vivid mental pictures of the things we want to be, have or do, and to hold those pictures clearly in our mind’s eye, is a very powerful tool for improving our lives. With it we can motivate ourselves towards our goals, change our state, restore our energy, improve our performance, develop new skills and form new habits.

The four keys to visualization are: frequency, intensity, vividness and duration. The more often you visualize, the more emotions you attach, the clearer you can see the picture and the longer you can hold it in your mind’s eye, the faster and deeper it becomes embedded into your subconscious. It is important to know that our subconscious mind does not know the difference between a real and a vividly imagined event, and if you imagine anything enough times your subconscious mind will accept it as being true. Visualization can help us in many areas of our lives and we have already discussed some of its uses. To clarify, here is a list of its most key areas:

1. Self-image – To enhance your self-image, imagine yourself as the person you would like to be with the qualities and characteristics that you desire.
2. Motivation – To motivate yourself into action, imagine yourself already enjoying the rewards of having achieved the task and how your life has improved as a result of it. Just as importantly, imagine how you would be worse off if you did not take any action.
3. Goals – If you visualize a goal that you desire with feeling, your subconscious mind will begin working to bring it into your reality. It will filter your perception to look for opportunities, give you ideas to reach the goal faster and guide your actions to move towards it.
4. Mental rehearsal – Prior to every important event, mentally rehearse and see yourself performing at your very best and achieving the ideal results. Either recall a similar experience of excellence or imagine what excellent performance would be like. You can use this to rehearse being successful in any important area of your life, until it is so real for you that your mind begins to believe it and will perform accordingly.
5. Skills – To learn or improve a skill you must first see a demonstration of it so you know what perfect performance looks like. You can then practice it in your mind by going through the entire skill over and over again in just the same way as you would like to do it in reality. By training a skill in your mind, you are creating pathways in your brain just as if you were actually doing the action, and each time you do it will become easier to perform the skill in reality.
6. Sleep – Before falling asleep it is a good idea to go through your major goals and daily list of tomorrows activities, because your mind will problem solve and prepare for them during the night. You will wake up with increased motivation and new ideas of how to reach your goals and complete your tasks faster and better. Another good idea is to do your daily reviewing right before going to sleep, because whatever you go over during the last 45 minutes before sleep will be replayed in your subconscious mind more times than other new information and will therefore be learnt better.
7. State – To create a positive state, think of a time when you had the desired feeling in vivid detail, or imagine what it would feel like. Make it bigger, brighter, more colorful and bring the image closer. Represent it even better than it was and then visualize yourself stepping into that picture, so that you can feel the emotion strongly.
8. Learning – Whenever you learn something useful that you cannot immediately try out, you should visualize yourself applying it in real life situations. This way you are much more likely to actually use the information and you will also learn it faster.

Affirmations

The most powerful words in the world are the words you say to yourself. Affirmations are commands that you say out loud or to yourself with emotion, that are driven into your subconscious mind. These commands will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind and it will make your thoughts and behaviors consistent with them. You can create affirmations for any goal or belief you want. The only rules are that they have to be positive, personal and in present tense. Some short examples would be: I am disciplined, I like myself, I love my life, I am responsible, I am healthy, I feel terrific, I am a genius, I am happy, I am the best, I am confident, I smile a lot, I can handle anything, I am interested in lots of things, I am glad to be alive, I use my time well, I exercise daily, I earn x dollars per year or I weigh x kilos.

You can either create your own affirmations, or select a few of these that you would want to become true, and then write them down. Affirm them 10 or more times in a row to yourself, three times per day, until you become absolutely convinced that they are true and you have begun acting accordingly. As you affirm them to yourself, pay careful attention to the images they bring up in your mind. Especially, visualize yourself in your mind as the person you are describing – as if the affirmation had already become true. At first your subconscious may reject your statements, because they conflict with your current self-image, but with enough consistency and dedication your beliefs will eventually change and your behavior with them. You can make the affirmations habitual by visualizing yourself affirming them at daily occurrences, for example after waking up, before lunch and before going to sleep. To increase their impact you can affirm them out loud.

Act as if

This technique can be used to induce any empowering state or personality trait you want. You simply act as if you had the characteristic you would like to have, and you will then gain the feelings and thinking that are consistent with it. By acting the same way as happy, self-confident and successful people do, you will start to experience those same states. Eventually, your self-image will improve and the positive behaviors will become habitual and natural. In simple terms, you fake it until you make it. You can overcome fears by acting courageously. You can gain leadership abilities by acting like a leader. In time it will stop being an act and become who you really are.

Summary

1. The key programs of human behavior are habit patterns of mind and body.
2. You can change yourself using pattern interrupts, conditioning, visualization and affirmations, or by acting as if the change has already occurred.

Mastering self-motivation is a vital part of reaching our goals, since most goals tend to involve pushing through short-term pain to achieve a long-term gain. Goals in and of themselves are highly motivating, but to get even greater leverage we are now going to take a look at a toolbox of motivational tips and techniques. In a nutshell, the key to motivation is to make the things we want so compelling that it will make us overcome the mental inertia, procrastination, bad habits, limiting beliefs and fears that hold most people back. We are always motivated when there is something we want badly enough.

Pain and Pleasure

The primary motivation of human behavior is the pain and pleasure principle. Almost everything we do, we do out of our fear of pain or our desire to gain pleasure. It is our most basic survival instinct. If you are failing to take action or to create change in any area of your life there is only one reason: you have learned to associate taking action with more pain than pleasure.

You can imagine motivation as being a scale. On one side is pain and on the other is pleasure. For any decision you make, your brain is always weighing the perceived pain and pleasure based on your beliefs and perceptions, and this will motivate you to seek out experiences that may lead to pleasure while avoiding experiences that could cause pain.

If you are not following through with your plans and goals, it is because you have that scale weighted in the wrong direction. You are focusing on the perceived pain of taking action, instead of the pleasure of getting things done. At any moment in time, whatever you focus on is what is most real to you – so to motivate yourself you must focus on the pleasure of completing your goals, as well as the long-term pain of staying in your present situation without moving forward.

Commitments

One of the easiest ways to stay motivated towards a goal is to commit that goal to paper and then to place that paper somewhere where you can see it every day. Once you have made a commitment like this you have burned your mental bridges and can no longer make excuses to put it off. To gain even more leverage you can announce your goal and its deadline to your encouraging friends, to get their support in helping you stay committed. When we make a public commitment like this it puts our integrity on the line, and we have a very strong psychological drive to remain congruent with what we say and do. Another great way to gain motivation is to make the task into a challenge. You can, for example, give a friend $100 or more as a cash reward to give back to you when you have completed a specific task, and if you fail or quit he gets to keep the money.

As a general rule, you should only share your commitments with supportive friends who believe in you. Otherwise your goal may sound impossible to them, and they will gladly try to “bring you back to your senses” by listing all the reasons why you cannot achieve it. If you have someone in your life that you know will support you no matter what, you should share at least one of your goals with them to see how much leverage this single technique can give you. If you cannot get yourself to make a full commitment to your goal and its action plan, then instead make a commitment to work on it just for today. If you can get yourself to follow through just for one day you can do it again the next day, and the momentum you build will make it easier and easier to keep going.

Your ability to make absolute commitments to your goals is a major key to success, because until those commitments are made, nothing really happens. Everyone you meet has a goal of becoming successful someday. They may think about it, wish, hope and dream, but very few of them will ever make the unequivocal decision that they are going to do whatever it takes to achieve their goal, and by not making the decision they have already decided to stay where they are.

Visualize

One of the keys to motivation is to see yourself having already achieved your goal in the future, to experience success mentally. Try this by choosing one of your goals and imagining the satisfaction you will have when the goal is already accomplished. The greater you imagine the feeling of completion, the more motivated you will be and the faster you will achieve your goal. Every time you visualize a goal you increase your desire for it and diminish your fears, and you strengthen your motivation to make your visualization a reality.

Motives

To become motivated we need motives, which come from asking ourselves: What will I gain from this? You can apply this to a goal by writing down your reasons for wanting it in a brief paragraph on your goal list. The more reasons you have and the greater they are, the stronger your desire will be and the more motivated you will feel to achieve the goal. If you have five reasons you may want it, if you have twenty you may do it, but if you have a hundred reasons you will do anything to achieve it.

Rewards

If you want to get really motivated towards a goal you can create a reward system for each step of it and for the completion of the entire goal. A goal in and of itself is a deferred reward, which are not as motivating as immediate rewards. It is only when the goal has been broken down into tasks and assigned immediate rewards that it becomes truly compelling. Determine what immediate rewards hold the most pleasure for you and create a list of at least 10 of them. It can be small treats, such as listening to music or taking a break or reading, whatever motivates you the most. Preferably, the reward should not be consumable since they will only motivate you until you have had enough of them. Next, write another list with larger deferred rewards, such as going out for a walk, a movie or shopping.

When your lists of rewards are done you can use them to assign small immediate rewards to the tasks on your to-do list and larger deferred rewards for the completion of the whole to-do list, or a goal on your goal list. Be sure to clearly visualize the rewards to make them motivating and discipline yourself to only give yourself the reward after you have achieved the task to 100%.

An alternative to giving yourself the reward directly is to give yourself a token for every success, for example a poker chip, as a symbol of what you have worked for. Using this system, you instead rate your rewards on a number scale, say 1-10, so you can exchange the tokens for rewards or save them up for even greater rewards. It may sound simple, but rewards are amazingly effective at changing behaviors and making us stay disciplined. The tasks will become much more enjoyable, procrastination will disappear and your efficiency will improve. Your focus will change away from the difficulty of the task and onto the enjoy-ability of the reward and you will find yourself eager to move forward.

Procrastination

Procrastination is when we delay doing a task we need to complete because we fear it will involve a lot of pain and difficulty. We procrastinate because we imagine that doing the task will be more painful than the pleasure of having it completed. To overcome procrastination all you need to do is reverse this process. Focus instead on all the positive results you could get by taking action and all the negative consequences you may suffer from not doing it. Keep doing this until you have conditioned yourself to feel that if you procrastinate it will be much more painful than doing the task right away.

A person who procrastinates is waiting for the “right” time to do the job. He believes motivation will suddenly appear out of nowhere. An action-oriented person on the other hand knows that motivation builds from taking action. Remember the momentum principle. In many ways we are paralyzed by inaction, but once you discipline yourself to do even a one small slice of a task, you will build forward momentum and stick with the task until completion. That is the key to eliminating procrastination. Discipline yourself to begin a small part of a task and that will get you going.

Self-discipline

Underlining all great achievements in life is the quality of self-discipline – the willingness to do what you know you should do, when you should do it, whether you like it or not. It is the ability to delay short-term gratification to enjoy even greater rewards in the long-term. In a way it is a substitute for motivation, by using our willpower to force the behavior that we want.

The key to developing self-discipline is to see your decisions and actions using a long-time perspective. It is only when you consider the long-term consequences of your actions that you start to move forward in life. Rather than doing only what is fun and easy, you can discipline yourself to do what is hard but necessary to assure yourself a better life in the future. Self-discipline is a skill that affects every area of your life, and every disciplined act strengthens the habit. You should therefore resolve to be self-disciplined in all areas of success and in every other important area of your life.

Summary

1. Motivation towards our goals can be enhanced through commitments, visualization, motives and rewards.
2. To overcome procrastination, do just a small piece of the task to build momentum while focusing on the pleasure of having it done.
3. When our motivation fails, self-discipline gives us the persistence we need to continue on.

Fear has always been the great enemy of success. More people are held back by fears than by any other factor. It is an emotion that overrides our intelligence, stops us from moving towards our goals and overall worsens our quality of life. People often do not recognize the impact fear has in their lives, simply because they use different words to describe the emotion – words such as worry, nervousness, stress, shyness or anxiety. Specific fears can also be hard to discover, even though they may constrain our lives immensely – fears such as the fear of failure, rejection, making mistakes, public speaking, asking someone out on a date, expressing your opinion or asking for what you want. Our goal in this chapter is to overcome fear so that we can make our own, rational choices on how to act, instead of just reacting blindly in a fearful situation.

Fear of Failure

The major fear that stands as the greatest obstacle to success is fear of failure. The problem is not actually failure itself, which can make us stronger and more determined, but the fear itself that paralyzes us from action. We attach fear to things we do not need to have any intense feelings about. To things like trying something new and not having it turn out exactly the way we expect, which some people would choose to call failure.

Fear of failure is what restricts people to their comfort zone. It is what makes them avoid risks and play it safe as the years pass them by. We fear going for what we want in case we fail, but by giving in to our fears we have already failed. Ask yourself: What one thing would you attempt to do if you knew you would be successful? This will help you recognize in what areas the unconscious fears of failure are holding you back. If you ask this over and over again, your entire view of what is possible will expand dramatically. You will see clearly what you really want to be, have and do, and simultaneously realize that it is only the fear and doubt in your own abilities that are holding you back. The main reason for fear of failure is that most people do not understand the role of failure in achieving success. The correlation is simple: you cannot achieve success without failing. Failure is an essential part of becoming successful in anything. The key to solving fear of failure is to realize that there is no failure, only feedback. You always learn something and the lesson learned is always worth more than the price of getting it. See failure as temporary isolated incidents of life-instruction, and fail forward by quickly bouncing back from it with a new approach.

Overcoming Fear

We all feel fear initially, but some people learn to overcome it. Therefore, it is not fear itself that is the problem, but how we react when faced with it. For some people the fear is motivating. For others it creates a state of complete paralysis. People who overcome fear view it from a position of power, and may use words such as “excited” to describe the emotion rather than labeling it negatively.

A fascinating thing about fears is that if you face them courageously, they diminish. On the other hand, if you back away from them they grow until they have the power to hold you back from any progress. The key then to overcoming fears is to face them quickly and bravely, without giving yourself time to be afraid. When you discipline yourself to do the thing you fear, your fear of the situation gradually goes away. You just do what you fear again and again until it holds no more fear for you. You face the fear, confront the fear, and act despite the fear until you are no longer afraid.

As an example, one of the greatest fears for most people, ranked even before death, is the fear of public speaking. However, studies in this area have found something quite interesting. No matter how afraid of public speaking a person is, if that person is required to regularly stand up and speak to a group, eventually the person will lose their fear of speaking and become good at it. His confidence will gradually rise and his competence will follow until he feels no uneasiness at all. Therefore, if you want to reprogram a fear response fast, put yourself in a situation where you are faced with the fearful event again and again. This will go into your subconscious mind and quickly reprogram your fear response. Another powerful approach is to face your fears in small doses that are easy to overcome. For example, if you are afraid to talk to strangers you can start out with just becoming comfortable holding eye contact with people. You then add a greeting, then a question, and so on until you can hold a conversation with a stranger without any uneasiness at all.

The problem with overcoming fears is that no matter which approach we choose we will still experience some fear initially, which causes a crippling inertia for many people. Fortunately, there is a way to stop the fear from occurring in the first place. Since fear is a state of mind, it is only as powerful as its representation in your head. In the case of fear, it only has an impact on you if you have an expectation of a painful consequence. If you can access how fears are represented in your mind, through your internal pictures and dialog, you can change them into something that supports and motivates you. When your representations carry no imagined negative consequences they will lose their fearful impact. The way to do this is to face your fears in your imagination first, by visualizing yourself acting courageously in the fearful situation and achieving great rewards as a result of it. See yourself with a confidant voice and posture skillfully confronting the fear, and at the same time change any representations that might work against you. Run through this mental movie several times to build the momentum to do it in real life.

Now that you have learnt how to overcome fear, it is time to make the decision to be free of your fears and to make a habit throughout your life of facing the things you fear. If you act bravely in spite of fear, you will keep on growing. On the other hand, if you avoid the things you fear then fear will control your life. Therefore resolve right now to be free of your fears. Keep in mind that no matter how secure we may feel in our comfort zone, pushing through fear will always lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.

Self-confidence

To diminish our fears we can develop our self-confidence – our belief in ourselves and our abilities. Self-confidence is not absence of fear, but mastery of fear. It is a foundation quality of success in every walk of life and the most recognizable attribute of a happy, healthy and successful person. The more confident you are the more attractive and persuasive you will be, and the better you will perform at everything you turn your hand to. You will take more chances, be less affected by temporary setbacks and commit yourself to achieve objectives that today you can only dream about. With greater self-confidence, with an unshakable belief in yourself, nothing would be impossible for you.

The key to developing self-confidence is to recognize that it is just a state of mind that you can create anytime you want no matter what situation you are in. You can feel confident about anything, even things you have never done before, by controlling your physiology, focus and representations. In essence, by acting as if you are already confident. A feeling of confidence is nothing but a sense of certainty that you can do something, a belief that you will succeed in your undertakings and an absolute trust in yourself and your abilities. You need to install this belief, by visualizing and defining yourself as a confident person who overcomes their fears. Once you have done that, your subconscious mind will take care of the rest.

The very highest level of self-confidence that you can reach is the point where you are totally unafraid. The level when you feel so good about yourself and your abilities that you are willing to try just about anything. When you are not concerned about what other people think of you and you stand up for what you believe in and pursue your goals without hesitation. You will then have reached the point where success starts to come naturally.

Summary

1. Fear is one of the main factors that may hold us back from pursuing our goals.
2. View fear from a position of power and excitement instead of pain and paralysis.
3. Make a habit of doing the things you fear so that you will overcome them.
4. Develop an absolute belief in yourself and in your ability to overcome any obstacles.

Your self-image is the way you see yourself in your mind as the person you believe yourself to be. It is your inner mirror that you subconsciously look at for how to behave and perform. We always act according to this image. It is one of the strongest forces in our psychology. Yet our self-image is largely subjective, meaning that what we believe to be true about ourselves is really not based in reality. It is simply a collection of beliefs about who we think we are, how we define ourselves, that comes from the decisions and commitments that we have made about ourselves and from other people’s opinions about us that we have accepted as true.

You can define your self-image by answering the question: What do you believe other people think about you? It should be built up of beliefs starting with “I am” – for example: I am strong, weak, intelligent, stupid, optimistic, attractive, shy, rich or successful, in this or that area. Take a moment right now to find the beliefs about yourself that have a major impact on your life, and consciously decide which of them work for you and which of them you are going to throw away.

Your self-image is one of the most important determiners of your success, because it affects your performance in every area of life. If you believed yourself to be exceptionally gifted and capable of greatness, then that would become true for you. You would think, speak and behave as if you had the qualities that you believed yourself to have and your results would follow. Equally, if you saw yourself as a fit, intelligent, graceful, confident, rich and successful person, you would engage in the behaviors that lead to those effects, just as you would avoid behaviors that contradicted that image of yourself.

Improving your Self-image

If we replace an old, negative or unsupportive picture of ourselves with a new, positive and empowering one, it will change every area of our lives for the better. Fortunately, it is easy to change our self-image. You simply imagine yourself as the person you would like to be, over and over again, until the new image is embedded into your mind.

Begin by imagining another you standing in front of you. It is the person you would most like to be, your ideal-self, with all the qualities that you admire in other people. What do you look like? How are you standing, moving and talking? What qualities do you have? Are you more intelligent, confident or happy? Imagine the other you doing things that you are afraid or unable to do with ease. See that person going through your everyday routines with efficiency, grace and enjoyment, and performing extraordinarily well in difficult situations. Then, when the image is exactly like you want it to be, step into that empowered self and see through their eyes, hear through their ears and feel how good it feels to be your ideal-self. Stand the way they stood, move the way they moved, speaking in their tone and think about how much better your life will be from your ideal-self’s perspective.

To integrate your new self-image, continue to act like your ideal-self for the next week and use this visualization exercise at least three times each day, starting in the morning. Once you have done it a few times you will find that you can recreate it very quickly, in as little as a few seconds.

Modeling

The visualization technique above can also be used to model other people. You can literally take on a self-image from any person you know that is stronger than your own, anytime you need to overcome difficulties, challenges, problems, worries and fears of any kind, and it will gradually improve your own self-image.

For instance, pick a role model you have: the most confident, powerful person you know, fictional or real. Then, either visualize that person in front of you or take on his self-image. Next, ask how he would solve a problem you have or how he would perform in a situation that you find difficult. Seen through the perspective of such a person, our problems and worries will often become so small and easy to deal with that they are laughable.

The people we admire are always available in our minds whenever we need them. Which self-image to use depends on the resources you need at the time – such as courage, intelligence, humor, elegance, strength, leadership, flexibility, or just being someone who enjoys life more. You can develop a whole array of powerful role models that you are able to model for different situations.

Summary

1. Our self-image is a collection of beliefs that form a composite image of the person we believe ourselves to be.
2. We can improve our self-image by repeatedly imagining ourselves as the person we would like to be.
3. We can borrow strengths from people we admire by taking on their self-image.

When ideas are repeated over and over again they eventually become beliefs, or convictions, and they affect our decisions, behavior and perception of the world. Any idea that we accept as true will tend to become true for us, because we will act in a manner consistent with it. Your beliefs cause you to view, rationalize and interpret situations, people and especially yourself in accordance with those beliefs. This is because it is a natural function of the mind to remain congruent with what it has previously accepted as true. Basically, you do not necessarily believe what you see, but rather you see what you have already decided to believe. Your beliefs become your reality.

Types of Beliefs

The beliefs that affect our lives are either empowering or limiting. Limiting beliefs hold us back from our goals or detract from our enjoyment of life, while empowering beliefs cause us to reach for our goals and enjoy a greater quality of life. To make sure that your beliefs are empowering, you should ask yourself – for every new idea you come across, and for every strong conviction you already have – whether or not it is useful. Does it give you more power, flexibility and choice, or does it take away? Do not judge your beliefs on whether they are accurate or not according to your perception, but focus on the consequences of believing in them. Beliefs have little to do with reality and you can change them any time you want. You can choose to replace limiting beliefs with beliefs that empower you, beliefs that are consistent with the life that you wish to enjoy.

Empowering Beliefs

There are many empowering beliefs worth having that can enhance your quality of life. You can find them by considering what you would have to believe in order to be, have or do what you want in life. Here is a list of empowering beliefs that contains some useful generalizations or assumptions. They may not always be “true”, but by convincing yourself that they are and acting as if you believe them, you will begin see the world from a more resourceful perspective.

• There is no failure, only feedback. We learn from every experience and every response is only information that tells you whether you are being effective or not.
• There are no problems, only challenges. Every obstacle is actually a stepping stone towards success to help you learn and grow.
• There is no fear, only excitement. Let your fears motivate you to overcome them instead of holding you back.
• If what I am doing is not working I will try something else. Be flexible and do not resist change. For something new to happen you have to try something different.
• No matter what happens, I can handle it. Become confident that you can deal with anything that may happen in your life.
• My past does not equal my future. At any point in time you can change any part of your life.
• I am destined for success. Become absolutely convinced that you are a success in the making.
• Everyone is secretly helping me to succeed. The concept of pronoia – assume the best of intensions of everyone around you.
• Anyone can do anything and anything is possible. If one person in the world can do it anybody can by figuring out how they are doing it.
• I am free to choose my own destiny. Accept that you are in control of your own life, decisions and actions.

Limiting Beliefs

We all possess some beliefs that do not ultimately support us. These negative beliefs exist whenever we incorrectly believe ourselves to be limited in any way. Most of the limitations we have are not based in reality at all, but exist only in our own minds. Irrespective of whether the limiting beliefs are real or not, they can become true for us. For example, people who are convinced they cannot succeed in an area – such as weight loss, relationships or finances – will not take any action to go beyond the limits they have set for themselves. Even if someone or something got them to try, they would still expect to fail, subconsciously sabotaging their efforts. They would also filter out references that run contrary to their conviction, while looking for and amplifying references to support it.

Do you have limiting beliefs about life, yourself, people, health, happiness, relationships, money or education that stop you from achieving the level of success you want? What are the limiting beliefs that come up in your self-talk whenever you think of something that you could be, have or do? Write them all down. The simple fact that you are having trouble making progress in an area often means that you have limiting beliefs there. Below is a list of some example limiting beliefs. As you can see, they mostly consist of either excuses or limiting, generalized statements.

• Negative self-image beliefs – “I am too shy, old, young, weak, unlucky or incapable”.
• Limiting rules – “If only that happened, then I would be happy” or “I must have this to be able to feel successful”.
• Self-pity beliefs – “I do not deserve wealth, happiness or success”, “I am not good enough as I am”, “Other people are better than me”, “I do not like myself” or “I have to prove myself by becoming successful”.
• Self-defeating beliefs – “I cannot succeed so there is no point in trying” or “It takes money to make money”.
• Scarcity beliefs – “I do not have enough money, time or education”.
• Inflexible beliefs – “That will not work for me”, “That is impossible”, “I tried that once and it did not work” or “I am right and you are wrong”.
• Unsupportive metaphors, labels or perceptions – “Life is a pain, a struggle or hopeless”, “Money is bad, scarce or evil” or “People are mean, dishonest or selfish”.

Changing Beliefs

The first step to changing limiting beliefs is to become aware of them. In addition to those you have already found, you will also begin to notice new ones whenever they show up in your life, as a result of learning that they exist. You may, for example, catch yourself arguing for your limitations or holding yourself back because of past failures. We can often remove weak beliefs by simply making the choice to do so as soon as we realize that they are limiting. However, stronger convictions may take a bit more convincing to get rid of permanently.

A belief is nothing but an idea or opinion built up of reference experiences, so the way to change a limiting belief is to undermine those references by using contradicting references. The contradicting references in turn then build up a new empowering belief that replaces your limiting belief. A limiting belief such as “I always fail” could for example be transformed into “there is no failure”. Take your list of limiting beliefs and rewrite them, one at a time, into empowering beliefs that support you.

When you encounter a strong limiting belief transform it by reflecting repeatedly on experiences that support your new empowering belief and that dismiss your limiting belief. We all have enough references to backup just about any belief, and we can even use other people’s success experiences, movies or even our own imagination as references to support our new beliefs. The more emotional and extreme the references are, the stronger our new empowering belief will become.

Expectations

An important way in which beliefs impact our lives is through our expectations, or our beliefs about the future. Whatever we expect of ourselves becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy, because we will always act to fulfill those expectations. If you confidently expect to be successful, wealthy, liked and happy, you will prepare for those results and will seldom be disappointed. The people around us are also strongly affected by our expectations of them and respond accordingly, whether it is about their behavior or how it is you want to be treated. The great thing about expectations is that you can expect whatever you want. You should therefore make it a habit to continually expect the very best of yourself and from life, and you will have one of the keys to success.

Summary

1. Whatever we believe shapes our reality, because we always act in accordance with our beliefs.
2. Develop a belief system that supports you in getting what you want.
3. Challenge beliefs that do not support you and replace them with empowering beliefs.
4. Confidently expect good things to happen to you.

However we define happiness, it seems to be a universal goal for human kind. We all want to be happy, and we do much to achieve those deep down feelings of happiness and satisfaction. People often make being happy into something complicated, by looking for things outside of themselves to induce a happy state, instead of taking responsibility for their own happiness. We have already learned that a state of happiness does not need to come from outside of us. It is a conscious choice rather than an automatic response. We can choose to be happy by directing our physiology, focus and representations in a way consistent with a happy mental state, rather than let our moods be determined by external circumstances. In this chapter we will look at some additional ways to control our state of mind with regard to happiness.

Substitution

Our conscious mind can only think about one thing at a time, either positive or negative, and we can substitute one thought for another. This means that you can deliberately replace a negative thought with a positive one and thereby simultaneously block out negative thoughts.

Deliberately focus your mind on positive thoughts and ideas, and they will become more abundant in your life. Keep your mind on the things you want, and off the things you do not want. Consciously replace all negative thoughts such as lack, loss, anger, guilt, worry, jealousy, regret, limitation, failure, poverty or rejection with positive thoughts of love, enjoyment, gratitude, appreciation, affluence, confidence or ambition. These are the thoughts that make you feel good and that take you in the direction of your goals.

Internal Dialog

Your self-talk or internal dialog is the way you talk, evaluate, explain and interpret things to yourself. It is something that goes on all of the time in our minds whether we are conscious of it or not, and it has a profound effect on our state of mind. By deliberately listening in on your self-talk, you can take control of it and change it. You can replace criticizing, complaining, blaming, demoralizing and demotivating words and tonalities with positive self-talk that encourages, inspires and leads you into action.

The starting point of positive self-talk is to never say anything about yourself that you do not want to become true. Never criticize yourself for anything and do not allow yourself to say negative things about yourself. Interpret everything that happens to you in a favorable way. Make a conscious effort to occasionally listen in on your internal dialog when it is on autopilot. Notice anything that could potentially work against you. Does your self-talk contain thoughts of fear, anger, limitations, self-defeating phrases, negative perspectives or victim vocabulary? If it does, rephrase it positively. Keep doing this every chance you get and it will soon become habitual.

Reframing

Reframing refers to your ability to take a frame of reference or perspective and to reframe or interpret it in a way that supports you. You can use this not only to become more optimistic, but also to derive more enjoyment out of life and to become more influential by reframing conversations. Reframing is based on the fact that there is no fixed meaning in anything in life. The meaning of any event depends on the frame in which we perceive it, so create meanings that are empowering. The meaning is always determined by our frame of perception, and for every negative perspective there is a counter positive reframe.

There are basically two types of reframing: meaning and context. Context reframing is taking a negative situation and making it positive in another context by asking: When or where would this be useful? Meaning reframing is changing what a situation means to you by asking: What else could this mean? For example, placing a problem in the context of your entire life, or changing the meaning from a “problem” to a “challenge”, would instantly change how you felt about it.

Only you get to decide how you think, so condition your mind to reframe things in a positive way. A frame of reference that many successful people share is that every “problem” empowers them and brings them closer to their goals. You can achieve this too by asking of every problem: How does this help me? By looking at every problem as a potential opportunity, you will usually find something within the problem that you can use to your advantage. It does not matter whether or not the interpretation is true, as long as you believe in it and it empowers you.

Reframing does not mean that bad things will not happen to you, but it does give you the option of perceiving them as good. You only need to make the choice to see situations in a better way. With a little practice you will learn how to turn any negative event around, internally and externally, and reframing will quickly become a positive habit that will greatly enhance your life. Try it for a couple of days on both your internal self-talk and external conversations. Whenever you catch yourself coming from an unresourceful or limited perspective, reframe it into something that supports you. Remember that you can choose to see the world any way you want to see it.

Optimism

A very important quality for happiness and success in life is optimism. A person with an optimistic attitude looks for the good in everything. Optimists are aware of problems, but they only focus on solutions. They see difficulties, but are not discouraged by them. They are aware of the negative, but emphasize the positive and they always expect the best.

There is a direct relation between your levels of optimism and the quality of your health, wealth, relationships and overall success in life. Optimistic people have what is often seen as an unrealistic expectation of success in everything they attempt. As a result, they try harder and persist longer in the face of the inevitable setbacks and disappointments that show up along the path of success. They get involved in more things, set higher goals and grab more opportunities than the average person, and as a result they become more successful.

Optimism is an emotionally intelligent attitude, because positive thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we think positive thoughts they become stronger and return to our minds more and more often. A positive outlook actually creates a life of joy and satisfaction, while negative thinking creates a life of misery and suffering. You should therefore make the decision right now to become a very optimistic person.

Qualities of Optimism

Optimism can be learned by practicing optimistic thinking until it becomes habitual. This involves five specific ways of looking at the world and dealing with difficulties:

1. Optimists look for the good in every situation, person and difficulty.
2. Optimists seek out valuable lessons in every temporary setback.
3. Optimists are able to appreciate the present moment, rather than feel guilty over the past or worry over the future.
4. Optimists think and talk continually about solutions rather than problems.
5. Optimists think about what they want and what they are thankful for, rather than on what they do not want or what they are missing.

10 Day Challenge

The solution to happiness, peace of mind and loving relationships is to stop expressing negative emotions. If you do not express, discuss or get involved in negative conversations or self-talk, the negative emotions die. All the energy that would have been drained by thinking about them becomes available for you to do productive things. We all feel negative emotions from time to time – emotions that denigrate our quality of life – but the people who excessively dwell and express these kinds of thoughts over the years literally program themselves to be negative.

Every single state we experience on a regular basis becomes a habit pattern, whether positive or negative. They come from habitual ways of acting, talking to ourselves, looking at the world and using our focus of attention. The more we repeat a behavior, the stronger that pattern becomes and the more we neglect it, the weaker it gets. It is the same with negative thought patterns. Every single time that you give in to them, you lower your resistance and every time you stop them, you increase your resistance.

The best way to eliminate your negative and destructive thought patterns is to take a 10-day mental challenge, where you take complete, conscious control over your thoughts, feelings and habit patterns. Here is the challenge: for the next 10 days, beginning immediately, do not allow yourself to focus on any unresourceful thought or emotion. Whenever you begin to feel bad about anything, or find yourself focusing on something unsupportive, use any of the techniques you have learned to immediately redirect your focus. Change your physiology, reframe it, change your representation of it or substitute it. Shift your focus and direct your attention towards your goals, solutions and enjoyment of life. Practice this absolutely every time you feel bad about anything.

If, however, you slip and dwell on the unresourceful thought or feeling for any length of time, you must start the 10 days all over again. It takes a lot of mental effort to keep your mind only on what you want, but if you can discipline yourself do so for just 10 days you will develop a new positive habit pattern that will stay with you throughout your life. You will completely recondition yourself to become a positive and optimistic person. It will also make you aware of all the habitual mental patterns that have held you back before, and it will show you how far you have gone in your personal development.

Summary

1. You choose whether to be happy or not.
2. You can substitute negative thoughts for positive ones.
3. Develop positive self-talk by using positive words and tonalities.
4. Reframe your representations of the world in empowering ways.
5. Become optimistic by continually looking for the good in everything.
6. Eliminate negativity from your life by not expressing negative emotions.

The quality of your life is largely determined by the quality of the mental states you live in day to day – states like love, anger, happiness, fear and excitement. There are two main ways to control your state of mind. Either by controlling the way you use your physical body, or by controlling your focus of attention and the way you interpret it. What happens in your life does not determine how you feel. How you feel is only the result of how you are using your own mind and body at any moment.

No matter what happens in your life, you are in control of your own state of mind. Make sure to use that ability to put yourself in a state that is appropriate for what you want to achieve. In most cases, would it not be nice to be in a highly positive mood most of the time? People in our society often turn to external means such as food, alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to elevate their mood, but with the techniques you are about to learn you will not have to depend on anything outside of yourself to change the way you feel.

Physiology

Every emotion we feel has a way of using our body associated with it, a specific physiology. In the same way that an emotional state affects our body, we can consciously make changes in our physiology and instantly produce the desired emotional state. Best of all, you already know the physiology of successful, powerful, confident and happy people. All you have to do is move, stand, talk, breathe, gesture and use your facial expression as if you felt a certain way, and you will actually feel the feelings that go along with that physiology. Your body will lead your mind.

For example, a person who is depressed will look down, talk slowly, have shallow breath, slackened facial muscles and will be physically hunched over. Conversely, a happy and positive person will smile, talk faster, raise their shoulders, lift their head and breathe deeply. We also become happy when we take action toward something that is important to us, while on the other hand depression comes from inertia. You cannot be sad and busy at the same time.

Try this right now. Sit the way you would be sitting if you felt absolutely successful. Put the look and the smile on your face that you would have if you felt totally happy and excited. Breathe the way you would be breathing if you felt strong, proud and full of energy. Look up, hold your back straight, push your shoulders back and chest up. Now, without changing any part of your physiology, try to get depressed. It is difficult because when you hold the physiology of a winner your body is sending that message to your brain. Keep in mind that part of your physiology is not only the use of your body, but also its condition. If you are suffering from physical pain, lack of sleep or a bad diet that is going to affect your mental state as well.

Mental Focus

The only things we are going to have feelings about are the things we focus on, and we can only focus on one thing at a time. You can control what you are focusing on by what you are picturing in your mind, saying to yourself and paying attention to. This gives an almost unlimited number of choices. You can focus on past experiences, future expectations, the present moment, your self-talk or even your own imagination.

Every one of us right now could get into a state of absolute joy, by thinking of all the great things in life, just as we could have everything and still be unhappy if we always focus on something negative. If you find someone who is incredibly happy, the reason is probably that they focus continuously on what makes them happy. You can experience this too by focusing continuously on what you want, what you have got and what is great about every situation, and as a result you will feel incredible. You will start to enjoy life much more, because you will be focusing on the most positive aspects. In addition, you will increase those positive things because you always get more of what you focus on in life.

Representations

It is not only what we focus on that determines our mental state, but also how we represent things in our minds. Everything we experience in life will be processed through our own internal representations, and by changing the pictures and sounds involved we can instantly change the intensity of our state or transform it completely. Let us look at some ways to increase and decrease the emotional strength of our representations.

As an example of reducing emotional intensity we will change the representation of a negative memory. Think of a major uncomfortable memory and notice the images and sounds that come to mind. It is how this memory is represented that determines your emotional reaction to it, so let us do a simple exercise to change it. Start by disassociating yourself from the memory by stepping out of it, so you can no longer see yourself in it. For example, you can pretend that you are sitting in a cinema watching the experience as if it were a movie. Now start changing the visual and auditory representation of that memory to make it more enjoyable. Change objects, colors and sounds to representations that make you smile or even turn the whole memory into a cartoon. Especially, change disturbing elements of the memory, for example by shrinking them down, making them black and white or moving them off into the distance. If it is a person bothering you then give them a comical voice, absurd clothes and a small stature. Once you have improved the memory play it backwards and forwards, faster and faster about 10 times. Every time you go through it, you can change it again to make it even better. Play with the way that you are representing it and rerun it until just thinking of it makes you smile.

The images and sounds of each of our memories hold emotional associations, and they are not always empowering. This technique is a way of interrupting the patterned response and changing it. By making these kind of changes in your internal representations you reprogram the way that you feel about your focus of attention – whether it is a memory, a person, a piece of food or anything else – so that it no longer triggers the negative response.

Next, we will increase the emotional intensity of positive emotions. For instance, to put yourself in a great state, think of a time in your life when you did something that made you feel absolutely fantastic. Visualize the memory as a mental movie in vivid detail and step into yourself in that movie. Imagine seeing and hearing the experience again and feel that fantastic feeling. Make the image bigger, brighter and bolder, make the sounds louder, the colors richer and the feelings stronger. You can also change aspects of the movie – such as making yourself look even more powerful and confident. For auditory representations you can add a good soundtrack or hear the cheers of the crowd as you run through the movie.

You can use these kinds of representations anytime you want to improve your day to day emotional states. They are also useful for overcoming fears, amplifying your motivation and changing how you feel about things. It is your mind so make sure you represent the world in a way that serves instead of hinders you.

Anchors

This technique is one of the most powerful methods available to change our state of mind. You can use it to instantly go from whatever you are feeling to a peak state immediately. From afraid to excited, angry to laughing or feeling bad to feeling strong and resourceful. It is based on the fact that whenever we experience two things together for a while with emotional intensity one will automatically remind us of the other. Anything that happens consistently that is unique and specific while you are in an intense feeling state will get linked up, or anchored in your mind. You can anchor any specific sight, sound or touch to any resourceful state such as humor, excitement, happiness, creativity, confidence or flow. You can then trigger that state whenever you need it by just repeating that stimuli. You can also look for and take advantage of the anchors you already have linked up to positive emotions, such as specific memories, songs, idols, quotes, pictures, posters, diplomas or sceneries.

Creating Anchors

Before you create an anchor you first need to choose a stimulus, one that is easy and discreet so you can use it anywhere. It can be either an auditory, visual or physical stimuli such as a specific word, phrase, visualized image, touch or gesture. Just be sure it is not anything too common, or the anchor will diminish itself. When you have found one to use, you need to put yourself in the emotional state you want to anchor in.

For this example, let us pick confidence. Think of a time when you felt absolutely confident – or imagine what it would be like to be completely confident. Then enhance the emotional intensity of that time through your representations, to make it even better than it was. See what you saw before, only bigger, brighter and bolder. Make it clearer, more solid, more colorful and closer. Hear what you heard, loud and clear, and really feel the powerful confidence flow through you. Step into the picture so you are absolutely there again and right at the peak of the emotional response, trigger your stimulus to associate it to the feeling. Repeat this process at least six times, using different peak moments of confidence. During the peak state you can also think about situations in the future when you would need this state and you will get back that feeling when the future situation actually arrives.

Once you have created the anchor, you can test it by first getting yourself out of that state and then triggering it again using your stimuli. If you have done it properly, you will go back into the anchored state. The more you repeat the anchoring and the more intense your state, the stronger the anchor becomes and the longer it will last. You can use this technique to create a whole set of anchors for different empowering states.

Summary

1. You can affect your state by changing your physiology and focus.
2. You create your own experience of the world through your representations.
3. Anchors provide a convenient way to store states for later use.

We call people who produce highly creative work for the benefit of mankind geniuses, yet geniuses are simply those who have learned more efficient ways of using their minds. In this chapter we will take a look at three specific strategies that geniuses apply to achieve their goals faster: note taking, flexibility and creativity.

1. Note Taking

The habit of compulsive scribbling has long been regarded as one of the hallmarks of genius. Less than 1% of the population habitually record their ideas, thoughts, experiences and perceptions in journals and notebooks, yet the world’s top achievers nearly all seem to fall within that critical 1%. In a study of hundreds of geniuses, it was found that they all shared the habit of recording thoughts and ideas in writing, starting from an early age. They did not start keeping notebooks because they assumed they would someday be famous. It was the scribbling itself that unconsciously nourished and activated a superior intellect.

Get a portable memory bank such as a notepad, pocket recorder or smart phone. Carry it with you everywhere you go and use it regularly to record your thoughts and ideas. It will build you halfway to full genius almost without effort. We get ideas everyday on how to improve our lives, but because we do not use them they are soon forgotten. Each time you respond to an idea by sharing it, acting upon it or writing it down, you reinforce the behavior of being creative. You will soon notice a sharp increase in the number and quality of creative thoughts and interesting perceptions that flow into your mind. Before you get too many notes, start to organize them into categories. Review these categories often for things you may have forgotten or ideas you have stopped applying.

2. Flexibility

All geniuses have open minds. They remain teachable, curious, adaptive and willing to consider any possibilities. To develop the quality of flexibility you need to become open to new ideas. You need to be willing to change, to try out new things and to challenge limiting beliefs. You should always be willing to let go of your old ideas just as fast as somebody else can prove that there are newer and better ideas available.

A simple way to tell how open and flexible you are is by looking at how willing you have been up to now to try out the ideas and techniques presented in this book. A highly flexible person will not argue with or reject an idea to improve their life, but instead try it out for themselves and judge its value by their own results. They are willing to try almost anything once. However, for most people there is a huge gap between what they know and what they do. If you feel you may be lacking in flexibility, you can make a commitment right now that each time you come across an interesting new idea you will try it out in your own life.

3. Creativity

Creativity implies solving problems by creating original and useful ideas, often by combining old ideas into new contexts. It could also be said that it is simply a way of improving upon the existing way of doing things. We are all naturally creative, but our creative minds work best when we are motivated, but still very relaxed. The more calm you are the better quantity and quality of unique ideas you will come up with. Just as importantly, the greater your knowledge is about a subject, the greater are the ideas you can create in that subject. If you begin to tax your creativity you will quickly start to become more creative.

One of the best methods to harness our creativity is through brainstorming. To begin brainstorming, you write down your current problem or goal on a page in the form of a question. The more specific the question is the better your mind can focus on it and the better quality of answers you will generate. Some example questions could be: How can I improve my health, time management or income today? Then, start writing out answers and stay at it until you have at least 20 of them. Try to make every answer as concrete as possible, while letting your mind flow freely. The answers are limited only by your imagination. You will probably start off with simple answers, but after the first few it will get tougher and tougher to find something new to write. When you are done finding 20 answers, select at least one solution to implement immediately. Often, the last few answers will be most valuable. The best time to brainstorm is first thing in the morning, because this will get you thinking creatively all day long. Using this technique frequently will give you so many valuable ideas that you may not even have time to try them all.

Summary

1. Become a collector of good ideas and review them often.
2. Remain flexible by always being open to new ideas.
3. Improve your creativity through brainstorming.

Speed reading is a set of techniques for increasing the rate, comprehension and retention of what we read. It can be used as a replacement for most normal reading, but it is especially useful whenever we need to go through a lot of written material. Before learning the techniques you should start by calculating your current reading speed so you have something to compare with. Take out an unread book and time yourself for one minute reading at your normal rate. Then calculate your current words per minute (wpm) by multiplying the number of rows you have read with the approximate number of words per line. The average reading speed lies between 200-250 wpm and less than 5% read over 400 wpm. About 1% can read above 800 wpm and only 0.1% above 1000 wpm with full comprehension. If you are willing to practice speed reading you can in a couple of weeks join at least the top 1%, because most people have never tried to or even thought about the possibility of increasing their reading speed.

Subvocalization

Everyone who is not a speed reader uses subvocalization, meaning that their reading is accompanied by a voice in their mind’s ear. This habit is the main reason why people do not develop speed reading on their own, since a subvocalizer has to wait to hear the words internally and believe they cannot understand words without hearing them. There is in fact no need for you to hear how the words sound to know what they mean. Fortunately, removing this limit is an easy step. If you force yourself to read faster than you can subvocalize, the limit will disappear. At any rate above 600 wpm your subvocalization simply cannot keep up. You will still hear certain words, but you will be much more selective with what you hear. A simple exercise you can try to prove to yourself that you can read without subvocalizing is to engage your inner voice by counting or humming, either out loud or in your head, while reading at your normal rate. You will notice that you can understand the text even with your ability to subvocalize hindered.

Soft Focus

To be able to make full use of your peripheral vision when speed reading you need to use soft focus, instead of the hard focus which we commonly use for reading. Soft focus means you relax your eyes without focusing on the individual words and it is the way we focus when we look at pictures. It makes better use of your peripheral vision, which allows you to see more of the text and take in more words at each focus. Soft focus also puts less strain on the eyes so you will actually find it easier to read.

Regression

Do not allow yourself to stop and look back over what you have already read. Instead force yourself to move ahead even if you think you have missed something or if your attention has temporarily wandered. Your brain is phenomenal at filling in information gaps and important concepts are often repeated in a text anyway. Most people regress or stop more than twice at every row, which cuts their reading speed down by at least 30%.

Training

The primary method for training speed reading is to use a physical aid such as your hand to guide your eyes through the text. The guide keeps your eyes moving forward faster and smoother which enhances your concentration and effectively removes both regression and subvocalization. Because of these advantages many speed readers prefer to always use a guide when reading, but by training like this your reading speed without a guide will also increase. As for reading e-books from a computer screen you can use a program that supports automatic scrolling to guide your eyes, such as Adobe Reader.

First you need to become comfortable with using your hand as a guide. Get a book to train with and preferably break it in so it can lie flat without closing itself. Sit upright at a desk with only your book in front of you. Then, start by moving either your left or right hand underneath each line at a steady pace using a sweeping motion, with your eyes trailing along above your middle finger. Read like this for 10 minutes or until you are comfortable with guided reading. It may help to train this motion with the book upside down so you are not distracted by the content. It should feel like your fingers are dragging you through the text. At this step, your speed should be about 400 wpm, since you eliminate any regression.

Once you are comfortable with guided reading, it is time to start training your speed and comprehension. Practice guiding yourself through the text at your fastest possible rate, while still going completely across each line with your fingers. This speed will be much faster than you can consciously register all the words and you will initially perceive everything as a blur, but even so you must continue if you want to get any results. When you overwhelm yourself with information, your brain will struggle to keep up with the pace and after a while you will begin to recognize a few keywords on each page. Continue training for 20 minutes straight and you will have gotten noticeable results. When you are done training go back to your normal unguided rate of comprehension and measure it again. You will find that it is faster than your previously recorded speed. The exercise you have given your brain has changed your perception of your reading speed and you have set a new standard. You will need to repeat this exercise every day for at least a week until you can comprehend what you read.

Reading Speed

When we apply speed reading to our everyday reading it is important to adapt the reading speed to the difficulty of the material. Generally, the more familiar you are with the subject, the faster you can go through it. Having three speed ranges – normal, double and triple rate – will cover most reading scenarios:

• Normal rate – If you are reading a section with unfamiliar ideas, concepts or difficult terminology, you should read at your current comprehension rate. Use this speed especially on sections where most of the information tends to lie – mainly in the first and last chapter, paragraph of a chapter, sentence of a paragraph and any summaries.
• Double rate – In most sections of a book you will probably encounter things you already know, that are familiar to you, and that you can go through at double your comprehension rate. At this rate you will not learn unfamiliar vocabulary, but you will recognize what you already know. The goal you set before reading will also cause your brain to pick up what you are looking for and make it appear more clearly.
• Triple rate – When there are parts of a book that are very familiar to you, or almost unnecessary, you can go through them at triple your comprehension speed or even skip over them.

The Four Reading Stages

Speed reading is about extracting the value from a book, not reading every word linearly from beginning to end. Since the value can vary a lot from book to book, we use a multistep method of reading for nonfiction books. This way we can stop at any step when we have acquired what we need from the book so the time spent on it is proportional to its value to you. The four steps in this method are: overview, preview, reading and postview. You should also start with the preparation step and end with the review step from the accelerated learning model.

1. Overview

Get a sense of what the entire book is about and how it fits into what you want to learn. Read the front and back material to determine its main purpose and general subject range. Skim the table of contents for any keywords that relate to your learning goal and find out exactly what the book has to offer you. If you read with a purpose, your mind will make the things you are looking for stand out and be easily remembered. Make sure the book will add to your existing knowledge and that it is relevant and applicable in your life. Keep in mind that the fastest way to get through a book is by not reading it at all if it is not worth your time.

2. Preview

Go through the book from beginning to end at a rate of about 1 second per page. During this time let your eyes glide vertically over each side of the page so as to capture a mental photography of it. Identify the basic structure of the text with the help of headings, subheadings, bold text and other highlighted material. Also see if the book contains summaries, questions, exercises, pictures or a dictionary. This preview will give you a hook on which to hang the information and it will significantly increase your reading speed, because you will already be familiar with the structure of the book and can just focus on linking the details.

3. Reading

Start speed reading the material with the goal of learning all the essential information you need. Read with a pencil nearby, or in your hand as a guide, and whenever you come across important material put a line in the margin next to it. You can also use other notations, such as question marks for difficult material and stars for sections you need to memorize. After you have read a chapter, take a moment to think through what you have learned and summarize it to yourself in your mind. Reflecting on the material like this will allow you to recall much more of it later.

4. Postview

When you have finished going through the material then summarize the sections that you have marked up as important. This is an important part of the learning process so make sure to have a notebook or computer handy for this purpose. If you need a high level of recall of these notes you can convert them into a mind map.

Summary

1. Practice speed reading by reading at a high rate for 20 minutes at a time using your hand as a guide.
2. When speed reading, vary your speed to the difficulty of the material.
3. Read in progressively deeper steps until you have extracted the value you need from the book.