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Introduction

“I maintained my edge by staying a student; you always have something to learn.” (Jackie Joyner-Kersee)

The better you feel about yourself and the world around you, the happier and more cheerful you will be. The more positive a person you are, the more people will be

willing to help you in everything you want to do. The most successful people at every level of society are those who are liked and respected by the greatest number of other people.

By deliberately doing and saying the kind of things, every day, that will make you feel better about yourself, you will improve every aspect of your attitude and your life.

In this lesson, you learn how to become an unshakable optimist in a world of continual challenges, difficulties and setbacks. In this lesson you will learn:

■ How to develop self-esteem, self-confidence and self-trust

■ The three keys to personality development

■ The Law of Habit

■ How to develop a positive mental attitude

■ How to be an “Inverse Paranoid”

■ Keys to develop a positive language

■ How to interpret every situation in a positive way

Becoming an Unshakable Optimist

PersonalGrowth Strategies

2© Brian Tracy. All rights reserved. The contents, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form for any purpose without the written permission of Brian Tracy.

What Do You Already Know?

Test your knowledge by attempting to answer the questions below.

1. What is the key measure of your self-esteem?

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2. What can you do every day to build a more positive personality?

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3. How do you overcome the feelings of “learned helplessness?”

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4. What steps can you take to learn the habits that you need to be successful and optimistic?

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5. What can you find that is good or beneficial in the most difficult situation you are currently facing?

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6. What is the one simple, powerful key to maintaining a positive mental attitude?

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7. What is the role of adversity in your life and how can you turn it to your advantage?

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4© Brian Tracy. All rights reserved. The contents, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form for any purpose without the written permission of Brian Tracy.

Becoming an Unshakable Optimist

1. Self-esteem, self-confidence and self-trust are essential to success, and they can be developed.

a) Self-esteem: “How much you like yourself, respect yourself, and consider

yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person;”

b) Self-confidence, in your ability to do whatever you want to do;

c) Self-trust, in yourself and your judgment.

21Three keys to personality developments.

a) POSITIve AffIrmATIOnS — repeat positive, personal, present-tense statements about the way you want to be and the things you want to do;

b) vISUAlIzATIOn — create clear mental pictures of the way you want to perform in each part of your life;

c) AcT The PArT — act as if you already had the qualities that you wish to enjoy and you were already the person you want to be.

3. Learned optimism vs. learned helplessness.

a) learned helplessness is the major problem holding people back from maximum performance today;

b) Learned helplessness is acquired as the result of both failure experiences and thoughts of failure experiences;

c) The antidote to learned helplessness is “learned optimism” — which comes through practice;

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d) Optimism is learned as the result of success experiences and thoughts about success experiences.

4. The Law of Habit explains fully 95 percent of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

a) The way you think, feel and act are all largely the result of habit;

b) You can learn the habits you need to be a highly effective person;

c) Bad habits must be replaced by good or better habits;

d) The key: Decide upon the habits you want, then affirm, visualize and act as if you already had them;

f) The major emotions that affect habit pattern development are fear and desire;

g) Your task is to think about your desires rather than about your fears.

5. A positive mental attitude, optimism and self-confidence are all the result of habit.

a) How you feel is determined by how you interpret things to yourself;

b) Your “explanatory style” determines your emotions, your attitudes and your behaviors;

c) The rule: Look for the good in every situation;

d) See short-term failures as temporary rather than permanent;

e) See problems as impersonal rather than personal;

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f) See problems as general rather than particular;

g) Seek the valuable lesson in every setback or obstacle.

6. Become an “inverse paranoid,” convinced the world is conspiring to make you successful.

a) “That’s good!” Look within every situation for what is really good about it;

b) Every setback contains a benefit of some kind. What is it?

c) Gifts come wrapped up in problems;

d) Keep positive by assuming a greater plan is at work in your life;

e) Look for the silver lining to every cloud;

f) The key to a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)? Think about your goals, all the time.

7. Use positive language to describe the difficulties you experience every single day.

a) Rather than calling it a problem, call it a “situation;”

b) Better yet, refer to a problem as a “challenge;”

c) Best of all, think of a problem as an “opportunity.”

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8. every situation can be a positive situation if you look within it for the opportunity it contains for growth and self-mastery.

a) A positive mental attitude is simply a positive response to stress

and difficulty;

b) Adversity makes you stronger and more capable of success in the future. Welcome it!

c) From failure you learn to succeed in the long term;

d) Difficulties show you who you really are in terms of character;

e) Resolve in advance to persist and to be positive until you succeed.

Your success is inevitable when you take full and complete control over your own thinking. When you persist in keeping your thinking focused on the things that you want, and not on the things you don’t want, you become a more positive, optimistic person.

When you talk to yourself in positive language, visualize clear, positive mental pictures of what you want to be and do, and then act as if you already were the person you wish to become, you take full and complete control over the development of your character and your personality. You put yourself onto the high road toward maximum performance.

Action exercises

1. In what situations do you feel the highest level of self-esteem and self-confidence?

1. ________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________

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2. In what three ways can you talk and act to keep yourself positive no matter what is happening around you?

1. ________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________

3. What three things would you do differently if you were absolutely guaranteed of great success in any goal you could set for yourself?

1. ________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________

4. In what three areas of your life or work do you experience a feeling of learned helplessness?

1. ________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________

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5. What positive habits can you develop that will enable you to deal with the problems and difficulties of modern life?

1. ________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________

6. What negative habits have you developed that interfere with your ability to respond effectively to the inevitable problems and difficulties of your work or personal life?

1. ________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________ 3. ________________________________________________________________

7. What are your three most important goals in your career right now? (Whatever they are, resolve to think about them most of the time.)

1. ________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________

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8. What are the three most important benefits you could derive, or lessons you could learn, from the biggest problem you are wrestling with today?

1. ________________________________________________________________ 2. ________________________________________________________________

3. ________________________________________________________________

What one action are you going to take immediately as the result of what you have learned in this lesson?

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