Brian Tracy's Not Wide Spread Knowledge Will Change Your Future — Most Underrated Speech

Did you ever stop and ask yourself why is it that some people are more successful than others? Why is it that some people make more money, live longer, have better relationships, while the great mass of men, as Thoreau said, live lives of quiet desperation? And over the years, I've read and studied for over 30,000 hours to find the secrets of success. And I'm happy to say that I eventually found the answers I was looking for. And my purpose in speaking with you today is to share with you some of the most important things I've ever learned. Here are seven rules you can apply to any challenge that you face in achieving anything you desire. Rule number one, the most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and then launch. Get started. Take action. Do something. Move. A 12-year study at Babson College concluded that the act of taking the first step is what separates the losers from the winners, or the winners from the losers. We set out at the age of 20 with $300 each to cross three continents and travel 17,000 miles. And we made it in just under 12 months. But the most important step was the first one. All the rest followed from there. Number two, once you've launched towards your goal, never consider the possibility of failure. Always forward. Never backward. Never consider the possibility of failure. Every person here is here because they refused to quit when the going got rough. Your ability to persist in the face of setbacks and disappointments is vital to all great achievement and it's always a decision that you make. It's not the external environment. It's always the internal environment. Number three, the biggest goal in the world can be accomplished if you just take it. Thomas Carlyle once wrote that our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. The only time you will ever have is now. If you live every day, every hour, the best you can, the rest will take care of itself. As the Bible says, sufficient unto the day are the cares thereof. Number four, watch out for the naysayers. The negative people around you are always telling you that you'll die in the desert. Get around positive people. Get around winners like people in this room. Fly with the eagles and refuse to listen to objections and reasons why you can't succeed. Someone once said that if every possible objection must first be overcome, nothing will ever get done. And truer words were never spoken. Number five, welcome obstacles and difficulties as valuable and inevitable steps on the ladder of success. Remember, the difficulties come not to obstruct, but to instruct. Our trip to Africa was one problem after another. We ran out of money over and over. We strained every muscle of our bodies trying to ride bicycles across France and Spain. Our Land Rover broke down again and again. We suffered from dysentery and heat stroke and exhaustion. But when it was time, we were ready for the Sahara Crossing. In retrospect, we saw clearly that without the lessons that we had learned from our mistakes, we would have surely died in the desert. And when you look back on any achievement, you will find it was preceded by many difficulties and many lessons. They are the price that you pay for your success, and no success is possible without them. Number six, be clear about your goal, but be flexible about the process of achieving it. Be willing to change, to try something new. Keep your mind open and fluid and flexible. Be willing to accept feedback from your environment and correct your course. This is a key quality of peak performers. They're not rigid. They're flexible. Remember, it's not what you have, but what you do with what you have that separates winners from losers. It's not what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you that counts. In the final analysis, your response to the adversity of life is the real measure of who you are and what you're made of. The Greek philosopher Epictetus once said that circumstances do not make the man or woman. They merely reveal him to himself. When you find out who you really are when you face adversity. And remember number seven, the last rule is nobody does it alone. At every step on our journey across Africa, people helped us with advice and with food and with assistance and with money, but especially with warmth and with kindness and with generosity. When life is over, it will be the people that we live and laugh and love with that we remember more than anything else. So don't be afraid to ask for help from others. It's a mark of strength and courage and character. And don't be reluctant to give of yourself to others generously. It's the mark of caring and compassion and personal greatness. And remember, 87% of millionaires and billionaires are self-made. They started with nothing. And nobody's smarter than you and nobody's better than you. If somebody else can do it, especially with all the disadvantages that many people start off with, if someone else can do it, you can do it as well. That's the proof. Abraham Lincoln once said that some become wealthy is proof that all can become wealthy. It's just the very fact that a person does well. It's proof. They started with nothing and they became wealthy. Well, there's the proof. You can do it as well. Just do the same things over and over again. If you do all the things that we've talked about, pretty soon you develop a level of self-confidence. Your confidence comes as a result. You only get confidence by doing certain things over and over again that build a solid foundation within your own mind that you can do whatever you need to do, that you have what it takes to be successful. Continue to move forward. Self-confidence begets great achievement. You cannot imagine a successful person with lacking self-confidence. That once you've been successful, you have a pattern set down which will enable you to apply that pattern to another part of your work to be successful in that. And the more you succeed, the more this pattern of success is reinforced. And you'll finally reach the point where it's impossible for you to fail if you succeed enough times, because you will have within you a self-adjusting mechanism that will guarantee your success. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Act as though it were impossible to fail. And this brings us to the most important part, if I can just summarize in one minute. It is this, is that your true beliefs are only and always expressed in your actions. It is not what you say or what you intend that tells what you believe, but only what you do. Your actions are always the true measure. If you will act the part, if you will pretend as though you have the quality already, the feelings will generate the actions, and the actions will generate the feelings. That if you will act, walk, talk, and live by the same principles and do the same things that successful men and women do, even if you doubt yourself in the initial stages, eventually you will come to the point where you actually feel to the bottom of your soul like a successful, positive, confident, cheerful, optimistic, unstoppable human being. Everyone eventually goes through periods of great difficulty, their own private hells, their dark nights of the soul. But it is by facing whatever life gives us with courage and determination that we grow more surely toward the stars. If you will resolve with whatever life hands you to carry on, there is nothing that can stop you from achieving the greatness for which you were created. So let me just wrap up by saying this is you are some of the best people in the whole world. You are thoroughly good people. You have unlimited potential. You're living in the best country at the best time in all of human history. The possibilities for the future are the greatest that have ever existed for mankind right here in this country. There is nothing that you can't do if you put your mind to it. So go out there and kick some butt and take some names. It's easy to fight when everything's right, when you're mad with the thrill and the glory. It's easy to cheer when victory is near and wallow in fields that are gory. It's a different song when everything's wrong, when you're feeling infernally mortal, when it's ten against one and hope there is none. Buck up, little soldier, and chortle. Carry on, carry on. There isn't much punch in your blow. You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind. You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind. Carry on, carry on. You haven't the ghost of a show. It's looking like death, but while you've a breath. Believe in your mission. Greet life with a cheer. There's big work to do, and that's why you're here. Carry on, carry on. Let the world be the better for you. So at last, when you die, let this be your cry. Carry on, my soul. Carry on.