Make Your Life a Masterpiece

By Brian Tracy

This is the age of achievement. Never have more people accomplished more things in more different fields than they are accomplishing today. More people are becoming successful at a faster rate than at any other time in history. There have never been more opportunities for you to turn your dreams into realities than there are right now.

The Seven Ingredients of Success
Your ideal life is a blending these seven ingredients in exactly the combination that makes you the happiest at any particular moment. By defining your success and happiness in terms of one or more of these seven ingredients, you create a clear target to aim it. You can then measure how well you're doing. You can identify the areas where you need to make changes if you want your life to improve.

Peace of Mind
The first of these seven ingredients of success, and easily the most important, is peace of mind. It is the highest human good. Without it, nothing else has much value. In corporations, peace of mind can be measured in terms of the amount of harmony that exists among coworkers. The wonderful truth about peace of mind is that it is your normal natural condition. It is the basic precondition for enjoying everything else.

Health and Energy
The second ingredient of success is health and energy. Just as peace of mind is your normal and natural mental state, health and energy is your normal and natural physical state. If you achieve all kinds of things in the material world, but lose your health then you will get little or no pleasure from your other accomplishments. So imagine yourself enjoying perfect health, and think of how you would be if you were your ideal image of physical fitness. Then strive for your mental goal of fitness and health.


Loving Relationships
The third ingredient of success is loving relationships. These are relationships with the people you love and care about, and the people who love and care about you. They are the real measure of how well you are doing as a human being. At almost any time, you can measure how well you are doing in your relationship by one simple test: laughter. This is true for companies as well. High-performance, high profit organizations are those in which people laugh and joke together. Examine your relationships, one by one, and develop a plan to make each of them enjoyable and satisfying.

Financial Freedom
The fourth ingredient of success is financial freedom. Achieving your financial freedom is one of the most important goals and responsibilities of your life. A feeling of freedom is essential to the achievement of any other important goal, and you cannot be free until and unless you have enough money so that you are no longer preoccupied with it. When you decide exactly what you want your financial picture to look like, you will be able to use this system to achieve your goals faster than you might have imagined possible.

Worthy Goals and Ideals
The fifth ingredient of success is worthy goals and ideals. To be truly happy, you need a clear sense of direction. You need to feel that your life stands for something, that you are somehow making a valuable contribution to your world.

Self Knowledge and Self-Awareness
The sixth ingredient of success is self-knowledge and self-awareness. To perform at your best you need to know who you are and why you think and feel the way you do. It is only when you understand and accept yourself that you can begin moving forward in other areas of your life.

Personal Fulfillment
The seventh ingredient of success is personal fulfillment. This is the feeling that you are becoming everything that you are capable of becoming. It is the sure knowledge that you are moving toward the realization of your full potential as a human being.

Action Exercise
Take the brush of your imagination and begin painting a masterpiece on the canvas of your life. It is for you to decide clearly what would make you the happiest in everything you are doing. 

The Importance of Solitude

by Dr. Napoleon Hill


I love my family and my friends. My love for them is deep and sincere. I would do anything within my power to add to their comfort and welfare . . . but, I also love to get away from the crowds, away from everybody and visit with myself. This may seem rather selfish, but it isn't. My mental development demands it.

I love to think, to look ahead and anticipate the experiences yet to come in my life, to figure out why I am here and what to do to fulfill my read mission in life. I love to go just a step further in imagination than I have ever gone in realization. In other words, I love to do what many call "dreaming.”

Contrary to what some may believe, dreaming is not harmful. In fact, quite the reverse is true. Getting away from others to dream allows you to rise above commonplace thoughts and things.

Milton did his best work after blindness forced him to turn to solitude for realization.
Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" while being held as a prisoner of war on a British ship.

When we are with others, we must be polite and discuss with them whatever subject they may happen to bring up. When we are with ourselves, we can direct our thoughts along any line we choose and concentrate upon those thoughts, impress them upon our minds and keep them where we may get them when we want them.

This is constructive dreaming!

No one ever becomes a "doer" without first becoming a "dreamer." The architect first draws the picture of a building in his mind and then places it on paper. And so we must all see the object of our labors in our minds before we can see them in reality.

Source: Adapted from the March 1919 issue of Napoleon Hill’s Golden Rule magazine as appearing in the April, 1994, Volume 6, Number 4 issue of Think and Grow Rich Newsletter. Pg. 5.

5 Ways To Be Happy

5 Ways To Be Happy

1. Free your heart from hatred.

2. Free your mind from worries.

3. Live simply.

4. Expect less.

5. Have a deeper relationship with God.