The Most Powerful Success Factor
Brian Tracy is one of my favorite personal development authors. He has granted me to post this article
The Most Powerful Success Factor
By: Brian Tracy
The most powerful success factor for lifelong success has to do with the “golden hour” of your day.
As an individual, you become what you think about, most of the time. You become the sum total result of the ideas, information and impressions you feed into your mind, from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night. Everything counts, but some impressions count more than others. The thoughts with which you flood your mind in the first hour of the morning, the golden hour, have a strong influence on how you think, feel and act for the rest of the day.
Fully 95% of everything you do or say is determined by your habits, whether good or bad. Successful people have good habits that lead them to engage in positive, productive behaviors throughout their lives. Unsuccessful people have inadvertently developed bad habits that cause them to act, or fail to act, in ways that lead to underachievement and failure.
Perhaps the best habit you can develop is to take advantage of the golden hour and start every day in a thoughtful, productive way that sets you up for greater success in the hours ahead.
The Golden Hour
The golden hour is the rudder of the day. When you begin to arise early and invest the first hour in yourself, you will be amazed at the difference in the way you feel and in the results you will get. You will gradually transform your thinking about yourself and what is possible for you. You will become a success magnet and begin to achieve success in all levels.
Here is a successful and effective formula that has worked for me, and for thousands of others, in going from rags to riches. Resolve to try it yourself for 21 days before you pass judgment on whether or not it is helping you. My promise to you is that, by the time you have practiced these behaviors for 21 days, your whole world will have changed in positive ways that you cannot even imagine.
The 21 Day Mental Diet
1. Starting tomorrow, arise each morning at least two hours before you have to be somewhere, and invest the first golden hour in yourself, and in your mind. If you exercise physically each morning, do this before you begin to exercise mentally.
2. Before you turn on the television, radio, or read the newspaper, take 30-60 minutes and read something motivational, inspirational or educational. Be sure that the first thing you put into your mind in the morning is positive, healthy and consistent with the kind of life you want to lead.
3. After you have completed your morning reading, take a spiral notebook and write out your top 10-15 goals in the present tense, exactly as if you have already achieved them. Write goals such as, “I earn $100,000 per year”; “I weigh 165 pounds and am superbly fit”; “I drive a brand new grey BMW”; “I live in a beautiful 3500 square foot home” and so on. Rewrite your list of goals every morning without referring back to the goals you wrote the day before. This is a very important success factor for you to practice in order to achieve your goals.
4. Plan every day in advance. After you have rewritten your goals, make a list of everything you have to do that day, and then organize the list by priority, value and importance.
5. Begin immediately to work on your most valuable and important task, before you do anything else. Resolve to focus single-mindedly on that one task until it is complete. When you start and finish your major task first thing in the morning during the golden hour, you will experience a surge of energy, elation and confidence that will propel you into your other tasks, and dramatically increase your overall productivity for the rest of the day.
6. Listen to educational audio programs as you drive around. Leave the radio off. Continually feed your mind with high quality mental nutrition that uplifts and inspires you to do your best.
7. Finally, develop a sense of urgency. Pick up the pace. Move quickly from one task to the other. Don’t waste time. The faster you move, the more energy you will have. The faster you move, the more you will get done, and the better you will feel. The faster you move, the more in control of your life you will feel, and the more you will like and respect yourself.
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