Million Dollar Habits

Think About Excellent Performance 
An important habit of thinking developed by optimists is 
the habit of “excellence-
orientation.”
The fact is that, to achieve something you have never achieved 
before, you will have to develop and master one or more skills that you have never 
had before. By the Law of Correspondence, your outer world will always be a 
reflection of your inner world. If you want to change something in your outer 
world, or achieve a goal that you’ve never achieved in the past, you are going to 
have to change your inner world in some way. Almost invariably, this requires the 
acquisition of a new skill or set of skills. 
Here is the good news. A skill is the same as a habit of performance, and like 
habits, all skills are learnable. You can learn any skill you need to learn to achieve 
any goal that you can set for yourself. If anyone else around you has developed a 
key skill that has enabled him or her to be more successful, that is proof in itself 

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Million Dollar Habits – Page 71 
that you too can learn and develop this skill. It is simply a matter of practice and 
repetition. 
Identify Your Key Skills 
Excellence orientation requires that you make a list of the key skills that are 
essential for success in your field. There are usually only about 5-7 skills, or key 
result areas, that determine most of the success that one achieves in any field of 
endeavor. Your first job is to identify these key skills and write them down.
Here is an interesting discovery. You have achieved your of success in your field 
today because of your talent and ability in certain key areas. But at the same time, 
you are being held back by your weaknesses in other areas. The rule is that your 
weakest key skill
determines the height of your results, and your income. In other 
words, you could be excellent at six out of seven key result areas, but your 
weakness in the seventh area will determine your overall results and rewards in 
that job or field. 
You therefore ask yourself this question, 
”What one skill, if I developed and did it 
consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my 
career?” 
This is one of the most important questions that you ask and answer throughout 
your career. You must develop 
the habit of continually identifying and working on 
your weakest key skill
. Bringing up your ability in this one area will usually have a 
greater and more immediate impact on your results than anything else you can do. 

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