Maximum Achievement

by Brian Tracy

  The Law of Belief states that whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your reality. If you love and respect yourself, and you believe yourself capable of accomplishing great things, you are almost certain to achieve far more than if you doubt yourself, or if you do not believe in your personal potential.

  The Law of Expectations states that whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect the best of yourself and others, which is the natural expression of a loving attitude, you will seldom be disappointed. You will acquire far more of the things you want if you confidently expect good things to happen to you, and you behave accordingly.

  The Law of Attraction states that you invariably attract into your life people and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts. When you think kind and loving thoughts about yourself and others, you attract kind and loving people to you. These people make your life a joy. They fill your life with happiness. They assure fulfillment in your work and satisfaction in your personal relationships.

  The Law of Correspondence states that your outer world will be a reflection of your inner world. If you have a kind, gentle and loving nature, your outer world of relationships, health and material success will be marked by health, happiness and prosperity.

  The Law of Concentration states that whatever you dwell upon grows. If you continually choose to think loving thoughts about yourself and others, you “grow” more loving relationships in every part of your life.

  The Law of Substitution says that you can replace a negative thought with a positive thought. When you consciously select the content of your conscious mind, and keep your thoughts focused on love, patience, tolerance and forgiveness, you crowd out negative thoughts that disrupt your peace of mind, undermine your health and energy and harm your relationships.

  Love teaches us the principle of nonresistance. The Bible says, “Judge not that ye be not judged,” and, “Pray for those who spitefully use you.” When you respond to anger and negativity with love and kindness, you not only preserve your own emotional integrity and maintain a positive mental attitude, but you also help the other person.

  There is nothing that so surprises a person as to have someone whom they are mistreating respond to them with gentleness, courtesy and kindness. It frees him or her to stop the critical behavior and become a better person.

  The Law of Superconscious Activity states that any thought, plan, goal or idea you can hold continuously in your conscious mind will be brought into reality by your superconscious mind. You can have a wonderful life, full of happy, loving relationships, characterized by health, energy and the experience of joy, by thinking continually about the things you really want in your life and keeping your mind off of the things you don’t want.

  LOVE IS THE ANSWER

  Always, love is the answer. The one thing that you can never have too much of is love. You can never have too much love for yourself, and you can never give too much love to others. Lack of love, or love withheld, lies at the root of most personal and behavioral problems. Love is not only the answer, but it is the cure for most of life’s problems.

  THE GREAT ROBBER EMOTION

  Whatever one’s religious beliefs, it’s hard to deny the universal truth of many of the biblical teachings. One of the most beautiful lines in the New Testament is “God is love and he that dwelleth in God, dwelleth in love and God in him.”

  It also says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.”

  These words are important to us because the great robber of human happiness is, and always has been, fear of some kind—fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of criticism, fear of losing someone’s love or respect, fear of ill health, fear of not measuring up to other people’s expectations of us and a generalized fear of not being good enough.

  The only way you can fulfill your potential as a human being is to gradually diminish the role that fear plays in your life and in your decisions. Your aim and your ideal must be to reach the point where you are not afraid of anything. When you eliminate fear you become completely self-confident, and your entire world opens up before you. And it is love that dissolves fear and eventually removes it from your life.

  SELF-LOVE, THE BEGINNING

  Self-esteem and self-respect are the foundation qualities of the truly healthy personality. Everything you do to raise your own self-esteem contributes to making you a happier human being. No matter how low your self-esteem is when you begin, you can ratchet it up one notch at a time, like jacking up a car, by doing some of the things we’ve talked about in this book.

  You can speak to yourself positively all the time. You can visualize yourself as the very best person that you can possibly be. You can fill your mind with positive messages of hope and inspiration. You can associate with happy, optimistic, goal-oriented people. You can organize every part of your life to continually reinforce good feelings about yourself.

  The more you like or love yourself, the more you will like and love other people. The amount of love and respect you have for others, and they for you, is in direct proportion to how much love you have for yourself.

  The Law of Reversibility states that, just as feelings lead to actions, actions also lead to feelings. If you do and say the things that are consistent with loving yourself, it won’t be long before you actually feel positive and loving toward yourself. If you do and say the things that are consistent with your desired results, the results will materialize around you. Love is the catalyst that activates the very best that is in you, and in the people and situations around you.

  The only true measure of your beliefs is your actions. It is not what you say, or what you wish or hope that counts, but only what you actually do. It’s actions, not words, that count. And there are several specific things you can do that combine to build within you the feelings of high self-esteem and self-regard that make everything else possible.

  THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM OF PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT

  First, you can resolve to accept yourself unconditionally, no matter what you have done or not done in the past. You can stand back and appreciate your special qualities and attributes. You can emphasize your good points and ignore the areas in which you may not be as good as someone else. You can like and respect yourself exactly as you are rather than as you would like to be someday. The foundation of self-esteem is self-acceptance.

  Second, you can build your self-esteem, and your sense of personal value, by accepting complete responsibility for your life and for the consequences of all your actions. When you become a self-reliant, self-responsible individual, you refuse to blame or criticize others, or make excuses for things in your life that you don’t like. You work on those areas where you are unhappy rather than spending your creative energies dreaming up excuses or blaming your situation on others. An attitude of high self-responsibility is a fundamental part of high self-esteem, self-love and personal effectiveness. Each of these interacts on and reinforces the other.

  Third, you can set worthwhile goals for yourself. The very act of setting a big goal for yourself raises your self-esteem. It improves your self-concept. Only a person who likes and believes in himself or herself will write down an exciting goal in the first place. And writing down the goal makes you like and believe in yourself even more. The very act of setting the goal is the starting point of becoming the kind of person you want to be. It is the demonstration of your attitude of self-responsibility. It is the key to taking control of your life and feeling terrific about yourself.

  The fourth way to build self-esteem is to take good care of yourself physically. When you eat healthy, nutritious foods and get lots of sleep and regular exercise, you cannot help but feel better about yourself. The better you take care of yourself, the more self-respect and self-love you have. This feeling spreads into your relationships with others. When you treat yourself well, you treat others well.

  Fifth, and perhaps the fastest way to boost your self-esteem, is simply to repeat “
I like myself I like myself I like myself” over and over, fifty to one hundred times a day, until you implant this message deep in your subconscious mind. Eventually, your subconscious mind fully accepts this command as your operating instructions. Then you will notice the difference. Your body language, your attitude, your facial expressions and your tone of voice will all change for the better. You will feel more positive and enthusiastic about everything you do. You will be “programmed” to feel good about yourself.

  THREE KINDS OF LOVE

  The ancient Greeks divided love into three different categories. The first type of love they called Eros. This refers to self-love. Most people never get beyond this preoccupation with themselves and with their own feelings in the area of love. The primary reason for failure and unhappiness in life is low self-esteem. Because of their low self-esteem, most people become completely concerned with themselves and their own feelings to the exclusion of the feelings of others. They are fixed at the level of Eros. In extreme cases of neurosis and psychosis, they become unable to consider the feelings of others at all.

  The second form of love is called Filia. This refers to the love of others. Once a person loves himself or herself, the natural tendency is to turn outward toward loving and caring for other people. This is the mark of the healthy, happy person.

  Whenever you feel particularly good about yourself, you feel a greater sense of kindness, patience and friendship toward others, even strangers. Whenever you feel blessed in any way, you instinctively want to reach out to help others less fortunate. Self-love makes you generous and big-hearted in everything you do.

  The third and highest form of love, according to the ancient Greeks, was Charis, from which we get our word charismatic. Charis refers to universal love, love for all mankind, and is the rarest type of love. Only a very few people ever rise to this level of personal development. Many of the greatest men and women who have ever lived, such as Jesus, Buddha and St. Francis of Assisi, were renowned for their amazing capacity to love so expansively. And these great lovers of mankind have had more positive impact on the history of mankind than all the kings and rulers who ever lived.

  LOVE TRANSFORMS THE WORLD

  Jesus of Nazareth is referred to as the “Apostle of love.” The followers of Christianity consider Jesus to have been the perfect man, who expressed total and unconditional love for all people, even under the most trying and painful of circumstances. It is this model or ideal of perfect love that most people strive toward throughout their lives.

  Prince Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha, who founded Buddhism in the sixth century B.C., continues to be an inspiration to millions because of his totally loving nature and his teachings for overcoming fear and attaining bliss.

  St. Francis of Assisi is famous for expressing unbounded love, extending to the birds, the animals, the flowers and even the lowly worms and bugs. This standard of unconditional love for all living creatures has made St. Francis of Assisi a role model and a hero to millions of people down the generations.

  Dr. Albert Schweitzer of Africa, whom I met and worked with in 1965, is recognized as perhaps the greatest humanitarian of the twentieth century. His overarching philosophy was called “reverence for life.” He lived and practiced this philosophy for more than fifty years, ministering to the needs of the people of Central Africa. His example became an inspiration to millions throughout the world.

  In our modern day, Mother Teresa of Calcutta has become perhaps the most respected person in the world. She has had a tremendous impact on the hearts and minds of millions of men and women because of her unconditional love toward the poor and dying in Calcutta, India. When she was once asked how it was that her Missionaries of Charity seemed so happy as they went about their tasks of providing solace to unfortunate people during their final hours, she replied by saying that each worker believes in the words of the Book of Matthew, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

  LOVE IS AN ACTIVE VERB

  The word love is a verb, an active verb. Love is not just something that you feel; it is something that you do. In fact, because of the Law of Reversibility, whenever you engage in a loving behavior toward someone else, you deepen and intensify your feeling of love toward that person. The action of love and kindness generates the feeling of love and kindness.

  Just as you can act yourself into love, you can act yourself back into love, even if you feel that the love you experienced earlier has diminished or gone.

  The Greek word for this is “Praxis.” Praxis means that it is the practice of the actions that accompany the emotion that actually creates the emotion itself.

  You can act your way back into love by treating the other person exactly as you would if you were deeply in love with him or her. You can maintain the love in your relationship by treating the person as you did when you were courting him or her, or when you most intensely felt in love. If you continue to behave this way throughout the relationship, you will maintain the feelings of love that brought you together. But if a person forgets and starts to take the relationship for granted, if he or she stops doing the things that signify and demonstrate love, the feelings of love can begin to diminish, and problems may begin to arise.

  THE KEY TO HAPPINESS

  The happiest of all men and women are those who continually look for ways to show love, kindness and affection toward the people around them. Not only are they the most loved and respected by others, but they are also the healthiest and the most blessed of all human beings.

  There is a wonderful poem by Leigh Hunt, called “Abou Ben Adhem”:

  Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

  Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

  And saw within the moonlight in his room,

  Making it rich, and like a Lily in bloom,

  An Angel, writing in a Book of Gold;

  Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

  And to the presence in the room he said,

  “What writest thou?” The vision raised his head

  And with a look made of all sweet accord,

  Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

  “And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”

  Replied the Angel. Abou then spoke more low,

  But surely still; and said, “I pray thee then,

  Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

  The Angel wrote and vanished. The next night

  It came again, with a great wakening light,

  And showed the names whom love of God has blessed,

  And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

  SOWING AND REAPING

  You can never have any more love for yourself than that which you express to other people. Love only grows by sharing, and the only way you can have any more love for yourself is by giving it away. The more you give away, the more you have.

  By the same token, the less you express love, the less love you have for yourself. If you do not express love at all, you will turn inward on yourself and become angry, critical and unhappy.

  The antidote to feelings of fear, doubt and low self-esteem is to get out and find someone else you can help, someone else you can express love toward. The best cure for unhappiness is to make someone else happy.

  Most people have it the other way around. When they are feeling unhappy or unloved, they feel that the solution is for someone else to make them happy, for someone else to love them and solve their problems. However, love is something that you do. Love is expressed in positive and constructive behavior toward other people. If you practice expressing love, you will have no problem getting love back, and eventually filling your life with it. You control the amount of love you have in your life by how much of it you give away to others. Be generous!

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote one of the most beautiful poems on love ever put on paper. It has been one of my favorites for many years and it is called “How Do I Love Thee?” />
  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  I love thee to the level of everyday’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  Throughout the ages, the wisest men and women have come to the conclusion that nothing is more important than love. Since you are a self-responsible individual, it is up to you to improve the quality of your life by increasing and improving your expression of love and kindness to the people in your world.

  NEGATIVITY IS THE ROADBLOCK

  The greatest obstacles to the experience and expression of love are negative emotions, especially those of fear, anger, guilt and resentment. Almost everyone is still harboring negative feelings toward someone who has hurt them in the past. Many people carry around anger and resentment toward their parents for forty or fifty years, if not into their graves. It is quite common for people to still be angry and resentful toward someone in a previous relationship or marriage. Often an unsuccessful job, or a business venture that goes sour, will generate these negative emotions. If a person clings to these feelings, by dwelling upon them, he or she keeps them alive year after year, long after the incident has passed.