Speaker 1: Everybody's got opinions, and most of them are a little weird.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest today is Bob Proctor and author, lecturer, counselor,
Speaker 1: business consultant, entrepreneur, and teacher of positive thinking, self motivation
Speaker 1: and maximizing human potential and that endeavor. He follows in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of such motivational giants as Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale,
Speaker 1: and Wallace D. Waddles. Bob is the author of numerous books,
Speaker 1: including the international bestseller You Were Born Rich. His latest
Speaker 1: book is called The A b CS of Success. He
Speaker 1: was prominently featured in the book and movie The Secret
Speaker 1: by Rohnda Burne. And we invite you to go look
Speaker 1: at the free resource guide of Bob's three favorite books
Speaker 1: of all time, his three favorite songs to stay inspired,
Speaker 1: and his three favorite books he has written, and you
Speaker 1: can find that at one you feed dot net slash Bob.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'd like to mention before we get
Speaker 1: started is that Eric is doing some one on one coaching.
Speaker 1: So if you feel like you could do some help
Speaker 1: with whatever is going on in your life, and if
Speaker 1: you'd like to go a little further with some of
Speaker 1: the principles we discuss on the One you Feed, you
Speaker 1: can talk to Eric and set up some coaching sessions.
Speaker 1: Just send a request to Eric at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net. And with that, here's the interview with Bob Proctor. Hi, Bob,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you, good to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm I'm excited to get you on because
Speaker 1: one of the things that we're going to spend a
Speaker 1: little bit of time talking about is positive thinking. And
Speaker 1: listeners of the show know that I have some um,
Speaker 1: you know, I have my I have my concerns about
Speaker 1: some positive thinking, and some things in your new book
Speaker 1: really um set that up a lot, and I think
Speaker 1: give us a lot of good things to talk about.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to explore that. But first, let's start
Speaker 1: with the way we always start, which is the parable
Speaker 1: of the two wolves. There's a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other there's a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, you know it is
Speaker 1: the parable, but it's also very true. We have a
Speaker 1: paradigm that's genetic and environmental, and it really controls the
Speaker 1: life of the vast majority of people and Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: keep feeding it, and it stops us sent our tracks.
Speaker 1: It will not let us grow, and it it dominates
Speaker 1: the thinking of most people. But we've also been given
Speaker 1: the ability to originate, to create thoughts or Drawd's highest
Speaker 1: form of creation. And if we will feed that side
Speaker 1: of ourselves, if we will strengthen it, develop it, it
Speaker 1: will beat the bad wolf. But the big bad wolf
Speaker 1: is the paradigm, and unfortunately it wins in the life
Speaker 1: of too many people. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you a little bit about you are. You
Speaker 1: are well known for having been featured in the movie
Speaker 1: The Secret, which has the Law of attraction. And I've
Speaker 1: heard you say that the movie based on the Law
Speaker 1: of attraction is pop culture fluff. What what do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Well, the movie left people with the
Speaker 1: idea that you get what you want, and you do
Speaker 1: not get what you want. Once are they're they're part
Speaker 1: of the intellect. They're you can have a want, it's
Speaker 1: an idea in your conscious mind, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to get that unless that want is internalized and turned
Speaker 1: into a desire. And if that doesn't happen, the want's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. Now, vibration is a law like gravity.
Speaker 1: It's always been here. It's not a new idea. It
Speaker 1: wasn't originated in The Secret. But I'd also like to
Speaker 1: mention I think on to Burn accomplish what she wanted
Speaker 1: to accomplish. In The Secret got a lot of people
Speaker 1: thinking about themselves and about the law. Our brain is
Speaker 1: like an electro magnetic machine, and whatever we think controls
Speaker 1: the vibration we're in, and we change the vibration momentarily
Speaker 1: as we change our thinking. But we can only attract
Speaker 1: to us what we're environmenting with. If I turned my
Speaker 1: radio one, I'm only going to get what's on that frequency.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get something else. If I'm on
Speaker 1: a talk station, I'm not going to get candle light
Speaker 1: in line music. Well, if you're feeding not they could
Speaker 1: evolved that bad wolf and you're worrying and you're thinking
Speaker 1: negative thuts, you're on a frequency that can only attract
Speaker 1: negative energy. So the law of vibration is attraction is
Speaker 1: a secondary law. The law of vibration is the primary law.
Speaker 1: The entire universe moves. We live in an ocean of motion.
Speaker 1: Nothing rests. There's no such thing as in their ships
Speaker 1: um and the vibration we're in is dictated by what's
Speaker 1: going on in our subconscious mind, what we impress upon it.
Speaker 1: So I've heard you also say that positive thinking alone
Speaker 1: does not deliver, It does not fulfill. In fact, it
Speaker 1: frustrates you because it is not in harmony with what
Speaker 1: we do. Thinking about music will not make you a musician.
Speaker 1: Practicing music will well, I mean, that's so true. We
Speaker 1: the belief that we just get what we think about
Speaker 1: is a men. We get what we internalize. I think
Speaker 1: James Allen puts it very well. He said, you become
Speaker 1: what you are, and you are the sum total of
Speaker 1: your thoughts. It's the thoughts that you internalize. Just see
Speaker 1: just thinking something. Thinking is a function of the conscious mind,
Speaker 1: and it's done with your reasoning factor, one of your
Speaker 1: higher faculties. And you can think about something until you're
Speaker 1: old and gray. If you don't internalize those thoughts and
Speaker 1: make them a part of your being, is never gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where a lot of people get
Speaker 1: They just they get off tracked. They know that's where
Speaker 1: a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. You know, the
Speaker 1: power of positive thinking a great book, but it goes
Speaker 1: far beyond just thinking. Now, positive thinking is required, but
Speaker 1: you've got to internalize it and then from their act
Speaker 1: upon it. That's right, that's right. Well, if you internalize it,
Speaker 1: if you keep impressing it upon your subjective mind, you
Speaker 1: are going to act on it. See, whatever is impressed
Speaker 1: must be expressed, and the expression is the action. The
Speaker 1: expression is the idea that you are, uh, that you're
Speaker 1: thinking about and internalizing. Desire was put very well by
Speaker 1: Wallace Waddles. He said, desire is the effort of the
Speaker 1: unexpressed possibility within, seeking an expression without through your action.
Speaker 1: So you build the want in your conscious mind with
Speaker 1: your intellect, and then you internalize that want, and if
Speaker 1: you keep getting emotionally involved with it, it will turn
Speaker 1: into a desire. And then the desire is what's fueling
Speaker 1: the expression. It's the expression of the ideas that you're
Speaker 1: emotionally involved with. The action will follow. I've heard you
Speaker 1: say that discipline is sort of the very most basic
Speaker 1: thing we have to have. We have to have the
Speaker 1: ability to uh say to ourselves, we're going to do
Speaker 1: something and then do that thing. Um that seems to
Speaker 1: be it's easy to say, and I agree with you
Speaker 1: that we can't get anywhere without it. How do we
Speaker 1: build that discipline? Is that part of what you're talking
Speaker 1: about here, that is you, as these things become true desires,
Speaker 1: not just thoughts in the mind, that we will act
Speaker 1: in harmony with those. We will we will we will
Speaker 1: have the ability to do the things that we deeply want.
Speaker 1: A person will never get anywhere with our discipline, Because
Speaker 1: if you're really going to improve the quality of your life,
Speaker 1: you have to change your paradigm. You have to change
Speaker 1: that part of you that's in control of you most
Speaker 1: of the time, and that takes a respectable amount of discipline.
Speaker 1: This I will do, and then you've got to do it.
Speaker 1: It's giving yourself a command and then follow it. Let
Speaker 1: me read to something here that I think is incredible.
Speaker 1: The mind that is properly disciplined and directed to definite
Speaker 1: ends is an irresistible power that recognizes no such reality
Speaker 1: of permanent defeat. It organizes defeat and converts it into victory. Now,
Speaker 1: that was Carnegie's idea that he gave to Hill, and
Speaker 1: all the way through it he talks about discipline. He said,
Speaker 1: the mechanism of the mind is a a found system
Speaker 1: of organized power which can be released only by one means,
Speaker 1: and that is by strict self discipline. You see, I
Speaker 1: think as children we can be taught that. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: But I think we can be taught that the same
Speaker 1: as we're taught a language or how to walk and talk.
Speaker 1: The problem is we're not people that are successful. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the the top two three, their disciplined individuals.
Speaker 1: They give themselves a command and follow up, and the others, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: are not. So let's take that other. We say we're
Speaker 1: going to do something, we don't. We start something, we quit,
Speaker 1: We we clearly don't have that discipline. What are some
Speaker 1: of the ways that people can start to build that
Speaker 1: that discipline in themselves, because it seems pretty fundamental that
Speaker 1: without that everything else is going to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're just not going to be successful. So what are
Speaker 1: some very practical, short term steps people can take to
Speaker 1: start to build that disciplin that if they don't have
Speaker 1: it today. Well, you're perfectly right, it is very fundamental.
Speaker 1: But I see, I believe our our real problem is
Speaker 1: that we don't understand ourselves. We don't understand our mind
Speaker 1: or how it functions, and we're not taught anything about it.
Speaker 1: As we go through school, I have found psychiatrists that
Speaker 1: really do not understand it from a practical perspective. And
Speaker 1: it's the paradigm where the problem lies. And the paradigm
Speaker 1: is both genetic and environmental. It's the conditioning that takes place. Um,
Speaker 1: you look like some of your relatives, just like I
Speaker 1: look like some of mine. Well, that comes out in
Speaker 1: genetic conditioning. At the moment of inception, conception, the the
Speaker 1: the genes are forming the nucleus of you, your mother's
Speaker 1: and your dad's. But where did they come from their
Speaker 1: mothers and dads? And it goes back and we don't
Speaker 1: we're not sure how far back it goes. And then
Speaker 1: after birth, your your programmed by environment Carl Manninger from
Speaker 1: the Manager Foundation, since it is more important in heredity, Well,
Speaker 1: we've got to understand that paradigm. And if we're not
Speaker 1: understand we're talked this, this isn't going to happen. This
Speaker 1: is what explains why brilliant people are leaving universities. They've
Speaker 1: got degrees coming out the end of their business card
Speaker 1: and they're pretty well useless. They don't make things happen,
Speaker 1: And there's someone else that has never seen the inside
Speaker 1: of an organized educational institution that's building a big organization multimillionaires.
Speaker 1: We've got to understand the power of paradigms and what
Speaker 1: paradigms do. Um it's I mean, I've been teaching this
Speaker 1: for a long time and I've gone into major corporations
Speaker 1: and they don't understand it. Major corporations have to ask
Speaker 1: themselves why are our stars stars? And they don't know.
Speaker 1: If they didn't know, they can it and give it
Speaker 1: to everybody. The stars themselves don't know why they're stars.
Speaker 1: They're what you call unconscious competence. They're very good, but
Speaker 1: they're not sure why. And if somebody asked them, they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: as I do this and I do that. You can
Speaker 1: find people in the same business that are failing and
Speaker 1: they say I do this and I do that. They're
Speaker 1: not consciously aware of why they're doing what they're doing,
Speaker 1: so they've got something that's non transferable. They can't even
Speaker 1: give your own children. Well, when an individual starts to
Speaker 1: grasp the concept of the programming in the subjective mind,
Speaker 1: the paradigm um, that's when they start to see it
Speaker 1: and people attempt to discipline themselves. They say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do this, I'm gonna do this, but they don't understand
Speaker 1: the paradigm. They don't change the paradigm, and the paradigm
Speaker 1: is going to win. You know, they try, and you
Speaker 1: watch them going on diets and they're trying to lose
Speaker 1: what they're trying to try. And if they don't this,
Speaker 1: fund themselves and change the paradigm, I'm not gonna lose weight.
Speaker 1: And the problem is they're trying to lose weight. What
Speaker 1: they've got to do is release it. Because whenever you
Speaker 1: lose something, you're programmed to find it. That's part of
Speaker 1: the paradigm. So the path to better discipline is more
Speaker 1: about understanding the way our mind works and what we're
Speaker 1: made of it. It's through study less than um just
Speaker 1: maybe doing it. Oh yeah, well you see, I just
Speaker 1: did it personally. Uh maybe you did. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I do know that most people that are really
Speaker 1: winning cannot really articulate on why they are. That's that's
Speaker 1: what got me into this business. I didn't sit down
Speaker 1: beside to be in this business. I was in a
Speaker 1: different business. I was in an office cleaning business and
Speaker 1: very successful. It builded into seven cities and three countries,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely no idea what I was doing. And
Speaker 1: one day I asked myself, how is this all half?
Speaker 1: And um, I hadn't gone to school, I'd gone to
Speaker 1: high school for two months, and yet I was earning
Speaker 1: over a million dollars a year. I couldn't accept the
Speaker 1: idea that there was a capricious or emotional god on
Speaker 1: a cloud that said, I think all jib baba turn.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I was lucky, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was doing that caused things that happened like
Speaker 1: I was doing. I mean I was reading Thinking Girl Rich,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a lot of other people. I was
Speaker 1: doing certain things so with a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: And I've been raised to believe, if you're gonna earn
Speaker 1: onne money, you've got to be really smart. Well I
Speaker 1: didn't think I was that smart. Um, but I was
Speaker 1: learning a lot of money. Or if you're going to
Speaker 1: have a good job, you have to have a good
Speaker 1: formal education. I didn't have a good job. I owned
Speaker 1: the company, and I didn't have any formal education to
Speaker 1: speak up. So I decided I had to figure out
Speaker 1: what the heck happened. I was just so inquisitive, and
Speaker 1: I took teen nine and a half years when I
Speaker 1: did put it together and realized what it was. All
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was teach it. And that's all
Speaker 1: I've done. I went into Predential of America, the largest
Speaker 1: insurance come in the world. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: their budget is for training, but it's multimillions. And then
Speaker 1: I hope them race sales by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: One VP told me that it was over a billion.
Speaker 1: And what I was doing showing the people how to
Speaker 1: change the paradigm. I need nothing about insurance, but I
Speaker 1: know a lot about them. And so when you say
Speaker 1: change the paradigm is that, can you elaborate a little
Speaker 1: bit more on what you mean by changing that? If
Speaker 1: you really become very objective about yourself and look at
Speaker 1: yourself and say what am I doing and start to
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, keep a track of how you're
Speaker 1: spending your days, what you're doing, the things you do
Speaker 1: that get results you don't really like, you don't like doing,
Speaker 1: write them all down, and you know when wright doing
Speaker 1: these things, well, you automatically do them. You just do them.
Speaker 1: You wake up in the morning. There's a routine. You
Speaker 1: fall into a routine the way you go that it's
Speaker 1: either productive or it's not productive. But there's a routine. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're married, a white as a routine during business,
Speaker 1: your partner has a routine. So you watch this and
Speaker 1: you can almost predict with certainty what people are going
Speaker 1: to do over a given period of time. Well, that
Speaker 1: is because their programmed to do it. A paradigm is
Speaker 1: nothing but a multipude of habits that are fixed in
Speaker 1: the subjective mind. Well, what we have to realize is
Speaker 1: then when we're getting results we don't like, the results
Speaker 1: are caused by a behavioral pattern. Well, then you don't
Speaker 1: just try and change the behavioral pattern. Ask what's causing
Speaker 1: this behavior? Well, it's ideas that are fixed in the
Speaker 1: subconscious mind, So you have to change. How did they
Speaker 1: get there? Who cares? That's why psychoanalysis is going down
Speaker 1: the tooth. See, they've been analyzing people trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what's causing the problem. Well, let's suppose you find
Speaker 1: the cause. The cause, they're still there, then you've got
Speaker 1: to go about changing. I'm saying forget the cause. As
Speaker 1: the psychotherapy comes in, say, let's realize there's an idea
Speaker 1: and your subconscious mind it's causing that behavior. Here, let's
Speaker 1: figure out what behavior would be the polar opposite to that.
Speaker 1: Let's suppose you're sleep in every day, You're always late,
Speaker 1: always an idea in your subconscious mind is causing that.
Speaker 1: Then what what would be the polar opposite? I wake up?
Speaker 1: I get up when I wake up, and I wake
Speaker 1: up failing, wonderful, with a smile on my face, and
Speaker 1: immediately move into action. You write that out and then
Speaker 1: sing it to yourself, repeat it to yourself, rewrite it
Speaker 1: over and over, write it maybe times every day. That
Speaker 1: idea eventually is going to get fixed in your subconscious mind,
Speaker 1: and the other idea is going to die for a
Speaker 1: lack of nourishment, and you're starting to change your behavior.
Speaker 1: The behaviors nothing but these ideas that automatically express themselves.
Speaker 1: That's what it happen is it's an idea that automatically
Speaker 1: expresses itself without any conscious thought. Successful people just automatically
Speaker 1: become successful. And so the key there then is to
Speaker 1: take those unhelpful behaviors that are tied to some non
Speaker 1: helpful belief and real program that belief by sort of
Speaker 1: just simply saying the opposite of it over and over
Speaker 1: and over and over. Sure, now understand why you're doing
Speaker 1: it though. That's why then centuries ago Solomon was pretty wise, guys,
Speaker 1: King Solomon, he said, in all you're getting get understanding,
Speaker 1: we've got to understand ourselves. We go right to our
Speaker 1: educational system, Erica, and you can go service to some
Speaker 1: of the most prestigious universities in the world and learn
Speaker 1: virtually nothing about Eric. Who is Eric? First of all,
Speaker 1: you're not Eric. Eric is your name? You know? And
Speaker 1: and we've got to start to understand this what makes
Speaker 1: me tick? Why do I do what I do? This
Speaker 1: is simple stuff. You can teach it to kids, but
Speaker 1: that also don't even know, and the kids don't not
Speaker 1: and it's not taught in school. So you see, our
Speaker 1: educational system isn't an educational system at all. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's a place where people go to gather more information.
Speaker 1: That's how there is an educational system works. Read the book,
Speaker 1: remember what's in the book, and then answer questions on't
Speaker 1: If you answer more than right and wrong, you'll pass.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you're gonna do what you read that's
Speaker 1: just nolisees store in your conscious mind. See, it's like
Speaker 1: mad and Montessori said, a child is not like a
Speaker 1: cup that you fill up with knowledge. She said, the
Speaker 1: child has all the knowledge. What you have to do
Speaker 1: is get them to bring it to the surface and
Speaker 1: utilize it. All the knowledge there, ever was, or ever
Speaker 1: will be, is a hundred percent evenly present in all
Speaker 1: places at the same time. You don't get knowledge, you've
Speaker 1: got it. You become aware of what you've got. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like energy. All the energy there, ever was,
Speaker 1: or ever will be is a hundred percent evenly present
Speaker 1: in all place at the same time. So you don't
Speaker 1: get energy. Somebody say, where does she get on the energy?
Speaker 1: Where does he get all the nobody gets energy. Everybody
Speaker 1: releases energy, and desire is the trade raine mechanisms mechanism
Speaker 1: to release energy. Like I'm gonna be eighty one in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. I've got more energy most people
Speaker 1: there are twenty one because I've got a tremendous desire.
Speaker 1: So the desire fuels the engine and where you go.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've heard people say is
Speaker 1: that sometimes the prosperity the abundance. This way of thinking
Speaker 1: is a little bit like it's all driven by what
Speaker 1: I want. I want this, so I will do this.
Speaker 1: I want that is there is there more to a
Speaker 1: spiritual life and a good life than what I want? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you see the want misguided people will want it so
Speaker 1: they can. I don't know for self pun grandisement. That's
Speaker 1: not what you want. Wants come from the spiritual essence
Speaker 1: of who you are. Spirit spiritual essence of you is perfection.
Speaker 1: Your spiritual DNA is perfect. There's perfection and every one
Speaker 1: of us, well, it's a perfection attempting to express itself
Speaker 1: in a greater way. Spirit is always for expansion and
Speaker 1: fuller expression. Although nature operates by law, it's always for expansion,
Speaker 1: for expression, never for disintegration. So wants come into our
Speaker 1: consciousness to help us express this essence of who we
Speaker 1: are in a greater way. You don't want to get,
Speaker 1: You want to grow. Your wants are helping you grow.
Speaker 1: Listen all religions, I don't care which one you look at.
Speaker 1: Everyone that has stood the test of time, that has
Speaker 1: been around for any period of time. It's it's based
Speaker 1: on the emotional appeal of a future promise that you
Speaker 1: will one day become one with your God. That's why
Speaker 1: people like candles, That's why they go to church, That's
Speaker 1: why they go to the temp or the mosque. They
Speaker 1: want to raise their love of consciousness until become a
Speaker 1: are of their oneness with their micro with their God.
Speaker 1: And God works through us. And if we're doing God's work,
Speaker 1: then we are creating in a bigger way. We're creative beings.
Speaker 1: We're the only creature on the planet that is totally
Speaker 1: disoriented in our environment. All the other little creatures blend in.
Speaker 1: They're part of nature. They blend in, They operate by instinct.
Speaker 1: We have been given higher faculties. We can create our
Speaker 1: own environment, but we don't know that. So we just
Speaker 1: love whatever is going on around this control us. Um.
Speaker 1: It feels to me like yes, the the that growth,
Speaker 1: that expansion is a core part of our spiritual nature.
Speaker 1: I also see greed in the world. How do you
Speaker 1: tell the difference, How do you tell the difference between
Speaker 1: your fuller expression of your your deeper nature to grow
Speaker 1: and and to and to become other things, to transform
Speaker 1: and when when is it? When is it greed? Because
Speaker 1: I think at least I see a lot of greed
Speaker 1: in the world. A lot of greed in the world.
Speaker 1: That's what causes wars. I want more land, I want
Speaker 1: to control more of the world. Yeah, greed is a
Speaker 1: very destructive concept. Um. People are greedy when they don't
Speaker 1: understand the nature of themselves. When they don't understand the
Speaker 1: relationship with their creator, they become greedy. To see, you
Speaker 1: should only want money for two reasons. One is to
Speaker 1: be comfortable, and the more comfortable you are, the more
Speaker 1: creative you can become. The other is to extend the
Speaker 1: good you do far beyond your own presence. If a
Speaker 1: person has more money than they need, they're not doing
Speaker 1: what they should be doing. We should be doing greater good.
Speaker 1: I want to expand the good that I do more
Speaker 1: than I'm expanding, and I want to do it all
Speaker 1: over the world. Our company builds schools and a ACA.
Speaker 1: We build a school in our company every two and
Speaker 1: a half weeks. I want to build one every day,
Speaker 1: and I know I'm going to reach that objective. So
Speaker 1: you've got to want for the right reason. I believe
Speaker 1: our creator intended us to do great work. That's why
Speaker 1: we've been given great mental faculties. We're not taught how
Speaker 1: to use them. We're not even taught what they are.
Speaker 1: In most schools. We have perception, intuition, and reason, the will,
Speaker 1: memory and intuition imagination, and we can develop those faculties
Speaker 1: to a phenomenal degree. And as we do, we can
Speaker 1: do greater and greater work. First of all, the greedy
Speaker 1: should understand that everything they think they own, they don't
Speaker 1: own at all. You never own anything. Everything you think
Speaker 1: you own at the time, your dusts are going to
Speaker 1: belong to somebody else. But what you are is yours forever.
Speaker 1: Nothing's creator, they're destroyed. Dr Werner von Braun, the father
Speaker 1: of the Space program. He says nothing disappears without a trace,
Speaker 1: while all science and as the all to tell you
Speaker 1: nothing is created or destroyed. You moved into your body,
Speaker 1: You're gonna move on with You are a soul. You
Speaker 1: don't have one. You are a soul, and the soul
Speaker 1: goes on the next phase of its eternal journey. Excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you. Let's let's jump into your latest book,
Speaker 1: The A. B. C's of Success, which I believe is uh.
Speaker 1: It's a book, it's put together in a way. Um
Speaker 1: short little snippets pulled out of you know, your many
Speaker 1: many years of teaching, and there were some in there
Speaker 1: that resonated a lot with me, and I thought, uh
Speaker 1: spoke a lot to the things that we talked about
Speaker 1: on the show. So I'd like to move into some
Speaker 1: of those. And the first one that I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk about is you describe um you describe an old story?
Speaker 1: I like parables. I think you you you use a
Speaker 1: lot of stories where the devil is having I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly, but the devil is having a garage sale
Speaker 1: and he's got a few different things on sale, but
Speaker 1: the one thing that he will not sell because he
Speaker 1: has to keep it for himself. It's his best tool
Speaker 1: is discouragement. You see, you get discouraged if you think
Speaker 1: you're doing it and it's not happening the way you
Speaker 1: want it to happen, and discouragement will cause you to
Speaker 1: quit every time. But if we understand that the best
Speaker 1: way it's never been thought of, we'll figure it out
Speaker 1: and if we stay with it, we're gonna end up
Speaker 1: with it. Then we don't get discouraged. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you take take a look at the Wright Brothers at Edison,
Speaker 1: that Dreadmund Hillary, any of the ones that really did
Speaker 1: great work, Samuel Morris, mart pony Um. They just did
Speaker 1: not prevent them to get discouraged. They never saw anything
Speaker 1: as permanent. Defeat was temporary, Carnegie pointed out. They they
Speaker 1: turned that temporary defeat into victory. So the next one
Speaker 1: is you've got a line in the book from your
Speaker 1: talking about Sir Alec Ginness, the actor, and uh. It
Speaker 1: was a phrase that a friend to his another sir
Speaker 1: who was also an actor, whose name I'm not recalling
Speaker 1: right now, but they had a phrase that they they
Speaker 1: used together as a as a way to deal with
Speaker 1: life day to day. The phrases rise above it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just see, if we let the little things get us down,
Speaker 1: we're letting something outside control us. We've got to rise
Speaker 1: above it. We're bigger, we're higher than that. We don't
Speaker 1: want to let it yet to us. See, we're either
Speaker 1: going to react to life or we're going to respond.
Speaker 1: I was reading something excellent the other day. It was
Speaker 1: something that Victor Funkel, the viny psychiatrists that spent the
Speaker 1: warriors in the camp. Your old man search for meaning something.
Speaker 1: He said. He said, in every situation, between the situation
Speaker 1: and your response. There's a space and in that space
Speaker 1: you can decide what your response will be the last
Speaker 1: of the human freedoms. He called it. Yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 1: Like if you did something that really upset me, my
Speaker 1: nature is going to be going to react to it.
Speaker 1: But he said, there's a space and you've got to
Speaker 1: take and in that space say there's some reason why
Speaker 1: that's happened. I'm not going to let it throw me
Speaker 1: off track. And we can do that. There is that
Speaker 1: space and we can see. I feel when you react,
Speaker 1: you're the other person or the situation is in charge
Speaker 1: of you. When you respond, you remain control over you.
Speaker 1: Just the difference between responding and reacting. Dennis said, rise
Speaker 1: above it. It used to be something now you're probably familiar.
Speaker 1: Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let the little things
Speaker 1: get you. A question that I wrestle with a lot
Speaker 1: is and we talked about on this show, is that
Speaker 1: there are wiser responses to things. So don't sweat the
Speaker 1: small stuff. Rise above it. Um, you know, not be discouraged.
Speaker 1: And yet there's human emotion that we have and I'm
Speaker 1: always wrestling with where do we how do we find
Speaker 1: the line between the emotions are there for a reason.
Speaker 1: They're they're telling us something we have emotion. Where is
Speaker 1: the line between indulging that emotion, feeling sorry for ourselves
Speaker 1: doing all that, and completely repressing it and pretending that
Speaker 1: nothing ever bothers us? How do you find for you
Speaker 1: what's the right place between those things? Well, you see,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's an either or choice. I don't
Speaker 1: think you have to repress it or suppress it. Suppressing
Speaker 1: is a very dangerous thing to do, causes a lot
Speaker 1: of disease. You don't have to suppress it. I think
Speaker 1: consciously you have the ability to deal with it. And
Speaker 1: if you find it's emotionally upsetting, you can be upset.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stay there. You can say no way,
Speaker 1: I'm going to deal with this. I'm going to think
Speaker 1: this true. I'm gonna ask why did she do this?
Speaker 1: Why did he do this? Why did this happen? Um?
Speaker 1: Michael Beckwith gave me a beautiful response for that. He said,
Speaker 1: there's a three step approach to this. He said, Number One,
Speaker 1: it is what it is, accepted. It's either going to
Speaker 1: control you or you're going to control it. Number Two,
Speaker 1: harvest the good. There's something good in everything, Harvest the good.
Speaker 1: And he said, the more you look for, the more
Speaker 1: you're going to find. And number three, forgive all the
Speaker 1: rest forgive, let go out completely abandoned. And it's such
Speaker 1: an excellent response. See, I don't think you have to
Speaker 1: suppress it bottled up inside. I think you can. You
Speaker 1: can feel the emotional response and just know that it's there.
Speaker 1: It's like grief when you lose someone, Um. Grief is
Speaker 1: a normal part of dealing with it. I believe grief
Speaker 1: comes in waves. At first, the waves are big and
Speaker 1: they're plentiful. Then the waves get smaller and they get
Speaker 1: further apart. But you don't let it control you. You
Speaker 1: control it. And so when we're talking about people like
Speaker 1: the Right Brothers and and Edison or Um, you know,
Speaker 1: Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest, we use those examples
Speaker 1: of people who did not get discouraged and kept going.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that those people probably had normal
Speaker 1: human emotions of disappointment or discouragement that came upon them
Speaker 1: in the moment that say, the next invention failed. But
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: then they go through this process by using their human
Speaker 1: endowments that you you talk about imagination and um and
Speaker 1: creative thought and all those different things. They use those
Speaker 1: to process that emotion into a place that becomes useful
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, and I think I think they understood
Speaker 1: that the missing, the mark, and the failures are a
Speaker 1: normal part of success, of winning, of growing I had.
Speaker 1: I had the good fortune of working with Hillary on
Speaker 1: two or three occasions, so I was able to get
Speaker 1: to know him a little bit, and he's no different
Speaker 1: to you or me. And that led me to understand
Speaker 1: that Edison isn't any different. The Right brothers are no different.
Speaker 1: They just understood something that everybody else doesn't understand, or
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand. When we can understand,
Speaker 1: we've got that greatness within us, we can do great things.
Speaker 1: And we've got to realize they're no different and we
Speaker 1: can learn from them, and that's who we should learn from.
Speaker 1: We don't want to listen to the guy next door.
Speaker 1: Be nice to the guy next door. I have a
Speaker 1: conversation with him, but if he's never done anything of
Speaker 1: any consequence, I'm not gonna learn life' lessons from him.
Speaker 1: I want to learn life lessons from someone who's done
Speaker 1: what I love to do in a much greater way
Speaker 1: than I've done it. I think that's really important, that
Speaker 1: idea that they're not different than us, so that they're
Speaker 1: going to feel some of the things that we feel,
Speaker 1: but they have a they have a back to your
Speaker 1: point earlier, a paradigm that says, yes, things are not
Speaker 1: going to go the way I expect every time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I feel disappointed. Now I processed through it. I know
Speaker 1: that's part of the process, and on they go. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of times some of the
Speaker 1: success literature makes it sound like we should never feel
Speaker 1: any of that stuff, and then when we do, we
Speaker 1: feel like we're not we're not cut out, we're not
Speaker 1: made the same way. Now, well, some of that literature
Speaker 1: shouldn't be written. I remember um Dr Ken McFarland, who
Speaker 1: was a wonderful speaker for many many years he traveled
Speaker 1: for General Motors. He was the great educator from Great
Speaker 1: Horsemen down in Kentucky, and I still love listening to him.
Speaker 1: And he said that at one time he said that
Speaker 1: the the University down Kentucky had done a lot of
Speaker 1: research into self help books and he found that they
Speaker 1: were all full of sound and a original ideas. But
Speaker 1: he said most of the ones that were original weren't sound,
Speaker 1: and most of the ones who were sound weren't read.
Speaker 1: You know, So there's you know, everybody wants to be
Speaker 1: an author, so they're all pumping out books. I think
Speaker 1: we've got to say that they have something to write about.
Speaker 1: Have they? Have they done it? Have they? Are they
Speaker 1: out there in the marketplace? Are they making it happen?
Speaker 1: So I like to read vote people you know that
Speaker 1: have really done something. Um, you recommend biographies of great
Speaker 1: people a lot, don't you, Absolutely no question about it.
Speaker 1: One of the great ones is Albert Schweitzer. I love
Speaker 1: reading his biography, or Lincoln or something, any of them,
Speaker 1: any of the great authors. Thomas Troward for for the thinkers.
Speaker 1: If you're not a real deep thinker, you might not enjoy.
Speaker 1: But he wrote wonderful books on this. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the people that have really made it happen
Speaker 1: are going to give something to us that's our value.
Speaker 1: It's the same as where you study. I am very fortunate.
Speaker 1: I've had some phenomenal mentors, really incredible people. But I
Speaker 1: learned very early to listen to the people that we're
Speaker 1: doing it. See. I started to listen to Earl Nightingale
Speaker 1: and studying Napoleon Hill, and they both they were both
Speaker 1: tuned in. They both teach the same thing, and so
Speaker 1: that's who I started to get my information from. And
Speaker 1: I don't think you don't ignore everybody, but you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily follow them. Everybody's got opinions, and most of them
Speaker 1: are a little weird. In the book, you have a
Speaker 1: analogy that you use that I really like, the room
Speaker 1: of mirrors versus a room of windows. Yeah. Well, we
Speaker 1: keep looking back at ourselves, you know. Um, And I
Speaker 1: think we've got to open our mind. We've got to
Speaker 1: look at the truth of who we are and that
Speaker 1: this is an orderly universe that we are a part of,
Speaker 1: and the universe operates by law. I believe the laws,
Speaker 1: God's motives, opera, en diets, how everything happens. And if
Speaker 1: we study that and understand, we're an expression of an
Speaker 1: infinite power, where the as James Allen said, the offspring
Speaker 1: of a deathless soul, we've got such phenomenal potential and
Speaker 1: we want to be developing all the days of our life.
Speaker 1: I think that's why we're here. We're here to grow.
Speaker 1: And so the room of mirrors versus the room of
Speaker 1: windows is the the idea that in a room of
Speaker 1: mirrors we reflect everything back onto ourselves. Everything we see
Speaker 1: we see through our own lens. We see through our
Speaker 1: own perception. All we see and think about is us.
Speaker 1: And the room of windows is what you're saying. It's
Speaker 1: expanding and opening our mind. It's looking outside of ourselves,
Speaker 1: it's seeing things through different perspectives. Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: another thing in the part in the book that you like,
Speaker 1: and this this one has been so helpful to me
Speaker 1: over the years, and it's where we have a tendency
Speaker 1: to say, I have to do this thing, I have
Speaker 1: to do that, I have to go to work today,
Speaker 1: I have to go pick up the kids from school.
Speaker 1: And and you say, there is nothing you have to do.
Speaker 1: Everything you do, you choose to do. I use two
Speaker 1: ridiculous examples. I said, you don't have to breathe, you
Speaker 1: can put a bag over your head, you don't have
Speaker 1: to pay taxes. You can go to jail or go
Speaker 1: to attractive tax free zone. We choose to do everything.
Speaker 1: Jan Martin Coley wrote a marvelous buck I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with it. Your greatest power, and your
Speaker 1: greatest power is your ability to choose. We say we
Speaker 1: have to do this, I have to work on you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be late, I have to do this. I
Speaker 1: have to do that, Nona, You're choosing to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I find that so personally helpful in my life
Speaker 1: because it's very easy to slip into, at least for me,
Speaker 1: the obligation mindset. I've got to do this, I've I
Speaker 1: do that. I remind myself, I don't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't have to go pick up my kid from school.
Speaker 1: I don't ever have to see him again. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't like the consequences of those choices, but it
Speaker 1: is still a choice. We've got to understand that no
Speaker 1: is a complete sentence. One other thing that you have
Speaker 1: a line in the book and uh, it's a question
Speaker 1: that that I bring up a lot on the show,
Speaker 1: and I and I think about a lot. It's these
Speaker 1: things that are sort of paradoxical, sort of um. And
Speaker 1: it is the idea of UM. You say you should
Speaker 1: never be satisfied, happy, but not satisfied. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting distinction because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us are caught so much in the striving that
Speaker 1: we uh, we were never we never enjoy any of
Speaker 1: of what we have. And yet that striving, clearly, as
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier in the conversation, does seem to
Speaker 1: be a pretty fundamental part of our nature, that that
Speaker 1: desire to grow and expand. So tell a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that's happy but not satisfied. When I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, my grandmother pretty well raised me. My
Speaker 1: mother raised three of us by herself, and Grandma was
Speaker 1: there helping, And whenever we ask for anything, grand would say,
Speaker 1: don't ask, don't ask. You should be satisfied with what
Speaker 1: you've got. Well, when I got older and started to
Speaker 1: study and understand this, Grandma was wrong. Now you see,
Speaker 1: we have a hard time, first of all, thinking Grandma
Speaker 1: would be wrong, because grandma's like the deity to a
Speaker 1: little kid. But Grandma was wrong. Dissatisfaction is a creative state.
Speaker 1: It was dissatisfaction that gave us the ability to carry
Speaker 1: on this conversation the way we're doing. It's dissatisfaction. They
Speaker 1: gave his air travel, It gave us the smartphone, the TV,
Speaker 1: that the knowledge of the laws it's dissatisfaction. They gave
Speaker 1: us the golden age that we're living in. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction is going to cause you to want to do better.
Speaker 1: You see, this wasn't satisfied with a kerosene lamp or
Speaker 1: a wax candle. He wanted to illuminate the world, so
Speaker 1: he did well. Dissatisfaction is a creative state. You should
Speaker 1: be satisfied, never satisfied with what you've got, but you
Speaker 1: should be happy with it. And there's a difference. I
Speaker 1: can be very happy with my results, but dissatisfied with them,
Speaker 1: like I am happy with the results I'm getting in
Speaker 1: my life. But I'm going to tell you something, I'm
Speaker 1: not at all satisfied. I know I'm capable of doing
Speaker 1: a heck of a lot better than i'm doing, and
Speaker 1: every day I get up and I attempt to improve
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I want it to be better. I
Speaker 1: want this interview to be better than the last one.
Speaker 1: I want the next one to be better than this one.
Speaker 1: This is the best one, probably, Bob. It's all downhill
Speaker 1: from here for you. Yeah. I think that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think that's a very um. That's
Speaker 1: another one of those things. That's sort of paradoxical and
Speaker 1: completely true, and it is one of those things that
Speaker 1: I think I struggle with with finding that right balance
Speaker 1: of happiness while being dissatisfied. We're raised to believe you
Speaker 1: should be satisfied and if you're not satisfied, then you're greedy.
Speaker 1: That is not true at all. Dissatisfaction is a creative state.
Speaker 1: It's what causes us to want to improve. And if
Speaker 1: we've got infinite potential, why nothing is as good as
Speaker 1: it can be. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: happy with what we've got. We should enjoy what we've got,
Speaker 1: but we want to improve it. You said that the
Speaker 1: two most important ingredients for successful life are goal and persistence.
Speaker 1: Well they are, and but have also you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to get in to understand the paradigm. They the
Speaker 1: goal and the persistence are going to enable you to
Speaker 1: change the paradigm. And like you want to understand yourself,
Speaker 1: you've got to have goals. It's going to cause you
Speaker 1: to stretch and you cannot let conditions are circumstances control you.
Speaker 1: That's where the persistence comes in. Napoleon Hill said, there
Speaker 1: may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence, but
Speaker 1: he said the quality is to the character of the
Speaker 1: human like what carbon is to steal. It'll keep you
Speaker 1: going when everything's beating you back. And that's how you
Speaker 1: change the paradigm by persisting, absolutely, by persisting to accomplish
Speaker 1: something beyond where you're at, because the paradigm is going
Speaker 1: to have your producing the same as you've got and
Speaker 1: that's where most people are. There's incremental little improvements, but
Speaker 1: the average person is about the same place today as
Speaker 1: they were a year ago, and they could read and
Speaker 1: then get into positive thinking of positive thing isn't going
Speaker 1: to do it if they don't internalize it and get
Speaker 1: the paradigm shifted. Got it well, Bob, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: This has been a very informative and enjoyable discussion for me.
Speaker 1: I thank you for taking the time to come on
Speaker 1: the show. Eric, it's been a pleasure. Get everybody to
Speaker 1: go and buy the A b CS of Success sixties
Speaker 1: seven different subjects. We will have links for it on
Speaker 1: our show notes at one you feed dot net. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Okay, take care, okay bye. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Bob Proctor and this podcast and also get
Speaker 1: the free resource guide of Bob's three favorite books of
Speaker 1: all time, his three songs to stay inspired by, and
Speaker 1: his three favorite books he has written at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash Bob