The Power of Self-Confidence: Become Unstoppable, Irresistible, and Unafraid in Every Area of Your Life
By Brian Tracy
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About this ebook
Why are some people more successful than others? Self-confidence!
What one great goal would you set if you knew you could not fail? What wonderful things would you want to do with your life if you were guaranteed success in anything you attempted?
Your level of self-confidence determines the size of the goals you set, the energy and determination that you focus on achieving them, and the amount of persistence you apply to overcoming every obstacle. In this powerful, practical book based on work with more than 5 million executives, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and ambitious people in more than sixty countries, you learn how to develop unshakable self-confidence in every area of your life.
The Power of Self-Confidence explains how to increase your "mental fitness" by thinking like top performers in every field. Little by little, you build up and maintain ever-higher levels of self-confidence in everything you do. Self-confidence allows you to move out of your comfort zone and take risks without any guarantees. With step-by-step guidance, author Brian Tracy will help you build the foundations of lifelong self-confidence. You discover how to determine what you really want, and unleash your personal powers to accomplish it.
You'll learn how to:
- Clarify and live consistently with your values to become the very best person you could possibly be
- Set clear goals and make written plans to accomplish them
- Commit yourself to mastery in your chosen field and to lifelong personal improvement
- Program your subconscious mind to respond in a positive and constructive way to every problem or difficulty
- Minimize your weaknesses and maximize your strengths for higher achievement
- Develop high levels of courage and incredible persistence
Become unstoppable, irresistible, and unafraid in every area of your life through the power of unshakable self-confidence. Become a person of action, overcome any obstacle, and scale any height. With your newfound unshakable self-confidence, you will accomplish every goal you can set for yourself.
Brian Tracy
BRIAN TRACY is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. His goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. Brian 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 70 other countries worldwide.
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Reviews for The Power of Self-Confidence
78 ratings6 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title helpful, simple, and inspiring. It is well written and explained, with interesting examples. While some readers found it confusing and frustrating due to skipped pages, overall it is a good read that provides valuable insights on building confidence. The book is also praised for its accessibility and simplicity, making it enjoyable for readers of all levels of English proficiency.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5très bon livre, le début est juste parfait car on découvre les loi naturelles en plus de quelques préconisations pratiques..en gros bonne entrée en matière.. très agréable à lire avec un anglais simple et accessible a tous
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It's simple and to the point.
Surely worth reading again. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Helpfull book, will read over again, this time with notebook!
4 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good reading. Very inspiring and reference material in one's jounery to building confidence.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It is very well written and explained every part of self-confidence with interesting examples.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5this book skips pages get lost easy
piss me off
Book preview
The Power of Self-Confidence - Brian Tracy
INTRODUCTION
Entering the No Fear Zone
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved excepted by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
—Bruce Barton
Welcome to the no fear zone. In the pages ahead, you will learn how to develop confidence, courage, and unshakable determination in every area of your life. You will learn to approach the biggest challenges and opportunities of your life completely unafraid, convinced of your ability to accomplish anything you put your mind to.
The good news is that you have extraordinary potential for success, achievement, and prosperity, with more talent and natural ability than you could use in a hundred lifetimes. The only thing standing between you and the incredible life that is possible for you is fear—of all kinds—and by the time you finish this book, your fears will be gone forever.
For more than 25 years, I’ve studied successful men and women, looking for the characteristics and qualities they have in common that have enabled them to achieve so much more than the average person. I’ve read thousands of books, articles, and research studies on success, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the foundation quality of success in every walk of life is self-confidence.
Every man or woman who has ever accomplished anything out of the ordinary has turned out to have greater self-confidence than the ordinary person. When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know that you can accomplish almost anything you really want, your future will be unlimited.
The Great Question
A woman who had listened to one of my programs wrote to me recently and told me that one line in that program had changed her whole outlook on life. It was simply a question: What one great thing would you dare to dream, if you knew you could not fail?
When she began asking herself that question, over and over, her entire view of what was truly possible for her expanded dramatically. She saw clearly what she really wanted to be, have, and do, and she simultaneously realized that it was only fear, and doubt in her own abilities that was holding her back.
What would you do differently if you were absolutely guaranteed of success in any undertaking? What if some great force could endow you with the power to achieve any goal that you could set for yourself? To put it another way, what if you were completely unafraid of anyone or anything and you felt completely free to act, in any area, in your own best interests? The fact is that, if you developed the quality of unshakable self-confidence, your whole world would be different.
Unlimited Self-Confidence
With greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, you would set bigger goals, make bigger plans, and commit yourself to achieving objectives that today you only dream about. You would take whatever steps were necessary to earn more money and enjoy a higher standard of living. You would set your sights on a bigger house, a better car, more beautiful clothes, and nicer vacations. You would want all kinds of things for your family and for those close to you. You would do what you really want to do and you’d refuse to conform to the wishes or opinions of anyone else. You would define your life in your own terms and live every day consistent with exactly what it is you want, and not the wishes of other people.
With greater self-confidence, you would be a different person in every part of your work life and career. You might decide to ask for a promotion, or a raise, or even change to another job or another company, or even another industry. You would move immediately to do whatever it took to get onto the fast-track in your career.
If you are in sales, you would call on more people, make better and more forceful presentations, ask for more orders, and close more business. If you are in management, you would organize and reorganize your human and material resources to create a work environment that suited you perfectly, rather than making endless compromises in an attempt to please a variety of different people.
With greater self-confidence, you would be bolder and more imaginative. You would be more creative and willing to experiment with new and different ideas and ways of doing things. You would be willing to consider unusual and risky alternatives and be willing to commit yourself wholeheartedly to projects that are today sitting only on the back burner of your mind.
More Powerful, Popular, and Persuasive
If you had unlimited self-confidence, you would be more powerful, popular, and persuasive with other people. You would be more cheerful, likable, and welcome wherever you went. You would speak up and speak out clearly in your interactions with others, and you would be admired, respected, and sought after by everyone who knew you. Recognition and responsibilities would flow to you because of people’s belief in your ability to do whatever it took to get the job done. Positions of prestige and status would open up for you and people would bring you opportunities and possibilities that you cannot now imagine.
Dealing with Difficulties
With greater self-confidence, you could deal more effectively with the inevitable problems and difficulties that arise in day-to-day life. You would think continually in terms of solutions, and how you could turn any situation to your best advantage. You would laugh at adversities that would dishearten most people and pluck success out of the jaws of failure. You would turn lemons into lemonade. You would feel invincible and unconquerable.
With higher levels of self-confidence, you would be far more effective in dealing with difficult people and situations. You would be a far better negotiator and be able to ask for, and get, better prices, terms, and conditions in everything you bought and sold.
Feel Terrific about Yourself
With greater self-confidence, with an unshakable belief in yourself, nothing would be impossible for you. More than anything else, you would feel terrific about yourself. You would feel truly happy about every part of your life, knowing deep down inside that you have the ability to take whatever steps and make whatever changes are necessary to assure that your life is exactly the way you want it.
You would experience a tremendous sense of control, which is the fundamental requirement for happiness, well-being, and maximum performance. You would feel like the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.
With unlimited self-confidence, you would feel completely self-determined and in charge of your life. You would experience a feeling of strength and power and purpose, and you would have a positive mental attitude toward yourself, everyone in your life, and everything you do. With unshakable self-confidence, you would unquestionably be an exceptional human being.
You Can Develop Self-Confidence
Unfortunately, however, this is not all that easy. Most people have limited self-confidence and many people have no self-confidence at all. Human beings tend to be plagued with doubt about their own abilities and fears about every imaginable thing, especially the unknown. The psychologist Abraham Maslow said the story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.
The great majority of people tend to compare themselves unfavorably with others. They dwell on their own weaknesses and limitations, and they eventually settle for far less than what they are really capable of. Instead of enjoying high levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride, the average person just gets by from day to day.
If self-confidence, and the self-esteem that goes with it, is so desirable, why is it that so few people have enough self-confidence to live the lives that are possible for them? There are a thousand reasons, but perhaps the most wonderful discovery about self-confidence is that it is a mental quality that can be learned with practice. Because it is learnable, self-confidence can be developed and built up systematically and progressively over time by following the instructions in this book.
The good news is that everyone has a certain amount of self-confidence, more in some areas and less in others, and by working from that base, it is possible for you to build yourself up to the point at which you are completely confident in any area that is important to you.
The Great Law
Perhaps the most important of all the laws that govern our lives was put forth by Aristotle in about 350 b.c. He called it the Principle of Causality,
and proclaimed for the first time that we live in a universe governed by order, and that there is a reason for everything that happens.
We call it the law of cause and effect, and it is often referred to as the iron law
of human destiny. The law of cause and effect can imprison us in a cell of our own making, or it can liberate us by giving us complete freedom, depending on how we use it. The law itself, like the law of gravity, is neutral.
This law of cause and effect, which is both a physical and a mental law, says that for every effect in our lives, there is a specific cause, or causes. If there is an effect in our life that we want more of, like more money or greater success, we can trace it back to the cause, and by repeating the cause, we can enjoy more of the effects. If we are in sales or business and we have successes, we can trace those successes back to the specific things that we did to achieve them; by repeating those causes, we can enjoy the same effects.
This law also says that if there is an effect in our lives that we don’t want, whether it be overweight, insufficient funds, problems with people, or negative business conditions, we can trace that effect back to the causes, and by removing or changing the causes, we can achieve different effects or results.
This law of cause and effect is so simple and obvious that no one seriously questions it. We live in a world, and in a universe, governed by law, not by chance. Everything happens for a reason. Neither success nor failure is an accident. They have specific causes, and when we repeat the causes, we get the same effects, no matter who we are. This is just the way the world works.
The Roots of Low Self-Confidence
The world is full of people who are not happy with their results, and yet they continue to do the same things, think the same thoughts, say the same things, and take the same actions, every day, and they are amazed that they continue to get the same negative effects. Einstein’s definition of insanity was, continuing to do the same things and expecting to get different results.
However, this is simply not possible.
The law of cause and effect applies with equal validity to our levels of self-confidence. All around us, and throughout human history, there are and have been men and women with exceptionally high levels of self-confidence who have gone on to achieve extraordinary things.
In studying the lives and stories of these people, we find that some of them started out with high levels of self-confidence that they learned from their parents in early childhood. However, most of them started off the same way we all start off, with deep-down feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Because of destructive criticism, lack of love, and other mistakes that parents make with us in early childhood, we grow up with diminished feelings of self-esteem, low self-confidence, and a feeling that, I’m not good enough,
in comparison with others.
With low self-confidence, many people today work extremely hard on the outside to achieve success. However, when they do, deep down inside they feel like imposters.
This so-called fear of success
is really a feeling of unworthiness that we can’t seem to get rid of no matter how much we achieve. Many successful men and women are repeating the line to the Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is?
when looking around them at their homes and cars.
You Want to Be Happy
What people want more than anything else is just to feel really good about themselves. We want to be happy and positive and have a sense of well-being. Above all, what we really want is peace of mind, and you can only enjoy peace of mind when you feel confident in your ability to deal effectively with the requirements of life, with your family, your friends, your work, your customers, your social activities, and all the other things that you are involved in.
The law of cause and effect tells us that if we want to enjoy the effect of high self-confidence, we need only engage in the causes of high self-confidence. If we can find out what it is that other highly self-confident men and women think and say and do, and then do the same things, we will eventually get the same results. We will eventually feel the same way. We will eventually become unstoppable.
Mental Marathon Training
It’s often hard for people to believe that mental qualities can be developed just as physical qualities can be developed. If this were a program on how to run a physical marathon, and I was offering to train you, day by day, over the next six months, to run a marathon, you would come to realize that even a nonrunner can go from being physically unfit to running a marathon of 26.4 miles in six months of disciplined training. Today, there are even men and women in their 50s and 60s who are running marathons with this kind of training.
What this book will do for you is to put you through a mental marathon.
This marathon will not be as arduous or painful physically as a physical marathon, but it will still require a tremendous amount of work. The amount of work that you put in will exactly determine the results that you get out.
If you follow these proven and practical principles, drawn from the lives and behaviors of the most successful men and women alive today, and all of which are scientifically validated by extensive research and experience, you can develop the self-confidence that you desire so that you can achieve anything you really want. Let’s begin.
CHAPTER 1
The Foundation of Self-Confidence
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
—William Shakespeare
Your thoughts and feelings about yourself, and what you can or cannot do, are the sum total result of a lifetime of experience and conditioning, and usually have little relationship to what