For the average person, life is like a bumper car at the carnival, continually being knocked in different directions, with very little control. This book challenges you to think that your world is largely created by the thoughts you think, and the things that you do as a result of your thinking. Therefore when you improve your thinking, you improve your actions and your results. When you change your thinking, you change your life.
Cites a study that the top 10 percent, the happiest and most successful people in group, thought about two things most of the time: what they wanted and how to get it.
They thought about their goals and the actions they could take to achieve them. The more that successful people thought about what they wanted and how to get it, the more ideas and insights came to them. These ideas motivated them to take even more actions, which moved them faster and faster toward their goals. When they achieved their goals, they felt happier, more motivated, and eager to set even bigger and more challenging goals. Really into an upward spiral of success and achievement.
As one of the co-author’s is a psychologist by background it is not surprising that the effect of your parenting and upbringing is highlighted.
The “you can’t do it”, which maybe appropriate at the time to to stop a child hurting themselves could lead to a fear of failure. Conditional love really leads to a fear of rejection. Being aware of this can help you as you become what you think about most of the time, you become what you say to yourself most of the time as well. When a person has been raised with destructive criticism and lack of love, they can develop deep feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. These feelings may manifest as an over-concern about the actions, reactions, and treatment that is experienced from other people.
The majority of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself throughout the day. People with good self-esteem become popular wherever they go as they are on their upward spiral of success.
4 factors That Create Negative Emotions
- Negative emotions cannot exist unless you can explain to yourself and others why you are entitled to feel how you do about this person or situation. When you are discussing the negative situation, you become preoccupied with justifying your negativity on a variety of grounds.
- Taking things personally. You see what happens as a personal attack
- Hypersensitivity to the thoughts, opinions, or attitudes of others toward you.
- Judgmentalism, the tendency of people to judge others in a negative way. When you judge others unfavourably, you invariably find them guilty of something. This guilt becomes the justification for your anger and resentment toward them.
Your great goal in life must be the elimination of negative emotions, of all kinds. In the absence of negative emotions, only positive emotions will fill your mind. The two most powerful positive emotion builders are the phrases “I like myself!” and “I am responsible!” Suggests to say these repeatedly.
Three Mental Laws
- The law of emotion says that everything you do is motivated by an emotion of one kind or another, positive or negative. You can hold only one thought in your conscious mind at a time, positive or negative, and you are always free to choose.
- The law of habit says that whatever you do repeatedly eventually becomes a new habit. The rule is that good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits, especially emotional reactions, are easy to form but hard to live with. The majority of what you do, think, say, or feel is determined by habit, either good or bad.
- The law of substitution says that you can substitute a positive thought for a negative thought. You can deliberately decide to think a thought that makes you positive or happy as a substitute for any thought that makes you unhappy.
Claims they have asked people with near death experiences who are then asked two questions:
What have you learned?
How have you increased your capacity to love?
A tip to success is to eliminate the phrase “if only” from your vocabulary. Never say those words again. Accept that whatever happened happened. Perhaps in retrospect it was unfortunate, but in any case, it is over and done with.
When giving feedback particularly if negative do this in private.
In terms of communication listen more, this builds trust. Lean forward attentively listen, pause before replying and think about what they said by asking questions to confirm you understand. Paraphrase what they have said before responding.
There central role of self esteem in success, happiness, and good relationships. The core driver of self-esteem is self-efficacy. This is defined as how effective you feel you are at doing what you are doing, and how competent you feel to achieve your goals. people who have set and achieved one or more big goals are filled with confidence and enthusiasm. The very thought of a new challenge raises their self-esteem, increases their courage and confidence, and propels them forward toward the achievement of even bigger goals in the future.
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