Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement (26 page)

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ings, motivations, and desires of others. A person with high interpersonal intelligence has the ability to interact with people effectively to get things done.

Successful managers, team leaders, and even military officers usually have interpersonal intelligence developed to a very high degree. As a result, people want to work and cooperate with them in the accomplishment of group goals.

The highest-paid salespeople are those who are excellent at persuading others to purchase their products and services. The most effective businesspeople, consultants, and professionals demonstrate this intelligence constantly. It is the most important single ability of the successful politician. This may be your particular area of genius, as well.

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INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Your seventh form of intelligence is
intrapersonal
. This is the ability to be aware of yourself—who you are and who you are not.

With this intelligence, you know exactly what you want and what you don’t want. You are capable of setting goals for yourself and making plans for their accomplishment. People with high levels of intrapersonal intelligence are good at introspection. They reflect on how they are thinking and feeling. As a result of understanding themselves better, they are more effective in dealing with others.

The greater your level of self-awareness, gained through thought and introspection, the greater your level of
self-understanding
. The better you understand yourself and why you think and feel the way you do, the greater will be your level of
self-acceptance
. The more you accept yourself as a valuable and worthwhile person, the more you like and respect yourself. And the more you like yourself, the more you like others and the more they like you. Intrapersonal intelligence is very important to a happy and successful life, and you can develop it with practice.

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ENTREPRENEURIAL INTELLIGENCE

Your eighth form of intelligence is
entrepreneurial
. This is the ability to see market opportunities and then to bring the various resources ccc_tracy_9_154-178.qxd 6/23/03 3:38 PM Page 168

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together to produce products and services that can be sold at a profit. Entrepreneurial intelligence is one of the highest-paid forms of intelligence in our society today, and is the foundation of all successful, fast-growing businesses.

Most self-made millionaires and many self-made billionaires started with nothing and made their money by applying their entrepreneurial intelligence to market opportunities that appeared before them. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft with an idea to develop software for the emerging market in personal computers. Michael Dell began assembling personal computers in his dorm room at college. They had high levels of entrepreneurial intelligence.You probably do as well.

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INTUITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Your ninth form of intelligence is
intuitive
. This is the ability to sense the rightness or wrongness of a situation, to judge people quickly and accurately, and to come up with ideas and insights separately from your logic or training.

Many people are great judges of character. They seem to know an enormous amount about a person within just a few seconds of meeting them or even just hearing their voices.

Women’s intuition is more respected than men’s. But when men and women are tested and given intuition-dependent questions to answer, men and women score equally well. Why then do we respect women’s intuition so much? It is because women themselves listen to and trust their intuition more than men do.

Fortunately, your intuitive intelligence is inborn and can be increased with use. The more you listen to and trust your intuition, the sharper and more accurate it becomes. As you use your intuition more, you will receive more and better answers from it. Author Jane Ponder said that
“men and women begin to become great when they
start to listen to their inner voices
.”

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ABSTRACT INTELLIGENCE

Your tenth form of intelligence is
abstract
, or conceptual intelligence. This is the kind of intelligence possessed by an Einstein who ccc_tracy_9_154-178.qxd 6/23/03 3:38 PM Page 169

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could see himself riding on a beam of light and as a result was able to formulate the theory of relativity, which completely revolutionized the field of physics.

The scientist F. A. Kekule saw a great snake curling back on itself and grasping its own tail. He recognized it as a clue to the ring-like structure of the benzene molecule, a critical discovery for our century.

Often in your life, you will get a sudden idea or picture that combines several factors into a new synthesis. This can turn out to be a new business idea, such as Ray Kroc had when he observed the mass production methods for cooking hamburgers and french fries developed by the McDonald brothers of San Bernardino. With that insight, he started the 30,000-unit McDonald’s Corporation.

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YOUR INTELLIGENCES

MAKE YOU UNIQUE

Your combination of intelligences makes you a potential genius, and also makes you different from anyone else who has ever lived. Think of yourself this way: Imagine that these 10 intelligences are like the 10 digits from zero through nine. If you take any large city, you will find that there are hundreds of thousands of people with different telephone numbers, even though all of their telephone numbers are made up of an area code plus seven digits.

If you give yourself a score from zero to nine in each of the 10

intelligences, you will have a 10-digit number that describes your personal combination of intelligences. This unique combination of intelligences forms a kind of
personal
intellectual telephone number. Your private mental code number makes you different from every other person who has ever lived. Like DNA, the likelihood of someone else having the same intellectual formula as you is billions to one.

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APPLYING YOUR INCREDIBLE MIND

By developing and exploiting your unique combination of intelligences, you can perform at extraordinary levels. You need to first evaluate your intelligences and then grade yourself in each one.

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Next, you identify the special areas of intelligence that you enjoy the most, the ones that you have used most successfully in the past. Finally, you look around you and think about what kind of work you could do that would enable you to use your special combination of intelligences at the highest level.

Above all, you must develop a greater respect for yourself and your potential brainpower. The psychologist Abraham Maslow estimated that not more that 2 percent of adults were doing all that was possible for them based on their special talents. You must therefore develop a higher level of faith and confidence in your ability to use your mental powers to overcome any obstacle and to achieve any goal that you can set for yourself.

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THREE WAYS OF LEARNING

You have three ways of learning: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.

You can learn by
listening
, learn by
seeing
, or learn by
feeling and
movement
. Each person uses all three modalities to learn, but each person also has what is called a
preferred
learning style.

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The Visual Learner

Visuals
like to see things clearly in front of them. They process information with their eyes. They have acute senses of sight and like to meet friends and business associates personally. If you give them verbal information on business results, they will ask, “Do you have that in writing?”

They are avid readers. When you quote a book or a magazine, they will want to get a hard copy to read personally. They like to take photographs, and like to see things rather than to talk about them. Visuals represent about 50 percent of the population.

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The Auditory Learner

An auditory learner likes to listen to others, to educational audio programs, audio books, music, lectures, speeches, and seminars.

They are active conversationalists and prefer to have new ideas and concepts explained to them. If you hand them a written report, they will glance at it and ask, “What does it say?” ccc_tracy_9_154-178.qxd 6/23/03 3:38 PM Page 171

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Auditories
say things like, “That sounds good to me,” and “I hear what you’re saying,” or “That doesn’t sound right.” They are also sensitive to music, and enjoy high-quality stereo equipment, concerts, CDs, and other sound reproductions. Auditories represent about 40 percent of the population.

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Learning by Doing

The third preferred learning style is kinesthetic, or learning by doing and touching.
Kinesthetics
have a hard time just sitting around.

They want to be active, to try things out, often ignoring the written instructions (visual) or verbal instructions (auditory).

You find kinesthetics in any type of work that requires manual dexterity, such as carpentry, mechanics, construction, and even driving trucks or cars. Athletes are kinesthetics as well.

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YOU ARE TRULY UNIQUE

What is your preferred way of learning and dealing with the world?

You will be happy and fulfilled only when what you are doing on the outside is in harmony with the unique and special person you are on the inside.

When you combine your dominant intelligences with your preferred method of learning, you can create a combination of intelligence and ability that will enable you to achieve extraordinary things with your life.

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UNLOCKING THE FLOODGATES

OF YOUR MIND

There are two powerful methods that you can use to unlock your brainpower and generate more ideas for goal attainment. These methods are called
“mindstorming”
and “
brainstorming”
. The first will make you rich personally, and the second will make you successful by enabling you to tap into the brainpower of other people. These methods are responsible for the creation of many self-made millionaires. You can use them almost anytime and anywhere.

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MINDSTORMING FOR IDEAS

The process of “mindstorming” is often called the “20-idea method.” It is so powerful in generating ideas that when you begin using it your entire life will change. I have taught it to many tens of thousands of people all over the world. Everyone who uses it sees immediate profound improvements in each part of their lives to which this method is applied.

The method is simple, which is probably why it is so powerful.

All you need is a blank sheet of paper. At the top of the page, write out your current problem or goal in the form of a question.

Let us say that your goal is to double your income over the next two years. Make the question on this goal as specific as possible. The more specific the question, the better your mind can focus on it and the better quality of answers you will generate with this exercise.

So instead of writing, “How can I make more money?” you would write instead, “What can I do to double my income over the next 24 months?” Remember, you write this question at the top of the page.

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GENERATE 20 ANSWERS

You then discipline yourself to generate at least 20 different answers to that question. Force yourself to write out 20 different things that you could do that would help you to double your income. You can write more than 20 answers, but you must write a minimum of 20.

Your first answers will probably be simple and obvious. You could write, “work harder,” “work longer,” “upgrade my education,” “improve my skills in specific areas,” and so on. They will be easy. The next 5 to 10 answers will be harder. The last 10 answers will be excruciatingly difficult, like squeezing water out of a stone.

But to get the most out of this exercise, you must force yourself to continue writing until you have answered the question 20 different ways. You can play with these answers if you like. For example, you can write the exact opposite of one of your earlier answers. You can also generate ridiculous answers as well.

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THINK OUT OF THE BOX

For example, you might write, “work harder at my current job.” Your next answer might be, “work less at my current job.” Or,

“work harder at a different job.” Or it may be to create your own job. Or it may be to get a second-income job, or to work part-time in another field.

If your income depends on selling and your success in selling depends on prospecting, your answer could be to
double
the number of qualified prospects you see each week. Or it could be to see higher-potential prospects who have the ability to buy twice as much of your product. Or it could be to sell a different product with a higher commission per sale.

In any case, the potential answers are limited only by your imagination, and your capacity to generate ideas to help you is, to all intents and purposes, infinite.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTION

Once you have answered your question with at least 20 answers, go back over your answers and select at least one answer that you are going to take action on immediately. This step is very important! It is your taking action of some kind that keeps the torrent of ideas flowing through your mind. As you take action on one idea, another idea for another action will come to you.

Here is an exercise you can use to double and triple the impact of the 20-idea method. Once you have generated at least 20 ideas and selected the one idea you are going to implement immediately, you can then perform the 20-idea method on
that
new idea, generating 20 different ways to put that idea to work.