Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field
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- The Seven-Step Strategy
| Developing New Habits Fully 95 percent of everything you do is determined by your habits, first of thinking and then of action. Successful people have good habits that lead to happy, productive, and financially successful lives. Poor people have poor habits, or no habits at all, that lead to the opposite. Fortunately, all habits are learnable with practice and repetition. You can learn any habit or skill you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. The only real question is, How badly do you want it?” Rich people and poor people have been studied, contrasted, and compared for many years to determine what it is about them that makes them different from each other. The bottom line is that you can start off with every advantage in life— good family, excellent education, ideal contacts and opportunities—but if you lack the mental habits necessary for success, they will do you no good. On the other hand, you can start with no advantages, like people who escape from a poor country or a dictatorship and arrive with no friends, no contacts, even no language skills, but with excellent habits, and then goon to create great lives for themselves. The Seven-Step Strategy Habits are developed with a simple seven-step strategy. First, strive to develop only one habitat a time. If you get ambitious and decide to develop several good habits immediately, you end up developing none. Be patient. Make haste slowly.” Because it takes about twenty to thirty days of repetition to develop anew habit, you can actually develop one new wealth-building habit per month, or twelve new habits in a year. This is enough. For example, most wealthy people arise before 6:00 am, fully three hours before their first appointment. They have rituals that they follow each day. They getup, exercise, dress, plan, and prepare for the day. They read, learn something, and get organized. They are usually at work long before the average person has had his first cup of coffee. This is a habit you can decide to develop immediately. It may change your life. Second, input new data Decide upon a habit that can be helpful for you to develop. Be clear about this new way that you want to think and act. Turn this new habit over in your mind. For example, rich people think about creating wealth most of the time. They look around continually for opportunities to make more money by offering products and services that people want and need, both today and in the future. They think continually about revenue generation. You can do the same. Third, affirm to yourself that you already have this habit. Say to yourself, over and over, I see moneymaking opportunities everywhere.” The most powerful words are the ones you say to yourself and believe. Continually read, learn, study, and gather information about making money. Read the interviews and stories of other people who have started with very little and become financially successful. Think about how you could do the same. Fourth, visualize yourself as you would be practicing this new habit. Remember, The person you see is the person you will be.” All improvement in your performance begins with a change in your mental pictures of yourself acting in a particular way. You always perform on the outside the way you see yourself performing on the inside. Create a mental picture of yourself getting out of bed before 6:00 a.m. and immediately beginning your day. It is amazing how many wealthy people say that they start every morning, sometimes at 4:00 or 5:00, with thirty to sixty minutes of aerobic exercise. If you do this everyday fora month, you will soon develop a positive addiction to the feeling of being bright, alert, and full of energy all day long. Fifth, act as if you already had this new habit. There is a Law of Reversibility that you can use that is responsible for many of the great transformations in people that lead to financial success. This law says that if you feel in a particular way, or if you believe yourself to be a particular type of person, you will naturally act in a particular way. But what if you start off not feeling or believing that you area wealthy or successful person? William James of Harvard pointed out, If you do not already have a habit that you desire, act as if you already had this habit in every respect, and the action itself will soon create the actual belief.” Successful people plan everyday in advance, usually the night before. They set priorities on their tasks and begin on the most important task first thing, before anything else. You can do the same thing, starting tomorrow. As you plan and organize your day, think to yourself, This is what rich people do In no time at all, it will be a habit and will be locked in as a permanent part of your daily routine. Sixth, refuse to allow exceptions. Once you resolve to develop a habit, never letup until the new habit is locked in permanently. Don’t rationalize away unhelpful behavior. Refuse to justify or make excuses for not remaining true to what you have resolved to do. This is what poor people do. Seventh, if you falloff your horse get back on immediately. If you lapse back into the old habit, which you will from time to time, immediately catch yourself and begin acting consistent with the new habit that you have decided to develop. Brushoff your temporary lapse and say, Next time, I’ll do better and then begin again. Don’t expect to get it right the first time, or even the first few times. Be patient and persistent. Download 0.86 Mb. Share with your friends:
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