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

SET HIGH STANDARDS
In the famous book 
In His Steps
, by Charles M. Sheldon (Christian
Library, 1984), an entire town agrees, prior to every act or decision,
to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” and then to behave ac-
cordingly. The eventual outcome for the townspeople was that the
problems that had divided them were soon solved and the town be-
came happy and prosperous. They created an 
ideal
for themselves
and then built their lives around living up to it.
In a study of successful men and women, most of whom had
started from humble beginnings, researchers found that these
people had almost all been avid readers of biographies and auto-
biographies when they were young. As they read the life stories of
famous men and women, they imagined themselves having the
same qualities and characters of the people they were studying.
When they became adults themselves, those qualities and virtues
had become part of their thinking and guided their choices and
decisions in later life.
Modeling
has been used as a powerful way to develop personality
and character throughout history. Young people have been encour-
aged to study school heroes and heroines, and emulate them as