Zig Ziglar - How to REPROGRAM Your MIND for SUCCESS and WEALTH!

We program ourselves. For example, an overweight person sits down at the table and says, "Everything I eat turns to fat." We lay down late at night, you know, we know we got to get up early tomorrow morning, we look at our watch and say, "Boy, I bet I'm going to feel bad tomorrow." We're programming ourselves for that instead of programming it for accomplishment. We know that accidentally on occasion and deliberately there's going to be garbage dumped in your mind on a daily basis. What you've got to do is combat that with a deliberate input into your mind every day. I try to read the Bible a little every day. I try to read something of a positive nature, a good book, every day. I always listen to some motivational recording every day. And by having a deliberate input, not waiting until I get down, but rather to keep the input coming in, then that eliminates or greatly reduces the chances of getting down.

I've got a question for you. Give me some typical examples of how people cheat themselves out of success.

Oh, I think the biggest thing is they—

Zig Ziglar was one of the world's most popular motivational speakers. Ziglar was one of 12 children raised by a widowed mother during the Great Depression. He wrote over 25 books, including See You at the Top, and inspired millions of people around the world. In this exclusive training, Ziglar shares with us how to fix your environment Use powerful words to improve your attitude and keep yourself motivated at all times. Special thanks to the Ziegler family for partnering with us to release this exclusive content on our YouTube channel.

Enjoy. With me now in the studio is Zig Ziglar. Zig, thanks for being with us tonight. It's a pleasure. We've been looking forward to having you.

Well, Fred, I've been looking forward to being here. It's always exciting to have a chance to talk to this many people at the same time. All right.

Let's start by this. You give motivational speeches to groups, to companies, to individuals. You're well known as a motivational speaker. What is it that you really tell people and what do you do for them?

Oh, basically, Fred, I try to give people hope and some directions to go along with it. As I like to use the old phrase, hope with believability, because if it doesn't have believability, it really isn't hope. And believability always introduces one thing, and that's called instructions, or as you were talking earlier privately, training and teaching skills.

Well, tell me this, why do we need somebody to pump us up, to get us motivated? What's going on?

Well, we need somebody to give us some encouragement from time to time, Fred, because we really live in an environment that is essentially negative. Our conversation is basically negative. We see a lot of negative happenings. We're in a cool, laid-back world anymore where people think it's, you know, it's sophisticated to, you know, to act as if you have a don't-care attitude. And we need something to get out of that because what goes into our mind is so tremendously important as far as that attitude is concerned.

Let me tell you what you just said that I thoroughly believe. When you say our environment is negative, one thing I've noticed is that When the kids go to school, they get beaten down very often. We don't like to admit it, but they do. When people go to work, for whatever reason, they get beaten down. Sometimes marriages don't work and people get beaten down there. Is that what you're saying about a negative environment?

Pretty much, and our conversation is basically negative.

Give me an example of that.

Well, you ask somebody how you feel and they'll say, "Not too bad," you know, whatever that is. Not too bad considering, huh?

Yeah, or "Fine so far," or "Great since it's Friday." So what you do is help people people to reprogram themselves in the way they think.

Absolutely, because the words that you utter have a direct bearing on the programming. I was reading an article in this month's Psychology Today, just absolutely fascinating, talking about the psychologist in Japan and China who did a study, and in China and Japan there are, they said, none or very, very few children with learning disabilities.

Are you serious?

That's correct. Now they have some children with learning difficulties, but no learning disabilities. And as they did a study of the English and Chinese and Japanese language, they discovered they were relatively the same as far as difficulty is concerned. But in the Japanese and Chinese language, there is no way to say learning disability.

In other words, we have certain words that prevent us from performing.

Absolutely, and we use those words too many times. We program ourselves.

Interesting.

For example, an overweight person sits down at the table and says, "Everything I eat turns to fat." We lay down late at night, you know, we know we got to get up early tomorrow morning, we look at our watch and say, "Boy, I bet I'm going to feel bad tomorrow." We're programming ourselves for that instead of programming it for accomplishment.

Let me ask you this. Earlier you were talking about the school system, and you do a tremendous amount of work in the school system. Tell us about your work there and what does it consist of and what's really happening?

Well, basically we have a course based on my book, See You at the Top, and the course was developed by Mrs. Mamie McCullough, who is a South Georgia schoolteacher. We call her the I Can Lady. Such a beautiful person. We tell people she could talk a dog off a meat wagon. What she really does, though, is talk young people into believing in themselves and what they can do.

You made a comment to me that I found so brilliant that I wish I had made it myself. When you said that the vast number of hours in our school system is teaching skills, we have no courses on teaching kids correct attitudes. Why don't you elaborate on that?

Well, what we do, Fred, is we ask audiences to identify the qualities of success. They generally come out with about 25 of them, and we identify them or ask them then to say to us, "Tell us which of these are attitudes and which are skills." Out of 25, 20 of them are always attitudes. Then I say to them, "Well, would you agree then that attitude's important?" They do. Then I say, "How many of you, when you were in school, had even one course that taught you how to build a winning attitude?" Less than 1% of the audience will say, "I had." such a course. Then we point out that obviously the schools are missing the boat, because in industry, according to Harvard University, 85% of the reason a person gets a job and gets ahead in the job is because of their attitude.

Well, let me play a game with you. You're saying to me, why don't the schools do a better job of teaching attitudes? So the game I want to play is this: is there anybody in the schools that is capable of teaching attitudes?

Uh, Fred, if they can teach you English and history and mathematics, you betcha they can teach attitude. There is a course, and as I've indicated, we have that course, and there are others, but obviously I'm going to talk about mine. And it's structured with beautiful manuals and games and involvements and exercises that the students do which get them involved in the class. And the net result is 86% of the students in the class come out with better attitudes. Attitudes. 46% of them make better grades in all of their other subjects as a result of it.

Zig, do you believe that positive, healthy attitudes start with good self-esteem?

Fred, it might sound like an overstatement, but I think about everything starts with a good, healthy self-esteem.

Well, how do we learn self-esteem? You know, a lot of us are brought up in homes where things aren't working right. We go to school and we fail. We take a job and we don't know how to succeed. How do we finally erase the failure pattern and start the good self-esteem pattern?

Let me give you a couple of little things we teach in the class, and this is the way we build esteem. When a youngster is called upon to do anything, they have to stand up to answer. There's nothing on this earth that develops a good self-image as quickly as public speaking.

Really?

That's right. If the student has to repeat something or ask a question, he always stands up to ask. The confidence that they build in that one little exercise is absolutely astonishing.

Hey there, it's Mark Timm with the Ziglar Family, and I sure hope you're enjoying the video from my mentor, the legendary Zig Ziglar. Because you're part of Evan's audience, we want to give you a special bonus. It's a cool little book called The Little Book of Big Quotes, packed with awesome content. This book is free just for you. Check out the description below. And it's yours. Alrighty, let's get you back to Zig.

I've got a question for you. Give me some typical examples of how people cheat themselves out of success.

Oh, I think the biggest thing is they expect it to come more easily than it will.

You mean you can't just become an overnight— well, you were an overnight success, but it took you 20 years, right?

Something like that. Fred, a lot of people amuse me on occasion. I actually made over 3,000 talks before I ever received a fee for one.

Are you serious?

I'm deadly serious. I drove as much as 200 miles to talk to a dozen people and then drove back that night. I did it because I thought I had something to say. I did it because I believed that the day would come when the rewards would be there.

But what you did is you put in the work and you did it and you weren't concerned, well, what am I going to get out of this? When do I get paid? And you did it because you love to do it is what you're saying.

I did it because I love to do it, but I'll have to be candid and admit that I hoped that somewhere down the road, yes, there would be those rewards.

But what you're saying is you were paying your dues.

Absolutely.

And you're saying to me a lot of us are not willing to do that.

I'm saying that too many people today expect success to come too easily. For example, from a physical point of view, I'm a jogger.

Yeah.

I'm 56 years old, and I stayed on the treadmill at Cooper Clinic—

I've got to keep you quiet. We got another phone call.

I don't mean to be rude. Okay.

Hello.

Yes, how with very young children, so many times we have to tell them no. How can we be positive with these young children that we have to tell no for their own safety and for their own education?

I want to— before he even says something, I want to tell you that's an excellent question, and I went to school for many years and I still don't know the answer to that one. Do you know it, Fred?

I'm going to take a shot at it because anytime anybody asks a question, I think they're entitled to at least an opinion. I, first of all, would encourage parents to use positive language. For example, "terrible twos" is just a disaster in dealing with a child. There are the terrific twos, the tremendous threes, the fantastic fours, the fabulous fives. You establish, first of all, love and trust with a child. A small child needs, as does us older people, needs an awful lot of skin touch, a lot of hugging, and a lot of loving, and a lot of reinforcement. And then when a child wants to do something, instead of saying always, "No, you cannot do it," the simple words, "Let Mommy show you a better way to do this," or, "Let me give you something else to do which will be even more fun." If we get a little creative and work at it, there are many occasions when we can, in reality, make it positive and give them a new direction, a better way.

Zig, you sound like one of these soft people who believes in stroking, encouragement, love, and lots of reinforcement.

Do I hear you right? Yes, you do, Fred, but I also believe that when the occasion demands that we must, in love, be very firm with the people we're dealing with, always doing what is best for the child. If the child is reaching for a hot poker rather obviously, you don't casually say, "Here's a better way," you know. You immediately take that action. But what we need to do is be careful not to always have negative instruction.

I think he gave you some really good advice. Let me add one thing to what Zig is saying, okay? If you've got kids with those kinds of problems, then it's going to be stressful for you and frustrating at times, but what you got to do is believe if you keep doing it, it's going to get better.

Oh, I know it must, and like I say, the problem right now is having the 3-month-old. My 3-year-old has has changed her personality a little bit and it's getting a little bit harder to be positive with her. And, you know, I really do want to do that as much as possible.

Right. It sounds to me like you're doing good. Just hang in there, okay?

I'm hanging.

Thank you.

I don't have anywhere else to go.

Thanks for calling. We appreciate it. Let me get personal with you. You, now you're a big name. It wasn't always that way. What were some of the things that you had to overcome? What were your own self-defeating habits that you had to work through?

Fred, there were so many, it's kind of difficult to say. But again, I think the biggest thing was the realization that it wasn't going to be easy, that it was going to be a process and a growth process. To this day, and I'm always amused when somebody makes a reference like you just did, you are a quote big name. But Fred, I spend an average of 3 hours every day of my life in research and study and preparation and planning so that when I get in front of that audience tomorrow, I've got something new and I've got some reinforcement and I've got some new excitement and new motivation.

You mean you're not just relaxing, riding the crest of the wave?

I have more fun every day because I'm not relaxing. There's so much to learn and so much to be excited about.

We got another phone call.

Hello. Yes, I'd like to ask Zig, how does he keep the positive principle going in his life when, as a lot of people know, we're surrounded with negatives every day in the newspapers and everything else? How does he keep the positive mental attitude from day to day and not burn out on it?

Let me add to what you're saying. What you're asking him is, who winds the clockwinder? How do you wind yourself?

Well, by doing exactly what I just made reference to. We know that accidentally on occasion and deliberately There's going to be garbage dumped in your mind on a daily basis. What you've got to do is combat that with a deliberate input into your mind every day. I try to read the Bible a little every day. I try to read something of a positive nature, a good book, every day. I always listen to some motivational recording every day. And by having a deliberate input, not waiting until I get down, but rather to keep the input coming in, then that eliminates or greatly reduces the chances of getting down.

Good. Does that help you?

That's great. You know, I'm an advocate of Zig's and any Norman Vincent Peale as well, but I find myself a lot of times— I'm in sales myself— and a lot of times you can get knocked down pretty fast, but it's a day-to-day process as Zig said. That's very helpful to me.

What do you sell?

I'm a freight salesman.

That sounds like a heavy load.

It is.

I might also add, for salespeople, and this is one thing that made a dramatic difference in my sales career, I was very careful about my schedule. And every day, regardless of what time I'd finished the day before, every day at precisely the same time, I was knocking on some prospect's door or office somewhere. The motivation came when I knew that precisely at that moment I was going to have a chance to make a sale and I was able to get up for it as a result.

Okay, are you still there?

Yes, sir.

Hey, listen, we really appreciate your call. Hang in there. Thank you. You know, Zig, what I like about what you're saying is it's theoretical but it's also very practical.

Yes, and it involves work. You know, we— That's the part I don't like. One of the things that we have to constantly remind people is that It's not easy.

Right.

US News did a study and discovered that the average 20-year-old American has seen a million television commercials, and most of them are problem solutions, you know. Well, you don't have 30-second solutions to problems, man. I've always had to get out and hustle and dig, but I kept focused. One of the reasons that I can stay motivated is I have clearly defined objectives, and if you know what's going to be happening and you know where you want to go tomorrow, then you can put up with some of the hassle and harassment and difficulty of today because you have the confident, optimistic hope that tomorrow is going to be better.

If you do the right thing today.

If you do the right thing today, absolutely.

Then why do so many of us— I mean, I know what you're saying and I believe it, and yet I don't do the right thing today. You know, I procrastinate, I delay, I find the easy way. I'm supposed to be smart. Why do I do these things?

I think it's a little thing called discipline. I know that for 24 years of my adult life I have discipline.

I can resist everything but temptation.

I know what you mean. For 24 years of my adult life, I by choice weighed well over 200 pounds.

Really?

Yeah. I say by choice because I never accidentally ate anything. It was always deliberate, you know, like 3 times a day. But 11 years ago, I really decided to do something about it, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. Took me 10 months. But all I had to do was lose 1 9/10 ounces a day, and 10 months later I was to the 165 I needed to be. And that's another very vital point, Fred, in keeping that motivation there. If you set realistic, reachable goals which you can see, and I could visualize losing a pound a week. See, that's what that really boils down to. I knew I could do that, and that gave me confidence. And as I saw that weight beginning to come off, my first 10-pound loss, I rewarded myself with a new suit. And I bought it a little too tight, knowing that I now would have to lose more to make that suit really comfortable.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this. Are you surprised at the success you've had, the magnitude of your success?

Fred, I'd be less than honest if I didn't say not only was I surprised, but sometimes astonished. And obviously delighted, you know, that it is. But we like to think we've built our business on a concept that you can get everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. And so when I stand up to speak or when I sit down to write, I try to figure out what does the people who I'll be— what do they need, what do they want? And if I can inspire or teach I don't have to be worried about being invited back to Orlando, Florida, which is where I'm going tomorrow.

What do they want?

I think as we said at the beginning, most people want hope with some directions on how to get there. And they want the assurance that they're all right and that yes, they can do it.

They also want the assurance that everything's going to be okay.

I think they do. And you know, I don't believe they believe these people who tell them it's going to be easy. So 4 or 5 times in a presentation, I stress to them that this is gonna be difficult, but it's so much more fun to succeed. And I work on vocabulary a lot. I don't talk about paying the price. I talk about enjoying the benefits. And I think that's very important for most of them.

Let me ask you this, Zig, something that I'm very curious about. You work at the top levels of some major organizations. Am I correct?

As a salesperson, yes, that's true.

What is your impression of the people who really get ahead in business, the real dynamic successes? Do you find that they're doing already many of the things that you're talking about?

Yes, but let me add another dimension to this because a book recently appeared which really is an eye-opener. It's called The Corporate Bigamist, and it was written by a Jewish scholar. I don't know why I can't grab his name, but he's from New York. Did a study, an interview of 100 of America's top corporate executives. He asked the question, what's necessary to go to the top and stay there? These men had 4 points they brought out. These were unanimous. You got to build on honesty and character and integrity. Then they threw in the word motivation. Then they summed it up by saying anybody who thinks they can go to the top and stay there Who's not honest is dumb. You must be dependable is what they really say. Your word must be your bond.

I believe that because you're going to be found out if you're not honest.

Right.

Why did he call the book The Corporate Bigamist?

Well, the conflict that often exists between what a man wants to do, his family and his business career, was the reason that I believe he called it The Corporate bigamist.

Okay.

Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard, incidentally, just completed a 20-year study, and he said that if you want to teach your children— and I hope the lady is still listening in— if you want to teach your children how to succeed in life, if you will teach them moral values, that is the most important thing you can teach.

Because that gives you the foundation.

The foundation to build on, absolutely. The Connecticut Mutual report of 2 years ago revealed virtually the same thing. That those with good moral integrity as a foundation have got something solid upon which they can build.

You're saying that before you think of making a whole lot of money and becoming a big deal, you better be a solid, real person.

That's right. We recently built a beautiful home 108 miles east of here down at Holly Lake so that I can go down and do more writing. The man who built it was a man named Bill Tennyson. And we chose him because everybody down there said he's honest, he does great work, he'll do everything he says. Bill didn't come to us and say, "Let me build your house." We went to Bill and said, "Bill, would you build us a house?" And he delivered everything that we'd been told he would. Excellent.

Zig, one of the things I don't like about doing our show is sometimes we run out of time too fast. You've been dynamite, you've been interesting, and I've really enjoyed it, and I think the response from our listeners tells you how much they appreciate what you've said. So we hope you join us again sometime.

I hope you'll invite me again.

Thank you.

To watch another amazing Zig Ziglar video, check it out right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

I believe that success is getting a reasonable number of the things money will buy. Now, money is not everything, but it's reasonably close to oxygen.