he said. “When I feel down, I reach up and pull a book off the shelf and get myself charged up again. You can’t read these thoughts without getting a little excited about yourself and the world.”
How to Think Positively Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of
Positive Thinking, was one of the first motivators to sug- gest that our thoughts and images are mainly responsible for how we feel. He told Selling Power: “You can make yourself sick with your thoughts and you can make yourself well with them. A positive emotion is created by positive thoughts and images. You can say, ‘This is a great day. I am fortunate to sell a wonderful product. I look forward to meeting many interesting people today; I’ll be able to help some of these people and I look forward to learning a great deal today.’ You see, thinking and talking that way adds to your enthusiasm and vitality. Your mind is expand- ing – and all this contributes to your well-being.” Dr. Peale found that demotivated people have one thing in common: They habitually think negative thoughts. He explained, “If you put yourself down mentally, you are reducing the vitality of your system.” The greatest motivational challenge comes when peo- ple experience problems. “A problem is a concentrated opportunity,” said Dr. Peale. “The only people that I ever have known to have no problems are in the cemetery. The more problems you have, the more alive you are. Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution.” Instead of complaining about the problem, Dr. Peale suggests you think of it as an opportunity to grow: “Everybody I’ve ever known who has succeeded in a big way in life has done so by breaking problems apart. I often say, when the Lord wants to give you the greatest value in this world, He doesn’t wrap it in a sophisticated package and hand it to you on a silver platter. No, He takes this big value and bur- ies it in the heart of a big, tough problem. How He must watch with delight when you’ve got what it takes to break that problem apart and find at its heart what the Bible calls ‘the pearl of great price.’”
How to Condition Yourself “Attitude is the essence of life,” says Tony Robbins, one
of the most respected success trainers in America over the past three decades. “The only distinction I’ve found,” he emphasizes, “is that a lot of people have great attitudes but they don’t have very good plans. They become what I call ‘perma-grinners.’ They go around always smiling, always up. But what do they do with it?” Robbins doesn’t dismiss the principle of motivation
through a positive mental attitude, but he cautions people to be clear about their ultimate destination. “Attitude is too big a frame – too big a generalization,” he says. “At-
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titude is a set of habitual ways of looking at the world. It’s a set of beliefs – a set of questions that you ask yourself on an ongoing basis. So just saying, ‘Have a great attitude,’ doesn’t really empower somebody to reach their goals.” To explore the differences between success and failure, Robbins has interviewed hundreds of salespeople who make over $200,000 a year. “I expected they were going to tell me that the difference between success and failure was something technical like closing,” he told Selling Power. “That wasn’t it. It all came down to managing their emo- tions.” Robbins finds that 80 percent of the difference in performance comes from self-management. People who are able to follow through on their beliefs are those who win on a consistent basis.
Robbins suggests that poor self-management habits lead to emotional roadblocks and poor results. “I show people how to literally condition themselves so that, ev- ery time they go out and talk about their product, they really feel inside all the intensity at the deepest emo- tional level. I show people the technology of how our brain really works. You’ve got a computer in here and you’ve got to run it properly so you can get any result you really want.” Robbins offers his students a mental reprogramming technique called “Neuro-Associative Conditioning.” He explains: “For change to happen, we’ve got to change the association. For example, some salespeople think that making cold calls means pleasure because, eventually, cold calling will lead to sales. But, simultaneously, they think that cold calling will lead to pain. They have two dif- ferent neuro-associations that are in conflict. So they make a halfhearted attempt.”
Robbins shows people how to associate pleasure with successful habits (like prospecting). The positive associa- tion can lead to a more productive emotional state, which can improve the outcome of cold calling. Robbins’ reprogramming doesn’t end with changing one single association. Rather, he adds, “I teach people how to condition themselves to be congruent.” People want their beliefs, their values, and their actions to be congruent with their direction, goals, and ultimate destination. For change to happen, Robbins urges people to be clear about their beliefs, values, and direction. Once these funda- mentals are in place, it becomes easier to transform a minor inconvenience like cold calling into a pleasurable challenge. Robbins’ master secret to motivation: Condition yourself on a deep emotional level to move toward clear goals. Few people have had as clear an understanding of the power of motivation as Dr. Peale, Clement Stone, Napo- leon Hill, Tony Robbins, or Earl Nightingale. But you don’t have to be a great orator or bestselling author to be able to motivate yourself to peak performance. By following the tenets of these legends of motivation, you can moti- vate yourself to perform at higher levels while you achieve above and beyond your goals.
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