Daily Motivations - HOW TO BUILD SELF CONFIDENCE

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Motivational Quotes To Boost Your Confidence “Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember – the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.” -Zig Ziglar • ��Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.” -Norman Vincent Peale • “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” -Helen Keller • “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” -Helen Keller Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg     Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg Interested in sponsoring this show reach out to us via [e-mail] Speakers: Brian Tracy Grab your Ultimate Female Body Fitness Guide Ebook  copy now at an exclusive 50% off discount  https://selar.co/42zb40?currency=USD Kindly Support Us Below to sustain future episodes. Support the Show.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. If you were absolutely guaranteed a success in any goal, big or small, short or long term, if you could wave a magic wand, take a pill, but you'd be absolutely guaranteed, what one goal would you set for yourself? And when you ask that question, usually big goals come into your mind. You'd be rich, you'd be famous, you'd be powerful. But when you ask the question, what happens is you start to realize that it is fear that holds us back more than anything else. Because if you're absolutely guaranteed of success, you'd be unstoppable. I mean, you would be a force of nature. If someone

were to put a blessing on you and say that you are indestructible and you could accomplish any goal you ever set for yourself, what different things would you do? Now, when I started off, I came from a poor family. I say I came by my feelings of guilt and unworthiness, honestly, because I was raised by a Catholic mother. And I grew up with no self-confidence, no self-esteem. I was kicked out of school several times. I misbehaved. I ended up spending half of my school in the library because I was kicked out of courses. I left school in the 12th grade and got a job as a dishwasher, worked as a laborer, lived in my car, dug ditches and things like that. So I had no self-esteem. And I began studying the

subject over the years and I found that your level of self no self-esteem. And I began studying the subject over the years, and I found that your level of self-confidence, how much confidence you have in yourself to be, do, accomplish something, really determines the whole quality of your life. Self-confidence is essential in business, because it's impossible to even start a business, to arrange a bank loan, to set up customers, to hire people, to all the things that are necessary in business require self-confidence. The more confident you are, actually, the more magnetism you have. That's why actors and actresses who seem to be extremely confident have a certain amount of magnetism. So confidence not only is really important for us, it makes us feel happy. It affects and empowers

other people. It causes people to treat us differently. We make more sales. We make more money. We marry better. We're better and more effective socially. Self-confidence is everything. And so I began studying when my self-confidence was very, very low, and I began looking at the subject of self-confidence. I find that there's three factors that interfere with our self-confidence. Number one factor is doubt and fear. Doubt and fear. This is really the greatest problem that human beings have. Throughout all of history, throughout all the books of religion and spiritual works and philosophy and psychology, fear and doubt, doubt and fear hold us back more than anything else. And then second of all, it's feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Feelings of guilt and unworthiness.

And these are universal. And then finally, number three, is we have feelings of inferiority and undeservingness. Welcome to Daily Motivation, where you get motivated and inspired. It's absolutely amazing. They've done lots of work with AIDS patients, and they find that some people who have AIDS live for years and years and years,

and some die, and they found that the critical thing is the feeling of worthlessness. It's people come down with a disease, and they feel that there's something wrong with them, and they lose their heart. Viktor Frankl, when he was in the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz, said as long as people believed in something, they stayed alive. As soon as they stopped believing, they just died. And so we all have these feelings. In fact, the feeling of undeservingness is one of the dirty little secrets that we have with regard to success. As you've heard the old expression, fear of success. So no old expression, fear of success. So no such thing as fear of success.

It's just a pop suggestion. It's feelings of undeservingness. We don't feel that we're worth it. And so people who unconsciously don't feel that they're worth very much, they will work very hard on the outside to achieve success and then they'll sabotage themselves. So these are the big three. And where do doubts and fears come from?

Where does guilt and unworthiness come from? Where do guilt and unworthiness come from? Imagine if you had no doubt at all, completely self-confident, no fears at all, is if you felt fabulous about yourself and your ability to accomplish things. If you felt like you deserved all good things in the world, think how much different you would be. And then you look at people who are really successful and happy, and that's the way they are. And as it happens, nobody starts out that way. So I began studying this, and this is really what got me going. And I have now been teaching for 25 years, but I began with these very principles we're talking about today. So what we know is that all habits, including emotional habits, are learned. And this is an interesting concept that came about studying the works of Ouspensky,

who wrote The Turn of the Last Century. But emotional habits or ways of feeling, ways of responding emotionally, are all learned. They are not fixed. They're almost like vagrant emotions. They have no home in the subconscious. If they were fixed, and certain phobias and certain mental illness is fixed, if they were fixed, they're locked in, you can't get them out. But as it happens, 99.9% of our emotional responses, especially negative ones, are actually

unlearnable. You can actually defuse them. You can actually pull the wires that keep them functioning and get rid of them. And so I began studying success. I got into sales and I spun my wheels and I finally began asking the question, why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others? What I learned, which turned my life around, which you've heard before, is the law of cause and effect. Now, the law of cause and effect says that for every effect in your life, for everything that's going on, there's a cause. That we live in a universe that is governed by law. This is often called the iron law of the universe, the iron law of human destiny, because it says that everything that is happening to you is happening for a reason. So the law of cause and effect says that

if you can be clear about an effect that you desire, you can trace it back. And by finding someone else who's gotten that effect, if you do the same things that they do over and over again, you'll get the same result. Well, the great practice or the great application of the law of cause and effect, which has been the foundation principle of human society, psychology, religion, philosophy, metaphysics, and so on, is that thoughts are causes. Thoughts are causes. And conditions are effects. And this is an extraordinary, extraordinary breakthrough.

Because most people believe, falsely, that their situation in life is determined by factors outside of themselves. And I'll come back to this later because it's very important. Whereas the fact is that our thoughts, which are the only thing that we control and which we do control, determine everything that happens to us in life. They determine the quality of our life, the quality of our relationships, the quality of our health, how long we live, how much money we earn, the home we live in, the friends and social relationships we have, our level of happiness and self-confidence, thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.

And over the last 5,000 years, a series of mental laws have been discovered. In fact, back before the time of Christ, there were what were called mystery schools. And mystery schools were schools of people who would withdraw to the mountains, and they would study for years. And over the course of the years, they would be taught these principles. Today, the great findings of the mystery schools are available to us as simple as gumdrops and newspapers, but 99.9% of people have not discovered them. So I want to give you some of the discoveries in the mystery schools, which many people today are rediscovering and going, whoa, it's like a teenager discovering

sex. I mean, wow. Never seen it before. So the second law discovered in the mystery schools was the law of belief. The law of belief has a great cultural heritage. It's the foundation of virtually all religions and all philosophies. And it basically says this, is whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality. Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality. If you strongly believe it, your mind actually sorts out and creates almost a strainer effect, and you see the world through what is called a screen of beliefs. You do not see the world as it is, as the writer Aeneas Ninwan said, you see the world as you are. And you actually deliberately ignore things that are inconsistent with your beliefs. And you only see things that

are consistent with your beliefs. So therefore, the law of belief is very powerful. Now, here's a great tragedy, is some people have beliefs, and we don't need to go into geopolitics, but some people have beliefs that are, first of all, not based on reality. They are based on completely false information, which they're passionately attached to, and which are life-destroying as opposed to life-enhancing. I don't pass judgment on anybody's belief, but the way you can pass judgment on your own beliefs is does it make you happy and does it enhance the quality of your life and your relationships? We'll give you an example. When I had my first child many years ago, one of the child psychology books about raising children said the role of the parent is to break the will

of the child at an early age. And as it happened, that was a common teaching in the 20s, 30s, 40s, even into the 50s, is that children, if they're too willful, will not respond well to instructions from their parents, so the parent's job is to break the will of the child. Well, you can imagine, we have a lot of grown people in our society who were raised by parents with that idea, and they're broken people. They're angry, they're drunk, they're alcoholic, they're alcoholic, they're overweight, they're frustrated, and so on and so forth, because at a very early age, like young colts, they were broken. So the law of belief says that we act based on our beliefs, even though we have self-limiting beliefs. Now here's a very interesting point, is that no one's born with any beliefs.

Every belief you have about yourself, your potential, the world, religion, politics, people, anything, every belief you had, you had to be taught meticulously with very careful instruction, repeated over and over again. The worst of all beliefs are self-limiting beliefs. Now, self-limiting beliefs are beliefs where you believe yourself to be limited in some way. And so the starting point of using the law of belief on your behalf is, first of all, you ask yourself, what beliefs would it be useful or helpful to me to have? And imagine that you could go to the belief store and buy a belief, like a piece of software, and program it into your hard drive

so it became part of your operating system. But you can only choose one belief. What would be a good belief to buy? That you can do all things that you think about and want to do. That you can do all things that you think about and want to do. That's almost dead on, sir. You may go now. Well, a friend of mine spent 18 years studying the biographies of more than 500 men and women who had started with nothing and became successful.

And he was looking for the common denominator of success, and he found it. He found that every single one of these people throughout their lives absolutely believed that they were going to be a big success. They absolutely believed they were going to be a big success when they grew up and no matter what happened to them in their adult lives, and they never lost sight of that. Like the three wise men following the star, they felt that everything that happened was part of the process. Every setback was a lesson. Every pain was something sent to teach them something that would be helpful, and they never stopped believing in themselves. So if you could buy one belief, the belief is this,

is that you are destined to be a big success, that you have incredible potential, that you're surrounded by incredible opportunities, and that you're going to be a huge success in life, and everything that's happened up to now is part of your preparation. So challenge your self-limiting beliefs. Don't ever say, I can't do that, or I'm not good at that, or something else. No, wait a minute. Say, wait, what if that's totally false? What if deep down, what if deep down inside of you, you have the ability to be extraordinary at something that's important to you?

Whether it's skiing, or skydiving, or mathematics, or selling, or earning money, or running a business. You probably have more ability than you can dream of, but don't sell yourself short. Now, in the Bible, it says, according to your faith, it is done unto you. That's one of the most important principles of the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, it says, as a man thinketh in his heart, and the heart stands for the subconscious mind, which means a deep belief, so is he, or so is she. William James says, beliefs create the actual fact, is that if you have the belief, it actually becomes the fact, because you always. Is that if you have the belief, it actually becomes the fact because you always act in a manner consistent with the belief. And as a result, you get the results consistent with your actions. And you can control your beliefs.

Is it easy to change your beliefs, especially old negative? No, it's not easy. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it easy to lose weight? No. Is it possible? Of course it is. Now, the number three law is called the law of expectation. Now, the law of expectation, there is an entire field in economics called expectations theory. There's an entire field in psychology called expectations theory. Your expectations largely determine the quality of your life in this sense, is that whatever you expect with confidence becomes your self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever you expect with confidence becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, you are always telling your future

by the way you talk about how you think things are going to turn out. You are like a fortune teller in your own life. And if you believe that things are going to turn out well, if you expect that things are going to turn out well, then by gum they do. If you believe that you're going to be popular and that people are going to buy and that you have a great product and a great company and you're going to have a great life and you're going to be accepted and well received by people,

then you act that way. So it's very, very important that you always expect the best. And this is the key. Expect the best. Expect the best. Expect the best of yourself. Expect the best of other people. But especially expect the best of people who look up to you. One of the discoveries at Harvard University is that there's two qualities of child raising that raise happy, healthy kids. Two qualities, by the way, that raise happy, healthy, powerful business teams as well and sales teams. Number one is a democratic environment. A democratic environment is where

everybody is welcome to express their opinions and people discuss and debate and get feedback and so on and so forth. And they make their decisions based on consensus. So everybody feels valuable and important and respected. That's number one. For kids, it's phenomenal. Ever since my kids have been little, I always ask for their opinion. What would you like to do? Where would you like to go? Now, as they grow up, we take turns. Where would you like to go for dinner? Where would you like to go? And so on. And the kids decide. And now, when they're adults, they feel that their opinion is valid. When they meet with other adults, they feel that their opinion is valid because they've been trained all their lives that their opinion is worth something.

So number one is a democratic environment. Number two is a climate of positive expectations. Is the parents expect their kids to do well? Just like I tell my kids, you're going to be a very successful person when you grow up. You're going to do extremely well. You're going to be very popular. You're going to get good grades. When you expect the best of your children, children rise to your expectations. They may argue with you. They may reject. They may discount your positive statements because you're a parent, but it affects them at an unconscious level. I remember reading a wonderful line from a journalist. He said, my father was not very talkative. He said, he was a good man, but he didn't talk very much. But I do remember him saying one thing which affected my whole life. He said, son, I expect you to do something worthwhile with

your life when you grow up. He said, I still remember that because whenever it came up, he'd say, son, whatever you do, I expect you to do something worthwhile with your life when you grow up. He said, that rang in my mind all my life. He said, I've striven all my life to do something worthwhile with my life, just because of the positive expectations. So it's really important. Telling people that you expect the best of them. If you're married, telling your spouse that you believe in them and that you expect the best and you believe they'll be successful. And if they're not successful, then they'll learn something. They'll be successful next time. Repeating that over and over again is the greatest blessing that a person can have. Okay, so expect the best. Expect the best of you. Other people expect the

best of yourself too. Okay, now the fourth Now, the fourth law is the law of attraction. Now, the law of attraction is getting, you know, a lot of traction today, a lot of buzz. The law of attraction has been around. It was discovered, first written about 3,000 years before Christ. The law of attraction is a very interesting law that combines with the other laws that it says that each person is a living magnet. Now, along with the law of attraction, there's a couple of other laws. One is called the law of vibration.

And the law of vibration, as you know, everything in the physical universe is in vibration, even thoughts. Now, what causes a thought to vibrate is the emotional component of the thought. A thought with no emotion just lies there. An emotion with no thinking is just out of control, like a random molecule. impelled by an emotion sets up a force field of energy that attracts into your life people, ideas, and resources necessary to achieve the thought. And the more powerful the emotion, the faster it comes into action. Now, the interesting thing is all these laws are neutral. If you believe negative things, then that's what you will see, that's what you'll perceive, that's what you'll experience. If you expect negative things to then that's what you will see. That's what you'll perceive. That's what you'll experience. If you expect negative things to happen, that's what will happen as well.

So don't talk about things you don't want because your mind is so powerful. It's this powerful engine that is sending out vibrations and attracting into your life people and circumstances in harmony with the things you're saying and the thoughts that you're thinking. If you're thinking negative thoughts, you're attracting those things into your life. Tell me, you know, car crashes and burglaries and broken dishes and ripped toes and, you know, all kinds of things happen if you think negatively. So we say that you are a living magnet. And there's a second law. It's called the law of sympathetic resonance.

Let me give you an example of the law of sympathetic resonance which affects your life. If you had two pianos in a large room, and you went over and you hit the note of C sharp on this piano, bang, and you walked across the room to the other piano, the string of C sharp would be vibrating in perfect harmony with the string vibrating on the piano that you struck. Are you with me so far? Why? It's called sympathetic resonance. Now, where is sympathetic resonance especially relevant? It's when we meet the right person for ourselves.

Khalil Gibran says that there will be a moment of recognition at the moment of meeting, instantaneous. You walked into a place and you saw the person and your eyes met across a crowded room was instantaneous. Well, it's the same thing. The law of attraction is a very interesting law, but it says that whatever thoughts you're thinking, positive or negative, are sending out this force field of energy

that's attracting into your life people and circumstances in harmony with it. Now, thought energy is a very fine energy. You know, if you were talking about throwing bullets or basketballs, you couldn't get them through the wall. But thought energy travels at 186,000 miles a second, like the speed of light, and it can literally go across the world instantaneously and through all substances. I'll give an example of the law of attraction that you've experienced many times. You're talking to your friend about somebody else,

and the phone rings, and it's them. You ever had that happen? And you say, we were just talking about you. And the other person says, well, I just had this impulse to phone you. This happens throughout your life. If it happened once or twice, you could say, well, that's an interesting coincidence. But if it happens repeatedly throughout your life,

then you know that there's a law at work. So how do you use the law of sympathetic resonance, the law of attraction? It's very simple. You keep your mind on what you want, and you think about what you want in very positive terms. You think about things that make you happy. You think about people that you love, and you think about success experiences. Interesting difference between winners and losers. Can you guess? Prior to every sales call or experience, both of them visualize and recall a memory. But winners recall their previous success experience and how happy they were about that.

And non-winners recall their previous unhappy experience and how bad they felt and how depressed they felt and how unsuccessful and so on. So winners think of their past success experience and they set up a force field of energy that largely creates that experience. Sometimes when you walk into a room, if you are really up, people turn their head. I mean, the vibrations will hit them. They'll turn their head. They'll notice that you've come into the room. So this is very much determined by the thoughts that you're thinking. We'll talk about this as we go along. So the law of attraction says you're constantly attracting into your life people, circumstances, ideas, resources in harmony with your dominant thoughts, but it is a neutral

law. Nature is neutral in this sense. If you think negative thoughts and worried thoughts and anxious thoughts and angry thoughts, that's what you attract into your life. And so it's really important that you be aware of that. Okay, the next law is called the law. I've written these down here. There's actually 32, oh, it's one of my favorite. It's called the law of correspondence.

I love this one. It's kind of a summary law in many ways. And it has an equation. and the equation is this. This is my favorite equation. Remember this for the rest of your life. The law of correspondence, which is talked about in the New Testament, the Old Testament, and many of the old books, simply says, as within, so without. As within, so without.

What it says is that your entire world around you is a mirror that reflects back to you your dominant thoughts. We say wherever you look, there you are. It's almost like you live in a 360 degree mirror. And wherever you look, you see yourself reflected back. Now, the three or four places where this is most common is, first of all, your relationships. Now, remember, human beings are extraordinarily sensitive, so that if you have negative thoughts going on about anything, you affect their relationships close to instantaneously. They'll pick it up across a crowded room. Women, by the way, are far better at this than men. Men are kind of like blocks of cheese, but women are like high-tech computers. Have you ever had an experience? Every man's had an experience.

They phone home. They say, hi. She says, what's wrong? That's all you said is hi or hello. She said, what's wrong? Is it your boss again? How did you know? A woman can pick it up with a single word.

You can walk in the door and say hi, and she'll just go. Instantly, she'll just read them. With regard to relationships, your relationships almost instantaneously will show you what's going on inside your own thoughts. If you're feeling happy, your relationships will reflect it immediately. If you're unhappy or angry for some reason, they'll reflect it immediately. A second area, by the way, has to do with income, is your outer world of income will be determined by your inner world of attitude toward money, earning, productivity,

performance, and everything else. With regard to your health, your inner world of attitude toward health, food, diet, fitness, everything else determines your external world of health. And also to success. If you believe that you're going to be a big success, if you believe it on the inside, then you'll see it. It'll be reflected back to you in your outer world. Remember, most people look at a mirror. If they don't like what's in the mirror, they bang and pound the mirror. But intelligent people realize that whatever they see in their outer world is coming from themselves. So they always ask this great question, is what is it in me? What is it in me that is causing what's going on in my environment? Now, this is the mark, the question of the superior person.

The average person always tries to blame something in their external environment or someone, past, present, future. So, the next law is called the law of subconscious activity. Now, the law of subconscious activity, and there's all kinds of stuff that is written for popular reading, the law of subconscious activity, and there's all kinds of stuff that is written for popular reading. The law of subconscious activity basically says that your subconscious mind functions automatically. It is like clay. It takes the imprint of your conscious thoughts. And then it makes all your words and actions consistent with your previous programming.

It makes your words and actions consistent with what you've put in in the past. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey there, fellow listeners. If you're passionate about fitness and wellness, then you're in for a treat with our latest ebook, The Ultimate Female Body Fitness Guide. Click the link in the episode description to grab your copy now at an exclusive 50% off discount. This comprehensive resource is designed specifically for women aiming to conquer their fitness goals. From strength training to cardio, flexibility, nutrition, and mindset, we've got you covered. Inside, you'll find expertly crafted workout routines, personalized meal plans, motivation tips, and strategies

tailored to help you reach your fitness dreams. We also tackle common challenges women encounter on their fitness journeys, offering advice on balancing exercise with life's demands and breaking free from societal norms. Don't miss out on this incredible deal of 50% off. Get your ebook now before it's too late. So it does not think, it does not create, all it does is keeps everything going. Your subconscious mind is also the seat of the autonomic nervous system, which handles and regulates the exact balance of hundreds of chemicals in every single one of the hundreds of billions of cells of your body on a moment-by-moment basis. They say the subconscious mind makes 500 million commands a second. I mean, that's how fast it does. It basically

keeps a chemical balance of every single cell in your body at a perfect level. People who say, you know, human beings just emerged out of the primordial muck as a result of a couple of chemical mixes and a couple of lightning strikes, really need a checkup from the neck up. Because when you look at the incredible complexity of the human system, it's literally beyond belief. We are so complicated. And if one little thing was out, if one little feature was out in our eyes, none of us could see, either long distance or short distance. One little feature was out in our bloods, hearts, veins, anything else, we would not survive. And you take hundreds of thousands and millions of

these little things that are so perfectly calibrated. Lots of research has been done on this. It's a phenomenal thing. But anyway, is keep asking. Subconscious activity is subject to programming. It's sort of like if you program your computer, what do we say? Geico sounds for what? Garbage in, garbage out, but it also means good in, good out. So if you reprogram, if you reprogram the commands going to your subconscious computer, you get new programming. That's why most programs, when they come off the production line, have what? Bugs and defects.

And so what they do, the professionals go through, the engineers go through, and they debug it. One of the things we need to do to fulfill our potential to have high self-confidence is to debug. And we need to go back through and take out all those little ideas and misconceptions and feelings and concepts and beliefs which are not consistent with being happy and joyous. They say the fruits of the spirit are joy and self-control. And so if you're not feeling completely in control of your world and experiencing joy, that means there's something wrong with the computer. So what we do is we say, oh, must have gotten a bug in there, and we don't get upset about it. We say, where's that bug? And we just go to work. Sometimes just challenging one thought can transform your life. I'll give you a quick story. Once upon a time, there was a young guy, grew up in a family. His father was a Fortune 500 executive, extremely

wealthy. This kid grew up, he had everything. He had servants, he had money, he had everything else. He grew up spoiled beyond belief. And his father was busy working and so on. But for one reason or another, he grew up and he was very spoiled. He was pushy. He was arrogant. He was rude toward the servants and toward other people. And the father realized he had raised a really spoiled, wastrel-type kid because he'd never have to work for anything in his life. Well, the young man went off to college, completed college, reasonable grades. And then he came back and he said, okay, dad, get me a job. Nice kid. So the father said, all right, I will get you a job. The father

realized he made a mistake with his son and he wasn't quite sure how to help him. But he got him a job with another Fortune 500 company and young man went to work. And after 18 months, boss called him and said, you're fired. We don't want you around here anymore. Your work is low level. You're not very competent. You're fired. Get out. Well, the young man was shattered. It's his first job. His friends have got jobs, friends working in large companies. He comes home. He's been fired. His father said, well, you know, I'll see if I can get you another job, so a couple of months goes by. His father gets him another job. He goes and he works for 18 months at this job.

This time he works really hard because he's determined not to be fired. After 18 months, boss calls him and says, you're fired. Get out of here. Get out. Out, out, out. We don't want you around here. You're worthless. You're no good.

Kid goes home. And this time he's, now he's in his mid-20s. He's really upset and angry. His father says, well, let me see what I can do. I'll call around. And this time he gets him another job. 18 months later, he's fired for incompetence. He does this four times. And then the son discovers when he's about 28, 29, by this time, he's working hard. He's working long hours. He's working himself silly so he could do a great job so he could really work up and he's doing a great job he's gotten better and better more disciplined

more focused and everything else but fired four times in a row for major companies and then he finally finds out somebody lets him slip and he said well why am i being fired he said well that was the deal he said what do you mean, deal? He said, well, the deal was I told your father I would put you on for 18 months, and he agreed as long as I would fire you at the end of 18 months. He said, quite honestly, you've done a fantastic job here, one of the best people we've ever seen, but that was the deal. This young man went home, and he was so, now he's in his late 30s, he is so mad,

he gets into a fighting, shouting contest with his father. He swears at him, and he says, that's it, he said, I will never talk to you. I will never have anything to do with you the rest of my life. He walks out, leaves, gets his own job this time with a Fortune 500 company, becomes a crack executive, moves up to a senior position. He's well-paid, well-respected. At the age of 38, he's still mad. He's talking to his spouse or something else about his father and what his father did all the way through his 20s. And his spouse, his wife said, honey, did you ever think

that maybe your father loved you so much? He was willing to put you through all of that, knowing you'd end up hating him. But he did that to make you the all of that knowing you'd end up hating him but he did that to make you the kind of man that you've become today and it was just like a whack in the face and suddenly the son realized in all honesty he was a jerk when he came out of school and that now he was a successful highly respected person and it would never have happened in the absence of those experiences. So he went to his father, he's now 38 years old, father's about 60 something, went to his father and confronted him and said, is this true? And he said, yes. He said, I

hated to do it, he said, but I realized I made a mistake in raising you and I had to compensate for it. I had to make you the kind of person that you could be and it would only happen with adversity. And so I was willing to lose you in order to save you. And they embraced and they became the best of friends for the rest of their lives. True story, by the way, true story. So my point there was what he did is from being angry to the age of 38, he changed his perspective and realized that what had happened was a good thing. What had happened was done out of love and not out of unkindness.

My friend Wayne Dyer has this little one-liner. He said, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. The work at the University of Pennsylvania says basically that we see the world based on what is called our interpretive style. And your interpretive style is the way you interpret things to yourself.

So if you change the way you interpret things to yourself, your attitude toward everything changes. So here's the seventh law. And the seventh law is the law of habit. And the law of habit says that whatever you do repeatedly over and over again becomes a new habit. So you can develop any emotional habit. You can develop an emotional habit of confidence, of optimism, of happiness, of joy, of positive expectancy. You can develop a mental habit by simply repeating certain things over and over again until you do it. I'm going to show you how to do that. So here's the bottom line. The bottom line when you take all these habits together, all these mental principles together, is that you become what you think about

most of the time. You become what you think about most of the time. Now, it's not what you think about fleetingly that passes through your mind, but it's what you think about most of the time. As Emerson said, a man is what he thinks about all day long. So the question is, what do you think about most of the time? And the rule is, if you change your thinking, you change your life. If you change your thinking, you change your life. And there is no other way. And this brings us to the greatest discovery of the 20th century, the discovery of the self-concept. I call this the master program. And each person has a self-concept.

And this self-concept is a combination of all your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, doubts, hopes, fears, and experiences throughout your entire life that come together to make you the kind of person you are today. Now, we know that the only thing that is unique about you is your mind. Everything else the human being has in common with a horse or a monkey. The only thing that you have that makes you distinct and unique is your mind. And every single person is completely different because every single person has had hundreds of thousands of different experiences at different times to which they've responded and interpreted differently. So your mind is unique in all the world. There could not be two of you if there are 50 billion human beings.

And what they discovered was the self-concept. And what we found is that your performance and your effectiveness is determined by your self-concept. How you perform and behave on the outside, how you treat people, what you accomplish is all determined by your internal programming. So if I give you a little bit of a graph here, here's a graph. We say that your level of effectiveness is determined by your self-concept. How effective you are as a person, as a salesperson, as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as a writer, whatever you do, your self-concept and your level of effectiveness have a one-to-one relationship. You've also heard it said that the average person uses only 10% of their potential. Well, this means that there's fully 90% of your potential left untapped.

Some people only use a small part of their potential, but imagine that you could earn twice as much, three times as much, five times as much, just by using more of your potential. Well, according to the Stanford Brain Institute, they did some studies on this, actually cadaver studies. The average person really only uses about 2% of their potential. They're saving up the rest for some good purpose that we don't know yet. But the average person functions on 2%.

2% gets you the entire quality of your life that you have today. That means, by the way, average is 2%, Some are less than that. Some use less than that. And what we do is we use it to get up in the morning, brush our teeth, go to work, go home, watch television, but we don't use it for very much. But let's just pretend and say we use 10 percent of our potential. That means that your self-concept is limited to only 10 percent as well. We also know that each person has a series of mini self-concepts. Now, you have a self-concept is limited to only 10% as well. We also know that each person has a series of many self-concepts. Now, you have a self-concept for every part of your life or work that you consider to be important. For example, you have a self-concept for every sport that you play. You have a self-concept

for how well you sell. You have a self-concept for how you dress and for how much you weigh. You have a self-concept for your creative ability and your memory, your ability to tell stories, your sense of humor. You have a self-concept for your appearance. You have a self-concept for any kind of musical instrument or anything else you do. You have a self-concept for how much money you earn. What they have found is that every person has a self-concept which is like a thermostat. And this self-concept with regard to money, you never go more than 10% above or below your self-concept level of income. If you earn 10% or more above your self-concept level of income, you immediately go into what I call throwaway behaviors.

You do everything possible to get rid of the money. You give it away, you spend it, you go out for dinner, you buy champagne, you order drinks for everybody at the bar. That's why if ever you win a prize or something, the very first thing you think of, let's go on a vacation, buy a motorhome, get some jewelry. And 68% of people who win the lottery are broke again within three years. They have more money than they've ever had in their life, but it takes them so far out of their self-concept that they go just like a rocket that goes off course and starts to spin, and they go crazy. But if you earn 10% or more below your self-concept level of income,

you engage in what are called scrambling behaviors, and you scramble to get your income back up. But once you're into that 10% range, plus or minus, you relax. And this becomes your comfort zone. This becomes your comfort zone. And the great enemy of human success is the comfort zone. In this comfort zone, you're comfortable. Now, you may not be happy with the amount that you're earning, but you just become comfortable with that amount. The only way that you can increase your income is to change your self-concept in relationship to income. And what we know is that your overall self-concept is determined by your self-concept in all the areas of your life that you consider important. We also know this, is that your self-concept is made up of three parts.

Again, this is basic behavioral psychology. Number one, it's made up of your self-ideal. Now, your self-ideal, like three wedges of a pie, consists of your values. It consists of your ideals. It consists of your goals. It consists of your hopes. It consists of your dreams. It consists of all those things that are inside you. And what we know is that there's a direct relationship

between how clear you are about your goals and ideals and your self-ideal. What do we know about top people? Top people are clear about what they believe in, and they don't compromise their values. What do we know about little people, weak people? Is they're very confused about their values, and they compromise them for the slightest advantage. So my point is that people with a very clear self-ideal are much stronger and more powerful people than people who are unclear about their ideals. The second part of your self-concept is called your self-image. And, you know, there's hundreds of books on self-image psychology, but basically what they say is your self-image is the way you see yourself and the way you think about yourself. Your self-image is called your inner mirror.

Whenever you go to do anything, you check this mirror like a stage performer checking the mirror before they go on the stage. Before you go in to see somebody in a sales call, you just kind of check your inner mirror to see how do I perform in sales calls? And your performance on the outside is largely determined by your self-image, one-to-one. Remember that ratio. The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. Now, your self-esteem is the most important part of all. This is the emotional part of your personality. This is what I call the nuclear reactor core. This is the energy source. This is the power in the human personality. Your level of self-esteem determines your level of vitality, energy, personality, sense of humor, creativity, personal strength, influence, persuasiveness, and so on. So your self-esteem is critical, and your self-esteem

is defined as how much you like yourself. How much you like yourself is the measure of your self-esteem. How much you like yourself. Here's an interesting point, is whenever your self-image, your personal performance, is consistent with your self-ideal, the person that you would most like to be, your self-esteem goes up. Whenever you do anything that is consistent with the best person you could be, you feel happy. You feel proud. You have greater self-respect. You have more energy. Whenever you do something that's not like you, you blow up.

You get mad. You swear. You do something that's not consistent with the best person you could be. Your self-esteem takes a hit. But when you start to act in a way consistent with the best that you know, your self-esteem goes up. Well, here's the most important part, going down here, is we say that the most powerful words you'll ever learn are the words, I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. Whenever you say the words, I like myself, your overall self-concept goes up.

Your self-image improves and your self-ideal clarifies. And as your self-concept goes up, your performance and your behavior at every part of your life goes up as well. They say the flip side of self-esteem, like a coin, is called self-efficacy in psychology. And self-efficacy is how competent you are. So whenever you do something well, your self-esteem goes up and you like yourself more. And the more you like yourself, the better you do. And the better you do, the more you like yourself. And the more you like yourself, the better you do. And you get onto an upward spiral. So what we found is the most powerful words that you can use prior to any event of importance

are the words, I like myself. Say it. Say, I like myself. Now say it like you mean it. Say, I like myself. Now you notice the first time you say it, and I went through this many, many years ago, the first time you say it, you may feel a little uncomfortable. Some of you didn't say it with too much enthusiasm. You know, you said it because everybody else was saying it, but you felt a little bit guilty, like undeserving. Like that's, you know, like a little bit, it's not quite right. Well, that's

perfectly normal. It's perfectly normal. What it means is somebody's programmed some kind of defect into your computer, a piece of negative information that's inconsistent with liking yourself. And what happens, it's called cognitive dissonance in psychology. The new message hits the old garbage and goes bang, like a bang, and it creates a stress. And the stress is felt like a feeling of discomfort. Are you with me so far? So whenever you say, say the words, I'm the best. I like myself.

When you say these words, the first time you say them, you may feel a little uncomfortable because they may feel to be, you know, not consistent with reality. But the more you repeat them, it's like driving a pile in a river. The more you repeat them, you drive them deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind, and gradually these words will reprogram all the old garbage in there and blow it away, almost like a psychological roto-rooter. So you get up in the morning and say, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself. You go through the day,

I like myself, I like myself. And when we're in business, our self-esteem is taking a hit all the time, like a tire or an inner tube losing air. So you have to keep pumping it up. I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself. Somebody's rude, slams down the phone, shows you to the door, waste your time. I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself. You've got to keep yourself up. You may get a game. Now, I don't suggest you say this in crowded washrooms or elevators, but just say it to yourself on a regular basis because the idea of liking yourself is the purest and most positive statement you can give from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind because it's like mummy's kisses. It makes everything everything okay. Takes all the pain away.

It's impossible to like yourself and feel negative. It's impossible to like yourself and be angry. It's impossible to like yourself and be worried. And your mind can only hold one thought at a time, positive or negative. So if you keep repeating, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself, what happens is eventually it becomes a habit of thinking. Wake up in the morning, say, I like myself. Throughout the day, say, I like myself. What happens is he eventually becomes a habit of thinking. Wake up in the morning, say, I like myself. Throughout the day, you say, I like myself.

Somebody's rude or difficult to you, you say, ah, it doesn't bother me. I like myself. And you act like it. Now, initially, it'll be like getting fit. Your muscles will be stiff. Your emotional muscles will be stiff. But after a while, it starts to become automatic. And whenever you have any kind of negative event, you can immediately zap it by saying, oh, wait a minute, I like myself. Now, here's the most wonderful thing. The more you like yourself, the more you

like other people. And the more you like other people, the more they like you right back. And what do you think is the foundation of self-confidence? How much you like yourself, self-esteem. The more you like yourself, the higher your level of self-confidence. The more you like yourself, the less you feel for your fear, failure, and rejection. The less you're worried about negative events and negative experiences. You fall on your face, you pick yourself up. People fall down. People make mistakes. Life goes on. So in other words, things don't bother you because you actually develop almost like a Teflon cover around your emotions and you become a completely positive person.

Remember in the 60s, there was that poster that says, I do not love you for yourself, but for the way you make me feel when I'm with you. Do you know the most powerful thing you can do in your relationships with other people is to make them like themselves? Is to say things and do things with them, not manipulatively, but positively, that cause them to like themselves. Compliment them on the way they look. Thank them for being punctual. Praise them for their accomplishments. Say little things, nice things that make me feel happy. Say thank you. It causes people to like

themselves. If you go through the world sort of like a hummingbird going from flower to flower, making people feel important, making people like themselves, you'll be one of the most popular people there is. Everybody would be happy to see you. Everybody brighten up when they know you're coming. We all agree with this. We should all have high self-esteem. Well, what is the problem? Well, the problem is negative emotions. And the greatest single challenge we have are negative emotions and negative habit patterns. Positive habit patterns are joy, love, spontaneous humor, happiness, compassion, and so on. But negative emotions are the greatest enemy of all. We can only improve our lives to the degree to which we free ourselves from our negative emotions.

And the good news is that no child is born with any negative emotions. All negative emotions are learned from infancy onward. And that's a good thing because if it was not true, then we could not get rid of them. Because if it was part, like our eye color or our hair color or our height, we couldn't get rid of it. But it's not genetic. It's not fixed. It's learned. And it's therefore relearnable or unlearnable. You can, in other words, just reach in and short circuit the negative emotion circuits which we learn. So here's some of the things that we know about negative emotions. And when I began studying this, I spent something like five years studying this,

and it changed my whole life, is we know that negative emotions are the greatest single obstacles to success. They're the things that hold us back more than anything else. Let me show you where negative emotions, the negative emotions tree. This is the negative emotions tree. This is my own creation, by the way. Here's the trunk. Here's the ground. And here's the roots. Now, where do negative emotions...

First of all, what are the most popular negative emotions? There's about 54 negative emotions in the textbooks. But the worst of all are fear. Fear is a terrible negative emotion. And then there is a doubt, which we talked about before. That's a killer. And then there's envy, which goes along with resentment. Envy and resentment are like twin sisters that go around together.

Because if you envy somebody, they, you resent them their success. And of course, there's jealousy, what Shakespeare called the green-eyed monster. Jealousy is a terrible thing, which comes from low self-esteem. People experience jealousy when they feel that I'm not good enough. And then there's hatred. And then, worst of all, there's anger. Now, we know that the roots of the negative emotion tree, and by the way, there's lots more,

but the roots of the negative emotion tree are two things. They are, first of all, I'll put this up here, they are justification. What we find is that it is impossible to have a negative emotion or a negative feeling of any kind unless you can justify it, unless you can explain why you are entitled to this negative emotion. Why? What someone else has done or not done entitles you to this negative emotion. So if we stop justifying, in the Bible, which is a book on psychological and spiritual development, in the Bible, in the Sermon on the Mount, it says, Judge not that ye be not judged. You see, because if you judge, you become a hanging judge, you automatically condemn.

If you judge and condemn, you justify and create negative emotions. The worst thing of all is it doesn't affect the other person. It affects you. So if we stop justifying, the negative emotion starts to die. The second part is identification. Identification is where you take things personally. This is very common. We hear something that happened, we take it personally, we become angry and upset of something that's happened to someone somewhere else. So if you don't justify and tell yourself you're entitled to this emotion, if you don't identify and take it personally, the emotion

starts to die. The fruit starts to die. However, what's more important is the trunk of the tree. The trunk of the negative emotion tree is blame. And all negative emotions require for their survival blame. If you stop blaming, you stop the negative emotion. And it's almost like your negative emotion tree is like a Christmas tree that's plugged into the wall. If you jerk it out of the wall, yeah, if you jerk it out of the wall and you cut down the trunk, if you stop blaming, all your negative emotions stop. I told you I spent 4,000 hours, spent years studying this subject, I was overwhelmed by its enormity. Because the key to your fulfilling your full potential as a human being is to eliminate your

negative emotions. Because if you eliminate negative emotions, what's left? Only positive emotions. Happiness, joy. The one common goal that all human beings have is to be happy. To be happy and joyous and loving and feel wonderful about themselves and their relationships. And the only thing that impairs that is negative emotions. And these negative emotions we'll talk about in a second or learn. So the key is to stop blaming. And the way that you stop blaming is with a very simple three-word neutralizer or zapper. And it is the words, I am responsible. I am responsible. So say it. Say, I am responsible. I am responsible. So from now on, whenever you think of anything

that makes you mad, just say, wait a minute, I'm responsible. I'm responsible. I'm responsible. You see, your mind can only hold one thought at a time, positive or negative. It cannot hold the thought of responsibility and the thought of anger at the same time. Now, people are going to give me every conceivable response to this position because nobody wants to give up their negative emotions. Doggone it, you've paid for those negative emotions. You've spent years keeping them alive and fertilizing them and justifying them and talking them over with other people and putting water on them and thinking about them and so on, people love their negative emotions. To get them away, you almost need a crowbar to get people to give up their negative emotions. In fact, what we

have found is that if you have just one negative emotion that you will not part with, that alone can sabotage your whole life. So the starting point of your achieving the greatness that is possible for you is to get rid of the negative emotions. So we talk about I am responsible. Your ability to respond in an effective way is the critical measure of how much you become as a human being. In other words, if you can respond effectively to crises, problems, upsets, which may not be legally your fault,

if you can respond positively, effectively, it means that you've come a long way. It means you've become one of the best developed human beings on our planet. Because average human beings fall apart, get angry, blow up, go into chaos, throw fits, have tears, threaten to sue and pour the drink down their throat and everything else when they have a reversal. But not top people. Top people say, hmm, stay calm here. What's happened? Let's look at it. What do we do now? What's our next action? And so on. So by saying, I am responsible, whenever you feel something angry, you neutralize the negative emotion. If you keep repeating the words, I am responsible, over and over again, pretty soon

they become an automatic mantra. Something happens, you start to become angry, you instantly say, wait a minute, I'm responsible. So we know that no child is born with any negative emotions. Children come into the world and they have an incredible need for love. Love is the most powerful need that children have. The child needs love like roses need rain. They come in completely pure. They have no negative emotions at all, except for two. They have only two fears, fears of falling and fears of loud noises. All other negative emotions must be taught to the child from childhood.

When a child comes into the world, they have two wonderful characteristics. First of all, they're completely uninhibited. They laugh, they puke, they pee, they poop, they cry, they do whatever they want. In other words, they're completely uninhibited. They have no inhibitions at all. As far as the child's concerned, the child can do anything. I can do anything. These are the words of the early child. The second characteristic a child comes into the world with is they're completely spontaneous. They do exactly what they want, they say what they want, they cry, they gurgle, they pee, they squeal, they play, they do whatever they want.

They say, I don't have to do anything. You notice that with children? I don't have to. And so these are the two characteristics. Very early in life, because of mistakes that parents make in upbringing, especially destructive criticism and conditional love or withdrawal in love, children begin to develop the two major clusters of negative habit patterns from which all others come. Almost emotional cancers, if you like. The first is they develop the inhibited negative habit pattern, or inhibitive negative habit pattern. The inhibitive negative habit pattern is characterized by the words, I can't. When the child is young, the child wants to touch and taste

and smell and feel and get anything, a touch thing, a grab knives, a crawl around and run out in traffic. And parents often say, don't, get away from this, stop that, put that down. How many times have I told you? And they punish the child, and they punish the child at an early age when the child is incapable of comprehending why the parent is getting so upset. All the parent, all the child hears is the parent's angry voice, and sometimes the physical punishment and the shouting and the putting in their bedroom or putting in their crib. The child at a very early age starts to develop this idea, I'm too little, I'm small, I'm incompetent, I'm incapable, I can't.

I can't. I can't. So every time they try something, they get a spank or a punishment. I can't. What happens is that this child begins to form this impression that I can't. And as the child grows, as the child begins to extend it to the rest of their world, I can't learn this. I can't do this. I can't get a good grade.

I can't get a good job. I can't form a good relationship. As adults, whenever the child is confronted with a new risky proposition for which there's no guarantees, the natural response is, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. What if I lose? What if it costs me money? We call this the fear of failure. And the fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success in adult life. Now here's an interesting thing physiologically,

is the fears are actually experienced in the human body. And we feel it, first of all, in the solar plexus, then in the heart, then in the throat, then in the head, and sometimes in the bladder. Well, the next negative habit pattern, number two, is called the compulsive negative habit pattern. And the compulsive negative habit pattern, which is the second constellation, is characterized by the words, I have to. And it's associated with what we call the fear of rejection. The fear of rejection, the fear of criticism,

the fear of disapproval, which is terribly important to us as members of a of a society and the compulsive negative habit pattern is trained into children when they are told at an early age if you don't you're going to get this if you don't do this then this and what it's associated with is what is called conditional love now since children need love more than anything else, the threat of taking away the love and approval is terrifying to the child. It terrifies the child. It actually traumatizes the child to have their love taken away. Children need love the way that we need oxygen or that the patient needs blood. If you pull away the love or give it back and pull it away like this, the child goes into a constant state of turmoil emotionally.

As adults, they are hypersensitive to the reactions of others. They can't make any decisions for fear that others will disapprove of it. They are extremely worried about what others may say. They're concerned about the Joneses and everything else. They are so concerned about what others may do that they don't have a mind of their own. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? And this always goes back to childhood and to conditional love, where the love was given and taken away, or maybe never given at all. And what it does, it traumatizes the child. Now, the worst of all, which is what affects most adults, is I have to, but I can't. I can't, but I have to. I have to, but I can't. And they're torn back and

forth. Most illnesses, you know, in our society is psychosomatic in origin. Psycho, the mind, makes some of the body sick. Prolonged confrontation with these fears makes you physically ill. It actually changes your blood chemistry. It leads to ulcers. It leads to diseases as serious as cancer, strokes, phlebitis, internal congestions. Most skin breakouts are caused by anger and by negative emotions. Most of the problems in our bodies can be associated back one way or another to these. So the antidote to these is whenever you think of something that you want to do, you say, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Say, I can do it. And say, when you repeat this, say, I can do it.

I can do it. Whenever you think of anything, picking up the phone, calling the customer, taking a chance, just say to yourself, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. And what it does is each time you say that, your fears go down and your confidence goes up. It's almost like they're on a teeter-totter. As you build your confidence, your fears go down. And whenever you feel under compulsion, just say, I don't have to. I don't have to. I choose to do this, but I don't have to. I don't have to. I don't have to. So one of the critical manifestations of negative emotions that deflates our self-confidence, and you notice this? All these fears hold back our self-confidence. Fears we can't. Fears we have to. Fears we have to please other people. Other people won't like us. We may lose our time or money. All they translate into

one of the worst of negative emotions, which is guilt. Guilt goes around with her twin sister unworthiness. As we feel unworthy. Now, it's interesting is that no child grows up with guilt. Most of the main religions in the world have, at a very early stage, inculcated guilt as a fundamental part of their teachings. And they use it at a very early age because the easiest way to control people is with guilt. So there's two reasons why guilt is practiced deliberately. One is for control, and the other is for manipulation. And control and manipulation, why? It's because they work.

If you can get your children to feel guilty at an early age, you can control them like on a fishing string for the rest of your life. And what you do, you do it, first of all, we use destructive criticism. Destructive criticism breaks people down emotionally. And if you criticize them a lot when they're young, they'll feel broken down, their self-confidence is down, their self-esteem is down, and then you use guilt to manipulate them. And the way that you deal with guilt is when anybody ever tries to use guilt on you, you say, excuse me, are you trying to make me feel guilty? And you smile. And they'll say,

oh, no, no, because nobody will admit it. At least not the first few times. You say, that's great, because it doesn't work on me. Guilt doesn't work on me. Oh, well, good. And then they'll try it again, mother. And you say, excuse me, are you trying to make me feel guilty again? No. And finally, she'll say, yes, I am. You say, well, it's not going to work. It worked in the past. It doesn't work now.

Is always say when a person says anything, are you trying to make me feel guilty? That immediately stops the game. The game only works if it's underground. As soon as you bring it up and put it on the table, the game stops. And you don't allow people to make you feel guilty because guilt is totally destructive. It destroys your soul. It undermines your self-confidence. So the way that we get rid of guilt, and we'll talk about this in a couple of seconds, the final principle I have to teach you with, have to teach you is the most important principle in self-confidence, the most important

principle in personal development, and it's based around another law, and it's the law of forgiveness. The law of forgiveness. Now, the law of forgiveness says that you are a healthy person to the degree to which you can freely forgive and forget offenses against you. To the degree to which you cannot, you move down the human totem pole and you become a less and less person. A person who can forgive nothing is a person who's totally destroyed psychologically and emotionally. So how do you deal with forgiveness? Number one, forgive your parents. You do not become an adult until you have forgiven your parents 100% for every mistake they ever made. Remember, it's never too late to have a happy childhood, so just go back and forgive your parents.

If they're no longer with you, forgive them and let them go. So the second thing, forgive any relationship that you ever had that didn't work out. Now this is hard because it's so personal and it's so painful. But if you can forgive your parents, it's a real good warm-up. Most people are still mad at their parents in their 50s. If you then forgive every previous relationship, you accept that you were at least partially responsible for getting into the relationship. You were definitely responsible for staying in the relationship. You just say, I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible. I bless them and let them go. And just let it go. Because in letting them go, you set yourself free. By not

letting them go, you're keeping yourself in prison, in an emotional prison. The third thing that you can do is forgive everybody else. Forgive everyone else in your life that has ever hurt you in any way. Every past childhood slight, every sibling, every person in your family, every person you ever worked for, every lousy boss or person who cheated you, lied to you, robbed you, and everything else, and so on. I mean, just let it go. Just let it go. Remember, it's a selfish act. You're doing it for yourself. And finally, number four, this is really critical, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. Now, I have it on good authority. I've done some research on you before you came here.

I find that every single person here has done some wicked, senseless, brainless, foolish, cruel, idiotic, stupid things in their life. Is that true? Say yes. Let it go. And please understand this. The person who did those things in their life. Is that true? Say yes. Let it go. And please understand this, the person who did those things no longer lives, no longer exists. The person you were in the past is a different person than you are today. The person you are today wouldn't do those things because you now have wisdom, you have hindsight, you have intelligence, you understand consequences.

So the person you are today is a different person from the person you were back then. So don't keep beating yourself up because that other person, another person, did something that today you disapprove of. All right? Just let yourself go. Let yourself off the hook. And when you let it all go, it's almost like a huge burden off your back. You just forgive everybody and you forgive everything. And on a go-forward basis, you just forgive everybody. You don't have any negativities at all. No negativity toward anybody. You're just a positive person. And if you do that, if you accept responsibility like yourself and forgive everyone else, you become a truly superior person. Most amazing, Dorothy. Now, learned helplessness is one of the greatest enemies of success in our lifetime. And

learned helplessness, based on 25 years of research and millions of dollars at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the greatest killers of human success, is we learn to be helpless. They have done a whole series of experiments, but one, they took a dog and they put a piece of glass in the middle of a cage, and on one side they put the dog, the other side a delicious piece of meat, and the dog would throw itself at the glass and hurt its nose, and throw itself at the glass and hurt its nose, throw itself three or four times at the glass and hurt its nose, then they take the dog away, and the next day they put them back with the dog and the meat. They did this for three or four days, and by the third or fourth day, the dog would just sit there passively and not throw itself at the glass because he didn't want

to hurt his nose. Then the next day, they just removed the glass and put the dog in the cage next to the meat. And the dog, with a stomach growling and rumbling, would lay there right next to the meat and never reach for it. The dog had been trained to be helpless. The dog believed that it could not get to the meat. So even though there was nothing in the way, the dog had been trained to be helpless. The dog believed that it could not get to the meat, so even though there was nothing in the way, the dog just sat there. They did a study with, they did 25 years of this. They took a bunch of university students, and they put them into a room. They said, you can leave this room whenever you like. It's up to you, and that's the only instructions that you have. So they went into the room and the

room had several doors and they closed the doors and the students went around and checked the doors the doors were all locked from the outside as soon as they finished checking they went and sat down and then they began to play music loud music terrible music broken glass trash can music outrageous music band they began to increase the temperature in the room. They let a foul odor into the room. And so you had this music and this odor and this heat and everything else. And the students just all sat there. Even though the doors had been unlocked as soon as they tried them, the doors were unlocked. They could have left at any time. They had learned to be helpless with one experience. They say humans can learn to be

helpless with a single experience. They can try something and instantly conclude, I can't do that. I'm not capable of it. I can't play a sport, can't cook a dish, can't type a type, can't work a telephone. They instantly conclude that they can't do it. And for the rest of their lives, they're helpless. Now, here's an interesting point. Remember, it's not what a man knows what hurts him, it's what he knows what ain't true. And have you ever had an experience where you felt you couldn't do something, and then somebody showed you how to do it properly, and you found you could do it quite easily? And suddenly, your whole belief system changed. Up to that time, you'd always believed you couldn't do it. From that point forward, you believed that you could for the rest of your life. We talked earlier about self-limiting beliefs. One of the self-limiting beliefs

is that we are not capable of doing something. We feel learned helplessness. So it's very important that you ask this question, is it true that I can't do it? And the fact is that if hundreds of thousands of millions of other people could ski or skydive or sell or invest in real estate or build businesses, you can do it as well. Don't ever sell yourself short and conclude that you're helpless. Now the other problem that people have has to do with Sammy the rat. And Sammy the rat, they took Sammy the rat and they put him into a cage. And on the outside of this cage there were four tunnels. And they waited until Sammy was hungry

and then they put some cheese, a little bit of cheese, at the mouth of the fourth tunnel. Well, when they put Sammy, his little Sammy, into the cage, here he is, put him into the cage, Here he is. Put him into the cage. Sammy's hungry. Steps around. There's cheese around here somewhere. He explores around, explores around, explores around,

and finds the cheese. Aha! Eats the cheese and is happy. Take him out of the cage. Keep him for 24 hours. He's hungry again. Put him back in the cage, and the cheese is there. And Sammy explores, but not as much, and he eventually gets to the cheese. The next day, he puts Sammy in the cage, and the cheese is there. And Sammy explores, but not as much, and he eventually gets to the cheese.

The next day he puts Sammy in the cage. Sammy goes straight to the cheese and eats it and is happy. Then the researchers take the cheese and they move it a little bit further back in the tunnel. Well, Sammy's put it in the cage the fourth day. He goes running up to the tunnel. There's no cheese. He looks up at the researchers and says, where's put into the cage the fourth day. He goes running up to the tunnel. There's no cheese. He looks up at the researcher. He says, where's my cheese?

Don't know. So he sniffs around. Sammy goes to the second tunnel and the third tunnel and the first tunnel, whatever. And then finally he comes back and he begins to explore. He smells an odor of cheese and and he works his way back, and he finds the cheese, comes out, and he's happy again. So then the next day, they move it further back, and eventually all the way to the back of the tunnel.

Now, Sammy comes into the cage, beep, beep, goes straight across, goes into the tunnel, all the way to the back, gets the cheese, comes out, and he's happy. Then they take the cheese, and they move move it and they put it in the back of the second tunnel. Sammy comes into the cage the following day, goes straight to the tunnel, all the way back, comes all the way back, and Sammy is not a happy camper. Where the you-know-what is my cheese? They say, we don't know. Sammy turns around, goes back into the cage, comes in the tunnel, comes back out again. Goes around, sniff, sniff,. Sammy turns around, goes back into the cage, goes in the tunnel, comes back out again. Hmm.

Goes around, sniff, sniff, sniff, comes back, goes back, and I can't find the cheese. Sammy's just a little bit angry. So finally, Sammy begins to do some exploring. And he explores, and he goes into this cage, and eventually all the way back, and eventually all the way back,

and he finds the cheese at the back of the second tunnel. And he eats the cheese. Now, here is the moral of the story. Is that Sammy is a rat. A rat has a brain the size of a pea, or even smaller. Sammy the rat with a brain the size of a pea will eventually figure out that there is no cheese at the back of the fourth tunnel, and will begin exploring until he finds it at the back of the second tunnel. But a human being will keep on going down the fourth tunnel forever. Now this is an example of the comfort zone. This is an example of the comfort

zone. Now these are the twin threats to our success is, first of all, the learned helplessness. We believe we can't. Our comfort zone, we get into a comfort zone and we practice what Newton called inertia. You know the law of inertia, which is one of the laws of physics? The law of inertia says that a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. But it says that something in motion will just keep on going. It'll just keep on going the same way forever. And because of learned helplessness in the comfort zone, we keep going at a low level of performance indefinitely. And then we use the same reasons

for negative emotions. We justify it. And we explain the reason I can't is because of this. It's my upbringing. It's my childhood. It's my education. It's my boss. It's my bills. It's my family. And we think of all the reasons why it's not possible for us. And what we do is we fall in love with our excuses. We develop a disease called excusitis, which is an inflammation of the excuse-making gland, which is invariably fatal to success. So in order for us to break out of learned helplessness, we have to realize that anything that many other people can do, I can do as well. I may not be able to do as quickly as them, but I can do it as well. We need to break out of the comfort zone by setting bigger goals. And it has to be a goal that's worthy of you. So it's got to be something big and exciting.

Now, you don't have to worry how you're going to achieve the goal, because if you can be clear about the goal, all the mental laws begin to work for you, including the final mental law, which it's called the law of superconscious activity. Now, the law of superconscious activity is really one of the greatest laws of all. And it says this, because of the superconscious mind, which is a mind that puts you in tune with the entire universe, everything past, present, and future, every idea and possibility, and comes to you through intuition and through coincidences, any thought, plan, goal, or idea held continuously in the conscious mind must be brought into reality by the superconscious. Any thought, plan, goal, or idea held continuously, held continuously, you become what you think about most of the time, must be brought into reality by the superconscious mind.

Now, remember we talked about before the law of cause and effect. Well, the law of cause and effect is very simply, what is the cause is your belief, your absolute clarity about the goal that you want. What is the effect is the goal comes into your life. The law of belief says, what do you believe in? You believe that you must ultimately achieve this goal unswervingly, and that belief creates your reality

because you begin to see the whole world differently. The law of expectations, you confidently expect that everything that happens is part of a plan to help bring you towards your goal. The law of attraction, what do you attract? You attract people, ideas, and circumstances into your life to help you to achieve your most important goal. The law of subconscious, the law of correspondence, your outer world corresponds to your inner world of goal setting. The law of subconscious activity, you continually program your subconscious mind with a clear picture of your goal, and your subconscious mind arranges all your words and actions so that they fit a pattern consistent with achieving that goal. And the law of habit is you think about your goal repeatedly over and over again until it becomes a

habit to wake up in the morning and think all day about your goal. And so all you need to do to raise your self-confidence, your self-esteem, and your level of attainment high is to have an absolutely crystal clear goal and work on it every single day. Psychologists recently have concluded what I started teaching 25 years ago, that as you feel yourself moving towards something that is important to you, your self-esteem and self-confidence go up. You feel happy. You feel powerful. You feel strong. You feel a surge of energy and elation. You're more creative. All of your best qualities emerge. How do you blot out all the negatives in your life? You think about your goal. Whenever you think of something that makes you unhappy or negative, you swing your thoughts off them like

a searchlight and you think about your goal and you talk about your goal and you work on your goal because your mind can only hold one thought at a time. And if you're totally determined to achieve a single goal and you think about it and work on it every day, eventually all the other things will fall away. There's a wonderful line we use that says, when you turn toward the sunshine, the shadows fall behind you. And when you start to think about your goal, the shadows fall behind you and all the little negatives begin to disappear. And if you start to think about things that make you mad, you say, wait a minute, I'm responsible and I like myself. I can do it. I can do anything I put my mind to. You just talk to yourself. You become your own cheerleader. Thanks for listening. Kindly support the

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