Brian Tracy | The Phoenix Seminar | Complete in HD and English

The Psychology of Achievement - Phoenix Seminar Transcript

Key Concepts: Success instinct, peace of mind, health and energy, loving relationships, financial freedom, worthy goals and ideals, self-knowledge, self-understanding, personal fulfillment, law of control, law of accident, law of cause and effect, law of belief, law of expectations.

What is Success?

Brian Tracy introduces the Phoenix seminar, focusing on the psychology of achievement. He poses the question of why some people are more successful than others, a question he has dedicated 25 years to studying. He asserts that success is predictable and achievable through:

1. Decision: Committing to exceeding previous levels of accomplishment.
2. Knowledge: Learning the principles of success.

He emphasizes that success is not necessarily correlated with intelligence, education, luck, contacts, or appearance. Instead, humans possess a "success instinct," a drive to achieve and fulfill their potential.

Seven Ingredients of Success

Tracy breaks down success into seven key categories:

1. Peace of Mind: Feeling content, relaxed, and free from fear, stress, anxiety, and negative emotions. It's the most important ingredient because without it, other achievements are not enjoyable.
2. Health and Energy: Being free from sickness, disease, and pain, and possessing vitality. He notes that 80-90% of ailments are linked to disrupted peace of mind (psychosomatic medicine).
3. Loving Relationships: Having the capacity for long-term, loving relationships, giving and receiving love. The quality of relationships determines 85% of life's success. Laughter is a key indicator of a healthy relationship.
4. Financial Freedom: Having enough money to eliminate financial worries, allowing focus on higher pursuits.
5. Worthy Goals and Ideals: Having a sense of meaning and purpose, aligning with personal values. Dr. Victor Frankl's logo therapy emphasizes the need for meaning and significance.
6. Self-Knowledge, Self-Understanding: Knowing oneself, understanding motivations, and possessing self-honesty to face strengths and weaknesses.
7. Personal Fulfillment: Feeling that one is becoming everything they are capable of becoming (self-actualization, as defined by Abraham Maslow). This results from achieving the other six ingredients.

The Tragedy of Underachievement

Tracy laments that most people function far below their potential, scoring low on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of human potential. Statistics cited include:

• 84% of people are underemployed.
• 80% would prefer a different job.
• 38% of married couples would rather be married to someone else.
• Most people retire broke, with only 1% becoming wealthy and 5% financially independent.
• The average savings of a retired couple is less than $60,000.

The primary reason for this underachievement is the lack of an "instruction manual" for success.

The Formula for Success: U x E = R

Tracy presents a formula for success:

• U (Understanding): Learning how to do things right.
• E (Effort): Making the necessary and correct efforts.
• R (Results): The outcome of understanding multiplied by effort.

The seminar aims to increase understanding and the effectiveness of efforts, leading to dramatically improved results. He claims that participants have doubled or tripled their income within weeks or months of applying the principles.

Session Two: Seven Mental Laws

Tracy emphasizes that individuals are unique and extraordinary, with odds of over 50 billion to one against someone exactly like them. However, everyone is subject to the same basic mental laws.

1. Law of Control: Feeling positive to the degree one feels in control of their life and negative to the degree one feels out of control. Psychologists refer to this as internal vs. external locus of control. Control begins with thoughts, which influence feelings, which influence actions, which determine success.
2. Law of Accident: Living without clear plans or goals, leading to a feeling of being out of control. Tracy states that "failing to plan is planning to fail."
3. Law of Cause and Effect: Every effect has a specific cause. To achieve desired effects (success, happiness), one must identify and repeat the causes. To eliminate undesired effects (problems), one must identify and change the causes. Thoughts are causes, and conditions are effects.
4. Law of Belief: Whatever one believes with feeling becomes their reality. Beliefs influence actions and filter information, creating blind spots (scotomas). He shares the story of a student who initially failed due to believing he had a low IQ (misinterpreting a Scholastic achievement test score) but excelled after changing his belief.
5. Law of Expectations: What one expects, one gets. Expectations, especially about outcomes, become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dr. Robert Rosenthal's experiments demonstrate that expectations influence people and events, even if based on false information. Successful people have an attitude of positive self-expectancy. He cites an experiment where teachers told they had the brightest students (chosen randomly) saw significant academic improvement in those students. He highlights the impact of parental and boss expectations, as well as the expectations one holds for others.

Conclusion

The seminar aims to provide an "instruction manual" for success, enabling individuals to achieve their full potential by understanding and applying these mental laws.