How To Be Successful: Take Action Today

This post was originally published on briantracy.com

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture… Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.

-Norman Vincent Peale

You are earning today exactly the amount that you have decided to earn no more and no less. You are where you are financially because you have chosen to be there. Only you. No one else.

What this means, in terms of income, is that whatever you are earning today is the amount that you have decided to earn. Not a penny more, not a penny less.

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You have decided to earn this amount as a result of your actions and as a result of your inactions. There are specific actions you have taken to get your income to the point where it is today. And there are actions that you have failed to take that have caused your income to stay far below what you are truly capable of earning. Whatever you are earning today, you have decided to earn that amount.

How To Be Successful: Take Action Today

When I first heard this idea, that I was determining my own income, I was shocked and angry. I denied it vigorously. “That’s not true,” I said. “No one would choose to earn this amount, and worry about money all the time!”

I blamed my low income on my parents, my education, my boss, my company, my industry, the competition, and the economy. Then I looked around me, and realized that there were hundreds and even thousands of people who had the same problems and limitations I did but who were earning far more than I was and living much better lives.

I finally accepted that I was where I was and what I was because of me. If I was not happy about my life, and my income, there was only one person in the world who could change it—me and I decided to take action.

Five years later, I had increased my income ten times! I went from rented apartment with rented furniture to my own home with my own dream car, a Mercedes-Benz SL350, parked in my spacious double garage. My whole life was different, and yours can be as well.

Your Greatest Financial Assets

Your most valuable financial assets are your earning ability, and earning power. This can be defined as your ability to get results that people will pay you for. Unless you are already rich, your earning ability, represents 80 to 90 percent of your financial value.

Properly applied to the marketplace, your earning ability is like a water well. When you take action by maximizing your earning ability through getting results that people will pay you for, you can pump tens of thousands of dollars a year into your pocket. All your knowledge, education, skills, and experience in life have contributed to the person you are today and to this ability to get results for which someone will pay good money.

Your earning ability is like farmland—if you don’t take excellent care of it, if you don’t fertilize it, and cultivate it, and water is on a regular basis, it soon loses its ability to produce the kind of harvest that you desire. Successful men and women are those constantly make a decision to take action and who are extremely aware of their earning ability. They work every day to keep it increasing in productive value, and current with the demands of the marketplace.

An Appreciating Asset

Your earning ability, like any asset, can be either appreciating or depreciating. It can be regularly increasing its value, enabling you to earn more and more with each passing year. Or it can be a depreciating asset, losing value as the markets change and your skills become less and less in demand.

Here is the hard truth: if you are not becoming more and more valuable, by continuously and aggressively upgrading your skills, you are automatically falling behind. If your earning ability is not appreciating, it is automatically depreciating. There are millions of unemployed people today who have let their earning ability decline so far that no one will hire them to get the few results they are still capable of generating.

Make A Decision

What is the key to increasing your income? Make a decision! Make a decision, from this day forward, that you are going to earn the amount of money that you are truly capable of earning. Make a decision that you are going to take complete control of your career and your income so you can survive and thrive in any economy.

Make a decision today that you are going to double your income and then double it again. Make a decision that you are going to earn more and more until you fulfill your true potential as an earning machine. The best news is that the amount that you are truly worth is vastly higher than anything you have ever enjoyed up to the current day.

Remember, it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from; all that really matters is where you’re going. And where you’re going is only limited by your imagination.

Your very highest income lies in the future. Your very best accomplishments lie in the future. Your proudest achievements lie in the future. Your happiest moments lie in the future. The greatest successes of your life are still to come.

Thank you for reading this article on how to be successful by improving your financial assets. Make a decision and take action today to become financially successful.