Awaken the Giant Within

The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family. I don’t worry about maintaining the quality of my life, because every day I work on improving it. I constantly st

at the end of each day I ask myself these questions: What have I learned today? What did I contribute or improve? What did I enjoy?

One of the most important global beliefs that you and I can adopt is a belief that in order to succeed and be happy, we’ve got to be constantly improving the quality of our lives, constantly growing and expanding.

We must make sure that we live our lives in the present and respond to things that are real, not to our fears of what once was or what might someday be.

In fact, most of the things that are valuable in our lives require us to go against the basic conditioning of our nervous systems.

Remember, too, that it’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain. And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief—our sense of certainty—that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure. We’re not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality.

So what’s the first step in creating a change? The first step is simply becoming aware of the power that pain and pleasure exert over every decision, and therefore every action, that we take.

The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors.

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t life controls you.”