I think this guy is the real deal.

Brian Tracy is an incredible speaker, salesman, businessman, and entrepreneur. He has succeeded in the self-development field, but even before that, he was a successful salesman and businessman.

What makes him even more incredible was that he started off broke, from a poor family, and used to be really bad at selling. He learned the hard way through practice, just like you can.

That is basically his entire message: You can do this too.

I have learned a lot from this man. I wanted to share with you some of the top insights I learned. Some of these are surprisingly new concepts, despite me being in the self-help field for so long and hearing almost everything under the sun.

These mainly come from his book Personal Success Made Simple (affiliate link) but there are insights from his other teachings as well:

1. Obtain Clarity of Mind

Your goals and mind must be properly defined. Brian means that you should always try and put yourself in a state of clarity and well-being 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Most people cling to situations, events, or people that spread negativity.

He recommends that you remove all influences that spread negativity or unhappiness into your life. Unfollow or avoid toxic social media comments or communities or influencers you follow. Complainers in your real life. Skeptics online. It really is that simple. By doing so, you can remove a lot of the influences that hold you down in life.

Maybe the comments on your social media are negative and catch you by surprise. If these can easily turn your day sour, hire someone else to help manage them as customer support or turn them off.

But what about engagement? Doesn’t that help with social media growth? I believe it does sometimes, but it requires a certain thick-skinned personality to deal with that. You want to be able to perform at your peak levels at all times and unnecessary negative influences on certain personalities stop that from occurring.

Therefore, do what you must.

2. Everything Has A Cause and Effect

This is an iron-clad law of the universe.

For every effect, there is a cause. There is a reason why you are not where you want to be in life.

If you are ripped, it is because you spent years consistently working out. The result (muscles) is caused by consistent proper training. Every person I have approached at the gym with massive arms have said they have consistently worked out for 10+ years.

If you are doing poorly financially, there is a cause. Work on consistently creating the cause you want to get the effects you want in life.

What you sow is what you reap in harvest years later. If you are planting seeds of succeed such as consistent exercise, goal-setting, and hard work, you will get great rewards. If you spend everyday planting seeds of poor eating with junk food, you will get the results of that for years to come with a fat belly.

3. Have A Positive Attitude, with Affirmations, and a “Universe is Working For Me” Attitude

Brian Tracy, Norman Vincent Peale, and millionaire W. Clement Stone have all emphasized the importance of a positive mental attitude (PMA) for success. Most people go through life with a negative mindset, always blaming others or focusing on the things that aren’t going well.

Brian Tracy and millionaire and speaker Tony Robbins, also recommend a lot of positive affirmations when you wake up in front of the mirror: “Today is going to be a GREAT day”, “I am exuberant”, “I am energy-producing”, “Great things are happen to me today”, or “I am energetic”.

I recently saw an interview where billionaire talk show host Oprah Winfrey said that she used a variation of this affirmation to stay successful and positive. When she was exhausted or depressed, it didn’t seem logical or believable to say something as extreme as “I’m happy and full of energy”.

So she baby-stepped it and slowly said affirmations that were slightly more positive and energetic than her current situation. Over time, it really helped her get to another state.

I have a theory that one of the reasons this works is because you start to focus on things you would have otherwise not noticed when you open your mind to these opportunities. It is like when you want to be a specific make and model of car, and you all of a sudden start noticing all these cars on the street.

It’s a phenomenon involving your reticular activation system in your brain. Essentially, you have primed yourself to be more aware of a specific thing and now you are noticing it more often.

If you want to be more aware of business opportunities, you prime your subconscious with affirmations using the Napoleon Hill style and you might start seeing opportunities in unique ways you might have missed before. If you tell yourself your day is going to be GREAT, you will notice things you took for granted and better appreciate what you find.

I tested all this out myself and there definitely seems to be some level of perceived benefit in happiness, energy, and well-being. There was a day when it didn’t work at all (car accident, boring day, etc.) yet I was still happy and appreciative. Note: this may also be because I’m running other tests at the same time. I have been really making sure to see the bigger picture in life, not take myself too seriously, and just be thankful I have food on the table and am uninjured. It was not a controlled experiment.

Note: this may also be because I’m running other tests at the same time. I have been really making sure to see the bigger picture in life, not take myself too seriously, and just be thankful I have food on the table and am uninjured. It was not a controlled experiment.

Brian Tracy voices an idea that is common in other self-development books like The Alchemist. They recommend that you have this belief or attitude that the entire universe and everything in it is working to help you succeed in ways beyond your comprehension.

Now, for some skeptics and people who have had really bad lives, this seems very difficult to do. I look to Steve Carey when I think about this. He had no education, a minimum wage job, lived in the self-help section of the book store, adopted all of the principles, and still carry them to this day after he’s made tens of millions of dollars acting.

Steve voiced his opinions on this point in a commencement speech at Maharashi University. Here’s his point: maybe the universe really isn’t working everything in his favor in mysterious ways to bring him success. But to him, it doesn’t matter, because he believes it to be so.

What’s my point? Try it out. It may be a similar thing with the reticular activiation system where this belief might just help you have a better attitude, be a better person of value to be around, and attract what you want into your life. There’s little downside and it couldn’t hurt to test out considering the upside.

As Brian Tracy says, you attract who you are. If you are a positive person, you attract other positive people towards you. If you are negative, you will attractive other negative cynics.

You set up a force-field of energy that attracts people, circumstances, and opportunities that align with the type of person you are. If you are a positive man who is always into self-development, that will slowly bleed through. And if you’re serious about it, you will attend seminars and invest in yourself, and you will attract similar people.

Trust that this law will bring the right people into your life.

4. Have Great Expectations and Belief

Henry Ford has said that “Those who believe they can and those who believe they cannot are usually right.”

What he means is that if you believe you can’t, it is affecting your mentality and stopping you from achieving success. You’ve given up, so by definition, you can’t continue.

Will Smith has mentioned the same quote but referred Confucius as the originator. The originator doesn’t matter. It holds true.

Brian Tracy says that if you have great expectations for yourself, it will come true. If you expect failure, that will most likely come true as well.

Successful people have great expectations for what they think they will achieve or accomplish. Note: That doesn’t mean they aren’t realistic. That doesn’t mean it won’t take a lot of failed attempts before they finally get there.

5. Goal Setting

Brian Tracy says that you increase your chances of success by 1000%+ if you write your goals down.

Based on my studies of thousands of successful people, I recommend that you write it at least twice (when you wake up and when you go to sleep) using pen or pencil and paper. Don’t use an electronic device like a computer or phone to type down your goals.

Use the Napoleon Hill method for the details on how to do this right.

One key part of this method is to write specifically what value or skills you will give in exchange for what you want in detail. If you don’t know, write down and brainstorm 20 things that you can give in exchange.

6. Read Great Books

Will Smith has said that any obstacle or problem you ever will have, there is a book written by someone already on how to solve it.

Brian Tracy had a friend who wanted to sell his business but failed for over 2 years. He had built a successful business but wanted to sell it to travel the world. Finally, a light bulb went off and he searched to see if there were any books written on how to sell a business. There was a ton.

He picked a few books on how to sell and package a business and successfully sold it. The answer is likely already out there somewhere.

7. Visualization

Many people have successfully used visualization and subconscious programming to achieve their success.

If you don’t take control of your subconscious mind, you will let negative influences that deter you from success seep into your subconscious.

Here’s what you can do to increase your chances of subconscious programming working:

• Visualize the success occurring. If you’ve only succeeded once and failed numerous times, visualize that one success in your mind the next time. Don’t let the thoughts of failure come in.
• Do this frequently at least twice a day (when you wake up and when you go to sleep)
• Write down in present tense specifically what you want as if you’ve already accomplished it with a deadline and what you will exchange for it. Feel as if you’ve already achieved it.
• Do this with enthusiasm and emotion. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.
• Do this consistently for at least 90 days. Do it as long as possible.
• Have pictures, vision boards, and reminders all over your house and your environment to keep reminding yourself and program it into your mind.

One thing that separates the winners from the losers is actually doing this consistently and as specifically as stated. There are a lot of losers who never achieve anything great despite learning about this because they never execute on any of this in detail: they never write a deadline, they never do it frequently, there’s no emotion, and so on.

If they ever do it, it’s once or twice per month and it’s never even close to how it was specifically laid out. They half-ass things.

8. Focus On The Positive Things You Want Rather Than The Negative.

What you focus on expands. As Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins often say, what you focus on most will occur and grow and most people focus on the negative things they don’t want.

Focus on the things you want to have one day and stay positive rather than complaining or spending even another second focusing on the negative things that aren’t working out right now (unemployment, a bad job, a bad house, no friends, or no dating life).

9. Don’t Tell Your Goals To Everyone. Only A Select Few If Any

If you tell your goals to negative people, they will tear you down for a variety of possible reasons: they couldn’t achieve it themselves, their small-minded limiting beliefs are holding them back from realizing it’s possible, or maybe they’re just negative people.

Be very selective with who you tell your goals to, especially the more intimate and crazy goals. You don’t want to be deterred by other people trying to dissuade you when you could have possibly accomplished it, especially if you’re someone who is easily influenced by other negative thoughts.

Make sure that in the long run you develop an ability to stay the course despite any negative influences or opinions you get, because you will get them.

I found this advice to conflict a little with other successful people. I believe in one of Robert Greene’s books, he pointed to a couple people like Ben Franklin, who would announce their goal publically to build accountability towards achieving them. I guess it depends on the context. If it’s something that people could find weird or dissuade you from, it’s best to not mention it. I believe Ryan Holiday didn’t even tell his friends or family he was writing a book for years for this reason. Perhaps, if it’s just something you want more motivation towards and you don’t the backlash will affect you, you can announce it publically?

10. Program Into Your Subconscious Who You Want To Be

Use affirmations like “I am not a smoker.” or “I eat healthy” to program into your vast subconscious mind as an identity. This mind works many times faster than the conscious mind.

If you consistently do this daily for months, the effects can be incredible. You may start seeing that you all of a sudden stop smoking or exercising and eating right.

Brian Tracy gave two examples of how the results could be different with this type of programming: one man gradually decreased smoking cigarettes by one every week until he quit altogether using this subconscious programming and another used it for months but still kept smoking the same amount, but he kept at it and one day coughed every time he tried to smoke. He realized he didn’t like it anymore and quit.