An effective self- concept generates the desire to strive for things that were thought to be impossible before. It generates fight, but it doesn't kick dogs and slap babies. Andrew Carnegie is reputed to be the toughest man to sit behind a desk. But the railroads he built are still with us today, and the foundation he created still advances human welfare. Before we go into how you can Power Up Your Self Concept. Let's talk about The Four Mental Conditioners first. The Four Mental Conditioners. 1. You are what you concentrate on. If you concentrate on failure. You get feelings of failure. If you concentrate on success, you get feelings of success. Which feeling is likely to produce your best effort? Feelings of success, isn't that true? So you pretend you're successful, and you do this by concentrating. Eventually you make success feelings a habit. By a mental act that originates in pretense, you achieve your best effort. You are what you practice. You practice what you concentrate on. When you concentrate on success, you practice success. That trains your nervous system to produce success for you. 2. What you concentrate on grows Concentration on trouble makes trouble grow, because that's what you're looking for. A guy in playing poker loses a few hands and gets scared of losing more. More disciplined players watch him with a smile. They know that scared money never wins. When you try not to think of an elephant wearing pink underwear.....you think of an elephant wearing pink underwear. If you try not to think of failure, you think of failure. That's why scared money never wins. To produce success, you have to think SUCCESS. 3. What you concentrate on becomes real. By misusing this one you can wind up in the institution believing you're Alexander The Great. We come to believe anything we concentrate on, no matter how bizarre or fantastic. A guy can start out as a conman promising heaven, but if he continues to promise it, he winds up a believer. That's the history of conmen, they became fanatics. Don't kid yourself that they become sincere through some moral revelations. It's a law of the mind that what we concentrate on becomes real. Scientifically they call this "self fulfillment". You can start playing around with astrology with your tongue in cheek, but if you persist in concentrating on it, you'll wind up believing it. Use this law to induce beliefs that produce fruitful actions. Concentrate on achievement, success, energy, confidence, skill, joy, persistence. If you concentrate on being Alexander the Great, you have a very severe handicap , your troops were killed centuries ago.... 4. You always find what you concentrate on. The outcome of our efforts always tells us what we are concentrating on. I know a very good teacher who divides students into winners and losers. That's all he wants to know about them, and he makes a practice of doting on winners. He even carries his theory onto the golf course, pairing himself with people who win. He could make a nice living just playing golf. People who win are people who think victory. People who lose are people who think defeat. It's hard to convince a loser that he looks for defeats. Reasoned justification makes a whole literature. Don't waste your time on it. It's just prolonged weeping, which is embarrassing in grown- up men. Losers all think the world should be changed. It never occurs to them that they might change themselves. But they can, simply by concentrating on winning. That sets up success habits. You always find what you concentrate on. To find and develop your greatest potential, you discipline your mind with four mental conditioners. You concentrate on growing, achieving, winning, confidence, persistence, determination, and success. You develop your potential by thinking SUCCESS. It's important to understand that they ALWAYS work whether you consciously use them or not. The greatest danger in your life lies in dwelling on failure. The greatest reward lies in thinking SUCCESS. How to use the four mental conditioners to Power Up Your Self Concept. * Power up your self concept. Now you're skating on thin ice, because the greatest sin in self- development is looking into yourself. Stay away from introspection as if it were poison. Introspection is self- criticism and plays failure experience on the imagination's turntable. Stay strictly with what works and what doesn't work. Throw out the things that don't work, and try the things that look like they might work. * What you see tells you what you are. To change what you see, change your self- concept. That's all the self- analysis any one needs. That's all he can handle, if he wants to grow up and achieve. Set your self concept to switch on success by programming it to strive for the things you want. You set your sights on higher performance, because when you move towards higher performance, your ability grows. Train yourself into a "Go For It!!" self concept by disciplining your mind with the four mental laws discussed earlier. Let's restate them now in the light of self- concept. 1. Your self concept is formed by what you concentrate on. 2. Concentration makes your self- concept seem real. 3. Your self- concept grows towards the image of your concentration. 4. What you find in the world reflects your self- concept. Successful mental re-programming produces mental discipline, the ability to think something useful instead of something useless or ....dangerous. You can think a new self concept into existence by a process of visualizing yourself playing this new role. You speed up the process by auto- suggestion. Reinforce this synthetic experience by taking the actions that ingrain it into your nervous system. Soon things that seemed impossible are done automatically. You build your first great success habit when you build a healthy self- concept, and it becomes a faithful General when you've trained it into your nervous system. In a nutshell; The self- concept governs energy, power, and force. It's the motive power for action. When you set your self- concept to "Go For It!!" you switch on success. It's equally important to build a guidance mechanism for this power mechanism to work through. Right now, just to get an idea of the power unleashed by a striving self- concept, try carrying a card that says "Go For It!!", we promise you more action than you've had in years. To your incredible success, |
