Using the Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires
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There are characteristics common among men and women who started
out with nothing and achieved great financial success.
Characteristics that are responsible for their success. They are
traits anyone of average intelligence can develop if he or she
is willing to pay the price.
It is estimated that today every 58 minutes someone in the
United States or Canada becomes a millionaire. And the rate is
accelerating. When self-made millionaires are studied, however,
it is found that they are not necessarily smarter than the
average person.
It is found that most self-made millionaires did not complete
college. According to a study, between 68% and 75% of them did
not complete college or never attended in the first place. Many
of them got poor grades in school. Some of them even dropped out
of high school and went to work to help support their family.
It is also found that 80% to 90% of self-made millionaires came
from a working class background. They did not come necessarily
from a background that would open up opportunities for them.
Most started with no opportunities at all.
I believe that one reason why people of average intelligence
tend to be more successful is that they do not fall into what we
call the intelligence trap. This is what people fall into when
they think that they know it all, they stop learning.
Consequently, their peers, who are continually asking questions
and learning, move ahead of them.
Mr. Brian Tracy, in his extensive study of one particular group
of achievers, the self-made millionaires, learned that they
possess seven basic qualities and characteristics responsible
for their success. To make it easier for us to remember these
seven qualities, or keys, according to Mr. Tracy, he used the
acronym SECRETS. So, let's spell out these keys to
learn what Mr. Tracy found in these secrets:
* Sense of Purpose: All men and women who achieve a high
level of success in life are intensely goal-oriented. They have
what Charles Garfield, in his work on peak performance, calls "a
sense of mission". They are extremely focused on what they are
doing. They have a clear vision of the person they want to
become and what they want to accomplish.
* Excellence, more specifically, the making of the
commitment: It means making a decision, at some point in
their life, that you are going to be the best at what you do, or
do it to the best of your ability. They do not just finish their
work, they finish it to the best of their ability. If you do not
love your work enough to want to be the best at it, get out of
that work and find something else. One of your greatest
responsibilities in life is to find the work that is meaningful
to you. We can never be happy or have high self-esteem and be
enthusiastic about ourselves unless we are doing our work in an
excellent fashion.
* Contribution: This refers to the contributions we make
to our jobs, to our families, to our customers, to our friends,
to our environment, and ultimately to our world. Peter Drucker
says in his book, The Effective Executive, that a
focus of contribution is the hallmark of personal and
professional effectiveness. The great turn-on, the great
motivator, for self-made millionaires, comes from knowing that
what they are doing for others is valuable, and that it is
enriching, ennobling, and enhancing the lives of others. All
self-made millionaires concentrate continually on increasing the
value of what they are doing for others.
* Responsibility: This means taking 100% acceptance for
your life, for everything that happens to you. Losers make
excuses; winners make progress. Losers blame others; winners
accept total responsibility for their lives. Everything that
will ever happen to you is up to you. Everything that you are
today is your responsibility. It is not your family's; it's not
your spouse's or children's. It is not the government's; it is
not your boss'. It is yours.
* Effort: Every single study has revealed that there are
no shortcuts to success, no substitute for hard work, and that
the sooner you get your shoulder to the wheel, and put in those
extra hours and develop those talents, skills, and abilities,
the sooner you will become successful.
* Time Management: You never get time; you always have to
make time for the things that are most important. Manage your
time effectively by doing it NOW, setting priorities,
concentrating on one thing at a time, and keeping your life in
balance.
* Stay with it: In everything you do, stay with it, apply
your drive. A quality that ties in closely with persistence is
courage, the willingness to take risks. Persistence and courage
are functions of your belief in yourself. Thomas J. Watson, the
founder of IBM, said it very well many years ago when he stated,
"Do you want to be successful? Then double your failure rate."
The more times you fail and learn from those failures, the
faster you achieve success.
So, the secrets of success suggest that we never stop learning;
that we read, listen to audiocassettes; view DVD