This article was posted this morning by Brian Tracy. It is a great article and talks a lot about the basic premise of "The 3-Week Miracle". I hope you enjoy it!

By Brian Tracy:
      How long does it take to develop a new habit? The time period can be any length from a single second to several years. The speed of new habit pattern development is largely determined by the intensity of the emotion that accompanies the decision to begin acting in a particular way.
Many people think, talk about and resolve to lose weight and become physically fit. This may go on for years. Then one day, the doctor says that, “If you don’t get your weight down and improve your physical condition, you are in danger of dying at an early age.”

Suddenly, the thought of dying can be so intense or frightening that the individual immediately changes his diet, begins exercising, stops smoking and becomes a healthy and fit person. Psychologists refer to this as a “significant emotional experience,” or a “SEE.” Any experience of intense joy or pain, combined with a behavior, can create a habitual behavior pattern that may endure for the rest of a person’s life.

For example, putting your hand on a hot stove or touching a live electrical wire will give you an intense and immediate pain or shock. The experience may only take a split second. But for the rest of your life, you will have developed the habit of not putting your hand on hot stoves, or touching live electrical wires. The habit will have been formed instantly, and endure permanently.

According to the experts, it takes about 21 days to form a habit pattern of medium complexity. By this, we mean simple habits such as getting up earlier at a specific hour, exercising each morning before you start out, listening to audio programs in your car, going to bed at a certain hour, being punctual for appointments, planning every day in advance, starting with your most important tasks each day, or completing your tasks before you start something else. These are habits of medium complexity that can be quite easily developed in 14-21 days through practice and repetition.

How do you develop a new habit? Over the years, a simple, powerful, proven methodology has been determined for new habit development. It is very much like a recipe for preparing a dish in the kitchen. You can use it to develop any habit that you desire. Over time, you will find it easier and easier to develop the habits that you want to incorporate into your personality.

Seven Steps to Developing a New Habit

First, make a decision Decide clearly that you are going to begin acting in a specific way 100% of the time, whenever that that behavior is required. For example, if you decide to arise early and exercise each morning, set your clock for a specific time, and when the alarm goes off, immediately get up, put on your exercise clothes and begin your exercise session.

Second, never allow an exception to your new habit pattern during the formative stages. Don’t make excuses or rationalizations. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you resolve to get up at 6:00 AM each morning, discipline yourself to get up at 6:00 AM, every single morning until this becomes automatic.

Third, tell others that you are going to begin practicing a particular behavior. It is amazing how much more disciplined and determined you will become when you know that others are watching you to see if you have the willpower to follow through on your resolution.

Fourth, visualize yourself performing or behaving in a particular way in a particular situation. The more often you visualize and imagine yourself acting as if you already had the new habit, the more rapidly this new behavior will be accepted by your subconscious mind and become automatic.

Fifth, create an affirmation that you repeat over and over to yourself. This repetition dramatically increases the speed at which you develop the new habit. For example, you can say something like; “I get up and get going immediately at 6:00 AM each morning!” Repeat these words the last thing before you fall asleep. In most cases, you will automatically wake up minutes before the alarm clock goes off, and soon you will need no alarm clock at all.

Sixth, resolve to persist in the new behavior until it is so automatic and easy that you actually feel uncomfortable when you do not do what you have decided to do.

Seventh, and most important, give yourself a reward of some kind for practicing in the new behavior. Each time you reward yourself, you reaffirm and reinforce the behavior. Soon you begin to associate, at an unconscious level, the pleasure of the reward with the behavior. You set up your own force field of positive consequences that you unconsciously look forward to as the result of engaging in the behavior or habit that you have decided upon.

      These days you can find any number of people trying to sell you the "secret of success." I've always thought that it was funny to offer the secret of success because success to one person isn't necessarily success for another. What I find most important is to find out how you define success for yourself, and then pursue that.
     Just for fun, I did a Google search for the phrase: "The secret of success is..." It returned about 100,000 results but here are the top 50 that I found:

1.     “The secret of success is sincerity.” – Jean Giraudoux
2.     "The secret of success is constancy to purpose." - Benjamin Disraeli
3.     “The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.” - Aristotle Onassis.
4.     “The secret of success is to be like a duck – smooth and unruffled on top, but paddling furiously underneath.” – Author Unknown
5.     “The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.” - Benjamin Disraeli
6.     “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.” – Tony Robbins
7.     “The secret of success is never believing you are successful.” – Jeffrey Archer
8.     “The secret of success is doing what you love.” – Tony Hawk
9.     “The secret of success is close contact with a customer.” – Lubro Moly
10. “The secret of success is focus.” – Enoch Tan
11. “The secret of success is that there's success in everyone.” – Roberto Bonomi
12. “The secret of success is that there is no secret of success.” – Elbert Hubbard
13. "The secret of success is secrecy." – Ann Devlin
14. “The Secret of Success is a scientifically developed Workshop based on practical techniques taught by the greatest teachers, masters & motivators.”
15. “The Secret of Success is Just Being There.”
16. “The secret of success is failure?”
17. “The secret of success is to create rather than to compete.” – U. Andersen
18. “The secret of success is luck.” – Tony Bober
19. “The secret of success is having the courage to begin in the first place.” – Author Unknown
20. “The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.” - J.D. Rockefeller.
21. “Success is sweet but the secret of success is sweat!”
22. “The secret of success is to make your vocation your vacation.” - Mark Twain
23. “The Secret of Success is Enthusiasm”
24. "The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore." – Cyril Connoly
25. “The secret of success is the need for constant intention, dedication, effort, patience and practice.”
26. “The secret of success is trying longer and harder than your competition.”
27. "The secret of success is simply showing up," – Woody Allen
28. “The secret of success is confidence.”
29. “The secret of success is focus of purpose.” – Thomas Edison
30. “The secret of success is consciousness of success.”
31. “The secret of success is to realize that the crisis on our planet is much larger than just deciding what to do with your own life.”
32. “The secret of success lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.”
33. “The secret of success is constant practice.”
34. “The secret of success is flexibility to accept and experiment with new ideas to succeed.”
35. "The secret of success is not in doing your own work but in recognizing the right man to do it." – Andrew Carnegie
36. “The secret of success is to put your heart, mind, intellect and soul into even your smallest acts.” - Sivananda Sarasvati
37. “The secret of success is indeed a mystery.”
38. “The secret of success is variety.”
39. “The Secret of Success is Not Keeping Success a Secret”. Sandy Elsberg
40. “The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position.”
41. “The Secret of Success is licensed as shareware.”
42. “The secret of success is doing well the job close at hand.”
43. "The secret of success is learning from mistakes."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
44. “The secret of success is pretty simple. The more you listen, the smarter you get.” - Miles Nadal.
45. “The secret of success is learning to transform unsuccessful experiences from stumbling blocks to stepping stones.” – Michael Josephson
46. “The secret of success is to do all you can do without the thought of success.”
47. “The secret of success is the union of divine power with human effort.”
48. "The secret of success is to get up early, work late and strike oil." – J.D. Rockefeller
49. “The secret of success is preparedness.”
50. “The secret of success is the capacity to survive failure.” – Noel Coward

As you can see, there is no universal secret of success that applies to everyone. There are definitely tools and tips that can help you achieve your personal success, but each person has to discover what success means to them and the go after it with all of their efforts.

Kris

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Last year I had the opportunity to go to Portland, Oregon for a business trip. I spent some time walking around the downtown area, admiring the diverse and sometimes strange people milling about.
    I sat down on a park bench to eat a gyro from one of the many little food stands on the street. As I ate, I looked over and saw a snail on the next bench over. At first I was just surprised at his determination to make it from the ground up onto the bench. He scooted along until deciding he wanted make a left turn. There was just one problem: a big gap between the wood slats.

The gap was too far for him to get across but he seemed pretty determined. As I watched I was thinking I should go put my hand under the bench to catch him when he fell through.

He moved over to the edge of the wood an then stretched his "neck" (I don't know if they have necks) out to the other side. Wow! Pretty impressive.....but now what? You gotta get that big heavy shell across that space!

"Now you're screwed", I thought to myself. You've got one "foot" on one side and your holding on to the other side by your teeth! The weight of the shell has already twisted you up!

Now I just shut up and watch the show because I obviously am very cynical when it comes to the persistence, determination, and elasticity of snails

Sorry I ever doubted you Mr. Snail. Now you are just one chin-up away from blowing my mind.

Of course he made it! This is a motivational blog. How motivational would it be if he fell and got squashed?
I have looked at these pictures a hundred times and they still blow my mind. I just can't quite understand how he is able to transfer the weight like that!

There are probably 50 lessons to learn from this one experience but I wanted to share just a few thoughts. When I first saw that snail trying to cross I thought, "No way". I had no confidence in his ability to get across. I was thinking about how dumb snails must be.
     But the snail knew something I didn't. He was determined and knew without a doubt he could make it. If snails have ears, he probably heard me saying, "You can't make it!" But when he made the decision to act, there was no turning back. He stuck his neck out, he stretched himself, he held on during the hardest part even though it twisted him up, and he followed through.
    What can we learn from the snail? That we have to go through the same steps in our big goals and endeavors. We have to be determined. We have to stick our neck out there even though the people around us may be saying it is impossible. We have to stretch ourselves farther than we think we can and then we have to hold on and have faith in ourselves.
    If we can apply these lessons learned from a snail, we will not only achieve more but we will inspire those around us to do the same.

Kris

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On a hot August evening in Mesa, Arizona, a player wearing jersey #24 runs onto the football field.  He is the starting middle linebacker for the Mesa Community College Thunderbirds. Underneath the pads and uniform, however, there is something different about this player; something that the crowd in the stands doesn’t realize. #24 is about to live his lifelong dream.

Lincoln Proctor is from St. John’s, Arizona, a small town near the New Mexico border. He played football in high school and then left the country to serve a 2-year mission for his church in Ecuador.

Upon his return, he worked for a company building custom iron fences.  In 2006, he started his own business in the iron fence industry. As the economy turned, so did the business and he eventually closed up shop.  He spent some time in different jobs and eventually decided to go back to school. He enrolled at Mesa Community College. Soon after enrolling, he found out there would be open try-outs for the football team. He got excited. When he was young he had dreamed of playing college football. The he remembered something; he was 32 years old! He has a young family at home. There is no way a 32-year old man could go out and compete with young athletes in their prime. Or could he? Lincoln decided to take chance at living his dream.

It wasn’t easy. He was competing with 80 other kids for just a few open spots on the team. “What the heck am I doing?” he asked himself. Many of the other players were stronger and faster but he was determined to make up for it in hard work and maximum effort. He would show the coaches that he wanted this more than anybody else.

Thirty minutes before the try-out started he realized that he needed a physical release from a doctor to be able to play. In a panic, he ran across the street to an urgent care who just happened to offer physicals. There was a long line, so he went around asking if anyone would trade numbers with him. When he was finally able to see the doctor, they wouldn’t sign his physical because the running and anxiety had pushed his blood pressure through the roof. After some tense moments, his blood pressure came down. He got his physical release, ran back across the street, and played his heart out. When try-outs were over, the coach pulled him aside and told him he had made the team.

Lincoln wasn’t done yet. With hard work and desire he earned the starting role as middle linebacker. He kept working. The program awarded him a football scholarship. He kept working.  The coaches named him as a defensive captain.  He's still working. Lincoln is 12 years older than the average player on the team. His nicknames among the players are “Grandpa” or “Father Time”. He is still working.

On August 13th, 2011, while the crowd came to watch the Thunderbirds play, a small group was cheering wildly for a man who was living his dream.

When you ask him how it is going, a smile crosses his lips as he says, “I’m having the time of my life! It should be illegal to have this much fun!”

Is Lincoln Proctor super-human? No. Is he more capable than everyone else? No. He is a man who had a dream. Even when conventional wisdom would say that his window of opportunity had closed, he took a chance. He got out on the field and put in the effort. It is hard and painful work but he is having the time of his life. He’s not done. He’s hoping to transfer and play for a major university. He is living the dream.

            Lincoln is part of a new movement of people who are fed up with living life on auto-pilot. The people in this movement are not the incredibly talented or ambitious. They are your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. They are the average, everyday people around you. There is one difference though. They are starting to realize that they are not average. They are rediscovering the dreams they once had. They are learning that working towards their true dreams will bring them happiness, confidence and fulfillment. They are experiencing the miracle.

            Tonight I'm excited to go and watch #24, the 33 year-old freshman linebacker, my cousin, Lincoln continue living his dream as the Thunderbirds play against Snow College. Good luck Lincoln!

In his book "Today Matters", John C. Maxwell shares the following lines:

1. Just for today, I will choose and display the RIGHT ATTITUDE!
2. Just for today, I will determine and act on IMPORTANT PRIORITIES!
3. Just for today, I will know and follow HEALTHY GUIDLINES!
4. Just for today, I will communicate with and care for MY FAMILY!
5. Just for today, I will practice and develop GOOD THINKING!
6. Just for today, I will make and keep PROPER COMMITMENT!
7. Just for today, I will earn and properly manage MY FINANCES!
8. Just for today, I will deepen and live out MY FAITH!
9. Just for today, I will initiate and invest in SOLID RELATIONSHIPS!
10. Just for today, I will plan for and model GENEROSITY!
11. Just for today, I will embrace and practice GOOD VALUES!
12. Just for today, I will seek and experience IMPROVEMENTS!


     I really like these because sometimes we have so much we want to change or improve in our lives that we get a little overwhelmed. It is hard to say, "I'm going to change the way I act for the rest of my life." It is such a big task that subconsciously we will reject it and give up. That's why so many diets fail. We set these big goals that are so big that we never really start them. Or we throw in the towel after a week because it just seems like we will never make our goal. However, if we could change our thinking to be, "I am going to eat healthy today. Just for one day." we could all last one day. and then tomorrow we can say the same thing, "Just one more day." Before we know it, we've gone a week of healthy eating and have lost weight.
       The really big obstacles and challenges in our life can all be conquered if we can boil them down to a specific task to accomplish each day. The cumulative effect of all those small efforts will be big improvements in our lives.
      Give it a try. Look at your biggest goals and ask yourself, "What could I do today?" You will be happy that you did.
      Go for it.......just for today.

Kris

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A story shared by one of my mentors, Rory Vaden. Enjoy!

            I once heard a true story of a woman who was trapped in a burning building on the 80th floor. She had an intensive fear of heights and also an intensive fear of closed in spaces so when the fire alarm went off she absolutely refused to follow her colleagues into the stairwell to evacuate to safety. 

            She could not handle the thought of going down the stairs being able to look down in the middle all the way to the bottom. And the thought of being trapped inside the enclosed stairwell was just too much to endure and so instead she made a conscious choice to hide under her desk and wait to die. 

            Until some firemen made it up to her floor and were doing a sweep of the building when they found her in time to where they could still get her out. They told her she would have to take the stairs or she would surely burn alive in the flames. And yet she still wanted to choose death over facing her fear! 

            Finally a fireman grabbed her and picked her up and started dragging her towards the stairs. She wouldn’t stop kicking and screaming “I’m scared! I don’t want to because I’m scared!” And he couldn’t get her to go anywhere until he said these magical words to her “That’s ok, do it scared.” 

            “Do it scared. Do it scared. It’s ok to be scared just do it scared.” He kept saying it into her ear as he rushed her all the way down 80 flights of stairs. “Do it scared. It’s ok to be scared just do it scared.” 

Reportedly as the woman and the firefighter finally burst out the bottom doors just seconds before the building became an engulfed inferno she said the bright light of outside was also the exact moment of an epiphany for her life. She could hear the firefighter’s voice in her ear, “Do it scared. Do it scared. No problem, just do it scared.” The phrase saved her life physically but it also transformed her life emotionally.

            The catch phrase became her life mantra and she went on to live a completely different life after that. 

            Don’t you have times like that in your life? Where you know what the obvious move to make is but somehow you find this evil force holding you back because of a violently detailed fear? Don’t you sometimes have people trying to drag you down the path that will save your life? Isn’t it sometimes obvious that you have to take the stairs, yet the fear grips you and causes you to choose convenience and safety over life? 

            Do it scared. It’s fine to be scared – do it scared. It’s fine to be unsure – do it unsure. It’s fine to be uncomfortable – do it uncomfortable. Just do it scared. That is the attitude of the most disciplined and successful people on the planet. They just do it scared, if they have to. But they do it anyways. 

Do it scared. 

             You are going to develop the habit of acting in the face of fear. You are going to create movement and momentum. You are going to get closer to your fear so that you can understand it and overcome it. You will act and you will have life! 

See you in the stairwell

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            William Kamkwamba was born on August 5th, 1987 in a small village in Malawi. He was the only boy among seven children. William attended a small primary school until he was 14, completing the 8th grade. In 2001, harsh famine hit Malawi. William’s family lived in a small community maintained by the sale of crops. In a matter of a few months, the entire livelihood of the village literally dried up. Without crops to sell, there was no money to continue paying William’s yearly tuition of $80. William was forced to drop out of school at the age of 14.

            William was determined to continue learning. He would walk a few miles to a community library in a nearby village and borrow whatever book he could. On one occasion he found a book called “Using Energy”. The cover of the book depicted large wind turbines. In the book he read about how windmills could be used to generate electricity. The village where he lived had no electricity and kerosene lamps were used for lighting the home in the evening. William decided that he would find a way to build a windmill and generate electricity for his family’s home.

            The problem was that he had very few resources with which to build anything like a windmill. So he started digging around in trash heaps and waste dumps, looking for anything he could use. The people in his village thought he had gone crazy. His family told him he was crazy. He was the laughingstock of the village. People would see him digging through the trash, collecting junk day after day.

            After a lot of trial and error, William Kamkwamba finished his windmill. It was fifteen feet high and was made of a broken bicycle, a tractor fan blade, an old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. To look at it you would think it was just a pile of junk on top of a wooden framework. But when the wind picked up, the gum tree blades began to turn, and something amazing happened. That small light bulb William had attached to the wiring slowly flickered to life and shone. William’s family, friends and neighbors stood and stared in disbelief.

From that moment, there was no stopping William Kamkwamba. He next figured out he could use an old car battery to store the energy and use it to power lights at night.  He next extended the windmill to over thirty feet in order to better catch the wind above the trees. He developed a system in his home with light switches and circuit breakers made from nails, wire, and magnets. He used parts from broken cassette players to make a radio, which provides music to his home. People from nearby villages would line up at his door begging him to charge their cell phone batteries.

            Today his family compound is equipped with an additional windmill that pumps water to irrigate their fields. He has converted his radio into a transmitter, which is used to broadcast music and messages about HIV prevention to the surrounding villages. Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound; a deep water well with a solar powered pump for clean water, and a drip irrigation system.     

            William’s story spread and before long he had drawn the attention of the local and international press. Today he lectures all over the world, sharing his story in an attempt to inspire others to realize their dreams. He is also a member of the inaugural class of the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. His goal is to make a difference in the lives of all Africans.

            William Kamkwamba is an inspiration to millions of people in Africa and around the world. He is an excellent example of what can be accomplished by a vision followed by hard work and determination. All of us should endeavor to be like “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”.

     “When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
                                                                                                                                                - Jacob Riis

     There is probably nothing more important in our struggle for self-development than persistence and hope. Persistence produces the results, while hope pushes us to take another step. These two go hand in hand just the way faith and works do.
     If I hope to reach a goal but give up trying whenever I face an obstacle, I will never reach any goal worth achieving. If I work hard at something every day but don't have any hope that I will see results, I will soon get discouraged and abandon the effort.
     What is hope? Persistence is easy to define: Just keep working at it. But what about hope? You can't just tell someone to have hope. "Hope" is an often misused term or misunderstood concept. People tend to use it the same way they would use the word "wish". It actually has a different meaning. As a noun it means, "the feeling that what is wanted can be had." As a verb it means, "To look forward to with desire and confidence. To believe, desire, or trust." Sounds a lot deeper than just wishing something would happen. Hope is actually linked to the words "confidence", "desire", and "trust".
    How do we develop greater hope? Our hope will increase as our confidence increases. Our confidence increases when we see the positive results of our persistent actions. If I practice shooting free throws every day and can consistently make 10 in a row, I will become confident that I can make a free throw in a basketball game. If I never practice free throws at all, do I have the right to hope for a game-winning free throw? Not really. Without the persistent effort, I am just wishing to that I could somehow chuck the ball up there and by some miracle, make the shot. The difference between having hope and wishing comes from the persistent effort leading up to it.
    Persistence comes from not giving up. When there is a goal you are working towards, you have to learn to persist even when it seems like you aren't making progress. There is always a tipping point. That point where it seems like everything you have been doing is in vain, but just a little more effort tips the scales in your favor and results start to come faster and faster. Most people give up before the tipping point. That is why we must have hope. Hope is what tells us that a little more effort will get us there. It keeps us going.
     Persistence and hope. You can't really have one without the other. Develop them both and you will be successful at anything you endeavor.

"Discipline is a choice. Its simply consistently choosing the hard right over the easy wrong."

     I love this quote from Rory Vaden, author of the book Take the Stairs. What a great description of discipline. Becoming disciplined is not easy and it doesn't happen all of a sudden. It is slowly developed over time and requires consistency.
    When I think about discipline, I automatically think about some of the diets I have attempted. I can easily choose the carrots over the candy bar for a few days but it seems like after a week I am off the wagon and pounding breakfast burritos. No consistency. Diet Discipline comes from consistently choosing the hard healthy (carrots) over the easy junk food (candy bar).
     The diet analogy is applicable to just about anything we attempt in life. It doesn't matter how good we are for a week. It matters how good we will be each day for a lifetime. Repetition leads to discipline. Discipline leads to success. All great achievers are incredibly disciplined. They weren't born that way, but they have become that way.
     I'm pretty sure that early on, there were days where Michael Phelps didn't want to get out of bed to go swim laps. He probably ditched some days or at least gave his mom a hard time about making him go. But the more he worked at it, he realized that to produce the results he wanted, he had to be disciplined. He had to learn force himself to leave the comfort of his bed and go get in the water.
     When we strike out into something new or strive to achieve some great goal, we start the process of developing our discipline. If we can focus and work every day, our efforts will become easier and easier and we will move closer and closer to our goal. Our level of discipline will determine our level of success.
     Choose the hard right, avoid the easy wrong, enjoy the lasting benefits of a disciplined life.

     With the book coming out soon I have had a lot of people ask me, "Can it really help me?" Another common comment is, "Do I have to totally change for it to work?" This is where I feel the need to add a disclaimer. "The 3-Week Miracle" has no magical powers. It will work if you want it to work. It will be effective to the level that you want to apply what you learn. But when you first open the pages, lights will not shine forth from the book and envelope you in a moment of self-help rapture.
     However, what if reading the book helped you change just one thing? Would it be worth it? If you only improved in one area of your life, how would you feel? I'm hoping it would still be worth it to you. Improving in one small area is better than living the next 10 years stuck in the same place.
    As the old saying goes, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The reason I wrote "The 3-Week Miracle" was to help myself and others take that first step. We just need that push out the door. Even if we only change one small thing, it is still a step towards a better life. If we could change just one aspect of our lives every month, we would be pretty far down the path to success after an entire year. Take the step.