If you want to change your life in the fastest way possible, trade your expectations of others for appreciation.

You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want using whatever life gives you along the way.

You shape your perceptions, or someone shapes them for you. You do what you want to do, or you respond to someone else's plan for you.

When you know what's most important to you, making a decision is quite simple.

The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. For those magical moments while you are immersed in the forests of Arden, you are William Shakespeare; while you are shipwrecked on Treasure Island, you are Robert Louis Stevenson; while you are communing with nature at Walden, you are Henry David Thoreau. You start to think like they think, feel like they feel, and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you long after you've turned the last page.

What kind of person will I have to become in order to achieve all that I want?

You must learn how to handle rejection. To succeed, you must learn how to cope with a little word 'no', learn how to strip that rejection of all its power. The best salesmen are those who are rejected most. They are the ones who can take any 'no' and use it as a prod to go onto the next 'yes'.