Self Discipline by Brian Tracy

Starting with Nothing

Interestingly, almost everyone starts out the same in life—with little or nothing. Almost all fortunes in America (and worldwide) are first generation. This means that most individuals started with little or nothing and earned everything they own in their current lifetime. The wealthiest people in America are almost all firstgeneration

multibillionaires. This is the case with wealthy Americans such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison,

Michael Dell, and Paul Allen. Fully 80 percent of millionaires and multimillionaires started with little money,

often penniless, and sometimes deeply in debt and with few advantages, such as Sam Walton, who died worth  more than $100 billion. Why have these people been able to achieve so much when so many have achieved so little? In their book, The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko interviewed more than 500  millionaires and surveyed 11,000 more over a twentyfive-year period. They asked them why they felt they had been able to achieve financial independence when most of the people around them, who started at the same

place, were still struggling. Fully 85 percent of this new generation of millionaires replied by saying something

like “I didn’t have a better education or more intelligence, but I was willing to work harder than anyone else.”

Hard Work Is the Key

The indispensable requirement for hard work is selfdiscipline. Success is possible only when you can overcome

the natural tendency to cut corners and take the easy way. Lasting success is possible only when you can

discipline yourself to work hard for a long, long time. As I mentioned in the Introduction, I started my own

life with no money or advantages. For years, I worked at laboring jobs, at which I earned just enough to get from

paycheck to paycheck. I stumbled into sales when I could no longer find a laboring job, where I spun my wheels for many months before I began asking that question: “Why is it that some people are more successful in selling than others?” One day, a top salesman then told me that the top 20 percent of salespeople earn 80 percent of the money. I had never heard that before. This meant that the bottom 80 percent of salespeople had to be satisfied with the remaining 20 percent, with what was left over after the top people had taken the lion’s share. I decided then and there that I was going to be in the top 20 percent. This decision changed my life.