LIVING A GREAT LIFE PART M

 CHANGE YOUR THINKING CHANGE YOUR LIFE

By Brian Tracy

CHAPTER 12: Living a Great Life

  Part M

Persist Longer

The final courage you need is the courage to persist longer than anyone else. Persistence is the quality that will ultimately guarantee your success. Your willingness to persist in the face of every adversity can be your greatest asset. It can be the one factor that guarantees your success. If you refuse to quit, you must ultimately succeed. Just as in baseball, you won’t ultimately hit a home run unless you keep on swinging. In 30 years of studying successful people, I have discovered one fact over and over. No one was ever defeated until they accepted defeat as a reality. No one can ever defeat you but yourself.

When you discipline yourself to do what you should do, whether you feel like it or not, and you use this inner strength to build high levels of courage and persistence within yourself, you will become an incredibly powerful person. You will soon feel that there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. You will eventually develop yourself to the point where you feel completely unstoppable.

YOU ARE ULTIMATELY SELF-MADE

Someone once said, “I’m a self-made man, but if I had to do it over, I’d bring in a little help.” You and I are all self-made. We all have a lot of areas in which we could improve. We all need to set higher standards for ourselves. We all need to work continually on the development of our characters. We all need to strive to become better people. We can never allow ourselves to be complacent at any level of accomplishment. We have to keep raising the bar on ourselves.

One of the marks of superior people is that they can manage themselves. If they work for a company, they might do this by imagining their boss sitting next to them, observing them and filling out their annual performance appraisal every minute of every day. Or, by seeing themselves as role models, they might set far higher standards for themselves than anyone else could set for them.

Only the top 2 percent of people in our society can supervise and manage themselves. They can conduct themselves throughout the day as though everyone is watching, even though no one is watching.

THE REAL PAYOFF

When you set high standards for yourself, your self-esteem and self-respect increase. When you decide that you are going to live consistently with your highest values and your deepest convictions, you feel wonderful about yourself. When you become completely honest, you stop compromising yourself in your relationships with others. You speak sincerely to everyone with whom you live and work. You practice absolute truthfulness with yourself and others.

The more honest you are with yourself, the greater courage and self-confidence you will have. You will become more positive and enthusiastic about yourself. You will develop a tremendous feeling of inner power and personal strength. The more you live consistently with the very highest values you know, the finer your character will become. Eventually, you will reach the point where you are absolutely unstoppable.

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