The path to success consists of knowing your outcome, taking action, knowing what results you’re getting, and having the flexibility to change until you’re successful. The same is true of beliefs. You have to find the beliefs that support your outcome—the beliefs that get you where you want to go. 1. Belief #1: Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us.
2. Belief #2: There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.
• I’ve used the words “outcome” and “results” throughout this book because that’s what successful people see. They don’t see failure. They don’t believe in it. It doesn’t compute.
• The super successes of our culture aren’t people who do not fail, but simply people who know that if they try something and it doesn’t give them what they want, they’ve had a learning experience.
• Mark Twain once said, “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.” He’s right. People who believe in failure are almost guaranteed a mediocre existence. Failure is something that is just no perceived by people who achieve greatness.
• “Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.” (William Shakespeare)
• “Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes.”
• Dr. Robert Schuller, who teaches the concept of possibility thinking, asks a great question: “What would you attempt to do is you knew you could not fail?”
3. Belief #3: Whatever happens, take responsibility.
• Another attribute great leaders and achievers have in common is that they operate from the belief that they create their world. The phrase you’ll hear time and again is, “I am responsible. I’ll take care or it.”
• Taking responsibility is in my opinion one of the best measures of a person’s power and maturity.
• Those who take responsibility are in power. Those who avoid it are disempowered.
4. Belief #4: It’s not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything.
• Achievers invariably manage to be time misers.
• Successful people are especially good at making distinctions between what is necessary for them to understand and what is not.
• You can spend all your time studying the roots, or you can learn to pick the fruit.
5. Belief #5: People are your greatest resource.
• Individuals of excellence—that is, people who produce outstanding results—almost universally have a tremendous sense of respect and appreciation for people. They have a sense of team, a sense of common purpose and unity.
• “There was hardly a more pervasive theme in excellence companies than respect for the individual.”
6. Belief #6: Work is play.
• “When I work, I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.”
7. Belief #7: There’s no abiding success without commitment.
• Individuals who succeed have a belief in the power of commitment. If there’s a single belief that seems almost inseparable from success, it’s that there’s no great success without great commitment.
• “To follow, without halt, one aim: there’s the secret of success.”
• “I never saw anyone practice more.”
• I like to use the term W.I.T.—Whatever It Takes. Successful people are willing to do whatever to takes to succeed.
From "Unlimited Power" by Tony Robbins
