Quotes from Jim Camp

If you can't keep from talking, you won't be able to blank slate.

You help create the vision, but you don't create the pain itself at all. The pain is just there. The doctor doesn't create your pain; she helps you see your case clearly.

I have seen that the failure to set manageable goals is as common a mistake as any other. People get confused because they don't have a step-by-step plan. They casually talk about goals and results, or objectives, but they don't really know how to distinguish between them.

one thing, they don't have a mission and purpose to guide them. They thereby put themselves on an emotional roller coaster, and this is a fatal error, as we shall see time and again in these pages. Disappointment, excitement, despair, hope—they experience the whole range of emotions, and all because they're reacting to events over which they don't have control and ignoring those over which they do have control.

I'm inclined to give credence to the theories of learning that suggest we humans need about eight hundred hours to truly master a complex concept and the habits necessary for its application.

Making decisions based on a sense that the adversary seeks your friendship is misguided. They would much prefer your effectiveness.

When we have the habit of setting as a goal only activity that we can accomplish and that is genuinely productive, we've taken the first step to getting some real work done. Rather than succeeding or not succeeding almost by accident in the service of some goal that's really beyond our control, we've taken the first step to taking responsibility for our actions and to end what is, really, self-deception (and probably companywide deception).

Why would you want to load down a business relationship with a lot of emotional baggage, including guilt, which can be the by-product of "friendship"? It doesn't work. It doesn't pay.

It's too easy to sell or not sell fifty widgets this week, or to sign or fail to sign the contract with your supplier. It's much more difficult to behave and act at all times in a disciplined, systematic way. But this is what you must do in order to achieve what you're capable of.

the price that will be paid in any negotiation—is directly related to the clarity of the vision of pain?

People who are unhappy and frustrated in their work either have invalid mission and purposes—"I want to make a million dollars before I'm twenty-one"—or they don't have one and are serving someone else's, and some part of them understands this at some deep level.

The mission and purpose is not self-evident. If you work for yourself and do not have one in place, you are working at a great disadvantage. You're just as vulnerable to working and negotiating on behalf on an invalid mission and purpose as is an employee at a giant, faceless multinational corporation. You must begin to develop one immediately.

The essential problem is that they are I-centered. They are set in the world of the individual building the mission and purpose. This is why they are 100 percent invalid and worthless for any person, business, or negotiation.

History and experience should tell each and every one of us, time and time again, that having wealth and/or power as the aim in life will destroy any individual (and many other people, in some instances).

you're scorekeeping, and scorekeeping means you're thinking about results over which you have no real control.

Winning isn't everything, but the will to prepare to win is everything.

winning is beyond our control, while preparation is 100 percent under our control.

My purpose here isn't to elevate your success regardless, but simply to provide you with the opportunity to do so.

That way you are protected with adequate information in case something unexpected comes up.

The only agenda that is valid for purposes of negotiation is the one that has been negotiated with the adversary.

win-win is hopelessly misguided as a basis for good negotiating, in business or in your personal life or anywhere else.

Your ability to blank slate is directly related to your ability to rid yourself of expectations and assumptions, two very bad words in my system of negotiation.

many problems relate to the major categories of my system: Who are their decision makers? What's their pain? What's their budget?

your adversary is building your positive expectations to close the deal. If you buy into these statements, he'll move right in and take the advantage.