--- ## Highlights Now, how can you tell if your favorite excuse is valid or not? It’s simple. Look around and ask, “Is there anyone else who has my same excuse who is successful anyway?” (Location 317) When you ask this question, if you are honest, you will have to admit that there are thousands and even millions of people who have had it far worse than you have who have gone on to do wonderful things with their lives. And what thousands and millions of others have done, you can do as well—if you try. (Location 319) With self-discipline, I have built successful businesses in training, consulting, speaking, writing, recording, and distribution. My audio and video programs, books, seminars, and training programs have sold more than $500 million in thirty-six languages and fifty-four countries. (Location 338) I discovered that you can achieve almost any goal you set for yourself if you have the discipline to pay the price, to do what you need to do, and to never give up. (Location 341) to achieve greatly, you must become a different person. (Location 346) Kop Kopmeyer had written four bestselling books, each of which contained 250 success principles (Location 358) ‘Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.’” (Location 364) “There are 999 other success principles that I have found in my reading and experience, but without self-discipline, none of them work. With self-discipline, they all work.” (Location 365) Perhaps the two biggest enemies of success, happiness and personal fulfillment, are first the Path of Least Resistance and, second, the Expediency Factor. (Location 373) Over time, they develop the habit of always seeking an easier, faster way to get the things they want rather than doing what is hard but necessary to achieve real success. (Location 376) In other words, most people do what is expedient, what is fun and easy rather than what is necessary for success. (Location 379) Another definition of self-discipline is self-mastery. Success is possible only when you can master your own emotions, appetites, and inclinations. (Location 385) Self-discipline can also be defined as self-control. (Location 387) “the unintended consequences of an action can be far worse than the intended consequences of that behavior because of a lack of long-term thinking.” (Location 416) “successful people make a habit of doing the things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do.” (Location 425) Successful, happy people were more concerned with the positive, long-term consequences of their behaviors, whereas unsuccessful people were more concerned with personal enjoyment and immediate gratification. (Location 429) To develop the habit of self-discipline, you first make a firm decision about how you will behave in a particular area of activity. You then refuse to allow exceptions until the habit of self-discipline in that area is firmly established. Each time you slip, as you will, you resolve once again to keep practicing self-discipline until it becomes easier for you to behave in a disciplined way than to behave in an undisciplined way. (Location 456) Your success in life depends more on the person you become than on the things you do or acquire. As Aristotle wrote, “The ultimate end of life is the development of character.” (Location 494) A popular definition of success is “being able to live your life in your own way, doing only those things that you want to do, with the people who you choose, in the situations you desire.” (Location 524) the top 20 percent of people earn 80 percent of the money and enjoy 80 percent of the riches and rewards. (Location 531) Your first goal in your career should be to get into the top 20 percent in your chosen field. (Location 532) there is a premium on knowledge and skill. The more knowledge you acquire and the greater skill that you apply, the more competent and valuable you become. As you get better at what you do, your income-earning ability increases—like compound interest. (Location 534) “I didn’t have a better education or more intelligence, but I was willing to work harder than anyone else.” (Location 550) Lasting success is possible only when you can discipline yourself to work hard for a long, long time. (Location 554) “If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing can stop you from eventually enjoying the same rewards that they do. But if you don’t do what successful people do, nothing can help you.” (Location 566) When you are not working deliberately, consciously, and continuously to do, be, and have those things that constitute success for you, your default mechanism is at work. You end up doing those fun, easy, and low-value things in the short term (Location 581) “There are only three requirements for success. First, decide exactly what it is you want in life. Second, determine the price that you are going to have to pay to get the things you want. And third, and this is most important, resolve to pay that price.” (Location 586) You can always tell how much of the price of success you have paid by looking at your current lifestyle and your bank account. (Location 595) “learn from the experts. You will never live long enough to learn it all for yourself.” (Location 604) The point of this story is that, by continually seeking out ideas and advice from other experts in his field, he came across a new technology that helped him become the leader in his field and saved him ten years of hard work in order to reach the same level of financial success. (Location 620) Becoming an expert in your field, continually upgrading your skills—which I will talk about in Chapter 5—is like physical fitness. If you stop exercising for any period of time, you don’t maintain your fitness at the same level. You begin to decline. Your body and your muscles become softer and weaker. You lose your strength, flexibility, and stamina. In order to maintain them, you must keep working at them every day, every week, and every month. (Location 649) Action Exercises: Take out a pen right now and write down your answers to the questions below. 1. If your work life and career were ideal, what would they look like? What one discipline could you develop that would help you to achieve it? 2. If your family life were ideal, what would it look like, and what one discipline would help you the most to make it a reality? 3. If your health were perfect in every way, what disciplines would you have that make it possible? 4. If your financial situation were ideal today, what one discipline would you have that would help you the most? 5. Why aren’t you already as successful as you would like to be, and what one discipline would help you the most to achieve all your goals? 6. What one skill could you develop that would help you to realize more of your goals? 7. If you could wave a magic wand and be completely disciplined in one area, which one discipline would have the greatest positive impact on your life? (Location 678) “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself and be lenient to everyone else.” —HENRY WARD BEECHER, NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLERGYMAN (Location 695) “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear a word that you say.” (Location 701) It is your level of integrity, living in complete truth with yourself and others, that demonstrates more than anything else the quality of your character. In a way, integrity is actually the value that guarantees all the other values. When your level of integrity is higher, you are more honest with yourself and more likely to live consistently with all the other values that you admire and respect. (Location 709) when you study and read stories about men and women who demonstrated the kind of values that you admire and respect, and then think about those stories and that behavior, those values sink ever deeper into your mind. Once these values are “programmed” into your subconscious, they create a propensity within you to behave consistently with those values when the situation requires them. (Location 758) “Circumstances do not make the man; they merely reveal him to himself.” (Location 774) When a problem occurs, people tend to react automatically based on the highest values that they have developed up to that moment. (Location 775) At the highest levels of development of the human race, however, are those men and women of complete integrity, who would never compromise their honesty or their character for anything, including the threat of financial loss, pain, or even death. (Location 795) When you see yourself as calm, positive, truthful, and possessed of high character, you behave with greater strength and personal power. (Location 818) whenever you actually behave in a manner that is consistent with your highest values, your self-image improves. (Location 820) Your self-esteem is largely determined by how consistent your self-image, which shapes your personal behavior, is with your self-ideal, or your vision of the very best person you can possibly be. (Location 829) Whenever you use your willpower and strength of character to return to the values that are most dear to you, you are rewarded with a wonderful feeling of happiness and exhilaration. You feel energized and free. You wonder why you didn’t make that decision a long time ago. (Location 845) In the development of character that is based on self-discipline and willpower, long-term thinking is essential. The more you think about the long-term consequences of your behavior, the more likely it is that you will do the right thing in the short term. (Location 848) If you are in a situation today in which you are not living up to your highest values, make a decision, this very minute, to confront the situation and straighten it out. The minute you do, you will once again feel happy and back in control. (Location 857) Accepting responsibility is one of the hardest of all disciplines, but without it, no success is possible. (Location 891) I found that you could learn anything you need to learn in order to accomplish any goal you set for yourself. (Location 920) Over time, I learned that fully 80 percent of the population never accepts complete responsibility for their lives. They continually complain, criticize, make excuses, and blame other people for things in their lives about which they are not happy. The consequences of this way of thinking, however, can be disastrous. They can sabotage all hopes for success and happiness later in life. (Location 922) Most people grow up believing that if something goes wrong, someone else is responsible. (Location 933) Most religions teach the concept of sin, which states that whenever something goes wrong, someone is to blame. (Location 952) This whole idea of guilt and punishment leads to ever-increasing feelings of anger, resentment, and irresponsibility. (Location 953) Anger is directed inwardly when you bottle it up rather than expressing it constructively to others. (Location 968) one. Since your mind can hold only one thought at a time, when you deliberately choose the positive thought, “I am responsible,” you cancel out any other thought or emotion at that moment. (Location 993) There is also a direct relationship between the amount of control you feel you have and how positive you feel. (Location 1014) Even if an accident has occurred, such as your car being damaged in the parking lot while you are at work, you may not be legally at fault for the accident. But you are still responsible for your responses, for how you behave as a result of what happened. (Location 1023) that you will not become upset or angry over something that you cannot affect or change. (Location 1029) Furthermore, you especially do not allow yourself to be angry and unhappy in the present because of unhappy experiences or situations from the past. You say, “What cannot be cured must be endured.” (Location 1031) to get so busy working on things that are important to you that you don’t have time to think about or express negative emotions to or about anyone, for any reason. (Location 1044) When you exert your self-discipline and willpower in the acceptance of personal responsibility for your life, you take complete control of your thoughts and feelings. By doing so, you become a much more effective, happy, and positive person in everything you do. (Location 1045) only 3 percent of adults have written goals and plans, and this 3 percent earn more than all of the other 97 percent put together. (Location 1076) if you have clear goal and a plan to achieve it, you therefore have a track to run on every single day. Instead of being sidetracked by distractions and diversions, getting lost or going astray, more and more of your time is focused in a straight line—from (Location 1078) In life, you either work to achieve your own goals or you work to achieve the goals of someone else. Which is it going to be? (Location 1103) you don’t need to know how to get there. You just need to be clear about what you want to accomplish, and the goal-striving mechanism in your brain will guide you unerringly to your destination. (Location 1135) “There are no unrealistic goals; there are only unrealistic deadlines.” (Location 1156) Make a List of Everything You Can Think of That You Could Possibly Do to Achieve Your Goal. As Henry Ford said, “The biggest goal can be accomplished if you just break it down into enough small steps.” • Make a list of the obstacles and difficulties that you will have to overcome, both external and internal, in order to achieve your goal. • Make a list of the additional knowledge and skills that you will need in order to achieve your goal. • Make a list of the people whose cooperation and support you will require to achieve your goal. • Make a list of everything that you can think of that you will have to do, and then add to this list as new tasks and responsibilities occur to you. Keep writing until your list is complete. (Location 1161) When you do something every day that moves you in the direction of your goal, you develop momentum. (Location 1185) Take another clean sheet of paper. Write out your Major Definite Purpose at the top of the page in the form of a question. Then discipline yourself to write a minimum of twenty answers to the question. (Location 1218) for granted. But it has taken you your entire life to develop your earning ability. Every bit of education, experience, and hard work (Location 1270) “the very best proof that something can be done is that someone else has already done (Location 1317) 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. (Location 1322) 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 to in their cars? (Location 1339) Bob did something that few people ever do: When he received advice, he followed it. He immediately took action on the advice and then reported back to the people who had given it to him. (Location 1387) 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. (Location 1397) 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. (Location 1415) Read sixty minutes in your field each day. (Location 1452) Listen to educational audio programs in your car. (Location 1453) 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. (Location 1456) Never stop learning and growing. (Location 1461) all you need to invest is about two extra hours per day to move from the average to the superior. (Location 1480) 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.” (Location 1539) Rewrite Your Goals, Every Day. (Location 1550) Ask Two Magic Questions After Every Call or Event. First, ask yourself, “What did I do right?” Then, ask yourself, “What would I do differently?” (Location 1570) 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. (Location 1579) So if everyone is afraid, what is the difference between the brave person and the coward? The only difference is that the brave person disciplines himself to confront, deal with, and act in spite of the fear. (Location 1622) The Book of Lists, 54 percent of adults rate the fear of public speaking ahead of the fear of death. But Toastmasters International had a solution. They created a system based on what psychologists call “systematic (Location 1675) Get so busy working on your goals or the solutions to your problems that you have no time to be afraid or to worry about anything. (Location 1754) Each time you discipline yourself to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not, your self-esteem increases. This why there is direct relationship between self-esteem and persistence. Each time you persist and force yourself to continue on, even when you feel like quitting, your self-esteem goes up. (Location 1783) important qualities that a person would need to be promoted in your company?” Of these executives, 85 percent agreed that the most important qualities are 1. The ability to set priorities and work on high-value tasks; and 2. The discipline to get the job done quickly and well. (Location 1878) There is nothing that will bring you more quickly to the attention of people who can help you than for you to develop a reputation for hard, disciplined work, every hour of every day. (Location 1900) Average employees increase their income at only about 3 percent per year, which is just about the rate of inflation or cost-of-living increases. In other words, if you’re an average employee, you’re not really making any more money from year to year. Rather, you’re just keeping up with your expenses. But the top 20 percent in most fields increase their income anywhere from 10 to 25 percent per year—which is also compounded, year after year. (Location 1902) Often, at the break, someone will come up to me and say, “You don’t understand my company. There is no way that I could double my income at my current company. They simply would not pay me that amount of money.” Having heard this before, I then ask them the critical question: “Is there anyone at your company who earns twice as much as you?” (Location 1910) First, make a list of all the things that you do in a week or a month, from the time you start work on Monday morning through to the end of the week. Write everything down, both small and large, including checking your e-mail and returning phone calls. Then, review this list and ask this key question: “If I could do only one thing on this list, all day long, which one task or activity contributes the most value to my company?” (Location 1925) We call this the “Law of Three.” The Law of Three says that there are three primary things you do that contribute 90 percent or more of your value to your company or organization. Your job is to identify those three critical tasks and then discipline yourself to do them all day long. (Location 1936) All of your other minor tasks will be support tasks, complementary tasks, enjoyable tasks, or useless tasks. They will be little things that you have often gotten into the habit of doing as a way of unconsciously avoiding the big, difficult, important tasks that can make a tremendous difference in your work and career. (Location 1938) For example, if you earn $50,000 a year, divided by 2,000, your hourly rate would be $25. If you earn $100,000 per year, divided by 2,000, your hourly rate would be $50. Whatever it is, from that moment onward, resolve to do only those things that pay you your hourly rate or better. (Location 1945) “The very worst use of time is to do very well what need not be done at all.” (Location 1955) The key to doubling your productivity and output—and eventually your income—is to really work all the time you are at work. Simply put, when you work, work. Don’t waste time. Don’t delay. Don’t chat with coworkers or sit around drinking coffee. Don’t read the newspaper or surf the Internet. When you come into work in the morning, put your head down, and then work all day long. (Location 1965) Your mantra from now on should be, “Back to work! Back to work! Back to work!” (Location 1975) Resolve today that you are going to develop the reputation for being the hardest-working person in your business. This will do more to help you than almost anything else. (Location 1985) When you are surrounded by time-wasting people and situations, it takes tremendous self-discipline to work all the time you are at work. You must constantly fight against distractions and interruptions so you can get back to work. (Location 1987) instead of relaxing, I would go to my boss and say, “I’m all caught up. I want more work to do. I want more responsibility.” These words became my mantra: “I want more responsibility.” (Location 2000) Come in a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. This will move you so far ahead of your competitors that they will never catch up. (Location 2034) you can tell where you are going to be five years from now by looking at the number of hours that you put in today in excess of forty hours each week. (Location 2048) The highest paid people in America, in every field, work fifty to sixty hours per week. The average self-made millionaire works fifty-nine hours per week. This is equal to five twelve-hour days or six ten-hour days. (Location 2055) Remember, “birds of a feather flock together.” (Location 2060) Learn how to dress for success. Read books and articles, or ask others for advice. Look at the most successful people in your business and dress the way they do. (Location 2066) the role of the leader is to “take responsibility for results.” (Location 2114) You become a leader when you develop a vision for yourself and for your company, your life, or your area of responsibility. (Location 2124) It is not possible for anyone in the organization to have a clearer vision or to aspire to a higher standard of excellence than the leader. For this reason, the leader is the role model, the one who sets the tone and the morale for everyone in the organization. (Location 2130) You cannot raise morale in a business; it filters down from the top, from the leader. (Location 2133) The leader sets the standards for the organization’s behavior, quality of work, personal organization, time management, and appearance. In excellent organizations, the leader is the person who everyone looks up to and wants to emulate. (Location 2147) be an effective leader, there are seven principles you must incorporate into your leadership behavior and activities. 1. Clarity: This is perhaps your most important responsibility. You must be absolutely clear about who you are and what you stand for. (Location 2163) Great leaders act as if they own the entire company. (Location 2211) Leaders are intensely action-oriented. They gather information carefully and make the decisions that are necessary. They set measures and standards and hold others to them. They insist that the job be done quickly and well. (Location 2213) the first law of business is competition. It requires tremendous focus and discipline to do the things necessary to attract the scarce money of customers toward purchasing your product or service. (Location 2253) According to the experts, fully 70 percent of your business decisions will turn out to be wrong in the fullness of time. This is the average. When you are a new business - person or starting a new business, you will be wrong even more often than this. It is not unusual for an entrepreneur to be wrong 90 percent of the time in the beginning of his career. (Location 2265) You must have so much confidence in their marketability that you are willing to undertake financial risk and invest many hours, weeks, and even years to achieve your business goals, and you must do all this with no real guarantee of success. (Location 2272) At the same time, you need discipline to curb your confidence, to remain objective and realistic. Overconfidence in business can lead to business mistakes, financial losses, and even bankruptcy. (Location 2274) Because of the aggressive and determined nature of your competition, in order to simply survive, you must discipline yourself to be equal to or better than your competitors. After all, your competitors get out of bed every morning thinking about how they can put you out of business. (Location 2277) The reason why so many entrepreneurs underachieve and fail is that they lack discipline. They lack the discipline to carefully study every aspect of the business before committing to it. (Location 2293) The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer in a cost-effective manner. Profits are not the purpose of a business. Profits are the result of creating and keeping a sufficient number of customers who yield a sufficient number of profits after all costs. (Location 2315) What is the key measure of business success? The answer is customer satisfaction. (Location 2317) What is the measure of customer satisfaction? The answer is repeat business. (Location 2319) What is the key to long-term profitability? The answer is recommendations and referrals. (Location 2323) The ultimate question that determines the long-term success or failure of your business is, “Based on your experience with us, would you recommend us to others?” (Location 2324) referral business is the key to your future. You require tremendous focus and discipline to develop and maintain customer service policies that cause people to buy from you, then buy again, and then recommend you to their friends. (Location 2328) You need to practice the CANEI Formula, which stands for, “Continuous and Never-Ending Improvement.” No matter how high your level of quality is today, you can never be satisfied. You must continually be raising the bar on yourself—and on everyone within your area of responsibility. (Location 2332) Nothing happens until a sale takes place. All the factories, businesses, offices, and producers of goods and services leap into action only when someone, somewhere makes a sale to someone. (Location 2373) You can go as far and as fast as you want by stepping on the accelerator of your own ambition and determination to excel in the profession of sales. (Location 2377) One of the most important questions you can ask as a salesperson, entrepreneur, or business owner is whether what you’re doing right now is leading to a sale. Ask this question of yourself repeatedly throughout the day. Every time the answer comes up “no,” you must immediately stop whatever you are doing of lower value and turn your attention to sales generation. (Location 2408) The key to sales success is to eliminate the fear of rejection, to become so confident and optimistic that you can call continually all day long and still remain positive and cheerful. (Location 2436) “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” (Location 2437) You have two responsibilities when it comes to achieving success in sales: 1. First of all, keep your funnel full. Always have more prospects to call on than you have time during the day. (Location 2471) Second, get better at each stage of selling. Study, read, listen to audio programs, and upgrade your skills in prospecting, presenting, and closing sales. The better you get, the fewer prospects you require in the top of the funnel to generate sales out of the bottom of the funnel. (Location 2474) Discipline yourself to act every minute of the day as if everyone were watching you. (Location 2486) instead of saying, “I feel happy when I spend money,” you will say, “I feel happy when I save money.” (Location 2570) Once your money goes into this account, you resolve that you will never spend it on anything except the achievement of financial freedom. (Location 2573) Today, however, financial advisers suggest that you need to save 15 or 20 percent of your income in order to achieve all your financial goals. Any less than this opens you up to the risk of running out of money later in life. (Location 2597) Time management is really life management, personal management, management of yourself rather than of time or circumstances. (Location 2679) When you engage in aerobic exercise first thing in the morning, you drive hyper-oxygenated blood into your cerebral cortex, the part of your brain that you use for thinking, analyzing, and decision making. This makes you wide-awake and alert from first thing in the morning and then for several hours afterward. (Location 3288) When you exercise as soon as you get up, you kick your metabolic rate into a higher gear. As a result, your body continues to burn calories all day long. You continue to lose weight for several hours after exercising. (Location 3290) People invest their entire lives developing traits and qualities—especially positive qualities—and they feel flattered when you notice and compliment them on those qualities. (Location 3811) To succeed in the “outer world,” you must discipline yourself to focus and concentrate, work hard at your job, take continuous action toward your goals, and become better and more capable as you move onward and upward in life. To succeed in the “inner world,” however, requires almost the opposite abilities. To achieve inner peace, you must discipline yourself to let go of everything that can disrupt your sense of inner peace and contentment. (Location 3876) “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” (Location 3887) have friends and meet people with ideas and opinions that range all over the political and religious spectrums. In most cases, we get along well together because we simply put aside the discussion of opinions on which we differ. We consciously and deliberately discipline ourselves to detach from these ideas, and we focus instead on subjects that we agree on and in which we share common interests. (Location 3890) Each person has a “Forgetting Curve,” or what is often called a “Forgiveness Curve.” This curve measures how quickly you forgive and forget a negative experience, and it determines how mentally and emotionally healthy you really are. (Location 3927) Forgiveness is a purely selfish act. Forgiveness has nothing whatever to do with the other person. You forgive others so that you yourself can be emotionally free, so that you no longer carry that baggage around with you. (Location 3948)