Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

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CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE
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erations. As a result, the company is seldom surprised by anything
that happens. It is never caught off guard. It always has a backup
plan ready to go. It has also become one of the most continuously
profitable and successful companies in the world. Thinking ahead
really pays off.
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LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
What works for large and small corporations can work for you as
well. You should practice crisis anticipation regularly in everything
you do. Look down the road of your life, like a traveler, and imagine
some of the negative things that might happen and how you could
respond to them. You will be amazed at how much more positive
and confident you will feel when you have already developed alter-
native courses of action to some of the worst things that could hap-
pen in a particular area.
For example, what would you do if you lost your job today? The
idea of losing one’s job is a major fear for most people, affecting 37
percent of the working population according to one study. I re-
ceived a letter recently from a gentleman who told me that his fear
of losing his job, which he recognized was completely irrational, was
so great that it was paralyzing him. It was actually holding him back
from doing the kind of work that he had to do in order to 
keep
his
job. His fear and his lack of alternatives were actually increasing the
likelihood that he would be laid off.
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YOUR NEW JOB
Sometimes I ask people in my audiences,
“What is your next job go-
ing to be?”
For most people this question comes as a surprise. They
have not even thought about what their next job is going to be. But
we know that the world of work is changing at a rapid rate. The fact
is that you have already changed jobs several times. It is virtually in-
evitable that you will change jobs again, and perhaps sooner than
you expect. What is your next job likely to be?
When I explain that each person must be preparing for his or
her next job, it is a new idea for most people. They either have not
thought about it or don’t want to think about it. But the only