Don’t Let Anybody Steal Your Dream is a wonderful book written by Dexter Yager, a legend in the Amway business. While it’s not a book about network marketing, per se, it is a book about how to think like a successful person.
I spent 2.5 years in Amway myself. I was in Dexter Yager’s line of sponsorship, but I never met him personally. From what I’ve found online, he has approximately ONE MILLION people in his Amway team, and nearly half of all Amway’s business comes from his line of sponsorship. That makes him an Amway Diamond many, many times over. Pretty impressive!
I recently picked up a used copy of Don’t Let Anybody Steal Your Dream on Amazon. It cost me less than $5 with shipping included.
The book was first published in 1978. It’s published by Dexter’s company, Internet Services Corporation. It comes in soft-cover format and has 95-pages. I read the book over the period of two days and really enjoyed it.
Dexter has lots of wisdom and there are definitely some great tips about attitude, mindset, and success in this book. Overall, I give the book a 7 of 10 and consider it a good addition to any network marketer’s personal library.
Don’t Let Anybody Steal Your Dream: Top Quotes
What I want to do in the paragraphs below is share some of my favorite Dexter Yager quotes from the book. Each quote is in bold and italics. After each quote, I will provide my own thoughts about it. The quotes are listed in no particular order. Enjoy.
# 1: All big men are dreamers.
All success starts with a dream. You must be able to see things before they exist. Of course, it also takes a good game plan and lots of hard work. Without a dream, you’ll never get started. You can definitely measure the size of a person by measuring the size of their dream.
# 2: But if it’s your vision, your prayer, your dream why give up so easily? Give it a chance and never let someone else make the decision for you and destroy it.
If you want something bad enough, you have to go for it. Good things take time to accomplish. No one achieves success overnight. You have to fight for the things you believe in, those things that are important to you.
# 3: For every dream that is carried through, thousands are stolen.
Most people give up on their dreams. By the time most people have been in the work force for a few years, they settle for mediocrity. They realize that life might not turn out like they thought it would be when they were kids. Plus, there are lots of dream-stealers in the real world; people who tell you that your dreams are crazy. There are few things sadder than seeing a person who has stopped dreaming.
# 4: If you do not have to work to accomplish a goal, then probably there was not much validity to it in the first place. Anything of value is worth exerting effort to obtain.
Big goals require lots of hard work, persistence, and sacrifice. In most cases, you must stretch out of your comfort zone and dig deep. The bigger the goal, the harder it will be for you to achieve. But it’s worth it!
# 5: Remember that the closer you get to success the harder it is to reach it.
So many people give up right before they become successful. There’s an old adage “three feet from gold” that talks about how many gold miners give up right before they hit the vein and make it big. Usually, your greatest moment will come shortly after your darkest hour. When times get tough, and they certainly will, you must get tough.
# 6: The word “try” does not belong in the realm of successful living.
Replace the word “try” from your vocabulary. Instead of saying “I’ll try it” say “I can, I will, I shall.” Act “as if” the things you want to accomplish have already happened.
# 7: We are only as big as our minds allow us to be.
Most people underestimate themselves and sell themselves short. We are all capable of great things, if we believe in ourselves.
# 8: A person who lives below what he is actually capable of performing is a most unhappy person.
Never operate or live below your potential. Always give 100%. Always perform at the best of your abilities. Thing big. Act big.
# 9: Everyone needs friendship.
Focus on building relationships and friendships with others if you want more happiness (and a bigger business). We all want more friends. We all want to spend time with people who appreciate us and make us feel important.
# 10: To be a winner you need to associate with winners.
The books you read the people you associate with today will determine where you will end up in the next five years. Spend time with people who encourage you and lift you up and bring out the best in you. Avoid the haters and dream-stealers at all cost.
# 11: The richest people are those who are always willing to give without honestly expecting anything in return.
You have to give before you can get. Understand sowing and reaping. You can’t reap a harvest before you sow your seeds. Pay your dues, stay the course, and good things will eventually happen.
# 12: Don’t ever settle for second best.
Always strive to be the best you can be. If you do end up in second place, set a new goal and work hard to get first place the next time around.
# 13: Well defined and properly pursued goals direct your life.
When you have clearly defined, written down goals, your life will have purpose and direction. This will make you excited to wake up each day.
# 14: The short range goals are extremely important.
Your short-range goals should break down your long-term goals into bite sized chunks. Set good short-term goals, work hard, and you shouldn’t have any trouble reaching your long-term goals.
# 15: It is far easier to place the blame elsewhere and hide behind a false front.
Accept 100% responsibility for your own success or failure. There is no such thing as a successful victim.
# 16: If you fail in the first attempt get up and try again.
Temporary failure is a normal part of success. You can’t succeed your way to success; you have to fail your way to success. Always get up one more time than you were knocked down and you will eventually succeed.
# 17: Successful people are leaders.
Leaders are people who get things done. Leaders accept 100% responsibility for their own lives and they are results oriented.
# 18: A winner is someone who accepts his failures and mistakes, picks up the pieces, and continues striving to reach his goals.
Let each mistake that you make be a building block that you can learn from. Get up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward.
# 19: If you cannot or do not think well of yourself, how do you expect someone else to?
Work on your self-image and self-talk. Learn to love yourself. It will be hard to become successful in life until you learn how to do that.
# 20: If you can honestly admit that you have faults and are working to improve them, then you do not need to worry about what people think or say about you.
Spend some time and identify areas you can improve upon. Accept that you are human and will never be perfect. Just try to get a little bit better every single day. Those little improvements will compound over a period of time.
# 21: The way a person dresses provides an excellent clue as to what he thinks of himself. Dress for success.
You don’t have to wear a suit and tie all the time, but the way you look will help dictate how you feel about yourself. The way you dress will also determine how others judge you.
# 22: Hard work is the requirement for the person striving to be successful.
At some point, you must roll up your sleeves and get to work. Success is often disguised as hard work.
# 23: More important than making money is how we make money, and what we do with it after we get it.
What you do to earn your money is very important. It must be legal, moral and ethical. What we do with the money we earn is equally important.
# 24: Instant and free success comes only in fairy tales and love stories.
There is no free lunch in life or in business. There is no such thing as get rich quick or fast/easy money, especially in business. If you want something you have to go out and get it.
# 25: Life is too short to waste time on doing things we really do not enjoy.
Find something you love and find a way to turn it into a career. Do something you love and the money will follow. When you love what you do you will never work a day in your life!
# 26: What we say has a great impact upon what we actually do.
Speak well about yourself and others. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Use affirmations and positive statements to program yourself for success.
# 27: A person who cannot control his tongue is a person who probably will not succeed in life.
Think before you speak. Learn how to control your words. Whenever possible, keep your emotions in check. When you are angry, take some time to be quiet and process your thoughts before you speak.
# 28: A person is more productive if he or she is winning at home.
When your marriage and family life are strong and happy, it will help you in other areas of your life. Your “home life” has a big impact on your career, so do the little things and keep your family life running smoothly.
# 29: Success does not come in one area of life at the expense of another. Success is contagious and once begun it spills over into every other area of life.
The last thing you want to do is focus all of your time and energy on your career and forget to take care of your family. Lots of successful executives and entrepreneurs sacrifice their family to make it big. You don’t have to do that. You want to live a life of balance.
# 30: Marriage is not a down-hill experience; it should get better and better!
If your marriage is important to you, and you work on it, it should get better every single year. It shouldn’t be a year of excitement and then a bunch of years of misery. You must keep doing the small things and work hard at building and maintaining a strong marriage.
Final Thoughts
In summary, Don’t let Anybody Steal Your Dream is a great book by Dexter Yager. It’s a book about attitude, success, and mindset. I think the content will benefit any network marketer who is looking to take their business to the next level.
What do you think? If you’ve read Don’t Let Anybody Steal Your Dream before, please leave a comment below and tell me what you think about it. I look forward to hearing from you. Have a great day!
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If it wasn’t for dreams many of the luxuries we enjoy daily would not be. Henry Ford had a dream and now we have highways all over the world. Samuel Morse had a dream and now we have smart phones that we can use for calling and to get on the internet. It has always been dreams that have made the world what it is. It is good to dream and do not let anyone steal it. People tried to tell Columbus he would sail off the edge of the Earth, but he didn’t allow anyone to steal his dream. Keep dreaming because it keeps you alive.
All businesses, new ventures, and relationships are started on a dream of something better, something that the person can see in their mind, but doesn’t exist in real life yet.
Without dreams, life would be miserable. It’s important to have a goal, to have something you are aiming to achieve, and to have something to hope for. That’s how I see it anyway.
I think we all could use some advice as to how to think like a successful person. I am not sure many people realize the connection between their position in life and the way they think. If you are negative in your thinking you will attract negative energy and produce negative results. So if we learned to embrace positive and successful thinking we would produce those types of results.
The best wisdom someone ever told me was this:
“Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. If you want to fix your outer world, you must fix your inner world first.”
The older I get, the more I realize how valuable this advice was.
This sounds like a very good book with a lot of positive properties. #6 is one that my Dad used to use on me. Whenever I said I would try something, he would have me sit down in a chair. “Now try to get out of the chair.” After I stood up he would say, “I said try to get out of the chair.” After we went round and round, he explained that we either do it or we don’t. Try is a word that shouldn’t be. I will never forget that lesson.
Yes, this is a great book and must read for any networker.
That’s right. There are many dream-stealers out there. You need to avoid them at all cost.
Definitely. It’s actually quite normal in today’s society. Any time you step out of the “norm” and try something different dream stealers appear out the wood work. It doesn’t need to be network marketing either.
It’s important to anticipate the dream stealers and haters, or it could destroy your new venture before you even get started. That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with your own mastermind group, or alliance, of people who support and encourage you.