Maximum Achievement

Brian Tracy presents a comprehensive system for personal achievement drawn from decades of study and practical application. The book's central premise is that success operates like a combination lock: By learning the right sequence of thoughts and actions, anyone can achieve desired results in health, wealth, happiness, and peace of mind.

Tracy grounds the system in his own biography. He grew up in poverty, failed high school, and spent his early twenties drifting through laboring jobs. He read voraciously, entered sales on straight commission, and began applying what he learned. He moved into management, then real estate development, and eventually earned admission to an executive MBA program. In 1981, he assembled his findings into a two-day seminar called "The Inner Game of Success," later renamed the Phoenix Seminar after the mythical symbol of transformation and new life. Nightingale-Conant Corporation released it as the audiocassette program The Psychology of Achievement, and the book serves as the written form of that system.

Tracy argues that before pursuing success, one must define it. He introduces "zero-based thinking," a method for re-evaluating every area of life by asking what one would do differently if starting over with current knowledge. He then presents the Seven Ingredients of Success: peace of mind, which he calls the highest human good; health and energy; loving relationships; financial freedom; worthy goals and ideals; self-knowledge and self-awareness; and personal fulfillment, linked to psychologist Abraham Maslow's concept of self-actualization, the drive to become everything one is capable of becoming.

The system's foundation rests on what Tracy calls the Seven Laws of Mental Mastery. The Law of Control holds that people feel positive to the degree they feel in control of their lives. The Law of Cause and Effect asserts that thoughts are causes and conditions are effects. The Law of Belief states that whatever one believes with feeling becomes one's reality. The Law of Expectations claims that confident expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies. The Law of Attraction posits that people draw in circumstances matching their dominant thoughts. The Law of Correspondence states that the outer world reflects the inner world. The Law of Mental Equivalence argues that vividly imagined, emotionally charged thoughts become reality.

Tracy introduces the self-concept as the "master program" governing all behavior. He presents a formula: Inborn Attributes plus Acquired Attributes, multiplied by Attitude, equals Individual Human Performance. Because attitude can be improved almost without limit, he argues it is the decisive variable. The self-concept has three parts: the self-ideal (the vision of who one wants to become), the self-image (how one sees oneself in daily life), and self-esteem (how much one likes oneself), which Tracy calls the foundational quality of high performance. He traces self-concept formation to childhood, arguing that destructive criticism is the primary saboteur of self-esteem. Two negative habit patterns emerge: the inhibitive pattern, rooted in the fear of failure, and the compulsive pattern, rooted in the fear of rejection. He presents seven techniques for reprogramming the self-concept, including visualization, positive affirmations, acting as if the desired result were already achieved, feeding the mind with developmental material, and associating with positive people.

Tracy elaborates on the conscious and subconscious minds, modeling them as a golf ball atop a basketball to convey their relative power. He introduces additional mental laws, including the Law of Substitution (a positive thought can replace a negative one) and the Law of Concentration (whatever one dwells upon grows). He traces the history of accelerated mental techniques from Dr. Emile Coué's discovery of autosuggestion, the practice of using repeated self-directed statements to influence the subconscious, through Georgi Lozanov's research combining deep relaxation, classical music, and repetition to achieve remarkable learning rates. Tracy presents several reprogramming methods, from written affirmations to systematic body relaxation.

Goal setting occupies a central position in the system. Tracy asserts that human beings are teleological, meaning they are mentally engineered to move toward goals, and that the brain contains a goal-seeking mechanism. He identifies seven reasons people fail to set goals, chief among them the fear of failure, which he calls the greatest obstacle to success. He presents five principles of goal setting, including congruency with one's values, balance across multiple life areas, and determination of a major definite purpose. He then details a 12-step goal-achievement system that begins with developing intense desire and belief, proceeds through writing goals, analyzing obstacles, and making detailed plans, and concludes with the resolve never to give up.

Tracy introduces the superconscious mind as the highest mental faculty, defining it as the source of all pure creativity and inspiration. He presents a five-step process for engaging it: define the problem clearly, gather information, consciously try to solve it, turn it over to the superconscious, and get busy elsewhere. A superconscious solution, Tracy argues, is always complete, appears as a "blinding flash of the obvious," and arrives with a burst of joy and energy.

Tracy frames the acceptance of total personal responsibility as the "master decision" without which no other principle will produce lasting benefit. He names four root causes of negative emotions: justification, identification (taking things personally), lack of consideration, and blaming, which he identifies as the foundation of virtually all negativity. He introduces the Law of Forgiveness, defining mental health as directly proportional to one's ability to forgive freely. He describes "the letter" technique for ending unresolved relationships: writing a letter that accepts full responsibility, forgives the other person, and wishes them well.

Tracy identifies peace of mind as the master goal and introduces the cognitive control method, using one's thinking ability to manage emotional responses. He addresses seven major sources of stress, including worry, fear of failure, denial, and anger. He discusses Type A behavior, marked by chronic hostility and an external sense of obligation, distinguishing it from the workaholic personality driven by internal goals and genuine enjoyment of work.

The final chapters apply the system to relationships. Tracy presents the Law of Indirect Effort: Relationship goals are achieved more effectively by approaching them indirectly, such as impressing others by being impressed by them. He identifies seven behaviors for building others' self-esteem, beginning with acceptance, appreciation, and approval, and culminating in attentive listening. For romantic relationships, he argues that similarities attract in values while opposites attract only in temperament, and that total commitment and genuine liking matter more than being "in love." He introduces the Greek concept of Praxis, the idea that performing loving actions generates the feeling of love.

On parenting, Tracy defines the primary role as building children's self-esteem and self-confidence. He identifies three ways to express love: eye contact, physical contact, and focused attention through long periods of unbroken time. He warns against destructive criticism and cites research by Dr. David McClelland of Harvard identifying two characteristics of households that produce high achievers: a democratic environment in which children's opinions are respected, and positive expectations consistently communicated by parents.

The book closes by presenting love as the ultimate principle underlying all success. Tracy discusses three Greek categories of love: Eros (self-love), Filia (love of others), and Charis (universal love for all of humanity), identifying Charis as the rarest and highest form. He identifies negative emotions as the greatest obstacles to love and prescribes issuing a "blanket pardon" to everyone who has ever caused hurt. He closes with a guiding principle: "Only what's done with love will last."