Self Discipline the Neuroscience by Ray Clear (Audiobook)

this is released for the sake of education this is a brief key insight about all the concepts of the book because we provide free audio books key insights summaries and brief study notes on the concepts of the books so make sure to subscribe and become a part of our family without wasting any second let's dive into the ocean of words on behalf of cyber vision systems i would like to welcome you to one of the most beneficial and powerfully effective personal achievement programs you will ever experience the neuro psychology of self-discipline the master key to

success my name is richard gebhardt and i'm going to be your guide as we explore learn and use this fascinating and effective program for developing your power of self-discipline the iron will the inner strength and drive you need to achieve your life's goals and ambitions this program is the result of many years of thoughtful scientific inquiry and research in an attempt to discover and understand the main driving force the core source of inner power that separates the dynamically achieving person from the unfulfilled underachieving masses cyber vision systems has directed its financial and human resources to

find the answer through its association with the famed stanford university neuropsychological research laboratory and through seven years of intensive investigation into the science of human achievement cyber vision systems has uncovered what it believes is the master key to success the master key which unlocks the raw potential that lies dormant within the heart and mind of man simply stated we call this key self-discipline self-discipline what's the first thing that phrase makes you think of unfortunately for most people the term conjures up images of strictness long stretches of boring or irritating work of self-sacrifice and self-denial nothing

could be further from the truth truly self-disciplined people are not bored unhappy or suffering from any kind of deprivation in fact they have learned to give themselves the true joy that comes from pursuing and achieving their most cherished goals and dreams what then is self-discipline really all about the simple answer may surprise you self-discipline is your ability to systematically and progressively work towards a goal until you have reached it it includes acquiring knowledge and skills it's your ability to become positively obsessed single-minded and efficient to strive without giving up to work consistently day after day

week after week and year after year until your purpose is fulfilled self-discipline is the power to say this is what i really want in life and this is how i'm going to get it and if i have to give up some other things i will because it's worth it in the long run to be self-disciplined you must learn to develop the kind of obsession that glows like a beacon in a storm you must learn to watch that light and steer your course towards it no matter what gets in your way or how long it takes

like a sailor you must learn to use the skills that will point you in the right direction and you must keep on using all your knowledge skill and energy to stay on course until you have reached your destination self-discipline is the single ingredient that makes success possible for anyone who dreams of achieving great things without it there would be no olympic gold medal winners no great artists musicians or writers no brilliant inventors grand prix winners or multi-millionaires every person who has made an enduring success of his or her life used self-discipline to get there if

self-discipline is so effective why don't more people have it unfortunately we live in a quick fix society where old-fashioned effort isn't appreciated nearly everyone wants to be an overnight success people spend their money as soon as they make it to get instant gratification through material things and then the same people wonder why they're not getting anywhere the truth is without paying the price and without making an effort most people will fail at what they set out to do it takes years of hard work and discipline to master a skill or craft years of putting in

seven day work weeks to build a business from scratch into a multi-million dollar operation years of schooling and internship to get a medical degree and start a doctor's practice and years of tempering and seasoning to become a prima ballerina we all greatly admire successful artists business people and doctors among others but how many of us are willing to put in the years of work it took for these people to get where they are the late ray kroc the founder and guiding genius behind mcdonald's restaurants told a wonderful story about the contrast between the self-disciplined achiever

and the wishful thinker in a speech he gave to mba candidates at dartmouth college he said i'm reminded of a story about the great pianist who gave a concert and at the end a lady rushed up to him and said i'd give anything in the world if i could play like that and he said no you wouldn't she could have if she wanted to anybody could i know as a piano player that piano playing is mechanical to a great extent but it's the dedication the disciplining to practice that makes the difference and when you're talking

about a concert pianist he has been practicing for years years of practice several hours a day every single day practice practice practice practice sacrifice and discipline that's what it gets down to and so he said no you wouldn't meaning that what she said she wanted to attain she wouldn't pay the price to get to discipline herself to do the studying and practicing required to be a concert pianist how many times have you heard yourself saying i'd give anything to be a doctor or a lawyer or president of a company or a singer actress or dancer

if only i had the talent or the education or the intelligence the truth is with a minimum of talent and average intelligence you could be any one of those things with a steady sustained effort that never falters never crumbles and never gets lost in unimportant details you can be anything you want many people believe that talent alone is the key to success talent might play its part but it's not the difference in every field of endeavor millions of talented men and women with special talents are wasting away contributing little to their own success or the

good of mankind and every day we see others who are less gifted but who have accomplished more many believe that education is the key to success though it is a valuable aid it is not the difference the educated derelict is a common sight and so is the man or woman who has achieved phenomenal success without the advantage of a formal education and many believe that intelligence is the key to success even though a person with a high degree of intelligence is fortunate and possesses the raw materials to be successful the relationship between intelligence and accomplishment

is something less than balanced every day we encounter highly intelligent people who barely get by and their opposite number men and women of average intelligence but superior achievements the one quality which sets one man apart from another the one key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity is not talent formal education nor intellectual brilliance it's self-discipline with self-discipline all things are possible it's the closest thing you could have to a wish-granting fairy godmother without self-discipline even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream [Music] in

america today the greatest cause of failure is the lack of self-discipline lacking self-discipline millions of american dreams turn to ashes with lofty visions of success many people don't know that it takes more than wishful thinking shortcuts gimmicks and get rich quick schemes to achieve excellence somehow most people have lost sight of the age-old truth that anything worthwhile achieving takes time organized persistent effort and more time as you look around you you'll see the many obvious fruits of the undisciplined mind poverty unhappiness and drugs the social cancer of a quick fix society but it is the

not so obvious more subtle effects of the lack of self-discipline that we address here the raw power and potential of talented and intelligent people that lies dormant unchanneled and wasted untapped and unfocused because of the inability of these people to commit and mobilize themselves to a course of consistent action the lack of self-discipline is the number one killer of achievement in america successful people have one thing in common they set their sights on a goal and work every hour of every day towards reaching it they learned what they needed to do to reach that goal

and they found a way to do it if it meant taking on an extra job they took the job if it meant going to school at night they attended evening classes if it meant working countless hours seven days a week they worked the hours if it meant relocating themselves and their families they moved consists of self-discipline and self-discipline consists of doing whatever you have to do for as long as you have to do it to get where you want to be if you truly want to seek your fortune you must develop the inner strength to

relentlessly pursue your vision day after day week after week month after month year after year until it becomes a reality and it will become a reality stop and think about all the things you wish you'd accomplished the things you know you could have accomplished if you'd only had the self-discipline to pursue them would you have gotten more education practiced and practiced at your favorite sport until you had a chance of becoming a pro learn to read and write music and play an instrument study engineering so you could design and sell the ideas you're always dreaming

up actually there are things you've accomplished through self-discipline way back in your childhood just think how long did it take you to learn how to walk for how many weeks and months did you struggle to stand upright how many bruises did you get from falling down and how many times did you pick yourself up and try again you learn to walk because as a toddler you became obsessed with learning to walk you were determined to learn no matter how hard it was at first or how long it was going to take every step you took

was a small victory and every time you fell down it was just an excuse to start all over children are naturally self-disciplined because children believe that everything is possible children don't say i can't do it children say i want to do it when you want something badly enough and when you believe in it strongly enough self-discipline will get it for you self-discipline is the most powerful tool you own for bridging the gap between wishful thinking and real fulfillment without it you can only stare as author amy gross says like a window shopper at the good

things of life and shrug and move on you can have those good things by developing the self-discipline to achieve them what do you want that you're willing to pay the price for what means so much to you that you'll spend weeks months or years pursuing it start thinking about your most cherished dream because with the power of self-discipline you're finally going to be able to achieve it and this program will teach you how the neuropsychology of self-discipline your master key to success will show you how to take the raw materials you already possess your talent

intelligence strength and motivation and turn them into the assets you need to achieve your life's goals you learn how to gain the knowledge and skills that will set you on the path to success and you'll learn to develop the kind of positive strength it takes to stay on that path until you have reached the very end you may think it's impossible for you to develop the kind of self discipline you see others using to achieve success you may think you're too lazy too scattered too quick to give up and that may be true of the

way you're behaving now but most people aren't self-disciplined because they never had a chance to experience the kind of joy and satisfaction that comes with mastering their own abilities and applying them to the one thing they really want in life once you get a taste of how intoxicating of how free self-discipline feels you'll be hooked on it for life the neuropsychology of self-discipline is not the result of pop psychological and fetish theories nor does it contain simplistic problem like success gimmicks found so often in many self-improvement programs the neuropsychology of self-discipline program incorporates the breakthrough

findings of one of the world's most respected brain researchers doctor carl h pribrum director of the stanford university neuropsychological research laboratory with the practical experience of cyber vision systems team of learning experts dr pribram is one of the most respected and renowned brain and behavioral researchers in the world trained as a neurosurgeon doctor pribrum has been conducting research into the brain and behavior for over thirty years his pioneering work and discoveries have led to his being called the father of neuropsychology besides his responsibilities at stanford dr pribrum also serves as the director of advanced research

for cyber vision systems the neuropsychology of self-discipline incorporates two of dr pribron's revolutionary discoveries the first is his finding that our behavior is governed by images of achievement and that without these images we cannot mobilize and motivate ourselves to achieve our goals the second is dr priebus discovery of how the human brain forms visual and sensory images and how these images affect our emotions our power to commit ourselves to a course of action and see it through to the end with excellence through perseverance and persistence dr priebrum's cutting edge work lets us understand for the

first time the relationship between thinking sensing motivation and behavior and by collaborating with dr pribrum cyber vision systems has been able to develop a powerful technology that enables you to harness your own mental processes and motivate yourself to develop the kind of iron will that will carry you through thick and thin to achieve your goals achieve them well and completely and enjoy the journey every inch of the way you don't have to be a scientist to understand apply and benefit from these principles all of the complex research development and testing has already been done for

you we've turned doctor priebus research results into a simple but powerful technology anyone can use to learn the beauty and joy of true self discipline your neuropsychology of self-discipline program centers around three points of organization first in session two you'll be introduced to a description of ten characteristics of gold achieving highly disciplined people countless hours of research and interviewing went into gathering this information all to discover the tools these people used to develop and exercise their powers of self-discipline these characteristics will become a model or benchmark that you will strive to incorporate into your life

by keeping these characteristics close in mind you'll have an achievable ideal against which you can measure your own behavior and habits as you strive to acquire and make permanent the skill of self-discipline the second crucial section of this program is what we call the knowledge and information section in session three you'll be systematically guided through the easy to understand and learn principles of cyber visions power of self-discipline you'll learn once and for all that the power of self-discipline is the master key to your success not only will you learn why but you'll thoroughly understand in

depth the power principles of self-discipline the third and to you the most important section of the program is what we call action and implementation in sessions four through ten you'll begin the actual process of becoming self-disciplined of developing the core skills that will enable you to achieve anything and everything you desire you'll start by learning how to determine exactly what it is you want to achieve in your life you'll then learn how to select role models who have already achieved what you desire to achieve and learn patterns of success from them you'll discover how to

transform those desires into emotion provoking imaginary blueprints sensory images rich in sight sound touch taste and smell images that excite and stimulate your emotions you'll learn how to overcome the poisonous doubt that gnaws deep within you as you dwell and reflect upon your chances for success you learn how to determine the knowledge and skills you need to achieve your desire and how to plan your time so that you can progressively achieve your goal over a sustained period of time and you'll discover the principles of persistence how to break through the barriers of time how to

keep going no matter how difficult painful or tiring it may be until your dream is realized once you have mastered the principles of self-discipline you'll discover that nothing literally nothing is impossible for you you will feel like a lean hungry lion who has just been set free from temporary captivity proud aggressive and equipped with the instincts and tools of survival included with this program is a personal study guide it was designed to assist you in mastering the materials and applying the techniques contained in the audio cassettes use it well for it will help you every

step of the way in developing the power of self-discipline before you go any further with the audio cassettes please read the introduction in the study guide complete the written exercises for this session session one then prepare yourself to listen to session two by first reviewing the background information on session two in the study guide by following the principles of this program you will for the first time in your life be able to achieve whatever it is you desire and accomplish it with the pride of excellence talking about success is one thing anybody can do that

achieving it day by day month by month and year by year is another that's what you're going to learn in this program how to do it behind every great achiever there's another achiever it may be someone close to home a parent teacher or friend it may be someone who's currently famous or it may be a historical or mythological figure there are probably many young cadets at west point and annapolis today who secretly dream of someday repeating the astonishing feats of general george s patton the legendary world war two hero yet patton himself attributed his success

on the battlefield to great military leaders of the past from early childhood one of his favorites was alexander the great the young greek ruler who nearly conquered the world over two thousand years ago fascinated by alexander's repeatedly successful conquests and his dashing personal style patton read everything he could about the ancient warrior soon he came to know alexander intimately his personality his leadership style his way of thinking and solving problems his military strategies and finally patton got to the point where he could think like alexander the great act like alexander the great and get results

like alexander the great when he planned his battle strategies patton used tactics that followed along the lines of alexander's greatest military achievements and they worked patton was so successful in battle after battle that the germans considered him to be the allies greatest weapon patton had alexander the great and his own disciplined personality to thank for his success but alexander himself had someone else to thank for his own brilliant military maneuvers alexander drew his inspiration from the mythical greek god hercules after studying everything that had been written and that was known about the mythical god of

courage and strength alexander began to pattern his thinking personal style and actions after him there are countless other examples of the great learning from the great baseball champion babe ruth was once asked how he developed the hitting style that made people call him the king of the home run hitters ruth replied that he had simply studied and copied the greatest hitter of his time a player called shoeless joe jackson most if not all great achievers draw their inspiration their style and their strategies from role models how much we eventually achieve in life may well boil

down to one simple ingredient the quality of the models we choose to emulate all human behavior begins with models we learn to walk talk dress and feed ourselves by watching our families doing those things every day but we learn more than simple everyday activities from the people who surround us as we grow up we also learn how to think and behave by watching the way they do some people have excellent role models successful parents or a family friend who has achieved far beyond the ordinary but having a role model is just the first step toward

becoming a disciplined achiever you must use that model make it a part of your own personality in order to succeed this program will take you through the entire process from start to finish in this session you're going to start by being given a role model of your own a model of the disciplined motivated achiever you'll learn the ten dominant characteristics of that model and be able to compare your own behavior to it and you'll also learn about its opposite the undisciplined underachiever and why that person is destined to fail years of research have gone into

the creation of this model cyber vision has studied people who have been successful in business education science the arts and other fields these people were tested for the possible presence of dozens of characteristics and attitudes and when all was said and done cyber vision found ten qualities that were common to every one of them understanding the characteristics of the highly disciplined achiever can be as inspiring to you as alexander the great was to george patton together they will form a living breathing picture of the type of person who is highly self-disciplined and who gets things

done with this picture in front of you you'll have a model to pattern your own behavior after and you'll be able to begin to reshape your life along rewarding achievement oriented lines as you listen to these ten characteristics compare your own behavior to each one the idea isn't to become discouraged because you're not living up to an ideal rather concentrate on rating your strengths and weaknesses so you'll understand from the beginning what areas you need to work on the most recognize that as a chinese philosopher once said the journey of a thousand miles begins with

a single step you've already taken that first step by acquiring and beginning to use this program now let's discuss the 10 characteristics common among highly disciplined achievers the first characteristic of a self-disciplined achiever is a strong well-defined sense of purpose the self-disciplined person knows precisely what he or she wants and will go for it even if it means sacrificing other things in life to get it take norwegian explorer rauld adminson for example in 1887 when he was a boy of fifteen amudson read the story of arctic explorer sir john franklin he was so inspired by

franklin's adventures that he secretly resolved to dedicate his life to polar exploration and since no man had yet physically found the south pole amundsen set his sights on being the first his mother had other ideas she wanted her son to be a doctor and insisted that he attend medical school at first amundsen gave in but then unhappy and frustrated he quit school joined an exploration party and went to see amundsen spent years apprenticing in the treacherous antarctic it was hard physical work there was a lot to learn he studied nautical techniques until he became a

master sailor and then he began to organize his own expeditions twenty four years after amundsen chose his goal he succeeded in achieving it in 1911 he became the first man to find the south pole contrast amundsen's single-minded pursuit with a profile of a person who isn't sure what he or she wants to accomplish the purposelessness personality drifts through life uncertainly always searching never finding this is the type of person who changes jobs leaves relationships and starts projects but never finishes them it's someone who never stays with anything long enough to become successful at it people

today are becoming more and more afraid of commitments they're afraid of committing themselves to one career they're afraid of committing themselves to one relationship they're even afraid to commit themselves to staying in one place for very long they talk about leaving their options open ironically these people are very much committed to failure because without a sense of purpose they can't apply themselves to any one thing and without applying themselves they can never succeed look around you and you'll see forty-year-olds and fifty-year-olds who are still jumping from job to job from relationship to relationship always searching

for an answer somewhere they'll never find it the second characteristic of the self-disciplined person is that he or she seeks out and uses positive role models often called mentors patton found and learned from alexander the great rawald adminson got his inspiration from sir john franklin to be self-disciplined you must find a mentor who can inspire you with his or her own example of discipline this person will instill you with a sense of real possibility the belief that if he can do it so can i the person who has no self-discipline tends to identify with and

tries to emulate people whose values are quick fix the undisciplined think success can be achieved through gimmicks luck or who you know for this reason they actually distrust and resent the truly successful they cannot bring themselves to admit that it takes hard work and consistent effort to reach a lifelong goal rather than working to get their own lives in order these people blame their lack of success on bad breaks they will always have bad breaks until they give themselves a break the third quality that distinguishes the self-disciplined person is the strength of his or her

imagination self-disciplined people use a goal-setting technique called sensory vision robert kennedy's immortal words explain it very well kennedy himself a highly disciplined achiever said some men see things as they are and ask why i see things as they could be and ask why not the key to developing this kind of vision is learning to use your imagination in a clear creative way once you've decided on a goal you must learn to visualize the outcome with strongly detailed sensory rich images you must learn to clearly imagine the rewards of success through sight sound touch taste and

smell the french have an expression deja vu which means already seen the self-disciplined when they reach their goal have the sense of deja vu because they have already been there thousands of times in their imaginations you can be sure general patton knew what victory felt like long before he fought his first battle and for roald amundsen reaching the south pole must have felt like a homecoming the great film director alfred hitchcock said that the actual process of directing a film was almost anti-climactic for him by the time production started on each of his films he

had already visualized every single frame and every single camera angle so clearly in his own imagination that making the movie consisted of just going through the motions hitchcock began each project with a template of what he wanted clearly and firmly set in mind those who lack self-discipline also lack vision they have only the vaguest images of goals they might maybe someday want to achieve these people are quite capable of creating sensory rich visions but unfortunately they tend to apply those visions to scenarios of failure rather than success the fourth quality exhibited by the self-disciplined individual

is what we call a positive sensory orientation achievers dwell on their own past accomplishments as proof of their ability to succeed they won't admit to failure in fact it can truly be said that they don't know the meaning of the word failure if things don't first turn out as planned they just chalk it up to experience and keep on working toward their goal self-disciplined people are so eager to learn that they feel every bit of life experience just brings them closer to achieving success they're not afraid to try new approaches if old ones don't work

anymore they never lose sight of their goal but they're open to more than one way of achieving it and this kind of positive attitude ensures that they will those who lack self-discipline waste precious time and energy dwelling upon past failures through a vicious cycle of negative reinforcement they use those perceived failures as an excuse not to try again in the future they develop a fear of failure a fear of making the effort and failure generates failure if you're convinced you can't do something you won't be able to do it the characteristics we've discussed so far

all add up to a quality called self-assurance the self-disciplined have a strong gut level belief in themselves and their ability to succeed that is truly unshakable deep down in their hearts they know they can do it and no one can convince them otherwise when christopher columbus set out to find a new route to the west indies europeans thought he was crazy the world is flat they told him if you sail west you'll fall off the edge and be devoured by monsters but columbus believed the world was round and he stubbornly applied to every monarch in

europe until he found one who would finance his voyage to what turned out to be the new world the disciplined achiever is fueled by self-confidence but the undisciplined are hampered by self-doubt this foreboding of failure haunts them in everything they attempt to do and effectively slams the door shut on any possibility they might have of succeeding the sixth characteristic that self-discipline people share is their ability to plan and organize the self-disciplined achiever knows how to take his or her goal and break it down into pieces that can be worked on one at a time priorities

are set and the important tasks are tackled at the beginning this practical methodical approach is the only way to achieve success no matter what your endeavor when henry ford designed the model a he had a goal in mind he wanted every american to be able to afford to own a car his car but in those days cars were hand built and the time and effort involved in making one resulted in a very expensive price tag ford knew he had to find a faster cheaper way to build cars so he patiently worked and planned out a

radical new idea the assembly line each person on the line would perform just one task enabling them to perform it quickly and an entire machine could be assembled in record time people laughed and said it wouldn't work but ford had spent years planning it out in every detail and it did work the assembly line became such a success that other industries began to use it as well one man's careful and patient planning launched a new industrial era contrast henry ford with the typical man on the street his attention is scattered and he's disorganized he either

has no idea what he's going to do next or he has so many irons in the fire that he can't keep track of them all maybe he's trying to start a business but he's busy hiring employees when he still doesn't have any clients or office space maybe he's decided to switch careers but he's already planning how to spend all the money he's going to make even though he's going to need four more years of schooling before he can begin to practice his new career this type of person is wasting time and energy without a detailed

game plan and without following that plan as closely as possible until you reach your goal you can spend your life floundering among half started projects and missed opportunities for success many people think all you need to be successful is a great idea but without planning organization and hard work the most brilliant ideas aren't worth a dime which brings us to the seventh characteristic common to self-disciplined achievers their ability to acquire the essential knowledge and skills they need to put their game plan to work achievers recognize how important it is to learn and they're willing to

make the necessary sacrifices to complete their own personal education sometimes this means going back to school sometimes it means spending weeks or months gathering information on a particular subject and talking to the kinds of people who can help sometimes it means taking a new type of job just to acquire certain skills what it always means is a commitment to learning what must be learned in order to make a goal achievable if you want to become a doctor you must first study pre-med then go to medical school and then complete your internship before you can set

up a practice anyone who thinks he can become a physician without doing all of those things is just dreaming if you want to run your own business there are ways of approaching your business education you can go to graduate school and get an mba you can work for someone else in the type of business you want to start and get hands-on experience before going off on your own you can find a partner who knows how to run a business and take on less responsibility in the beginning watching what your partner does and learning the essentials

those without self-discipline are always looking for shortcuts they take weekend courses and think they're highly qualified for a new profession they listen to one person's advice and think they've heard it all they try to start a business without business plans going through a real learning process is too much trouble why is it so much trouble because the undisciplined person lacks patience the eighth quality on our list of self-disciplined characteristics the kinds of patients christopher columbus and henry ford exhibited the kind of patients engineer washington augustus roebling demonstrated in finishing the building of the famous brooklyn

bridge roebling's father john augustus was the brilliant engineer who designed the brooklyn bridge and began overseeing the building of it in 1869 it was going to be the first steel suspension bridge in the world a feat of engineering for its time but the project had hardly begun when the elder robling suffered a fatal accident and someone had to carry on that someone turned out to be his son washington augustus roebling took over where his father left off but just three years later he contracted caisson's disease from spending so much time underground the illness left him

almost completely paralyzed in great pain and confined to a wheelchair for life some people would have given up the project under those conditions but washington augustus didn't instead he moved to an apartment in brooklyn heights that overlook the bridge and he sat all day at the window watching the work as it progressed and supervising it from his living room messengers ran back and forth conveying his instructions to the workers on the bridge washington augustus worked this way for 11 years until the bridge was opened in 1883. obviously the younger roebling's patience paid off mostly because

he like other self-disciplined achievers was not intimidated by time robling would have sat at that window without complaint for twenty thirty years or more in order to finish his project it meant that much to him later in this program we'll explore further the special relationship between the highly self-disciplined and time for now we'd like to point out that time becomes immaterial to those immersed in pursuing a goal hours pass as if they were minutes weeks as if they were days years as if they were months the self-disciplined do not worry about time they also see

time as a tool accomplishment takes time and people who wish to achieve have all the time in the world because every moment they're working towards their goal they know they are coming one minute closer to reaching it and for the self-disciplined getting there is at least half the fun the undisciplined view time as an enemy something to beat you'll hear them say i want it all now i can't wait unfortunately these people don't realize that time is going to pass anyway and if they're not working toward their goal they're only wasting the time they feel

is so precious the self-disciplined are persistent this is the ninth quality that contributes to their success they have what it takes to stick to their vision through thick and thin day in and day out they don't give up in spite of rejection hardship setbacks or other people's opinions they are relentless in their pursuit of their own dreams and goals the self-disciplined are actually very stubborn they succeed against all odds when they get discouraged they draw new inspiration and motivation from their sensory rich visions of success and that's enough to fuel their emotional drive to keep

on making the effort ellie hawkins a mountain climber is a good example of someone who just wouldn't give up even when the odds turned against her she set out to climb a particularly difficult face of yosemite's treacherous el capitan ellie undertook this climb to prove that dyslexia a learning disorder from which she suffers can be beaten in the middle of the climb ellie slipped and suffered a rope burn on her left hand that was so bad she almost lost complete use of the hand she could have stopped there but she didn't what started out to

be a six-day climb turned into a torturous eight-day ordeal as ellie worked with one hand holding her wounded arm above her head to lessen the pain ellie reached the top and immediately announced plans to tackle another very difficult climb no one doubts that she'll do it because she has the hallmark of a disciplined achiever the undisciplined are easy quitters they give up when the going gets rough they're more interested in having a good time than in working even worse they find it impossible to have a good time when they are working this brings us to

the tenth and last characteristic of the self-disciplined achiever the ability to experience pleasure while working to achieve his or her vision these people are excited by their goals and become easily engrossed in the work it takes to get there they're interested in learning they enjoy acquiring new skills and they have a good time while they're pursuing their ambitions to the highly disciplined there's no such thing as work their work becomes their life and their main source of pleasure when they become successful you often hear them say i can't believe i'm getting rich doing this it's

so much fun and most of them would keep doing what they're doing even if they weren't making money at it to the undisciplined work is the stressful painful boring part of life that must be tolerated between periods of pleasure these are the people who live for the weekend who are willing to work only because it gives them the disposable income they can spend on fun and these are also the people who don't want to put in overtime or take work home unless they're being paid extra for it if taking on more work will only get

them a promotion or a crack at a better job they won't do it now that we've identified the ten qualities common to all self-disciplined achievers we'd like you to begin comparing yourself against the model characteristics we just discussed this self-assessment will give you a good idea of your own strengths and weaknesses after you finish listening to the session turn to page 11 of your study guide and follow the instructions for using the personal assessment form you'll find there let's summarize the characteristics of self-disciplined achievers first they have a strong well-defined sense of purpose they know

what they want second they seek out positive role models for inspiration and learning third they use sensory rich visions and a vivid imagination to set the stage for their own achievement fourth they have a positive sensory orientation they expect to succeed rather than fail fifth they have a deep rooted belief in their ability to achieve they are immeasurably self-assured sixth they have the ability to plan and organize they can break down what they want to achieve into manageable steps and set priorities that let them accomplish the most important things first seventh they know how and

when to acquire essential knowledge and skills they're not intimidated by the thought of having to learn something new eight they have patience the passing of time doesn't bother them they'll keep working toward their goal for as long as it takes ninth they persevere they're stubborn and they don't give up even when the going gets rough tenth they view work as pleasure because work is bringing them closer and closer to the realization of the goal that will be their final reward turn off the tape now and score yourself on the personal assessment form when you're done

turn the tape back on welcome back we hope you're not too discouraged by an honest assessment of where you stand now in terms of self-discipline remember you've already taken the first steps toward making a positive change in your life and you will experience that change by the time you finish this program nothing will be impossible for you once you develop and harness this inspiring and enduring power of self-discipline and as you'll soon find out self-discipline is not so difficult to develop as you might think as a matter of fact using this program is going to

be your first exercise in acquiring it already you're on your way in the next session we'll explore the power behind the characteristics we've just discussed you'll learn why they're so important in developing self-discipline and what they can do for you once you have them and you'll be further along the road toward understanding and developing the one characteristic that will give you the power of success after completing session two you should now have a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses as compared to the model of the self-disciplined achiever perhaps for the first time in your

life you're able to objectively see which of your attitudes and behaviors have been acting as barriers to developing the kind of self-discipline that will enable you to achieve your dreams and ambitions now that you have a better understanding of the ten characteristics of the self-disciplined achiever we're going to provide you with the scientific foundation for cyber visions unique self-discipline program in this session you'll learn how recent scientific discoveries have made it possible for you to acquire harness and focus the power of self-discipline the power to achieve whatever your mind and heart are set on achieving

that power is what sets achievers apart from the mass of ordinary people people described by american philosopher and writer henry david thoreau as leading lives of quiet desperation that power is what drove great achievers like dr jonas salk ludwig von beethoven albert einstein and mahatma gandhi but what does that power consist of what is the force that motivates high achievers to sustain a long-term effort that might take ten years twenty years or a lifetime to achieve more importantly if we can define and isolate such a force how can you or i tap into it the

force exists and it has a scientific basis by the time you've completed the neuropsychology of self-discipline you'll understand its origins its strength and its power and you'll be armed with all the tools you need to stay in touch with that force in order to accomplish anything you set out to do there are many self-improvement programs that like crash diets offer good short-term results but stop working after a few days or weeks these programs tend to rely on one of three kinds of motivation the first is evangelical a powerful orator will call him speaker x comes

to town with promises to increase motivation and production after a single seminar or series of seminars perhaps your boss encourages you and your co-workers to go perhaps even purchases a block of tickets meeting night arrives you attend and the speaker is indeed inspirational as are the bells and whistles and songs and slogans that accompany him it is a fever pitched emotionally charged experience that speaker x has to offer as he exhorts you to live up to your enormous potential to work harder better and more enthusiastically to use your talents to use your mind you feel

power welling up inside you and the people around you are feeling the same kind of power inside them yes you're all saying we can be more productive we can have a better attitude we can get ahead if we want to the very air becomes charged with mass enthusiasm the next day you're at your desk a half hour early and you work a half hour past normal quitting time the same thing happens the day after you start planning new ways to accomplish your work more effectively you're feeling happier about the work you're doing and for the

next few weeks it looks like you're getting more work done in less time than you ever have before but soon your enthusiasm begins to fade and your pace starts to slow down even if you have the audio tapes of the speech it's hard to recapture and sustain the original emotion you felt in the presence of an inspired speaker and of course you no longer have the kind of group excitement and energy you experience the first time around you're getting tired and bored your boss sees productivity fall after an artificial peak and sure enough when the

next motivational speaker comes through town we'll call him speaker why there's the boss with another block of tickets in hand this evangelical form of motivation may get short-term results but it creates an unhealthy dependence on external hype it's like a drug addiction you need more and more of an artificial stimulant to reach the same level of false well-being when you get your shot of motivation you become enthusiastic and energetic when the shot wears off you get sluggish and lethargic the same problem exists with the second major motivational tool that most self-improvement programs rely on external

rewards like money prizes bonuses for reaching quotas these are essentially pats on the head from the boss often desirable paths but still pat's on the head signals that you've pleased someone else this method works very well on children unfortunately it tends to create a childlike dependence on outside rewards even in adults like evangelical speakers this carrot and stick approach produces only short-term results external rewards do not increase individual commitment and most people tend to adapt to them quickly soon expecting bonuses as a matter of course and not because they've performed above and beyond the call

of duty rewards are manipulative people who give them out are always asking themselves how can i motivate my staff the truth is to be truly effective in the long term motivation must come from within the third classic motivational tool is a familiar one fear humorists carl reiner and mel brooks created a comedy album in the early sixties in which reiner as a journalist interviews brooks who plays a two thousand year old man eager to know about life in the distant past reiner asked brooks what was the major form of transportation in those days brooks replies

fear fear transported you reiner is puzzled fear he asks brooks responds yeah fear you see an animal would growl and you would go two miles in a minute it's true fear is a great motivator if you don't perform something undesirable happens you lose your job there go the house payments the car payments the kids college tuition and so on as the mental dominoes fall you're motivated to keep performing but while fear may bring short-term results it also brings resentment and rapid burnout it doesn't take long before you're angry at the system that's keeping you going

and anger makes you less productive which increases your fear it becomes a vicious cycle with an unpleasant ending it should be pretty clear by now that these motivational systems aren't motivational at all each of them relies on an external stimulus and an artificial situation and each relies on an initial burst of emotion that fades rapidly when the new situation becomes habitual you may have tried several of these motivational or goal-setting programs in the past perhaps they even contributed to your sense of self-awareness if so you've no doubt learned that self-awareness alone is not sufficient to

motivate change it's easy to identify self-defeating behaviors it's easy to plan strategies for eliminating them it's easy to turn over a new leaf but it's very difficult to sustain change for a long enough period of time for your new behavior to become as ingrained in your character as your bad habits were in the past having a roadmap is not enough you need fuel the key to developing self-discipline the power to persistently pursue a long-term goal without giving up until the goal is achieved is the fuel of internal motivation it would be nice if we were

all born with the patience drive and skill it takes to achieve any long-range goal or complete any long-term project but we're not self-discipline is a learned behavior years of research at major american universities primarily california's stanford university have proved it and cybervision's own research into the latest learning theories of behavioral scientists have confirmed that self-discipline is an acquired characteristic with a basis in behavioral science the neuropsychology of self-discipline has been developed according to materials gathered from two major sources our information comes from our own research into the way human beings learn and from the revolutionary

discoveries about the structure and organization of the human brain made by dr carl pribrum head of stanford university's neuropsychology research laboratory dr pribrum is one of the most respected brain scientists in the world trained as a neurosurgeon his research into brain function led to a deep interest in the behavioral sciences his pioneering work in both of these areas led to the fusion of the two into the science of neuropsychology as a neuropsychologist dr pribrum how the nervous system and its component parts affects human behavior those studies have led to two revolutionary discoveries the neuropsychology of

self-discipline incorporates both of them the first of doctor priebus discoveries explains how the human brain forms visual and sensory images and how those images affect our minds our bodies and our behavior the second discovery is that our behavior is governed by images of achievement neuronal blueprints of the skills and actions that determine our success or failure in the achievement of our goals let's discuss how each of these scientific discoveries leads us to understand the power and the origins of self-discipline many scientists and psychologists have believed for years that the human brain barely distinguishes a real

experience from an imagined one best-selling self-help books like psycho cybernetics think and grow rich and others have used this belief as their foundation for motivation and change this idea has also been the cornerstone belief of people involved in metaphysics and the human potential movement the idea that the brain cannot tell the difference between a real experience and an imagined one has never been scientifically proven until dr priebrums research showed us that it is true but doctor priebus research did not prove that as many people think all you have to do is imagine what you want

and through the magical power of the mind you will achieve it if this were true achievement would be easy and as anyone who has tried to achieve a long-term goal will tell you it is not put into its proper perspective this concept of imagination is critical to achievement but not because imagination possesses a magical power to attract success like a magnet imagination is critical to achievement because it evokes the power and emotion that stimulates and sustains the drive to achieve the human nervous system responds emotionally to imaginary images rich in sensory detail in sight sound

touch taste and smell as if they were real in fact the brain doesn't distinguish between sensory rich imagination and reality that's why the sight of a hand reaching for a murder victim on a movie screen can inspire the same terror the same rapid heartbeat and rush of adrenaline as a real threat does you can perform a simple demonstration of how an imaginary image affects the body's responses right now close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you're holding a firm ripe lemon in your hand now bring the lemon up to your mouth and slowly

bite into it as your teeth break through the peel penetrate the skin and sink into the flesh of the fruit imagine the juice exploding into your mouth what did you experience during this exercise did you develop a feeling of bitterness and distaste did you pucker up in response did you begin to salivate as you would if you really took a bite out of a lemon the feeling of bitterness is an emotional response provoked by the imaginary sensation of the lemon juice being absorbed by the mucous membranes in your mouth the buildup of saliva was a

physiological response saliva neutralizes the acid level in lemon juice you can create a similar response by imagining yourself biting into an onion rather than experiencing a sense of sourness and a watering of the mouth your eyes will begin to burn and tear this power of imagination to create physiological and psychological responses is crucial to the survival of the human species the images of love and eroticism stimulate sexual response for reproduction the image of fear stimulates the fight or flight response for survival but our brain's ability to respond to images is a two-edged sword the person

who is dominated and controlled by emotional impressions becomes a victim of his own sensory images these people act impulsively in response to their feelings they have little control over their environment they are easy prey for fear superstition and con artists they are usually unhappy on the other hand the person who understands the power of imagery and who can deliberately harness a flood of sensory images to reinforce an intellectually formulated plan has a lifetime source of energy to apply toward positive action this person uses emotion as fuel only when the imagination is harnessed and focused on

the benefits and rewards of a specific goal can we light the fires of self-motivation and develop the kind of self-discipline that will help us achieve that goal dr pribram made a second significant discovery in his research into the brain and human behavior he found that all of our actions are governed and driven by what he calls an image of achievement that image of achievement is actually a mental blueprint for reaching a goal it is made up of images rich in sight sound touch taste and smell and in the mind of a highly self-disciplined achiever it

serves as the source of emotional fuel that drives him to work long and hard to reach his goal wimbledon tennis champion stan smith reported that once he realized that he could compete with some of the world's best tennis players he established a vision of himself becoming the number one tennis player in the world he imagined winning the wimbledon title years before he actually achieved it he saw himself receiving the trophy dancing at the winner's ball he felt the worldwide acclaim that would accompany his success he used that vision as an emotional well from which to

draw the necessary strength persistence and perseverance to spend thousands of hours in practice and competition developing the skills and experience that would eventually see him to the realization of his dream have you ever heard someone say i wanted it so bad i could taste it that's the kind of stimulus that motivates the self-disciplined achiever not only can the achiever taste victory you can see smell hear and feel it too after years of research we now know that such deep sensory rich images are the actual language of the brain although it is actually far more complex

the brain can be compared to a computer computers also referred to as hardware can do nothing by themselves they're simply the vehicles for programs called software that tell the computers what to do think of the brain as hardware and the imagination images of achievement as software images of achievement tell your brain what to think which in turn tells you how to act the right images can set in motion a chain of events that will lead you towards any kind of achievement you can imagine author joe hymes describes watching a taekwondo master named young tai li

practicing blows against a straw covered board lee pounded his fist again and again against the board oblivious to the fact that his knuckles were bleeding when lee's practice was over himes asked him whether his hand hurt lee replied not until just now when i thought about it when hiams looked astonished lee explained further when i was striking the makawara board as you came in my mind was on my home in korea though i was standing here i was seeing the mountains i knew as a youngster and the children i played with hearing their laughter and

my mother's voice i was unaware of the pain in my hand lee then told a dramatic story of his own taekwondo master who once underwent a sinus operation with only his own concentration for an anesthetic how is that possible hiams asked regulate your breathing lee replied fix your eyes and mind on something else perhaps a rock or a spot on the floor or ceiling concentrate on that object savor it taste it give it color and smell the dimension let it absorb all your thoughts and concentration and the pain will diminish if we replace the word

object in lee's description with the word goal we have the perfect description of a sensory blueprint concentrate on that goal savor it taste it give it color and smell the dimension let it absorb your thoughts and concentration this ability to use sensory images to marshal one's powerful sensory impulses toward a goal is the essence of self-discipline we are all born with imagination self-disciplined achievers have learned to use it to achieve even the most seemingly impossible goals the self-disciplined achiever begins the journey to success with imagination he asks himself if i can have whatever i can

imagine what do i want what is my purpose when he's defined that purpose he uses his imagination to create a vision of achievement a sensory rich image that will evoke an emotional response so strong that he is driven to action to bring his vision to life and when he has achieved that goal he uses his vision to create new goals for the self-disciplined achiever never stops he has learned such a powerful method for becoming successful that the pleasure of succeeding has for him become life itself the self-disciplined achiever also uses imagination to change his goal

whenever necessary as images evoke emotion and emotion propels him to act he gets closer and closer to his goal and the closer he gets the more his reality changes when it changes in such a way as to make his original goal either impossible or undesirable he changes that goal to fit his new reality the self-disciplined achiever creates a feedback system that ensures that he will never give up and he will ultimately achieve what he wants this is where most people fall down they're working towards a goal and suddenly circumstances interfere with that goal they get

sidetracked then when they try to get back on course it doesn't work because their original goal does not fit their new reality they think they have failed and they give up in the same circumstances the self-disciplined achiever uses his or her goal visualization as a reality check if reality suddenly dictates that the original goal won't work the goal must be altered to fit reality the achiever has not failed he or she has set a new course that will lead to success take someone who sets out to become an obstetrician after four years of pre-med and

two years of medical school our self-disciplined achiever suddenly realizes that she's far more interested in becoming a neurologist should she drop out of medical school of course not she'll simply switch her visual blueprint to another field of medicine and change her plans for where she'd like to intern after medical school she doesn't think of herself as a failed obstetrician she thinks of herself as a successful neurologist or take the businessman who wants to open up a retail store in his neighborhood during the knowledge gathering process of talking to other business owners discussing loans and insurance

with bank officers and looking into buying franchises he discovers that a retail operation won't really fit his particular talents or expectations instead he realizes he's a perfect candidate for starting a direct marketing company so he changes his vision and his direction to fit his new goal for these people the fire still burns but the trial and error process of working towards their goal has led them in directions they wouldn't originally have thought to go in and they will be successful because they're flexible enough to grow and change as their goals grow and change the relationship

between vision self-motivation and achievement can be condensed into an easy to understand seven-step formula for developing self-discipline as we explain that formula you can refer to your study guide and follow along as we talk about the seven keys to self-discipline outlined in diagram 3.1 the first step in developing the power of self-discipline is to create a purpose you must define a cause to which you can wholeheartedly commit your time resources and energy this cause points you in a direction it gives you a reason for making the effort it lights a small spark inside you that

will soon begin to burn with emotion and drive the second step is to find role models who have already achieved what you want to achieve study their life patterns their methods and techniques for reaching their goals let their example inspire you and realize that they are normal people just like you but they are self-disciplined people with the power of self-discipline you can achieve as much as they have with a firm purpose in mind and an exciting sense of possibility sparked by your role models you'll find yourself developing a strong-willed emotional belief in your ability to

succeed the first small spark of hope is turning into a glowing ember of possibility in the third step you'll translate your feeling of possibility into a sensory rich vision of success at this point with a vision rich in touch taste sight smell and sound in front of you you'll make the leap from the possible i think i can do it to the heartfelt i know i can do it your vision and your belief will fan the embers of conviction until they burst into a flame of emotion that incites you to action this all-encompassing flame of

emotion is the fourth step of the formula it is what gives you the energy the creative power and the desire to single-mindedly see your vision through to its successful completion motion is the root word for emotion the original meaning of the word emotion is in fact a moving a stirring an agitation which is precisely what happens when belief in your goal catches fire the fifth step in our formula is planning the first bit of action inspired by your emotion through effective planning you can identify and map out the steps you need to take in order

to make your vision a reality you'll figure out exactly what you need to do to accomplish your goal and how long it will take and turning your vision into a concrete goal will further fuel the fires of emotion and action once your vision has become a plan you must acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to implement that plan this is the sixth step in the formula for developing self-discipline no matter how difficult the learning process might be you continue to draw inspiration and fortitude from your vision and each time you master a skill your confidence

in your ability to achieve increases the seventh and last step in our formula is what we call persistence and perseverance persistence is staying with your vision seeing it through to its completion no matter how long it takes or how difficult it is perseverance is persisting in spite of setbacks disappointments and hardship once you begin acting to achieve your goal your drive to sustain the forward motion to persist and persevere is constantly fueled by the strength of your initial vision and as you get nearer and nearer to accomplishment the vision becomes more and more real as

your vision fuels reality and reality fuels your vision your drive to achieve begins working like a giant breeder reactor you put into motion a self-perpetuating spiral of vision belief emotion motion and reality this formula for harnessing the essence of self-discipline will change your life for the first time science has given us the power to truly be able to change our own circumstances from the inside out to understand what makes men and women overcome tremendous odds and obstacles to achieve greatness for the first time greatness is within the grasp of each of us through the understanding

of the scientific principles that govern our thinking and behavior we can for the first time program ourselves for success in the next session you'll begin to put the principles you've just learned into action you'll learn a powerful sensory exercise which will let you determine your true goal and once you've taken that vital first step you can begin the exciting journey of action that will propel you towards the ultimate achievement of your heart's desire at a recent workshop based on the neuropsychology of achievement cyber vision president stephen devore was asked an interesting question by a young

corporate product manager mr devore had been outlining the principles of goal setting when the product manager said you know there's one problem i haven't yet solved we talk about opportunities and goals but there are so many opportunities to choose from so many different directions we can go how do you figure out exactly what you want to go for how do you focus in on one choice among so many this session addresses that very problem the problem of finding a purpose and it isn't always easy we live in a free society filled with opportunities for anyone

who wants to take advantage of them it's wonderful to have so many choices but sometimes it makes choosing what you really want to do your purpose even more confusing than ever still there are ways to narrow your choices down and this session will show you how to do it through an exciting and powerful four-point exercise you're going to learn to pinpoint what it is you want most in life out of all the things you may think you want it will take some effort some soul searching some creative thinking and the outcome may surprise you by

the end of this session you'll have chosen and defined what we call a macro purpose the term macro means large or inclusive your macro purpose is equivalent to what creative people call the big idea it's your main desire your real purpose in life your reward for hard work and effort it's going to become your very reason for existing besides defining your macro purpose in this session you're going to learn what micro purposes are and how they're used micro purposes are the stepping stones to your macro purpose they consist of all the things you need to

do to achieve your most important ambition to help you thoroughly understand the concept of macro and micro purposes think back for a moment to your early years in school when you first learn to do simple math remember what a struggle it was to understand how to add subtract multiply and divide numbers seemed a mystery to you back then and you may have thought you'd never learn how to perform the most basic math functions at the time learning math for you was a macro purpose and all the elements of learning it were micro purposes you had

to learn to count for one thing you had to learn the symbols for addition multiplication subtraction and division and you probably had to memorize the multiplication tables as an adult math seems to hardly be important but you couldn't balance your checkbook or manage your money without it and if you're a stockbroker accountant retail store manager or bank teller among other things math is an important part of your job so math was a micro purpose that helped you launch your present career your macro purpose if your desire is to earn a college degree a macro purpose

you must take a certain number of courses and amass a certain number of credits each course you take that counts towards your degree is a micro purpose but if you want to be a doctor earning a bachelor's degree by itself is only a micro purpose you still have to attend and graduate from medical school and complete an internship more micro purposes before you can be licensed to practice medicine as you can see macro and micro purposes change according to your stage in life and what you want to accomplish at the moment a teenager may enter

college with no clear idea of what he or she wants to do except finish school the macro purpose of the moment but by the third year of school that student may decide on a career that requires additional schooling and a period of apprenticeship so finishing school becomes a micro purpose a stepping stone to a rewarding career but macro and micro purposes don't just apply to careers or lifelong goals setting a macro purpose and determining what micro purposes are necessary to achieve it is an excellent way to help you accomplish any goal no matter how large

or small it's a logical and creative process that lets you organize your thoughts and actions to make your goal clear more rational and easier to achieve just imagine for a moment that you're stranded alone in the wilderness on a freezing winter day it's late afternoon and there's no hope of rescue before the next morning somehow you have to figure out a way to survive the bitter cold night your macro purpose your micro purpose is keeping warm and right off the bat you can think of three ways to do this the first is to put on

some more warm clothes but you don't have any so that choice is out the second is to find shelter but there's none in sight and you don't have the time or the tools to build anything before nightfall the third is to light a fire and keep it going through the night since the woods around you are filled with dry logs and kindling this looks like a real possibility but you don't have any matches and as for rubbing two sticks together to start a fire it never worked when you were a child and you doubt that

it will work now there has to be another way looking around you for another solution to accomplishing your macro purpose you notice a sliver of broken glass on the ground and there's still enough sun left for you to be able to feel its warmth picking up the glass you hold it so the sun's rays can penetrate its surface and focus on a dry stick of wood underneath in 10 minutes the stick is burning but your ordeal isn't over after the fire is lit you have to gather enough logs and kindling to last through the night

another micro purpose and then you have to force yourself to stay awake all or most of the night to make sure the fire doesn't go out in the course of this harrowing experience you've chosen a macro purpose staying alive and defined all the micro purposes that went into it and if you succeeded in accomplishing all of the micro purposes you also achieved your macro purpose you survived defining your life's purpose and the steps you must take to achieve it may not be a life and death matter but the principle works the same way by the

time this session is over you'll have a macro purpose a clear understanding of what to focus your energy talent and intelligence on and you'll be able to light your own inner fire and feed it with a life enriching emotionally compelling purpose and purpose as we've noted is the starting point from which self-discipline and achievement spring your first step in determining your macro purpose involves something everybody loves to do play you've already learned how important enjoying work is to the highly self-disciplined to these achievers work and pleasure are synonymous now you're going to get a taste

of how easily this can happen for the next few minutes i'm going to ask you to work and play as you engage in a process called limitless wishing start by closing your eyes and relaxing imagine that you're on a beautiful deserted beach walking barefoot in the sand a soft breeze is keeping you cool and you're enjoying the sound of the waves splashing rhythmically against the shore as you stroll along the water's edge you see an object in the near distance that's half buried in the wet sand the waves splash over its surface then recede leaving

it exposed to your curious eyes you wonder what it is and you start to walk a little faster so you can reach it before it's engulfed by the next wave in a couple of minutes you're standing over it still not sure what it is it's metal somewhat round and looks like an old lamp you dig your fingers into the wet sand and pull it out there's an inscription on the side of the object but you can't read it clearly you begin to rub some of the sand away from the oddly shaped letters suddenly the lamp

begins hissing and it releases a cloud of what looks like steam or gas frightened you drop it but you continue to watch what the lamp is doing out of curiosity slowly before your very eyes the cloud begins to assume human shape and soon you're looking up at the largest person you've ever seen when it speaks its voice is rich and kind and its message is amazing the genie thanks you for releasing him from hundreds of years of captivity inside the lamp and according to the hospitality of his people he offers you a reward for helping

him you have only to name five wishes he says and they will be granted you can ask for anything he tells you as long as it is specific and humanly possible to achieve at first you refuse his offer but as he continues urging you to accept you begin to realize that no you aren't dreaming and yes you really can have your five wishes the possibilities start dancing before your eyes think long and hard about it what are the things that will turn your life around and make you truly happy what is it you secretly wish

for day in and day out every day of your life take your time in deciding this is too important for you to rush over you may change your mind about your first choices after you thought about it some more when you do make your final selections write each one down in the space provided on page 18 in your study guide start each wish with the term i want and write it in clear specific language in the present tense turn your tape off now and decide what you will wish for welcome back you now have in

front of you a list of five wishes that your mind and heart told you are the most important things in life to you now with a little imagination you're going to create a scenario in which each of these wishes is fulfilled this second step of our four-part process is called wishful imagining close your eyes again and picture in as much detail as possible that your first wish has come true if you wish for a great deal of money imagine how your life has changed now that you've gotten it imagine the kind of house you're living

in the kind of car you're driving the kind of clothes you're wearing and what you're eating for breakfast and dinner maybe you've got a private plane or a swimming pool a new career new friends or the same friends you have now but with a new attitude toward you try to imagine that you're having dinner or drinks with your best friend and you're explaining to that friend how your new life feels this is a friend you trust completely so you can say anything positive or negative really imagine you're there in the restaurant or bar being served

food or drinks with people talking around you and soft music in the background imagine what you look like are you younger thinner better dressed is your friend looking envious picture every single detail down to the season the location the restaurant the plates and glasses on the table repeat this process for every one of the five wishes you wrote down and as you imagine each one coming true pay attention to your emotional response are some wishes easier to imagine than others did one or two really make your pulse quicken with excitement are there any that felt

particularly comfortable as if you could just walk right into the scenario and feel at home which one seemed to draw you in like a magnet there will be one wish that unmistakenly evokes the greatest emotional response in you that wish will be your final choice and you'll be ready to proceed to the third step in defining your purpose the step we call creative biography when truly accomplished people pass away they've generally left behind a legacy of achievement in art finance politics or the social sciences biographers and historians then catalog those achievements so others can read

about them for inspiration for example here's the entry on a man named thomas arnold from the britannica junior encyclopedia the text of this biography also appears in your study guide on page 18. the biography reads as follows thomas arnold 1795-1842 some people are loved without being respected and others respected without being loved arnold of rugby was loved by many respected and admired by everyone who knew him born at cows isle of wight this great headmaster and scholar was educated at winchester and at oxford in england where he distinguished himself in classics and history he left

oxford in 1819 and after nine years of study and writing was elected headmaster of rugby school his powerful personality set its mark on the school from the first and made it great in a new sense he was very religious and he inspired his boys with new and more serious ideals of scholarship and life he found time to during the 14 years of his head mastership to publish sermons an edition of the greek historian thucydides and a history of rome in 1841 he was appointed professor of modern history at oxford but died the following year he

was buried in rugby chapel and his son matthew wrote a beautiful elegy about him on that occasion arnold was too forthright to be tactful in his dealings with boys or indeed with grown-ups but he always won their respect and often their love by his high-minded attitude toward life and its responsibilities this entry can only summarize the lifelong accomplishments of a beloved teacher and respected scholar but listening to it you can get a good idea of the purpose which must have guided thomas arnold here was a man who valued learning scholarship teaching and personal integrity above

all else what do you value above all else what would you like to be remembered for relax and close your eyes again now imagine that you hold in your hands an encyclopedia published in the year twenty one hundred it's a heavy book with a solid feel to it you can smell the leather binding and feel the crisp new paper as you open it find the section that begins with the first letter of your last name then turn the pages slowly as you search for the entry that gives you the details of your life there it

is suddenly clear as a bell your heart beats just a little bit faster as you see your name in bold face type now you're burning with curiosity did they include the most important things about you are your most cherished accomplishments in there did they understand the purpose behind the things you did you begin to read the entry to find out yes it's all there your birth date and hometown the schools you went to where you lived and then the words that describe your highest achievements your contributions to society savor the words as you read them

let them form a clear picture in your mind of the kind of person you were and what your purpose in life was when you finished reading your own biography turn off the tape and write down what you just read in the space provided on page 19 of your study guide don't leave out a single detail make sure you paint a vivid picture of the self-disciplined achiever who worked so long and hard in pursuit of a single purpose that he or she ended up deserving an entry in such a distinguished publication when you finished writing your

own biography please turn the tape player back on welcome back now that you've completed the limitless wishing wishful imagining and creative biography exercises a clear pattern should be emerging you should now be able to answer the question what do i deep in my heart really want to do what is my purpose in life your fourth step in determining your purpose is writing this the answer to that all all-important question down you're now going to compose a personal statement of purpose but before you do it for yourself imagine that you're going to do it for someone

else a famous historical figure for instance try george washington what do you think his statement of purpose might say after all he accomplished a great deal not the least of which was becoming the first president of the united states but george washington never actually intended to become the first president he was elected because of the kind of purpose he really had a purpose statement for george washington might read i would like to use all my strength courage knowledge and resources to secure liberty and freedom for all my fellow colonists george washington was a great statesman

and public servant but there are other kinds of achievers amelia earhart for example even in childhood she had a definite purpose in mind it was not to be a famous woman aviator that came later as a natural outcome of what she really wanted to do amelia earhart's purpose statement composed when she was still a child said when i grow up i'm going to have adventures and show the world that women can be as heroic as well as men a purpose statement can be as general as you want it to be it can speak of heroism

freedom social changes adventure it's meant to act as a focusing tool not an actual blueprint for achieving it you'll learn how to do that later in this program turn to page 20 in your study guide and compose your personal statement of purpose turn off the tape now while you do it welcome back again you've come a long way in this session you've learned to use limitless wishing wishful imagining creative biography and a statement of purpose to narrow down your options and make a final choice about where you're going to focus your efforts you've just used

this four-part process to make a major decision about what you really want to accomplish and achieve in your life but you can use it again and again anytime you feel it's necessary to aid you in making any kind of decision from the smallest to the most important this process works equally well for macro and micro decision making whether you know it or not you're now well on your way to becoming a self-disciplined achiever you've learned to use one of your richest natural resources your intuition and imagination you've discovered what it is you really want to

achieve and have written it down as a statement of purpose you've laid the solid foundation upon which the power of self-discipline is built we'd like to congratulate you on what you've already accomplished in our next session you're going to learn how role models can inspire and teach you to achieve your lifelong ambition in homer's the odyssey one of the oldest surviving epic poems in the world there is a character named mentor a wise and practical man mentor kept everything running smoothly at home while odysseus the hero of the tale went off for ten years to

have adventures mentor played his role so well and gave such wise and true advice that his name has become part of the english language as a representation of what he stood for the american heritage dictionary defines a mentor as a wise and trusted counselor or teacher this session is about mentors few achievers can ever reach their goals without them mentors provide you with the kind of inspiration motivation and example that can make the difference between achievement and failure mentors help you to develop the belief that anything is possible and mentors allow you to learn through

modeling that is emulating the person you'd like to be in ancient civilizations mentors were revered in the 18th century bc there lived a wise babylonian king named hammurabi one of his greatest achievements was developing and drafting mankind's first set of civilized laws known today as the code of hammurabi this king was so wise that one of his laws required all men of learning and craftsmanship to pass on their knowledge and skills to the young through examples their students could follow hammurabi realized that without modeling no civilization would last very long there have been many changes

in the past thirty eight hundred years but one thing has remained the same without modeling learning and achievement are not possible it is a rare person who can forge a new path in society without consciously or unconsciously imitating someone that came before him it is a rare artist who develops a new style without first having worked in the style of a master he or she has always admired but actual skills aren't the only thing you learn through modeling values attitudes and behaviors are also passed on from mentors to students and whether you realize it or

not you've been a student of behavior all your life as an infant your eager mind quickly grasped everything that was going on around you you watched and later imitated what your parents siblings friends and teachers were doing if you had good models models of integrity and achievement most likely you grew up to be an achiever yourself but if your models reflected apathy or failure you probably grew up to imitate many of the self-defeating and negative behaviors you witnessed in your early years most of us had models who could best be called middle of the road

your parents may have had specific skills and abilities they were proud of but fell short of being a good example to you in other ways an older brother or sister may have possessed exceptional talent in an area where you couldn't possibly compete as a result you've probably been instilled with a mixture of negative and positive attitudes about yourself and your abilities to succeed it's time for you to develop the kind of positive outlook that is critical to developing self-discipline it's time for you to throw off the cloak of self-doubt and realize that when you acquire

self-discipline you have what it takes to achieve your goal it's time for you to use that self discipline to develop the knowledge and skills you need to achieve and in order to do all those things it's time for you to find mentors who have already accomplished what you want to achieve you're no longer a helpless infant who can't pick and choose good models to learn from as an adult you have the intelligence and power to go out and find the kind of mentors will inspire and teach you with examples of their own persistence and positive

attitudes and behaviors by the time we finish this session you'll know how to find your own personal mentors and use them to their fullest ability and you'll be able to overcome the negative attitudes and lack of self-discipline that have been holding you back up until now you'll learn how to identify your own personal role models using historical figures and the people surrounding you today you'll find out how to actually learn new attitudes and behaviors from them you'll learn how to use them to create a blueprint for your own actions starting right now and more importantly

you'll learn how to draw inspiration from them the kind of inspiration that empowers your purpose what you want to achieve with a sense of possibility if others have achieved it then it's possible for me to how do you go about finding mentors at first glance it may seem that there's nobody even remotely accessible to you who has the same kind of hopes and dreams as you do but high achievers always find a way and so can you in our research we discovered that achievers draw their inspiration from role models in two ways indirectly from reading

and watching films and directly through day-to-day observation and contact let's first discuss how self-disciplined achievers indirectly find their mentors indirectly they learn through media portrayals mostly through the reading of biography and autobiography reading profiles of achievers in magazines and other periodicals and watching inspirational films and television programs you may not be able to meet and talk to george washington charles lindbergh margaret mead or agatha christie but each one of them has left behind a legacy of accomplishments that have been covered extensively in print and film stop now and think of all the people you've read

about heard about or seen portrayed in films whom did you admire most whose story elicited a throb of recognition from you a feeling that if you could be in anyone's shoes that was the person you'd like to be it could even be a fictional character a great detective or explorer created by an imaginative writer but there had to be and still has to be someone you've always greatly admired and wished you could be like after he made the film rocky sylvester stallone talked in an interview about the power of mentors and how his movie work

to inspire millions of people around the world i think there's a definite formula in reaching audiences he said provide them with heroes and heroines who have to pull themselves up from the depths of despair and as they struggle and claw and finally attain their goal the audience says that's the kind of person i want to be stallone's character rocky is the embodiment of a man obsessed with and driven by a vision rich in emotion and purpose a self-directed achiever who overcame the odds through hard work effort persistence and perseverance browse through the new york times

non-fiction bestsellers list this sunday in your local paper you'll find that half the books listed are biographies or autobiographies testaments to people of enormous self-discipline and high achievement examples of the power of self-discipline are all around you you only have to visit your library your local newsstand the closest movie theaters or your local video store for inspiration your first step in finding a self-disciplined mentor is to search out books magazine articles and movies in which the main characters fictional or real have achieved something similar to what you want to achieve and after studying these people

you can begin to answer the questions what is it i must do to achieve my goal what skills do i need to learn how must i behave what actions do i need to take your mentors will provide you with the answers the self-disciplined have three direct methods of finding role models to learn from and emulate the first is through personal acquaintances they may have a friend whose business or personal successes have inspired them to take similar routes to the top or perhaps there's a family member who has achieved widespread recognition for outstanding contributions to the

community because these mentors are close at hand they can be watched from a front row seat you can observe their attitudes behaviors and thinking patterns you can notice how they solve problems you can pay attention to how they behave when confronted with setbacks or victories you can watch these mentors grapple with the issues of everyday life and the larger issue of achievement in a chosen area but sometimes there just aren't any people who are that close to you who fit the bill of the self-disciplined achiever you must find other methods of seeking out real life

mentors the second way self-discipline people directly find mentors is through what is commonly known as networking networking consists of building relationships with the people who can introduce and expose you to positive role models networking is not to be confused with social climbing the primary motivation of the networker is to learn as much as he can from as many successful people as he possibly can the main benefit from networking is the quality of the contacts you can establish contacts that will create greater opportunities and put you in the mainstream of successful self-disciplined role models the third

source of finding models directly is apprenticeship learning directly from a master mentor the concept of apprenticeship may seem old-fashioned in a world of computer assisted learning and mass public education but most of the high achievers we studied apprenticed themselves in some fashion to a mentor who could pass on his or her skills through intentional personalized learning apprenticeship is extraordinarily common in the arts trade crafts business medicine law politics teaching in sports lead through any encyclopedia and notice how many of the achievers profiled learned their skills under the tutelage of a master mentor some people are

obvious masters of their craft and easy to pick as mentors but sometimes it isn't so obvious especially when it comes to business or professional achievers how can you choose among several possible candidates how can you pick the person who is most likely to provide you with the inspiration and example you need in session two you used an assessment form to compare your own behaviors habits and thought patterns against the ten positive characteristics of the self-disciplined achiever on page 25 of your study guide you'll find a similar form that you can use to identify the strengths

and weaknesses of prospective mentors with instructions on how to use it put this form to work for you as you seek out that special person who can help you achieve your most cherished dreams and goals when choosing a mentor of any kind pay particular attention to how he or she developed the knowledge skills and abilities it took to reach his or her goal was there special schooling involved particular reading materials an apprenticeship with a mentor of his or her own carefully sought out teachers how many hours did your mentor work every day toward achieving his

or her goal also pay close attention to your mentor's way of thinking be sure to choose someone who handles stress and pressure well someone who responds to difficult problems by coming up with creative solutions someone who loves what they do but still finds time for important personal relationships the highest achievers work hard but are not workaholics they still find time to enjoy their friends and families look for a mentor who has learned not to waste time and who has mastered the art of juggling a heavy schedule while staying calm and in full control this will

be an important trait for you to imitate and find someone who neither capitulates to everyone around him nor is so arrogant he won't listen to the opinions of others you'll want to learn how to listen well and then make your own decisions in looking for all these traits remember that your mentor is still going to be human and have faults this is one of the most important things you can learn about your role model in spite of great success wealth and the admiration of friends family and the community he or she makes mistakes just like

you rather than being disappointed in your mentor you should rejoice over his or her human failings because those failings mean that anyone can succeed just as they did if it was possible for an imperfect person with one all-important golden life to make that goal come true you can do it as well at cyber vision systems we've developed a number of sports training video cassettes that use a new and revolutionary learning technique these video cassettes feature some of the world's greatest athletes highly self-disciplined achievers who have won world championships and olympic gold medals and in the

casual conversations we've had while working with these athletic stars each one has revealed that he or she had a mentor whose skills attitudes and behavior served as an example of how to achieve one of the things that struck us during these conversations was the fact that most top athletes were just as intimidated as you and i might be the first time they met their role model heroes for lack of a better word the idea that a major league ballplayer of undisputed talent might be quivering like a school kid in the face of their lifelong hero

made us feel pretty normal actually i think we all feel a sort of psychological barrier when it comes to measuring ourselves against our role models but as the athletes we talked to discovered that barrier can be overcome quickly and easily each of them described the eventual realization that came from playing on a team with a personal hero or from riding the same pro circuit the realization as olympic gold medal skier jean-claude keeley put it everybody puts his pants on one leg at a time what each of them realized was that they too could easily perform

like the role model they idolized the idols viewed close up turned out to be as ordinary as the worshipers they realized how great an opportunity they had to learn from their hero discovering that their idols were human and fallible they began to believe deep within their hearts that they could equal or even surpass their idols accomplishments though the role models you choose have developed tremendous strengths that have made them successful they also have many weaknesses renowned fiction writer ray bradbury for example who was first published when he was in his teens will never win the

monaco grand prix or even a race to the local supermarket why because he never learned to drive a car a skill most of us acquired long ago without thinking about it twice a friend of ours who was independently wealthy a local politician a publisher of fine art books in a world traveler wears finely crafted boots with all his clothes even his business suits is it part of his personal style yes but his close friends know his secret he never mastered the bow knot this much admired man literally cannot tie his shoes recognizing how human and

fallible your mentor really is demystifying your role model plays an important role in boosting your confidence in your own ability to succeed if a man who cannot tie his shoes can become a politician a publisher and a self-made millionaire what couldn't you accomplish with the same ambition and drive that got him where he is this is a man who never let minor shortcomings hold him back he and a thousand other mentors will prove to you that you don't have to be perfect to succeed in fact you may be amazed to find out that there are

a lot of similarities between you and your mentor people with similar goals often think alike the only substantial difference then between you and your mentor is the kind of self-disciplined effort he or she has applied to achieving a goal if you apply the same kind of effort you can be just as successful in achieving your goal as a matter of fact you can try on success for size by emulating your mentors achievements while you're working toward a similar goal remember childhood dress-up games playing pirate with a tin foil sword and your mother scarf wrapped around

your forehead role playing doesn't work only for children it can give anyone who's striving to reach a particular goal a template to follow for achieving that goal hunter thompson who broke new ground in journalism in the nineteen seventies with his gonzo style picked up much of his technique by imitating one of the greatest writers in the english language charles dickens thompson literally sat down and physically copied dickens by hand letting his mind and his muscles get used to dickens rhythm and style hour after hour he copied dickens pros word for word and thompson went on

to become a successful and popular contemporary writer the great 19th century psychologist and philosopher william james contended that if you want to acquire a positive habit or behavior simply act as if you already have it and you will james was aware that the human nervous system is incapable of distinguishing between a physically real experience and a vividly imagined one which means that once you select your mentor all you need to do is act just like that person in order to be just like him or her remember general patton he acted just like alexander the great

and he won battle after battle against the axis what about babe ruth he imitated shoeless joe jackson and went on to achieve much greater fame than his role model or perhaps you've heard of a fictional character named bunker bean bunker bean was a timid weak boy raised by his parents to think he would always be a failure and he was he failed in school he failed with his friends he failed in everything he attempted until one day bunker bean ran into a fortune teller who told him he was the reincarnation of napoleon and was destined

to achieve great things bunker bean was shocked out of his usual apathy by this revelation going to the library he took out every book he could find on the legendary napoleon bonaparte he bought posters of napoleon and hung them up all over his room and as he studied about the emperor whom he really believed was his former self he began to imitate napoleon's habits attitudes and behaviors years later bunker bean was a rich and powerful man he had everything anyone could have asked for running into the fortune teller one day he thanked her for changing

his life by telling him about his former self and to his astonishment she laughed and told him she had lied to him years before just to get his money he wasn't the reincarnation of napoleon after all bunker bean was crushed but since he had spent the many years acting like his role model he found he couldn't shake the habits of success he had acquired it was then that bunker bean realized that everyone is born with the potential to be a great achiever if they can only believe they are you don't need a fortune teller to

set you on the road to greatness you do need to find a mentor study that mentor realize his or her strengths and weaknesses and start imitating the behavior that made your mentor the success he or she is today if you were an actor preparing for a starring role you'd spend months studying the script learning your lines and rehearsing your part over and over again until you knew it inside out only then would you have the knowledge skills and confidence to make a glorious debut if as shakespeare said all the world's a stage then finding a

mentor is your way of choosing your own starring role for a while as you closely observe your mentor and learn the script you'll be just an understudy but then one day the stage will be yours acting as if has remarkable suggestive power in a book called the wind walker which was made into a powerful film an aged blind indian spends his days teaching the ways of warriors sitting late at night reflecting on the day's lesson and the children's reactions to it he recites a poem to the heavens part of which goes and did you not

see the glow of their faces when he called them men when he called them warriors and is it not so that we become most quickly the persons we think we are and later this passage appears he was making the children feel important that one day they could be important that was the way of a teacher of a true man once you select your role models and learn about them and from them you like the young indian children should feel important so that one day you will be important this power of importance you draw from role

models is really the power of possibility once you learn about your role models their strengths and weaknesses they become real and human to you you stop worshiping them and begin to believe that you can become like them or even surpass them once you make this realization then your purpose becomes more real more possible and the fires of desire fanned by the sense of possibility begin to burn deep within your heart and then and only then can you successfully begin the process of working persistently and progressively toward your vision and purpose we're now reaching the heart

of the action section of this program in this session you're going to learn how to transform your purpose into sensory rich emotion provoking images of achievement but before we do let's quickly review the kinds of actions you've taken so far to begin your journey to achievement in session four you learned how to determine your purpose the goal that represents the true desire of your heart and mind this purpose is so important to you that you're willing to dedicate a great deal of time and energy to achieving it it gives you a reason for living and

a reason for becoming the kind of self-disciplined achiever who can make it happen in session five you learned how to identify models of achievement people who have already attained goals similar to yours you learned how to turn those models into personal mentors people who can inspire and teach you to achieve in much the same way they did you found out how to isolate and identify their talents and habits you also learn to use your mentors to create a strong sense of possibility a feeling that if they could do it so can you with a clearly

defined purpose and a strong feeling of it's possible for me you have already broken through the chains of failure that shackle and bind more than ninety percent of mankind most people don't have a purpose they don't think that they're capable of achieving anything worthwhile now you're ready to take another giant step on the road to achievement in this session you're going to learn just how to translate your purpose into an emotion provoking vision this vision will become so real in your imagination that it will inspire and motivate you to work towards it every minute of

every day until you make it come true what we call your vision of success is a clear sensory rich highly detailed mental picture of what you want to achieve and the rewards you'll experience as a result of its achievement when this vision of success is linked to your purpose and a strong sense of possibility it will like a hot branding iron burn itself deep into every fiber of your being not only will you become obsessed with this vision but you'll also develop a sense of deep belief in your ability to achieve it your vision allows

you to make a quantum leap from the sense of possibility to the sure-fired conviction that i know i can do it you're about to learn a simple but powerful four-step process for transforming your purpose into a sensory rich goal once you have done that we're going to give you five easy-to-use guidelines that will help implant the goal deep into your mind and nervous system it will then become a permanent part of you and serve as the fuel that fires your emotion and incites you to purposeful action let's now begin to learn about the process of

sensory goal setting and how you can use sensory goals to develop what we call a magnificent obsession a burning desire to achieve your purpose the first step you must take is to translate the statement of purpose you developed in session four into what we call a sensory goal statement as you recall your statement of purpose was a general statement of what you would like to achieve your sensory goal statement is going to be much more specific there are three main elements to the statement you are now going to write first it must be result oriented

it must focus primarily on what you want to get out of your achievement second your sensory goal statement must be time specific you must determine a point in time when your goal will be achieved and third it must be measurable you must specify a criterion that lets you know when your accomplishment is complete if you want to become a doctor for example your criterion might be finishing your internship and setting up your own practice if you want to start your own business your criterion of success might be the day you move into your own offices

or hire your first employee having a measurable goal gives you the motivation to work towards a specific end it also lets you measure your progress along the way and take corrective action if you're moving off target this sense of having a concrete reality to work for combined with an actual time frame and a result to look forward to fuels your drive and compels you to work persistently and systematically toward the ultimate success of your endeavors let's quickly look at a few examples of how a statement of purpose can be translated into a sensory goal statement

let's say your statement of purpose reads i want to help cure disease your sensory goal statement might read like this in june of 1989 i will receive a medical degree if your purpose is to become your own boss then your sensory goal statement might read in january of 1987 i will open up a retail store of my own if your purpose is to run a marathon your sensory goal statement might read in june of 1986 i will enter the boston marathon and complete the 26 mile run in under five hours now turn to page 29

of your study guide and look at form 6.1 there's a space there for you to write your goal statement down take a moment now to compose and write your sensory goal statement in the space provided i'll pause for a minute while you do this after writing your sensory goal statement your next step in the sensory goal-setting process is turning that statement into what we call a vision of achievement the first way in which you're going to do this is by finding photographs in books magazines and newspapers that show people living experiencing and achieving your vision

if your vision is to become a doctor look for photographs of a medical school graduation ceremony find pictures of doctors involved in research look at scientific american the new england journal of medicine and similar publications aimed at doctors and scientists if your vision is to be your own boss find photos of people who own successful businesses businessweek industry week and specific retail trade publications are good sources to try if your vision is to run the boston marathon make photocopies of newspaper stories about marathon winners that you can find in the library and check runners world

and similar publications aimed at serious runners the purpose of this exercise is to give you some concrete images to inspire your own personal images of achievement you learn how to create those personal images in a few moments creating a vision achievement scrapbook of pictures that personally speak to you about your own desire for achievement can have a powerful effect on your motivation and drive devote sometime today or this evening to locating these pictures and in the future continually be on the lookout for more the third step in the process of developing a sensory goal requires

that you make a listing of all the advantages and rewards you will experience as the result of achieving your goal for a few minutes close your eyes and imagine that you have already successfully realized your ambition how is your life different because of it what recognition have you achieved has it made a difference with your family and friends has it made an impact on other areas of your life are you getting up at the same time in the morning driving the same car to work are you going out more in the evenings wearing different clothes

turn to page 31 in your study guide and in the space provided on form 6.3 write down every single reward you can imagine resulting from the achievement of your goal don't just write down the general rewards get as specific as possible for instance running the boston marathon may greatly boost your self-confidence and increase the respect you get from family and friends but training for it will also get you into superb physical shape meaning you'll have more energy more stamina more drive you'll look better feel better sleep better and do a better job at work use

the photographs from your scrapbook to help you identify all the rewards you can think of that are associated with your goal and when you're finished writing them down you'll be ready to translate them into a vision that will stimulate your emotions provoke your desire and incite you to positive action close your eyes for a few moments and imagine that you have just achieved your goal where are you what do you see around you are you indoors outdoors in your own home at the office who are you with notice every tiny detail of your surroundings including

the texture of wallpaper the color of the sky the faces of the people you're with the clothes they're wearing pretend you're going to have to draw a picture of the scene in a moment so you really need to focus in on every little item so as not to forget it now holding that visual image before you switch your focus to sounds what are you hearing are people talking to you are they congratulating you if so what are they saying are you hearing the voices of your parents your spouse your children your friends are you all

watching tv where a famous newscaster's voice is reciting the story of your achievement maybe there's a party being held in your honor and you can hear music in the background concentrate on every single sound you can hear and differentiate now let's add the sense of touch are people shaking your hand do their hands feel smooth rough warm cold are the grips firm or slack are you being patted on the back hugged by your family and friends is someone pulling at your sleeve to get your attention next imagine the prevalent smells that are surrounding you if

you're in the middle of a celebration and you smell the food on the buffet table is the fragrance of champagne wafting up from the glass you're holding can you smell people's perfume or cologne now concentrate on taste are you sipping that champagne you were holding a moment ago eating hors d'oeuvres or is the taste of success so sweet that you don't need or want any food finally what are you feeling emotionally pride satisfaction maybe you're feeling relief that the hardest work is behind you maybe you're feeling the power of your new position perhaps you're feeling

the exhilaration that comes with knowing that having achieved what you did you can now achieve anything you might even be feeling humble having come face to face with weaknesses you never knew you had during the long hard effort to reach success after you have awakened all of your senses to the sight smell taste touch sound and feeling of success turn to page 32 in your study guide and complete form six point four entitled the sensory vision worksheet the four step process we have just outlined takes you on another emotional journey that gets progressively richer clearer

and more potent you start with a specific statement of what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it then you gather inspirational photographs of others who have achieved what you want to achieve you imagine and list the rewards and benefits you'll experience as a result of achieving your goal and finally you bring these three steps together into an imaginary scenario rich in sight sound touch taste smell and emotion this scenario is your vision it is the driving force behind all of your thinking and activity the more intense and more detailed your vision

is the more emotional power it will pack the more often you conjure up your vision the more drive and sustaining power you'll have behind you this drive and power will in turn enable you to develop working plans working habits knowledge and skills you need to achieve your goal and it will help you to persist and persevere until it is accomplished now that you've imagined reaching your goal in all of its sensory detail you're going to have the opportunity to record it on tape don't leave out a single sensory detail the richer your description the more

powerfully it will affect your ability to keep striving to reach your goal day after day week after week month after month use as much enthusiasm as you can during your description you should be enjoying yourself after all it's your vision of success you're describing after you've finished recording play back your description and listen to it carefully did you falter in places were there things you couldn't describe fully did it sound as if you didn't quite believe what you were saying if the first version of your story doesn't satisfy you erase it and create another one

do this over and over until you have a version that completely satisfies you it should be highly detailed and utterly convincing and if along your path to achievement you find your goal changing shape or form just record a new version that better fits your new goal you're now going to learn to use this recording as part of a five-step daily plan for internalizing your vision and making it so much a part of you that it will drive you to plan to work to achieve to persist your first step will begin early in the morning soon

after you wake up the first thing you're going to do before going about your daily business is to review your statement of purpose your sensory goal statement your photographs of achievement and your list of rewards for achieving your goal this is not just to remind you of why you're striving for success it's to remind you of exactly why you need to succeed your statement of purpose your list of rewards your photographs all speak of your deep need for achievement and the ways in which it will satisfy you and enrich your life this is what you

need to awaken in yourself a new every single morning after you've reviewed those materials your second step is to listen to your recording of your sensory goal description the sound of your own voice filled with enthusiasm describing the joy and pride you feel in achieving your goal will light a fire inside you that will give you the energy and stamina to persist in your efforts to reach success every single day and during the day as part of step three you must take a few moments out from whatever you're doing close your eyes and imagine your

sensory goal in all its richness and brilliance recall the touch taste smell sight and feel of success relive your emotional reactions to it keep the obsession to achieve burning in you all the time by remembering this vision as often during the day as possible for step four at night you must mentally review all the events that occurred during the day did you have new experiences that could help you fuel your vision and make it richer and clearer make another recording that reflects your new thoughts and feelings step five consists of listening once more to your

sensory goal description before going to bed and as you're falling asleep play your sensory rich scenario of achievement over and over again in your head this five step plan will refuel and reinforce your motivation for achievement and it will help to give you daily feedback on how well you're progressing toward your goal but remember there will be setbacks and mistakes along the way and there will be readjustments in your thinking and planning about what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it you'll find yourself adjusting your course just as you adjust your

steering wheel while driving on a winding road this is to be expected because there is no effortless path to achievement for this reason we suggest you record your vision over again at least every two weeks that way it can keep pace with your daily experiences and changes in outlook you've come a long way in this session you've turned a general statement of purpose into a specific statement of what goal you want to achieve you've put an achievement date on that goal you've gathered pictures of it and you've learned to turn it into a living breathing

vision of success that evokes the kind of strong emotions you need to sustain a long hard effort of achievement now is the time to record your vision take your time and do it as many times as necessary until you are satisfied with the results remember you're going to be listening to it twice a day so it needs to be rich and rewarding you may find you need several tries before you successfully record a vision that satisfies you in its richness of detail and intensity of emotion do as many versions as you need until you get

the one that sounds just right if your goal changes record a new version if you've reached your goal and want to pursue another create a new vision and record it remember include all the details and be as enthusiastic as possible now begin your own narration of what it would look taste touch smell sound and feel like to achieve your goal what you can do or dream you can do begin it boldness has genius power and magic in it these immortal words written by the great german philosopher and dramatist johann wolfgang von guerta perfectly set the

stage for what you're going to learn in this session here we're going to help you turn the vision of what you want to achieve into an action plan in gerta's words to boldly begin your dream you already have the vision you believe in it and in your potential to achieve it now we're going to work on a practical step-by-step process through which your vision can be brought to life for as former united states president theodore roosevelt said dreams are a dime a dozen everybody's got dreams it's their execution that counts planning is the logical mapping

out of where you want to go and how you want to get there seneca the roman philosopher captured the importance of planning when he said when a man does not know what harbor he is heading for no wind is the right one planning helps you focus your direction and organize both your time and resources every moment spent in planning saves three or four in execution in this session you're going to learn a simple yet powerfully effective system of planning of organizing any goal you want to achieve into logical easy to visualize steps this system is

applicable to any type of task or project from building a deck to getting a medical degree it will help you to make short or long range plans organize your resources create schedules to meet necessary deadlines and improve your decision-making skills it will also improve the quality of your work while following this plan you'll experience an increase in self-confidence and pride as you realize that you are on your way to becoming a self-disciplined achiever every small task in your plan that you accomplish will be living proof that you are one step closer to your goal and

as you take each step your faith in your ability to accomplish your goal will be reinforced and expanded in approaching the creation of a plan it is important to keep the following basic facts in mind first planning is a way to look at both the whole picture and parts that make up the hole it is a way to organize those parts in a logical and sequential way one step should lead to another more than that each step you take should make the next step possible like adding links to a chain to make a fence we've

introduced you to the concept of macro and micro achievements the whole picture is your macro achievement the steps you must take to achieve your macro achievement are micro achievements if you want to build a house a macro achievement you must start by leveling the site and digging a foundation only after those steps have been accomplished can you go on to pouring the foundation putting up the framing putting in electricity and plumbing finishing the walls installing the roof and so on the second fact to keep in mind is that ideas take time to implement i won't

dwell at length on the subject of time now since we're going to devote all of session eight to time but i'd like to tell you a short story about a micronesian island leader named peolug that illustrates the kind of time and patience it takes to achieve excellence fifty-year-old piolug is the most respected and powerful man in his community because he's a navigator his grandfather had told him if you learn navigation you will have a name you will eat the navigator's food at sea you will have more power than a chief peolug began learning navigation at

the age of five using shells and pieces of coral on sand his grandfather created models of the constellations to teach him how to chart distance and direction pilot learned that at the right time of year he could simply point the bow of his canoe at the rising star to steer his course but since the stars rise four minutes earlier each evening the rising star changes position every day so pioluk also had to learn the positions of the multitude of lesser stars it took him 45 years to learn every movement of every major and minor star

and constellation in the nighttime sky but having taken the time to learn the look now enjoys the respect admiration and status in his community that comes with being a navigator like peolug you must recognize that it will take time to achieve your goal weeks months or years like peolug you must develop patience in learning the steps that lead to your goal with time and patience on your side you'll be assured of realizing your ambition and like peer log you'll achieve the respect that comes with final accomplishment a third fact to remember in creating a plan

of action is that ideas take concentrated work to come to fruition too many people like to think that managing a project means that others do the detail work they can simply spin out ideas like sparks from a child's pinwheel toy leaving others to tend the fire if you leave others to tend the fire don't blame them if the house burns down admiral hyman rickover spent over 40 years building america's nuclear submarine fleet rickover himself supervised the research design construction and operation of the mighty underwater craft his reputation as an excellent manager who always got results

was only equaled by his talent for engineering upon rickover's retirement he explained his philosophy of management to an interviewer the man in charge rickover said must concern himself with details if he does not consider them important neither will his subordinates yet the devil is in the details it is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters in my work i probably spend 99 of my time on what others may call petty details most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters but when details are ignored the project fails no infusion of policy or

lofty ideals can correct the situation three basic elements to keep in mind then when creating an action plan they include looking at the whole picture taking time to complete each step before you go on to the next and paying attention to details a fourth point to remember is planning and the implementation of a plan is a trial and error process you will make mistakes most of them will be unavoidable and will serve as springboards of learning and refinement when you make a mistake learn from it take corrective action to avoid making it again and get

right back on course remember supposed experts have made greater mistakes than you're going to make and have managed to turn them into creative successes take the coca-cola company's introduction of the new coke for example after spending millions of dollars on market research and more millions of dollars marketing their reformulated soft drink they were forced by public pressure to bring back the old formula they made a mistake in trying to change the taste of coke and their marketing executives admitted it but because of that mistake coke is now in a stronger marketing position than ever the

coca-cola company has brought back their old formula now sold under the name classic coke and they still have their new formula on the market which was formulated to appeal to pepsi drinkers was coke's surprise move really a mistake nobody thinks so now by correcting its mistake coke has the potential to win over an even larger share of the market than it had before this process of self-correcting behavior is what scientists call cybernetics the term may sound very space age but there's a reason for that the organizational method you're about to learn is the same one

nasa engineers used to put men on the moon in the early 1960s when former president john f kennedy ordered nasa to put a man on the moon within a decade nasa's engineers and systems designers rose to the challenge accomplishing the task by july of 1969 how did they do it they took their macro objective putting a man on the moon and broke it down into a series of micro objectives that would lead to the final great accomplishment when the project started nasa scientists and organizers immediately began preparing flow charts identifying each step they would have

to take in order to put a man on the moon first they had to build a new type of rocket then that rocket had to successfully orbit the earth for longer and longer periods of time they had to design spacesuits that would be able to protect the astronauts from the moon's atmosphere each step got them closer and closer to achieving their objective until that historic day when they got the job done you can duplicate the same process of planning simply and easily you can apply it to any job you might be called upon to handle

we call the system of planning you're going to learn in this session visual network planning visual because it helps you to look at identify and visualize each of the steps necessary to complete an objective network because each of the steps are connected together to show how they lead to your goal the instructions and examples that follow will show you how you can quickly and easily put the visual network planning system into immediate operation there will be seven steps involved first you'll write your objective second you'll break it down into major steps we call activities third

you'll organize the activities in logical order fourth you'll design a visual network fifth you'll estimate how long each activity will take to complete you'll determine what we call critical path and float and seventh and last you'll assign actual calendar dates to each activity don't worry about remembering all of these steps now we'll go over them one by one with examples to help you understand them for now as we begin our discussion of this powerful planning system you'll need to refer to your study guide and follow along as i explain each concept i'll pause here for

a few moments while you locate the page first let's discuss the four basic elements of visual network planning look at diagram 7.1 on page 36 the first element is what we call an activity box an activity is a step or task that must be completed in order to achieve a goal the name of the activity is listed in a box one activity is linked to another activity by a line with an arrow this linking of activities is the second element of a visual network plan the third element is the activities reference number each activity is

assigned a number for the purpose of identification the number is circled and located in the upper left hand corner of the activity box any number can be assigned to an activity box and the numbers you do assign don't necessarily have to follow in numerical order activity number twenty three can follow activity number fifteen the fourth basic element of a visual network plan is what we call duration each activity takes a certain amount of time to complete that amount of time is called its duration duration is listed at the bottom right hand corner of the activity

box it can be represented in minutes hours days weeks months or years now let's use these elements to build a simple network a group of linked activities that lead to a goal refer to diagram 7.2 on page 36 this diagram assumes that you have some hard winter wheat and a wheat grinder and you want to make some fresh hot whole wheat cereal how would you develop a simple visual network plan to illustrate all of the steps you must take to end up with a bowl of piping hot cereal your first step would be to get

a piece of paper and pencil and list your objective on the top in this case it would read something like cook whole wheat cereal from scratch your second step would then be to break your objective down into its major steps or activities in this case there are two major activities involved the first is grinding the wheat the second is cooking the wheat third you would then put the activities into their logical order in our example the wheat must be ground before it can be cooked and fourth you would construct a visual network plan in which

the two steps are placed in activity boxes with reference numbers durations and linked arrows we have already developed the visual network plan for this objective in diagram seven point two as you can see activity number two is grinding the wheat activity number four is cooking the wheat when activity number two has been completed having taken two minutes activity number four is ready to begin activity number four takes seven minutes reaching your goal of making a bowl of fresh hot whole wheat cereal takes a total of nine minutes this simple visual network plan shows you how

many activities you need to complete before your goal can be accomplished in this case two and how long each activity will take in this case two minutes and seven minutes the example is very elementary if you look at diagram seven point three on page thirty seven you'll see a slightly more complex visual network plan in this case our goal has two activities that are dependent upon the completion of one activity here our goal is to get both a car and a motorcycle out of a garage neither can be accomplished without opening up the garage door

notice also that activity 5 labeled getting the car out of the garage is independent of activity 7 labeled getting the motorcycle out of the garage both activities five and seven can be accomplished at the same time providing you have someone to drive each vehicle and providing the door is open first in this example note that five of the seven steps of visual network planning have been completed one the objective has been written two the major steps of the project have been identified three the steps have been put into a logical order four they have been

organized into a visual network five each activity has been assigned a time estimate for completion now let's examine step six the concepts of critical path and float to help you follow along in our explanation turn to page 38 of your study guide and look at diagram 7.4 titled critical path and float as you can see we've expanded our visual network plan for cooking cereal to one for cooking and eating cereal the new objective is to prepare and eat freshly ground whole wheat cereal in 15 minutes look at the visual network plan you now have three

separate paths that come out of activity three grinding wheat going from the top down the first path is made up of activities three five and eleven the middle path is composed of activities three nine and eleven the bottom path includes activities three seven and eleven look at the three paths individually and total up the amount of time each will take the middle path will take a total of fourteen minutes to complete the top path takes only eight minutes the bottom path takes nine minutes look at your objective again your goal is to cook and eat

the cereal within 15 minutes if you are to complete your objective on time the activities on the longest path must all be completed on schedule the longest path on a visual network plan is known as the critical path the activities on the critical path are called critical activities and are vital to the success of the project the non-critical activities those not on the critical path can be delayed without affecting the result these activities have what is called float float is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without affecting the completion of the project

in diagram 7.1 grinding the wheat cooking the wheat and eating the cereal take the longest amount of time and are thus on the critical path getting the balls and milk can be delayed without affecting the schedule therefore they both have float diagram 7.5 on page 39 is the visual network plan we use here at cyber vision systems to develop our programs study the plan and try to determine the critical path which activities take the longest amount of time to complete as you can see activities 11 13 and 15 are on the critical path activities 17

and 19 and 21 and 23 which take a total of 10 weeks to complete have six weeks of float because of the amount of time it takes to complete the critical path these activities can be delayed for six weeks without affecting the schedule on the other hand if any of the activities on the critical path are delayed the whole project will be late identifying the critical path of your project enables you to gain control by knowing what your priorities are you can then concentrate your efforts on getting those priority items done letting the others float

until you have time to take care of them too the seventh step in developing a visual network plan is to assign calendar dates to each of the activity boxes once you're ready to commit your project to firm starting times you must insert completion dates for all activities along the critical path for example if we were to begin our audio program development on january 5th and the first activity on the critical path developing a program idea has a duration of one week then the activity box showing the completion of this task would have a target date

of january twelfth that date and all others on the critical path must be met in order for the project to be completed on time a delay in finishing a critical path activity will result in the delay of the project but critical path dates have another function besides keeping your project moving on time these target dates also serve as guides for the float events that lead to your goal you can position your float activities to coincide with your critical target dates in such a way as to complete them when it's best or easiest for you to

work on them these activities can be worked into your schedule because they can be delayed until it's most convenient for you to do them visual network planning works for macro goals and for micro goals you can create one visual network plan for a macro goal such as becoming a doctor and create another visual network plan for getting through medical school in diagram 7.6 on page 40 of your study guide we've outlined a simple visual network plan for someone with a macro goal becoming a neurologist each of the activities listed on this plan which takes a

total of fifteen years of post high school study can be turned into a micro network plan of its own any project that has a beginning and an end will benefit from visual network planning before embarking on your plan for accomplishing your macro goal we suggest you try this organizational method out on something smaller so you can see the results in a matter of a few hours or a few days apply it to a project or on the house that you've been putting off for weeks pruning your trees or repainting several rooms this will give you

a chance to get used to organizing your activities in a logical and systematic way in using this plan you learn the meaning of hard work and patience you'll find yourself tempted to skip certain steps and leap ahead to something you feel like doing right away but when you do go off your schedule your project won't be completed in time and you'll begin to see how important it is to stick to dates and schedules if you want to realize any goal using this plan will also reward you with a sense of self-disciplined accomplishment as you complete

each task on your path to success you can mark it off on your chart and be proud that you've done it you'll also be able to look at your chart at various times during your project and see how far you've come before we go on to complete this planning session on cassette side 10 i'd like to say a final word about the planning system you've just learned no one can be totally certain about the outcome of a string of planned events mistakes unforeseen problems and outside events over which you have no control can and will

contribute to the changing of your plans your visual network plan is not carved in granite it's a living working system that must change to accommodate the changes in your life you may underestimate the amount of time it will take you to complete an activity you'll know better the next time you may find that you don't need to perform a certain activity at all giving you some breathing room in your schedule the objective of this plan is not to give you a rigid yardstick against which to measure your success or failure rather it is to give

you a logical working system for achieving your goal in creating your visual network plan do your best to be as accurate as possible about dates and durations of activities but remember that things may go wrong and you may have to change those dates this is not an excuse to quit it is a good reason to keep sticking to your plan for without it you have little chance of achieving your goal at all remember to successfully realize your purpose you must have the courage to take risks the courage to fail and the courage to learn from

your failures visual network planning is a road map that points out your destination and suggests a way to get there but it doesn't tell you how to take the trip it's up to you on the next side of this tape you'll take the exciting step of developing your own visual network plan and you'll write your own story of achievement in a way that brings home the power and reward of final success now that you've been introduced to the guidelines of effective planning you're ready to turn your own purpose and vision into macro and micro plans

as you do keep in mind the following suggestions first the instructions on how to develop a visual network plan are guidelines only and not a rigid set of rules use the principles we've discussed as a guide to meet your own specific needs second take the time to work at converting your goal into a visual network plan you'll probably need to come up with a number of rough versions before you arrive at your finalized plan don't get frustrated the very active planning will force you to think logically and use your creativity more importantly your vision will

go from the abstract to the concrete a step most people aren't able to take or don't know how to take in developing your personalized visual network plan you'll find that this system will become one of the most valuable tools you'll ever use so study it thoroughly familiarize yourself with the steps get to work and be patient after you have developed your first visual network plan there's an exercise i want you to complete take your plan and put it in front of you study what you've written for a few minutes you have a stated objective a

list of activities and a time frame that's all it takes to tell a story so i'm going to ask you to tell the story of the achievement of your own goal only you're going to tell the story in the past tense as if your goal has already been achieved in your story pay attention to details how long did it take to reach your goal what did each step along the way feel like did you have to reevaluate your goal in the process of achieving it what did you discover about yourself along the way that led

to the successful achievement of your ambition keep your story simple pretend you're talking to a friend be enthusiastic be proud give your friend a step-by-step description of just how you did it first i did this then i did that and this happened along the way so here's how i took care of it and so on now you're going to tell your story on tape to describe your success in sensory rich detail with all the enthusiasm you can muster as if it finally really happened when you're done you'll have a record of your success that you

can refer to again and again for inspiration when you play your story back for the first time listen very carefully to your descriptions did you falter in places was there a lack of conviction in your voice in certain areas did you hesitate as though to tell yourself you really didn't believe that success was yours or were you self-assured and utterly convincing if the first version of your story doesn't satisfy you erase it and create another one do this over and over until you have a version that completely satisfies you with its richness of vision and

inner strength when you achieve your goal you can use this same method of storytelling in pursuing another one always make sure that your story rings true and offers real inspiration to you when you hear it remember don't be afraid to brag and relive the success you've already accomplished in your imagination you've already taken an important step in mastering the science of self-discipline by learning how to turn your most important goals into step-by-step plans for achievement now comes the time to roll up your sleeves and learn how to put these plans into action this is an

exciting moment for you and a turning point in your quest for success up until now you learned how to prepare for achievement now you're going to learn how to actually tackle the hard efficient work that is the bread and butter of achievement itself notice we said hard efficient work not just hard work hard work alone doesn't guarantee success in fact many unfortunate people spend a great deal of time working very hard and never get anywhere in spite of it making intelligent and efficient use of your time is of paramount importance in achieving your goal especially

when that goal may take years to achieve in this session you're going to learn how to manage your time and effort so efficiently that you won't waste one valuable moment in your journey to achievement you'll learn how to find time in an already busy schedule to work on the micro tasks that make up the stepping stones to your macro purpose you'll find out why what we call seasoning a special way of looking at time is so critically vital to your success you learn how to actually quicken time make hours seem like minutes weeks seem like

days and years seem like months and you learn once and for all how to develop the do it now habit allowing you to permanently overcome the world's number one cause of failure procrastination by the time you finish this session and complete the corresponding exercises in your study guide you'll be equipped with a new attitude towards time and achievement and you'll be ready to begin systematically putting your step-by-step plans into purposeful disciplined action let's now begin exploring the fascinating principles of using and managing time that can make the difference between success and failure to begin at

the beginning let's talk a little bit about the relationship between time itself and achievement we all know that it takes time to accomplish something depending on what you'd like to accomplish it may take a little bit of time or a great deal of time the same goal can also sometimes be achieved in less time or more time depending on how good a job you want to do in achieving it think about any small task you might be confronted with around the house let's say one of your doors is stuck and needs planing in order for

it to open and close easily there are lots of ways you could accomplish that task and lots of shortcuts you could take but in order to do a really good job you know you should measure the door and doorway opening figure out how much wood you need to remove take the door off the hinges and mount it on a sawhorse and plane it down until it reaches the right size this approach may take longer than some others you can think of but it's the best way to achieve your goal and when the job is done

properly you know that door will never get stuck again the person who takes the time to do the job right is the epitome of the self-disciplined achiever someone who has learned not to worry about time but use it to its full potential to achieve a goal in the best way possible none of your goals are going to be as simple as this one to accomplish but the principle remains the same to achieve with excellence you're going to need a long period of time in which to allow your knowledge and skills to mature and grow this

is the concept of time that we call seasoning seasoning is a law of nature all things take time to come to fruition people in their impatience to get what they want without going through this growing process often end up stunting their own personal growth and making true success impossible shortcuts only lead to mediocrity and failure scientists philosophers artists and statesmen have always recognized the importance of seasoning in accomplishing any goal when asked by an impatient student how long it would take to become a master teacher the roman philosopher epictetus replied nothing comes into being all

at once not even the grape or the fig if you say to me now i want a fig i shall answer that requires time let the tree first bring forth tender blossoms let the blossoms endure the weathering of the sun wind and rain let the tree then put forth its fruit and finally let the fruit ripen cyber vision founder steve devore recalls learning about seasoning the hard way when i was five years old he said i planted a garden in my backyard because i didn't understand how seeds grew i would go out and dig them

up every day to see if they'd sprouted yet i hardly watered them and i didn't weed them regularly as i should have because i was so impatient and neglectful my plants never got the chance to grow properly and when harvest time came my vegetables were pitifully small and undeveloped i had a friend next door a slightly older boy who understood the principles of gardening he let his plants grow and ripen in their own time helping them along with regular watering fertilizing and weeding he enjoyed a bountiful harvest that summer and i learned a lesson about

patience and self-discipline all great achievers not only understand the concept of seasoning but they value it greatly they know that success cannot be hurried they know that to try to hurry it is to ruin it they understand that every step along the road to achievement is a necessary one and a small achievement in itself and they also know that getting there can and should be half the fun self-disciplined achievers are willing to pay the price of time to realize their ambitions they are not intimidated by the thought of having to work and study for five

ten even fifteen years their commitment to a goal is absolute and their vision of success is unwavering the self-disciplined achiever knows that if what he wants will take five years to achieve the five-year effort will be worth it he knows that those five years are going to pass anyway and he has a choice about whether to spend them preparing for success or wasting the time thinking and dreaming about what he'd really like to do for the self-disciplined achiever there is no choice he'll gladly spend those five years working and studying to achieve his goal the

several years seem like a long time to you think how fast the last five years of your life have gone by what did you do during that time to make achievement possible if you had been working steadily towards your goal all that time you could have achieved it by now let's say you're 34 years old and your dream is to become an architect you know it will take you six years of schooling and apprenticeship before you can get a good job with a respected architectural firm but that means you'll be forty years old by the

time you reach your goal and you feel you just can't wait that long stop and think you're going to be forty years old in six years whether you study architecture or not and if you choose not to study it now in six years you'll be in the exact same position wanting to be an architect and knowing it will take you six years to get there only by then you'll have to work until you're 46 to achieve your goal you can get there in six years by starting now or you can choose to give up hope

of ever getting there at all if you really want to achieve your goal six years won't seem like such a long time as you'll find out later in this session to the self-disciplined achiever the six years will go by very fast impatient people want things to happen overnight in the words of french philosopher blaise pascal they anticipate the future as too slow and coming and in being unwilling to devote hours of time to the kind of seasoning it takes to become accomplished at anything they waste their lives by doing nothing at all and they wonder

why they always feel so unfulfilled how many youngsters have you known who came home from a rock concert determined to learn to play the guitar it looked easy when the group on stage was playing so the youngster goes out and buys a guitar and takes his first few lessons and all of a sudden it becomes apparent that it's not easy it's going to take years of hard work and effort to learn to play really well so the youngster loses interest and gives up bored with a tedium of practicing scales for hours yet the professional musicians

he's watched have put in years of practice to get where they are and where the youngster would like to be the great artist pablo picasso was once approached by an admiring woman in a restaurant having recognized him she asked him to draw something anything on a napkin for her she told him she'd pay him whatever he thought was fair if only he would provide her with this impromptu work of art picasso agreed and spent five minutes drawing a picture on the napkin when he was finished the woman picked the napkin up in delight how much

did he want for the picture she asked calmly picasso replied ten thousand dollars dumbfounded the woman began to argue with him that a picture drawn on a napkin in five minutes couldn't possibly be worth that much but picasso just smiled and said madame it may have only taken me five minutes to draw the picture but it took me 40 years to learn how to draw it forty years does that seem like an interminable amount of time to a master artist seeking the ultimate expression of his talent a great scientist seeking a cure for disease or

an ambitious businessman trying to turn a small company into a fortune 500 corporation forty years can seem to fly by overnight to the dedicated self-disciplined achiever time is nourishment for what he wants to accomplish and that time is well spent taking step after step in a continuous effort to achieve a specific goal the achiever does not get sidetracked every day he concentrates on the micro tasks that make up his macro purpose and each completed microtask becomes a source of pleasure and a reward in itself top newscaster eric severide achieved his macro purpose by actually ignoring

it instead he concentrated on the micro purposes that would help him accomplish his goal severide tells the story in his own words once when i relinquished my job and income to undertake a book of a quarter of a million words i could not bear to let my mind dwell on the whole scope of the project i would have surely abandoned what has become my deepest source of professional pride i tried to think only of the next paragraph not the next page and certainly not the next chapter thus for six months i never did anything but

set down one paragraph after another the book wrote itself years ago i took on a daily writing and broadcasting chore that has totaled now more than two thousand scripts had i been asked at the time to sign a contract to write two thousand scripts i would have refused in despair at the enormousness of such an undertaking but i was only asked to write one the next one and that is all i have ever done you can learn to work in micro tasks by following your step-by-step plan for success and concentrating only on each step at

a time but you cannot learn seasoning as if it were a skill seasoning is an attitude that must be adopted and made part of your mental framework if you are able to achieve your lifelong purpose it is crucial to self-discipline more than that it is actually at the heart of self-discipline besides seasoning the self-disciplined achiever experiences something we call time quickening time quickening does not mean taking shortcuts as you might first guess rather it represents what happens to your perception of time as you become involved in the pursuit of your goal time quickening is an

almost magical experience where time seems to disappear and you know you're in complete control of what you're doing when it happens you feel energetic concentrated and completely absorbed in your task we've all experienced time quickening when we're doing something we particularly enjoy for you it may have happened while you were reading an exciting murder mystery watching an action-filled movie playing a game of tennis or even weeding a garden time quickening takes place whenever you find yourself completely engrossed in something to the point where nothing can distract you the moments fly by so quickly you're just

not aware of them past and future seem to disappear leaving only you and the task you're engaged in and after what only seems like minutes you look up and notice in shock that a great deal of time has passed dreams are a reverse example of this phenomenon although you may often wake up feeling as if you've been dreaming a particular dream for hours the whole thing is actually taking place in just a minute or two the human mind has the amazing ability to alter our own perception of time once you learn to use this ability

to your advantage you will no longer be discouraged at the thought of having to spend so much time pursuing your goal scientific research has shown us how to trigger the experience of time quickening you can actually learn to consciously create the sensation that time has stopped you can do it by becoming single-mindedly and uninterruptedly involved in an activity for a significant period of time [Music] time quickening occurs when you surrender your attention and your senses to something outside of yourself there are six steps you can and must take to experience the benefits of time quickening

listen to them carefully and then try to recreate them first with lesser tasks that may or may not be related to your goal then with your actual micro purposes first create or find a working environment that is free of distractions and potential diversions second focus on doing one task at a time and stick with it until it is completed third surrender yourself to the task at hand work hard and work well and don't stop working until you have finished as much or more of the task as you started out to do fourth plan to work

uninterruptedly for a significant span of time several hours if possible fifth don't watch the clock as you work and don't continually compare how much you've accomplished against how much you still have to do sixth and last stop working when your thinking becomes muddled due to fatigue the first few times you try using these six steps you may have a hard time following them all but the more you practice the easier it will get and soon you'll notice that time seems to be flying by quicker and quicker every time you sit down to work time quickening

makes work enjoyable and helps prevent the normal wear and tear of work on your mind and your nerves it is the antidote to burnout and the key to maintaining a healthy emotional balance during long hours of effort time quickening will enable you to successfully complete the string of microtasks that over an extended period of time will take you closer and closer to the completion of your macro goal and if your goal is years away time quickening will make it seem to all happen so quickly that the illusion of overnight success will almost seem as if

it's coming true using time quickening to follow a step-by-step plan for reaching a goal is one way to make that goal appear closer than it really is but time quickening won't do you any good if you find you can't even get started on your micro tasks for most people the biggest enemy of success is procrastination postponing doing the work you know you must do in order to accomplish your ambitions like most people you may think procrastination is relatively harmless a trivial problem that you don't really need to worry about but there's nothing trivial about a

habit that is the cancer of self-discipline procrastination is an achievement killer and unfortunately the more often you succumb to it the more habitual it gets and the harder it is to deal with procrastination is a serious deterrent to self-discipline and it takes a serious effort to overcome it in the next part of this session we're going to explore some common reasons for procrastination and the most effective ways of overcoming the would-be achievers most self-defeating habit psychological research tells us that chronic procrastinators fall into three groups the first group fears failure the second group fears success

and the third group uses procrastination as a way of rebelling against authority let's examine each of these groups to see how they turn their own psychological problems into reasons for procrastination the first type of procrastinator may actually already be a successful business person or professional but he or she is successful only up to a point these people set such high standards for themselves that they live in constant fear of not being able to meet those standards they their own efforts to succeed by working at less than their capacity so they are never really challenged and

therefore never will fail people who are successful early in life usually in school or in an athletic career often turn into this type of procrastinator take sarah for example a city planner who graduated at the top of her class from stanford university soon after graduation sarah joined the planning director's office in a major west coast city one of her duties is to generate reports for her boss to use in making important presentations sarah has begun putting off doing the reports until the last minute once she collects the material in time she finds that she dawdles

with the writing process until the night before or sometimes even the morning of the presentation she then rushes through the writing and ends up turning out an adequate but far from superlative report what sarah manages to do in each case is avoid testing herself to the maximum she is not certain whether she can live up to the high promise of her success in school by putting off her work to the last minute she doesn't have to find out the truth about her abilities because of course at the last minute nobody could be expected to turn

out a perfect report in the course of this kind of procrastination sarah has picked up a new skill called brinksmanship she flirts with catastrophe by not doing her work in time then pulls herself out of the brink at the last minute if her performance doesn't measure up she can always blame lack of time for failure when her performance is good she can applaud her ability to come through in the clutch all that sarah is proving is that she can do an adequate job at the last minute the real test what she do with the report

if she took the time to work on it has never been faced the second group of procrastinators are afraid of the very thing most people are striving for success some of these people are simply afraid to stand out from the crowd they don't want to be seen as different many are afraid that if they are too successful they will outgrow marriage partners families or friends these people limit their own performance actually holding themselves back because they fear the kind of change success may bring to their lives the third group of procrastinators is constantly rebelling against

authority these are the people who put off doing their work because it gives them a feeling of control over their boss rebellious procrastinators spend their lives reacting to a fear of being controlled or dominated whenever something is expected of them they react by procrastinating just to prove that they are the ones in power if you're a procrastinator you probably fall into one of these three groups or you may find you have a little bit of each type of procrastinator in you understanding the reason for your procrastination is your first step towards overcoming it it's especially

important for you to realize how self-destructive and self-defeating procrastination is whether you're rebelling against someone or responding to an inner fear procrastination will eventually hurt you in everything you try to do there are a number of techniques you can use to help overcome the habit of procrastination and replace it with energetic efficient inspired action william james the great harvard university psychologist and philosopher who already taught us in session five the value of acting as if we are what we want to be has a very practical solution to procrastination james suggests do something every day for

no other reason than you would rather not do it at all listen again do something every day for no other reason then you would rather not do it at all what james is really telling you to do is to replace the habit of procrastination with the habit of action as soon as you catch yourself thinking well i won't do that now i'll do it later you must immediately do whatever it is you're procrastinating about self-disciplined achievers also use two special time management techniques to overcome the tendency to procrastinate the first is called swiss cheesing the

second is called unscheduling swiss cheesing is another term for dividing a macro purpose into a series of micro tasks the management consultant who invented the term conceived of it as a way of poking holes in a large task to make many smaller tasks if you have a task that will take two hours swiss cheesing it creates eight fifteen minute segments or four thirty minute segments or however many smaller segments you need to get the task done [Music] breaking a macro purpose down into micro tasks makes it seem much less formidable in fact this one step

at a time approach is the only way to achieve a major goal without losing sight of what you want to achieve you should never go around thinking about the enormity of your major purpose you must concentrate only on achieving one small step at a time unscheduling also helps you to overcome procrastination and get on with your project in the most efficient way possible sometimes you know you're going to need so much time to complete a task that you won't even start it you rationalize that you'll never find the time to finish it anyway but often

people overestimate how much time it really will take them to do something and they don't realize that by swiss cheesing they can find the time to do it in an otherwise busy schedule turn to page 45 of your study guide and look at form 8.1 you'll see a chart with the days of the week listed along the top row and the hours in a day listed vertically along the left side there are seven days listed and sixteen hours per day the chart presumes that you get up at six o'clock in the morning and retire at

ten pm but you can easily change the numbers to correspond to your own daily hours it's often a shock to look at a chart like this and realize how many hours you actually have available to you in a one week period of course many of those hours are taken up with the necessities of everyday life your first task in this exercise is to fill in all those hours that are occupied with travel meals work meetings regular recreational activities and other commitments only fill in the time that absolutely must be devoted to activity if you regularly

watch television or read magazines for three hours every night that doesn't qualify as a life necessity unless it's part of your job to do so when you've finished look at the boxes you haven't filled in these represent your free time time you have full control over and can devote to your own micro projects you may be amazed to find that you easily have twenty or thirty hours per week of free time to devote to your project and if you include time that spent commuting on a bus or train the hours may add up to considerably

more than that once you've ascertained when and where your free time occurs you can begin allocating that time to your micro projects when the hour arrives to start working remember william james advice and do it now work uninterruptedly during that time taking scheduled breaks only as necessary and don't allow yourself to get sidetracked working uninterruptedly means learning to say no when people try to take you away from your work if a friend calls up and asks you to go bowling while you're working you must learn to refuse make a date to go some other night

but complete your working hours in the time you've allotted to them let your family know that you're serious about completing your tasks schedule time to enjoy being with them and let them know that when you're working you are not to be interrupted after successfully completing each work session fill in the blank hours on your chart with a special colored pen or pencil choose a name for your project and fill in the blanks with that name it will soon become extremely rewarding for you to look at the chart and see the red or green boxes begin

to take up considerable space on the page more rewarding you'll begin to see real progress in your effort to complete your micro tasks as you learn to devote uninterrupted time to your work you'll find the time quickening experience begin to occur more and more often and you'll be less and less inclined to procrastinate soon your micro projects will become as much a part of your life as eating and sleeping and an excitement will take hold as you begin to realize that yes you are working steadily toward your goal and not only can you really do

it you are really doing it be careful not to over commit yourself in terms of time spent on your project your goal is not to exhaust yourself and be aware of trying to go in too many directions at once that can cause the kind of anxiety that will make you want to give up before you even get started concentrate on accomplishing one task at a time that task will get done and then you can start on the next which will also get done and so on keep in mind through all of this that your objective

is not to punish yourself with work in every free hour you have during the week working towards a macro goal by accomplishing micro tasks should not be an unpleasant experience by creating a healthy balance between work and recreation you'll find yourself looking forward to those hours when you can devote yourself to pursuing the goal that will make life truly worthwhile for you you'll reach a point where you wouldn't trade those hours for anything in the world you've come a long way in this session you've learned how to overcome the tendency to procrastinate how to experience

time quickening and how to learn to value seasoning as inevitable in reaching any goal we'd like to make one more suggestion to you before ending this session put up a sign at your desk table or other workspace assign in big bold letters that you can see every time you look up this sign should say use time or lose time let it serve as a constant reminder that time marches on whether you're working toward your goal or not and every minute that you are devoting to your micro projects is bringing you just a little bit closer

to achieving your life's ambition in the next session you'll find out how self-disciplined achievers master the skills and knowledge they need to make their vision a reality and you learn to broaden your own new field of knowledge by overcoming your learning blocks and harnessing your built-in powers of intelligence and discipline in this session we're going to talk about how you can identify and learn the knowledge and skills you need to master in order to achieve your vision and purpose as we've repeated throughout this neuropsychology of self-discipline program any goal worth achieving takes preparation and careful

patient work as easy as running is as natural as it seems you wouldn't go out today and run a marathon without months of preparation slowly working up to three miles a day then seven then ten then fifteen gradually working toward the twenty six mile goal you would start marathon conditioning with a careful program of nutrition stretching exercises reading talking to other runners and even a doctor's checkup you determine what knowledge and skills you'd need to accomplish your goal of 26 miles and you'd accumulate the knowledge and skills step by step until your goal was achieved

the goal of this session is to help you learn how to learn many of us were programmed years ago with the belief that there are certain things we just cannot learn we were tracked in school into one path or another because of test results which told us we had no aptitude for a particular subject area or by teachers or counselors who believed we were best suited for one discipline over another in some cases the stereotype was as blatant as girls take home economics boys take shop in other cases the grounds for tracking could have been

racial or economic or some other person's perception of our intelligence in a now famous psychological study new teachers in an elementary school were told that certain students in their classes were gifted and certain others were slow in truth there was no measurable difference in the student performance up till that time but by the end of the following semester the students labeled gifted were doing work above grade level while the slow students were performing below the only thing which had changed was the teacher's attitudes toward the children much of our response to learning has been based

on what we've been told about our ability to learn in this session you'll learn how to break through the learning barrier and clear away the mental blocks that have you falsely entrapped in the belief that you can't learn certain difficult subject matter and skills you'll learn how to learn all over again this time recognizing that your potential is as unlimited as your imagination you like other self-disciplined achievers will know how and when to acquire the essential knowledge and skills that will enable you to achieve your goals in our research into human achievement we found that

the world's most persistent and successful people had developed a four-step approach to learning that ensured they would successfully acquire the knowledge they need to achieve their goals the process is a simple one listen carefully as we go over its basic components first they're able to determine what new skills and knowledge they must learn in order to achieve their goals second they call into play their belief in their ability to learn they believe they can learn any subject or skill no matter how difficult it might be third they're patient they understand that acquiring new knowledge and

skills is often a slow step-by-step process that requires systematic trial and effort no matter how young or how old the learner must go through the same progression of acquiring knowledge and skills and fourth they develop their own effective personalized system for learning a simple learning formula they can apply to any subject matter to efficiently and thoroughly master goal relevant knowledge and skills let's delve into each of these steps in turn to see how they can be applied to your own learning efforts the first step of a learning program to acquire a new skill can be

approached much like the planning work we dealt with in session seven you can design a similar flow chart with an activity box labeled start in a box labeled finish the intermediate steps are of course other activity boxes activities which must take place at the same time must appear one above the other the activities that follow each other in chronological order are listed from left to right the activity that comes first is to the left of the activity on the right any research you have to do consultations you have to make background materials you have to

accumulate all are entered on your flow chart in the proper activity boxes let's assume for a moment you're just about to begin your first year of college your ambition is to become a neurologist you know that to get into medical school you have to excel in college pre-medicine the thought of taking four years of math chemistry and biology seems pretty intimidating and becomes even more intimidating when you realize that you have to have almost a straight a average in those subjects to be even considered for medical school admission the intimidation would quickly go away if

you could develop a four-year visual network plan that outlines specifically what you had to learn and in what order you would have to learn it year by year then upon viewing the completed network plan look at it and develop the deep inner belief that you have it in yourself to master each of the subject matter areas let's work through a visual network plan for successfully completing college pre-med granted most of you listening to this program won't want to become medical doctors but this example is applicable to any situation in which new knowledge and skills must

be learned turn to diagram 9.1 on pages 48 and 49 of your study guide i'll pause a few moments while you find diagram 9.1 as you can see there are three visual network plans the first one outlines the chronological steps to becoming a neurologist we call this a macro plan with the objective of becoming a neurologist below that is the micro plan with the objective to graduate in pre-medicine in four years with a minimum 3.5 grade point average the micro plan is broken down into two levels the first level is visually represented in two steps

the start labeled number one and graduate with a bachelor of science in pre-med labeled number three this first level has actually been extracted directly from the macro plan now look at page forty nine and the level two diagram as you can see level two is an expanded version of level one through the study of the college course catalog and after talking at length with college advisors you have identified the pre-med requirements and have broken them down into a prerequisite chronological order this visual network plan then serves as the step-by-step map for completing your pre-med program

the first step in your macro objective of becoming a neurologist as you look at the visual network plan for completing pre-med what type of emotions do you experience do you feel intimidated at the prospect of excelling in the hard sciences do you doubt your ability to learn such difficult subjects and to learn them so well that you finish each course at the top of your class if you feel intimidated and experience doubt then you probably won't make it if you look at the plan and feel deep down inside that with enough effort study and application

you can master each of the courses then you'll probably succeed the difference you see is really not inability or intelligence rather it is an attitude your belief in yourself the belief in yourself as someone who is capable of learning is ninety percent of the learning hurdle the other ten percent is single-minded application mixed with ability the belief in yourself as someone who has the ability to learn is the second step involved in the self-disciplined achievers pursuit of goal-related knowledge and skills much of your own belief in yourself as someone who is capable of learning complex

material may have been educated right out of you in school for a variety of reasons some of which we explored at the beginning of this session one major reason for this belief is a vicious cycle people get caught up in early in their learning experience take math for example many people have learning blocks when it comes to math they feel that they just don't have the aptitude to learn complex mathematical concepts and they can prove this lack of ability to you from their grades and success in math classes what most of these people lack is

not the aptitude for math but the application of self-discipline math requires progressive learning you have to master one concept before you can go on to the next if you miss a few steps in between then it's really easy to get lost and once you get lost it's nearly impossible to catch up to stay on top in math requires a daily effort of study most people who enter math because of their lack of self discipline think that they can get by with the minimum of effort most of these people are intelligent they can get by in

most other courses by just coasting they think they can do the same thing in math but soon they get behind and can't catch up and usually do poorly in the course then after such an experience they label themselves as poor in math they carry this label with them throughout their lives this label shades most of their decision making when it comes to choosing courses of study and careers such people will avoid careers that require mathematical understanding because they think they don't have the aptitude actually they probably had and have the aptitude but not the attitude

their life's potential was stunted by a false assumption all they needed was someone to teach them the value and skill of self-disciplined application most of the people we studied in the creation of the neuropsychology of self-discipline program were not extra intelligent but they did have a firm belief in their ability to learn anything and everything to them ninety percent of their ability to learn was their belief in their ability to learn [Music] if you examine your own positive role models you'll probably discover that few of them test out at genius level on intelligence tests most

people think that albert einstein for example was a mathematical genius when in actuality he flunked his college entrance exams and was a poor student in mathematics as a youngster he envisioned himself one evening riding through space on a beam of light in his imagination he sensorily experienced the theory of relativity he knew what it was but he was not able to explain it to others in a language they could understand the only language was mathematics driven by his vision he forced himself to learn mathematics for einstein it was a day-by-day struggle but he finally developed

enough mathematical knowledge to simply express his experience mathematically einstein's theory of relativity and its mathematical expression ushered in the age of nuclear energy another scientist who most people attribute genius was the inventor of the laser doctor theodore meyman while at stanford university he flunked his phd oral exams and had to take them over again learning didn't come easy for him it was a daily step-by-step struggle baseball hitting great and cyber vision role model for its baseball neuromuscular training video cassette rod carew didn't make his high school baseball team because his coach thought he wasn't a

good enough hitter since then through thousands of hours of practice crew has won seven american league batting titles and is one of thirteen players ever to get more than three thousand career hits the list goes on famous author philosopher and scholar leon yuris flunked high school english three times malcolm forbes publisher of forbes magazine one of the most successful business publications in the world did not make the staff of his college newspaper the editor said he lacked the basic skills of reporting and editorial writing stephen devore who founded cyber vision speaks the finnish language considered

by language experts to be the most difficult language for western tongues to learn though he mastered this difficult language he lays no claim to a superior intellect either when i was 19 he told an interviewer i was selected to go to finland for two years of volunteer work i had no foreign language ability at that time in fact i had nearly flunked out of high school french in latin so i thought of myself as having absolutely no ability to learn languages with this negative attitude devore entered an intensive language program for two months before he

left for finland it was something like sixteen hours a day with a group of ten others i finished last in the group he recalls devore went to finland where he spent five miserable months unable to communicate i couldn't do anything i was incredibly frustrated i'd lose patience when people were talking then one day i went to the park and in the park there was a man giving instructions to his dog and finish the dog obviously understood him and was obeying all of his commands i thought this is ridiculous i'm smarter than a dog if a

dog can understand finnish so can i in the two months following this experience devore became fluent in the finnish language he learned to speak finnish so well that he served as a translator for american businessmen and their families traveling to finland buoyed by the accomplishment of learning finnish devore returned home after two years and went back to college where before he had been a lackluster c student because he was convinced he couldn't learn he received straight a's and academic scholarships for the rest of his college and graduate school years which proves another point about learning

success and attitude once you have successfully learned a subject or skill it bolsters your confidence in your ability to learn other skills once you've proven to yourself that a negative concept you had was wrong you begin to realize that all of your negative concepts may be wrong what you couldn't do in the past you can now do you can do it because finally you believe you can do it breaking the cycle of a negative attitude may not be easy but once you do you'll be far less inclined to get back into the cycle that's why

small steps and small accomplishments are so important in pursuing a macro goal you may look at a map for becoming a neurologist and say i'll never get through all those math courses but if you get one a in algebra you'll realize that you can another way of expressing this is that success in learning begets more success once you have successfully learned a subject or skill it bolsters your confidence in your ability to learn other skills your past in which you may have been labeled or labeled yourself as a non-learner is precisely that your past it

is not your present it has little relation to what you are capable of accomplishing now what has happened to many of us is that we have been conditioned into a negative feedback loop where learning is concerned the step-by-step accumulation of new skills is the way to break this loop and replace it with a much more positive cycle which brings us to the third step in the learning process the attitude and value that learning takes time and patience most of us at the time we are exposed to our greatest concentration of education haven't developed the necessary

self-discipline skills to be able to take advantage of it and why should we we were only children excellence as we've been learning in this neuropsychology psychology of self-discipline program is based on seasoned learning skills like medicine mathematics chemistry dance law music pottery writing languages architecture masonry carpentry the list is endless all require seasoning the accumulation of knowledge over time the perseverance to stick with the task over a long period of time sometimes decades the ability to find pleasure in the accomplishment of steps toward a goal rather than seeking the instantly gratifying quick fix all these

are the hallmarks of the self-disciplined a wise philosopher in speaking of the seasoning of a learner once said there are very few human beings who receive knowledge complete and staggering by instant illumination most of us acquire it fragment by fragment on a small scale by successive developments cellularly like a laborious mosaic one other myth about the acquisition of knowledge has it that you can get too old to learn this bit of fallacious thinking has been handed down in the aphorism that you can't teach old dogs new tricks it's worth laying to rest a classic incident

from the life of the great poet long fellow illustrates the relationship between age and learning told by howard r driggs the story goes it happened that while the poet at over 80 years of age was still teaching at harvard one of his appreciative students asked him how do you keep so parentally young professor longfellow we never get tired of your classes you always have something new and interesting to give i've never had that question put to me before return the poet then looking out of the window he said you see those two apple trees in

the yard do you observe any difference between the blossoms on the older tree and those on the younger one no replied the student they look just alike to me how do you account for the fact that the old apple tree flowers out as beautifully as does the young one persist to the teacher let me tell you the secret that old tree managed last year to grow enough wood to put forth its new blossoms blossoms you know always come on the new wood oh i see said the young man to keep young one must keep growing

yes came the quiet response einstein in his later years was asked the secret of his ability to learn his reply also illustrates the point and importance of lifelong learning einstein said the more i learn the more i realize i don't know the more i realize i don't know the more i want to learn age should be no barrier to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills if you have the self-discipline to see your efforts through you can learn anything at any age let's now discuss the fourth step in the learning process a set of tried

and proven principles that work together as a system to make learning easy if you'll turn this cassette over now we'll introduce you to a very simple yet powerful system to learn effectively at any age whatever the subject area a recent movie called educating rita beautifully illustrates the points we're going to discuss in the remainder of this session this film is about a working-class english woman who has a dream about becoming educated the film tells the story of her personal odyssey as she pursues her vision her dream in the face of incredible obstacles she faces at

one point or another during the story conflicts with work with transportation with her parents with schedules with her mentors desire and ability to teach with the disdain of other more educated students and with a husband who wants her to stay home and make babies not thesis through it all she perseveres driven by the dream of herself as an educated woman a woman who can discuss important issues who can commune with the great thinkers and writers who make up such a rich part of her english heritage she burns with the fire of her vision a vision

rich in dignity and strength it's a vision she can hear smell taste touch and see the actress julie waters expresses her character's struggle to change to improve to better herself with such credibility that you can see the woman rita change before your very eyes there was nothing abstract about rita's quest for education each book she read each class she took each time she met with her advisor or participated in a class discussion was a visible step toward the completion of her goal it was extraordinarily obvious how closely her vision and her process of learning were

interconnected sometimes that connection is less obvious so that's what the remainder of this session will speak to how to recognize the connection between learning and the successful achievement of your goals learning is not simply the rote memorization of useless facts or even useful facts of course we're all aware that in 1492 columbus sailed the ocean blue but what does that have to do with our vision the same lack of relationship to vision is often true with our attempts to understand abstract principles as in mathematics chemistry or physics they are very difficult to learn and use

if we cannot see the direct applications to our everyday lives to the pursuit of our purpose and vision we ask ourselves how is this going to help me in achieving my vision cyber vision founder steve devore recalls signing up for a course in statistics when he was attending graduate school he hadn't taken the prerequisite higher math courses but had gotten permission from the instructor to take the course anyway du bois instructor however issued a dire warning at the beginning without those prerequisite courses divorce stood a good chance of failing but forewarned is forearmed and devour

found a way to overcome his lack of preparation the first week of class he found himself swamped with mathematical concepts that were abstract and confusing the only way i could make sense out of what was going on he says was to take each abstract principle and make it concrete instead of talking about x's y's and z's i made them into apples and oranges and i ended up with the second highest grade in the class i find this concreteness also ties into vision divorce continues whenever you have to learn something that seems beyond your grasp remember

your vision and why you have to learn it then it will seem real and vital and you'll have an easier time dealing with it whatever you have to learn no matter how abstract or detailed the information if it's necessary for your vision then you can embody that information with your vision then it becomes something real and vital you can put a handle on it you have a reference for it you've been learning the importance of vision all throughout this program the sensory rich detailed kind of vision you created in session six and are continuing to

create on a daily basis making those visions concrete you'll recall sometimes even involved putting clippings or photographs of a desired goal upon the wall this kind of work to strengthen vision is also at the heart of learning as i promised earlier i'm about to introduce you to a powerfully effective easy to learn method of learning that will carry you through the rest of your life this four-part learning system is the application of certain principles that reveal themselves in the course of our research with self-disciplined achievers learning and applying these principles will enable you to approach

any subject matter with confidence and thoroughly learn the material no matter how difficult it might be we call this system mega learning we use the word mega to connote power the power to achieve you acquire through the acquisition and application of knowledge let me quickly preview each of the four steps and then look at the process in greater detail first recognize the need to learn a principle second relate the principle to your personal vision or goal third internalize the principle by relating it to your own experience and fourth apply the principle in action let's examine

each of these four steps in turn first recognize your need to learn new information and skills you cannot reach your goal without getting an education first this doesn't necessarily mean attending school it means identifying the key skills and competencies that you must master if you are successfully going to reach your goal ask yourself will i achieve my goal without this knowledge or skill if your answer is no then you have a strong motivation for learning your learning is now crucial for without it your road to achievement is blocked learning is a lot easier if you

have a specific reason to learn once you recognize that you have a need to learn you've taken the first step toward achieving your goal step two is simply asking yourself how can i use this how will it help me fulfill my vision imagine yourself achieving your goal and using the new knowledge and skills you are about to learn see how each skill and bit of knowledge applies directly to your future success no matter how unrelated or trivial it might seem to be in the beginning this process is akin to putting a jigsaw puzzle together you

have a picture of what you want to achieve on the jigsaw box inside the box are hundreds of related but unrelated pieces of the puzzle you put two pieces together you pick up a third piece you toy with it mentally turning it over looking at its edges its contours its unique characteristics looking at the ways it might fit into the whole picture then comes the aha moment you see exactly where the new piece of puzzle fits how the contours of the piece are shaped to fit the pieces already in place and as you place the

piece in the puzzle you get an idea of what the larger picture will look like perhaps you refer back to the picture on the jigsaw box which is analogous to the mental picture you have of the goal for which you're striving the very act of studying the information and putting it in its proper place helps you bring the picture on the box to life the third step in our learning process is internalizing the principle by relating it to your own experience if you're learning about electrical wave forms and frequency for example think about the times

you've thrown a pebble into a pond and seen ripples form on the water the bigger the pebble and the harder you through it the bigger and faster the waves would be in newtonian physics you can easily understand the law that states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction by remembering how you stand up from a sitting position do you just shoot straight up or do you have to first push your weight down on the chair to stand up in order to stand up you have to first push down that's newton's law in

action every time you find an example from your own experience to illustrate a bit of knowledge you're trying to learn you'll reinforce your understanding of that knowledge and you'll remember it because it's anchored to something very personal every time you think of newton's law you'll picture yourself pushing off a chair to stand up it works for just about any abstract theory you can think of the fourth critical step in learning is the actual application of the principle you're trying to grasp throw pebbles in a pond and watch the action when you're learning wave form theory

sit down and stand up over and over again until newton's law is firmly planted in your mind if you're studying a new language use the new vocabulary you learn every single day as you walk down the street or through your living room try naming every object you see in your new language using these four steps to learning will make the experience easier less frightening and more fun you'll make mistakes just as everybody does but persistent application of the mega learning system will pay off in greater understanding greater memory retention and a better education overall in

whatever it is you're trying to learn the four steps to enhance learning we've outlined here are similar to and related to the four stages which make up the process of creativity our definition of creativity is taking the knowledge and skills you learn and applying it to the realization of your purpose vision and goals to be creative you have to be armed with knowledge and skills tempered by experience the first stage in the creative process is preparation creative problem solvers consciously collect all the information they can gathering tools which will help them solve a problem or

get a job done during this stage if there's a problem to be solved the person might be perplexed but the same time excited about the possibility of coming up with a solution stage two is called incubation once the research has been done and the necessary information has been collected the creative person often releases the problem and turns to something else including rest relaxation or physical activity related to the problem during this stage the knowledge begins to reform itself below the level of consciousness shifting and realigning until it becomes a whole during this stage tantalizing flashes

of insights and glimpses of parts of the final solution may emerge stage three is called illumination this is the moment of discovery it is the point in time where all you have learned and experienced has been distilled in your mind the solution or inspiration springs forth almost miraculously miraculously if you don't recognize how much preparation and groundwork you've already laid in stage one often this stage is accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of certainty that says yes this is the piece of art i want to create or yes this is the product idea i want to

explore stage four is called verification or revision this stage takes place again on a conscious level the details of an experimental process if you are a scientist must be worked out if you're an artist you must decide whether this picture will be painted in watercolor or oil this stage involves visible work and rational thinking it involves drawing from your base of knowledge and fundamental skills to make your work conform to the vision of your creative insight as you can tell the knowledge and skills you acquire are the tools for the creative process the parallels to

the simple approach to learning we've outlined here and the process of creativity should also help put to rest the misconception that self-disciplined people are not creative that discipline involves being married to lists and systems to the exclusion of freedom and creativity on the contrary creativity is the byproduct of a disciplined well-informed mind a mind that is using its storehouse of knowledge to solve problems and achieve goals the more you learn the more creative you can become [Music] if your heart is set on becoming a professional musician you can hardly be expected to know how to

compose a symphony until you've become an expert in reading music and have studied music history if you want to become a heart surgeon you can't expect to pioneer new techniques and heart surgery until you've thoroughly mastered all the existing techniques if you want to start a business you must first study how other businesses are run and then make your own decisions about how your company will work if the realization of your vision requires the mastery of new knowledge and skills i hope that learning will now be a stepping stone rather than a barrier to the

creative realization of your goals in our next and last session you'll learn how to develop the twin pillars of the self-disciplined character persistence and perseverance and you'll be well equipped to begin your long and fruitful journey towards the goal you've chosen as your most important ambition i'd like to begin this final session with two true stories that illustrate the value of persistence and perseverance in any of life's endeavors the first story is about a mountain climber named don bennett after successfully scaling fourteen thousand foot mount rainier one of the highest mountains and most difficult climbs

in the united states don bennett was interviewed about the experience by a local reporter how did you do it the reporter wanted to know how did you keep going for fourteen thousand feet and not giving up bennett thought for a moment before answering then he spoke slowly trying to get the reporter to understand the mental process that led him to the peak of that mountain starting months before the climb bennett said i created a vision of myself at the top of the mountain that vision was so real that i could actually feel the cold wind

blowing in my face and i could see the spectacular mountains and valleys all around me i saw and felt this vision a hundred times a day it inspired me it motivated me it kindled my determination to see the climb through to the end during the climb itself he continued i drew upon my vision for inspiration when the going got tough i saw myself at the top of that mountain just as clear as could be and then finally i reached my goal and my vision became a reality the reporter was impatient with bennett's explanation yeah yeah

he said i've heard all that vision stuff before but that doesn't explain how you did it you're an amputee how did a one-legged man climb a fourteen thousand foot mountain don bennett looked the reporter straight in the eye and said quietly one hop at a time my vision became a reality one hop at a time our second true story takes place during the last few weeks of world war two don mccall was a seaman on the navy ship indianapolis which at the time was cruising the philippine sea suddenly the ship was struck by japanese torpedoes

and immediately it began to sink mccall was asleep below decks when the first torpedo hit he instinctively grabbed his life jacket and made his way up to the deck as the ship began to roll over as he launched himself into the churning sea the ship sank taking three hundred men with her another nine hundred or so had been pitched into the water i made up my mind that i was in big trouble mccall told an interviewer and i also made up my mind that i would do whatever i had to do no matter how painful

to survive the first thing mccall did was to move away from the other survivors and float alone he knew about the dangers of mass panic especially if there was a shark attack and he knew he'd stand a better chance if he stayed away from the other men mccall also protected himself from exposure in the blistering sun by keeping a life jacket over his head he kept a hose on his person so he could retreat underwater in case of a japanese attack and most important he kept in mind the lesson he had learned about the danger

of drinking seawater no matter how thirsty he got for days mccall watched men succumbing to mass panic and hallucination he watched them being torn apart by sharks while he escaped attack by remaining perfectly still he watched them drinking sea water and dying of dehydration while he swallowed his own desire to drink he watched them dying all around him while he remained alive four days later a navy patrol boat plucked an exhausted ninety pound mccall out of the sea he had survived four days without food or drink in the blistering sun in shark infested waters an

incredible feat and he had proved the power of self-discipline even in holding death at bay like mountain climber don bennett mccall never lost sight of his vision staying alive he used all his knowledge and skill to make that vision come true he resisted drinking sea water to get immediate gratification of his thirst which would have killed him and he found creative solutions to the problems of exposure to the sun and japanese attack both bennett and mccall used self-discipline to endure terrible physical hardship and achieve seemingly unachievable goals your own goal may not seem as urgent

as theirs but the principle of achieving it remains the same through vision commitment patience and creative application of knowledge and skill you can see your goal through to the end but the ultimate key to your success is what this session is all about persistence and perseverance in this session you're going to learn what persistence and perseverance are really all about you'll be taught how to develop both of these critical qualities through the application of five simple principles you'll find out how to turn problems and setbacks even agonizing situations into positive learning experiences that will actually

bring you closer to the realization of your goal and you'll understand the value of never giving up no matter how tough the journey gets or how endless it seems first let's define the words persistence and perseverance is there a difference between the two yes a subtle one persistence means never giving up perseverance means persisting in spite of hardships opposition and setbacks mountain climber bennett and navy seaman mccall displayed both persistence and perseverance in their heroic efforts to reach their goals bennett had to use his one leg to hop at least thirty thousand times to get

up to the top of mount rainier mccall had to stay calm and follow a life-saving plan while spending four days in shark infested waters without any food or drink these men reached their goals because they had already developed the qualities of persistence and perseverance now you are going to learn how to develop these qualities too there are five crucial steps involved in learning how to develop into the kind of self-disciplined achiever who never quits and never loses sight of his or her goal listen carefully while i outline each one the first step is to rekindle

and refuel your vision and purpose every single day remind yourself daily of the rewards and benefits that await you when you successfully realize your goal the emotion you draw from these constant reminders of why you're working so hard and giving up so many things will sustain your powers of persistence and perseverance the second step is to firmly anchor the following attitude deep within your heart and mind i can achieve anything i set my mind to nothing is impossible for me to achieve if i wanted badly enough and i'm willing to pay the price for it

no matter how much hard work it takes no matter how long it takes no matter how difficult it is i can and will achieve my goal i will never forget that a journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step step three realize that obstacles are going to arise and setbacks are going to occur keep in mind that these difficulties are really opportunities to learn every obstacle that you overcome every setback you bounce back from strengthens your character and makes you smarter and stronger whatever you do don't try to hide from or ignore problems

they never go away by themselves meeting challenges squarely and solving problems creatively is at the heart of self-discipline and at the heart of achievement as benjamin franklin said those things that hurt instruct when your progress seems blocked it means that it's time to increase your knowledge and look for creative solutions this is the fourth step in developing persistence and perseverance you may be doing the wrong things for the right reasons and now is the time to find out start experimenting with taking different paths to your destination but whatever you do don't quit most people quit

when things don't work out as they planned or when they realize how much hard work they're going to have to do remember a failure is someone who has not learned from his mistakes step five turn your work into fun make what you have to do into something you want to do working towards a lifelong goal shouldn't feel like a sacrifice because that goal is what you want more than anything in the world if you follow these five steps faithfully your long road to success will turn into an exciting journey of knowledge discovery challenge and reward

and for as long as you feel you're making progress even hard work and minor interferences won't shake you from your purpose the real problem arises when a major setback occurs especially if it's unforeseen a seemingly insurmountable obstacle is often enough to make even the most determined achiever decide that the fight simply isn't worth it setbacks make people give up just at the point when they should not how can you deal successfully with setbacks how can you learn not to feel like a failure when it suddenly seems that all of your hard work may have been

for nothing there are five ways you can turn every setback you encounter into a learning experience one that will leave you stronger and wiser and more determined than ever to keep working toward your goal listen carefully while i outline each one in turn first never try to ignore a problem or handicap deal with your problems directly don't avoid them or try to hide from them if you want to start a business but can't find people to back you up financially that doesn't give you the right to plunge into your project with no capital and a

lot of ideas for spending money if you want to become a doctor but don't have the grades to get into medical school it won't help you to start applying to schools you know you can't get into when you have a problem study it from all angles and try to determine the best way to proceed which brings us to our second point don't blame other people for your setbacks and don't chalk it up to bad luck you make your own luck in this life and you have to solve your own problems learn to tackle them head-on

being as realistic as possible and as level-headed as possible mentors can often provide a great deal of help in a bad situation try acting as if you are your own mentor what would he or she do in your situation or what has he or she already done to overcome an obstacle similar to yours third continually strive to strengthen your qualities of self-discipline setbacks often occur because of weaknesses in certain areas try to turn those weaknesses into strengths be your own severest critic but not your own worst enemy don't tell yourself i failed tell yourself i

slipped but i'm going to pick myself up and go on fourth in almost every setback there's a seed of opportunity a silver lining if you will find it and use it you may find yourself taking a slightly different path to achieving your goal than you first imagined but you'll get there just the same take the new path and see where it leads you following this philosophy helps take the emotional sting out of setbacks and is a good antidote for discouragement and it's a healthier way to react to a bad situation than deciding to give up

fifth always remember that no matter how difficult the problem is or how insurmountable it seems there's always a solution a problem is only really a problem if you think you can't solve it if you take the attitude that every problem has a solution and you approach your problem with an open and creative mind you'll find that solution a young woman we know named carol napier was faced with and managed to overcome the kind of setbacks that might make anybody want to give up her story is so inspiring that we'd like to end this session with

her example of what it's like to be a self-disciplined achiever who never quits no matter what at 26 carol had a degree in marketing and a good job as a marketing assistant with an eye to moving up in the company she worked for as soon as there was an opening for a higher position carol had diabetes diagnosed when she was 12 but it always been able to keep it under control with insulin shots and had always lived a perfectly normal relatively healthy life in the spring of carol's 26th year she began having trouble with her

eyes doctors told her that her diabetes was causing her to slowly lose her eyesight at first carol refused to believe it but when she began having trouble driving she realized the doctors were right and she would have to re-evaluate her job and her purpose in life to deal with the problem of approaching blindness but before carol could come up with a solution to that problem her kidneys also began to fail ultimately she needed a kidney transplant which was done successfully when she turned 27 everything seemed to be going fine when a sudden episode of insulin

shock left carol paralyzed from the waist down carol recalls wanting to quit then and there at that point i just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up the depression got so bad that i realized i couldn't go on this way i only had one choice and that was to get myself out of this slowly carol regained her strength learning to walk again with the aid of physical therapy she rewarded herself for her progress by making a trip across the country alone to visit her parents for thanksgiving a trip friends tried to dissuade her

from taking but which proved to carol that she could still make it on her own today carol is attending college studying for a master's degree in rehabilitative education she has decided to spend the rest of her life helping people face and overcome problems like hers she is completely blind and still walks with a cane but that has not stopped her from pursuing a goal many healthy people would find difficult to achieve the key to reaching any goal is to develop the strength of character that makes you refuse to give up no matter how bad things

look the most amazing thing about persistence and perseverance is that they make it almost impossible for you not to succeed in your endeavors in this session you've learned the importance of not being a quitter of learning from your mistakes and of keeping an open mind when it comes to finding creative solutions to problems you may think are unsolvable in the next session we're going to review everything you've learned in the neuropsychology of self-discipline program and give you some tips for developing the lifelong habit of self-discipline we're now coming to the end of the neuropsychology of

self-discipline and now is a good time to reflect on what you've learned and how far you've come it's also a good time to start thinking about how you're going to maintain and develop your self-disciplined character for the rest of your life because the process of becoming an achiever never really ends in the years to come you'll find yourself learning from trial and error from accomplishments from setbacks from disappointments from rewards from the feeling of satisfaction you get when a job has been well done the more you achieve the more you'll learn one of the greatest

secrets of achievement success breeds success every small step you take on the road to your goal will make it easier to take the next step and once you've achieved your goal you'll probably find that there's another goal you want to achieve along the way you'll delight in the process of watching yourself in action making corrections in your methods and strategies as you strive towards your ultimate goal and the hundreds of smaller goals you will successfully reach on the way let's talk about the milestones you already passed in session one which you listened to some time

ago you uncovered the master key to your highest potential self-discipline we define self-discipline as the ability to work systematically and progressively toward a goal to become positively obsessed with that goal and to let that obsession lead you to accomplishment we talked about the problems caused by lack of self-discipline we learned about the waste of potential the drifting from job to job from relationship to relationship of the person who has no real sense of purpose and an undisciplined approach to life in general we also talked about the problems of wanting immediate gratification and how that always

leads to failure because it means refusing to pay for success with hard work there is no other way to be successful except through hard work the words pay for shouldn't bother you all accomplishments come with a price tag just like something you might want to buy and just as you will save for an item you really want to buy cutting your budget and making financial sacrifices you should also be willing to make sacrifices in order to reach your goal you may have to give up time recreational activities other priorities in your life but it won't

be difficult to do because reaching your goal will become a more important source of pleasure in session two you were introduced to the ten characteristics of the self-disciplined achiever these characteristics served as a model against which you could compare your own strengths and weaknesses let's review them quickly now to refresh your memory and see how far you've come in absorbing the principles of this program first self-disciplined achievers have a strong sense of purpose they have a cause or direction to which they have chosen to dedicate their lives this cause gives them meaning in their lives

and a reason to exist second the self-disciplined seek out positive role models called mentors to teach them how to best approach their goal and overcome setbacks and obstacles along the way third self-disciplined achievers use sensory images to provoke the kind of emotion that keeps them working toward their goal for as long as it takes to achieve it fourth those possessing an iron will dwell on the fulfillment of their vision rather than on fear and failure they have a positive attitude toward themselves and their goal and refuse to let setbacks get them down fifth the self-disciplined

achiever has a deep rooted belief in his or her ability to achieve this i know i can do it attitude is nurtured by their study of mentors and their realization that the only thing that stands between themselves and their goals is hard work and self-discipline sixth self-disciplined achievers have the ability to plan and organize they know that a goal can never successfully be reached in a haphazard way they understand that they must map out a blueprint for success if they are ever to realize their highest ambitions seventh they know how and when to acquire the

essential knowledge and skills they need to achieve their goals this comes from the planning and organization work they did earlier eight self-disciplined achievers have patience they understand the concept of seasoning and its importance in reaching any goal time does not frighten them ninth people who achieve their goals do so through persistence and perseverance they are stubborn in their efforts to achieve and they never give up tenth self-disciplined achievers have a mature attitude toward pleasure rather than seeking any diversion that will temporarily make them feel better they take the most pleasure in doing the work that

will help them achieve their goal how many of these ten characteristics did you remember we suggest you play session two over and over again until you can recall every one of them without prompting making these qualities a part of your own personality is what acquiring self-discipline is all about and the more you listen to them the more you think about them the more they will become a part of your own life in session three we delved deeply into the scientific basis for this program you learned how the key to success is developing the kind of

constant internal motivation that keeps you on course through problems and setbacks through temporary boredom or fatigue through periods of doubt or discouragement and you found out why other motivational programs fail to give you the sustenance you need to pursue your goal for weeks months or years you learned about doctor carl pribrom's research into images of achievement and the critical role they play in motivating people to be successful dr pribram's discovery of the power of sensory rich images to provoke the drive of motivation made the creation of this unique program possible in session four we discussed

the power of purpose here you learn to focus your energy like a laser beam on what you want to accomplish you learned how your macro or major purpose really could be broken down into a series of micro or minor achievements you heard examples of how well-known achievers tackled major goals by turning them into step-by-step plans for success that they could deal with one at a time in the same session you participated in a fascinating exercise that let you pinpoint perhaps for the first time what your most important goal in life really is you then use

that goal to create a statement of purpose that would stand as a beacon in your quest for achievement in session five we talked about mentors and role models you learned about the process of modeling the basis for human learning we talked about how models are both a blueprint and an inspiration for our own activity and our own growth you learned how models help shorten the trial and error process we must all go through before chalking up an accomplishment you also learned how to choose a role model and how to turn that model into an inspirational

but not awe-inspiring figure you learn the value of realizing that your role model has faults and weaknesses just as you do but has succeeded in spite of them in session six you learned how to translate your purpose into sensory images that would fuel your inner fire of determination and ambition and you learn how to daily reinforce your mental images of achievement to make them a permanent part of your body and mind in session seven you were introduced to visual network planning this planning system applies to any endeavor from making a movie to making a run

for the presidency the system works by breaking down what you want to accomplish into logical building blocks it helps you keep track of your achievements over a long period of time and is a reward in itself for work well done in the same session you learn to become a storyteller the story was that of your own success you used your rich powers of imagination and your best verbal skills to detail the steps you took to accomplish your most important goals in session eight you learned about the self-disciplined achievers attitude toward time you learned how achievers

value patients how they oppose the kind of quick fix mentality that leads to general dissatisfaction with life and how they use single-minded hard work to experience time quickening a sensation that time is passing much more rapidly than it really is you also learned about the problem of procrastination its psychological causes and the ways in which you can overcome it you learned why it is considered the single most important cause of failure and why it's so important for you to develop a do it now attitude before you try to do anything else in session nine you

learned how to plan to acquire the knowledge and skills you need in order to achieve your goals you were introduced to the concept of mega learning a powerful four-step system that enables you to master any subject no matter how difficult or complex you also learned how knowledge is the building block of creativity you were introduced to a four-step process that lets you creatively channel your knowledge toward the kind of action that will help you achieve your goals and you learn that your belief in your ability to learn is ninety percent of the learning process finally

in session ten you learned how to develop the powers of persistence and perseverance the critical characteristics that will see you through to the successful completion of your vision and purpose no matter how long it takes or how difficult it is you heard several inspiring stories about people who persevered and achieved their goals through extreme hardship and even physical danger and now as we come to the conclusion of this program i'd like to point out that acquiring self-discipline is a never-ending process there won't come a day when you wake up in the morning and say yes

i'm finally self-disciplined now there's nothing more i need to do to develop strength of character and determination of will self-discipline requires a lifetime of commitment this doesn't mean you won't develop the habits of self-discipline in a relatively short period of time it simply means that you must always be vigilant about how you are approaching your goals and what your purpose in life really is it's all too easy to get sidetracked in something that feels comfortable but is not what you really set out to achieve every small victory will become a cause for celebration and a

chance to renew your faith in your own ability to achieve whatever it is you want in life and as you achieve it you will find yourself becoming the kind of person you've always admired the kind of person who could pursue a goal so single-mindedly so stubbornly and so patiently that he or she could not help but achieve it i'm richard gebhardt thank you for joining me in this cyber vision program this is released for the sake of education this is a brief key insight about all the concepts of the book books we provide free audio

books key insights summaries and brief study notes on the concepts of the books so make sure to subscribe and become a part of our family