Page 99 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

Remember that once you have worked out the math for this, the circle game

is only a four-minute daily exercise. Many times in seminars I give, participants
will say that they are too busy for all this goal-setting activity. They have lives to
live! But I like to remind them of the words of Henry Ford, who said, “If you do
not think about the future, you won’t have one.” And I also like to stress that I
am only talking about four minutes a day.

The purpose of making the circles mathematically sound is that you can
remove the elements of faith and hoping from your action plan. You know your
goals will be hit. Who would you want to bet on, the tennis player who has faith
that she’s going to win or the one who knows she’s going to win?

By drawing these simple four circles you can create your universe anywhere,
anytime. Waiting in line at the bank, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for a
meeting to begin, or just doodling. Each time you do it, your universe gets closer

to you. Each time you draw the circles, you are hit with this revelation: There is
absolutely no difference between succeeding today and having a successful life.

In The Magic of Believing, Claude Bristol recounts a particularly absent-
minded habit of his that, looking back, may have had a bigger impact on shaping
his universe than he ever realized. He said that whether he was on the phone, or
just sitting in moments of abstraction, he would always have a pen or pencil out,
doodling.

“My doodling was in the form of dollar signs like these— —on every
paper that came across my desk. The cardboard covers of all the files that were
placed before me daily were covered with these markings; so were the covers of
telephone directories, scratch pads, and even the face of important
correspondence.”

Bristol’s later studies on mind stuff experiments, the power of suggestion,
and the art of mental pictures caused him to conclude that his lifelong habit of
doodling dollar signs had had an enormous impact on programming his mind to
always be opportunistic and enterprising when it came to money. The fortune he
acquired demands that we take his observations seriously.

68. Get up a game

It is said that John F. Kennedy’s father’s credo was, “Don’t get mad, get
even.” That credo has a certain vengeful, clever wisdom in it as far as it goes,