Million Dollar Habits: Proven Power Practices to Double and Triple Your Income by Brian Tracy, Review and Summary
About The Book:
Million Dollar Habits: Proven Power Practices to Double and Triple Your Income, work with many thousands of men and women, in every industry, worldwide, who have gone from rags to riches in one generation. In Million Dollar Habits, Tracy identifies the critical habits and behaviors that virtually guarantee greater success and happiness for anyone, anywhere, in any area of endeavor.
Tracy shows the reader how to:
- Set and achieve goals faster and easier than ever thought possible
- Organize their life and manage their time effectively for maximum productivity and performance
- Increase income, reduce expenses, and achieve financial independence
- Tap into and unleash more potential for successful living
- Eliminate fears, doubts, and negative emotions that can hold them back
- Unlock the powers of their subconscious and superconscious minds for goal attainment
- Increase self-confidence and become absolutely unstoppable
Million Dollar Habits provides a proven, practical roadmap to follow to achieve every goal that a person can imagine for himself, and while doing so become an extraordinary human being. (The Second Edition Review and what is the difference)
About the Author:
Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. Brian’s goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. Brian Tracy has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 5,000,000 people in 5,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada, and 55 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year.
Summary: (Amazon)
The Power of Habit
Perhaps the most important discovery in the fields of psychology and success is that fully 95% of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit. Beginning in childhood, you have developed a series of conditioned responses that lead you to react automatically and unthinkingly in almost every situation.
To put it simply, successful people have “success habits” and unsuccessful people do not. Successful, happy, healthy, prosperous men and women easily, automatically, and consistently do and say the right things in the right way at the right time. As a result, they accomplish ten and twenty times as much as average people who have not yet learned these habits and practiced these behaviors.
The Definition of Success
Often people ask me to define the word “success.” My favorite definition is this: “Success is the ability to live your life the way you want to live it, doing what you most enjoy, surrounded by people who you admire and respect.” In a larger sense, success is the ability to achieve your dreams, desires, hopes, wishes, and goals in each of the important areas of your life.
Although each of us is unique and different from all other human beings who have ever lived, we all have four goals or desires in common. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, you can conduct a quick evaluation of your life by giving yourself a grade in each of these four areas.
Do What You Love
The third goal that we all have in common is to do work that we enjoy, to do it well, and to be well paid for it. You want to be able to get and keep the job you want, to get paid more and promoted faster. You want to earn the very most that is possible for you at each stage of your career, whatever you do. In this book, you will learn how to develop the habits of the most successful and highest-paid people in every field.
All Habits Are Learned
The good news about habits is that all habits are learned, as the result of practice and repetition. You can learn any habit that you consider either necessary or desirable. By using your willpower and discipline, you can shape your personality and character in almost any way you desire. You can write the script of your own life, and if you are not happy with the current script, you can rip it up and write it again.
Just as your good habits are responsible for most of your success and happiness today, your bad habits are responsible for most of your problems and frustrations. But since bad habits are learned as well, they can be unlearned and replaced with good habits by the same process of practice and repetition.
George Washington, the first President of the United States and the General in command of the Revolutionary Army, is rightly called “The Father of His Country.” He was admired, if not worshiped, for the quality of his character, his graciousness of manner, and his correctness of behavior.
The First Millionaire
During the same period, Benjamin Franklin, who began as a printer’s apprentice and went on to become the first self-made millionaire in the American colonies, adapted a similar process of personal development.
As a young man, Benjamin Franklin felt that he was a little rough, ill-mannered and argumentative. He recognized that his attitudes and behaviors were creating animosity toward him from his associates and coworkers. He resolved to change by rewriting the script of his own personality.
He began by making up a list of 12 virtues that he felt the ideal person would possess. He then concentrated on the development of one virtue each week. All week long, as he went about his daily affairs, he would remind himself to practice that virtue, whether it was temperance, tolerance, or tranquility, on every occasion that it was called for.
Over time, as he developed these virtues and made these habits a part of his character, he would practice one virtue for a period of two weeks, then three weeks, then one virtue per month. Over time, he became one of the most popular personalities and statesmen of the age. He became enormously influential, both in Paris as an Ambassador from the United States during the Revolutionary War, and during the Constitutional Convention when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the United States were debated, negotiated, and agreed upon. By working on himself to develop the habits of an excellent person, he made himself into a person capable of shaping the course of history.
The Key To Success
Then one day I began asking that question, “Why is it that some people are more successful than others?” Especially, “Why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others?”
With that one question, I did something that changed my life and began the formation of a habit that had a profound effect on my future. I went and asked the most successful salesman in my company what he was doing differently from me. And he told me. And I did what he told me to do. And my sales went up.
In the Bible, it says, “Ask and ye shall receive.” I soon developed the habit of asking everyone, and in every way possible, for the answers that I needed to move ahead more rapidly. I began to read books on selling and put into action what I had learned. I listened to audio programs while I walked and eventually, as I drove around. I attended every sales seminar I could find. I continually asked other successful salespeople for advice. And I developed the habit of immediately taking action on any advice or a good idea that I received or learned.
As a result, and not surprisingly, my sales went up and up, and eventually, I surpassed everyone in my company. Soon they made me a sales manager and asked me to teach other people what I was doing that enabled me to be so successful. Soon I was recruiting people with newspaper ads, teaching them the sales methods and techniques that I had learned, and sending them out to call on prospects and customers. In no time at all, they were making sales and moving upward and onward in their own lives. Many of those early salespeople are millionaires today.
The Seven-Step Formula for Goal Setting
There are many formulas and recipes for goal setting. As a rule, “Any plan is better than no plan at all.” Here is one of the best and most effective goal setting plans or formulas you will ever learn:
Step One: Decide exactly what you want in a specific area and write it down clearly, in detail. Make it measurable and specific.
Step Two: Set a deadline for the achievement of the goal. If it is a large goal, break it down into smaller parts and set sub-deadlines.
Step Three: Make a list of everything that you will have to do to achieve this goal. As you think of new items, add them to your list until it is complete.
Step Four: Organize your list of action steps into a plan. A plan is organized on the basis of two elements, priority and sequence. In organizing my priorities, you determine the most important things that you can possibly do on your list to achieve your goal. The 80/20 Rule applies.
20% of the things that you do will account for 80% of your results. If you do not set clear priorities, you will “major in minors” and spend much of your time doing small and irrelevant tasks that do not help you to achieve the goal. In organizing by sequence, you determine what has to be done before something else can be done. There are always activities that are dependent upon other activities being completed in advance. What are they, and what is the logical order or sequence?
Step Five: Identify the obstacles or limitations that might hold you back from achieving your goal, both in the situation and within yourself. Ask yourself, “Why have I not achieved this goal already?”
identify the most important constraint or limitation that is holding you back and then focus on removing that obstacle. It could be a certain amount of money or a key resource. It could be an additional skill or habit that you need. It could be additional information you require. It could be the help or assistance of one or more people. Whatever it is, identify it clearly and go to work to eliminate it.
Step Six: Once you have determined your goal, developed your plan, and identified your major obstacle, immediately take action of some kind toward the achievement of your goal. Step out in faith. Do the first thing that comes to mind. But do something immediately to start the process of goal attainment moving forward.
Step Seven: Do something every day that moves you to toward your most important goal. Make a habit of getting up each morning, planning your day, and then doing something, anything, that moves you at least one step closer to what is most important to you. The habit of doing something every single day that moves you toward an important goal develops within you the power of momentum. Daily action deepens your belief that the goal is achievable, and activates the Law of Attraction. As a result, you begin moving faster and faster toward your goal, and your goal begins moving faster and faster toward you.
I have spoken to people all over the world, for many years, who have told me that the habit of taking action every day on one or more of their major goals has been life-transforming. They have told me that this single habit has been more responsible for their success than any other idea they ever learned. Try it for yourself and see.