Motivational Book - Get What You Want

FRIPPICISM
Tell me what you say you want. Then show me one week of your life, and I'll tell you if you'll get it.

Texas multi-millionaire H. L. Hunt was asked, "How have you amassed fortunes when most of us are struggling to make a living?" Hunt, who built the Houston Astrodome, replied, "You have to make up your mind what you want. You have to make up your mind what you are prepared to give up to get it. You have to set your priorities, and then go about your job." That sounds too simple to be true. But think about it: Decide what you want!

It amazes me that most people spend more time planning next summer's vacation than they do planning the rest of their lives. What do you want? How do you want your life to be different in the future? What do you want to accomplish in your career, for yourself, or with your family? And what are you willing to do to achieve it?

Topics Include:
Define "Success"
Start with What You Don't Want
Who Do You Want to Be?
What Are You Willing to Give Up?
What Excites You?
What Are Your Power Sources?
Are You Aiming High Enough?
Can You Avoid Speed Traps?
ETC.

FRIPPICISM
The quality of your life doesn't depend on your situations and circumstances, but on how you respond to them.

Many people like to blame their problems on others. Parents usually rank first as scapegoats, followed in later years by hostile employers and rejecting lovers. Now, most parents do the best they can, raising their children the way they were brought up themselves. The mistakes they make result more from lack of knowledge than actual malice. Employers and lovers also have their own agendas and needs that don't always coincide with our own. As adults, we become responsible for our own choices, feelings, and self-esteem. Like it or not, we are the only ones in charge of our actions and reactions. It may be very comforting to see others as the manipulators of our behavior and the source of all our woes, but it is a real time waster. The day that you discover that you are in charge of you is the day you turn your life around...

Topics Include:
What Kind of World Do You Live in?
Write Your Own Ticket
Truth or Dare
Who Makes You Healthy?
Who Makes You Wealthy?
Who Makes You Wise?
Who Makes You Happy?
"I Can Do That!"
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
Never argue with the inevitable.

No one is a stranger to change. It visits us daily. Its challenge is so consuming of our daily lives that few have the luxury of contemplating its size of speed. Here are three ways to deal with change.

--ACCEPT that everything, both good and bad, will change, and you'll usually be able to find something useful, good, and healthful in the new situation.

--PARTICIPATE actively in the inevitable changes in your personal life, your company, your organization, and your country. Don't RE-act from necessity, letting events and other people dictate your life.

--BELIEVE strongly that your actions influence the outcome. You CAN make a difference.

Hope and optimism are terrific, especially when they're based on the realityof where life is now...

Topics Include:
Taking Risks
Big Changes in the Workplace
Whose Problem Is It?
The Scandal of the Red Undies
When You're Not Wanted
Creating Change Yourself
ETC.

Return to top

ROBERT FRIPPICISM
Our aim shouldn't be to have an easy life, but to have a better quality of problems.

If you're going to adapt to the frequent changes that bombard us, you're going to have to push past your comfort zone. Change, even good change, makes us uncomfortable. That's why we so often stick with old, unproductive habits, rather than trying something new. Adapting to change is going to make you feel uneasy, distressed, even miserable. This discomfort is absolutely necessary before you can become the person you want to be...

Topics Include:
What's the Best Defense?
Handling the Discomfort
Stretching Yourself
Painful Mistakes
Waiting...and Waiting
The Discipline of Having the Best
ETC.

Return to top

ROBERT FRIPPICISM
Artisans teach by what they do.
Masters teach by who they are.
What artisans do is who they are.
What masters do is who they are not.

"One thing you should know about me is that I'm stupid," said Arthur L. Schawlow. The 1981 Nobel Prize winner was talking to an astonished class of undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. "But," he continued, "lots of people are stupid, which is kind of nice. It means they miss a lot of things. If you can discover one of the things they've missed, you may win a Nobel Prize too." You can bet that those students left the room with increased confidence in their own ability to make a difference in the world...

Topics Include:
Seeing Yourself
Saying "Yes" to Yourself
Above-Average Human Beings
Attitude or Education?
Comparing Yourself to Others
The Deciding Moment
Who Would You Rather Be?
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
There is no point going anywhere that people won't remember you were there.

A woman at a Credit Union National Association convention asked me where I got my degree in behavioral psychology. "Behind a hairstyling chair," I told her, "...a twenty-four year degree." I have observed that many successful business people and entrepreneurs began their enterepreneurship at an early age...

Topics Include:
Creating the Entrepreneurial Ethic
The Kid and the Chocolates
Ideas from Bright Young Executives
Sitting in the Right Chair
Report the Deals, Not the Details
Everyone Can Be Creative
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
It is not your customer's job to remember you. It's your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don't forget you.

Suppose someone wants to do business with you. What is his or her first impression? What do they see, hear, smell, feel? Psychologist Marie Randall calls this "impression management," trying to influence people to think favorably of us...

(Some people -- and businesses -- think self-images are what other people see, and anything goes behind the scenes. But a true self-image reflects your true self, even when no one is looking.)

Topics Include:
The Crucial Four Minutes
Every Employee Is a P.R. Specialist
Your Weakest Link
Real People, Extraordinary Jobs
Your Image When No One Is Looking
Questions for Prospective Employees
Handling Goof-ups
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
The future belongs to charismatic communicators who are technically competent.

In business today, straightforward communication is imperative. This means from the top down and from the bottom up. I always ask executives one question: When was the last time you asked your assistant, your secretary, or anyone working under you what you could do to make his or her job easier? Top managers who complain about poorly motivated employees should hear what I hear from the people under them. These administrative assistants and managers complain to me, "We're all revved up. We're ready to get going, but our boss is so disorganized." "Why don't you go to your boss," I tell them, "and say, 'I'd like to really earn the money you pay me by doing more than I do now..."

Topics Include:
Your Source of Power
The Role of Role Models
Three Good-Management Musts
Seven Minutes to Say "Thank You"
Interview Everyone You Meet
What If You're Shy?
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
My mother told me: "You will never meet anyone without faults. Marry someone whose faults you can live with." (I have stayed single.)

Power in life and business comes from three things: who you are, who you are perceived to be, and who is on your side. You can't choose your family, and if you are happy with your relatives it's a cause for major celebration. However, you do pick your friends and lovers, and the world generally lumps you in the same category with them. This simplistic assumption may not be entirely true, but it is an age-old adage that you are judged by the company you keep.

Topics Include:
Clean the Closets of Your Life
(Five kinds of non-supporters to discard)
Identify Your Cronies
Great Pickup Lines
Advice to the Lovelorn
The Personal Safety Issue
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
Your best clients are also the hottest prospects for your competitors.

The only thing I've ever wanted in business was an "unfair advantage" over my competition. That simply means that I try to do everything a tiny bit better or more creatively or with more pizzazz. To work smarter, acquire an "unfair advantage" over your competition. It's really not hard...

Topics Include:
Building Your Advantage
How the Smart Guys Do It
(The Five Secrets)
Standing Out in the Crowd
ETC.

FRIPPICISM
Success is not who you know, but who wants to know you.

Our habits are part of us, built up like the layers of a pearl from our own juices. They can either provide a lustrous shield against adversity -- or a prison of our own making. Just a few habits can make a big difference in both how we handle and how we project ourselves. What new habits do you want to acquire? What old habits do you want to change? Which are habits and which are commitments?

Topics Include:
Habit or Commitment?
Five Steps to New Habits
Practical Uses for Ego
Do You Want to Be Famous?
ETC.

FRIPPICISM
Your future is the only time you have left.

If you want to take charge of your life, you have to take charge of your time. Whether time is your friend or foe depends on how you use it. Too many people spend their time the same way they spend their money: they go for every bright trinket they come upon so there is nothing left for the important things...

Topics Include:
ClichÈs That Work
Spending Time Like Money
No Time for Planning
How to Create Time
Effiency vs. Effectiveness
The ABCs of To-Do Lists
Your Ideal Day
Learn to Say "No" by Saying "Yes"
Three Coping Styles
AND DOZENS OF TIME SAVERS

ROBERT FRIPPICISM
You have to master technique in order to abandon it.

TIP #1. Understand which things deserve your energy. With so many fascinating opportunities before you each day, how do you decide which are for you? My brother, Robert, has formulated four questions for judging whether an action is appropriate for him....

Topics Include:
Identify Low-payoff and High-payoff Activities
Resist Emotional Blackmail
Make Contracts with Yourself
-- Before Someone Else Makes Them for You
ETC.

ARTHUR HENRY FRIPPICISM
In life, no one is dealt all the aces. You just have to play the hand you have better than other people.

Your whole life is a shifting prism of opportunities -- YOUR possibilities. No matter how much energy, persistence, and confidence you focus on your goals, you will miss some of the good stuff if you fail to notice opportunity. Keep yourself constantly open to possibilities...

Topics Include:
Make Yourself Indispensable
"That's Impossible!"
The Five Essentials of Life
Inspiring Others with Your Possibilities
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
So-called "ordinary people" can make exceptional things happen.

When you go to work each day, how do you think about what's ahead? Do you think, "I've got sixteen customers to deal with"? Or do you think, "I've got sixteen opportunities to transform people's lives"? Do you say, "I'll be spending eight hours shuffling papers" (or flipping hamburgers, bagging groceries, answering phones, or greeting patients)? Or do you think, "I'll be spending eight hours as an indispensable part of a terrific team that makes people happier, healthier, or more prosperous and the world a better place"? What are the chances that people who choose the former responses will make a powerful difference in other people's lives? And what are the chances that people with a passionate, positive vision of what they do will fail to make such a difference?

Topics Include:
Make Your Own Breaks
Market Yourself Shamelessly
Don't Be Normal
Getting Others Started
You Have to Ask
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
It doesn't matter how good you are. The world has to know it.

Outside the privacy of your own home, all speaking is "public speaking." There is no such thing as "private speaking." If you can stand up and speak eloquently and with confidence — or at least stagger to your feet and say anything at all — you will be head and shoulders above your competition...

Topics Include:
Promote Yourself
How to Give a Speech
Promote Your Business
Bombing in Front of an Audience
ETC.

Return to top

ROBERT FRIPPICISM
Things are not as bad as they seem, They are worse than that. They are also better than that. (We do not see life as it is, but as we perceive it to be.)

"How many of you have had things go wrong in your business that seemed devastating at the time?" I asked an audience of Women Entrepreneurs in San Francisco. Everyone raised a hand. Some people put up two hands. Like many of you, I have had a wonderful business, great employees, and many successes. I have also been disappointed, had hard-earned funds embezzled, and had people quit at the most inopportune moments. I managed to live through every single experience, and grow from it. It's relatively easy to look back at business disappointments and realize that they were just part of a regular up and down cycle. When you survive a few such cycles, you become a lot more valuable to your clients. Personal disasters are also part of the inevitable cycle called life. That's why the more we experience, the more philosophical we become about events, both business and personal, that would have been shattering when we were younger...

Topics Include:
Seven Tales of Survival
What to Do When Your World Falls Apart
ETC.

Return to top

FRIPPICISM
If you don't have a romance with yourself, it will be a lot tougher to have a romance with other people and with life.

More than anything else, people ask me, "How can I know what I want? I'm intelligent and well educated," they say. "I have a good job and I'm not unattractive. But how can I know what I want?" My reply is a question. "If in five years you are doing exactly what you're doing now, in the same job, with the same company, with the same friends-if you look the same, and you spend your free time doing the same things-would you be happy?" If the answer is no, then the next question is, "What would make you happy?"

Topics Include:
Take Inventory
The Three Stages of Love Affairs
Pretend You Own the Company
Love in a Less-than-Perfect World
Rekindling the Spark
That Mystical Click
ETC.

Return to top