By Brian Tracy
When I was 21 years old, a friend of mine and I decided to go off to see the world. Many of our friends were going to Europe and hitchhiking around with rucksacks. We decided to be different and go to Africa.
We had no idea how serious and how difficult this adventure was to be. As we drove south across the Sahara Desert, we encountered endless problems, any one of which could have finished our trip ... or our lives.
The prospect of getting across that immense desert was so daunting, it could have stopped us dead in our tracks. Instead, we learned a lesson that turned out to be one that I have since applied to every aspect of my life.
The French, who had controlled Algeria for many years, had marked a path across the desert with 55-gallon oil drums spaced exactly five kilometers apart. As we came to an oil drum, the next drum would pop up on the horizon and the last oil drum would fall off the horizon, as if shot in a shooting gallery. Wherever we were, we could always see two oil drums - the one we had just left and the one we were headed toward. And it looked like our journey was never going to end.
We could have thrown up our hands and said, "This is impossible!" But we didn't. We adopted a Positive Mental Attitude and realized that to achieve our goal, all we had to do was take it one step (one oil barrel) at a time.
A Positive Mental Attitude is indispensable to success. By focusing on doing what lies clearly at hand ... by taking the step that appears immediately in front of you ... that will automatically lead you to the next step, and the next, and so on. Eventually, you will find yourself where you want to be.
But there is much more to a Positive Mental Attitude than this. You can have a positive attitude that immediately disappears in the face of adversity ... or you can have an attitude that is so strong, you are able to remain positive, cheerful, and optimistic, no matter what.
Of course, this isn't as easy as it sounds. Because we are all faced with four obstacles that tend to get in the way of our maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude: fear, worry, anger, and doubt.
We are afraid that we will lose our money, waste our effort, or forfeit our emotional or physical investment. If we are not careful, we start thinking of our potential losses rather than focusing on our potential gains.
Fear triggers worry, and we begin to use our power of imagination to create all sorts of negative images that interfere with our ability to perform effectively.
Fear and worry create anger and doubt. Instead of constantly moving forward in the direction of our dreams, we turn ourselves into victims and begin to blame other people and other situations for our problems.
There are six things you can do to eliminate these obstacles and develop a Positive Mental Attitude:
A Positive Mental Attitude is indispensable to your success. And all it takes is for you to always take these six actions that are consistent with achieving your goals rather than actions that make you feel the negative emotions of worry, doubt, anger, and fear.