The Magic of Thinking Big gives you useful methods, not empty promises. Dr. Schwartz presents a carefully designed program for getting the most out of your job, your marriage and family life, and your community.The book, which has sold over 4 million copies, instructs people to set their goals high and think positively to achieve them. The author gives a step-by-step guide on how to achieve what one wants by changing their thought patterns and thought habits.

No matter whether your life goals are incredibly big and daunting or fairly small and achievable, chance are you’ve thought “Where do I even begin?” more than once.

The author suggests you start by creating a mindset in which you feel 100% capable of achieving whatever you set out to do.Why does this work? Because once you start believing in yourself enough, your brain will spark the creativity required to achieve your goal.

These ideas could have been the roots of what would later become positive psychology. One McKinsey study quoted in the book states that what management and societal leaders are looking for most, when working with people, is the drive to move forward.

People are looking for this attitude, because it makes sure you persevere in the face of failure and adversity, instead of running away at the first roadblock.Now David presents us with several strategies to improve your self-belief and confidence.

The first is to constantly work on your creative thinking skills. As opposed to just memorizing facts, which will only help you in certain situations, creative thinking will help you solve any kind of problem you will face.

Belief is everything and there is nothing mystical about the power of belief, but we must draw a distinction between merely wishing and actually believing. Doubt attracts ‘reasons’ for not succeeding, whereas belief finds the means to do the job. Schwartz was in conversation with an aspiring fiction writer. When the name of a successful author came up, the aspiring writer quickly said, ‘But I could never equal him; I’m not in his league.’ Knowing the writer in question, Schwartz pointed out that he was neither super-intelligent nor super-perceptive, merely super-confident. The writer had at some point decided to believe that he was among the best, and so he acted and performed accordingly.

Most of us believe that the result of an event is the best indicator of how successful we are, yet events are much more likely to reflect a person’s level of confidence. In Schwartz’s words: `Belief is the thermostat that regulates what we accomplish in life.’ Turn the thermostat up, and witness the results.

Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not supermen. Success does not require a superintellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success isn’t based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never—yes, never—sell yourself short.

Never depend on luck to get what you want. The only vaccination against ‘Excusitis’, as Schwartz calls it – ‘commonly known as failure’s disease’ – is conscious self-belief. Schwartz knows that as soon as we hit a rough spot our thinking is likely to shrink back to its normal size, yet this is exactly when it is crucial not to. Sporting champions do not collapse when, in the course of a game, they are being beaten. Instead of building a case against themselves, they will at this point remember that they are a champion.

Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier—certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans. Thinking larger thoughts is a kind of magic, since the effort put in is small compared with the long-term results. In the 1890s, a person named Gottlieb Daimler drew a three-pointed star on a postcard to his family and wrote next to it, ‘One day this star will shine down on my work.’ He co-founded Mercedes-Benz. Great accomplishments such as these demonstrate Schwartz’s claim that a person is best measured by the size of their dreams.

For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

Right from the start Grant takes a moment to address that being a giver doesn’t mean giving all the time. It doesn’t mean being a doormat and it doesn’t mean putting the needs of others above your own. Even though these seem like giving ways, Grant brings combines anecdotes, research, and popular stories from history to weave a different fabric that the best workers are made out of. It’s one of giving and how givers do certain things better that bring them an extra advantage.

One of the ways that givers get ahead is through better networking, and not in the traditional sense of selling something to someone. Givers rather, choose to help others and because they give and give, rather than take and take, they have a larger network. In the short run this means a bit of stagnation rather than moving forward but in the long term givers come out ahead. Givers win in the long term because they build up a larger network and help those people get ahead. If a giver needs to call in a favor then, they have a bigger balance of resources to draw from, and probably better results.

Grant also writes about how givers negotiate better than takers. In one study of student negotiators, the group trained as givers got better deals for themselves and their opponents. The researchers concluded that by shifting their thinking toward one of giving, these students were able to find creative solutions to the negotiation impasse they were at. They found things that were of high value to their opponent low cost to them. It was the research manifestation of the children fighting over the last lemon, both claiming they needed it.

Adam Grant advances the provocative proposition that givers enjoy a powerful comparative advantage over takers. His message is that the succeed-at-any-expense takers’ tactic is a dangerous, ultimately ill-fated success strategy. In particular, Give and Take is a searing indictment of the takers’ tactics of grasping, maneuvering, and manipulating corporate executives who literally take from their colleagues and customers; and who by their pursuit of egregious unethical misconduct literally take from their company’s customers, colleagues, and shareholders. The putative poster boy of this unsustainable style is Ken Lay, former Enron CEO, who exemplified that “takers may rise by kissing up, but they often fall by kicking down.”

At a time when marketing is moving from manipulation to meaning, when consumers seek the authentic over the plastic, when people more and more seek work that embodies their values and purposes, the implications of the message of Give and Takeare profound, for “There’s something distinctive that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and cascades . . . creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.”

The Richest Man in Babylon first appeared on the scene in 1926 as a series of informational pamphlets on basic financial management. By 1927, several of these pamphlets had been compiled into a book and this collection has been in print ever since.

In short, The Richest Man in Babylon is a series of financial parables. These stories are set in ancient Babylon and relate the story of a Babylonian regular guy who used some basic financial sense and built up a great deal of wealth.  Basically, a young man asks a rich person to mentor him. This wealthy man slowly teaches him the rules to wealth, which are timeless and that anyone can apply. He scolds the young man when he makes mistakes, but eventually the boy gets rich.

1. Spend Less Than You Make. Save and Invest The Difference

Sounds so obvious but common sense isn’t so common. Most young people I meet have openly admitted that they spend every bit of what they make every paycheck.This is one of my pet peeves that annoys me most. I know secretly that they will not get rich if they make more money (like they often complain and wish for) because they will just spend more and return down to zero in the bank account.

2. Use Saved Money To Make More Money

This is probably one of the golden truths of wealth creation that is voiced in many classics like Rich Dad Poor Dad. Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank explains this well. He imagines every dollar like little soldiers. Everyday, his mission is to capture more soldiers and get those soldiers to work to capture even more soldiers.

Most people are using that money on things that rust, rot, or deteriorate to a net worth of zero. These include houses, cars, boats, clothing, watches, jewelry, or any merchandise. You’re making someone else rich by doing that.

What are the smart people doing? They’re taking every dollar they save and spending that on something that will make them MORE money. Usually, it’s on something that they’re skilled at or can understand: a basketball player might spend it on basketball lessons, a programmer might spend it on an exclusive programming in-person training, a businessman might spend it on a small business that will make him more money.

3. Only Take Advice From People Skilled In That Field

Only take advice from the best people in a field. Be careful of any other advice that comes your way. Everyone loves giving advice. The book illustrates this with a story of the main character investing his money with foreign jewel traders that promised to bring back rare jewels for cheap. He was scammed and brought back fake jewels. He also tried investing his money in the shield business with a man who worked as a cloth maker (and clearly didn’t know a thing about the shield industry).

An example would be listening to advice from the tailor on jewelry or business. What does this guy know about either of these things? NOTHING! That’s why he’s a tailor. Find an expert at business or jewelry who has made a lot of money (and can prove it).

Sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many people listen to anyone’s advice. A lot of successful people do listen to advice, but it’s not as stringent as it should. They will listen to anyone who sounds successful or looks rich or is on a fairly famous podcast or has made at least 6 figures.

4. Only Invest Your Money In Industries and Skills You Are Very Familiar With Or You’ll Lose Your Money

Along a similar theme as the last point, you only want to invest in industries that you are familiar with. For example, let’s say you don’t know much about real estate. Investing money in it is like throwing it out the window because it’s easy for people to mislead you or for factors you didn’t consider to deplete your investment.Just like you shouldn’t try to do heart surgery with no knowledge or experience with surgery, you should not waste your hard earned money on areas you aren’t familiar with.

5. Don’t Wish For A Lump Sum of Cash. Work To Achieve A Consistent Cash Flow Instead.

People wish that they get lucky and win a lottery. But any lump sum of cash you win will eventually go to zero and you’ll be broke again. In fact, many lottery winners go through their whole winnings within a year. And their happiness levels go back down to zero.

The craziest part is that usually, they’re no better of than when they started: their fashion, standard of living, and everything else is surprisingly the same. They weren’t smart with their money or have a money-mindset and therefore they bought things that will depreciate to zero value.Treat your money like solders that will bring you more money.

6. You Will Lose Money If You Put It To Foolish Use

What this basically means is that if you invest or use money in businesses you aren’t familiar or people who aren’t good at a task, you will lose it. If you push it too hard to earn money in a near-impossible way, you will lose it. If you buy into scammers, you will lose the money. If you spend or use money based on your own inexperience or emotional urges, you will lose it.

7. Put Away 10% of your Earnings and You Won’t Even Notice A Difference in Quality of Living

Pay yourself first. This means that before you spend any of your earnings, put aside 10% for saving and investing.Your money is not truly yours to keep because you immediately give it away by spending it on rent, food, or items you don’t need.

The book makes a profound point: If you start with 10% tucked away, you will not even notice the difference. Your quality of life will have no noticeable difference. You surprisingly will learn to live without it.

8. Invest in Your Ability To Earn More

What the heck does that mean?It means you should spend your time (or money) to improve your skills, knowledge, and ability to earn more money. I truly think is a golden truth to wealth that is most important, yet overlooked constantly, so pay attention:

Most people quit learning at the age of 21 when they finish school. Others are lifelong learned. Until they die at 90 years old, they keep learning and improving. This gives them a huge advantage over time. While the average worker, goes home after work to watch TV, does nothing to improve himself, and rots his or her brain, you can get ahead by improving yourself a little each day.

9. You Will Lose Money If You Let Greed Cloud Your Judgement

There is a difference between having big dreams versus letting your greed influence your decisions. You can build a multi-billion dollar business with a small $1000 investment. It’s been done before. Crazier things have been accomplished.

But that does not mean you buy into a promise of someone offering you a “magic return of millions with a one time investment.” That’s a scam. Often, a lot of billionaires I have studied, like Sam Walton and Warren Buffett, were always very conservative with their investments. They would rather build slowly versus rushing into an opportunity with risky down-side.

10. What You Earn Is Not Yours To Keep Until You Invest It Properly

The book mentions a concept called “what you earn is not yours to keep.” It basically means that just because you earned $100 bucks doesn’t mean it’s really yours because you immediately turn and spend it on items (rent, toys, clothes, etc.). So in reality, it’s their’s to keep.

Instead, immediately take 10% off the top and set it aside into a income-generating system (like a Lemonade stand or McDonald’s) that you own forever and keeps generating you money for you to keep.

11. People Who Take Action Get Luckier Because They Make Their Own Luck

Don’t interpret this to mean, “if you gamble more, you will make more money.” What he’s actually saying here is that people who actually take what they learn and use it (rather than keep it in their head), tend to be more “lucky.” If you are doing everything you can to bend all your odds in your favor, you will have more chances and appear to others to be more lucky.

The stories themselves are of varying levels of quality. There are two great stories, a fair number of middling ones, and a few that left me confused as to the reason for their inclusion. Many of the stories had overlapping concepts, but they were explained and applied in different ways. In short, buy this book if you learn well from stories. If a well-told tale of the experiences of others is the way that you learn, this book will be very enlightening. I often learn this way, as I learned about totalitarianism from 1984 and objectivism from Atlas Shrugged.

The Millionaire Next Door was Tom Stanley’s runaway bestseller, revealing to the world a most unexpected picture of America’s millionaires. The Millionaire Mind is the more thoughtful and insightful look into the psychology of millionaires, the ‘soft’ factors in terms of attitudes and beliefs that have made these people so successful.

The key question asked: is it possible to have a very enjoyable, balanced life but still achieve millionaire status? Stanley’s surprising answer is that while money can’t buy happiness, millionaires are perhaps more aware than most that the best things in life are free. Rather than, as you might expect, spending their non-working time visiting glamour spots or engaging in expensive hobbies, the great majority of millionaires prefer to spend time with family and friends. If they are not doing this they are involved in community activities or playing a round of golf. As the author suggests, most millionaires are a ‘cheap date’ – but are not miserly personalities.

‘Vocation vocation vocation’

The way to sustainable wealth and a enjoyable life is simple: do work that you love to do. The more you love your work the more likely you will excel in it, and the more rewards accrue to you. You are also much more likely to create a profitable niche through the process of deepening your skills, knowledge and contacts in your chosen area. Millionaires are happy to make a life out of truck spare parts or car washes if they see opportunities – no matter what others think. Above all, millionaires ‘think differently from the crowd’ – they spend a lot of their time looking for things that others have overlooked, overturning assumptions and creating profitable niches within generic industries.

Risk, reward and self-belief

Stanley notes the strong correlation between the willingness to take financial risk and financial success. While most of us would see starting a business as a great risk, the financially successful see working 9 to 5 for someone else risky. You are dependent upon your employer for your livelihood, and your income is related to how much time you spend working. But millionaires tend to choose a career in which there is no ceiling on how much money they can make if they are successful at it.

School

A good proportion of self-made millionaires worked hard in school but were not the top students. What they learned most in school was how to judge people well and get along with them, and that hard work could bring a surprising level of success. It turns out here that great grades aren’t necessarily the key to success, but tenacity and leadership skills are. In other words, if you work hard and are involved in extracurricular activities (particularly in leadership roles) but are a B student, you’re in much better shape to succeed than an A student who coasts and isn’t involved in said activities. In fact, the chapter largely indicates that the B student is preferable here. In other words, don’t be ashamed of your grades – only be ashamed if you’re not willing to work for it.

Spouse

Nine out of ten married millionaires say their marriage has been a major factor in their success. A spouse provides on tap psychological support and advice which is likely to be honest.  If your relationship is about physical attraction above all, it won’t be rock solid when you need it to be because the bedrock of a reliable marriage is compatible values. If you have appropriate values for becoming a millionaire, then you’ll just undermine all of it by having a spouse that doesn’t share those values.

The Home

Another big clue appears here when it’s shown that millionaires on the whole do not buy houses that are ostentatious, but instead are functional for what the needs of the people are. They generally take their time looking for homes, search out bargains, and clearly define their needs before they buy, including factors such as good public schooling and so forth. They also buy modestly – the average millionaire owns a home with a median value only slightly above the median value for all homes; in fact, many of the most ostentatious homes are owned by non-millionaires.

What is the millionaire mind? Not living a spartan lifestyle and making money your god, but freedom from reliance on credit and being in control of your finances. The great self-discipline of the average millionaire means that they can’t help piling up wealth long after their modest needs have been satisfied. The millionaire mind evokes the famous biblical saying, “To them that hath, more will be given.” Not only do these people have money, they love their work. Most people will think ‘of course they love their work, they can do what they want’ – but few appreciate that it was their love of their vocation that helped to make them wealthy in the first place.

The “Rich Habits” are ten principles created through years of researching the daily success habits of his wealthiest clients. These ten simple principles miraculously transform every individual who comes into contact with them. By applying these principles, you are literally walking in the footsteps of the wealthy. In Rich Habits, Tom Corley provides a step by step financial success program that is concise, easy to understand and even easier to apply, regardless of your age, education or income level.

Rich Habits shares similar insight by eliminating the excuses and obstacles we often make for ourselves. It’s no longer merely about having good timing or [random] good luck. Tom Corley stresses the importance of developing daily habits that will help us create our own opportunities and increase the chances of having really good luck.

Likely the biggest reason Rich Habits holds such a high rank in my rather massive book collection is not because Tom is my client (which he is) but simply because this book cuts all the junk out and focuses on what really matters. Tom sees the urgency in making changes immediately so he gets straight to the point. More importantly, the stories and lessons are relevant to anyone from any background, so long as you are serious about really making a change in your life. This book empowers the lower and middle class in ways few other books have ever even attempted.

Redefining & Creating Luck

When we look at any popular success story, the temptation may be to think it was all luck and that it was an overnight success. We rarely see the journey there, the price that had to be paid for success. In Rich Habits, Tom confirms that it really is all about luck but we need to transform how we view luck. The average person may wait around for random good luck, but this leaves too much up to circumstances and adversity. The wealthy have mastered ways to create their own opportunity luck, which is an empowering thing to know. No longer do we need to feel that we are victims of adversity.

Use Daily To-Do Lists

To-do lists may seem like a mundane task or extra work but Tom’s research has shown that the wealthy use daily to-do lists and aim for 70% completion or better. This discipline makes long-term goals more achievable and puts us in a “do it now” mindset. By extension, this insight shows us how procrastination and lack of organization can be detrimental to our potential for success and wealth. The practice of daily to-do lists helps us visualize success and make progress more tangible.

Build Relationships Daily

In business, it is easy to treat people as sales prospects and referral sources. This short-sighted view on the value of people makes relationships more transactional, whereas it should be more about mutual support, emotional empowerment, and reciprocation. Tom urges us to meet people often and nurture relationships daily.

The wealthy show us that everyone matters and we should not think about a person’s immediate value or what we can gain from relationships; instead, we should focus on building life-long relationships and empowering others around us. Observe any truly successful person and chances are they have friends and colleagues they have known for years. Truly, success is often about who we know, not what we know. No one “makes it” alone.

Stop Gossiping

Tom’s research reveals that 79% or more of the poor engage in gossip while 6% of the wealthy or less do so. The key difference for this gap is that the wealthy treat their relationships like gold. Here are some reasons gossip is bad news for everyone.

Gossip Breeds Jealousy – When we focus too much on the good fortune and success of others, it is easy to become envious. We may gossip to say successful people are just lucky. This puts us in the position of waiting for good luck or merely living vicariously through others, which is certainly not productive.

Gossip Stops Productivity – Those who engage in gossip frequently eventually stop trying to make positive changes in their lives. They look at the more successful and wealthy as people they do not wish to become because of their flaws. This puts us into a gear of excuse-making rather than result-driving.

Gossip Hurts Relationships – Eventually, gossip makes us so bitter and jealous that we become toxic to others around us. This leads to isolation and more resentment. This vicious cycle is hard to break because it feeds off itself.

Rich Habits calls us to take inventory of ourselves and reform bad habits. By acknowledging our strengths and weaknesses, we can truly reinvent ourselves for the better. Even if you are already successful, the ten daily rich habits can help enrich your life. The ultimate goal is to turn destructive behaviors into productive ones while making us more proactive rather than reactive. In this manner, we become masters of our destiny, creating more opportunity luck every day!

According to Dr. Ed Deci, there are two types of motivation, autonomous and controlled. One will make you much more productive than the other.

Most of us, however, think of motivation only in terms of quantity: If you reward your children for doing their homework, they will usually respond by getting it done. But is this the most effective method of motivation? No, says psychologist Edward L. Deci, who challenges traditional thinking and shows that this method actually works against performance. The best way to motivate people—at school, at work, or at home—is to support their sense of autonomy. Explaining the reasons why a task is important and then allowing as much personal freedom as possible in carrying out the task will stimulate interest and commitment, and is a much more effective approach than the standard system of reward and punishment.

Dr. Deci, University of Rochester professor and former Science and Health Editor for the New York Times, is an expert on motivation. He believes the type of motivation that pushes you forward makes a huge difference. Autonomous motivation—pursuing a goal for its own sake, or for your own sake—makes you work harder, do a better job, and feel happier than controlled motivation.

Controlled motivation, on the other hand, will probably keep you productive but anxious, and can backfire so badly that you end up doing less work, doing it badly, or even rebelling. What is controlled motivation? Well, pretty much anything involving rewards and punishments. Which, unfortunately, are most people’s go-to tactics for motivating others. Dr. Deci believes you need to change your strategy if you want to optimize your results.

People have a need for autonomy, and resent being controlled. Supporting autonomy (autonomy support) is the opposite of control.

Control can take the form of rewards as well as punishments.

Rewards can still be employed, but simply as an acknowledgement of accomplishment, rather than to control behavior.

Similarly, competition can be employed as long as you don’t pressure people to win. Simply encourage them to do their best and try to finish first.

The real function of competition is to provide a challenge and in the process to have fun.

Autonomy support means taking the other person’s perspective and working from their. Actively encouraging self-initiation, experimentation, and responsibility through encouragement, not pressure.

Autonomy support does not mean permissiveness. You can still set limits, but those limits should be based on reason, not fiat. For example, rather than telling children, “Keep everything neat,” you can instead say, “I know that sometimes it’s really fun to just slop the paint around, but please try to keep the materials and room nice for the other children who will use them.”

Intrinsic motivation is its own reward (see: Flow). But it also leads to better performance and results.

Intrinsic motivation is associated with richer experience, better conceptual understanding, greater creativity, and improved problem solving (all demonstrated by controlled studies).

Extrinsic motivations can mask symptoms, but not the cause. Giving kids pizzas for reading doesn’t make them want to read; it makes them willing to read to get pizza. A better approach is to find ways to help them actually enjoy reading.

Motivation requires that people see a relationship between their behavior and the desired outcome. That’s why capitalism works better than communistic central planning.

There must be clarity about what behaviors are expected, and what outcomes will result from those instrumental behaviors.

People must also feel competent at the behaviors to be motivated. The desire for competence is another fundamental human need, just like the need for autonomy.

Competence without autonomy is not enough–being a competent puppet does not nourish humanness.

The feeling of competence results when a person takes on, and in his or her own view, meets optimal challenges (not too easy, not impossible).

Praising males increases their intrinsic motivation, but praising females decreases it.

Providing negative feedback: Start from the other person’s perspective. Ask them what they think.

The key to living autonomously is whether or not you feel, deep within yourself, that your actions are your own choice. Whether you comply with or defy controls, you are not being autonomous because your behavior depends on the controls.

Neither compliance nor defiance represents authenticity, and neither represents responsibility. To defy what authority says, just because authority says it, is to be irresponsible. But to comply with what authority says, just because authority says it, is also irresponsible.

We all need to internalize certain values–otherwise we would be psychopaths. There are many times when we have to do uninteresting or unpleasant things. But there are two different forms of internalization: Introjection, which simply replaces external control with an internal nagging voice, and Integration, which involves digesting the input and deciding what part of that input should be a part of the self.

If the benefits to supporting autonomous motivation are even half of what Dr. Deci’s experiments suggest, it’s well worth giving his techniques a try. Begin with yourself. What do you really want to accomplish? Why? And most importantly, how does the task at hand move those internal goals forward?

Anthony Robbins, the nation’s leader in the science of peak performance, shows you his most effective strategies and techniques for mastering your emotions, your body, your relationships, your finances, and your life. The acknowledged expert in the psychology of change, Anthony Robbins provides a step-by-step program teaching the fundamental lessons of self-mastery that will enable you to discover your true purpose, take control of your life and harness the forces that shape your destiny

Robbins acts as our coach, intending to teach us what is valuable in life, the beliefs that we need to cherish, and the emotions that are empowering. These will ultimately lead us to success.

Awaken the Giant Within contains many key concepts, such as the Master System; destiny; transformational vocabulary and metaphors; belief system; and emotions. As long as you make use of the right emotions in your daily life, you are on the path of accomplishing your dreams.

The author includes a step-by-step plan that will help you identify which emotions are empowering. According to Tony Robbins, everything that we do is related to our state of mind, the way we feel, and our emotions. Everything we do should be directed towards our enjoyment, to our well-being. It’s only natural, don’t you think so?

In the first chapter, “Dreams of Destiny”, Robbins reminds us that we all had a dream at one point in our lives. But due to a number of reasons, we seem to have forgotten all about it.

In order to accomplish our dreams, we need to change. This concept of change is essential to anyone who wants to improve the quality of their life. But what do we have to do?

Take a look at these steps provided by Tony Robbins in Awaken the Giant Within:

1. Raise your standards.

It Starts with a Decision. Every decision – or lack of it – has consequences. If you don’t decide how you’ll live 10 years from now, you’d have, by default, decided to let circumstances dictate your life. Every successful person (e.g. Mahatma Ghandi, John F Kennedy) had, at some point in their lives, made a major decision.

Pain and Pleasure: The Forces that Drive Us. Everything we do is to avoid pain, or to gain pleasure.  Even if we logically believe that something is good for us in the long term, we may not take action if we believe it’ll bring us short-term pain. Still, all of us have a pain threshold, where the level of pain is so high that we vow never to face it again. The key is to learn to use pain and pleasure to drive our decisions and actions, rather than be controlled by them. We’ll address this in Part 2.

2. Change your limiting belief.

In the book, Robbins explains the concept of belief systems and limiting beliefs, in great detail. In a nutshell, a belief is basically a “feeling of certainty about something”. A mere idea starts to develop “legs” when we find references or experiences that support it.  The strength of the belief depends on (a) the level of emotional intensity and (b) the number of references.

When we do something, our brains create a neural-connection to the associated feeling or behaviour. The more we do it, the more we reinforce the connection. Eventually, it forms a “neural super-highway”, and we do / avoid the behaviour, even when the sensation stops. Conversely, if we stop a response long enough, the pathway weakens

3. Change your strategy.

Everything we’ve ever wanted in life (e.g. goals about money, family, career) is to allow us to feel what we want to feel (e.g. loved, respected, happy etc.). Our feelings are our internal compass, to tell us if we are on-course. In the book, Robbins covers 3 important strategies to master your emotions.

• The Power of State.

Our emotional states are our internal (typically unconscious) reaction to what’s happening around us. You can change your emotional states in 2 ways: by Changing your Physiology (how you use your body), and Changing your Focus (including what you focus on, and how you focus).

• The Power of Questions.

Successful people ask better quality questions that empower and lead them to good answers. Questions can instantly shift your focus and feelings, help us to prioritize, and uncover resources and solutions. For example, instead of asking “why am I so upset?”, ask “how can I find joy at the moment?”.

• The Power of Vocabulary and Metaphors.

Language is a crucial part of culture, and it shapes how we perceive, think, feel, and act. Just by changing the words and labels you put on your emotions, you can change how you feel. Robbin terms this “Transformational Vocabulary”. Words affect how we interpret events around us, and generate an immediate biochemical effect. Metaphors are also very powerful because they bring up strong emotions, imagery and associated frames/ rules. In the book, Robbins covers numerous examples and details of words you can reduce the emotional intensity of negative feelings, heighten positive sensations, or soften your approach, as well as how changes in metaphors change perceptions and frames/ rules.

Robbins reinforces the ideas using various perspectives, details and analogies, all of which are important to create the “aha” moment, and to inspire us to action. To get the most from the book, you’ll need to examine the details, and take consistent action.

The precursor to The Secret, The Power of Positive Thinking has helped millions of men and women to achieve fulfillment in their lives. In this phenomenal bestseller, Dr. Peale demonstrates the power of faith in action. With the practical techniques outlined in this book, you can energize your life — and give yourself the initiative needed to carry out your ambitions and hopes.

For Peale, there was no greater source of personal power or guidance than the Bible. Biblical quotes are the mainstay of the book and perhaps because it is based on this timeless wisdom, it has amazing power. When statements such as the following are highlighted for us, it is difficult to argue with Peale’s conviction: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Romans 8:31) ‘If thou can believe, all things are possible.’ (Mark 9:23)

Peale said we do not have to depend on ourselves as there are incredible sources of power open to us if we only believe in their existence. We make life hard, but an appreciation of the universe’s ability to make good and provide would lead us to see life as flowing and abundant. To gain personal power and peace, we have to be willing to go beyond the personal to something greater than ourselves.

The book features cases and stories, filled with the struggle of humanity, to show defeat is not permanent. Some of the chapters are described below.

The knowledge that what one is doing is supported outside oneself and is serving a divine end, through attunement with the infinite, provides a constantly renewable source of energy. Working only for oneself leads to burnout. Prayer is a space to say whatever is on your mind, in whatever language you choose. Instead of asking for things, give thanks in advance for what you desire and visualise the good outcome. The Peale formula is: ‘Prayerise, picturise, actualise.’

We tend to expect the worst, but an expectation of the best has a way of organising forces in our favour. The subconscious, which regulates many of our actions, merely reflects our beliefs. Alter the belief about an outcome and our actions will seem to be shaped to achieve it. Peale’s phrase is: ‘Doubt closes the power flow, faith opens it.’

Use only positive and hopeful language for a 24-hour period. Then go back to being realistic the next day. Repeat this over a week and you find what you considered realistic a week ago now seems pessimistic. This new understanding of what is realistic moves up to a higher, permanently positive level.

Here are 3 lessons to help you think more positively:

Lesson 1: Believe in yourself and visualize your goals to see how small your problems are.

Yes, confidence is important, because if you feel inferior, you’ll act inferior. We know confidence alone doesn’t solve all problems. After all, it’s not the same as competence, and telling a kid who’s horrible at math that she’s great won’t make her study more for the next test.

However, the case for believing in yourself, that Peale makes, is one we’ve all experienced: the self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a common idea from self-help books, too, Napoleon Hill already addressed it 80 years ago.

It is up to you to actively change your thoughts and believe that you can bring value wherever you go. Peale suggests an exercise to help you do that, which happens to be backed by science.

Visualize your goals and the positive outcomes you want. What should your life look like in 6 months? Which goals do you want to achieve? Then, contrast those by visualizing the problems and obstacles that you might face along the way.

This is called mental contrasting and has been proven to cause changes in behavior that last for weeks with as little as a few minutes worth of the exercise.

Lesson 2: Your attitude determines your entire life.

Your world, your reality, is only determined by what you think about everything you experience in life.

For example, if you leave your house tomorrow morning, and are almost hit by a car, which breaks at the last second, you can treat this as a bad sign and spend the rest of the day walking around afraid of anything and everything. Alternatively, you can take this experience as a wonderful gift, a miracle even, and live your life to the fullest, enjoying every single second of the day and being grateful.

Don’t choose negative thoughts, when you can choose positive ones. Ever.

Lesson 3: Imagine your life free of worry to become less concerned about the future.

Here’s a super meta hack for worrying less: Imagine yourself as a worry-free person in the future. Just imagining that it is possible for you to live without worry will take a lot of your current worries away.

Worry is a major source of stress, and thus often leads to heart disease, arthritis and other sicknesses which cause your life expectancy to go down. So it is in your best interest to eliminate it, wherever possible.

Close your eyes, look into the future, and imagine yourself a few months or years from now, living free from all the worries that currently plague you, and you’ll feel much better when you open your eyes again.

Peale calls this draining your mind and it’s especially helpful before going to sleep, because then positive thoughts will sink into your subconscious, instead of negative ones.

The book’s principles are easily moved from its original time and place and applied to life. It is refreshing because there are no gimmicky techniques. Expect to find only a bag of well-worn tools for chiselling away cynicism and hopelessness.

Although the book contains things like a ‘prayer for salesmen’, it is something more than a hotchpotch of Christian and capitalist morals. Consistent with most of the self-help classics, it says the highest morality is fulfilment of potential: to give up is to deny yourself all the spiritual and material rewards that are rightfully yours.

Get ready to transform yourself for success. Jack Canfield, cocreator of the phenomenal bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, turns to the principles he’s studied, taught, and lived for more than 30 years in this practical and inspiring guide that will help any aspiring person get from where they are to where they want to be.

The Success Principles™ will teach you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions. Not merely a collection of good ideas, this book spells out the 64 timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history. And the fundamentals are the same for all people and all professions — even if you’re currently unemployed. It doesn’t matter if your goals are to be the top salesperson in your company, become a leading architect, score straight A’s in school, lose weight, buy your dream home, or make millions of dollars–the principles and strategies are the same.

The Success Principles gives the reader the tools required to enhance confidence, deal with daily life, overcome difficulties and achieve their ambitions in life. This book is a lot more than a simple collection of positive ideas thrown together, it consists of 64 workable principles that have been used by successful people from all walks of life since the dawn of humanity. The thing that I love is that the basics are the same whether you are at college, an entrepreneur or unemployed at the moment.

Your goal could be to be the top seller in your office, make a million dollars, become a surgeon or get A’s in all of your exams – the strategies that you will follow are the same.

Once you have read about these fundamentals of success, you will progress to transforming the way you think. After that it’s time to build a ‘Success Team’ and get the most out of all of your relationships. Finally, as is the way with achieving what I call ‘Circular Success’ you will learn how to develop a positive psychological blueprint around money and the day-to-day habits that will allow you to create the life that you want for yourself.

The Book contains fabulous stories of Business Leaders, Elite sports people, celebrities and regular members of society. The Success Principles will allow you to take a ‘leap of faith’ and start transforming yourself immediately.

The Main Things that You will learn from this Book are:

• How to Change any event, by changing how you respond
• How to change your perception of the past so you are ready for your positive future
• How to find amazing Role Models
• How to be ready when ‘opportunity knocks’
• How to realise that some ‘good’ things may not be for you so you can embrace the ‘great’ things
• How to be courageous enough to ask for what you want
• Why you should surround yourself with Positive People

The book’s thesis is simple: Whatever the reason is for you not being wherever you think you should be, you need to take steps, starting right now, towards changing your situation.

Complaining and feeling bad saps your energy, so that needs to go. What do we do instead? Spend a lot of time on goals. Canfield has, literally, 4 or 5 different goal types he wants you to set, write about and visualize: what you want to do before you die, “quantum leap” goals that represent huge shifts in your life, intermediate goals, immediate goals. He wants you to write your goals on the back of a card and keep it in your wallet. He wants you to have a “vision” for several areas of your life – work and career, finances, recreation and free time, health and fitness, relationships, personal goals, and contribution to the larger community. He wants you to write down a room-by-room description of your dream house. And on, and on.

Once your goals are written, Canfield advises the use of affirmations in order to “unlock the power of the subconscious mind.” Twice a day, using a formula he provides, you should use your affirmations to create strong visualizations and emotions within yourself. These emotions will propel you through the day and towards success. After you know what you want, and have powerful emotions to back it up, you should simply start acting as if you already have what you need – an act that will direct what you do and provide motivation.

If you want to spend some time setting goals and visualizing, Canfield’s a charming-enough companion. He does list some pleasant goal-setting exercises, and the book is an easy read.

Napoleon Hill wrote this book in 1938, just after publication of his all-time bestseller, Think and Grow Rich. This powerful tale has never been published, considered too controversial by his family and friends.

Using his legendary ability to get to the root of human potential, Napoleon Hill digs deep to identify the greatest obstacles we face in reaching personal goals: fear, procrastination, anger, and jealousy, as tools of the Devil. These hidden methods of control can lead us to ruin, and Hill reveals the seven principles of good that will allow us to triumph over them and succeed.

The book starts out with Napoleon Hill giving an abridged biography detailing his meeting with Andrew Carnegie, his various defeats, and how he overcame them. This abridged biography is to set the stage for his interview with the Devil. The rest of the book is written in a question and answer formate, with Hill as the interviewer and the Devil as the reluctant subject. Through out the book Hill forces the Prince of Darkness to reveal how he holds countless people in bondage to fear, superstition, greed, avarice, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, and laziness. He then forces the Devil to reveal the seven principles that can help overcome the before mentioned obstacles. These principles will not be revealed here, because I don’t want to deprive anyone of the pleasure of reading this book for themselves.

Beginning with chapter three and continuing to the end of the book, Napoleon Hill conducted an interview or discussion with the Devil. In this interview, he learned how the devil is able to control so many people. More importantly, he learned what to do to stay out of the devil’s control and lead a successful life.

Napoleon interviews the Devil in full dialog. The Devil says he exists as the “negative part of the atom”. This means he has to exist and is part of the human condition. Regardless of the religious connotations here, one thing is for certain – with success comes failure and failure success. Understanding that positive and negative exists in every facet of life is empowering once you free your mind from limitation and accept it as part of the ground rules for living. Being conscious of this fact is the first step to master it. In rudimentary terms, you cannot play football with a hockey stick. You have to understand the ground rules.

The Devil reveals that he controls negative thought while GOD controls positive thought. In his own words – “One of my cleverest devices for mind control is fear, the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death.” Remember – this book was written in the early 1930’s. Do any of these fears sound familiar? These fears fall right into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which are; physiological, safety, love/belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization. The Devil’s fears hammer right at the foundation of these needs.

The greatest trick of the devil plays is convincing people he does not exit. The clever move here is that school teachers, religious leaders and parents use fear as a tool to educate about the devil. The problem is that this inhibits accurate thinking. The devil uses this to his advantage because fear is what paralyzes people into the habit of drifting. The greatest of all fears implanted into children is the fear of “hell”.

Devil – “Accurate thought is the death of me……” Thus we can combat drifting with accurate thought.

Paraphrasing the Devil, “I cause people to allow me to do their thinking for them because they are too lazy and too indifferent to think for themselves.” “Laziness + Indifference = Procrastination = Drifting”
The good news is that there is a prescription to avoid all of this. In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. The principles begin with definiteness of purpose. It is important to know what your intent is and then start controlling your actions to meet this intent. This means having a plan as opposed to walking around aimlessly. Surround yourself with good people who can help you control your environment. As Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Also, everything takes time to develop, you must wait patiently and keep putting the work in.

In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. These principles are:
1. Definiteness of purpose
2. Mastery over self
3. Learning from adversity
4. Controlling environmental influence
5. Time
6. Harmony
7. Caution

The point of the book is self reflection and improvement. If you approach this work with that in mind then I believe you are in a position to glean some useful inspiration and information from this intriguing work. This book is a must read and will open your eyes. The key is to control your thoughts and your habits. Be aware of what is happening and stop sleep walking through life. It’s good to celebrate like Homer Simpson every once in a while but make it a habit and life falls apart.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!