Free No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy Page A

Moreover, the teacher John Boyle said, “Whatever you can think about on a continuing basis, you can have.”
     
    Napoleon Hill, author of the success classic Think and Grow Rich —which was first published in 1939 and is still selling today—said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
     
    When you think about your goal continually and work on it every day, more and more of your mental resources will be concentrated on moving you toward that goal—and moving your goal toward you.
     
    The discipline of daily goal-setting will make you a powerful, purposeful, and irresistible person. You will develop self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect. As you feel yourself moving toward your goals faster and faster, you will ultimately become unstoppable.
     
    In the next chapter, I will explain how the use of self-discipline to develop personal excellence is the most powerful step you can take to achieve all your material and emotional goals.
     
 
    Action Exercises:
     
    1. Resolve today to “switch on” your success mechanism and unlock your goal-achieving mechanism by deciding exactly what you really want in life.
    2. Make a list of ten goals that you want to achieve in the foreseeable future. Write them down in the present tense, as if you have already achieved them.
    3. Select the one goal that could have the greatest positive impact on your life if you were to achieve it, and write it down at the top of another piece of paper.
    4. Make a list of everything you could do to achieve this goal, organize it by sequence and priority, and then take action on it immediately.
    5. Practice mindstorming by writing out twenty ideas that could help you achieve your most important goal, and then take action on at least one of those ideas.
    6. Resolve to do something every day, seven days a week, to achieve your most important goal until you are successful.
    7. Continually remind yourself that “failure is not an option.” No matter what, resolve to persist until you succeed.
 
     

Chapter 5
     
    Self-Discipline and Personal Excellence
     
    “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence then is not an act but a habit.”
    —ARISTOTLE
     
     
     
     
    Y ou are your most valuable asset. Your life, your potential, and your possibilities are the most precious things you have. Thus your great goal in life should be to fulfill that potential and become everything you are capable of becoming.
     
    Your ability to learn, grow, and fulfill your potential is unlimited. Today, people are graduating from high school and college in their seventies, learning new subjects and developing new capabilities. Your ability to learn and remember can continue throughout your life if you keep your brain alive, alert, and functioning at its best.
     
    Your most precious financial asset is your earning ability . Your ability to work is your primary source of cash throughout your life. You could lose your home, your car, your bank account, and everything you own, but as long as you have your earning ability, you can earn it all back—and more—in the months and years ahead.
     

Your Biggest Investment
     
    Most people don’t realize this. They take their earning ability for granted. But it has taken you your entire life to develop your earning ability. Every bit of education, experience, and hard work that you have invested in learning your craft and developing your skills has gone into building this asset.
     
    Your earning ability is very much like a muscle. It can increase in strength and power year by year as the result of regular exercise. Likewise, the opposite is true, too: If left alone or ignored, your earning ability, like your muscles, can become weaker or even decline because you have simply failed to upgrade it continually.
     
    In other words, your earning ability can be either an appreciating or a depreciating asset. An appreciating asset is something that grows in value and cash flow every year as the