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Here's why reading books will never get you rich or successful
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Written by Henrik Flensborg
User Rating:  / 2
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Tuesday, 08 June 2004
Hi,
I don't know about you, but I know so many people who have
read everything Tony Robbins ever wrote and they've bought
every course Jim Rohn ever created and they still are not
rich or successful.
So they stock up with material from Brian Tracy and Zig
Ziglar, read it all, hoping that they will get it now - but
they still don't manage to become wealthy.
Frustrated they turn to seminars and workshops and get all
exited by seeing their success guru's in person.
But they still return home and they are nowhere closer to
living the life of their dreams than they were before.
So, what missing?
They are intelligent and smart people, so it's not that
they are not able to understand what they are reading
And it's not that they picked the wrong authors either.
But there is still a significant difference between them
and the successful people they want to become.
And the difference is "action"
When successful people read something or hear something
useful, they put it to action - unsuccessful people never
gets to the action part.
I know I've been guilty of this knowledge accumulation
myself and for many years I lived by the motto of
"knowledge is power"
But knowledge is just knowledge, and unless you put it
into action it's just useless - and it was even a waste of
time to acquire the knowledge in the first place.
So, here my plea to you: Do something with the knowledge
you acquire.
Every time you learn something new you should decide right
there and then how you will use this information actively
to make an impact in your life.
You might read that it's an excellent idea to write down
your goals. So do it - grab pen and paper and write down
your goals. You see, the only way for you to know if
something is working for you is to actually try it. You
won't get any results just by thinking that writing down
goals is a great idea.
And you might listen to an audio that explains the basics
of compound interests, and you might have read that
different banks have different interest rates. But unless
you grab your calendar and schedule some time to research
different banks, so you know which bank to use from now on,
you will still be stuck with the same lousy interest rate
as before.
The only difference will be that know you are aware of the
fact that your money isn't working as well for you as they
could.
So, do something with what you learn, or look back a year
from now, and see that nothing has changed in your life.
I've saved the most obvious example for last.
Let's say you bought a book about strength training (I
just did).
Do you think your muscles would get bigger if you just
read the book or watched the instructional video?
And would you loose body fat and gain muscle weight just
by reading about the exercises?
Of course not.
Nobody expects a physical gain just from reading a book.
Somehow we all know that we actually need to do the
physical exercises to get the physiological benefits.
And still we believe that we will get monetary gains just
because we have read about how to do it.
This is how silly our minds can be.
But the cure is simple: Just take action.
Every time you read a book you should be armed with a
marker to highlight the important paragraphs and you should
have pen and paper ready as well.
And each time you read something useful you should jot
down a small plan detailing how and when you are going to
implement it in your own life.
Make it a habit to never read a book without the intention
to pick up at least 5 useful ideas.
And when you put down the book you should make sure that
you already have plans in place on how to bring those ideas
to life.
Also, think about what you will get from putting these
ideas into action.
One of my NLP teachers used to finish each course day with
the following questions:
"So, what have you learned today?"
For most people this was rather easy to answer, but then
came his follow-up questions.
He said:
"And what's the importance of this?"
And the classroom became completely silent.
And he continued:
"And how are you going to make sure that you are going to
use this to improve your life right now?"
So right there and then he had us think about how we would
use what we had just learned.
To your wealth and growth,
~Henrik Flensborg
P.S. What can you do right now with the information you
just went through in this newsletter to get more out of
what you read and move faster towards your goals?
P.P.S. Was this useful or useless? - Please let me know
what you think at feedback@growth-focus.com
P.P.P.S If you missed the procrastination ebook
announcement, then you can still download it from
http://growth-focus.com/procrastination-download.html
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