21 success secrets of self made millionaires pdf download

Dreaming big dreams is the starting point of achieving your goal of financial independence. The number one reason that people never succeed financially is because it never occurs to them that they can do it. As a result, they never try. They never get started. They continue to go around in financial circles, spending everything they earn and a little bit more besides. But when you begin to dream big dreams about financial success, you begin to change the way you see yourself and your life.

You begin to do different things, bit by bit, gradually, until the whole direction of your life changes for the better. Dreaming big dreams is the starting point of financial success, and becoming a self-made millionaire. This is where you take your dreams out of the air and you crystallize them into clear, specific written goals. Perhaps the greatest discovery in human history is that, "You become what you think about most of the time.

Successful people think about their goals most of the time. As a result, they are continually moving toward their goals and their goals are moving toward them. Whatever you think about most of the time grows and increases in your life. If you are thinking and talking and visualizing your goals, you tend to accomplish far, far more than the average person who is usually thinking and talking about their worries and problems most of the time.

Here is an exercise for you. Take a sheet of paper and write the word "Goals" at the top with today's date. Then, make a list of 10 goals that you would like to achieve over the next 12 months. Write your goals in the present tense, as though a year has passed and you have already achieved them.

Begin each goal with the word "I" to make it personal to you. Set a deadline, make a plan, take action on your plan and do something every day that moves you toward your goal. From now on, think and talk about that goal all the time. Think and talk about how you can achieve that goal. Think and talk about all the different things that you can do to make that goal a reality.

This exercise will stimulate your creativity, increase your energy and unlock your potential. Success secret number three, see yourself as self-employed.

Refuse to make excuses or to blame other people for your problems or short comings. Stop complaining about things in your life that you are not happy about. Refuse to criticize other people for anything. You are responsible. If there is something in your life that you don't like, it is up to you to do something about it. But you are in charge.

The biggest mistake you can ever make is to ever think that you work for anyone other than yourself. You are always self-employed. You are always the president of your own personal services corporation, no matter where you might be working at the moment. When you see yourself as self-employed, you develop the entrepreneur mentality, the mentality of the highly independent, self-responsible, self-starting individual. Instead of waiting for things to happen, you make things happen.

You see yourself as the boss of your own life. You see yourself as completely in charge of your physical health, your financial well being, your career, your relationships, your house, your home, your car and every element of your existence.

This is the mindset of the truly excellent person. Self-responsible people are intensely result oriented. They take high levels of initiative. They volunteer for assignments and they are always asking for more responsibility. As a result, they become the most valuable and respected people in their organizations. They continually prepare themselves for positions of higher authority and responsibility in the future. You should do the same.

This alone could change your life. Success secret number four, do what you love to do. This is the one of the great secrets of financial success. This is also one of your primary responsibilities in life. It is to find out what you really enjoy doing, what you have a natural talent for, and then to throw your whole heart into doing that, very, very well. Self-made millionaires are those who have found a field where their natural strengths and abilities are exactly what is required to do the job and achieve the results desired.

Most self-made millionaires say that they "never worked a day in their life. When you are doing what you love to do, you seem to have a continuous flow of excitement, energy and ideas to do what you do even better.

Here is a question for you: "If you won a million dollars, tax free, tomorrow, would you continue to do what you are currently doing? Self-made millionaires, if they won a million dollars cash, would continue doing what they are doing.

They would only do it differently or better or at a higher level. But they love their work so much that they wouldn't even think of leaving it or retiring. Perhaps the greatest responsibility of adult life, when you are surrounded by so many different choices of occupation and activity, is for you to find out what it is that you really love doing and then dedicate yourself to that field.

And no one else can do it for you. Success secret number five, commit to excellence. Resolve today to be the very best at what you do. This decision, to become very, very good at what you do, is the turning point in your life. There are no successful people who are not recognized as being extremely competent in their chosen fields. Remember, no one is better than you and no one is smarter than you. Everyone who is doing well was once doing poorly. Everyone who is at the top of their field was at one time in another field altogether.

And what someone else has done, you can do as well. It is the key to great success. It is also the foundation of high levels of self-esteem, self- respect and personal pride. When you are really good at what you do, you feel wonderful about yourself. It affects your entire personality and all your relationships with other people when you know you are at the top of your field. Here is one of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer, for the rest of your career, "What one skill, if you developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on your life?

Set it as a goal. Write it down. Set a deadline. Make a plan. And work on becoming better in that area every single day. You will be absolutely amazed at the difference this commitment to excellence will make in your life.

This alone can make you a self-made millionaire in the course of your career. All self- made millionaires work hard, hard, hard.

They start earlier, they work harder and they stay later. They develop a reputation for being amongst the hardest working people in their fields. And everybody knows it. Practice the "40 Plus" formula. This formula says that you work 40 hours per week for survival. Everything over 40 hours is for success. If you only work 40 hours, and the average work week today is closer to 35 hours, all you will ever do is survive. You will never get ahead. You will never be a big financial success.

You will never be highly respected and esteemed by your colleagues. You will always be mediocre working the basic 40 hour week. But every hour over 40 is an investment in your future. You can tell where you are going to be in five years by looking at how many hours over 40 you put in every week. The average self-made millionaire in America works 59 hours per week and some of them work 70 and 80 hours.

The average self-made millionaire in America works six days per week rather than five, and works longer days as well. If you want to call a self-made millionaire, phone the office before normal working hours and after normal working hours.

The self-made millionaire is there when the staff arrives, the nine to fiver's, and is still there when they leave. When you work, don't waste time.

When you get in early, put your head down and get started immediately. When people want to talk to you, you excuse yourself and say, "I have to get back to work! Work all the time you work. Resolve today to develop the reputation for being the hardest working person in your company.

This will bring you to the attention of people who can help you faster than almost anything else you can do. Success secret number seven, dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.

The fact is that you have more brains, ability and intelligence than you could ever use if you were to work on developing yourself for the rest of your life. You are smarter than you can imagine.

There is no obstacle that you cannot overcome, no problem you cannot solve and no goal you cannot achieve by applying your mind to your situation.

But your mind is like a muscle. It only develops with use. Just as you have to strain your physical muscles to build them, you have to work your mental muscles to build your mind as well.

The good news is that, the more you learn, the more you can learn. Just like the more you play a sport, the better you get at the sport. Leaders are learners. Continuous learning is the key to the 21st century.

Lifelong learning is the minimum requirement for success in your field, or in any field. Make a decision today that you are going to become a student of your craft and that you are going to continue learning and becoming better for the rest of your life. There are several keys to lifelong learning.

The first key is that you get up and read in your field for 30 to 60 minutes each day. Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body. When you read for an hour each day, this will translate into about one book per week.

One book per week will translate into 50 books per year. Since the average adult reads less than one book per year, when you begin reading one hour per day it will give you an incredible edge in your field. You will become one of the smartest, most competent and highest paid people in your profession by simply reading one hour each day. The second key to lifelong learning is for you to listen to audio programs, especially in your car as you drive from place to place.

The average person sits in his car to hours per year. Question number four is, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? There is only one answer to this question at any time. Your ability to determine the single most valuable use of your time 44 The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires and then to start on that task is the key to high productivity and financial success. Finally, commit to working single-mindedly on one task, the most important task, and staying at it until it is percent complete.

Persevere without diversion or distraction. Push yourself to keep working at the job until it is done. The good news is that by continually setting priorities and concentrating on your highest value tasks, you will soon develop the habit of high performance.

This habit will then become automatic and will virtually guarantee you great success in life. This one habit alone can make you a self-made millionaire. Your ability to do this, and this alone, can change your whole life. Everyone today is in a tremendous hurry. Customers who did not even know that they wanted a product or service now want it yesterday.

People are less and less patient for anything. Loyal customers will change suppliers overnight if someone else can serve them faster than 45 46 The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires the people they are already dealing with. Instant gratification is no longer fast enough. Your job is to develop a reputation for speed. Move fast on opportunities. Move fast when people want or need something.

Move quickly when you see something that needs to be done. When your boss or your customers ask you to do something, drop everything else and do it so fast that they are amazed. They get more chances to do more and more things faster than other people who just do a job when they get around to it.

When you can combine your ability to select your highest priority task with the commitment to getting it done quickly and well, you will find yourself moving to the front. More doors and opportunities will open for you than you can even imagine today. Do it now! There are up cycles and down cycles. Often, trends in business can lead to a complete change in the industry. We see this today with the Internet and the expansion of technology in all directions, which are changing many of our fixed ideas and beliefs about the way business is done.

Take the long view in everything you do. Keep reminding yourself that everything in your life moves in cycles and trends. Be calm, confident, and relaxed with short-term fluctuations in your fortune. When you have clear goals and plans that you are working on every day, the general trend line of your life will tend to be onward and upward over the years. Where is the market going? What is changing and how will you have to adapt to these changes? What steps should you be taking today to be ready to take advantage of the new world of tomorrow?

Whatever your answer, take those steps now! If you can discipline yourself to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not, your success is virtually guaranteed. The key to becoming a self-made millionaire is having a long-time perspective combined with an ability 50 P ractice Self-Discipline in All T hings 51 to delay gratification in the short term.

It is your ability to set a long-term goal of becoming financially independent and then to discipline yourself, every single day and with every single expenditure, to do only those things that will guarantee that you ultimately achieve your long-term goal. Self-discipline requires self-mastery, self-control, self-responsibility, and self-direction. The difference between successful people and failures is that successful people make a habit of doing the things that failures do not like to do.

And what are those things? But successful people do them anyway because they realize that this is the price they must pay for the success they desire. Successful people are more concerned with pleasing results. Failures are more concerned with pleasing methods. Successful people take actions that are goal achieving. Unsuccessful people take actions that are tension relieving. Successful people do the things that are hard and necessary and important.

Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, prefer to do the things that are fun and easy and that give them immediate enjoyment. The good news is that every act of self-discipline strengthens your other disciplines as well. Every time you practice self-discipline, your self-esteem goes up. You like and respect yourself even more. And the 52 The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires more you practice discipline in small things, the more capable you become of the great disciplines required for the great opportunities, experiences, and challenges of life.

Remember that everything in life is a test. Every day, every hour, and sometimes every minute, you are taking a test—of self-mastery, self-control, and selfdiscipline. The test is to see whether you can make yourself do the things that are most important and stay with them until they are complete. Success requires tons of discipline. Identify one area of your life where lack of discipline is interfering with your success. Decide today to develop discipline in that area.

Launch strongly. Tell others about your decision. Never allow exceptions until the new habit is firmly entrenched. This decision alone could change your life. You are a potential genius. You are smarter than you have ever imagined. You have more raw brainpower and creative ability than you have ever used up to now.

Your brain has 10 billion cells, each of which is connected to as many as 20, other cells by a complex network of neurons and dendrites. This means that the possible combinations and permutations of cells in your brain are greater than the number of molecules in the known universe.

Your ability to develop ideas to help you succeed is unlimited. This means that your ability to succeed is unlimited as well. The more you focus your mind on achieving your goals, solving your problems, or answering the tough questions about your business and personal life, the smarter you become and the better your mind works for you in the future. Your brain, your creativity, is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger and more resilient it becomes.

You can actually increase your intelligence and your IQ by disciplining yourself to think creatively all day long. Just as you develop your muscles by straining them with physical training, you develop your mental muscles by straining them as well. Here is an exercise for you to develop your brainpower and unlock your inner genius.

Take a clean sheet of paper and write your most important goal or most pressing problem at the top in the form of a question. You will be amazed at the results. Then, imagine that this problem was solved perfectly or this goal was achieved in an ideal way. What would the solution or achievement look like?

What could you do immediately to bring about this result? Remember, action is everything! The more people you know and who know you in a positive way, the more successful you will be and the faster you will move ahead. At virtually every turning point in your life, someone is standing there to either help you or hinder you.

Successful people make a habit of building and maintaining a network of high-quality relationships throughout their lives, and as a result, they accomplish 57 58 The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires vastly more than the person who goes home and watches television each night. Everything involves relationships. Virtually all of your problems in life will come as the result of your entering into wrong relationships with the wrong people.

Virtually all of your great successes in life will be accompanied by great relationships with good people who help you and whom you help in return.

You are like a chameleon in that you take on the attitudes, behaviors, values, and beliefs of the people with whom you associate most of the time. If you want to be a successful person, associate with positive people. Associate with people who are optimistic and happy and who have goals and who are moving forward in their lives. At the same time, get away from negative, critical, complaining people. If you want to fly with the eagles, you cannot scratch with the turkeys.

Self-made millionaires network continually. They introduce themselves to people in business and social settings, hand out their business cards, and tell others what they do. G et around the Right People 59 And here is one of the best strategies of all.

Whenever you meet new people, ask them to tell you about their businesses and, especially, to tell you what you would need to know to send clients or customers to them. Then, as soon as possible, see if you can send some business their way. Always look for ways to put in before you start thinking of ways to take out. The very best way to network and build your relationships is to constantly look for ways to help other people achieve their own goals.

The more you give of yourself without expecting something in return, the more rewards will come back to you from the most unexpected sources. What could you do to help them in their lives and work so that they would be open to helping you? Identify the people you should get to know. What could you do to help them in advance of your needing anything in return? Remember, first you sow and then you reap.

You can live longer and live better today than has ever before been possible. You should aim to live to be 80 or 90 or even years old, in excellent health, and you can do it if you decide to. First, set a goal to live to be at least 80 years old. Then, look at your current health habits and ask yourself whether or not the way you are living today is going to get you to the age of 80 in great shape. The first is proper weight. Set a goal to get your weight under control and then remain lean and fit for the rest of your life.

There is a five-word formula for weight loss and physical fitness. Eat more lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables. Eliminate desserts, soft drinks, candy, and anything else containing sugar from your life. Stop consuming extra salt and stop eating white flour products. Eat smaller portions and eat four or five times a day rather than three large meals.

When you can take complete control of your eating habits, you will find it easier to take control of your habits in other parts of your life as well. The third key to long life is proper exercise. This requires that you engage in vigorous physical activity approximately minutes per week or an average of 30 minutes per day. You can get all the exercise you need by going for a brisk tominute walk three to five days per week.

If you are really serious, you should join a health club or get some fitness equipment for your house and work out even more vigorously. The key to excellent physical health and long life is to set clear, specific goals for your levels of health and fitness.

This commitment to health requires tremendous self-mastery, self-control, and selfdiscipline, but the payoff can be extraordinary. If your financial goal is to achieve a net worth in excess of one million dollars, your health goal should be to live as long as possible so that you can enjoy a wonderful lifestyle with your money.

Perhaps it is eliminating desserts altogether. Then, set this as a personal challenge and resolve to discipline yourself until your new health habit is firmly entrenched. They discipline themselves to take action and to carry out the decisions they have made. They move fast and they get quick feedback from their actions. If they find they have made a mistake, they quickly self-correct and try something else. The key to triumph is for you to try.

Successful people are decisive and they try far more things than other people do. According to the Law of Probabilities, if you try far more different ways to be successful, the odds are that you will eventually find the right way for you at the right time.

They know that they should do or stop doing certain things, but they do not have the character or the willpower to make firm decisions. As a result, they drift through life, never happy, fulfilled, or successful. They never become wealthy or achieve financial independence.

They settle for far less than is possible for them. When you become decisive and action oriented, you shift your entire life into high gear.

You get far more done in a day than other people. You move ahead far faster than the people around you. You actually tap into a higher source of energy, enthusiasm, and motivation that fills you full of joy and exhilaration.

This positive energy then propels you forward even faster toward your goals. Whatever your answer to that question, just do it! Note that it is not failure itself. Failure makes you stronger and more resilient and more determined. It is the fear of failure or the anticipation of failure that can paralyze your thoughts and your activities and hold you back from even trying to do the things that you need to do to be a big success. A young journalist once asked Thomas J. Watson Sr. Success lies on the far side of failure.

Self-made millionaires are not gamblers, but they are always willing to take calculated risks in the direction of their goals to achieve greater rewards. In fact, your attitude toward risk taking is probably the most important indicator of your readiness to become wealthy. Whenever you are faced with a risky situation, ask yourself this question, What is the worst possible thing that could happen if I go ahead? Then, as J. The fact is that everyone is afraid of failure. Everyone is afraid of loss and poverty.

Everyone is afraid of making a mistake and being set back. But self-made millionaires are those who consciously and deliberately face this fear and take action anyway. If you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain. And every act of courage increases your courage and capacity for courage in the future. Whenever you take action in a forward direction with no guarantees of success, your fears diminish and your courage and self-confidence increase.

You eventually reach the point where you are not afraid of anything. Your job is to set specific goals for yourself, write them down, and work toward them every day. Imagine that you were guaranteed success if you would only take action in the direction of your goals and dreams. Then, just do it! The advice in this book is based on Brian Tracy's twenty-five years of research, teaching, and personal experience on the subject of self-made millionaires.

Tracy himself used these ideas to rise from humble beginnings to become a millionaire. The Law of Cause and Effect says that if you do what other successful people do, you will even- tually get the results that other successful people get. This law says that when you learn the success secrets of self-made mil- lionaires and apply them in your own life, you will ex- perience results and rewards far beyond anything you have accomplished up until now.

Here is an important point for you to remember. Let me repeat that. Nobody is better than you and nobody is smarter than you.

Get those thoughts out of your mind. One of the primary reasons for selling yourself short, for underachievement and lack of financial success, is the conviction that people who are doing better than you are better than you. This is simply not the case.

The fact is that most self-made millionaires are ordinary people with average educations working at average jobs and living in average neighborhoods in average houses driving average cars. But they have found out what other financially successful people do and they have done those same things over and over again until they achieved the same results. It is no miracle and it is no accident.

And when you think the same thoughts and do the same things that self-made millionaires do, you will begin to get the same results and benefits they do.

It is simply a matter of cause and effect. There are 21 success secrets of self-made million- aires. Each of these is indispensable to your becoming financially independent. The failure to apply any one of these principles can, by itself, undermine and even destroy your chances for health, happiness, and great prosperity. The good news is that you can learn every one of these principles by practice and repetition, over and over again, until they become as natural to you as breathing in and breathing out.

And there are no limits except the limits you place on yourself by your own thinking. Now, let us begin. Allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to imagine and fantasize about the kind of life you would like to live.

Think about the amount of money you would like to earn and have in your bank account. All great men and women begin with a dream of something wonderful and different from what they have today.

Imagine that you have no limitations on what you can be, have, or do in life. If your potential were completely unlimited, what kind of a life would you want to create for yourself and your family? This is a powerful technique practiced continually by high- performing men and women. This way of thinking has an amazing effect on your mind and on your be- havior. Here is how it works: Project yourself forward five years. Imagine that five years have passed and that your life is now perfect in every respect.

What does it look like? What are you doing? Where are you working? How much money are you earning? How much do you have in the bank? What kind of a lifestyle do you have? Create a vision for yourself for the long-term fu- ture. The more clear your vision of health, happiness, and prosperity, the faster you move toward it and the faster it moves toward you. When you create a clear mental picture of where you are going in life, you be- come more positive, more motivated, and more deter- mined to make it a reality.

You trigger your natural creativity and come up with idea after idea to help make your vision come true. You always tend to move in the direction of your dominant dreams, images, and visions. It improves your self-concept and in- creases your level of self-confidence. It increases your personal level of self-respect and happiness.

There is something about dreams and visions that is exciting and that stimulates you to do and be better than you ever have before. Here is a great question for you to ask and answer, over and over again: What one thing would I dare to dream if I knew I could not fail? If you were absolutely guaranteed of success in any one goal in life, large or small, short-term or long- term, what would it be?

What one great goal would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? Whatever it is, write it down and begin imagining that you have achieved this one great goal already. Then, look back to where you are today. What would you have done to get where you want to go? What steps would you have taken? What would you have changed in your life? What would you have started up or abandoned?

Who would you be with? Who would you no longer be with? If your life were perfect in every respect, what would it look like? Whatever it is that you would do differently, take the first step today. Dreaming big dreams is the starting point of achieving your goal of financial independence. As a result, they never try. They never get started. They continue to go around in financial cir- cles, spending everything they earn and a little bit more besides.

But when you begin to dream big dreams about financial success, you begin to change the way you see yourself and your life. You begin to do different things, bit by bit, gradually, until the whole direction of your life changes for the better. Dreaming big dreams is the starting point of financial success and of becoming a self-made millionaire. Then decide upon one specific action and do it im- mediately. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.

As a result, they are continually moving toward their goals, and their goals are continually moving toward them. Whatever you think about most of the time grows and increases in your life.

If you are thinking about, talking about, and visualizing your goals, you tend to accomplish far, far more than the average person, who is usually thinking and talk- ing about his or her worries and problems most of the time. Here is a simple seven-step formula for setting and achieving goals that you can use to become a mil- lionaire: First, decide exactly what you want in each area of your life, especially in your financial life.

Most people never do this. Second, write down your goals clearly and specifi- cally. Something amazing happens between your head and your hand when you put your goals in writing. Third, set a deadline for each goal. Set subdead- lines if a goal is big enough. Give yourself a target to aim at.

Fourth, make a list of everything you can think of that you will have to do to achieve each goal. As you think of new ideas, add them to your list until it is complete. Fifth, organize your list into a plan of action. Decide what is more important and what is less important. Sixth, take action on your plan immediately. It is amazing how many splendid goals and plans are never realized because of procrastination and delay.

Seventh, and perhaps most important, do some- thing every day that moves you at least one step closer to your most important goal. This commitment to daily action will make you a big success in anything you decide to accomplish. Here is an exercise for you. Then, make a list of 10 goals that you would like to achieve over the next 12 months. Write your goals in the present tense, as though a year has passed and you have already achieved them.

By making out a list of 10 goals for yourself for the next year, you will move yourself into an exclusive group consisting of only 3 percent of adults in our so- ciety. The sad fact is that 97 percent of adults have never made a list of goals in their entire lives. Once you have your list of 10 goals, go over the list and ask this key question: Which one goal on this list, if I were to achieve it, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?

Set a deadline, make a plan, take action on your plan, and do something every day that moves you toward that goal. From now on, think and talk about that goal all the time. Think and talk about how you can achieve that goal. Think and talk about all the different steps that you can take to make that goal a reality. This exercise will stimulate your creativity, increase your energy, and unlock more and more of your potential.

Sit down and begin writing out your goals and creat- ing your plan to achieve them. This ex- ercise alone can make you a self-made millionaire. Refuse to make excuses or to blame other peo- ple for your problems or shortcomings.

Stop com- plaining about things in your life that you are not happy about. Refuse to criticize other people for any- thing. You are responsible. You are in charge. The top 3 percent of Americans see themselves as self-employed, no matter who signs their paychecks. The biggest mistake you can ever make is to think that you work for anyone other than yourself. You are always the president of your own personal service corporation, no matter where you might be working at the moment.

When you see yourself as self-employed, you de- velop an entrepreneur mentality, the mentality of highly independent, self-responsible, self-starting individuals. Instead of waiting for things to happen, you make things happen. You see yourself as the boss of your own life. You see yourself as completely in charge of your physical health, your financial well- being, your career, your relationships, your lifestyle, your home, your car, and every other element of your existence.

This is the mind-set of the self-made mil- lionaire. Self-responsible people are intensely result ori- ented. They always take high levels of initiative. They volunteer for assignments and are always asking for more responsibility. As a result, they become the most valuable and respected people in their organizations. They continually prepare themselves for positions of higher authority and responsibility in the future. You should do the same. Whatever it is, write it down, make a plan, and be- gin implementing it today.

This action alone could change your life. Is there anyone or anything in your life that you are blaming for holding you back? Whatever it might be, accept complete responsibility for your life and take action today! One of your primary responsibil- ities in life is to find out what you really enjoy doing, what you have a natural talent for, and then to throw your whole heart into doing that particular work very, very well.

Self-made millionaires are those who have found a field where their natural strengths and abilities are ex- actly what is required to do the job and achieve the re- sults desired. When you are doing what you love to do, you seem to have a continuous flow of excitement, en- ergy, and ideas to do what you do even better. Here is a question for you: If you won a million dollars, tax free, tomorrow, would you continue to do what you are currently doing?

This is a great question. It simply asks you what you would do if you had all the time and money you needed and you were free to choose your occupation. Self-made millionaires, if they won a million dollars cash, would continue doing what they are doing. They would only do it differently or better or at a higher level. Perhaps the greatest responsibility of adult life, when you are surrounded by so many different choices of occupation and career, is for you to find out what you really love doing and then dedicate yourself to that field.

And no one else can do this for you. What activities have been most responsible for your suc- cess in life to date? If you could do any job at all and be successful at it, what would you choose?

Set it as a goal, make a plan, and begin moving in that direction today. Set a goal for yourself to join the top 10 percent of your field, whatever it is. This decision, to become very, very good at what you do, can be the turning point in your life.

Virtually all successful people are recog- nized as being extremely competent in their chosen fields. Remember that no one is better than you, and no one is smarter than you. Everyone who is doing well was once do- ing poorly. Everyone who is at the top of his or her field was at one time in another field altogether. And what countless others have done, you can do as well. Here is a great rule for success: Your life only gets better when you get better.

And since there is no limit to how much better you can become, there is no limit to how much better you can make your life. Your decision to become excellent at what you do, to join the top 10 percent in your field, is the turning point in your life. It is the key to great success. It is also the foundation of high levels of self-esteem, self- respect, and personal pride. When you are really good at what you do, you feel wonderful about yourself.

Being excellent affects your whole personality and all your relationships with other people. You feel happy and proud when you know you are at the top of your field. Here is one of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer, for the rest of your career: What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excel- lent fashion, would have the greatest positive im- pact on my life? You cannot become good at everything right away, but you can identify the one skill that can help you the most and then throw your whole heart into develop- ing that skill.

Set it as a goal. Write it down. Make a plan. And work on becoming better in that area every single day. You will be absolutely amazed at the difference this commitment to excel- lence will make in your life. This commitment alone can make you a self-made millionaire in the course of your career. What are the parts of your work that you must absolutely, positively perform in an excellent fashion to move to the top of your field? Where are you strong and where are you weak?