How To Set Goals According to Brian Tracy for Lasting Success

One of the major reasons why people are unsuccessful is they're unclear, they're fuzzy about what they want to do together. As soon as you start making excuses, as soon as you stop blaming someone else for something in your life, all your negativity stops. People will say the words, I like myself, I like myself, I like myself are so simple. But in every language, those words are life transforming. The most important part of your life is your self concept. Your self concept is how you think about yourself.

What was your first speech? Do you remember what year your very first presentation was?

Probably 1981. October 1981.

October 1981. Okay, and who, how big was the audience? Do you have seven. Seven people? Six.

Six were my relatives.

Oh my God. What did you talk about?

It was, I, I had put together, I'd been to many, many seminars to learn these ideas and I put together a, a two day seminar whenever it was two days. And it was a system of thinking and acting that literally covered every base in the game. And you came around the whole circle and it ended up with you thinking and feeling differently about yourself and treating other people differently. My, my, my discovery, and I, I wish it was my own discovery, but came from all my research, is that the most important part of your life is your self concept. Your self concept is how you think about yourself. And the most important part, the core of your self concept is your self esteem. And that's how much you like yourself, how much you respect yourself, right? How much you consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person. And so the wonderful thing about self esteem is that everything that you do causes your self esteem to go up or down. Nothing is neutral. There's always, it always has an effect. And so everything that you do that improves the life or work of others raises your own self esteem. It raises this, but it raises your own self esteem. So the more you look for ways to help people improve the quality of their life and their thinking, the better you feel, the happier you are, the more positive you are, the more outward focus to, on your customers and clients, you are, it's a marvelous thing. And of course you heard me teach this all over the world people will say the words I like myself, I like myself, I like myself are so simple. But in every language those words are life transforming. If you want to have a happy family, raise your children so that they like themselves and they feel valuable and important, right? And, and, and, and how do you help people to like themselves as you appreciate them and respect them and, and teach them the ideas that you teach here. And the wonderful thing about this, what's in it for them? The reason I, the reason I like this is that when you, when you practice this, it rebounds on you, it reverberates on you and you like yourself more. So it's a positive upward cycle, like a worthwhile way of thinking about yourself in life. And the more you do it, the better you get at what you do, the better results you get, the more motivated you are. Everything is just good. And so I, I've got four children now and I just had one, I think when I met you. But I have four children and seven grandchildren. And each of my children has been raised, they've never been criticized. This is one of the great, most destructive things in, in life that affects people throughout their lives is criticism from their parents. So we made a decision. We would never criticize our children. So our children have never been criticized. That doesn't mean that we argue and disagree and have all kinds of things, but we never, never have told them or said anything to them to lower their self esteem. It's always been to build them up. And so that leads to self confidence, courage, energy, dynamism, happiness, happy, liking other people, other people liking you, and so on. So it's. And as a boss, I teach entire a one and two day courses on leadership is to structure your business so that everybody working for your business feels really happy to be working for you. And as a result, they do great work, they get along well with people. There's no politics, there's no dishonesty. It's just, just a wonderful thing. So what's in it for them is it is a universal lesson that you can apply, you know, with everybody in every situation.

Yeah, no, completely. And you know, one thing I want to comment on so the, the self esteem. I had become really good friends with late, the late Nathaniel Brandon, who was, you know, one of the kind of like the godfather of self esteem. And he wrote the Six Pillars of Self Esteem, the Art of Living Consciously, one of his greatest books, which was what, not one of his bestsellers. And this is where I want to kind of tie in self esteem. And the other topic was taking responsibility. I think a lot of people just don't take responsibility, don't want to take responsibility, don't even know what responsibility means. And I often think about my upbringing. You know, I spent many years just in therapy and in recovery and it happened. I've been in recovery for over 20 years and now I spend about half my time helping people that struggle with addiction. And so I have Genius Recovery Foundation. Even the proceeds of my book, what's in it for Them goes to addiction recovery. And part of this my childhood, I was constantly criticized as a child and I was physically abused and sexually abused and I became a drug addict. And it later in life I actually learned, you know, I've heard the words, you know, responding with ability, which is responsibility, you know, and many, many times it wasn't until it clicked in my head that when my life was working, I was responding. When my life was not and is not working, I'm reacting. And so people react to life and then other people respond to life. And of course I think, you know, you respond with ability. And so the more that you become able to do something, you can learn the technical skills of something, but the ability to manage your mind or at least get into a flow state. Because what addiction is is an unmanageable mind which leads to an unmanageable life in unmanageable physiology. Because it's not just mental, it's phys. And I've thought about this a lot. So you, with teaching leadership and with everything you've written about, there's always been this through line, this vein of be responsible, you know, take in confidence, feels good to operate with confidence, but courage doesn't feel good. So when you have to muster courage, the more that you can tap into the belief in yourself in that you can do it or at least you're going to try, you oftentimes, even in the face of massive adversity, can at least step up to the plate. You might not always win, you might get knocked out, but the fact is it's just stepping into that. So I'd love to ask you how you think the link between self esteem and responsibility creates a functioning human.

Well, this has been one of the most important things in my life. What you just talked about, self responsibility. I began studying this, I spent thousands of hours by the way, going back four or five decades. What I found just sort of like tripped over it is that the most important thing in life is to be happy. It goes back to Aristotle in 350 BC is that he said that everything that a person does in life is to achieve their own happiness. The difference is how effective are they at being happy. And the obstacle to happiness is negativity, negative thinking, destructive criticism. And so. But the key to the causative factor of negativity is blaming. Blaming is the worst thing that happens, is you blame someone else for something in your life with which you're not Happy. So what you have to do in order to be a happy, fulfilled person is you have to stop blaming. And the wonderful thing about the magic words, I call them I am responsible. The magic thing about those words is that when you say those words, you cancel all blaming. Blaming stops. You cannot blame someone and be positive. And when you accept responsibility, you automatically become negative. So in my seminars, I teach a whole lot of things. One of them is I call the golden triangle. And the golden triangle has three points to it. The first point is the acceptance of complete responsibility for your life and for everything that happens to you. That's number one. It's the starting point. And so I teach my audiences to say aloud, I am responsible. I am responsible. And as I said, I've written 91 books and I have a schedule for nine more. I want to get to 100. And I have my audiences say, I am responsible. And what happens as soon as you say I am responsible? All negativity stops. And just as I am responsible, I am responsible. I'm responsible. Now my I. I have several top selling books, millions of copies. My second or third best selling book is called no Excuses. The Power of Self Responsibility. It's called no Excuses and it's in every language all over the world. People just love the concept. So as soon as you start making excuses, as soon as you stop blaming someone else for something in your life, all your negativity stops and positive thinking flows in like a river. So that. And the second part of my golden triangle, once you've accepted responsibility, which is the first point, is setting goals. The very act of setting your goals and writing them down in a form that I teach in several different ways. My book on goal setting, which is just called Goals, is the best selling book on that subject in the world. And so you just, you set goals and you write them down and you review them every day. And as you do that, you become more positive, more focused. When you're working on your goals, you are a different person. And the third triangle is continuous learning is continually read, learn, write, upgrade your knowledge and skills. And those three, that golden triangle transforms people's lives. And all over the world I get letters that come back to me saying, this book, no Excuses changed my life is making excuses is the foundation of negative thinking. And it requires you blame someone for something. You stop doing that, your whole life changes. Right. Right now I just heard one liner. I've heard it before, but I just pass it on to you. In case you haven't heard it. It says being mad or Angry with someone else is like drinking poison and wanting the other person to die. Yeah. Yeah. So you heard that? I think that's just a great one liner.

Well, let me, let me ask you about that. So when. Yes. So having resentment towards another person and it could be someone that either did you wrong or there's a lot of envy where people are just angry and mad at another person that they oftentimes don't even know, or they heard someone else talk about someone, but they never really validated if what that person was saying was really true or not. There's a, you know, a million different variations of that. How do you, how have you found the difference between, say, letting go, forgiveness, moving on, just someone, let's say someone betrayed you because I know both of us have had pretty bad situations where people have, you know, attacked, made, made up stories. It could be anything from a, a negative review or an insult or something to outright, you know, theft. And, and I often say this to young entrepreneurs, it's kind of a joke. I say, if I would have known being successful was this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser. And you know, so, so there's a lot of work and you know, we've all encountered, we've encountered a lot over the years. How do you, how do you move past it when it's really a severe breach or if someone's really done something that's not with integrity or just outright theft or abusive? I mean, how, how do you, how do you not drink that poison? I guess metaphorically.

One of the things that I do, and we, we've both had to fight through this. One of the things that I do is I say, I, I forgive them for everything. I forgive him or her for everything. God bless them, I forgive them for everything. And it's, it's impossible to forgive someone and be angry. It's impossible to forget forgive someone and for it to have any negative effect on you. So the, the more you forgive other people, the better you feel. And it doesn't have any effect on them anyway. Yeah, it's just, you're saying, God, God bless them, I wish them well, God bless them, I wish them well. And so what you do is you get it off, you know, was it Mark Victor Hansen says, you know, he does that little thing about getting rid of negative thinking, negative feelings, negative reactions, and just let it go, let it pass.

How do you approach people that have come to you over the years, read your books, go to your seminars, looking to you for advice? And we've both Encountered this. Anyone that is a position of teaching, anything, any sort of teacher or instructor or coach or mentor is going to encounter this. Where they show up in their ethics according to your own value system. They're not the same. Like, meaning. I have a lot of opportunistic people that come into my world over the years. And I defined in my book that there's a big difference between pursuing an opportunity versus being an opportunist. There's a, you know, everybody has a want. We all want something. Nobody would read one of your books or go to one of your seminars or watch one of your videos or buy one of your courses or mine if they didn't want something. No one that is a salesperson would walk in to, you know, face to face environment or you know, over zoom or whatever over the phone wanting to sell something if they didn't want something for the other person. But what I say though is when you ask somebody for something, make sure that your give is equal to or greater than their want. I mean, even the other day when we were texting, you know, my first approach is, Brian, how could I do what, what could I help you with? And you said it made me feel really good. You said, you know, Joe, we've been friends for many years. I don't need anything for you. I'm just here to help you and there to serve, which is just a testament to how you show up as a human. And I have always done my best to not ask somebody for something if I can't show up with something useful for them that's either equal to or greater. So when people show up with all want but no give in, they're very opportunistic and they're trying to use your strategies, your sales techniques so they can go out and pitch people on stuff. How, how do you deal with that?

I just, just let it go. You know the expression water off a duck's back is you just let it go, nod, smile, yeah, that's a great idea. And you just recognize that that's where 80% of people are. There's, they're asking not what's in it for them, but what's in it for me.

Right, right.

Therefore, if that's fine and you just let it go and, and don't let it affect you just accept. It's like, you don't get upset when it rains out, it just rains. You know, that's just the way the world works. Sometimes it rains and so you don't, so you just let them go. And, and, and and this law of cause and effect, the. I call it the Aristotelian principle of causality makes me sound smart, but basically it says that for every action, there's a reaction. For everything that you do, something happens back for you. That nothing is ever neutral, is always. There's an effect, a cause and effect relationship. So therefore, if you want to have a great life, then put in good things, good ideas help people. And it always comes back to you. And it comes back to you. Always more than you put in. Yeah, don't get upset about it. You wish them well.

How do you, how do you actually. When do you determine if the juice is worth the squeeze? So if you see someone and you know that it may require a lot of work or there's a lot of resistance with them, when do you take the time to say, you know what, here's how I'm going to help the person versus, you know, we're just not on the same page. I wish you the best. Get the hell out of my life. I mean, I know you probably wouldn't say that to someone directly. I have no idea, I'm not sure. But how do you, how do you discern who gets your personal time? Like, the great thing about writing books and doing videos is you can say, you know what, go and read my whole book and then come back and talk with me and tell me if you learned anything. So I, I do that oftentimes when I'm coming across people that, you know, you just know they haven't done any research on you. You know, they haven't really gone deep with anything. But when, when you, when you are dealing with someone to determine if you're going to give them your personal time. Because you, you, you're, you've influenced millions of people through your words that you've written, that you've spoken, that you have recorded. And there are a lot of people that would love to get a piece of your time and to have Brian personally mentor them. How do you determine who's worth it and when you need to walk away?

Well, again, you've taught this, as have others, is you trust your intuition. Just trust your intuition. Your, your intuition will tell you what to do, more of or less of, what to pursue, what not to pursue, and just don't get wrapped up in it. Don't get your knickers in a knot, as they say. The great, the great majority of people are asking, what's in it for me? Yes, successful people, don't they say, how, how can I help you? And what I do is I steer them and I. I make it so I call it ping pong. The ping pong way of life. You hit the ball over, I hit it back. You hit the ball over, I hit it back. If you stop hitting the ball over, the game stops.

Yeah, yeah.

It's pretty simple. And so people come in to me, say, I need some advice or some guidance. And I used to think that this was a wonderful tribute to my knowledge and wisdom. And now what I do is I say, read this book. Sometimes I give them a book, sometimes I just give them the title. I say, if you really want to be excellent in selling or starting a business or raising money or anything, read this book and then call me and come back and let's talk about it. And 90% of people you'll never see or hear from again.

Exactly. No, you're right.

We give them a hurdle that they have to jump over. And if they don't, when you read the book, come back. And sometimes I'll give them the book. And I learned this way back at the beginning of my career. Give them the book and then have them. They have to hit the ball back.

Over Such, such good advice. And oftentimes people may not realize that until they have, you know, your whole thing about don't get your knickers in the night or whatever. The funny thing is, is we've all had to learn this ourselves. That's how you have all of this knowledge and wisdom is there was a point in time where you just go out and try to help people and you realize, wow, a lot of people ain't going to follow up there. They don't want to jump any hurdles. And I really do think that which is not earned is seldom valued. There's a big difference between having a fee versus giving something away for free. And I always, as are you, and I just want to put out good ideas in the world, and I just want to share them with people. And most of, I think the people that benefit from both of what we do, they never pay us anything. They. They come across a video, they listen to a course, they read something, or they make a very small investment, you know, so oftentimes the cost of a book, right, in order to get what you could really legitimately say is a lifetime of learning and teaching. And the fact is, there's a huge difference between someone that goes and buys the book themselves versus if someone gives them a book. And I've given away, like my recovery books. I've written two books on addiction recovery. I've given away far more of those for free than I ever charge for. And on my foundation site, which is geniusrecovery.org I don't even sell anything. It's like an educational platform just designed to help people with addiction. And I don't sell anything. I don't have a rehab center. I have a treatment. You know, we literally, you know, one day, maybe I'll point people to specific things. Like, we're creating stuff in virtual reality right now for fantasy contamination, which is what, you know, what. What we're calling it, because most addictions are a fantasy, and you want to contaminate toxic fantasies because in the moment, they seem like a good thing, but then you realize they can destroy your life. So, you know, there's that. However, right now, I take the. The money I make in my business and for people that support it, and we just, you know, create that for free. So there's a lot of free information out there. And there is a point, though, where you. You realize this person ain't doing anything except, you know, keep asking, asking, asking. So your whole notion of give them a book, send them off, and if they can't cross that hurdle, 90% of them really don't.

That.

That is a great barometer. And I have developed my spidey senses over the years because I. For the longest time, my buddy Patrick Giantempo is the one that shared this very simple but profound distinction with me. He's like, it's one thing ignoring the red flags. I mean, oftentimes there's red flags. You don't see the red flags, or you do see them, and you ignore them. What you really need to pay attention to are the yellow flags. And the yellow flags are often, you know, they're there, and they're not quite so severe. So you kind of let people go. You. You got it. And I'll tell you, I mean, I'm. I'm way more in tune with my intuition today than I ever was in the past, because I had to get, you know, I. I had to get beat up a few times in order for me to realize there were signs. I just didn't notice them. I just didn't pay attention to them. And I let someone's charm or I let their narcissism sort of fool me into thinking they were really an authentic person, but they really weren't. And so that's. That's what I've learned now. And I think giving education to people. Not only are writing books a great way to share ideas, if you do have good ideas and you really do want to help people. It's a great filtering mechanism. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there is, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to Joe's freebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Yeah.

So. All right. So with our time that we have because as you know I have a, I have to do a trading session at the top of the hour and I wanted and I, if you're open to it, I'd love to do a part two with you at some point but for you know we got a few more minutes and one of the things I wanted to ask you two things. 191 books, I mean thousands of hours. I, I imagine it's thousands of hours of training that is recorded, documented, packaged and available to the world that you've put into to courses. I've consumed hundreds of hours of your content in terms of audio. So I know you have so much of it. If you had to say what are I call them dominoes at the end of what's in it for them. Every chapter ends with the the first domino and you have first domino for countless people where they read one of your books change the trajectory of their life. They heard you say a concept or teach them something you know, be it the psychology achievement who I can't tell you how many people have told me over the years that's their all time favorite audio program. Out of all the things you taught, what do you think are the most important Dominoes? Maybe you could just pick two or three. That's first thing I want to ask you and then I was going to ask you about what do you not talk about or haven't shared yet that are going to be in those these upcoming nine books. So I'd like to get the Brian Tracy dominoes that you think are the most important ones and maybe some future ones that you haven't yet shared with the world.

Well, I think of my books in terms of a single word. The book Psychology of Achievement is really the best that I've ever done and according to my fans and friends, they say it's the best they've ever, ever read all over the world and you know 50 languages and it's. I get the emails every day. You changed my life. You changed my life. You changed my Life. And I started off as a poor guy and I came from a working family. I failed out of high school. So I didn't start off with any blessings or anything else. I didn't have a great childhood. And so I consider it to be really a reward. It's a wonderful thing to have a positive effect on people's lives. And so I'm trying to think of what are, what are the ideas and one word that I'm going to be focusing on, which is really closely related to your book and it's contribution is I'm going to write a book and it's going to be on contribution and it's going to be on the, the effects that if you want to be successful, look for ways to contribute to others. Don't worry, don't worry about what's in it for me. Just contribute to others, help other people and do it first. You don't have to expect or negotiate a return. So that's, that's a word. And responsibility is another word that can be a whole book. Talk about every, every, all the different things and different ways that you can accept responsibility and practice it so that it helps other people. And so people say, well, I want to be successful. Everybody wants to be rich and successful. Then what you do is you constantly look for ways to contribute to other people to, and with regard to negativity and negative thinking, accept responsibility. Say, I am responsible. I'm responsible for money. Everything that happens to me or doesn't happen to me is up to me. Nobody's going to do it for me because I am responsible. And so I think of the single concept almost like a hard nut. And then all the different ways that you could apply in your life, which makes it so simple and so easy to apply and there's no cost to it and you don't ask for any money. And where do I get these from? The same as you is people have told you that when they heard this from you or, or read it from you that it changed their life, it changed their thinking. They always thought accidentally that they should be doing it this way. And then they learned that, no, that's not, that's not efficacious. It doesn't help them. And so they follow your advice and they do something different. Earl Nightingale One of my favorite concepts from Earl's lead the field was the whole idea of service. And you know, and he talks about service comes from the Greek, the good, the Italian service, which is from serving from service. So therefore what you do is you constantly look for Ways to serve other people and serve them better and serve them faster and serve them earlier and serve them sooner and keep asking them what do they need from me more than anything else. And that's, that's summarized in the title of this book. And you know, just by looking at the title that this is going to be a good ride, as they say in the West. It's a, it's, it's going, it's going to give them ideas that they can use to really improve their lives.

No, go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah. Constantly look for, look for ways to give. Look for ways to put in. What can I do for. I, I remember when I was young and struggling and coming up and I was working for. I call, I call him the big Boss. He. When he died, unfortunately, he was worth $750 million. And he started off a small family. He became a doctor, then he became a surgeon and he worked his way up and he found he had a flare for business. And so he was well paid as a doctor. And then he continually invested his income in, in other things. And he became one of the fourth richest man in Canada. And he was a doctor. I called him the Doc. People called him the Doc. And he was a great man. He was just a great, a great man. Very quiet, very humble, just, just a good man. And so I think, well, what a wonderful reputation for a person to have, as there's never a person in his life who said anything but good things about him. And I still to this day. So in the back of your mind, I think, what would the Doc do? What would the Doc say? I remember one thing he said. He said to me several times, because he would use me sort of like a falcon would toss the, toss the bird out to go after the game. He would give me a project. People would bring him projects starting with hundreds of thousands, going up to many, many millions of dollars. And he would say, brian, check this out for me and see if it's something that we want to get involved with. And one of the things he told me, which I keep reminding myself of, is that it's easy to get into something. It's much harder to get out.

Yeah, yeah. So true.

Time, time to do your thinking is before you get committed too deeply. And I teach that to other people. But the other thing I do is I practice. This was my children. My children, of course, my staff. Here's an, here's an interesting thing people always say to me when they come to my office, the first thing they notice is laughter. I went before my company Reached its peak, we had about 35 people. And then, of course, we had Covid and a whole bunch of other things, and we cut back and. But people came to our office and they would hear laughter. People laugh together. If we hire somebody, we'd only hire somebody that we liked. And we don't hire people that everybody else liked. And if we. If they didn't laugh, if they didn't contribute to a really positive environment, then we just let them go. Not angry, no anything else, but just a happy environment. And we're one of the most productive and most profitable businesses of our kind. I developed millions and millions of dollars worth of real estate. Not only my own, but the real estate of my clients and my bosses. And so I worked with a lot, a lot of people, and they were all happy. That was a good thing. And they look back at that of those times as one of the best jobs they ever had. And they said that to me, you know, one of the best jobs I ever had was working for you. Because everybody's happy. And that's a good thing to aim at.

No, that's really important. I mean, I write about this in my book where you can often look at couples and you can tell. Engage the value of most relationships by how often they laugh together. And if there is no. Because life can be difficult. Life is not always kumbaya. Life can be very, very difficult. And laughter brings like. So, for instance, the first chapter of my book, what's in it for them is be a pain detective. And what I have learned, and a lot of this comes from my own journey through. In recovery, is that one of the best ways to bond with someone is to identify where they have pain and struggle and suff in their life and remove it, eliminate it, or at least bring some relief to it. And when someone's dying or they've got a terminal illness, or they're really in the depth of addiction or depression, Oftentimes the best thing you can do is just be a companion to them. You may not be able to fix the situation, you may not be able to dispense advice, but you can at least be there with them. And you can. And that is soothing, and that is comforting in and of itself, Even in the midst of enormous difficulty and suffering. And so my whole thing is be a pain detective. And part of that is you can connect with people on pain. And what is a business anyway? A business is solving problems for a profit. And if you can identify the problems that exist, bring some sense of relief to that, then you're doing really good in the world. Now, there are ways to make money by exasperating the pain. And some companies unfortunately do that, but I would not. Those are not the companies that I honor and admire. I admire people that are actually in the transformation business, not the transaction business. And so this, this whole, you know, everything that you're saying, I think is. Is. Is critically important, especially for young people. And I think as we get older, I mean, how old are you right now?

78.

78. Okay. And I'll be 55 in February. And as. As. And I have a. I have a Godchild that is 5 years old that his birthday was a day before yesterday. And I recorded a video. And it's funny because his father, Akira Chan, is. We make films together and stuff. And I know he'll store this video so his son can watch it 50 years from now. Because I said, I want you to watch this video 50 years from now. And you will. You will realize how amazing life could be or how difficult it could be, but you know that you'll be a different human at that point in time. But the thing is. So we have all kinds of advice for young people, and we. We often dispense it all the time. And in all of the years and all of the wisdom and that you have acquired, what would. If you had to say, here's the Brian Tracy operating system to start in your teens and then in your 20s. And if you do these things as you get into your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond, your life could turn out this way. If you do these things early on, what would those things be?

Well, I've already answered that a little bit.

Yeah, with it. With the three, you know, the. No, I. The triangle was a perfect way to. To mention that. I just want to make sure we.

And it's. And. And, you know, it comes down to responsibility. When I began to study metaphysics, Russian metaphysics, Uspensky and Gorchev, the great teachers of the 1900s, it's when I started to understand the impact and influence of your mind and how the most important thing you can do is to become a very positive and focused person. And the starting point is to accept responsibility is to eliminate negative emotions. So the most important thing is the elimination of negative emotions. And you do that by saying, I am responsible. Nobody else is responsible. No one else is responsible for it, and nobody else is going to do it for me. If there's anything that I want, one of my favorite words I could write a book on that is clarity. Is just becoming very, very clear about who you are and then clear about what you want and how you're going to get there. Yes, one of the major reasons why people are unsuccessful is they're unclear, they're fuzzy about what they need to do to get it. And so if you just take people and walk them through it. There's a very good book written many years ago, the psychiatrist in New York who had. And, and he was a Jewish psychiatrist. And the Jewish people will always tell you that within Judaism there's an enormous amount of negativity and guilt. And so he was brought with a lot of negativity and guilt. And he went to psychiatrists and psychologists and he read and he studied and he did everything possible and he was still miserable. And, and then he stumbled across the principle and I'm going to try to reach into my memory for it. And he formed a, an organization north of Phoenix in. What is the, what, what is the area?

Glendale.

Pardon?

North of Phoenix. Something in Glendale. Scottsdale.

It's in the mountains. And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a resort area.

Oh, Sedona.

Sedona, yes, yes, yes. He calls it the Sedona Method and the Sedona. Yes. And his name escapes me right now. But what he did was he talked about having negative things and holding on to them. You'll know this as soon as it clicks. You'll be negative and angry and frustrated and so on. And you blame it on someone else and blame it on someone else. And so at the beginning, Jack Canfield told me this when he went, he went there to this two or three day resort and what everybody was to think about the thing in their life that makes them the unhappiest, making them angriest. And so, and so he says, now imagine that this is a pencil pen like this. And it says, you hold it in your hand. All right? Now what would happen if you held this pencil in your hand for a few minutes to your hand? Well, your hand would start to tighten up. And what if you held it for an hour? Right. And then five hours and you kept holding and you hold it tighter and tighter. What would happen to your hand? Well, your hand would start to get tighter, tighter and the muscles would tighten up and the joints would tighten up and everything else. So how do you get rid of this negative thing in your life that's causing you all this aggravation? And he said, the answer is very simple. He said, everybody reach out their hands with their. The pen or the pen below them. And then what do you do? You just let it go. So how do you get rid of the negative things in your life? He said, just let it go. And it's called the Sedona Method.

That was Hale Dwaskin is what I pulled up.

Right?

Hale Dwaskin. He saw, he wrote the book, the Sedona Method. Is that him?

It could be. It could be God.

I remember that from years ago, too. I'm glad. No, but there's a famous philosopher, I can't remember his name, that says the last thing that a human being ever lets go of is their suffering.

Yes, yes, I've heard that too. That's right. But the thing is, the key to your success is to realize that this is success only exists because you're holding on to it. Let it go. And that's why I read a wonderful Christian piece of writing, and it said that if Jesus only taught one principle that would rate him as the greatest spiritual teacher of all time, it would be forgiveness. Just to let it go. Just to forgive everybody and everything for anything. Just let it go. And when you let it go, because all what happens is your mind is clear, your body is clear, the stress on your fingers and hands and everything just disappears. And so this is important and it's under your control because only you, only you are holding on to it. And so people are thinking, well, all that has to happen is somebody else has to do or not do something, and then I'll be okay. No, all you have to do is just let it go. Why? Am I upset or unhappy? Whatever it is, just let it go and get on with the rest and get on for the rest of your life. So that's why forgiveness, if you look at Christian teachings or spiritual teachings throughout the ages, forgiveness runs through them all. Because you can't. You can't make any progress at all. If you're still mad or if you're still holding it back, just let it go.

I love it. Well, let me, let me. Can I. So here's I like to do. If you're open for it, I would love to interview you on contribution, responsibility, connection, even the whole concept of easy to get into something and hard to get out, that's such an important thing. And then. And clarity, which is one of the things you talked about. If you'd be. I'd love to do a part two on that. Because you, you know, you've got so much knowledge and wisdom, and I would love to help you with any. Anything, always that. Because you have so Much. You've helped so many people and you put out so much good work into the world. And even our interviews that I have with you have been viewed so many, I mean, in the hundreds of thousands of times. The interviews I have with you that I've put on, on YouTube, so I know this one will be watched and listened to by many, many people. So in, in the spirit of what's in it for them? What did I not ask you that I should have? Or any final last words? And then I would love to do a part two with you.

Well, you know, what is it that everybody wants in life and is they want to be financially well off, they want to be financially free, financially independent. Because other than that, people think and worry about money all the time. Remember when we were younger and we just sweated bullets about money all the time, we just never had enough. We always had bills to pay. And, and, and so only when we press the point where we now have enough money that we don't worry about money, can you really start to enjoy life? Yes, I would say that probably 90% at least. Of all the people that will come to you and read and listen, our people, they worry about money, right? How much money they've got. I'll tell you just a little side thing, which when I was, I was single until I was 35 and, and I read a whole lot about marriages and couples and relationships and so on, and one of the things that I read over and over, which you've read over and over, is how many women, their husbands die and the women don't know anything about the finances of the family and they find out they don't have any money and they have to withdraw and live at a small Reddit place. They have to live with their family, their grown children, and so on and so forth. So one of the things I decided before I ever got married is that by gun, one of my goals was good to be sure that if ever anything happened to me, my wife would be financially independent for the rest of her life. She'd never have to worry about money. That's one of my major goals. And I wrote it down and I made a plan and I achieved. Took many years. I made sure my kids never wanted for anything and, and that my wife would be financially independent. And that's one of the things that makes me really happy. What makes you happy is I know that I have taken care of the most important person in my life and my wife is the most important person in my life. And I made it very clear to her and to my children, that this was a big focus in my life. I never worried about myself. You and I have had so many difficulties and challenges that nothing can really stop us. I mean, I'm 78 years old and if I lost all the money I have in the world, I go out and get another job, I figure it out. But I just wanted to be sure that my wife would be okay. And she is.

And then I, I like. No, so that, that alone, I would say that. So we'll, we'll put a button on that because that is great advice is to figure out the most important person in your life, married or husband, wife, friend, mother, brother, sister, you know, whoever that you, you actually take care. Because, you know what's in it for them is take care of the people that are most important for you. Like, the purpose of, purpose of my book is to be a roadmap for how to take the givers of the world and have, have them be better protected, better held for better boundary givers in the world right now. With all of the, the craziness that has happened pre and post pandemic and all of the leadership in the world right now, that isn't really leadership. There's so much of it that is just misleading. The world needs givers right now. The world needs people that are responsible. The world needs people that, that, that show up with not only asking the question, what's in it for them? But demonstrating it. And so you're, you're, you're an amazing human, Brian. You're a dear friend. I love you. I love what you've done in the world and I love how you're. You will be one of these people. Hundreds of years from now. People will be reading Brian Tracy's work, listening to Brian Tracy, watching Brian Tracy, and you will continue. You've. You've really etched a permanent place in, in just helping humanity. And I, and I hate the fact that I have to jump on another call right now. It's not you, it's me. I have to hop on another session to be the responsible person that I am. But I look forward to speaking with you again. And I just greatly, greatly appreciate you taking the time to share the enormous knowledge you have.

Well, thank you. I'll let you go. You and I, the door is always open both ways for you and I always will be. From the first time we met many years ago, and it's a long time, 30, 40 years. One thing that I would recommend is that you recommend my book, no Excuses. Because if you Believe as I do that accepting responsibility is the most important thing that you can do and it lets go of everything. Well, beings read the book. I think you will love it. But your time and your life is extraordinarily valuable. And if you can save time by giving people your best ideas in a book form and let them read it and let them take notes rather than you spending the hours of your life trying to help them. Always play the tennis. Table tennis. You hit it over, they hit it back, you hit it over. But no excuses is the same. The book that you would like to read is a book that you would like to give to people. It's a book that you'd like to have when you were young. Because it takes people years and years and years to figure out that the key to success is say I am responsible. I am responsible. And that is your ability to respond effectively to the ups and downs of life. Anyway, that's just something to think about it.

Yeah, no, I love and what I'll do, I'll put together a follow up at the end of this too with recommendations. Brian Tracy International is the website Brian Tracy dot com.

Yes.

Yep. And then I'll do a follow up and then so I gotta. I got another session in one minute. But you are awesome, my friend. So thank you so much and everyone that watches, please comment. Love to hear what you thought about this and share this with someone that you think needs to needs to hear it. And so thank you, Brian, I appreciate it.

Thank you, Joe. Be well.

Thank you, you too. Bye bye. Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now.

Come on. Thank you.

Watch them.