Life Strategies

Doing What Works, Doing What Matters

by Phillip C. McGraw, Ph.D.

Hyperion 1999
282 pages

Focus
Leadership
Strategy

Take-Aways
Dr. Phil has ten rules for life. The rst one is: You either get it, or you dont. Become
one of those who gets it. His other rules are:

Sales & Marketing

Corporate Finance

You create your own experience. Acknowledge and accept accountability for your life.

Human Resources

People do what works. Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior and that of others.

Technology
Production & Logistics
Small Business
Economics & Politics
Industries & Regions
Career Development
Personal Finance
Self Improvement

You cannot change what you do not acknowledge. Get real with yourself about your
life and everybody in it.
Life rewards action. Make careful decisions and then pull the trigger.
There is no reality; only perception. Identify the lters through which you view the world.
Life is managed; it is not cured. Learn to take charge of your life.
We teach people how to treat us. Own, rather than bemoan, how people treat you.

Ideas & Trends

There is power in forgiveness. Open your eyes to what anger and resentment do
to you.
You have to name it before you can claim it. Get clear about what you want and
take your turn.

Rating

(10 is best)

Overall

Applicability

Innovation

Style

10

10

10

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Relevance
What You Will Learn
In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) How common behavior patterns keep people from
getting what they want in life; and 2) The 10 laws for counteracting these patterns and
taking charge of your life.
Recommendation
Phillip C. McGraw, Ph.D., better known to Oprah Winfrey fans as Dr. Phil, has popped
out a refreshingly in-your-face contribution to the self-help genre that doesnt beat
around the bush. You will not be asked to commune with your inner child or vent your
anger and pain. Instead, Life Strategies is a prescription for action, complete with stories,
including about Oprah. Each chapter contains at least one writing assignment, designed
to stimulate honest inquiry and to challenge even your most basic assumptions. These
culminate in a meticulously detailed set of instructions for creating your life strategy.
Organized self-starters will love the lists and matrices, but even readers who dont
plunge into the assignments will gain fresh insights into their behavior. getAbstract.com
prescribes this bouncy book to anyone seeking a step-by-step plan for self-assessment
and realistic life change. Cynics need not apply.

Abstract

In this war we
call life, most of
the decisive battles are fought
within you.

When it comes to
managing our own
emotional lives,
and training our
children how to
manage theirs,
were out of control
but desperately
pretending otherwise.

Red Alert
Our society is experiencing an epidemic of unhappiness. The divorce rate is more
than 50%. Depression and suicide are increasingly common, and violent crime is
omnipresent. The so-called self-help industry has pumped out books and gurus, but
people are not getting any happier. The pharmaceutical industry has responded with
waves of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, but emotional health continues to go
downhill.
The root cause of all this misery is that people have forgotten how to live together.
Consciously or not, you may be engaging in self-reinforcing behavior patterns that keep
you from getting what you want out of your life. Some of these common behaviors are:

Denial If you refuse to accept something, you cant change it.

Relying on untested assumptions The opposite of open-mindedness.
Inertia The paralyzing effect of fear and denial.
Keeping a stiff upper lip If you dont admit that you need help, you may not get it.
Not realizing that behavior is a conscious choice Even the behavior of denial.

The key to change is realizing that you have conscious control over these behaviors.
If your life is not working, its time to try something different. Try applying the 10
Life Laws instead. You dont need special tools or years of therapy. All you need is
the willingness to honestly evaluate your behavior and consciously change what is not
working for you.
The First Life Law: You Either Get It, or You Dont.
Every situation has rules. While many of them are of the unwritten variety, they are
rules nevertheless, and if you dont know them and obey them, you wont succeed. The
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Being able to predict the behavior

of others can be
almost as powerful
as being able to
control it.

problem is that when it comes to interpersonal relationships, most of us were never

taught the rules, and we dont know who to ask. The trick is to nd an old-timer who
knows the ropes. Fortunately, the ropes for life and relationships are outlined in
these Life Laws.
The most important strategy for getting it is becoming a student of human behavior.
If you know why people do what they do, that knowledge is power. Include yourself in
your scrutiny. Knowing why you act the way you do gives you the power to change your
behavior. Most people have common characteristics, including a fear of rejection, a need
for acceptance and a certain level of self-interest. Look for these traits in others and in
yourself, and you will soon be on the way to getting it.

The Second Life Law: You Create Your Own Experience.

You are accountable for your life. If you step up and take responsibility for your choices
not just your future choices, but all your past choices you will begin to see clearly
what behaviors you need to change. This ies in the face of the cult of victimhood that
makes up the bulk of pop psychology. But pop psychology hasnt solved our epidemic of
depression, so its time to try something different.
Taking responsibility for your life and your actions is not the same as blaming yourself for
all your misfortunes. Of course, you were not responsible for choices others made when
you were a child. But you are responsible for how you live with the results as an adult.

Sometimes, the
hardest part in
learning something
new is unlearning
the old way of
doing it.

Remember, thoughts are behaviors, too, and they are powerful. If you often think
negative thoughts, you are programming yourself to live a certain way. Your thoughts
can directly affect your energy level and therefore your health. Furthermore, consider
how you present yourself to others. The rule of reciprocity states that others will react to
you based on what you give them to work with in your relationships.

The Third Life Law: People Do What Works.

Most people have, at one time or another, done something despite knowing better.
Dieters know better than to overeat; workaholics know better than to neglect their
children; smokers know they shouldnt smoke; partygoers know better than to have one
for the road. Yet they continue to do those things. The reason is simply that on some
level, they are getting something desirable from the behavior they choose. This concept
is called payoff.
If you wonder why you continue to behave in a certain way, look for your payoff.
Monetary payoffs may convince you to work long hours instead of spending time with
your family. The psychological payoff of feeling loved may drive you to give in to pressure
from a partner. Payoffs can also be spiritual, physical or achievement-based. If you realize
how you are paying yourself off for certain behaviors, you can create change. For any
behavior you cant seem to shake, ask yourself, what am I getting out of this? For many
people, these payoffs are based on the need for acceptance and the fear of rejection.
You will never,
ever x your
problems by blaming someone else.
That is for losers.

The Fourth Life Law: You Cannot Change What You Do Not Acknowledge.
Denial is very powerful. In extreme cases, people are grateful for the ability to block
out the memory of traumatic experiences. But in most ordinary situations, people
have a tendency to wish problematic facts werent true rather than dealing with them
head-on. This strategy wont work, because such problems seldom simply vanish.
Instead, you skate ever closer to the edge, not realizing you are in danger because such
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a realization would be upsetting. Its time to get real. Yes, the truth can hurt, but its the
only way to freedom.
As you seek to
understand why
you act in certain
ways, look hard
and honestly at
what you are getting out of what
you are doing.

Your life is not too

bad to x, and its
not too late to x
it. But be honest
about what needs
xing.

People dont care

about your intentions. They care
about what you
do.

The Fifth Life Law: Life Rewards Action.

What you intend to do doesnt matter. What matters is what you actually do. That is how
the rest of the world measures you, so you should start to evaluate your behavior (and that
of others) based on results, not intentions. Dont let yourself or anyone else make excuses.
The winners in life may not have the deepest insights or the purest intentions, but they
have the willingness to take action where losers hang back. Fear of rejection, or of failure,
may be holding you back, but this fear is nebulous and elusive. If you try something and
fail, chances are you can handle that specic event and move on. The fear itself may be
worse than the worst result you can imagine. The only real failure is to stop trying.

The Sixth Life Law: There Is No Reality; Only Perception.

Many relationships founder because the people in them see things differently, not
because one of them is wrong and the other right. Wouldnt it be wonderful if partners
could acknowledge their differences, instead of arguing about who is right or wrong?
The fact is, everyone has a set of lters through which he or she views the world. Some
are harmful and prejudicial, while others are neutral or even constructive. The important
thing is to recognize their existence.
Once you realize that you have a choice about how you perceive the world, you can
choose your reactions to events that befall you. Instead of viewing events through a lter
created by your history and failing to test those assumptions, take charge and refuse to
be limited by your past experiences.

The Seventh Life Law: Life Is Managed; It Is Not Cured.

If there was a manager in charge of your life, how would you rate that persons job
performance? Chances are, youd be tempted to re your manager. Unfortunately, you
cant re the manager, because you are your own life manager. Use the same standards
to evaluate yourself as a life manager as you would to evaluate any other employee.
Motivate and educate your life manager to accept important responsibilities including:

Spending emotional energy on your problems before those of others.

Naming your fears and dealing with them instead of living with nebulous worries.
Not letting frustrations build up until you overreact to a trivial slight.
Keeping your word, both to yourself and to others.

No matter how perfect your life is, you will always have problems or difculties. Success
in life requires managing these effectively as they happen.
You control your
perceptions.
Therefore, you
control your interpretations of and
attitudes about
your life. That is
power.

The Eighth Life Law: You Teach People How To Treat You.
This Life Law is related to the third Life Law (people do what works). If you dont like
the way people treat you or you feel you are getting a raw deal in a given relationship,
consider what that persons payoff is for treating you that way. He or she must be getting
something desirable as a result of this behavior. You can choose how to react, and
whether to keep paying someone off for treating you poorly.
Remember that a relationship is a mutual endeavor, and even behavior patterns that have
been ingrained over years or decades can be renegotiated. This may come as a shock to
the other person; most people strongly resist changes in the status quo. Do not let guilt
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trips get to you. If you back down from your decision to change your partners payoff,
nothing will really change. So stick with it.
Starting now,
begin each and
every day of your
life with the question: What can I
do today to make
my life better?

The Ninth Life Law: There Is Power in Forgiveness.

Anger, hate and resentment are strong and destructive forces. If you are carrying around
resentment from your past, bitterness will build up to toxic levels within you, and spill
over to every area of your life. If you allow this to happen, you are giving your history a
powerful hold over you, and allowing your past to control your future.
A person who has hurt you may not deserve forgiveness, and you may have a right to be
angry and hurt. However, forgiveness is about the forgiver, not the wrongdoer. Forgiving
someone else means refusing to let their past deeds determine how you live your life
now. If you let someone elses misdeeds bind you to them in anger and pain, then you are
letting them win. Forgiveness is a gift to yourself, not to them.

You either contribute to or contaminate every

relationship in
your life.

The Tenth Life Law: You Have to Name It Before You Can Claim It.
Do you know what you want out of life? Most people have a vague idea, and are much
more clear about what they dont want than what they do want. How can you expect to
get what you want if you dont even know what it is? It is essential to name exactly what
you want as specically as possible. You may want to be happy, but what makes you
happy and what makes your neighbor happy may be completely different. Your life goals
must be specic to you. If you know what you want, you can plan the steps necessary to
achieve it, and youll be ready to grab it when it comes along.
Now that youve learned the 10 Life Laws, make them a conscious part of your everyday life
and be prepared for insights and changes. You are ready to create a personal Life Strategy
based on your goals. Be very specic about each area of your life. You have the power
to decide what behaviors you want to change, how you can stop paying yourself off for
negative behaviors and who you can enlist to help you. You have the tools; theyve been
within you all along.

About The Author

Dr. Phillip C. McGraw has worked in human function and strategic life planning for
more than 20 years. He is the co-founder and president of Courtroom Sciences, Inc.,
and has been associated with some of the highest prole court cases in America,
including Oprah Winfreys Mad Cow suit. A professional psychologist, he appears
regularly on Oprahs show.

Buzz-Words
Accountability / Denial / Filter / Life laws / Payoff / Reciprocity

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