The Phoenix Seminar on the Psychology of Achievement (All 27 Sessions)

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• Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects, so changing a condition in your life starts with changing the thought that precedes it.
• You can never give away responsibility for your life; you can only give away control.
• Blame always looks backward at what cannot be changed, while responsibility asks one question: what can we do from here?
• Saying I am responsible and holding a negative emotion at the same time is impossible, because the conscious mind holds one thought at a time.
• One negative emotion you refuse to release works like a locked front brake: the harder you press the gas, the more you spin in circles.
• Saying I'll try is a way of excusing failure in advance, so replace it with I will or I won't.
• Worry is a sustained form of fear caused by indecision, which means making a decision is the fastest cure.
• Writing down the worst possible outcome and resolving to accept it removes most of the stress, because the stress lives in avoiding that picture.
• You tend to earn within about 10 percent of what you believe you are worth, and money beyond that self-image tends to get spent or lost.
• Reading one nonfiction book a month in your field already puts you ahead of most adults, who finish fewer than one a year.
• A car commute of 500 to 1,000 hours a year is the equivalent of one or two university semesters if you replace the radio with audio learning.
• In mental work effort defeats itself, so visualization and affirmation work best when you are relaxed, not straining.
• Losers rehearse their last failure before an event; winners deliberately replay their last success and lay it over the upcoming one.
• Forcing yourself to write 20 answers to one specific question each morning often surfaces the best idea at number 20.
• Calling something a situation or an opportunity instead of a problem keeps your mind dealing with it instead of shutting down.
• If you cannot say I was wrong, I changed my mind, I don't know, or I need help, your thinking has gone rigid.
• The fastest way to impress people, be liked or be respected is to be impressed by them, like them and respect them first.
• A parent who apologizes to a child for past destructive criticism can reset the relationship faster than years of trying to do better quietly.
• Asking what is the most valuable use of my time right now, before every task, does more for productivity than any scheduling tool.