Advanced Life Skills

by Brian Tracy

The starting point of all riches is the development of a prosperity consciousness. You must become a financial success in your thinking long before you achieve it in your reality. Both poverty and riches are the result of a state of mind, and the most important single step you ever take on the road to wealth and financial independence is the decision to change your thinking, to impress into your mind an unshakable belief that you can and will achieve your financial goals. This must happen before anything else happens. Think And Grow RichWhen I was growing up, I was fascinated by stories of successful men and women and how they made and lost their fortunes, and then made them over again. I read about the importance of a prosperity consciousness in the book Think And Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, several times.

But I never fully understood what it meant until about five years ago. Then it hit me and I’ve never been quite the same since. Every aspect of my life has improved dramatically, especially in the area of accumulating wealth, since I finally understood what it meant by a prosperity consciousness.

Two Great Discoveries

Here are two of the most exciting principles ever discovered in the long search by mankind for the secrets of health, happiness and great personal wealth.

All Causation Is Mental

The first principle is this: All causation is mental. That means that everything that you are or ever will be will be as a result of how you use your mind. You are merely a mind with a body to carry it around with. The entire man made world that you see is simply an expression of thought. Your entire life is an expression of your own thinking. And since the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life, if you improve the quality of your thinking, you must, you will, inevitably improve the quality of your life.

The Law Of Expectations

The second principle is what we call the law of expectations. This law says that whatever you expect with confidence, positive or negative, becomes your reality.

If you confidently expect to succeed, if you confidently expect to learn something from every experience, if you confidently expect to become wealthy as a result of applying your talents and abilities to your opportunities and you maintain that attitude of confident expectations long enough, it will become your reality. It will give you a positive optimistic cheerful attitude that will cause people to want to help you, and will cause things to happen the way you want them to happen.