Zig told me there are three things you simply can’t do: you can’t push a rope, you can’t put toothpaste back in a tube, and you can’t saw sawdust.
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to what happens to you.
Will—this is the “want to.” This is the heart, the desire, the attitude, the passion that people have.
Skill—this is the “how to.” This is the skill, the process, the technical expertise that people have.
Refill—this is reinforcing the Will and Skill. There is no such thing as “one and done” training and development. Will and Skill must be developed and reinforced daily. Take the Will away from any person and you will have at best someone who is just taking up space, and at worst someone who is a real drain on their company and their family. Without Skill, no matter what you do, you will create an endless cycle of frustration. Without Refill it is impossible to maintain the difference-making levels of Will and Skill you need to achieve the level of success you desire.
I love what Dave Ramsey says about being in debt. He says that “normal” people are broke, so be weird. I agree 100 percent! As Dad says, “I have had problems when I have had money, and I have had problems when I haven’t had money, and I have discovered that if you are going to have problems, it’s better if you have money!”
“Encouragement is the fuel on which hope runs.”
—Zig Ziglar
The great coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, wisely stated, “Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.” The simple truth is that you have to want to do something badly enough before you have the slightest chance of doing it! If you don’t want it badly enough, I absolutely guarantee that you will not be willing to do the planning and preparing it takes to get it.
Mr. Merrell planted a seed when he told me I could be great at something, and I believed him. My vision of my future started to change immediately, and I wanted that new future. As my desire grew I became sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wanted to change, and more important, I felt empowered to turn that new vision into reality. I took immediate action.
You have made some mistakes, and you may not be where you want to be, but that has nothing to do with your future. I’ll say it again and again: you can start from where you are with what you’ve got and go to where it is you want to go.
If you don’t finish something, it won’t be complete, and until something is completed, it isn’t finished. Much about success is just the result of simply the ability to follow up, follow through, and finish what we started. You’re not beaten by being knocked down. You’re only beaten if you stay down.
If you really want to win, you have to begin. I’ve always agreed with what I heard my friend and fellow speaker Joe Sabah say: “You don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to start to be great.”This means you have to be before you can do, and do before you can have.
I want to remind you that you were born to win. I also want to remind you that you are what you are and where you are because of what’s gone into your mind, but you can change what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind. The reason this is so is because you generally do what you think. Your thinking drives your choices. Choices determine the action you take, and action produces the results of your life. You can only think in ways consistent with the information you have in your mind. So to change what you do, you have to change the way you think, and to think differently, you need to change what goes into your mind.
Others don’t realize that the real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job; that you can best get to the top by getting to the bottom of things—and then climbing the stairs of success, one at a time. Success and happiness are not matters of chance but choice.
Sometimes all it takes is a word, a phrase, or a thought planted in someone’s mind to change his or her whole life. It truly pays to watch closely what and how you think.
Our character is formed by who we think we are and the standards and principles we embrace in our minds as truth.
Three men were busy at the same task, and a passerby stopped and asked each of the men what they were doing. The first man said, “I am cutting stone.” The second man said, “I am earning my living.” The third man said, “I am building a cathedral.” All three of the men were involved in cutting stone. The first man saw no purpose or value in what he was doing, and my guess is that his days were long and tedious. He probably went home tired and exhausted every night and dreaded going to work each day. The second man had a different perspective. He saw cutting the stones as a means to earn a living and probably had a better attitude than the first man. However, the value and purpose he saw in his effort was merely about getting his paycheck. I imagine this man spent a lot of time thinking about other jobs he might be able to get and probably found his work boring and repetitive.
The third man knew he was cutting stone, and he knew he was earning a paycheck, but he also saw value and purpose in his work that transcended those basic realities. The third man was building a cathedral that would be used by people. The cathedral would be a spiritual and social center where men and women could come to worship and fellowship together. That church, when completed, would give people hope and help them live better lives. What do you think the third man’s attitude was about his work? My guess is that he couldn’t wait to get to work every day. I imagine he arrived early and stayed late. He probably talked about his work all the time and was grateful to be doing something that was so much fun! I’m sure he could visualize that finished church in his mind and couldn’t wait to go there.
Getting knocked down in life is a given; getting up and moving forward is a choice.
If IBM believes investing huge amounts of time and money in artificial intelligence is smart and will pay off, can you imagine what you can do if you invest time to teach your real, truly intelligent brain new information?
Management expert Peter Drucker said, “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly or it vanishes.”
Reading great books about great people allowed me to learn the principles they embraced that produced success in their lives.
As I’ve said previously, I’ve been purposely reading nonfiction about three hours a day for many decades.
As I said previously, there is no substitute for experience, and there are two ways you can acquire experience. One is to go out and do things, and the other is to benefit from the experience of others! It can be a lot less costly to learn from others' mistakes and successes!
You have heard the saying that “God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason!” Did you know you don’t learn a thing when your mouth is moving? That may sound funny coming from a guy who consistently speaks at the rate of two hundred fifty words a minute with gusts up to four hundred, but it’s true.
What you may not know is that I’m a pretty good listener, and the things I’ve learned listening through the years have given me the ammunition I need to talk so much. I really love to listen to smart people, and I spend much of my time doing just that. I always carry a notepad and a pen so I can write down the good information I hear.
Wisdom is acquired by gaining knowledge and learning to apply that knowledge to the daily events of life. The daily events of life are filled with decisions, and these choices create the results of our lives. The kind of knowledge that creates wisdom is information that is true and correct.
Jim Rohn said, “Everyone should have at least six mentors.”
Many people believe that humans are just a more intelligent form of animal life, but that isn’t very logical, based on the observable facts and the track record of human beings. The difference between human beings and animal life is profound. Animals are driven and motivated by two things: survival and reproduction. Human beings break the mold of this model because our behavior is driven as much by what we believe as what we need. The things we believe drive our thinking; our thoughts produce emotions that influence our choices; and our choices determine what we do and how we live. In this respect, people are primarily driven and motivated by faith (what they believe).
The pain of exercising your brain comes in the form of being forced to think in ways that might be a bit uncomfortable.
To exercise your brain and challenge it to think, there are two things you need to do daily to be successful. The first is to continually add new information that your brain can process. New information comes by way of listening and observing. It also comes by way of reading. So the first step of brain exercise is to spend a little time each day soaking up new information through reading some good material or listening to audio messages by people who have knowledge you don’t have. This is why “Automobile University” (listening to audio material while commuting) is such an effective way to get new information.
The aging process is unstoppable, and someday we will all pass from this world and meet our Maker, but the quality of life for an aging person is directly related to how well they cared for their bodies in their younger years. I am so grateful I am now reaping the benefits of my decision all those decades ago to change my lifestyle.
As I am in the ninth decade of my life, I clearly see today that encouragement and hope are the two most powerful qualities any person can provide to others. This is true because encouragement and hope are critical to success: they are the fuel of confidence and the engine of positive thinking and attitude.
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.
Success is not a destination, it’s a journey.
It’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.
My late friend Mary Crowley said, “Worry is a misuse of the imagination,” and she hit the nail on the head with that remark.
There’s a song titled, “What If It All Goes Right?” by Melissa Lawson. The second line of the chorus is, “What if it all works out, what if the stars all line up . . . ” You have to develop a what if it does go right and work out expectancy if you want to be the winner you were born to be.
I’ve frequently said that motivation is not permanent, but neither is bathing or eating! If you eat and bathe every day, you’ll live longer and smell better in the process.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Actually, companies that do not train their people and invest in their ability don’t last.
I asked Dad while we were working on this book what he considered his biggest key to success other than character and integrity and he said persistent consistency was the number one reason for his success in life. Consistency means doing the things that you need to do in order to achieve success every single day. Persistency means sticking with it and doing the little extras so that every time you do it (consistency) you are getting better and better.
Don’t forget Howard Partridge’s quote: “Your business exists for ONE REASON and ONE reason ONLY - as a VEHICLE to help you achieve your Life Goals.”
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