Denis Waitley: This One-Phrase Motivation Hack Will Change Your Life!

Denis Waitley is the man that astronauts to heads of states call to learn at the highest level. He's the author of 16 books and has sold more than 10 million audio programs that have led to $100 million in sales. In this exclusive interview with Chris Widener, you'll hear Denis's best advice on how to overcome setbacks, how self-worth influences your net worth, and why you need to model success. And we got Chris's permission to put it up on our YouTube channel.

Enjoy. Dennis Waitley, welcome.

Thank you, Chris. It's great to be with you.

Yeah, it's good to have you here. Now, I like to help people get to know the person behind the personality, because particularly, especially when we're sitting down with someone like yourself who is so well known throughout the world, and anybody who has even remotely studied any sort of personal development, self-mastery, has heard the name Dennis Waitley, and most likely, according to the statistics, read one of your books or listened to one of your audio programs. And so this is just an informal chance for us to get to know you and the thoughts that you have brought about and brought to fruition over the years. And so I'm excited to be with you. You and I have spent a little bit of time together, but I like to hear some of the stories as well. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about your early life.

Well, it's not too exciting except that I was raised during the World War II era. And like all speakers, I came from a poor family. You know how we all say that we've overcome adversity to become great. And I never went to bed hungry. But we didn't have any money. My idea of money, my dad made $200 a month, was his biggest paycheck. And he said you could never live in a house like that. The rich people live there and they're born that way or crooked. So my dad thought you had to be either born with it or crooked to get it. And my mother made sandwiches for school and they were two pieces of Wonder Bread, mayonnaise and lettuce, a little pepper and salt. And I looked at it and I said, what is this? She said, that's a chicken sandwich. Without the chicken. I said, "How do you get the chicken?" And she said, "You gotta go mow some lawns and go to the store and bring your mama home a chicken." So we didn't have money, and my idea would have been maybe $800 a month would have been a king's ransom. But it was a good childhood. I listened to a lot of radio, which maybe got my radio voice. You know, listen to Sky King, who was Earl Nightingale in those days. And so I developed an audio kind of ear for the spoken word. And that was one of the things, reading a lot and listening a lot was an early childhood kind of thing.

Now you mentioned in jest, but it is true, you know, so many people say, well, I was born very poor and had hardships. Why do you suppose it is that so many people start out in sort of a, you know, tumultuous times or hard times, but then they go on to achieve such great things? I mean, is there something about that in our formative years that makes us go on and achieve great things?

I really think so. I think so many people have so much going in, they don't take anything out or forward. But if you don't have too much going in, then you're compensating for what you don't have and you try harder and work harder. So sometimes it's better to overcome adversity because then you really appreciate success when you get it.

So when you were growing up, did you say, I want to become wealthy, or I want to become a world-famous speaker, or— I think the speaking actually came out of the other things that you did we're going to talk about, but did you have these sort of, I want to escape and have more than what I had as a child?

Sure, my mom and dad argued a lot about money. My dad drank too much and smoked too much. And instead of being a chip off the old block, I wanted to be different than my dad. I wanted to be a man of the family. And they argued so much, I figured that they must be arguing about something that wasn't good. So I wanted to be different from my father. But I think I was inadequate and had ideas of self-doubt. And I think in order to get any self-esteem, I had to go out and prove myself, which means in athletics and in school. That was a way for me to see that I was better than where we were coming from.

It's interesting, you find a lot of people who didn't get that kind of self-esteem spoken to them by parents, and so it's almost like we grow up trying to achieve it so that we can, I don't know, prove it to ourselves or prove it to our parents. Was there some of that? You wanted to show your parents how much you could become?

Oh, a lot of that. In fact, when I was about 9 years old, my dad would come into my room and he'd been drinking and he would lean back against the light switch and blow it out. And I said, "How'd you do that?" And he said, "I got bad breath from drinking." He said, "But when the light's out for you, my son, it's out all over the world." And he said, "I don't want you to grow up like me. You don't have to be like me. But remember, when you sleep, the world is sleeping your dream. When you wake up, the world stretches and awakens with you." And when you're not feeling good, the world isn't a good place. The only world you'll ever know is the one you see through your eyes. And I said, wow, what a responsibility that I have to make the world as I see it through my eyes. And I think that helped me because he left home for good when I was 9, and I was left to be the man of the family with my little brother who became my little shadow and my sister. So I had to overcome where we came from, I think, at that age.

So you had a lot of responsibility thrust on you. That seems to be another aspect of overachievers is people, they experience responsibility at an early age, so they grow up too fast. Is that part of it as well?

Well, I think I had to take care of my mom, and she said, you know, I don't want you to grow up like your dad, and you need to be a good man. And so I would ride my bicycle about 20 miles one way to go to my grandmother's house, because at home I still felt inadequate, but at Grandma's house she made me feel like I was special. She said, you're a good boy and you mow a good lawn, and I'll give you piece of lemon pie because you're such a good boy. And I was thriving on any kind of positive input I could get, and she was the one that gave me the positive input.

Now you mentioned your grandmother. Is this maternal or paternal grandma?

It's maternal.

Okay, maternal. And you mentioned, as we were preparing for our conversation, you know, I said, who are your role models? And you mentioned your grandmother. Tell us about that.

Well, she's the primary role model in my life, and she and I planted a victory garden during World War II. We put these little seeds in the ground and she said, "Whatever you put in comes up." And I said, "Wow, how do you know? How do you know it's going to look like that?" And she said, "Because that's the way you plant it." She said, "The weeds will come in uninvited and unannounced. You don't have to even water the weeds, but you plant the seeds of greatness and you grow vegetables or fruit or good people." So remember, model yourself after people with proven track records of success and you'll plant the seeds of greatness in yourself. And she kept filling me with that kind of input. And so the Seeds of Greatness was like gardening for me, and I really believe that you cultivated and harvested what you plant.

Now, where was this when you were growing up? What area of the country?

San Diego, California.

San Diego?

Yeah, it was in San Diego, and I still live there, and my children, grandchildren live there. But I have fond memories of my grandmother believing in me when that's all I had to hang on to.

Yeah. As you travel around, one of the things I'm sure you talk about is avoiding naysayers and the people who speak negative things, but then also the self-talk that we tell ourselves and believe about ourselves. How can people, maybe they don't have a grandmother or an aunt or an uncle, maybe they're not getting it from their parents or brothers or sisters or even their spouse, how can we find somebody who can be a positive influence in our lives, somebody who can encourage us, build us up like your grandmother was for you? You weren't getting it at home, And so your grandmother became that for you and gave you the lift that you needed mentally in your youth.

Well, there's several things you can do. Obviously, it's good to be involved in organized extracurricular activities. You find it in sports on a team. You find it in music with a band. You find it by joining a camera club or a reading club, some kind of club where people are doing positive things. You belong even if it's wrong with a gang, belong to some kind of organized activity where people have the same goal rather than the same problem. That's one thing. But the most important thing, I think, is to read biographies of people who have overcome enormous obstacles to become successful. You read about Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey, you read about Jacques Cousteau, and you read about these average people, common people who become uncommonly successful, and you say, wow, they're not so special, or at least they weren't when they were kids, so maybe there's a chance for me if they did out of adversity what they did, maybe I could too. And you learn that they overcome enormous problems to become successful because that's what drove them.

What do you do if you have somebody in your life who is a close family member, maybe a spouse or even parents who are still living even if we're older, who are not particularly positive about the dreams that we want to achieve, the work that we want to pursue, those types of things. How do you overcome that? I mean, you don't want to sever the relationship, and yet we want to cultivate this atmosphere in our lives that is positive and uplifting. Is there any tips you can give people who might find themselves in that situation?

Well, I've been in that situation because my mother's always been very negative. She's 96 as we speak and believes that I should get a real job. She gives me classified ads, so, you know, wanted a good man for $1,500 a month with car.

Still to this day?

Yeah. The other day, do you think anyone in our family will ever become successful? And I said, well, you know, maybe the grandchildren, Mom. But what I've learned to do with her is I realize that she did the best she could with what she had to work with, and that I wasn't going to change her belief. So I pull the Venetian blinds on the negative things she said, and everything she said negative, I tried to reverse it. It's a hot day, I said, good sun. She said, it's raining, I said, good for the flowers. So I would always come back with a positive even though she came in with a negative, and that way I could reverse the thought. And the other thing I did is develop selective listening. When people would complain, you know, pity parties, group griping, grudge collecting, I would really try to selectively hear what the solution would be to the problem they were talking about. So I think it's very important to have a mastermind group and to hang around with optimists. If you're around a negative atmosphere, you have to have a good friend who's an optimist, or you have to belong to some kind of group that's talking about things. That's why I have I have lunch about once a week with people who might have similar goals but different backgrounds, and they challenge me to do better. Otherwise, you might stay in some rut that you were in simply because the people around you were maybe poisoning the water a little bit. And of course, the media, and the commercial media and news media a little bit. That's one great thing about this kind of program. You know, bad news sells. The fire that burns another warms the general population in the fact they're glad they weren't the victim of the day. So people pass on bad news, it makes them insulated and isolated from the problem, and they're glad that they weren't out there in the same way, and it makes them feel better being mediocre than challenging themselves because things are liable to turn out bad.

Yeah, yeah, TV nowadays, it seems like, what's the old saying, if it bleeds, it leads, you know, and that is really one of the goals here is to open people's minds to the ideas and the people who are promoting these kinds of ideas to help them understand that they can become better, that they can succeed, that they can achieve the things things that they want to achieve. Now I wanted to go back just a moment to parenting because we're going to talk at the end of the show about some really exciting stuff that you're doing. But I was reminded of a story, I believe it was Ted Turner when he won Time Man of the Year and he held up the magazine when he won it. He said, "Is this enough, Dad?" You know, and why is it that the people who are closest to us can sometimes be the hardest on us, whether it's a parent or a spouse? What takes place there? Why, when we say that we love somebody, can we be so tough on them?

I guess we love them so much that we're so critical of them. We keep digging up the seeds that are planted to see how they're doing. And what's bad about that is you feel inadequate because they're criticizing you. They're being a judge rather than a role model. They're being a critic instead of an encourager. And parents don't really realize how important it would be to just listen to children. And show interest in what they're doing instead of trying to make the children vicariously live their lives over again. So that's really what many parents want. They want their children to prove that the parents are good. And so that's a real problem. When I was about 12, I had a recurring dream. So you asked me about positive thinking and how I got into this. I had a dream over and over again. It wasn't a nightmare, it was a good dream. And I was in a tuxedo and I was older and I was in Carnegie Hall and I was standing there in front of the audience and they rose to their feet and gave me a standing ovation. And in the front row was mom and dad and my family, my grandma. And I remember saying in the dream, "Is it okay now? Am I okay? Is that acceptable behavior? I mean, am I, am I a good boy now?" Because grandma is the only one that said it. Not mom or dad, or not really. They— so I was proving myself in those dreams as somebody that could do something special. And about 25, 30 years later, I found myself in a tuxedo in Carnegie Hall, and I did get a standing ovation, but my parents weren't there. But it still was the same effect on me. I still said to myself, I'm okay now. It's too bad that we need external approval, though. That we need an audience to tell us that we're okay. It would be better if we were internal, if we played a beautiful piece on the piano and we knew it was good because we did it for the sake of excellence. But if you have to have an audience, then it means maybe you're still trying to prove yourself.

Yeah, I think there's a balance because I think we were created with a need for other people. Otherwise, if we were completely independent, I wouldn't need you, you wouldn't need me, we all live our separate lives. But really where it gets out of whack is when it becomes an overwhelming need or an unhealthy need. How do you balance that between, you know, you want your mother's approval, you want your father's approval, but you can't live off of your mother and father's approval. Does that make sense? I mean, how do you find that balance?

Oh, for sure it does. And what's so good about what you just said is that you want to play for a gallery of one, which is your own idea of being created for excellence, but at the same time, you want to help other people, And you really want to be a good friend to other people. And one of the ideas in life is to create other winners. And that's one way where you can, instead of just gaining approval, you can actually help other people achieve their dreams. And if you get out of yourself and into them, you really don't worry so much about yourself and you don't become selfish. You can have good self-esteem but still give yourself away and you've given up nothing. By sharing the best in you, you haven't given up anything, but you couldn't keep it anyway. So unless you give it away— knowledge and money are the same thing. They don't do any good when you have them. They only do you good when you employ them. So I think it's a great idea to say, sure, I'm as good as the best, but no better than the rest. And one of the things I need to do is pass my wins along, and that makes me feel better for being human.

So it's the balance between, on one hand, you don't want to be dependent on somebody else, and on the other hand, you don't want to be completely independent or autonomous. You want interdependence.

Sure. And then you're helping each other, so it's a shared victory. It's a double win. If you win, I win. If I help you win, then I win too.

Yeah, healthy interactions and that kind of thing. So who are some of your other role models? Over the years you've met, I mean, everybody. Who have been some of the people that you've looked up to, who've taught you, who you've learned from, who've really made a nice investment in your life?

Well, I think Billy Graham has been one really. I remember him looking at me and he said, "How many lives have you changed, Dennis?" And I said, "One, Dr. Graham. I've allowed mine to be changed, but I don't change people's lives." And he said, "Me neither." He said, "I give them what I believe in. They come down from the outfield to the infield, give them some literature and a prayer, and they usually go back to being themselves, unless at that moment they've intersected a commitment that they make to change." And I said, "Wow, that's kind of the way I feel, but you've done it with a lot of people." a lot more people, Dr. Graham. So he's been one that has been authentic, an authentic preacher. He walks the talk. Another one has been Dr. Jonas Salk, and he was my mentor and boss for many years. He's the one that discovered the first polio vaccine. And he said, you know, you're a crazy guy. You know nothing about science, but a lot about people. He said, why won't people invest in science? And I said, because It isn't any fun. People will do what they want before they do what they need, and therefore they'll spend their money on tension relieving instead of goal achieving. He says, so what we have to do is make investing in the future fun. I said, exciting, passionate, and not— don't pull too much on their negative emotional heartstrings, but give them an excitement and they will invest in it. And he said, that's a good lesson. He said, so what about a hidden agenda? What is that? I said, that's what people are really coming for. And the thing we ask questions for, Dr. Salk, is to find out what they really want. We do a want analysis and we find out what they're coming for, and that's a hidden agenda. So he was a great role model. He said, you know, you ought to go back to school. I'll help you get back. I'll help you get into psychology. If you're going to be selling a dream, you better be underpinned with good psychology. So he's the one that encouraged me to get a doctorate in human behavior and introduced me to a lot of really important people like Abraham Maslow and Viktor Frankl and William Glasser and some of the real icons in the— Carl Rogers— and that gave me the incentive to want to be more professional about what I did.

I want to go back as we transition out of the role models and all that to Annapolis. I mean, that's a pretty amazing— my son wants to go to Naval Academy. That's one of his big dreams, and very few people get to have that kind of experience. How did you end up at Annapolis?

Well, of course, it's the only way you can get a free education when you don't have any money. Yeah, yeah. And when the Korean War is on, instead of carrying a rifle, you want to go hide in a service academy. But my dad said that if I stayed in the Navy, kept my nose clean, and didn't rock the boat, I could retire with $800 to $1,000 a month. He said that really early in life. So before he left home, he really planted the seed that maybe a free education, a service academy. So I was obsessed with it, told everyone that that's where I was going to go, and then realized you needed an appointment by a congressman. So I tried to get, you know, Senator Nixon to give me an appointment, and then I didn't get that. So I had to join the Naval Reserve. They activated my unit, put me on a submarine, and were sending me to Korea. And I said, this is not going to work. So I studied really hard to pass the fleet examination, got into the Naval Academy, And sure enough, my mentor and big brother there was H. Ross Perot.

Oh, really?

Yeah, Ross Perot was the brigade commander there, and he had that same fiery intensity as he had when he used to run for president a couple of times. But he was a really good role model and example for me at the academy. And I think that I wasn't cut out to be a career service officer, but on the other hand, it taught me some discipline. It taught me some goal setting. It taught me that it takes a lot more effort than you think. And it was really good for me. That's why I became a pilot, because it was exciting and passionate.

Yeah, what kind of planes did you fly?

I flew first the old AD and then the A-4D, so I became a low-level attack carrier-based pilot, being catapulted off in the middle of the night. Can you imagine a poet being a pilot? Yeah. Every landing was a controlled crash on the carrier. As long as I caught a wire, it was great.

Yeah, it's amazing. So how did you get then, you got this period of time, we talked about your early life, then we talked about going to Annapolis and the things that you learned there, how do you go from being a fighter pilot to being a best-selling author and speaker? What took place over that? What was the transition? Give us a lay of the land there.

Well, I was more interested in people than I was in being a combat pilot. I was always trying to help the people, help the enlisted men, and be a guy that was speaking more. And of course, what does a naval officer who wants to be an admiral do? Speaking. So even then I began to be interested in personal development rather than in just being a defender. But I think resigning my commission, getting out of the Navy, had some small children. I went to work for Ampex Corporation, which had just invented the videotape recorder. And then I went to Russia to this World Fair there, and Nixon and Khrushchev were in the kitchen debating. And Khrushchev had his shoe and he said, we'll bury your grandchildren. Nixon said, no, you won't. and we smuggled out the videotape in our underwear back to the United States. And I think the idea of video and marketing and management got me more interested in public service and in publicity. But it wasn't until I came down to the Salk Institute and met Jonas Salk and decided to raise money for him, and he said, "I hate to speak, so you're going to go out and speak for me." while I'm in the kitchen making the formula. And everyone would be angry because here this guy coming and they said, you're no Jonas Salk. I said, no, but I'm gonna tell you why science is so important. So I had to explain complicated scientific things in layman's terms. And I think I developed at that time an ability to go out and speak over and over and over again. It was the fact that I did a little tape on, you know, POW, because at the same time during the '70s, I became a rehabilitation coordinator for the Vietnam prisoners of war. And on top of that, I wrote my doctorate thesis on why no American prisoner ever escaped from a minimum security camp during the Korean War. I couldn't believe it. If you're in a minimum security camp, you don't try to escape, but there's no barbed wire. If you're in a maximum security camp, there's barbed wire and dogs and machine guns. And you escape. Why? Because you're a leader. When you're purposeful, you know where you're going. When you're purposeless, you stay for the duration. So that became an underlying thesis for my whole, if you will, pitch in life was POW could be prisoner of war, could be Prince of Wales, could be power of women, could be prisoner of wishes, prisoner of work. But more likely, it could be psychology of winning. Depending on what you did with it.

Psychology of Winning. When people say Dennis Waitley, at least when I hear that, I think of two things: Psychology of Winning, Seeds of Greatness. And so you come out with this audio program, Psychology of Winning, and as we've talked, you told me something really interesting. You said, I didn't do it so much for other people, you did it for yourself. How did that all come about? How did you end up going from doing what you're doing, speaking on behalf of Dr. Salk, and then all of a sudden creating the best-selling audio program of all time. How does that, how does that happen?

Because I was losing instead of winning. And because I was losing, I wasn't doing well professionally. I sold the Salk Foundation to another foundation. I ended up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the middle of the winter, not being wanting to be there. I was a California boy. I'm in the worst winter. I don't have a job anymore because this foundation is being closed down. My kids want to mutiny. I'm a single father with 4 children, and my children don't want to be the bad news bearers anymore. They want to go back to California. They want to be in Pittsburgh. My son wanted to play football, and they mutinied on me. And there I was in the middle of the winter saying, I'm not a winner, I'm a loser. What would make a winner? If I could be a winner, what would I do? And I began to do more of my own research, more of the things I learned from Salk and from the other behavioral scientists. And I wrote the program for me, not based on my success, but based on what I wasn't doing. And that's why I think that some people wait until they perform to feel valuable. What if instead you felt value would lead to your performance? And what if you could learn at the worst time of your life that that might be the moment where you could bring the best out of you? Because when things are going well, you coast. When things are not going well, you have two choices: wallow in it or get out of it. So I wrote that program night after night, day after day. People would see me coming in this medical center in Pittsburgh and say, what are you doing? I said, I'm writing a program for myself to try to get out of here. And they said, you're a California boy, you want to go home, huh? And I said, I want to go home with my family. And so I wrote it for myself. I did a small tape of it. Earl Nightingale happened to hear the tape because World Book Childcraft had sent it to him because I did a speech for them. And he called me and said, you know, you have a nice voice. You're not well known, but you have a nice voice, good material. I think maybe, you know, maybe we might be able to use you. And that was— he had the only tape program out. In the spoken voice, Lead the Field, and The Strangest Secret. I still really believe in The Strangest Secret. I believe we become what we think about most of the time. I definitely believe we become that to which we're most exposed. And I think the exposure really leads to a reflex behavior because it's all habit. And habits are really comfortable. They're easy to get into. They're hard to break. They're really replaced. And they go from cobwebs in the cables So for me, the tape album was done for me. Earl Nightingale discovered by some intersection, and I was lucky that they used that album to build a mailing list. I mean, I wasn't known, so what do you use the album for? Yeah, send it out, you know, send out the stuff. Why would they send that stuff out on me? Because I didn't demand a high royalty because I wasn't well known, and wasn't that confident of myself to demand a royalty. But had I demanded a high royalty, they would never have done it. So I got really lucky that they used me as a front-end list builder.

How old were you at the time?

Believe it, I was almost 40. So I was in my late 30s. So, you know, it shows you that you can either have, either have permanent potential, but you don't have to do it when you're a teenager, you can put it all together by taking everything you've learned and turning failure into fertilizer or experience into something that comes together later in life. And that's why I didn't really start making it until I was in my late 30s and early 40s. So I think that we all reach a crossroad in life where we can— we don't have to believe that we're a failure because we haven't found out where we're going, even when we're in our late 30s or 40s.

Hey there, it's Chris Widener, and I hope that you're enjoying this interview that I did with one of the legends of personal development. And if you'd like even more information and great resources from the legends of personal development, all you have to do is click on the link below in the description, and I've got plenty more for you. So with that, let's get back to the interview. You mentioned a couple of people at particular times have come into your life and you weren't even really looking for them, were you? I mean, I mean, you weren't looking for Earl Nightingale. All of a sudden, he kind of shows up, and the tape gets passed from here to here. And is life like that? I mean, it seems to me like that's the way life really happens is, you know, we can go out and say, I'm going to achieve this, and I want it. But aren't we most likely to be pleasantly surprised by things that happen upon us?

Well, I think, yeah, you're exactly right. You know, Robert Schuller says, your greatest success will always be God's greatest secret. In other words, the person that helps you will be the least most likely to have intersected in your life. But there's that, that great analogy, if you will. Luck really is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. If opportunities are not out there, if opportunity is within you, then if you're always out there, you're liable to run into somebody who will help you get what you want. But unless you're out there— so I have a UPS driver, And he says, "I've always wanted to be a rock star, Dr. Waitley." And I said, "Where are you singing now?" He said, "No, I'm delivering packages and I got this small—" And I said, "No, you don't understand. Whatever you want to become, you need to be doing it now. You can't put it on layaway. You have to be practicing within when you're without. You have to be singing somewhere." Because if you look at everyone who's been successful, you'll find that but they're using their free time, their prime time, as preparation for what they really want to do. So they don't just wait for opportunity to show up, they're out there intersecting it every day. And that's where luck comes from.

Yeah. Was it Armand Hammer said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." That's right. I think that's what he said. And it really is true. And I think maybe that's some reason why some people don't ever get to achieve their dreams is because they aren't working on themselves so that when the door of opportunity does swing open, they're able to walk through it.

Well, that's true, and that's why I like this kind of program so much. If you figure that we spend most of our free time watching other people making money, having fun in their profession, they're loving what they do. The ones that are doing sitcoms and reality, they love it because they're being paid for what they love to do, and we're watching them and keeping their ratings up because we're doing things that overcome the frustration of the mediocrity in a day that we really didn't want to spend. But that's why I think you've got to live in prime time. You've got to watch things that you want to become and be inspired by what you watch rather than just titillated. You know, rather than just be shocked or viscerally stimulated, I think you have to be emotionally and mentally stimulated and inspired. That's why I like to watch positive television because it really helps. I watch National Geographic and Discovery Channel and the History Channel, and I watch programs that really make me feel better about myself. Of course, you know what that does. It makes you motivated into realizing you're not doing as well as you could, and it makes you maybe forced to be a little stressed and get out of your comfort zone.

Yeah, so you end up doing Psychology of Winning.

How many audio programs did that sell? That sold 2 million copies at $50 apiece. Wow. First go-around, and it's just, it's been chugging along. For 25 years.

Ever since? Yeah. What are the keys in the Psychology of Winning program? If somebody said, what are the 3 main things that I would want to walk away with that would enable me to apply them to my life and change my life, what would they be?

I think one of the first things would be that you believe in your potential and you invest in it because you're as good as the best but no better than the rest. So if you actually believe that you're valuable without having done anything, then that's potential. And that way you'll put education and training into you. So you have to at least believe that you're better than what you're doing. Then I think the other thing would be is that who's in charge here? And I always say, you know, God deals and says, go ahead, make your choice, do what you choose, but remember there are rules of the game. And I will keep you as the field judge on track. And so what I've done is try to be accountable. And I tell people that accountability or personal responsibility, that winners make it happen and losers let it happen, that winners deserve to win. There never was a winner who wasn't a beginner. So when you begin anything new, you're awkward, you don't feel confident. So you need to still keep in mind, you hang on to your dream when that's all you have to hang on to. You feel responsible and accountable for the outcome, and you focus all your intensity on desired result instead of penalty of failure. You go through life driving through the windshield rather than looking through the rearview mirror. If you're always looking through the rearview mirror, you're going in the opposite direction. And a fear can become as much of a goal as a goal, because the fear is a goal going in the opposite direction. So I think the feeling of deserving, the feeling of accountability, the feeling of having a focused idea, something specific that you want, maybe a magnificent obsession, and then be willing to put the practice in that the rest of the population aren't willing to do. Because I think that if you do it right in drill, you'll do it right in life. I learned that as a pilot. I learned that watching and helping the astronauts. Observation, imitation, repetition, simulation, rehearsal, internalization, reflex. There never was an Olympian who didn't practice so much that when they went to do it, they just remembered. They didn't try. So I think that self-discipline combined with belief in self would be the key, that persistence and looking at failure as the fertilizer of life, you know, trying to remain optimistic through setbacks. The mental toughness of that would be another key.

You know, you mentioned athletes. You've worked a lot with athletes. In fact, chairman of psychology for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Olympic teams from 1980 to 1992, right? And we look at athletes, at least I do, you know, you go to a professional baseball game and you see this guy walk into the batter's box and here comes this pitch, 90 miles an hour, it's curving, the next one's 70 miles an hour. There's so much to take in And we watched this person just effortlessly swing and hit this ball 410 feet over the fence. And there is a danger, I think, when we see successful people, whether it's in athletics or business people or whatever, to think that it came easy to them, to think that, oh, they're just good at what they do, or they've been lucky, or, you know, whatever these excuses we make to make it easy for them. But what we don't see is the thousands of hours of practice in a batting cage or writing speeches and rewriting speeches if you're a public speaker, all these different things. What do you think is the key to developing our lives so that we can become successful as it relates to this practice makes perfect idea? I mean, it's one thing to say, okay, I can see what a professional baseball player has to do. He has to take hundreds and hundreds of pitches, thousands of hours in a batting cage. But how does that apply when you're a manager in a company? Or a mom raising your kids, how do you— how does that concept transfer over?

Well, I think it's just the same. Behind every world-class athlete, there's a world-class coach. Behind every world-class person, there's a world-class coach. You find people with proven track records of success who've been where you want to go, and you learn the correct swing before you can play the inner game of anything. So you've got to learn the swing with each club. Golf is a great example. Most of us go out in the driving range and hit a bucket of balls, and I go out and practice my hooks, my slices, my dubs, and my lofts. And I practice my mistakes because I didn't have a coach, role model, or mentor to teach me how to do it right. I've been using trial and error, and unfortunately the errors are the ones that are practiced and repeated. What you do in each of these instances, in my opinion, is to find someone who's doing what you want to do and doing it well. Maybe they're about your age or maybe they're older, but they're usually someone that you can use as a role model. You know, you don't use a celebrity who you'll never meet and somebody who's, you know, I wouldn't look at Michael Jordan if I were just trying to shoot better free throws. I would find somebody that was most like me. I'd read about them. I'd study their lives, and I'd try to go to seminars, programs, and watch videos of them. And I'd rehearse the correct swing because even Harvey McKay has been saying that in his books. Practice doesn't make perfect. It makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect. So why would you practice your errors? And that's why I tell young people, Why do you think that you have to go out and make all the mistakes yourself rather than listen to veterans? So every veteran should have a rookie, and every rookie should have a veteran, because the rookies have the energy, believe they can't fail. The veterans know if you persist, you will succeed, and the veterans also have learned the correct swing. So I think one of the secrets is to study success rather than failure. And not go out on trial and error. I think it's to simulate the real thing.

I said two things that I think of when I think of Dennis Whaley: Psychology of Winning, Seeds of Greatness. Not many people get to have a great follow-up. I mean, there are lots of people that do a great thing. Very few people, or even fewer people, actually do a great thing and follow it up with a great thing. How did Seeds of Greatness come about?

Well, I backed into that because I was known as an audio voice, you know, kind of Pat Boone warmed over. Some people say to me, "How did you sell that many tapes? I mean, you're not that exciting." And I said, "Well—" Thank you very much. "I'm excited on the inside." They say, "You're no Tony Robbins." And I said, "No, I'm not. I'm who I am, and I don't try to copy other people." But the interesting thing, and of course I like to make fun of myself, I like to be a Bob Newhart with a little Vince Lombardi shoved on the inside, Bob Newhart personality on the outside. I like to really poke fun at myself so I don't, get impressed, because one of the worst things you can do is begin to get impressed with yourself. But I've said I've sold so many tapes because America has trouble sleeping. And if you'll pop one of my tapes in at bedtime, I mean, it's really a good way to relax.

It's more expensive than NyQuil, but hey, same sort of thing. That's true.

But I think having spoken a lot for companies and remembering my grandmother, I needed a sequel of some kind. I didn't need Son of Psychology of Winning or Psychology of Winning 2, So I went back to my grandmother's idea of the garden, and I began to write another program, only this time it was a book because I had not written a best-selling book. I mean, Psychology of Winning as a book was, was not a number one bestseller. It was just a listening program. So I wrote Seeds of Greatness and likened it to the garden and remembered what my grandmother said about the seeds and the success, and it happened to be one of the best-selling books in, in the in the 1980s.

What are the key seeds of greatness?

Well, the seed of love would be to look for good in somebody. I think to love someone is to look for the good in them and to overlook the blemishes and to realize that love is not conditional. So unconditional love means you accept people in spite of what they do. I think another seed is the seed of faith. There's no such thing as a lack of faith. There's only good faith or bad faith, because it either depresses you, your negative faith, or it inspires you. And faith is in something unseen and maybe unknown, and yet you believe it because you believe it with all your heart. But it may not be something you've experienced firsthand. And I think the seed of Perception or perspective. Looking beyond yourself for meaning in life. Looking at the big picture. Believing that it's unfolding as it should be and that I'm fitting into the harmony of the way it was created. I think perspective is great. Being able to see clearly with a vision of the world and not become pessimistic. And of course, the seed of direction or goals. I mean, goals are like guided missiles. They have a navigational guidance computer inside, and you set a target, and it makes negative feedback corrections and hits the target. If you don't have a target, it wanders aimlessly around or self-destructs. So I think some of those seeds were similar to the psychology of winning, but they really likened it more to a garden, and at the end you realize the garden is never complete. Because just when you think it's a great life and the garden is perfect, some ants and some aphids come over here. It rains too much or rains too little, and the garden always needs tending. You never will have a perfect garden, and life is like that too. Just when it looks so good, And then something else comes along to make you have to get back and cultivate and do some more planting.

Seeds of Greatness has a special part in my life because the first time I ever met you, and I'm assuming you remember this because we've talked about it a few times, I was going to put on conferences. I had this big idea I was going to be a conference promoter. So I had a friend and I called him up and he was putting on a conference where you were speaking. And I said, hey, I'd like to come and just learn. You know, kind of like you were saying, if you want to do something, go learn from people who are already doing it. So my son and I came, and he was probably 9 or 10 at the time, something like that. And I called this friend and I said, hey, can I come and help out to see the inner workings of putting on a conference? And he said, I really need somebody to drive Dennis Waitley around, so if you could be his host while he's here. And I thought, hey, super. So I had my son read Seeds of Greatness, I think when he was 9 or 10 years old, and I was so impressed because he was just a chatterbox, you know. After reading the book, he wanted to know all the the questions. And I was just impressed that you took the time. And that was really my first opportunity to meet you and to see that, just like you've said, you can't believe all the press about yourself. And I've always been amazed at what a kind and generous person you've been in all the different areas of your life. And so that's always been impressive to me. That's got to be one of the seeds of greatness, maybe not actually written in the book, book, but this idea of being a pursuer of achievement and those types of things, but remaining humble. How does humility play into this idea of I want to be successful, I want to be an achiever, but at the same time remaining humble about who we are and a kind and generous type of person?

Well, I feel that if you got the real thing, you don't have to flaunt the loud, expensive imitation. The people that shout the loudest are calling for help. So there's always this in-your-face kind of person And that works for gladiators because gladiators need to intimidate people, and maybe it works in the arena, but in real life it doesn't. I've always felt that arrogance is God's gift to shallow people. In other words, the longer the stretch of the limousine is that you need to ride in, the more you need to stretch yourself to hide the lightly valued self of the little child inside. So I think self-esteem is inversely proportional to the stretch of the limousine. Because a limousine should be ridden in because you enjoy it, not because other people are impressed by it. So I think the people that try to be impressive are the least impressive. The people that talk about themselves the most are very boring, because one of the things that I've learned is no one cares really about what you've done unless it benefits the person who's listening. Why show slides of your trip? They're not interested in where you've been unless you got a ticket waiting for them. So I try not to say things that are important to me unless I feel there's some value for somebody else. And I think humility is serving others with grace. And you stop to think about some of the greatest people. They've got so much going for them. They're so successful. Why wouldn't they be warm and generous and eager to share it? I mean, why wouldn't they give back to the fans what the fans have given them, the financing and the the adulation. So why wouldn't you be the most humble, gracious, warm, open, stay for hours and sign, help little kids? I mean, after all, that's what made you who you are. And I've always felt that— one of my daughters came home and she said, Dad, there's this great-looking guy. He's an athlete and a student and he can dance and oh, he's what a hunk. And he spoke to me. I said, come on, honey, let me tell you something. If he's good-looking and an athlete and smart and can dance and is a hunk, he should be the most warm and open, because look what he's got going for him. He's got all this success inside. Why wouldn't you pass on your wins? And that's what I feel. Unless you pass your wins on, it's a hollow victory to stand there over a fallen adversary to say, look at me. I'd rather say, we did it. You know, share the glory. And to build other winners too. And I think that really makes a champion.

What are some of the greatest lessons you've learned over life? Wow, there's, there's been plenty.

Yeah, some of them I've learned is that the persistence and patience are not exactly the same, because persistence can become obstinance. So what you can do is, if I fail once, then I need to learn more. If I fail twice, I need to learn more. If I fail 3 times, I need to do it a little differently. And if I fail 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 times, maybe I have set my goals a little too high. Maybe I need to bring them in a little bit. And I've learned it's much better to succeed by the inch rather than to try to go for the touchdown in one play. To stair-step success and pull myself along because you get reinforcement when you succeed in a small way. And you can overcome your mistakes easier if you bite off little pieces rather than try to take these big— because most people give up because they say, I knew, I knew it wouldn't work. That's because they're not incrementalizing. Another thing I've learned is that I am as good as the best, meaning that I have potential that I can do, but I'm no better than anyone who's ever been born or has yet to be born. And that's why I say I'm not impressed. I express, but I don't impress. And I've learned that that works for me. And I've learned that some of the best people I've ever met are so humble. And I say, wow. You know, we talked about that maybe in coming over. You know, we talked about a star who's nice. Well, why wouldn't they be? You know, why would they be this prima donna? They're prima donna because it came quick, came easy, and that maybe they didn't have to really work hard to get it. Because you have to work hard to get it. That you never forget who brought you to the dance. So I try to remember who said the quote, who to give credit to, and make sure I never forget anyone who's ever helped me. I think another thing that I've learned is that failure really is the stuff that success is made of if you use it as mulch or fertilizer. You don't want to wallow in your mistakes. You want to learn from them. So it's a learning experience and a temporary inconvenience, but failure is not a person, it's an event. I learn that every day. Failure is an event, not a person. So don't wear your failures on your back. You don't have to carry them forward. You learn from them. And somebody told me that the other day. They said, you know, I'm divorced. And I said, you're unmarried or single? When were you divorced? They said, I was divorced 3 years ago. And I said, I'm glad it's over. So in other words, it's final, and now you can go forward and learn from that and maybe, you know, have a better relationship next time.

Yeah, we all make mistakes, we all have failures, we all, you know, all the people that we see who are successful, you can look back in their life and say, hey, there were problems, there were bankruptcies, there were divorces, there were, you know, all sorts of difficulties. And yet, isn't it true that the most successful people are really in many ways just the people who keep going. They're the ones who decide to keep going instead of quitting.

It's really not rocket science, you know. They do have patience and persistence, and they hang in there, and they keep trying. They don't give up. The other thing they do, I think, is your self-worth in the long run influences your net worth. So your net worth is your achievement, and your self-worth gives you a passport to achievement. It allows you to believe that you can add a zero to your income. And you don't have to wait for an opportunity. You know, we've talked about that earlier. I will never wait for an incoming call because I've never had an incoming call offer me an opportunity, only offering me something to buy. People call me to achieve their goals. I call them to have them help me achieve mine. So I think you really have to make outgoing calls rather than wait for the incoming call to give you that lucky break.

You have entered into a new stage in your life where you're developing a lot of concepts around a topic that is new, at least to your public life, certainly not to your personal life. Tell us what you're doing now.

Well, I've decided to be more of a family leadership guy because I made so many mistakes raising my own children. You know, I've had his, hers, ours, theirs, been a single father for 9 years, and so I want to plant the seeds of greatness in the next generation. And I'd like to see us pass on values to our kids, roots and wings, instead of loot and things. If you give your kids loot and things, they won't have any roots and wings because they'll believe that money grows on a tree that is given to them by— the dad tree. The dad or mom tree, the credit card tree, or the born in America tree, or the entitlement tree. And it doesn't grow on that. So I'm really hoping to take a new version of the Seeds of Greatness for the next generation and do some roots of core values and some wings of self-motivation and expectancy and really try to help, 'cause I'm worried, you know, I'm always, you know, maybe when you get older, you worry. I believe the country's in good hands with young leadership, but I think there's a skin-deep culture that's invested in immediate gratification, and I think we need to delay gratification for the goal rather than try to get everything now.

What are the key principles that you're trying to communicate through Seeds of Greatness and your family leadership program?

Well, I think one of the most important ones has to do with money, believe it or not, that we don't talk about money with our kids. It's almost as taboo as sex. And so if we talked about how money is earned, how money is spent, and let them go down and go to the grocery store and take the coupons with us and learn to make choices based on what something's worth. To give children an allowance early to have them learn how to manage money. 30% to spend now, 50% to spend later in the year, 10% to give away to someone needy or the church, and then 10% for the future which you don't spend. And learn how to use debit cards instead of credit cards that you have to pay for your own cell phone bill, and if you're going to message other students, it's going to cost some money. And to have this mentality that if I give value, then I receive value, but it doesn't just come because of where I was born or who I am. So that's one of the things that would be to internalize value and then make them realize there's effort and delayed gratification to get there. And I think the important thing is is to develop a belief in one's potential that isn't always measured against celebrity or athletic ability, that believe that I'm worthy of success, and then get the discipline and early responsibility to make choices and live with those choices as long as they're not dangerous. In other words, a parent's role should be to plant the seeds, to let them mistake— make mistakes, Let them make choices in a safe environment as long as that doesn't damage them physically or emotionally and let them get the logical consequence or reward of their efforts and choices as early as possible so we can really develop a generation of, shall we say, hungry immigrants in our own country who are hungry for knowledge and are working as hard as an immigrant would work having just come to this country.

You think that sometimes we do our kids a lack of justice, so to speak, in protecting too much, not allowing them to experience the things that they need to experience?

Oh, I actually do. We tend to give our children everything they didn't earn, everything we didn't have. We want our children to do better than us, so we try to facilitate that, and we really don't want them to fail, and that's a problem because that's a very healthy thing, is to make mistakes, so we tend to protect them, number one, but we expect the best because we want them to live up to our expectation. 'cause it makes us feel like a good parent if they do well. And the problem with that is that we probably engage them in way too many organized activities and we over-promote their time and pretty soon it's all activity-based and they don't end up being able to be a child, they don't have dinner together. You know, I just read the other day that the parents that eat with their children have children who are more successful in school and in college than those that don't eat with them a few times a week. So I think turning the television off during supper, eating with the child, and being a hands-on parent rather than a parent that just tries to buy the child's affection rather than giving them time.

Dennis Whaley, thanks for being with us. I appreciate you and all your knowledge and all the things that you've done and just all the things that we can learn from you and people like yourself who, who sort of lead the way in the area of thoughts and ideas and action and goal setting and all that type of thing. Well, thank you.

I really have to pay a compliment back to you though. You know, I've seen your growth and seen where you've come, and you've come so far, and I'm just so excited that we have a generation of champions that are in this new 21st century, and I'm just excited to be a friend and also a co-mentor with you, a collaborator. It's great to be with you, Chris. Thanks.

To see Chris's interview with Jim Rohn, which was the last time Jim Rohn did a video interview, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. What you're about to watch is the last video interview that Jim Rohn ever did. He sits down with Chris Widener to talk about how to get the right mentors, set meaningful goals, and stop being broke.