Through the choices and decisions you make, you can determine what your environment will be. Let’s look now at what we can do, to make your future environment pay off in both satisfaction and prosperity. The first step is to recondition yourself for success. The number one obstacle on the road to high level success is the feeling that major accomplishments are beyond reach. This attitude stems from many, many suppressive forces that direct our thinking toward mediocre levels.
To understand these suppressive forces, let’s go back to the time we where children. As children all of us set high goals, at a very young age most of us wanted to conquer the unknown, be leaders, jet pilots, doctors, presidents, and great artists. To do exciting and stimulating things, become famous, and wealthy, in short.. to be successful. And in our blessed ignorance, we saw our way out clear to accomplishing these goals. But what happened? Long before we reached the age when we can begin to work toward our great objectives, a multitude of suppressive influences went to work. From all sides, we heard “It’s foolish to be a dreamer” and that “Our ideas are impractical, naïve, or foolish, we had to get our feet on the ground and our head out of the clouds”. We heard that to get ahead we had to have money to begin with, or that we had to have important friends, or just plain luck.
As a result of being bombarded with this, “You can’t get ahead so don’t bother to try”, PROPAGANDA. Most people you know can be classified into 3 groups. The 1st group are the people who surrendered completely, the majority of people who are convinced, deep down inside that they haven’t got what it takes, that real success, real accomplishments, is for others who are lucky, or fortunate in some special respect. Now you can spot these people because they go to great lengths to rationalize their status and explain how happy they really are.
The 2nd basic group are those who surrender partially. Now this is a much smaller group than the first one. This group enters adult life with a lot of hope for success, the people prepare themselves, they work hard, they plan. But after a decade or so, resistance begins to build up. Competition for top level jobs look pretty rugged, and this group decides greater success, just isn’t worth the effort. They rationalize “We’re earning more than the average, We live better than the average, why knock ourselves out.”
The 3rd group is quite small, perhaps 2 or 3 percent of the population. This group never surrendered their dreams. They never did and they still don’t let pessimism dictate their limitations. They don’t believe in surrendering to suppressive forces. Instead these people live and breathe success. This group of people is the happiest, because it accomplishes the most. These people become top salesmen, top executives, top leaders, top artists in their respective fields. These people find life stimulating, rewarding, worthwhile. These people look forward to each new day, each new accomplishment, each new challenge, each new encounter with other people, as adventures to be lived fully.
Now let’s be honest, all of us would like to be in that third group. The one that finds continually greater success. But to get into and to stay in that group, we have to fight off the suppressive influence of our environment. To understand how people on the first two groups will unwittingly try to hold you back.
Try this experiment: Tell several of your, average friends or your fellow workers with the greatest sincerity that someday you intend to be Vice-President of your company. What will happen? Your friends will probably think your joking, and if they do believe you mean it, they’ll say something like, “You poor sap, you got a lot to learn”. But assume that you repeat that same statement with equal sincerity to the President of the company. How will he or she react? One thing is certain the President of your company will not laugh. He might look at you intently and say to himself “Does this person really mean this?” But he won’t laugh, because BIG people do not laugh at BIG ideas.
By the same token, when you tell somebody that owns a Million-dollar home, you plan to own your own Million-dollar home one day, that person won’t laugh either. And they won’t think you’re crazy, that person knows it’s perfectly possible because that person has already done it. But if you tell your neighbors that they’re liable to tell you that it’s impossible. Remember people who tell you something can’t be done, almost always are unsuccessful people. Strictly mediocre in terms of accomplishment, the opinions of these people are poison. Develop a defense against people who want to convince you, that you can’t do something. Accept negative advice only as a challenge to prove that you can do it. Be extra, extra conscious about this. Don’t let negative thinking people destroy your plan, to think yourself to success.
I call these people Negators, Negators are everywhere and they seem to take delight in sabotaging the positive progress of others. Some of them do it out of jealousy. They’re not moving ahead themselves, so they want to see you stumble too. Others may be sincere and well meaning, but they’ve been brainwashed. They’ve surrendered, they’re convinced that success is impossible for them, and that people who strive for success are risking everything and are liable to end up with nothing. So be careful, study Negators. Don’t let them destroy your plans for success.
*Excerpts from the book “The Magic of Thinking Big” – David Schwartz Ph.D.
Check out the rest of the book it clears the path, this continues the earlier post on who to believe sometimes.
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