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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Maximum Achievement summary
Brian Tracy
Strategies and Skills that Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed
22 mins
Table of Contents
Maximum Achievement
summarized in 7 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 7
Overcome self-limiting beliefs to achieve higher levels of accomplishment.
Imagine you could watch a reenactment of your entire life – right up until now. Even better, you could hit pause anytime and rewrite the decisions you made in any given situation. If you knew then what you know today, what would you do differently?
This hypothetical exercise represents what is known as zero-based thinking. By imagining you could start over from zero – and focusing on the actions you’d take to improve your situation – you can empower yourself to make better choices in the future.
The opposite of this would be to look back on your life and focus on the external circumstances that are out of your control. But by doing this, you’ll only reinforce your own sense of powerlessness.
This idea of negative reinforcement follows a concept known as the Law of Belief, which states that you perceive the world through a lens of prejudices about yourself – otherwise known as your self-concept. Everyone is born without a self-concept, but as you grow to identify with your name, values, and habits, your way of seeing yourself, and the world, solidifies over many years of repetition.
This bundle of beliefs, thoughts, and mental pictures determines how you behave. So, for example, if you see yourself as being too old, or lacking courage, you can expect yourself to act in accordance with this belief in all situations. In the same way, if you view yourself as having unlimited potential, you can expect to persevere in the face of a challenge – time and time again.
When the author was growing up, his family was poor. As a child he wondered why he had to wear second-hand clothing when so many other families were wealthy. Then, at the age of 16, he had a revelation: he realized that it was up to him alone to guide himself toward a better life. He went on to self-educate his way through a career in sales and consulting, and he ended up as senior executive of a multi-million dollar company.
But throughout those two decades, he continued to devote himself to exploring the one question that had sparked his revelation: Why are some people successful, while others aren’t? What he determined is that successful people are, above all, masters of their own mind. And the first – and fastest – way to improve your performance is to simply transform how you think about yourself.
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What is Maximum Achievement about?
Maximum Achievement (2011) is a step-by-step guide to unlocking your potential and achieving your personal idea of success. Based on a self-improvement seminar program, it uses practical exercises to demonstrate how you can transform your self-esteem, boost your performance, and set goals to take control over every aspect of your personal and professional life.
Who should read Maximum Achievement?
- People seeking professional growth
- Anyone who wants to improve self-esteem
- Those interested in personal self-improvement
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