WHERE DO I START?

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

— MARK TWAIN

Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was profoundly aware of the weakness in his own nature. Yet he came to realize that people are evolving beings, capable of changing and growing toward an ideal. People can always improve themselves. That is part of our greatness. And that ability to improve ourselves can develop at any moment in life.

BELIEVE YOU CAN BE SUCCESSFUL

You have to believe you can be successful before you will ever succeed. Sounds like a cliché, doesn't it? But take time to stop and think about it. Where else can you begin? Your beliefs create your life experience — it's not the other way around. And no matter what you believed before, you can change your beliefs and change your life. It's impossible to create success without believing — deeply — that you are capable of being successful. It's impossible to live abundantly without believing that you deserve abundance. Our education, society, and other forms of mental conditioning are all, unfortunately, more pessimistic than optimistic. How often has someone told you not to waste your time on pipe dreams, that you have to be realistic, that you can't have what you want? Because we hear this so often and, as a result, believe it to be true, wealth always seems reserved for the fortunate few. Success seems an exclusive party to which we are cordially not invited.

But this is simply not true. If success and prosperity are an exclusive club, it's because they are so in the minds of people whose attitudes bar their own entry. Every successful person at some point came to believe that one day he or she would be successful.

Your beliefs about success are, no doubt, deeply ingrained, and you have to be open to changing them before you'll ever succeed. Examine your beliefs to see how they have affected your life. Many people needlessly sabotage themselves because of unexamined "core beliefs" about how the world operates. Marc Allen sums it up in Visionary Business:

It's important — in some cases critically important — to regularly take time to examine our lives. The first thing to do is to take a look at our past — as clearly and honestly as we can — and discover the important events and influences that have shaped our lives.... Some of these shaping events have led to very good core beliefs — and those moments should be remembered, and those beliefs should be encouraged and supported. All of us have had someone in our lives who saw our potential and supported us in one way or another. We've all had glimpses of our genius, as children, and we've all had other forces that have sought to crush our genius, through doubt, through cynicism, through lack of faith.

We need to reflect on these things occasionally. Those shaping moments that have had a negative impact on us need to be looked at, and we need to discover the negative core beliefs we formed as a result. Once those beliefs are identified, they can be let go of. Because they aren't true — they're simply self-fulfilling things that become true if we believe them. This is the process of becoming conscious — becoming aware of the forces that drive us, and learning how to act on those forces, how to shape our destiny, how to become powerful. How to achieve what we want in life.

What are your beliefs about success? Don't be afraid to analyze your thoughts more closely; you may be surprised at the barriers you have put between yourself and success, once you think about it. When you realize that you can change even your most deeply held beliefs, you can come to see that not only is it possible for you to become as successful as you would like — in all areas of your life — but also that it's easy, much easier than you have ever dreamed possible. In fact, dozens of opportunities appear to you every day. Profitable ideas flash through your mind, but you usually let them slip away without pursuing them with concrete action. The art of self-suggestion, which is discussed throughout this book, helps you discover how to develop your powers of intuition — the sixth sense for success. You already have these qualities, but you may not be fully aware of their existence. You only need to access them — and you can, quite easily.

SUCCEEDING IS NO HARDER THAN FAILING

For most people, failure has become a way of life. Failure is a hard habit to break; after all, our social climate has given us high expectations, but our social conditioning has given us low morale. It's a vicious cycle. In order to become successful, we have to understand that success is basically no more difficult than failure. It's simply based on a different kind of mental programming, one to which the subconscious mind is not inherently opposed.

Doesn't every failure involve a highly complex combination of circumstances? Consider what it takes to miss perfect opportunities, to misfire every time you attempt something, to avoid meeting the people who can help you on your path of success, to dismiss your ideas as useless when they could lead to something worthwhile, and to continually repeat the motions that lead to defeat. It's quite an achievement to fail, and yet the subconscious mind accepts defeat as natural. Throughout this book, we analyze the vital role the subconscious plays in manifesting success. When we understand how to get the power of our subconscious mind working on success rather than failure, we will succeed. It is inevitable.

We create all sorts of excuses to block our success. How many of these thoughts creep into your mind?

• Everything was much easier in the good old days.

This excuse is proven wrong every single day of the year. While negative, shortsighted people drone on about unemployment, downsizing, and outsourcing, thousands of small businesses start and flourish every year. Thousands — globally, millions — of people become millionaires each year! Think of the movies produced, the books published, the new opportunities in computer science and Internet media! Think of the parts of the world that are opening to free trade! Becoming successful is not only possible today; it's actually easier than it used to be. The entire world is ours to offer our new ideas, products, services — whatever gift we have to give. Success depends far less on outside circumstances than on our mental attitude, our beliefs about ourselves and the world.

• I'm too young.

Tell this to Debbie Fields, founder and owner of Mrs. Fields Cookies, who was in her twenties when she achieved success, or Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, who made his first million when he was twenty-three, his first ten million at twenty-four, and his first...