ix if I was given only five minutes to speak to you and I could convey only one thought that would help
you to be more successful, I would tell you "Write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans
every single day."
This advice, if you followed it, would be of more help to you than anything else you could ever learn.
Many university graduates have told me that this single concept has been more valuable to them than four years of study. This
idea has changed my life and the lives of millions of other people. It will change yours as well.
p.7 Success is goals, and all else is commentary. All successful people are intensely goal oriented.
They know what they want and they are focused single-mindedly on achieving it, every single day.
You ability to set goals is the master skill of success. Goals unlock your positive mind and release
ideas and energy for goal attainment. Without goals, you simply drift and flow on the currents of life. With
goals, you fly like an arrow, straight and true to your target.
p.16 Setting goals, working towards them day by day, and ultimately achieving them is the key to
happiness in life. Goal setting is so powerful that the very act of thinking about your goals makes you
happy, even before you have taken the first step toward achieving them.
To unlock and unleash your full potential, you should make a habit of daily goal setting and achieving
for the rest of your life. You should develop a laser-like focus so that you are always thinking and talking about
what you want rather than what you don't want.. You must resolve, from this moment on, to be a goal-seeking organism,
like a guided missile or a homing pigeon, moving unerringly toward the goals that are important to you.
p.41 Your values determine your beliefs... Your beliefs, in turn, determine the third ring of your
personality, your expectations... The fourth level of your personality, determined by your expectations, is your
attitude... The fifth ring, or level of life, is your actions.
p.104, 105 If You Measure It, You Can Manage It
In each area of your life, analyze your activities carefully and select a specific number that, more than
anything else, determines your level of success in that area. Then focus all of your attention, all day long, on that specific
number. The very act of focused attention will cause you to perform better in that area, both consciously and unconsciously...
You have heard the saying, "What gets measured gets done." There is another saying: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage
it." Your ability to set specific measures on your goals, keep an accurate record and track your performance each
day, will assure that you achieve your goals exactly when you have decided to - or even before.
p.108 Successful people think about solutions most of the time... Solution-oriented people are constantly
looking for ways to get over, around, and past the obstacles that stand in their way... Solution-oriented people,
on the other hand, simply ask the question, How can we solve this? and then take action to deal with the problem.
Between you and anything you want to accomplish you will always find problems or obstacles of some
kind. This is why success is sometimes defined as the ability to solve problems.
p.109-110 Theory of Constraints
One of the most important breakthroughs in thinking in the last few decades was described by Eliyahu Goldratt
in his book The Goal as "the theory of constraints." This theory says that between you and anything you want
to accomplish there is a constraint, or limiting factor, that determines how fast you get to where you want to go...
In accomplishing any major goal, there is always a constraint or bottleneck you must get through as well.
Your job is to identify it accurately and then focus all of your energies on alleviating that key constraint. Your
ability to remove this bottleneck or deal with this limiting factor can help you move ahead faster than perhaps any other
step you can take.
p.149 Your ability to set goals and make plans for their accomplishment is the "master skill" of
success. No other skill will help you more in fulfilling your potential in achieving everything that you are able
to accomplish.
p.189 Your ability to visualize is perhaps the most powerful faculty that you possess.
All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. You are where you are and what you
are today largely because of the mental pictures that you hold in your conscious mind at the present time. As you
change your mental pictures on the inside, your world on the outside will begin to change to correspond
to those pictures.
p.190 Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than facts." Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Imagination
rules the world." Napoleon Hill said, "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
p.225 Here is the most important rule of flexibility: "Be clear about your goal but be flexible
about the process of achieving it."
p.229 Fully 95 percent of children tested between the ages of three and five rated as highly creative.
Of the same children tested again as teenagers, only about 5 percent are rated highly creative. What happened to
them in the interim? ...your creativity is like a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. Just like a muscle,
if you do not exercise your creativity and stretch it regularly, it becomes weak and ineffective. Your ability
to generate ideas must be constantly utilized to be kept in top condition.
p.230 There is no problem you cannot solve, no obstacle you cannot overcome, and no goal
that you cannot achieve by tapping into your creative mind exactly as it is today. You have far more
intelligence and mental potential right now than you could ever use, even if you lived one hundred years.
p.231-233 The most powerful technique for improving your intelligence and increasing your creativity is
what I call "mindstorming." The way it works is simple. The results that you get will be so amazing as to be life changing.
You begin the mindstorming process by first getting a clean sheet of paper. At the top of
the page you write your goal or problem in the form of a question. The simpler and more specific the question, the
better will be the quality of the answers that you generate in response to it... Each of your answers should be written
using the "Three P Formula." It should be personal, positive, and in the present tense... Once you have
written your question at the top of the page, you then discipline yourself to generate at least twenty answers to
that question... it is essential in this exercise that you set a goal for a minimum of twenty.
Your first three to five answers will be easy... Your next five answers will be more difficult...
Your last ten answers will be the most difficult of all... no matter how long it takes, especially the first few
times you practice this exercise, you must discipline yourself to keep writing until you have at least twenty answers...
Once you have at least twenty answers, go back over your list and review your answers. Then select at least one action
that you can take immediately to begin moving yourself more rapidly toward your goal or toward solving the problem...
Whatever answer you choose, put it into action immediately. Do something. Do anything. The
faster you take action on this exercise, the greater and more conscious will be the flow of ideas as you go through the day.
p.236-237 Just as there is a process for solving mathematical problems, there is a process for solving business
and life problems, and you can learn it and use it for the rest of your career. It requires that you approach the business
of problem solving systematically and in an organized fashion.
Step one: Define the problem clearly ...
Step two: Ask, What are all the possible causes of this problem? ...
Step three: Ask, What are all the possible solutions? ...
Step four: Ask, What must this solution accomplish? ...
Step five: Assign specific responsibility or take responsibility yourself for implementing the solution.
