Wayne Dyer: Transform Your Life by Changing Your Thoughts!

He was an American self-help author and motivational speaker. His first book, The Erroneous Zone, is one of the best-selling books of all time with over 35 million copies sold worldwide. He spent most of his early life up until the age of 10 in an orphanage on the east side of Detroit after his father walked out on his family. He's Wayne Dyer, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

You can't give away what you don't have. Now, it sounds ridiculous, okay, but it's more than what meets the ear as you hear this. You can't give away what you don't have. People who are not good at giving away love can't give away love because they don't have it to give away. If I want to give you a dozen oranges, I can't give you those dozen oranges unless I go out and pick up 12 oranges someplace. Otherwise, all it is is just empty rhetoric. And the same thing is true of virtually everything in your life. You can't give away love for others if you don't have love in here to give away. If what you have in here is contempt, If what you have in here is anger, if what you have in here is fear, then these are the things you're going to be giving away in your life. The second thing that the ego teaches us is that who I am is not only what I have, but who I am is what I do, what I accomplish. And so we spend a big hunk of our lives believing that the way that we become, quote, successful, happy, fulfilled, self-actualized, whatever it might be, is on the basis of what I what my resume looks like, how many promotions I get. And so we send our children off to school, and we ask them to learn to identify themselves on how much they get and what they accomplish. Your grades become more important than what it is that you are studying. What you own, what clothes you wear, what labels you have and so on. And we become obsessed with this kind of absurdity. And we, this is the false self at work. There are many ways to get the things that we want for ourselves in our lives, but basically it all begins with how we choose to think. As you think, so shall you be. 7 little words that I think are perhaps The most important things that we can learn and master in our lives. This old proverb notion that I become what I think about all day long. And once you know that what you think about is what expands, you start getting real careful about what you think about. You don't allow your thoughts to be on anything that you don't want or that you wouldn't want to have manifest or show up for you in your life. Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing. One of the central principles of my life is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist about anything, and that each and every one of us, when we close our mind to what is possible for us or what is possible for humanity, closes off the genius that resides and lives in each and every one of us. Having an open mind doesn't necessarily mean, uh, finding fault with all of the things that you've been taught by others. It means opening yourself up to the potentiality and the possibility that anything and everything is possible. So having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing really means finding within ourselves the ability to get rid of a trait that I find so common in contemporary— in the contemporary world. Do you know that most people that I meet spend their lives looking for occasions to be offended. They actually are out there hoping that they can find some reason to be offended. And there's no shortage of reasons. They're out there everywhere. The way this person dressed, the what this person said. They turn on their TV, they hear the news, they're offended by this. Someone didn't, uh, someone used language that they didn't like. Someone doesn't share the same customs that you And people all day long, in fact, if you keep track tomorrow, you will find, uh, probably 100 reasons that you can go around being offended. But a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing is a mind that says, I'm never looking for anything to be offended by. And that whatever anybody else out there has to say, my response to that is, that's an interesting point of view. I've never considered that before. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Albert Einstein once observed that, uh, you have the most fundamental and major decision that you have to make in your life is this: do I live in a friendly or a hostile universe? Which is it? Is it a universe that is filled with hostility and anger and people wanting to hate each other and people wanting to kill each other? Is that what you see? Because when you see the world that way, that's exactly what you will create for yourself in your life. This is from great scientific minds. And the interesting thing is that this is not just a, a clever play on words, that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. It's actually a very scientific thing, and I'm going to show you that in just a moment. I'd like you to imagine the following scene. You're in your house. You've got your car keys in your hand. The lights go out. Power failure. You can't see a thing. You stumble around in your living room and you drop your keys. And you look around for a moment and you realize that you're never going to find them in the dark. But you look outside and you notice that the streetlights are on. So in your mind, a light bulb goes off. Hmm, I'm not going to sit around here in the dark and grope around looking for my keys when there's a light on outside. I'm going to go out here under the streetlight and I'm going to look for my keys. Why are you laughing? This makes a lot of sense. So you're out here and you're groping around and you're looking for your keys and you're looking and looking and your neighbor comes along and says, "What happened, Wayne?" "Well, I dropped my keys." "Oh, I'll help you look for them." And the two of us are now down here looking for our keys. And looking, finally he says to me, "Excuse me, but where did you drop your keys?" "Well, um..." I dropped them in the house. He said, you mean to tell me that you dropped your keys in the house and you're looking for them out here in the streetlight? Doesn't make any sense. And I said, well, it doesn't make any sense to grope around in the dark when there's light out here. Now you laugh and you think how silly that is, but isn't that exactly what we do when we have a problem, a difficulty, a struggle that is located inside And we're looking for the solution outside, someplace outside of ourselves. It would be like going to the doctor and telling him all of your symptoms, and the doctor says, oh boy, you've got a lot of symptoms. And he starts writing out prescriptions. You need a prescription for this symptom, you need a prescription for that symptom. And finally he gets this 4 or 5, and you go to walk out and you say, well, I'd like my prescriptions. He said, no, no, no, I'll give this one to your mother-in-law. And I'll give this one to your neighbor, and I'll give this one to your daughter, and I'll give this one to your father. I mean, you're the one with the struggles and with the difficulties, and giving, expecting somebody else to change or something outside of you to get better in order for you to make your life work at this level that I'm calling intention is something you have to really take a hard look at. It's in here. I used to say that, uh, Before I had children, I had 8 theories about how to raise children, and now I have 8 children and no theories. But one of the things I know about children is that no one likes being told what to do. And this isn't just children, this is all of us. One of my favorite songs, it's a song from when I was back in high school. Oh, give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above. Don't fence me in. Boy, you know it. Don't fence me in. Don't restrict me. Don't put boundaries on me. Don't tell me what I can do and what I can't do. Don't tell me how to be there. Don't tell me what to wear. What to think. Don't tell me even how to do yoga. Don't tell me. I don't want to be told. This is the soul speaking, always. The soul is constantly having a desire to expand and grow. And anything or anyone that comes into your life that attempts to do that, you will find yourself fighting it and reaching back. There are no justified resentments, and this is a very difficult principle for many people to get, but one that I believe very strongly in. I was in a group one time of, uh, drug addicts and alcoholics, and I was, uh, one of the people that was a sponsor and leading this group. And the sign on the wall said, "There are no justified resentments in this group." And what I said to that group that, that night was, no matter what anybody says to you here, no matter what kind of anger comes directed towards you, no matter how much hate you may encounter showing up in your life, there are no justified resentments. Meaning that if you carry around resentment inside of you about anything or about anyone— and I'm talking about the person that you lent money to and hasn't paid you back, I'm talking about the person in your life that you feel was abusive in your life, I'm talking about the person who walked out on you and left you for somebody else. I'm talking about all of the things that you have justified in your heart and in your life that you have the right to be resentful about. And I'm suggesting to you that those resentments will always end up harming you and creating in you a sense of despair. I've often said that You— no one ever dies from a snakebite. The snakebite will never kill you. You cannot be unbitten. Once you're bitten, you're bitten. But it's the venom that continues to pour through your system after the bite that will end up destroying you. In my mind, as I think about this idea of getting what you really want, and being able to attract it into your life. What, what, what we have to look at is basically the obstacles that we have conditioned ourselves. And you notice I say that we have conditioned ourselves because I have never believed that we need to be putting the responsibility on someone else. If you're conditioned, it's because you have allowed yourself to become that. And if we are conditioned, if we conditioned ourselves to believe certain kinds of things. And one of the things that we kind of believe and hang onto and, and live with is this whole idea that, um, all of the things that happened to me in my past are what are keeping me from doing what I'd like to do today. So we hang onto these things and we fill ourselves with blame. We say, I'm the middle child, I'm the youngest child, I'm the oldest child. You know, I'm an only child. Any one of those is a great excuse. You know, if you're the youngest child, you can say, well, you know, I never— how could I be making decisions for myself and be a fully functioning person today when I always had somebody else telling me what to do my whole life? How could I think for myself? If you're the oldest child, you can simply say to yourself, well, how could I be expected to think for myself? I always had to think for somebody else. I was always doing it for somebody else. And that leaves the middle child, you know, the classic identity crisis. Oh, poor me. My mother didn't even know my name. She was always calling me by this one's name or that one's name, so I don't know where I fit in. So that takes care of everybody except the only child. And of course, the only child, well, your parents looked at you and said, we won't be doing that again, right? You have to live with that. I don't, right? So everybody with their birth order or with their mother, like their sister better, or that we had enough or we didn't have enough, or we had too much, or we lived in the North, we lived in the South. I'm too tall, I'm too short, I've got too much hair, I don't have enough hair, it's falling out, it's not falling out. Whatever it is, we all have these excuses. And I call all of these things that we hang onto and use to keep ourselves from reaching these higher places in our lives. The wake. I call it the wake. And the wake is, uh, comes from a story that I heard Alan Watts tell one time, and it was a very powerful story. He said, your life is like a boat and it's heading up the river at say 40 knots. All right? And as it's going, you are somehow able to metaphorically stand on the stern the back of the boat and look down into the water. Now there goes your life in this direction, and you're standing here and you're looking down into the water, and you ask yourself these 3 questions. The first question, what is the wake? What is it? What is this thing that you see? And the answer, the wake is the trail that is left behind. That's what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the trail that is left behind. Second question to ask yourself in this little metaphor: what's driving the boat? What's making this thing go in this direction? The answer: the present moment energy that's being generated by the engine, and nothing more. That's the only thing that's making the boat go in this direction. And in this little scene, this means it's the present moment thoughts that I have and how I am using them that is making my life go in this direction and nothing more. Because the third question is the most important and powerful question. And I've ever, ever since I heard it, I've always thought about this whenever I have a tendency to look back here and blame something. Is it possible for the wake to drive the boat? That is, can a trail that is left behind make a boat go in this direction? And of course the answer to that is no, it can't. It's just a trail that is left behind. And in that trail there are an enormous number of things. And every one of us has a wake and we have a whole lot of stuff in it. And one of the problems that we have is that we have a tendency to look at the wake and all of the stuff that's in it to explain why it is my life isn't working the way I would like it to work. So this was something that Portia Nelson, who I knew, who passed away a few years back, 10 years back now, she lived up in Seattle, and she had, she was at a seminar and they were asked to write the autobiography of their life. In 5 verses, 5 chapters. So, and they gave them only like cards this size. Actually, they were smaller than this. They were 3x5 cards. So write out chapter 1 of your life and just go to where you are today. And I remember doing this very same thing, but what she wrote was so brilliant that I asked her daughter if we could put it on public television, which I did on the most recent show. We made a contribution to Portia's work. So this is what she wrote down in the chapter 5 of her life. Chapter 1, she said, "I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I'm lost. I'm helpless. It isn't my fault, and it takes forever to find a way out." Chapter 2 of my life. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. It isn't my fault. It still takes a long time for me to get out. Chapter 3 of my life. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit. But my eyes are open. I know where I am, and it is my own fault, and I get out immediately. Chapter 4 of my life. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Chapter 5 of my life. Finally, I walked down another street. Isn't that great? The next principle I call don't die with your music still in you. And who better to quote than Thoreau right here in Concord when he talked about some of us hear a different drummer. And we must march to the music that we hear. But all of you, everybody watching, everybody here in this beautiful parish, all of you have some music playing. And all of you have a heroic mission. There's no accidents in this universe. We all show up here with a purpose. There's an intelligence that is a part of everything and everyone, and all of us are connected to it. And too many of us are afraid to listen to that music and march to it. You out there, I know you have a book you wanted to write. I know there's a composition you wanted to compose. I know there's a song you want to sing someplace. Maybe you want to raise horses out in Montana, or maybe you want to open up an ice cream shop on Cape Cod. Who knows what it may be? Maybe you just want to travel and see the world. Maybe you want to go into a relationship with someone, but you've been afraid to, but your heart says it's the right thing to do. All of us feel something. And in Leo Tolstoy's famous novel, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he asks this question that would be terrifying to me. He says, as he has his accountant from Moscow lying on his deathbed contemplating the horror of this question: What if my whole life has been wrong? I've known what my music is. It's playing right now as I stand here in front of you with these cameras and in this place, and as I sit down and write my books and tell the world what I know are my truths, I feel always completely on purpose and fulfilled. And no time will I ever come to the end of my life and say, what if my whole life has been wrong? Whoever you are, whatever that music is, however distant it may sound, however strange, however weird others may interpret it to be, don't get to the end of your life and know that you're going to leave and not have it played yet. Don't die with your music still in you.

Thank you so much for watching. I made this video because Jason Han, video man Jason Han, asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave it in this— leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Wayne's top 10 rules meant the most to you. Leave it in the comments. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.