Instant Confidence by Paul McKenna

Well, its been a long time since I read this book. At least a couple of years now. I still listen to the NLP CD which accompanied the book pretty regularly however.

Just flicking through the book. I have come a long way in my note taking. I used to just highlight everything I liked. Now I highlight and score from 1-5 the highlighted bits which makes going back to the book to review the best bits quick and easy.

Hope you’re still with me… back to the book!

Here’s some quotes and content I found meaningful:

“The reason people fail is not because there’s something wrong with them – it’s because failure is part of the process of success.

To high-achievers, failure doesn’t mean ‘it’s time to give up’ – it means it’s time to step back, learn from what happened and recognize that you’re now even more prepared to succeed than before. Mel Gibson calls failure ‘school fees’ – the price you pay for the life you want to live.”

Yours truly, calls learning from failures like going to the school or hard-knocks. If you want to be successful you’ve got to attend. I’ve been attending for several years now. It’s a learning experience that’s for sure. But one I’m entirely focussed on conquering.

Just as a little side note: I disagree that there’s no such thing as failure, as you will often hear gurus preaching. It exists. I love failing. Every time I fail I know I am getting close to succeeding. Quite simply I see it as a process of elimination. Once I’ve eliminated all the ways to fail, surely there will only be ways left to succeed.

It’s a word, like unicorn. It’s meaning depends on the meaning you give it: the way you think about it.

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Just flicking through the book it looks like I’ve mostly highlighted quotes, as opposed to the content of the book… So get prepared for some quotes of inspiration:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”

- Aristotle

“A jug fills drop by drop.”

- The Buddha

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

- George Bernard Shaw

“…your mind is the one place where you have complete domination. And if the voice living in your head isn’t supporting you, it’s time to replace it with one that does. Because like it or not, the results you are getting in your life have everything to do with what that voice keeps telling you.”

“Good words are worth much and cost little.”

- George Herbert

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

- John Dryden

“…the way you think about yourself in relationship to the challenges you are currently facing in your life will have a profound impact on your ability to succeed.”

“I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will.”

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Research studies consistently show that having goals makes a significant difference in creating success, and the biographies of high-achievers throughout history bear out the research. So if you want to achieve anything worthwhile you absolutely have to have goals…”

“Perhaps the biggest mistake people make that limits their confidence and effectiveness is situation after situation is to wait until they feel absolutely certain about something before taking action. Yet what sets high-achievers in every walk of life apart is they have developed the habit of taking action before they feel completely ready.”

Side note: I do agree to an extent. This is a double-edged sword, with pros and cons on both sides.

Two things immediately spring to mind:

1. I have two friends who are both in business. One imports taps from the Far East and sells them online in the UK. The other runs a restaurant booking service, taking a commission for every cover he sends restaurants.

The tap importer friend set-up his website. It wasn’t looking great – but it worked. He started running PPC, and was up and running and taking orders  in about 3/4 months as I recall.

The restaurant booking friend spent over a year on a “business plan”. Spent days and months on the website making sure every web page, every image, every word, every letter looked gorgeous.

Now, both are doing well in business. The only real difference I can see is that one was making money for a year before the other.

I ask: Are you going to look back on your days and say: “I wish I had the photo on my website right a little bit. Or are you going to wish you had a year’s worth of extra positive cash flow?” It’s a no brainer.

The good old rocking chair test never fails!

The downside of course is that you’ll have to overcome certain unforeseen obstacles once you’re in business from the off. The good thing is you’ll likely have the cash flow to get it sorted.

2. I often say to myself: “Sam, not so long ago you wouldn’t think twice about lumping a few hundred pounds on a racehorse… You were prepared to risk the cash on two minutes of racing. Now, risk the cash on XYZ.” The way I see it, once you’ve stretched yourself to a certain point: you’re prepared to stretch yourself to that point and beyond again and again.

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My thoughts are summed up well by a certain John F. Kennedy, who said:

“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

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Back to the book:

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.”

- Charles Kettering

I couldn’t agree more.

“…the single most important factor in positively affecting the efficiency and well-being of employees was the feeling that attention was being paid to their efforts.”

That was interesting. Got to read the preceding paragraphs to really get the jist of it, but here’s the apple. If you want to understand how the tree grew, you might want to get Instant Confidence by Paul McKenna:

I listen to Paul’s NLP CDs regularly. This CD is a little shorter than the others, so you might find it not so easy to “relax deeply in trance”, nevertheless for a few pounds it’s money well spent in my opinion.

Enjoy!

Sam