Among the many fine individuals who have helped make this book possible, I would like to express my gratitude to the patience of my wife, Dellayne, to my friend and associate William Wallace, whose belief and support have been without peer, and to my son Anthony, who lived the principles of this book before it was written. I would also like to thank Julia Hayes who was willing to be a dedi- cated partner and pioneer in the new frontier of human potential, to my senior editor, Ré Ann Brown, whose contributions to the content and concept of this book were invaluable, and to my copy editor Holly Hill, one of the finest word-smiths I shall ever hope to meet.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Sylvia Regelbrugge who, for some forty years of my life, has unfailingly encouraged and always believed. I would like to offer a special thank you to my teacher and friend, Barbara Baylis, who taught me, many years ago, who I am. I would also like to extend my warmest thank you to my friend Ray Lind- strom who possesses both genius and belief, to Gregory, who has inspired me more than he knows, to Jeffery, who is becoming a true achiever, and to Timothy, my youngest son, who would have felt terribly left out if I did not mention him by name.
LIFE, FOR MOST OF US, should be pretty good. We have all heard what life is supposed to offer: endless opportunities, the fulfillment of our dreams, and a chance to live each day in a way that brings happiness and success. Most of us want and need at least a successful job or career, a good family life, and reasonable financial security. We expect that from life.
We know deep inside that we deserve our fair share and we have every right to attain it. Have you ever wondered, then, why things don’t work out the way they should? Why do we not get from life many of the things we would like to have— and know we should? Why do some people seem to be “lucky,” while the great majority of the rest of us seem not to be?
WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOU TALK TO YOUR SELF
Why are some people, day to day, happier, more productive, more fulfilled than others? What makes the difference? Is it Kismet, a kind of fate, which in some mysterious way charts our destiny and leaves little of the steering of our course through life up to us? Is the control of our lives in our hands or isn’t it? And if we can, or should control our lives, what goes wrong? What holds us back? If we truly would like to do better, be the way we really would like to be, and be happier and more successful every day in every area of living, what is the wall that stands in our way?
Imagine living a life which did not give in to the barriers and the battles, the hassles and the hur- dles of everyday living. Imagine a life filled with the vitality of achievement and the enrichment of daily self-fulfillment. To me, for a long time, that kind of life sounded like an impractical dream, a cardboard box filled with daydreams and wishes. To live a life of hope, promise, expectation, and achievement was to live the life of someone who lived only in the pages of a book. When I was quite young I had a soaring imagination. Long before I learned what we could not do, I dreamed of doing what I knew we could.
I remember, as a young boy, lying on my back in the cool, wet grass late at night, my mind sinking into the depths of the crystal clear stars that blanketed the summer sky above me. I could reach out and touch those stars. I could imagine any dream and see it come true. It was only later that my dreams gave way to more practical considerations. Star-filled heavens, dew- soaked grass, and princely dreams of imaginary king- doms bowed to more rational requirements. As I be- gan to pursue my education in earnest, I began to learn what we could not do. In time I became more intent on studying the laws and the limits of man, than on learning the far-reaching extremities of mankind’s po- tential. I learned all of the “shoulds,” “musts,” and “can- nots.”
I was told that it was bad to have your head in the clouds and it was good to have your feet on the ground. So I extracted my head from the magical excitement of the universe and got down to business learning about the more practical matters of survival and acceptance. From time to time I had the nagging suspicion that there was more to all of this than was meeting the eye—I just couldn’t see it yet.
I began the first part of my search by studying something called “human behavior.” That’s some- thing you can get a degree in without ever really figuring it out. It is also something that older people seem to know more about than younger people. No matter how many educational degrees my professors could profess, I suspected that some of the grayed and silver-haired older people I knew had figured out what human behavior was all about long before we were taught courses in the subject. I next studied something called motivational mar- keting. That teaches us what makes people do what they do even when they don’t want to do it.
When I completed my course work, it was my final opinion that you can never really get anyone to do anything they don’t want to do unless you use force. I decided that in most of the free world, “force” is called adver- tising. And yet, after learning these great and marvelous truths, and some of them are, I would take with a grain of salt anyone’s claim that they can give you the “secret of success.” If anyone offers you the moon, don’t buy it. As much as I have been a student of success, I have also been a skeptic. For many years I read and studied and listened.
And I wondered: If there are so many “keys” to success, why aren’t they working? Why are there shelves full of self-help best-sellers? It seemed to me that if the books were working as they ought to work, we wouldn’t keep needing new ones. If there are so many answers to our questions about what to do to make life better, why have so many people failed at making these great ideas work? Or if they work for a time, what makes them stop working?