The video emphasizes the importance of integrating experience with thought to achieve long-term success. It explains that experience provides the wisdom gained from actions, successes, and failures, while reflection transforms those experiences into meaningful lessons. This balanced approach of taking time to evaluate one's life and decisions can foster better understanding and growth.

Practicing self-confidence is crucial to personal success, according to the video. It relates personal anecdotes about overcoming low self-esteem and how setting goals can change one's trajectory from failure to success. The speaker stresses the importance of self-confidence as the limiting factor in achieving goals, underscoring the belief in oneself as key to overcoming external obstacles.

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. subsequent [ˈsʌbsəkwənt] - (adjective) - Following in time or order; coming after something in time. - Synonyms: (following, ensuing, successive)

Another definition of common sense was the ability to learn from experience and then apply those lessons to subsequent experiences

2. astoundingly [əˈstaʊndɪŋli] - (adverb) - Very surprising or shocking. - Synonyms: (surprisingly, remarkably, astonishingly)

Your chances of ultimate success increase astronomically and the only real limiting step you may have is your level of self confidence.

3. determinant [dɪˈtɜːrmɪnənt] - (noun) - A factor that decisively affects the nature or outcome of something. - Synonyms: (factor, element, variable)

What is the factor that determines how quickly I can achieve my goal or whether I achieve it at all?

4. proclivity [prəˈklɪvɪti] - (noun) - A tendency to choose or do something regularly; an inclination or predisposition toward a particular thing. - Synonyms: (tendency, inclination, predisposition)

These behaviors are not only progressive but also habitual. The more you engage in one behavior or another, the easier and more repetitive that behavior becomes.

5. affirms [əˈfɜːrmz] - (verb) - State as a fact; assert strongly and publicly. - Synonyms: (asserts, declares, states)

Every time you do something that moves you in the direction of something important to you, you feel a bit like a winner.

6. immune [ɪˈmjuːn] - (adjective) - Not affected or influenced by something. - Synonyms: (resistant, impervious, unaffected)

You will receive other job offers and be immune to economic downturns because your services will be invaluable.

7. refinement [rɪˈfaɪnmənt] - (noun) - The process of making something more precise or polished. - Synonyms: (improvement, enhancement, perfection)

Your ongoing commitment to personal and professional development gives you a sense of continuous growth.

8. obscurity [əbˈskjʊrɪti] - (noun) - The state of being unknown, inconspicuous, or unimportant. - Synonyms: (anonymity, insignificance, unimportance)

Developing greater self confidence has enabled me to go from poverty to wealth, from limited means and obscurity, to national and even international renown.

9. etiquette [ˈɛtɪket] - (noun) - The customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a particular profession or group. - Synonyms: (manners, decorum, protocol)

I remember sitting in someone else's cheap hotel room many years ago.

10. steadfast [ˈstɛdfæst] - (adjective) - Resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. - Synonyms: (loyal, faithful, committed)

Your determination must be as unwavering as the self confidence you desire.

Personal Empowerment through REFLECTION and LEARNING - Brian Tracy Motivational Speech

Friends, today we're going to talk about two very important things that shape the path to success. Experience and thought. It's easy to miss the real things that lead to long term success in this fast paced world where success is often measured by quick results and progress. This is because our skills and knowledge are built on experience, which is the wisdom we gain from our actions, successes and even mistakes. We learn the useful lessons of life by doing things which helps us get better at what we do and better understand what doesn't work.

But having knowledge isn't enough on its own to get the most out of it. We need to combine it with the powerful habit of reflection. Reflection gives us a chance to stop, think deeply about our experiences, gain useful insights and see how our actions affect other people. We turn raw experiences into meaningful lessons that help us make choices and plan for the future when we are in this space of reflection.

Come with me. As we look at how experience and thought work together to make a strong path to success, we will learn how to get the most out of every experience and how to successfully reflect on our journeys so that we can keep growing and getting better. As we start this journey together, let's keep in mind that the way to success is not a sprint, but a long, careful run. We set ourselves up for purposeful and long term success by valuing our events and taking time to think about them. Thanks for coming with me.

Let's learn more about how experience and thought work together to help you find the keys to long term success. One of the most valuable exercises you can perform to achieve any goal is to ask yourself, what is my limiting step? What is the factor that determines how quickly I can achieve my goal or whether I achieve it at all? The ability to identify your limiting step is one of the best demonstrations of your intelligence and your ability to eliminate this limiting step is one of the best demonstrations of your overall competence to achieve anything you desire.

Upon reviewing everything that has been written or said about personal success, the conclusion I reached is that your level of self confidence is probably the limiting step in everything you accomplish. As I have said throughout this course, when you have enough self confidence, you will attempt almost anything. Because success is largely a matter of averages or probabilities, the more things you try, the more likely you are to achieve great accomplishments.

When you set more goals and try more things, engage in more activities and explore more opportunities, your chances of ultimate success increase astronomically and the only real limiting step you may have is your level of self confidence. When you reach the point where you absolutely believe in yourself. The barriers that exist in your external world will not stop you. As soon as you win the inner battle, the outer battle seems to resolve itself.

The development of self confidence has been the turning point in my own life. The reason I feel so passionate about this subject is because of what it has meant for me. Developing greater self confidence has enabled me to go from poverty to wealth, from limited means and obscurity, to national and even international renown, and from living in a small rented one room apartment and being deeply in debt to living in a beautiful house on a golf course and driving a new Mercedes. Talent and ambition have been of great help. But without developing self confidence, my innate abilities would have remained latent and unused as they did for many years before I gained enough self confidence to make a difference.

My experience was not very exciting. I come from a home with three younger siblings, and as I grew up we never seemed to have much money. My father was a good man, but he was not always employed or working, and I remember that from my earliest days we could never afford anything. I became a behavior problem at an early age. Now looking back, I see that I was simply rebelling against my upbringing. But at the time I was a real problem for everyone around me. I was constantly being kicked out of classes for misbehavior and was suspended or expelled from four schools.

During my middle and high school years. I had the unfortunate distinction of being the worst behaved kid in school. With more detentions, more demerits, and more failed classes than any other kid. In grades 9, 10, 11 and 12. I started working from a young age. I worked part time jobs and then full time jobs to earn my own money, buy myself clothes and eventually get my own car. I worked as a dishwasher in a small hotel for eight hours a day during my senior year of high school. And although I didn't drop out, I failed. I kept going to school until the year ended, but I failed six of my last seven courses.

During the graduation ceremonies, I was allowed to walk across the stage in a gown in front of all the parents and receive a certificate from the principal. The person in front of me received a diploma and the person behind me also received a diploma. But what I got was a leaving certificate, a certificate of completion. It's a polite way of saying goodbye to school. Please never come back.

While many of my friends who had graduated from high school went on to college to complete their education, I started working in labor jobs. Over the next few years, I worked as a dishwasher and kitchen helper in sawmills and factories, on construction crews, and as a farmhand. By the time I was 23, I was working as a farm laborer during harvest. In one job I dug wells, which is where you start at ground level and work your way down instead of up.

By my mid-20s, I was still drifting, and to make a living I started selling office supplies door to door. I did poorly from there. I moved on to selling other things. I remember making calls for an entire month without selling anything. I lived on loans and charity from family and friends. I had practically no possessions, very few clothes, no money, no high school diploma, no business skills, and no real experience of value to anyone. I was going nowhere fast. Meanwhile, around me I saw people my age and younger who were doing well, moving ahead and climbing in their careers, having offices, and some even having staff. Several of them had married and had homes, families, furniture, and what seemed to be quite good lives.

My first turning point came when I realized that my problems in school and in getting along with others were a direct result of my own personality. I began to understand that my unhappiness, anger and frustration from my childhood experiences had made me develop a negative personality that repelled many people.

The second turning point came for me when I realized that I was completely responsible for my life and for everything that happened to me. From then on. If I was unhappy with my income, my job, my education, or my prospects for the future, it was up to me to work on myself and make the necessary changes. They would not happen on their own.

The third turning point came for me when I discovered the importance of setting goals and making clear decisions about what I really wanted in every area of my life. When I first came across the subject of goals, I thought they were something you had in football games. The idea of setting them myself was not entirely credible because I had low self esteem. Limited confidence in myself meant that the first goals I set were not very high.

They were consistent with what we discussed in session two of this program, but I considered the exercise more of an entertainment than a significant stepping stone to success. I remember sitting in someone else's cheap hotel room many years ago. I took a piece of hotel paper, wrote down a couple of goals, set deadlines for them, and then made a simple plan to achieve them. I quickly lost the piece of paper, but exactly 31 days later, just as I had written, and as a result of a remarkable series of coincidences, my two goals were achieved.

I was in my 20s then, and I still remember the feeling of astonishment I had at that moment. I felt that I had learned about a secret power that I could use to achieve almost anything.

Well, I had learned three ideas of success. First, accept total responsibility for yourself and everything you are and will be. Second, accept that you can change your situation only if you work on yourself and learn the things you need to know to be better. And third, set clear goals with timelines for the things you want and then start working to make those goals a reality.

Over the next few years, I used these ideas sporadically. Each time I did, I experienced a burst of success and progress. As soon as I achieved a minimum level of success, I would abandon these ideas and go back to simply reacting and responding to whatever happened daily.

It took me several years before I finally started practicing these ideas and many others I have regularly mentioned in this program and began getting results systematically and consistently. Later, I learned that our natural tendency is to work very hard until we find a specific method or technique that works for us, whether in life, work, or relationships. And then, for some perverse reason, we quickly abandon the technique and return to behaving as before, randomly and disorderly.

And here's the point. In hindsight, I learned that the reason I experienced so many frustrations and why I strayed from using these principles so often was that I lacked self confidence. My conscious mind told me that these principles made sense, but my subconscious mind, my repository of memories, emotions and previous experiences told me that I was not good enough and that success was not really for me.

As my friend Zig Ziglar says, I was designed for success, but programmed for failure. I wanted to succeed on the outside, but I really didn't believe I could achieve it on the inside.

The fourth turning point for me, and the reason I have produced this program for you, was my discovery that I could develop any quality that I believed necessary for my success and happiness. I learned that through hard work and repetition I could overcome and nullify my feelings of inferiority and unworthiness and develop my feelings of self esteem and self confidence. I could identify and then alleviate my own bottlenecks or limiting steps.

By working on myself systematically, I could become the happy and highly accomplished person I truly wanted to be. By taking my foot off my own subconscious brakes and putting it on my conscious accelerator, I could start to move forward rapidly in life. And the key, the spark plug, was the conscious and determined development and maintenance of high levels of self confidence.

Every successful man or woman I have spoken to or read about has more or less come to the same conclusion in every respect. You have more talent and ability than you will ever use in your entire lifetime. You too can step on the accelerator of your own potential and start moving forward at a speed that will astonish you. So here is how you can infuse your entire life with a kind of self confidence that makes everything possible for you.

Well, here are what I call the four Ds that underpin success in anything you want to achieve. The first D is desire. You must truly want to become a fully self confident human being. Your desire must become so intense that it overrides your fears of failure, rejection and inferiority and becomes the dominant emotion that governs your behaviors.

The second D is a decision you must make a life or death decision to work on yourself and stick with it until you achieve the kind of self confidence that allows you to do, be and say what you want.

The third D is determination. Once you have started making significant changes in your behavior, your inner gyroscope will try to take control and bring you back to your comfort zone, to your old ways of behaving. Sometimes progress will be slow and often you won't see any progress. Nonetheless, you must persist in the positive and constructive behaviors you know will lead you to become the kind of person you wish to be.

Your determination must be as unwavering as the self confidence you desire.

The fourth d is discipline. The quality of self discipline underlies and surrounds all great achievements in life. This is the ability to force yourself to do what you must do, when you must do it, whether you feel like it or not. If you have the desire to change, the decision to act, the determination to persist in your forward path, and the discipline to force yourself to do whatever is necessary, your self confidence and success are inevitable.

We said earlier that self confidence comes from positive knowledge, not just positive thinking or hoping. Only when you have a firm conviction or belief in your abilities based on experience do you really know that your self confidence is not an act. This is why every act of self confidence strengthens self confidence. Every success you experience increases your self confidence and your ability to achieve greater successes.

Every mental exercise you perform to improve and strengthen your personality strengthens your self confidence. And everything you learn and practice from the lives of other confident people enhances your self image, boosts your self esteem and increases your self confidence. In the mid-80s, the Gallup organization conducted one of the most comprehensive surveys on the reasons for success ever carried out in the US they selected 1,500 men and women whose names and biographies appeared in Marquis who's who in America, the country's most prestigious register of prominent individuals. They extensively asked them what they believed were the reasons they had become so well known and respected during their lives.

This group, by the way, included Nobel Prize winners, university presidents, Fortune 500 corporation heads, prominent scholars, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and even a high school football coach who continued to have a significant impact on the lives and personalities of the young people he coached. After many months of research and interviews, they were able to isolate the five most important qualities for success and self confidence in the US and their findings turned out to be consistent with virtually all other research conducted in this area.

The first and most important quality of all is simply called common sense. The participants in this survey defined common sense as the ability to get to the core of a matter, to recognize and address the essential elements of a problem or situation rather than getting sidetracked by smaller issues or symptoms. Another definition of common sense was the ability to learn from experience and then apply those lessons to subsequent experiences. Perhaps another word for common sense is wisdom.

Aristotle once defined wisdom as an equal combination of experience plus reflection. You are much, much wiser than you think. In fact, based on your experience, you probably have the ability to be much more effective than you are simply by applying what you have already learned. The problem for most people is that they simply don't take enough time to reflect.

Perhaps the two best questions I've heard about personal growth are these. After each experience, whether successful or not, stop and immediately review the experience, preferably on paper, and first, ask yourself, what did I do well? And second, what would I do differently? If you take a sheet of paper and write at the top of the page what did I do well? And then write down every part of the experience you did correctly, you will be accelerating your development of common sense.

By analyzing your immediate past performance, just like football players do on video, you will find yourself improving at a rapid rate. The mere act of taking time to reflect will cause you to improve in the areas you focus on. When you ask, what would I do differently? You begin to see all kinds of possibilities for improvement.

The wonderful thing about these two questions is that the answers to both are positive and constructive. And when you focus on the positive and constructive parts of your present and future performance, these parts sink deeper into your subconscious and program you to act consistently with that information next time.

The second quality for success and self confidence that emerged from the study was experience. Truly successful and happy men and women are very good at what they do and know they are very good. They have learned, practiced, reflected, and improved more and more until their peers recognize them as the best in their fields. And this Feeling of being the best is an absolute prerequisite for deep and lasting self confidence.

The third quality identified in the study was self sufficiency. Men and women who are respected by others tend to look primarily to themselves for the answers to their questions and the solutions to their problems. They are very responsible people who do not blame others or make excuses when things go wrong. They consider themselves the main creative forces in their own lives, volunteer for difficulty tasks, and are willing to take charge when something needs to be done.

The fourth quality of success they discovered was intelligence. Intelligence seems to be a key requirement for success and self confidence in any field, but when they analyzed this topic, they found that intelligence was not necessarily measured in terms of iq. Many of the most notable men and women living today had performed poorly in school, received low or no grades, and many had not completed college or even high school.

In my opinion, intelligence is really a way of acting. If you act intelligently, you are intelligent, and if you act stupidly, you are stupid, regardless of your IQ or education.

So what is an intelligent way of acting? An intelligent way of acting is a way of acting that is consistent with achieving the goals you set for yourself. Whenever you do something that moves you towards achieving a goal that is important to you, you are behaving intelligently. But whenever you engage in behavior that moves you away from one of your goals, you are behaving stupidly.

The world is full of people who behave stupidly hour after hour and day after day because they do things that guarantee results opposite to what they say they really want. If you work in sales or business and learn to manage your time extremely well so you can accomplish many things during your workday, you are acting intelligently.

If you do things that undermine your productivity or move you away from your goals, you are acting stupidly in terms of your own goals.

Here, everything you do either moves you closer to one of your goals or further away from it. Nothing is neutral. Everything counts.

Every act you perform is a positive act that counts on the positive side of your personal ledger, or it is a negative act that counts on the negative side of your personal ledger. A great life, as we said before, is simply a life that has many more marks on the positive side than on the negative.

Regarding self confidence, every time you do something that moves you in the direction of something important to you, you feel a bit like a winner. And every time you do not do things that move you in that direction, you feel like a loser.

These behaviors are not only progressive but also habitual. The more you engage in one behavior or Another, the easier and more repetitive that behavior becomes. The more you adopt winning behaviors, the more consistently you will act and feel like a winner. The greater your self confidence will be and the greater your faith in yourself and your goals.

The final quality of success identified in the study was a results orientation. This simply means that you know you are capable of getting the results for which you are responsible. All highly respected men and women are recognized as the type of people who can get the job done whatever it is. They are invariably determined, results focused and action oriented people.

They have a bias for action. One of the smartest things you can do is to increase your capacity to get things done and achieve the results that determine your success. The greater your results, the greater your self confidence and self esteem will be. You will be promoted more often and paid more money because you will produce a higher quality and quantity of work. You will receive other job offers and be immune to economic downturns because your services will be invaluable.

By developing an intense results orientation, you guarantee yourself a future of success and prosperity. I spoke earlier about the importance of selecting your values and organizing your entire life around what you believe to be right, good and true. As long as you know you are living according to your highest principles, your self confidence will be based on an unshakable foundation.

I have spoken all along about the importance of setting clear goals and deciding exactly what you want in each area of your life. You know that clearly defined, big, important and challenging goals improve your overall self concept and strengthen your self confidence. When you plan your work, work your plan and devote your energies to completing high value tasks.

You see yourself making rapid progress towards achieving your goals and your self confidence increases every time you decide to go the extra mile. Do more than you are paid for, contribute more than you withdraw and go beyond what is expected of you in your work and in your relationships with others.

You feel great about yourself. Your self confidence increases and you feel motivated to contribute even more of yourself to what you are doing.

When you commit to becoming better and better at performing performing the important tasks in your life, you feel a greater sense of mastery and competence. Your self confidence deepens and increases your ability to achieve the results that matter to you. Your ongoing commitment to personal and professional development gives you a sense of continuous growth. Each time you feel you are growing as a person, you feel motivated and energized internally to achieve even more.

The more you learn, the more you can learn, the more you develop and the more capable you become of further development. As you see and feel your life Improving you feel more positive and more in control of your own destiny. You like and respect yourself more and your self confidence increases with any positive, constructive and determined action you take toward your dreams.

It improves your self image and boosts your self confidence. When you keep your thoughts and actions consistent with your highest aspirations and most valuable goals, you progressively build the kind of unshakable self confidence that enables you to achieve almost anything.

Talk to yourself positively all the time. Tell yourself, I can do it, I can do it. Or say, I feel healthy, I feel happy, I feel great. Create a positive and suggestive environment around you. Create clear mental images of the person you want to be and the things you want to do.

Read books that expand your mind and increase your skills. Listen to educational audio tapes in your car. Surround yourself with positive people and distance yourself from negative ones. Before any important event, mentally rehearsed and visualize yourself performing at your best in the upcoming situation.

Recall and relive an excellent previous performance. Before you fall asleep, think about the things you did well during the day and the things you are going to do better in the coming days. Saturate your mind with positive images of yourself at your personal best.

Whenever something happens that throws you off balance, stabilize yourself by thinking about your goals. Due to the law of substitution, you can only think one thought at a time. And if you think about your goals, your mind will instantly become positive again.

Whenever you have the choice to do what is fun and easy instead of what is hard but necessary, force yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your dreams. Consciously resist the temptation to be easy on yourself. Remember that the comfort zone is the great enemy of human performance and potential. Only in the area of challenge and risk, where you push beyond what is comfortable and easy, do the possibilities of success await.

Every act of courage and boldness on your part not only generates additional courage and boldness, but also strengthens your self confidence. The more often you dare to move forward even in the face of uncertainty, the more likely this type of brave behavior will become a habit for you. Gradually, you will act without fear in almost all situations. There will be nothing you won't risk or try.

You will develop such self confidence confidence that you will absolutely believe in your ability to succeed even against difficult odds. And since success is based on the law of averages, you will eventually succeed and achieve great success. Make sure to take good care of yourself physically every hour and every day.

If you are not happy with your physical appearance, set to work to improve it. Set a series of goals to be at your perfect weight, wear the ideal clothes for you and be perfectly groomed in every aspect. Your self confidence is strongly affected by your self image. Your self image, on the other hand, is largely determined by how you believe others see you.

When you work hard on yourself and take the time to produce an image you know is attractive to other people, you feel wonderful about yourself and your self confidence increases. The final key to self confidence was revealed by Dorothea Brand in 1935 when she said that the great road to success is to act as if it were impossible to fail. And so it will be.

The real difference between winners and losers in life is the difference between acting and not acting. It is between the people who do it and the people who talk about doing it, between those who move and shake and those who just watch the world go by. Perhaps your greatest responsibility to yourself is to become a person of action, to act yourself into feeling the emotions that are consistent with high performance. Your main job is to make any effort, overcome any obstacle and climb any height to become the dynamic, unstoppable, irresistible and self confident person you are capable of becoming. And when you have developed this fundamentally important quality of self confidence within yourself, everything else will be possible for you.

We urge you to think once more about a question that Brian posed in the first session of this program, which is what great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?

If your answer your great thing is the same now as when the question was first posed, you are stealthy with each listen. These principles have challenged you in a new and exciting way. Soon you will know, if you don't already, that you have the power to make even the most daring dream a reality.

You have just listened to and absorbed an enormous amount of wisdom, insight and information, all charged with the power to change your life for the better permanently. But will it? That is the critical question, and the only person who can answer it is you. As any star athlete will tell you, real power and strength reside in follow through.

I will be honest with you. Many people who listen to an audio program like this never get to see the real rewards of that program. It is not because the information in the program was inadequate or couldn't be conveyed, but because at some point along the way, the listener abandoned the process.

Sometimes life, as happens to all of us, simply gets in the way and can displace the sincerest desires of our hearts. People who experience this often start feeling as you probably feel right now, excited, motivated, dedicated, ready to make the changes needed to reach the goals and achieve the dreams they set out to accomplish by listening to this life changing program. That is probably why they bought it in the first place.

The first week after finishing the program was great. They are shouting from the rooftops that this is it, this is the time when the change will be permanent. They found the answer but as the days and weeks go by the enthusiasm wanes, the vision fades and old habits return.

Maybe life deals them a blow or a setback and the goals they originally set take a back seat and maybe over time are completely forgotten. The program gets shelved and very soon they are back to square one. It is simply human nature.

Very few people have the extraordinary level of discipline needed to be exclusively self motivated. The rest of us need interactive, ongoing encouragement, support and motivation if we are to maintain our enthusiasm and truly achieve our goals. Without that it can become impossible to stay focused and on track.

Self-Confidence, Personal Development, Success, Education, Motivation, Inspiration, Achievemore