|
1. BEHAVIOR
The step that most directly controls our success or
failure is our behavior-what we do or do not do.
Behavior means our actions. How we act, what wedo,
each moment of each day will determine whether or
not we will be successful that moment or that day in
anything that we do. The right series of the right
actions will always end up making things work better
than the wrong series of the wrong actions. In most
cases, if you do the right thing, you're going to achieve
the right results.
This step involves even the simplest level of behavior.
As an example, if you like your job, do the right
thing at the right time, and keep at it, there is a good
chance that your job will do well for you. If, on the
other hand, you do not like your work and do things
which work against you on the job, it won't work as
well for you.
Let's use another example. If a student in school
refuses to study, never pays attention, and misses a lot
of classes (all behavior), will the student do well in
school? Probably not. If that student behaves in a way that says "I don't like being where 1 am," his or her
behavior will ultimately cause a problem. The good
grades won't show up and if something doesn't
j change, eventually neither will the student.
The same is true of your home fife. If you don't like where you are in your home life, what will you do? If you are like most of us, in one way or another, your
behavior, your actions will alert those around you that
you are unhappy. The result will be an unhappy home
life, or at a minimum you will have to live with
disagreements, arguments, and unhappiness in one
form or another.
On the other hand, if your actions are those which
work for you instead of against you, the likelihood is
that things around you will have a better chance of
working for you instead of against you.
But it goes far beyond that. How you manage yourself,
what you do, how you act, each and every
moment, every word you speak, motion you make,
and action you take, or do not take, will determine
how well anything in your life works for you. It does
not take a wizard to tell us that when we do the right
things, there is always a better chance that things
will work better for us than when we do the wrong
things.
But why do we do what we do? Why do we not do
the things we know we should, and so often say and do
things that we know we should not? What makes us do
what we do? What makes us act the way we act,
behave the way we behave? Why do we ever do
anything that works against us instead of always doing
exactly that which works for us? Is it because we don't
know any better? No. We usually know what's right
and what's wrong.
The reason we don't heed even our own advice is
because of something else which affects, directs, influences,
or controls all of our actions. That something
that makes us do what we do is called our:
2. FEELINGS
Every action we take is first filtered through our feelings. How we feel about something will always determine or affect what we do and how well we do
it. If we feel good or positive about something, we will
behave more positively about it. Our feelings will
directly influence our actions. Have you ever watched
a child who was made to eat something he didn't like?
How did he act? I've seen children who looked as
though they were going to die right there on the spot!
But set a favorite dessert in front of the same child and
what will he do? He may look as though he's going to
dive into it head first!
What is the difference between the one plate of food
and the other? It's not that one type of food is better
than the other. The difference is in how the child has
come to feel about the food. The way the child felt
determined what action he took. In one instance he
fought it, in the other he relished it.
I have a friend whose worst fear is that of flying.
Ordinarily she is level-headed and possesses an even
disposition. But because of her fear of being in an
airplane, she would rather drive a car from her home in
the Midwest to visit her family on the East Coast, and
lose two or three days getting there, than hop on a
plane and be with her family in two or three short
hours. When circumstances demand that she does fly,
she loses her well-mannered, even temperament, her
stress level triples, her anxieties take over, and she
! gets sick even before the flight begins.
Is it the flying? No. It is her feelings about flying that
cause her to act the way she does. In this example,
you'll notice that, once again, it made no difference if
the individual's feelings were "rational"; her feelings
I nonetheless directly controlled, influenced, and severely affected the woman's actions.
Your feelings about anything you do will detect how you do it. It doesn't have to be feelings of like or
dislike, joy or fear; all of your feelings affect your
I actions. How you feel about your job, your mate, your family, money, your health, your self, your success,
will determine how you behave in each of these areas.
If your feelings are positive and productive, your
actions will follow.
But what causes you to have the feelings which are
so much a part of you? Did you get them by accident?
What creates the way you feel about anything?
Chance? Never. Your feelings are created, controlled,
determined, or influenced by your:
3. ATTITUDES
Your attitudes are the perspectives from which you
view life. Some people seem to have a good attitude
about most things. Some people seem to have a bad
attitude about everything. But when you look closer,
you will find that most of us have a combination of
attitudes, some good, some not so good.
Whatever attitude we have about anything will affect
how we feel about it, which in turn determines
how we'll act about it and that in turn determines
whether or not we will do well. So our attitudes play a
very important part in helping us become successful.
In fact, as we can see, a good attitude is essential to
achievement of any kind! We so often hear of someone
who is said to have a "bad attitude." The term is often
applied to young people, especially to teenagers who
frequently get into trouble, but we often hear it about
adults, too. The implication is always that the individual
in question is not going to make it if he doesn't
change his attitude.
Without a good attitude, a perspective
which allows one to see the opportunities ahead
and set his sights to reach them, he never will. But
even more important is the fact that in order to possess
the kinds of feelings which work for us, we've got to
have the right attitudes to start with!
But where do we get our attitudes? Are we born
with them? Or do they just appear out of nowhere?
Our attitudes are no accident. They don't just happen.
Our attitudes are created, controlled, or influenced
entirely by our:
4. BELIEFS
What we believe about anything will determine our
attitudes about it, create our feelings, direct our
actions, and in each instance, help us to do well or
poorly, succeed or fail. The belief that we have about
anything is so powerful that it can even make something
appear to be something different than what it
really is! "Belief" does not require that something be
the way we see it to be. It only requires us to believe
I that it is.
Belief does not require something to be true. It only
requires us to believe that it's true! That's powerful stuff! That means most of what reality is, to each of us, is based on what we have come to believe-whether it's true or not! It is possible that tomorrow morning, in some classroom
in the Soviet Union, there will sit a little boy or girl who believes that the United States is bad. It is
also likely that tomorrow morning, in some classroom
in the United States, there will sit a young boy or girl
who believes that the Soviet Union is bad. It makes no
difference whether it is true or not. It is what they
believe. And what they believe will affect their attitudes,
feelings, and actions. One day when they grow
older, they could shoot at each other. To each of them
it would be right. It would be what they believe.
When I was a child, sitting on a church bench, trying
to understand what the man in the pulpit was talking
about, I remember him telling us to "believe." I didn't
know how to do that. I thought that some people were
lucky and some were not. Some just naturally got to
believe and some didn't. I did not know yet where
belief comes From, and I certainly didn't know the
power that belief would have in my life and the power
beliefs had held in the lives of every human being who
ever had lived.
As an example of how important belief can be,
imagine believing something about yourself, something
that was working against you, but was not true.
Let's say that you believed that you had trouble
making friends easily, or being accepted easily and
naturally by others. You believed that you took a
social back seat to people who seemed to be more
popular. As a result, you found yourself standing back
at social gatherings, self-conscious and unsure of what
to say. At your work you often missed opportunities
because you did not speak up--even when your idea
was better than the idea that was accepted from someone
else who did speak up. Let's say that you knew
that you wanted to be intelligent and witty and fun, but
you believed that the outside you just didn't measure
UP.
Since whatever you believe about yourself will end
up affecting what you do, you can be sure that if you
believe that you are not as socially successful as you
would like to be, your belief about yourself will turn
out to be correct-whether it was true or not. All
social behavior is conditioned-no one is born popular
and axially adept. Every social grace, skill, and comfort
level that we have, successful or unsuccessful, is
based on what we believe about ourselves. If you tell
yourself that you cannot, what can the only outcome
be?
We all have thousands of big and little beliefs about
ourselves. Some of them probably are true. I suspect
that most of them are not. But your mind will act as
though they are true if you believe them.
What makes us believe? Do our beliefs just one day
spring out of nowhere? Were our beliefs handed to us
on the day of our births, like birthmarks of our heredities
to be kept forever? Do we create them ourselves?
m e r e do we get them? Our beliefs are not accidents
of nature. Our beliefs are created and directed entirely
by our:
5. PROGRAMMING
We believe what we are programmed to believe.
Our conditioning, from the day we were born, has
created, reinforced, and nearly permanently cemented
most of what we believe about ourselves and what we
believe about most of what goes on around us.
Whether the programming was right or wrong, true or
false, the result of it is what we believe.
It all starts with our programming! What we have
accepted from the outside world, or fed to ourselves,
has initiated a natural cause and effect chain reaction
sequence which cannot fail to lead us to successful
self-management, or to the unsuccessful mismanagement
of ourselves, our resources, and our futures.
It is our programming that sets up our beliefs, and
the chain reaction begins. In logical progression, what
we believe determines our attitudes, Sects our feelings,
directs our behavior, and determines our success
or failure:
1 . Programming creates beliefs.
2. Beliefs create attitudes.
3. Attitudes create feelings.
4. Feetings determine actions.
5. Actions create results.
That's how the brain works. If you want to manage
yourself in a better way, and change your results, you
can do so at any time you choose. Start with the first
step. Change your programming. |
Disclaimer
