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INTRODUCTION: Unleash
the Imprisoned Splendor
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness;
...
And to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
WHence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
—Robert Browning
William James of Harvard wrote, "The greatest revolution of my generation is the discovery that people, by changing their inner attitudes of mind, can change the outer aspects of their lives."
You and your mind are extraordinary. You have 100 billion brain cells, each connected by ganglia and neurons to as many as twenty thousand other cells. The total number of thoughts that you can think is therefore equal to one hundred billion to the twenty thousandth power.
According to brain expert Tony Buzan, this means that the number of ideas you can generate is equal to the number one followed by eight pages of zeroes, more potential ideas than the number of all the molecules in the known universe.
The question is, "How are you using this powerful mental supercomputer?"
You have the mental ability right now to set any goal and achieve everything you could ever want or hope for in life. By using your brain—your ability to think, plan, and create—with greater precision and accuracy, you can solve any problem, overcome every obstacle, and achieve any goal you can set for yourself.
Your mental supercomputer is so powerful that you could not use your full potential if you had a hundred lifetimes.
10 Percent of Potential
When I was twenty-one, I was impressed when I heard that the average person uses only 10 percent of his or her mental ability. I later learned that the true number is closer to 2 percent. Most people have enormous reserves of mental capacity that they fail to use, that they are apparently saving up for some good reason.
Imagine that you had inherited a bank account containing $1 million and growing regularly with interest. But you only ever accessed twenty thousand dollars of this amount because you lacked the necessary code to acquire the rest of your money. The remainder of this wealth was yours, but you couldn't get at it, because you did not know the correct account number that would release these funds to you.
This ist he situation of most people. They have enormous stores of mental ability that they habitually fail to use.
In the pages ahead, you will learn a series of simple, practical, proven ways to tap into more and more of your natural thinking talents and abilities. You do not need to become more than you are or someone different. You only need to become all that you are already and to unleash more of your existing mental powers.
Learn the Combinations
Life is like a combination lock, only with more numbers. All combination locks work in the same way. You turn to the first number, back past the number to the second number, and forward to the third number. If you have the right numbers, the lock opens, whether it is a bicycle lock or a great vault in a major bank.
Imagine that you knew all the numbers but one to unlock the success code in whatever you wanted to do. Lacking one key number, you could spin the dial forever and never get into the riches contained inside your mental vault.
But with one extra number, in the correct order, the vaulut would open, and you could achieve extraordinary things with your life.
This book contains some of the best combinations ever discovered in terms of thinking tools that enable you to make quantum leaps in your life. In many cases, what holds you back is simply a matter of perspective, your particular way of looking at things.
Your Explanatory Style
Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania calls the way you explain or interpret things to yourself your "explanatory style."
This can be as simple as the difference between optimism and pessimism, the glass seen as half-full or as half-empty. The optimist looks for the good and what can be gained from every situation, while the pessimist looks for the problem or downside in each situation.
But as Josh Billings, the western humorist, once said, "it ain't what a man knows what hurts him; it's what he knows that ain't true."
Ignorance is nto bliss. The failure to use the appropriate thinking tools and styles in a particular area or situation can be disastrous—and often leads to overwhelming failure.
Look for the Good
Very often, when you change your perspective, you see things differently, make different decisions, and get different results. Napoleon Hill says in his succes classic Think and Grow Rich that "within every problem or difficulty there lies the seed of an equal or greater benefit or advantage."
After interviewing more than five hundred of the wealthiest self-made multimillionaires in America, he found they all had certain qualities in common. One of these common denominators was that the wealthy people in his research had developed the habit of always seeking the valuable lesson in every setback or diffuclty. And they always found it.
Most of their fortunes had come about as the result of applying the lessons they had learned through failure and hardship to developing breakthrough products and services that eventually made themr ich. But without the temporary failures and the lessons they contained, they would still be working for wages.
Here is a simple way to transform your thinking to that of the most positive and successful people in our society. Think about the biggest problem that you have in your life today. Now imagine that this problem has been sent to you as a gift, to teach you something. Ask yourself, "What is the lesson or lessons that I can learn from this situation that can help me to be happier and more successful in the future?"
Perhaps your biggest problem today is not a problem at all. Perhaps it is an opportunity. As Henry Ford said, "Failure is merely an opportunity to more intelligently begin again."
The Great Discovery
Perhaps the greatest discovery in human history is that "you become what you think about—most of the time." Your beliefs, either positive or negative, helpful or hurtful, largely determine everything you do and how you do it.
What do you think about most of the time? And how do you think about it?
As Wayne Dyer wrote, "You don't believe what you see; you see what you already believe."
Jim Rohn said, "Everything you have in your life, you have attracted to yourself by the person you are. You can change your life because you can change your thinking; you can change the person you are."
My bestselling book is titled Change your Thinking, Change Your Life. And its title's message is true.
As you learn and apply these different ways of thinking, you will begin to change the person you are inside.
By the Law of Correspondence, which says, "As within, so without," your outer life will begin to correspond to and mirror or reflect your inner life. As your inner life changes, your outer life changes to reflect this new thinking. Shakespeare wrote, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Let's begin to learn about and think the ways that the most successful and happy people think so that you can get the results and enjoy the rewards that the most successful people enjoy.
