Before you can achieve anything worthwhile in life, you have to pa.s.s "the persistence test." This is usually a "snap quiz" sprung on you unexpectedly with no warning. You suddenly face a major setback, problem, temporary failure, or even a complete disaster. When this happens, remind yourself that this is the "testing time." This is when you demonstrate what you are really made of. This is when you show yourself and others the strength of your character and your true determination to succeed.

Your Ability to Respond.

Your ability to respond effectively to setbacks-your level of "response-ability"-is the measure of your readiness to succeed. When you experience a major setback or problem, you will feel temporarily stunned. This feeling is very much like a punch in the emotional solar plexus. You will be stopped for a few seconds or a few minutes. During this period, you will often feel discouraged or experience self-pity. You will say, "Why me?"

However, it is not how far you fall that counts, but rather how high you bounce. Your aim is to bounce back as quickly as possible. Resilience in the face of unexpected reversals is vital to long-term success. Remember the warrior's creed: "I will lay me down to bleed awhile, and then rise and fight again."

Don't be surprised, shocked, or set back when things go wrong. Your best-laid plans will often fall apart. Instead, expect disappointments and setbacks as a part of life. Take a deep breath, pick up the pieces, and continue onward.

Optimism Gives You Resilience.

The most important quality you need for success and persistence is optimism. This is a boundless confidence in yourself and your ability to ultimately succeed. To remain optimistic, you must control and discipline your thinking when things go wrong. Refuse to feel sorry for yourself. Remember, you are not a victim. You are an adult, and you are in charge of your own life. You are doing what you have freely chosen to do. Setbacks come with the territory. They are merely speed b.u.mps on the road to success.

Refuse to blame others or make excuses. When you complain or blame other people, it just makes you feel and sound petty and small, and, what's worse, it takes away your personal power. Whenever you criticize or complain, it makes you feel weaker and reduces your ability to deal effectively with the situation. Instead, greet every setback by repeating, "I am responsible."

Look for the reasons why you are responsible for what happened rather than trying to pa.s.s off the blame onto other people. No excuses.

Be Proactive Versus Reactive.

Resolve to focus on the solution and what can be done now, rather than on what happened and who's to blame. Think in terms of the actions you can take to resolve the situation rather than what went wrong and who is to blame.

To remain optimistic, look for the good in every situation. When you look for something good, you will always find something good. Furthermore, while you're looking for something good, because your conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time, you will automatically become positive, optimistic, and back in full control.

Seek the valuable lesson in every problem or difficulty. Every setback you face contains one or more lessons that have been sent to you to help you be more successful in the future. The difference between successes and failures is simple: Failures feel sorry for themselves when things go wrong, whereas successful people look for the valuable lesson they can learn that will help them in the future.

Look for the Gift.

Normal Vincent Peale used to say, "When G.o.d wants to send you a gift, he wraps it up in a problem. The bigger the gift that G.o.d wants to send you, the bigger the problem he wraps it up in."

Instead of concentrating on the problem, look for the gift. Wonderfully enough, you will always find it. What's more, sometimes the gift, or valuable lesson, can be of far greater value than the cost of the problem itself. Sometimes, one lesson that you learn in dealing with a problem can be the key to your long-term success. As Napoleon Hill wrote, "Within every problem or obstacle lays the seed of an equal or greater opportunity or benefit. Your job is to find it."

Continually think of yourself as a strong, powerful, resolute person in the face of adversity. In World War I, a British general was described by his superiors: "There he stands, like an iron peg, driven into the frozen ground, immovable."

Let this be an accurate description of you whenever you face difficulties or problems of any kind. Resolve to stand like an iron peg driven into the frozen ground.

Resolve in Advance.

When you resolve in advance that you will never give up, your success is virtually guaranteed. In the final a.n.a.lysis, nothing can really stop you but yourself.

In life, it doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down. All that matters is how many times you get back up. If you continue to get back up and press onward, you must eventually reach your goal.

Each time you exert your self-discipline to persist in the face of adversity, you also increase your self-esteem and self-confidence. Then, as your self-esteem increases, you feel stronger, more powerful, and more unstoppable. When you feel better and stronger, you become more capable of persisting the next time-and then the time after that.

By disciplining yourself to persist in the face of all adversity, you put your life onto an upward spiral of self-esteem, self-discipline, and persistence until you eventually become like a force of nature.

Persistence is self-discipline in action.

In Part Two, you will learn the specific things you can do to apply these principles to the practical areas of life, to achieve greater success in your work and career, and to fulfill your potential in the months and years ahead.

Action Exercises:.

1. Identify one area in your life in which you need to persist even harder to achieve your goal, and then take action in that area.

2. Identify a goal in your life that you did not accomplish because you failed to persist through to completion. What steps could you take today to succeed in that area?

3. Identify one big goal that you achieved because you persisted and refused to give up, no matter how difficult it became.

4. Decide on your major definite purpose in life, the one goal that, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive impact on your life.

5. Write down your goal clearly, make a detailed plan of action to accomplish it, and then tell yourself that "failure is not an option."

6. Make a decision today that you will persist until you succeed, no matter what happens, because "I am unstoppable."

7. Resolve to set and achieve one important goal, overcoming the inevitable difficulties, problems and setbacks you will experience, and to work at it until you succeed. Repeat this process over and over until persistence becomes a habit.

PART II.

Self-Discipline in Business, Sales, and Finances.

In this part, you will learn how to develop the discipline necessary to join the top 10 percent of people in your field. You will learn how to increase your productivity, performance, output, and results. You will learn how to become one of the most respected and esteemed people in your organization and your industry.

Chapter 8.

Self-Discipline and Work.

"Leaders aren't born; they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal."

-VINCE LOMBARDI.

There is perhaps no area of your life where self-discipline has a greater impact on your future than in your work. Yet, if you're like most people, from the time you start in the morning and then continuing throughout the day, you are surrounded by people and events that draw you away from doing the things that are most important. However, it is through doing your most important tasks that you move onward and upward, quickly and dependably in your career.

A group of senior executives was asked, "What are the most important qualities that a person would need to be promoted in your company?" Of these executives, 85 percent agreed that the most important qualities are 1. The ability to set priorities and work on high-value tasks; and 2. The discipline to get the job done quickly and well.

It seems that these two qualities are more helpful for career success than anything else a person can do. Diligent, disciplined, focused work will enable you to consistently and predictably get more done, get paid more, and get promoted faster throughout your career than the average person.

Separate the Relevant from the Irrelevant.

I've mentioned the Pareto Principle-the 80/20 rule-several times in this book, and it applies again here. Fully 80 percent of the value of what you accomplish will come from 20 percent of the things you do. Your job, then, is to identify those top 20 percent of your tasks and then concentrate single-mindedly on doing them quickly and well.

Chapter 13 discusses time management in detail, but for now, let's take a look at the flip side of good time management-poor time management. According to Robert Half International, the average employee wastes about 50 percent of his or her time on nonwork-related activities:* Thirty-seven percent of work time is wasted on idle conversation on personal subjects with coworkers, conversations that have nothing whatsoever to do with the job at hand.

* The other 13 percent of wasted time is consumed by coming in late or leaving early, by long lunches and coffee breaks, by surfing the Internet, reading the newspaper, or conducting personal business during the day.

Even worse, when people who waste a lot of time actually settle down and get to work, they spend too much time on low-value tasks and activities. As a result, they get very little done, which then causes them to feel that they are under continual pressure to get caught up.

Unfortunately, when you waste time at work, your work does not go away. It continually builds, like an avalanche overhang. Deadlines come closer and closer. Stress mounts up until you finally force yourself to do the job, usually at the last minute, and then you often make expensive mistakes.

Develop an Excellent Reputation.

There is nothing that will bring you more quickly to the attention of people who can help you than for you to develop a reputation for hard, disciplined work, every hour of every day.

Average employees increase their income at only about 3 percent per year, which is just about the rate of inflation or cost-of-living increases. In other words, if you're an average employee, you're not really making any more money from year to year. Rather, you're just keeping up with your expenses. But the top 20 percent in most fields increase their income anywhere from 10 to 25 percent per year-which is also compounded, year after year.

The top 20 percent of people at work earn 80 percent of the money. The bottom 80 percent of employees have no choice but to share the 20 percent of the money that is left over. They must scramble for the crumbs that fall off the tables of the highly productive people in their fields.

YOU CAN DOUBLE YOUR INCOME!.

When I say to people in my seminars that you should set a goal to "double your income" in the months and years ahead, people react in different ways. Often, at the break, someone will come up to me and say, "You don't understand my company. There is no way that I could double my income at my current company. They simply would not pay me that amount of money."

Having heard this before, I then ask them the critical question: "Is there anyone at your company who earns twice as much as you?"

The person who I am talking to will always agree that, "Yes, there are people in my company who earn two or three times as much as I do."

I then make the key point, "So your company is quite willing to pay some people twice as much as they pay you. They're just not willing to pay you twice as much. Why is that?"

Then suddenly the light goes on. This individual realizes that it is not the company that is not willing to pay the money. It is the individual who is not contributing enough to be worth that additional money. The responsibility is his, not the company's.

The Law of Three Helps You Prioritize.

When we coach entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners, we take them through an exercise that is designed to help them double their productivity, performance, and output within twelve months-sometimes, even, within thirty days. It's simple. Here's how it works.

First, make a list of all the things that you do in a week or a month, from the time you start work on Monday morning through to the end of the week. Write everything down, both small and large, including checking your e-mail and returning phone calls.

Then, review this list and ask this key question:"If I could do only one thing on this list, all day long, which one task or activity contributes the most value to my company?"

As you go over your list, the correct answer will probably jump out at you. Whatever it is, put a circle around it.

Then ask the second question:"If I could do only two things on this list, all day long, which would be the second task or activity?"

Review your list again, and identify your second most important task in terms of contribution to your company.

Finally, ask the question once more:"If I could do only three things on this list, all day long, what would be the third item?"

We call this the "Law of Three." The Law of Three says that there are three primary things you do that contribute 90 percent or more of your value to your company or organization. Your job is to identify those three critical tasks and then discipline yourself to do them all day long. All of your other minor tasks will be support tasks, complementary tasks, enjoyable tasks, or useless tasks. They will be little things that you have often gotten into the habit of doing as a way of unconsciously avoiding the big, difficult, important tasks that can make a tremendous difference in your work and career.