THE POWER OF SELF-CONFIDENCE[3]

 CHAPTER 3

     Purpose and Personal Power

There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake. —Orison Swett Marden

The development of unshakable self-confidence will open up such possibilities for you as you cannot now imagine. You will be able to dream bigger dreams, set bigger goals, make greater commitments and plunge into life more wholeheartedly than you ever have before. Self-confidence is the hinge on which the gate of individual achievement turns. When your self-confidence becomes unlimited, you will be able to realize more of your potential than you could under any other circumstances. More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wrote that “Happiness is a condition. It is not something that is achieved by pursuing it directly, but rather comes as a result of our engaging in purposeful activities.”

 The Law of Indirect Effort-In a way, this is a restatement of the law of indirect effort. This law states that almost everything we get in life involving people and emotional experiences comes to us more indirectly rather than directly. They come to us as a result of doing something else. For example, if we pursue happiness directly, it eludes us. However, if we get busy doing something that is really important to us and begin to make real progress in the direction of our dreams and aspirations, we find ourselves feeling very happy indeed. Self-confidence is also subject to the law of indirect effort. We achieve higher levels of self-confidence not by wishing for it, but by setting and achieving ever-higher goals and objectives. As we move forward step by step, as we feel ourselves advancing in life, we feel better and stronger and more capable of taking on even bigger challenges.

Become More Confident and Competent-We develop the confidence to tackle larger goals by applying our energies to the accomplishment of smaller goals. We build up our confidence as we move forward until we reach the point at which there is nothing that we won’t take on. In fact, the habit of setting and achieving ever-larger goals is absolutely indispensable to the development of ever-higher levels of self-confidence and personal power. You can only really believe in yourself when you absolutely know that you have the ability to do what you set out to do. True self-confidence does not come from positive wishing or positive hoping or positive thinking. It comes from positive knowing based on having proven to yourself, over and over again, that you have what it takes to get from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. Self-confidence is a state of mind. It is an attitude and, as an attitude, it is more important than facts. However, it must be based on facts to be the kind of self-confidence you can rely on in a crunch. Your job is to do whatever it takes to convince yourself, in your heart, that you are absolutely unstoppable and that you can achieve anything that you put your mind to.

Thought Is Creative-If self-confidence is an attitude of mind, it is based on mental principles and mental laws, foremost of which is, “Thought is creative.” You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are. As you systematically and deliberately change your thinking about yourself, your outer reality changes to conform with it. Your thoughts create your life, including and especially your thoughts with regard to your feelings of self-confidence. The reason that goals are so important is because of these mental laws, the consequences of which are inevitable and inescapable. You are happy and successful to the degree to which you conform your life and your thinking to these laws, and live in harmony with them. The first law, which we have already discussed, is the law of cause and effect. This law is so simple and powerful that you need to remind yourself of it all the time. Everything that happens in your life—success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, happiness or unhappiness, selfconfidence or insecurity—are all subject to this law. The Bible teaches this basic law as the principle of “sowing and reaping.” It says that “whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.” This especially refers to the thoughts you think. If you sow positive, optimistic, uplifting thoughts in your mind, you will reap positive, optimistic uplifting events and experiences in your life. It cannot be otherwise. If you sow clear goals and objectives in your mind, you will reap clear results and rewards in your outer life.

The Law of Attraction-A corollary of the law of cause and effect is the law of attraction. This is one of the most important of all mental laws in explaining what happens to you. This law says that like attracts like. It says that you inevitably attract into your life the people, ideas, circumstances, and opportunities that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts. Just like a magnet attracts iron filings, you attract whatever is consistent with whatever you are thinking about most of the time. Because this is a law, you cannot think one thing and attract something else. Whatever you are thinking about most of the time you are drawing into your life from all directions. This is why “fuzzy” goals bring “fuzzy” results. Clear goals bring clear results. Because your level of self-confidence is directly tied to how effective you feel you are in achieving your goals, it is very important that you know exactly what it is you want and that you think of nothing else.

The Law of Correspondence_-Another mental law, also a corollary of the law of cause of effect, is the law of correspondence. This law says that your outer world tends to correspond to your inner world. Your outer world of health, wealth, and relationships will be a reflection of the way you think about each of these subjects. There is a saying that “thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.” Your thoughts and goals are like seeds, and your mind is like fertile soil. Whatever seeds, positive or negative, clear or unclear, you are planting into your mind will grow in your reality. Whatever you are reaping or experiencing today is the result of what you have sown in the past. Since your mind is not a vacuum, it doesn’t remain empty. Like a garden, either flowers or weeds will grow. Your thoughts are the most powerful forces in your universe. They are both creative and causative. Every minute of every day, they are forming the world around you. As Shakespeare said, “Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.” Your life is what your thoughts make it.

The Law of Concentration-Another principle that affects you life is called the law of concentration. This is an important principle in determining the development and maintenance of your self-confidence. The law of concentration, as mentioned earlier, says that whatever you dwell on continually grows in your reality. Thinking about a subject, dwelling on it continually, is like watering and fertilizing a seed. Concentration causes it to grow faster in your experience. The more you dwell on any goal or subject, the more of your mental capacities are dedicated to making that goal or subject a reality. The law of concentration explains why unwavering dedication to a single purpose goes hand-in-hand with all great accomplishment. The ability to concentrate without diversion on a single subject, to the exclusion of all others, explains why ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. Peter Drucker once said that whenever you find something getting done, you find a “monomaniac with a mission.”Because of this mental law, when an average individual with average capabilities brings all of his or her mental powers to bear on the achievement of a single goal, often far more can be accomplished than a seemingly more fortunate person whose energies are dispersed by having several goals at once, or as quite commonly happens, no goals at all.

The Law of Substitution-The law of substitution states that “your conscious mind can only hold one thought at a time, positive or negative.” Whatever thought is held continuously in your conscious mind will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind as an instruction or command. Your subconscious mind, in harmony with these other mental laws, will go to work 24 hours per day to bring your dominant thought or idea into reality. Your subconscious mind is inordinately powerful. It is the repository of all your emotions, beliefs, values, attitudes, and feelings. All your thoughts and feelings throughout life are stored in your subconscious. The development of the unshakable self-confidence that you desire requires that you step up to your “mental computer” and take every step necessary to program self-confidence deep into your subconscious mind.

The Law of Emotion-The final mental law you need to know in the development of purpose, personal power, and self-confidence is the law of emotion. This law says that every decision that you make, every thought you think, every action you take, is based on an emotion of some kind. The two primary emotions are either the emotion of fear, at one end of the spectrum of emotions, or the emotion of desire, at the other end of the spectrum. When you hold an emotion-charged thought in your conscious mind, it is rapidly accepted by your subconscious. Your subconscious then activates all your mental powers and begins to turn that inner thought into a result or experience in your outer world. The more powerful the emotion—the more affect it has on your thinking and actions—the more rapid the change in your experience. If the emotion is strong enough, the change can be instantaneous.

The Power of Decision-I had a friend who smoked for 30 years. He claimed that he couldn’t quit smoking because it was a deeply entrenched habit, going back to early adulthood. One day he had some chest pains and went to his doctor, who performed a series of tests on him. When the results of the tests were in, the doctor sat my friend down and told him that he had a serious heart condition and that if he continued to smoke, he would be dead within six months. Samuel Johnson once said, “When a man is to be hanged on the morrow, it clears his mind wondrously.” The idea of dying was so emotionally charged to my friend that he took out his cigarettes, threw them in the wastebasket, and never touched one again. In a positive vein, if you are absolutely convinced that you are meant to be a great success in life, and that there was nothing in the world that could stop you from achieving great things as long as you threw yourself wholeheartedly into every activity, and persisted until you succeeded, you would become an irresistible force of nature. The depth of your belief and the strength of your conviction would dramatically increase the power of your personality. If you really believed in your ability to succeed greatly, you would become unstoppable. The Four Cs of Inner Confidence You can develop this kind of belief, this inner confidence, by developing what I call “the four Cs.” 1. Clarity: Decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish and exactly the kind of person you wish to become. 2. Conviction: Develop the unshakable belief that you can do anything that you can put your mind to. 3. Commitment: Resolve to do whatever is necessary; develop the willingness to pay the price, in advance, for any success you desire. 4. Consistency: Resolve to work on your goals every day, morning, noon, and night, until they are accomplished.When you back your goals and actions with clarity, conviction, commitment, and consistency, you are on your way to developing the kind of confidence that will make everything possible for you.

 The Importance of Goals-The reason goals are so important in the development of self-confidence is because the very act of setting a major goal for your life activates all the mental laws in your favor. It will be as though all the switches were flipped on in your engine of accomplishment, and the after-burners were turned on to your potential. Clear goals free you from the law of accident, the tendency for things to happen in a random and unpredictable way. Goals give you a clear sense of direction and the knowledge that your life is self-determined. Goals give you a sense of power, purpose, and focus. They make you feel that everything that happens to you is part of an organized plan that is taking you, step by step, toward the attainment of your highest ideals. Your ability to set goals and to make plans for their accomplishment is the “master skill” of success, without which very little is possible. The habit of regular goal-setting and goal-achieving is probably more important than any other skill you could ever learn.

 The Master Skill of Success- Over the years, I have personally witnessed thousands of examples among my students of the amazing powers of goal setting. Recently, I addressed about 600 members of a national association at their annual convention in Phoenix, Arizona. During this talk, I emphasized the importance of writing down exactly what it was they wanted, and then making written plans to accomplish it. That was on a Saturday. About five days later, on the following Thursday, one of the attendees called my office to get my fax number. He said he wanted to send something immediately and didn’t want to wait for the mail. The letter that came in told this amazing story: the gentleman who wrote said that he had heard about goal setting many times and that he was prepared to be unimpressed with the talk that I gave at the convention. However, exactly the opposite happened. He decided to sit down after the convention and seriously write out his goals for the following year. The letter went on to say that on Sunday he made out a list of 10 goals, both personal and financial, that he wanted to accomplish over the next 12 months. What astonished him was that he had accomplished 5 of the 10 goals by Monday, the next day, at 5 o’clock. He could hardly believe it! He quickly wrote down 5 more goals, to bring his list for the year back up to 10, and by Thursday, when he wrote this letter, he had accomplished 5 more of his new list of 10 goals. He felt that he had made more progress in a week with clear, written goals and plans than he had made in the previous year.

 Remarkable Success Stories-Another gentleman, a recent immigrant from Pakistan, was dead broke and sleeping on the ground when someone tried to help him by letting him listen to an audio program of mine on goal setting. It transformed his life. Four years later, he had started and built two successful businesses and was worth more than a million dollars. A woman who was going through a difficult period of her life, with personal, health, and financial problems, decided to sit down and set some new goals and make some plans to resolve her difficulties. As a result, within one year, she got out of a bad relationship, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and quit drinking, lost 40 pounds, and tripled her income to more than a $100,000 per year. She attributed her successes to the power of written goals. There are countless other testimonies to the power of written goals. I receive them in person and via e-mail every week, from people all over the world. Before this chapter is finished, I will give you a simple goal-setting technique that can put your life into overdrive.

 Fear Holds You Back-Remember when I said that everything that you do is the result of either fear or desire? Fear is, and has always been, the greatest enemy of mankind, and it is also the greatest enemy of self-confidence. It is fear that holds us back more than any other factor. Fear, of all kinds, works on us unconsciously to undermine and sabotage our best intentions and our greatest hopes. In fact, as you read these words, you are probably thinking of a fear that holds you back in some way. No matter what you do, fear will rear its ugly head and attempt to trip you up. Sometimes, the fear will appear consciously in the form of rationalizations and excuses that you use to sabotage yourself and hold yourself back. Sometimes, you will find yourself avoiding goal setting by saying that “I already know what my goals are; I don’t need to write them down.” Your subconscious will tell you, “If you don’t set any clear goals, you can’t fail.” This is just another way of saying that you don’t really believe in your ability to do any better than you are doing right now. Fear will often appear as procrastination about writing down your goals in the first place. You’ll resolve to write out your goals and plans on the weekend, or on your vacation, or during the summertime, or when you can dedicate a few hours to it, or sometime in the indefinite future. Then, like 97 percent or more of adults, you’ll never do it. You will start to rationalize and say, “Well, considering my situation, it probably wouldn’t make any difference anyway.”

 The Comfort Zone- If the greatest enemy of self-confidence is fear, then the greatest enemy of human achievement is the comfort zone. Psychologists have determined that each of us has natural tendency to slip into a zone of performance and behavior where we are comfortable, one that is easy and unchallenging, and then to stay there. We stop striving. We relax. And day-by-day, we develop the habits that lead to underachievement and failure. We settle for far less than we’re truly capable of. We engage in social networking, watch television, listen to music, socialize, and generally waste our time, and then we eventually convince ourselves that this is the very best that we can do.Most people are in comfort zones of their own making. Your attitude and personality, your habitual way of responding to people and to life, is your comfort zone. The amount you earn, your standard of living, and your level of performance in your work is your comfort zone. Your level of mental and physical fitness is your comfort zone.

Resistance to Change-The natural tendency, once a person gets into a comfort zone, is to resist change of any kind, even beneficial change. If you are forced out of your comfort zone, like the collapse of a relationship, or the loss of a job, your natural tendency will be to attempt to recreate the same comfort zone, with the same type of person, or doing the same work. Everyone has had the experience of losing a job that they disliked only to go out looking for a similar job, doing the same work. We get into a relationship that doesn’t work out and our natural tendency is to try to form a new relationship with a similar type of person. We earn a certain amount of money and rather than striving to increase our earning ability, we adjust our lifestyle and accommodate to our financial situation. The tragedy of the comfort zone is that it, first of all, starts off by being comfortable, but it leads rapidly to complacency. Complacency eventually leads to boredom, to the question, “Is this all there is?” Instead of life being an exciting adventure, it becomes merely a boring repetition of what happened yesterday. Eventually, the comfort zone leads through complacency and boredom to frustration and unhappiness. Deep down inside, the average person knows that he or she is put on this earth with amazing capabilities. He or she knows that there is something better than this. As Carl Rogers, the psychologist, once said, “There is within every organism an inborn drive toward the complete fulfillment of its inherent possibilities.” There is a nagging “something” inside that tells each person that there is far more that he or she could be and have and do. This feeling is within you as well.

 The Attainment of Personal Greatness-Great men and women are those who absolutely believe that they are put on this earth to do something wonderful with their lives. They have a vision of something greater or better than their current circumstances. Personal greatness means having a sense of destiny and a conviction that your thoughts and your imagination are the only real limits to your possibilities. William James said, “Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.” The founder of Success magazine, Orison Swett Marden, once said, “There are powers inside of you, which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.” In a five-year study of leaders, reported on in his book, “Leaders,” Warren Bennis discovered that each of them consciously avoided the “comfort zone” by continuously setting higher goals. They never allowed themselves to become complacent. They lived their lives fully extended, always striving to be and do more. To develop unshakable self-confidence, you need to see yourself and think of yourself as a leader, and to do what leaders do. You need to stretch yourself toward the outermost boundaries of your potential. You need to set goals that draw out of you the very best that is in you. You need to work toward objectives that cause you to feel a sense of mastery and peak performance. And it all begins with a pad of paper, a pen, and you.

Imagine No Limitations-The starting point of setting goals is for you to throw off all mental limitations and let your mind roam freely across the entire universe of possibilities. Your primary job at the beginning is to allow yourself to “dream big dreams” and determine exactly what it is you want out of life, in every area and in every dimension. Decide what’s right before you decide what’s possible. Imagine that you can be or have or do virtually anything that you really want to, as long as you know exactly what it is. First, make up a dream list. Temporarily imagine that you have no limitations of time, money, knowledge, contacts, experience, or education. Imagine that anything that you can write down is possible for you. Remember, anything that you can clearly define and crystallize on paper is probably possible, if you want it long enough and hard enough and are willing to make whatever efforts and sacrifices are necessary. There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic timelines. The very act of writing your goals down sets the whole universe to work in your favor, and activates all the mental laws to help you. In fact, many people have had the experience of writing out a list of goals on New Year’s Day, putting them away and not referring to them again until the end of the year, and then finding that 80 percent of the goals have been achieved, sometimes in the most amazing ways. The very act of writing down big, challenging goals causes three things to happen. First, your self-concept improves and your self-confidence goes up immediately. The act of setting goals requires self-confidence and simultaneously builds self-confidence. Having the courage to write down what you really want improves your self-image and raises your self-esteem. The action itself generates a feeling of greater personal power and ability. Second, tap into your mental and emotional powers. Goal-setting actually gives you a burst of physical and mental energy. Your heart rate and your respiratory rate speed up. The very act of goal-setting is inherently exciting. It sounds a little corny, but someone once said, “Feeling listless? Make a list!” It’s true. It’s like stepping on the accelerator of your own mental and physical potential. And if you do it every day, the results can be amazing. Third, commit it to paper. The very fact that you have committed a goal to paper dramatically increases the likelihood that you will achieve that goal. Your mind is structured in such a way that you cannot write down a goal clearly on paper (not on a computer screen!) without simultaneously having the ability to somehow attain it. The most important question is: “How badly do you want it?”There are several mental exercises that you use to set your goals: 1. Imagine that you have just won a million dollars cash, and that you can do or have anything you want with the money. What would you do first? Where would you go? What changes would you make in your life? If you had complete financial freedom, what would you do differently from what you are doing now? 2. Describe your ideal lifestyle. Imagine that you could live your ideal of the perfect life. What part of the country would you choose to live in? What kind of a company would you choose to work for or to start and run as your own? What kind of a home and car would you want? How would you like to spend your time and live your life? What kind of relationships would you want? 3. Ask yourself what you would do if you learned today that you only had six months to live. If you had no limitations, how would you spend your last six months on earth? This is another way of asking, “What is really important to you?” Who would you want to spend time with? What would you want to accomplish? What would you like to leave behind? In other words, what do you truly value? What are the things that really give meaning and purpose to your life? 4. List all the worries or problems in your life and write out a goal that is the perfect solution to each of those difficulties. If money is a concern, write out a goal that clearly defines how much you want to earn, how much you want to accumulate, and what you want to achieve financially over the next three to five years. 5. Think about your family and your relationships. Describe the perfect situation between you and the important people in your life, and then make out a series of goals to achieve that situation. 6. Look at your health. Describe what perfect health and physical fitness means to you, and then make out a plan to achieve that level of fitness. 7. Define the kind of person that you would most like to become, both personally and professionally. Then, work out a plan of personal and professional development that will enable you to learn and grow and become the kind of person you most admire and would most like to be. Remember, as Goethe said, “Before you can have something, you must first be something.”

 Categorize Your Goals- Once you have written out your goals, divide them into the different areas of your life that are important. There are basically six divisions that most people use, but you can have more or fewer. 1. Financial and material goals. 2. Family and personal goals. 3. Self-improvement and educational goals. 4. Spiritual goals. 5. Health and fitness goals. 6. Social and community goals. To perform at your very best, your life must be in balance. This means that you need to have goals in each area so that you are moving progressively forward on something that is important to you all the time.

 Organize Your Goals- The next step, once you have all your goals in writing, is to organize them in order of priority. Select the goals that are more important than others and put them at the top of each list. Then, select the goals that are second and third and fourth, and so on. Finally, and perhaps the most important of all in goal setting, is for you to select the one goal out of all the goals that is more important than any other. This is the key to your success. The mental discipline to set your goals and to sort them out, and to decide on your chief aim or your major definite purpose, is the starting point of individual greatness. This major definite purpose is the one goal, the accomplishment of which will lead to the attainment of many of your other goals. This goal becomes the central focus for all your other goals and activities. This goal is what enables you to bring all your mental resources to focus like a laser beam on one thing. Your forward progress on this one goal is what eventually generates the unshakable self-confidence that you desire.

 Focus and Concentrate- This intense focus on one goal is not easy, but it is all-important. Orison Swett Marden wrote, “The giants of the race have been men and women of concentration, who have struck sledge-hammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men and women of today are those of one over-mastering idea, one unwavering aim, men and women of single and intense purpose.” Marden also said that “every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.” Single-minded concentration in the direction of your dreams will intensify your desires and increase your emotional drive toward your goal. This intensity of concentration will activate the law of attraction and begin to attract people and opportunities into your life to help you to achieve your goal. The more you think about your goal, the more it will come to dominate and direct your life. The more you think about it, the more rapidly you will move toward it and it will move toward you.

Make It Measurable and Bound by Time- Your major goal must be measurable. It’s a basic rule that “what gets measured, gets done.” Make it clear and quantitative and objective, and, if necessary, break it down into smaller parts that you can work on, one at a time. Your major goal must also be clearly bound by time. Set a deadline on it. Select a realistic but challenging date for its completion and write it down. If it’s a long-term goal, such as two or three years, break it down into smaller parts, with minor goals or benchmarks, every 30 to 60 days. Create a structure of rewards that you will give yourself on the attainment of each part of your goal, and on the attainment of your entire goal. For maximum motivation and high achievement, you need to tie each goal to a reward and each part of the goal to a smaller reward. The reward may be dinner out or a vacation or holiday. It may be a new car or a new home. It may be something that affects all the members of your family. Many people enlist the support and cooperation of their spouses and children by agreeing to rewards that everyone will get when the goal is attained. Rewards make the process more fun and interesting, and they act as an inner drive that propels you forward when the going gets rough.

Make Your Plans-Once you have determined your major and minor goals, you construct your plans by making detailed lists of everything that you will have to do to achieve each goal, and then organizing the lists by time and priority. What will you do first, what will you do second? What is more important? What is less important? Make each activity measurable and put a deadline on it. Select the very first thing that comes to your mind to do, and get started. By setting goals, making plans, and getting started, you will join the top 3 percent of adults in the world today and your success will be virtually guaranteed. A final point with regard to goals is this: keep your goals confidential. You build confidence and personal strength by keeping your goals inside of you and by channeling your efforts purposefully each hour and each day toward their attainment. Many people make the mistake of talking too much about their goals. Too much talking causes their energies to dissipate and their motivation to decline. It weakens their resolve. They lose the force and the power they would have had if they kept their goals to themselves and instead concentrated on purposeful activities.

A Simple Technique- Let me now give you a simple technique that has transformed my life and the life of almost every person who has ever used it. It is simply this: get yourself a spiral notebook, the kind used in school for taking notes. Begin each day by sitting down with this notebook and writing out your main goals in the present tense, as though they were already a reality. Use strong, definite words like, “I earn,” “I achieve,” or “I am.” You can write other things in this notebook if you like, but the most important action is that you take five minutes each day to write and rewrite your major goals, without referring back to what you wrote yesterday. Hand writing your goals is called a “psychoneuromotor activity.” Each time you write out your goals, you drive them deeper into your subconscious mind. You increase the intensity of your desire and the depth of your belief. You activate the mental laws of concentration and attraction and correspondence. You focus your mental powers and increase your confidence that the goal is achievable. By rewriting your goals every day, they become clearer and stronger and take on a power of their own. This exercise impresses your goals so deeply into your subconscious mind that they will eventually “lock on,” and you will begin to move irresistibly and unstoppably toward their achievement. When this happens, your future will be guaranteed. As you develop this ability to set and achieve whatever it is you want in life, you will develop the kind of confidence that comes from positive “knowing” rather than positive thinking. You will become unstoppable. Action Exercises 

1. Decide today exactly what you want in life. Set your goals as if you had no limitations, and whatever you wrote, you could achieve. 

2. Make a list of 10 goals that you would like to achieve in the next 12 months or so.

 3. Write your goals in the present, positive, personal tense. For example, you could write, “I earn $XXX,XXX by this date.” This is personal, positive, and in the present tense.

 4. Set deadlines on each of your goals, and set subdeadlines if necessary. 

5. Make a list of everything you will have to do to achieve your goal and organize the list by sequence and priority. This now becomes your plan. 

6. Review your list and ask, “If I could be guaranteed to achieve any one goal on my list within 24 hours, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on my life?”

7. Take this number-one goal, your major definite purpose, write it at the top of a new page in the present, personal, positive tense. Make a list of everything you could do to achieve this goal, organize it into a plan, and take action on your plan immediately. 

8. Do something every day, seven days per week on your major goal. Resolve to persist on this goal until you succeed, no matter how hard it becomes or how much time it takes. This process of setting and achieving one big goal will build your selfconfidence to the point where you will become unstoppable for the rest of your life.

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