Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

You shape your perceptions, or someone shapes them for you. You do what you want to do, or you respond to someone else’s plan for you.

The birth of excellence begins with our awareness that our beliefs are a choice. We usually don’t think of it that way, but belief can be a conscious choice. You can choose beliefs that limit you, or you can choose beliefs that support you. The trick is to choose the beliefs that are conducive to success and the results you want and to discard the ones that hold you back.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Understanding state is the key to understanding change and achieving excellence. Our behavior is the result of the state we’re in.

Action is what unites every great success. Action is what produces results. Knowledge is only potential power until it comes into the hands of someone who knows how to get himself to take effective action. In fact, the literal definition of the word “power” is “the ability to act.

success is simple. First, you decide what you want specifically; and second, you decide you’re willing to pay the price to make it happen—and then pay that price.

The road to success is always under construction. It is a progressive course, not an end to be reached.

The world we live in is the world we choose to live in, whether consciously or unconsciously. If we choose bliss, that’s what we get. If we choose misery, we get that, too.

If you don’t plant the mental and physiological seeds of the results you want, weeds will grow automatically. If we don’t consciously direct our own minds and states, our environment may produce undesirable haphazard states. The results can be disastrous. Thus it’s critical that—on a daily basis—we stand guard at the door of our mind, that we know how we are consistently representing things to ourselves. We must daily weed our garden.

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” —W. Somerset Maugham

Belief #6: Work is play. Do you know any person who has achieved massive success by doing what he hates? I don’t. One of the keys to success is making a successful marriage between what you do and what you love. Pablo Picasso once said, “When I work, I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.” Maybe

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.” —Thomas Henry Huxley

It's been said that there are only two pains in life, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret, and that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

The person who is motivated by necessity is interested in what’s known and what’s secure. The person who is motivated by possibility is equally interested in what’s not known. He wants to know what can evolve, what opportunities might develop.

How you feel is not the result of what is happening in your life—it is your interpretation of what is happening.

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.” —Anthony Robbins

The mystic poet William Blake once wrote, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind.

that people who produce outstanding results think this way.

They think that everything happens for a reason, and it serves them. They believe that every adversity contains the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. I can guarantee you

great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova once said, “To follow, without halt, one aim: there’s the secret of success.

People who consistently succeed are those who can commit all of their resources, mental and physical, to work together toward achieving a task.

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.

The most powerful and effective managers, coaches, parents, and motivators are those who can represent the circumstances of life to themselves and to others in a way that signals success to the nervous system in spite of seemingly hopeless external stimuli.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.” —Edmund Spenser

Mark Twain said, “The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.