Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement Read Free

your truth. As the author Richard Bach in his book Illusions wrote, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.” ccc_tracy_fm_i-xviii.qxd 7/7/03 3:23 PM Page xvii Introduction
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    ■ YOU ARE A LIVING MAGNET
    The Law of Attraction says that you are a “living magnet” and that you invariably attract into your life the people, ideas, opportunities, and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts.
    When you think positive, optimistic, loving, and successful thoughts, you create a force field of magnetism that attracts, like iron filings to a magnet, the very things you are thinking about. This law explains why it is that you don’t have to be concerned where your good is going to come from. If you can keep your mind clearly focused on what you want, and refrain from thinking about what you don’t want, you will attract everything you need to achieve your goals, exactly when you are ready. Change your thinking and you change your life.
    ■ THE ONLY REAL MEASURE
    Bertrand Russell, the English philosopher, once said, “The very best proof that something can be done is that others have already done it.” In the New Testament, Jesus taught the way to measure the truth of any principle: “By their fruits, ye shall know them.” In other words, the only question you need to ask about any idea is, “Does it work?” Does it bring about the results that you desire? Milton Friedman, the Nobel prizewinning economist, said,
    “The only true measure of a theory or idea is your ability to make accurate predictions of the future based on it.” The good news is that the ideas and principles you are about to learn have been tested and proven in the lives and experiences of millions of people. In themselves, like any principles of nature, they are neutral . Nature plays no favorites. Nature treats everyone alike.
    Whatever seed you plant in the ground, nature will grow. Whatever thought seeds you plant in your mind, nature will grow as well. It is entirely up to you.
    ■ CHOOSE YOUR THOUGHTS
    Successful people are those who think more effectively than unsuccessful people. They approach their lives, relationships, goals, ccc_tracy_fm_i-xviii.qxd 7/7/03 3:23 PM Page xviii xviii
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    problems, and experiences differently from others. They sow better seeds, and as a result they reap better lives. If you learn to think and act like other successful, happy, healthy, and prosperous people, you will soon enjoy the kind of lives they do. When you change your thinking, you change your life.
    Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.
    —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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    Change Your Thinking
    There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
    —William James
    Once upon a time there was a woman, about 30 years old, married with two children. Like many people, she had grown up in a home where she was constantly criticized and often treated unfairly by her parents. As a result, she developed deep feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem. She was negative and fearful, and had no confidence at all. She was shy and self-effacing, and did not consider herself to be particularly valuable or worthwhile. She felt that she was not really talented at anything.
    One day, as she was driving to the store, another car went through a red light and smashed into her. When she awoke, she was in the hospital with a mild concussion and complete memory loss.
    She could still speak, but she had no recollection of any part of her past life. She was a