The One You Feed - Bob Proctor

Episode Date: June 30, 2015

image by Filip Cedarholm[powerpress] This week we talk to Bob Proctor about thought and actionBob Proctor is an author, lecturer, counselor, business consultant, entrepreneur, and teacher  of positive thinking, self-motivation and maximizing human potential. In that endeavor, he follows in the footsteps of such motivational giants as Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale and Wallace D. Wattles.He is the author on numerous book including the international best-seller You Were Born Rich, his latest book is called The ABC's of Success.He was prominently featured in the book and movie, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.In This Interview Bob and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.The paradigm that feeds the bad wolf.His feeling on the movie The Secret.The Law of Vibration is the primary law over the Law of Attraction.That positive thinking alone does not deliver.The belief that we get what we think about it is a myth.How a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.How whatever we impress on our mind, we express outwardly.That we must have discipline as our most basic attribute.Being able to give ourselves a command and then following it.That the real problem is that we do not understand ourselves.Changing the core paradigm.His view on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.How we never learn about who we are in the formal education system.Whether there is more to a spiritual life than desire and wanting.That humans are creative beings.The two good reasons to want money.The devil's best tool.The damaging power of discouragement.Rising Above our circumstances.How we either react to life or respond.The space between stimulus and response.That when we re-act, the other person is in charge.Dealing with our emotions in a conscious fashion.The value of reading biographies of famous people.The room of windows versus the room of mirrors.Avoiding the obligation mindset.Dissatisfaction as a creative state.That grandma was wrong.The power of persistence. Bob Proctor LinksBob Proctor HomepageBob Proctor FacebookBob Proctor Twitter Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Dan HarrisMaria PopovaTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody's got opinions and most of them are a little weird. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Bob Proctor, an author, lecturer, counselor, business consultant, entrepreneur, and teacher of positive thinking, self-motivation, and maximizing human potential. In that endeavor, he follows in the footsteps of such motivational giants as Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, and Wallace D. Wattles. Bob is the author of numerous books, including the international bestseller, You Were Born Rich. His latest book is called The ABCs of Success.

He was prominently featured in the book and movie The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. And we invite you to go look at the free resource guide of Bob's three favorite books of all time, his three favorite songs to stay inspired, and his three favorite books he has written. And you can find that at 1ufeed.net slash Bob. The last thing I'd like to mention before we get started is that Eric is doing some one-on-one coaching. So if you feel like you could use some help with whatever is going on in your life, and if you'd like to go a little further with some of the principles we discuss on The One You Feed, you can talk to Eric and set up some coaching sessions. Just send a request to Eric at

OneYouFeed.net. And with that, here's the interview with Bob Proctor. Hi, Bob. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. Good to be here. Thank you. I'm excited to get you on because one of the things that we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about is positive thinking. And listeners of the show know that I have some, you know, I have my concerns about some positive thinking and some things in your new book really set that up a lot and I think give us a lot of good things to talk about. So I'm excited to explore that. But first, let's start with the way we always start, which is the parable of the two wolves. There's a grandfather who's

talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, you know, it is a parable, but it's also very true. We have a paradigm that's genetic and environmental,

and it really controls the life of the vast majority of people. And unfortunately, we keep feeding it, and it stops us in our tracks. It will not let us grow, and it dominates the thinking of most people. But we've also been given the ability to originate, to create thought, for God's highest form of creation. And if we will feed that side of ourself, if we will strengthen it, develop it, it will beat the bad wolf. But the big bad wolf is the paradigm, and unfortunately it wins in the life of too many people. So I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about, you are well known for having been featured in the movie The Secret,

which has the law of attraction. And I've heard you say that the movie based on the law of attraction is pop culture fluff. What do you mean by that? Well, the movie left people with the idea that you get what you want, and you do not get what you want. Wants are part of the intellect. You can have a want, it's an idea in your conscious mind,

but you're not going to get that unless that want is internalized and turned into a desire. And if that doesn't happen, the want's not going to happen. Now, vibration is a law like gravity. It's always been here. It's not a new idea. It wasn't originated in the secret. But I'd also like to mention, I think Rhonda Byrne accomplished what she wanted to accomplish in The Secret, got a lot of people thinking about themselves and about the law. Our brain is like an electromagnetic machine, and whatever we think controls the vibration we're in.

And we change that vibration momentarily as we change our thinking. But we can only attract to us what we're in harmony with. If I turn my radio on, I'm only going to get what's on that frequency. I'm not going to get something else. If I'm on a talk station, I'm not going to get candlelight and wine music. Well, if you're feeding that negative wolf, that bad wolf, and you're worrying and you're thinking negative thoughts, you're on a frequency that can only attract negative energy. So the law of vibration is attraction is a secondary law.

The law of vibration is the primary law. The entire universe moves. We live in an ocean of motion. Nothing rests. There's no such thing as inertia. And the vibration we're in is dictated by what's going on in our subconscious mind, what we impress upon it. So I've heard you also say that positive thinking alone does not deliver. It does not fulfill. In fact, it frustrates you because it is not in harmony with what we do.

Thinking about music will not make you a musician. Practicing music will. Well, I mean, that's so true. The belief that we just get what we think about is a myth. We get what we internalize. I think James Allen puts it very well. He said, you become what you are, and you are the sum total of your thoughts. It's the thoughts that you internalize. You see, just thinking something, thinking is a function of

the conscious mind, and it's done with your reasoning factor, one of your higher faculties. And you can think about something until you're old and gray. If you don't internalize those thoughts and make them a part of your being, it's never going to happen. And I think that's where a lot of people get off track. They know that's where a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. The power of positive thinking. A great book, but it goes far beyond just thinking. Now, positive thinking is required, but you've got to internalize it. And then from there, act upon it? That's right. That's right. Well, if you internalize it, if you keep impressing it upon your subject of mind,

you are going to act on it. See, whatever is impressed must be expressed, and the expression is the action. The expression is the idea that you are thinking about and internalizing. Desire was put very well by Wallace Wattles. He said, desire is the effort of the unexpressed possibility within, seeking expression without through your action. So you build the want in your conscious mind with your intellect, and then you internalize that want. And if you keep getting emotionally involved with it, it will turn into a desire. And then the desire is what's fueling the expression. It's the expression of the ideas that you're emotionally involved with. The action will follow. I've heard you say that discipline is sort of the very most basic thing

we have to have. We have to have the ability to say to ourselves, we're going to do something, and then do that thing. That seems to be, it's easy to say, and I agree with you that we can't get anywhere without it. How do we build that discipline? Is that part of what you're talking about here? That as these things become true desires, not just thoughts in the mind, that we will act in harmony with those? We will have the ability to do the things that we deeply want? A person will never get anywhere without discipline. Because if you're really going to improve the quality of your life, you have to change your paradigm. You have to change that part of you that's in control of

you most of the time. And that takes a respectable amount of discipline. This I will do. And then you've got to do it. It's giving yourself a command and then follow it. Let me read you something here that I think is incredible. The mind that is properly disciplined and directed to definite ends is an irresistible power that recognizes no such reality as permanent defeat. It organizes defeat and converts it into victory. Now, that was Carnegie's idea that he gave to Hill. And all the way through it, he talks about discipline. He said the mechanism of the mind is a profound system of organized power, which can be released only by one means, and that is by strict self-discipline.

Now, you see, I think as children we can be taught that. I wasn't. But I think we can be taught that the same as we're taught a language or how to walk and talk. The problem is we're not. The people that are successful, I'm talking about the top 2-3%, they're disciplined individuals. They give themselves a command and follow it. And the others, unfortunately, are not. So let's take that other 97%. We say we're going to do something, we don't. We start something,

we quit. We clearly don't have that discipline. What are some of the ways that people can start to build that discipline in themselves? Because it seems pretty fundamental that without that, everything else is going to, you know, we're just not going to be successful. So what are some very practical short-term steps people can take to start to build that discipline if they don't have it today? Well, you're perfectly right. It is very fundamental. But you see, I believe our real problem is that we don't understand ourself. We don't understand our mind or how it functions. And we're not taught anything about it as we go through school. I have found psychiatrists that really do not understand it from a practical perspective. And it's the paradigm where the problem lies, and the paradigm is both genetic and environmental.

It's the conditioning that takes place. You look like some of your relatives, just like I look like some of mine. Well, that comes out in genetic conditioning at the moment of conception. The genes are forming the nucleus of you, your mothers and your dads. But where did they come from? Their mothers and dads. And it goes back, and we're not sure how far back it goes. And then after birth, you're programmed by environment. Carl Menninger from the Menninger Foundation said it's more important than heredity. Well, we've got to understand that paradigm. And if we're not understanding, we're toast.

It just isn't going to happen. This is what explains why brilliant people are leaving universities. They've got degrees coming out the end of their business card, and they're pretty well useless. They don't make things happen. And there's someone else that has never seen the inside of an organized educational institution that's building a big organization and multimillionaires. We've got to understand the power of paradigms and what paradigms do. I mean, I've been teaching this for a long time, and I've gone into major corporations and they don't understand it. for a long time and I've gone into major corporations and they don't understand it.

Major corporations have to ask themselves, why are our stars stars? And they don't know. If they did know, they'd can it and give it to everybody. The stars themselves don't know why they're stars. They're what you call unconscious competence. They're very good, but they're not sure why. And if somebody asks them, they'll say, well, I do this and I do that. You can find people in the same business that are failing and they say, I do this and I do that. They're not consciously aware of why they're doing what they're doing. So they've got something that's non-transferable.

They can't even give it to their own children. Well, when an individual starts to grasp the concept of the programming and the subject of mind, the paradigm, that's when they start to see it. And people attempt to discipline themselves. They say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. But they don't understand the paradigm. They don't change the paradigm. And the paradigm is going to win.

You know, they try and you watch them going on diets, and they're trying to lose weight. They're trying to, and if they don't discipline themselves and change the paradigm, they're not going to lose weight. And the problem is they're trying to lose weight. What they've got to do is release it, because whenever you lose something, you're programmed to find it. That's part of the paradigm.

So the path to better discipline is more about understanding the way our mind works and what we're made of? Absolutely. It's through study less than just maybe doing it? Oh, yeah. Well, you see, I just did it personally. Maybe you did. I don't know.

But I do know that most people that are really winning cannot really articulate on why they are. That's what got me into this business. I didn't sit down and decide to be in this business. I was in a different business. I was in an office cleaning business and very successful. I built it into seven cities and three countries. And I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And one day, I asked myself, how is this all happening?

I hadn't gone to school. I'd gone to high school for two months, and yet I was earning over a million dollars a year. I couldn't accept the idea that there was a capricious or emotional God on a cloud that said, I think I'll give Bob a turn. I didn't think I was lucky, but I didn't know what I was doing that caused things to happen like I was doing. I mean, I was reading Think and Grow Rich, so was a lot of other people. I was doing certain things, so was a lot of other people. And I've been raised to believe if you're going to earn a lot of money, you've got to be really smart. Well, I didn't think I was that

smart, but I was earning a lot of money. Or if you're going to have a good job, you have to have a good formal education. I didn't have a good job. I owned the company. I didn't have any formal education to speak of. So I decided I had to figure out what the heck happened. I was just so inquisitive. And it took me nine and a half years. When I did put it together and realized what it was, all I wanted to do was teach it. And that's all I've done. Like I went into Prudential of America, the largest insurance company in the world. I have no idea what their budget is for training, but it's multi-millions. And I helped them raise sales by hundreds of millions of dollars. One VP told me that it was over a billion. And what I was doing is showing the people how to change the paradigm.

I knew nothing about insurance, but I knew a lot about them. And so when you say change the paradigm, can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by changing that? If you really become very objective about yourself and look at yourself and say, what am I doing? And start to maybe, I don't know, keep a track of how you're spending your days, what you're doing, the things you do that get results you don't really like, you don't like doing, write them all down. And say, now, why am I doing these things? Well, you automatically do them. You just do them. You wake up in the morning, there's a routine. You fall into routine, the way you go. Now, it's either productive or it's not productive, but there's a routine.

If you're married, your wife has a routine. If you're in business, your partner has a routine. So you watch this and you can almost predict with certainty what people are going to do over a given period of time. Well, that is because they're programmed to do it. A paradigm is nothing but a multitude of habits that are fixed in the subject of mind. Well, what we have to realize is that when we're getting results we don't like, the results are caused by a behavioral pattern. Well, then you don't just try and change the behavioral pattern. You ask, what's causing this behavior? Well, it's ideas that are fixed in the subconscious mind. So you have to change.

How did they get there? Who cares? That's why psychoanalysis is going down the tubes. See, they've been analyzing people trying to figure out what's causing the problem. Well, let's suppose you find the cause. The cause is still there. Then you've got to go about changing it. I'm saying forget the cause.

That's where psychotherapy comes in. Say, let's realize there's an idea in your subconscious mind that's causing that behavior. Let's figure out what behavior would be the polar opposite to that. Let's suppose you sleep in every day. You're always late. Well, there's an idea in your subconscious mind that's causing that. Then, well, what would be the polar opposite?

I wake up, I get up when I wake up, and I wake up feeling wonderful with a smile on my face and immediately move into action. You write that out. And then sing it to yourself, repeat it to yourself, rewrite it over and over, write it maybe 500 times every day. That idea eventually is going to get fixed in your subconscious mind. And the other idea is going to get fixed in your subconscious mind, and the other idea is going to die for a lack of nourishment, and you're starting to change your behavior. The behavior is nothing but these ideas that automatically express themselves. That's what a habit is. It's an idea that automatically expresses itself without any conscious thought.

Successful people just automatically become successful. And so the key there then is to take those non-helpful behaviors that are tied to some non-helpful belief and reprogram that belief by sort of just simply saying the opposite of it over and over and over and over? Sure. Now, understand why you're doing it, though. That's why many centuries ago, Solomon was a pretty wise guy. King Solomon, he said, in all you're getting, get understanding. We've got to understand ourself. We go right to our educational system, Eric,

and you can go to some of the most prestigious universities in the world and learn virtually nothing about Eric. Who is Eric? First of all, virtually nothing about Eric. Who is Eric? First of all, you're not Eric. Eric is your name, you know. And we've got to start to understand this. What makes me tick? Why do I do what I do?

This is simple stuff. You can teach it to kids, but adults don't even know it, and the kids don't know it, and it's not taught in school. So you see, our educational system isn't an educational system at all. It's a place where people go to gather more information. That's how the educational system works. Read the book, remember what's in the book, and then answer questions on it. If you answer more of them right than wrong, you'll pass. That doesn't mean you're going to do what you read. That's just knowledge that's stored in your conscious mind. See, it's like Madame Montessori said, a child is not like a cup that you fill up with knowledge. She said, the child has all the knowledge. What you have to do is get them to bring it to the surface and

utilize it. All the knowledge there ever was or ever will be is 100% evenly present in all places at the same time. You don't get knowledge, you've got it, you become aware of what you've got. It's like energy. All the energy there ever was or ever will be is 100% evenly present in all places at the same time. So you don't get energy. Somebody will say, where does she get all the energy? Where does he get all the energy? Nobody gets energy, everybody releases energy. And desire is the triggering mechanism to release energy. Like, I'm going to be 81 in a couple of weeks. I've got more energy than most people that are 21 because I've got a tremendous desire.

So the desire fuels the engine, and away you go. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the wooly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that I've heard people say is that sometimes the prosperity, the abundance, this way of thinking is a little bit like it's all driven by what I want. I want this, so I will do this. I want that. Is there more to a spiritual life and a good life than what I want? Oh, absolutely. You see, the want, misguided people will want it so they can, I don't know, for self-aggrandizement.

That's not what you want. Wants come from the spiritual essence of who you are. The spiritual essence of you is perfection. Your spiritual DNA is perfect. There's perfection in every one of us. Well, it's that perfection attempting to express itself in a greater way. Spirit is always for expansion and fuller expression. Although nature operates by law, it's always for expansion and fuller expression, never for disintegration.

So wants come into our consciousness to help us express this essence of who we are in a greater way. You don't want to get, you want to grow. Your wants are helping you grow. Listen, all religions, I don't care which one you look at, every one that has stood the test of time, that has been around for any period of time, it's based on the emotional appeal of a future promise, that you will one day become one with your God. That's why people light candles. That's why they go to church. That's why they go to the temple or the mosque.

They want to raise their level of consciousness until they become aware of their oneness with their maker, with their God. And God works through us. And if we're doing God's work, then we are creating in a bigger way. We're creative beings. We're the only creature on the planet that is totally disoriented in our environment. All the other little creatures blend in. They're part of nature.

They blend in. They operate by instinct. We have been given higher faculties. We can create our own environment. But we don't know that, so we just let whatever's going on around us control us. It feels to me like, yes, that growth, that expansion is a core part of our spiritual nature. I also see greed in the world. How do you tell the difference? How do you tell the difference between your fuller expression of your deeper nature to grow and to become other things, to transform, and when is it greed? Because I think, at least I see a lot of greed in the world.

There's a lot of greed in the world. That's what causes wars. I want more land. I want to control more of the world. Yeah, greed is a very destructive concept. People are greedy when they don't understand the nature of themselves, when they don't understand their relationship with their creator. They become greedy. You see, you should only want money for two reasons. One is to be comfortable, and the more comfortable you are, the more creative you can become. The other is to extend the good you do far beyond your own presence. If a person has more money than they need, they're not doing what they should be doing. Indeed, they're not doing what they should be doing. We should be doing greater good.

I want to expand the good that I do more than I'm expanding it. I want to do it all over the world. Our company builds schools in Africa. We build a school in our company every two and a half weeks. I want to build one every day. And I know I'm going to reach that objective. So you've got to want for the right reason. I believe our creator intended us to do great work.

That's why we've been given great mental faculties. We're not taught how to use them. We're not even taught what they are in most schools. We have perception, intuition, reason, the will, memory, and intuition, imagination. And we can develop those faculties to a phenomenal degree. And as we do, we can do greater and greater work. First of all, the greedy should understand that everything they think they own, they don't own at all. You never own anything.

Everything you think you own at the time you're dust is going to belong to somebody else. But what you are is yours forever. Nothing's created or destroyed. Dr. Wernher von Braun, the father of the space program, he says, nothing disappears without a trace. Well, all science and all theology tell you nothing is created or destroyed. You moved into your body, you're going to move out of it. You are a soul. You don't have one. You are a soul. And the soul goes on the next phase of its eternal journey. soul. You don't have one. You are a soul. And the soul goes on the next phase of its eternal journey. Excellent. Well, let me ask you, let's jump into your latest book, The ABCs of Success,

which I believe is a book that's put together in a way, short little snippets pulled out of your many, many years of teaching. And there were some in there that resonated a lot with me and I thought spoke a lot to the things that we talk about on the show. So I'd like to move into some of those. And the first one that I'd like to talk about is you describe an old story. I like parables. I think you use a lot of stories where the devil is having, I don't remember exactly, but the devil is having a garage sale. And he's got a few different things on sale. But the one thing that he will not sell sell because he has to keep it for himself, it's his best tool, is discouragement. You see, you get discouraged if you think you're doing it

and it's not happening the way you want it to happen. And discouragement will cause you to quit every time. But if we understand that the best way has never been thought of, we'll figure it out. And if we stay with it, we're going to end up with it. Then we don't get discouraged. I mean, if you take a look at the Wright brothers, at Edison, at Sir Edmund Hillary, any of the ones that really did great work, Samuel, Morris, Marconi, they just did not prevent them to get discouraged. They never saw anything as permanent defeat. It was temporary. Carnegie pointed out they turned that temporary defeat into victory. So the next one is you've got a line in the book from, you're talking about Sir Alec Guinness, the actor, and it was a phrase that a friend of his, another sir who was also an actor whose name I'm not recalling right now, but they had a phrase that they used together as a way to deal with life day to day. The phrase is, rise above it.

get us down. We're letting something outside control us. We've got to rise above it. We're bigger. We're higher than that. We don't want to let it get to us. See, we're either going to react to life or we're going to respond. I was reading something excellent the other day. It was something that Victor Funkel, the Viennese psychiatrist that spent the war years in the camp, he wrote Man's Search for Meaning, something he said. He said in every situation, between the situation and your response, there's a space. And in that space, you can decide what your response will be. The last of the human freedoms, he called it. Yeah, it's so good. Like, if you did something that really upset me, my nature is going to be, I'm going to react

to it. But he said, there's a space, and you've got to take and in that space say, there's some reason why that's happening. I'm not going to let it throw me off track. And we can do that. There is that space. And we can, see, I feel when you react, the other person or the situation is in charge of you. When you respond, you remain control over you. Just the difference between responding and reacting. Guinness said, rise above it.

Used to be something, you're probably familiar, don't sweat the small stuff. Don't let the little things get you. A question that I wrestle with a lot is, and we talk about it on the show, is that there are wiser responses to things. So don't sweat the small stuff, rise above it, you know, not be discouraged. And yet there's human emotion that we have. And I'm always wrestling with where do we, how do we find the line between the emotions are there for a reason. They're telling us something. We have emotion. Where is the line between indulging that emotion, feeling sorry for ourselves, doing all that, and completely repressing it and pretending that nothing ever bothers us.

How do you find, for you, what's the right place between those things? Well, you see, I don't think it's an either or choice. I don't think you have to repress it or suppress it. Suppressing is a very dangerous thing to do. It causes a lot of disease. You don't have to suppress it. I think consciously you have the ability to deal with it. And if you find it's emotionally upsetting,

you can be upset, but you don't have to stay there. You can say, no, wait a minute, I'm going to deal with this. I'm going to think this through. I'm going to ask, why did she do this? Why did he do this? Why did this happen? Michael Beckwith gave me a beautiful response for that. He said, there's a three-step approach to this. He said, number one, it is what it is. Accept it. It's either

going to control you or you're going to control it. Number two, harvest the good. There's something good in everything. Harvest the good. And he said, the more you look for, the more you're going to find. And number three, forgive all the rest. Forgive. Let go of completely. Abandon. And it's such an excellent response. See, I don't think you have to suppress it, bottle it up inside.

I think you can feel the emotional response and just know that it's there. It's like grief when you lose someone. Grief is a normal part of dealing with it, I believe. Grief comes in waves. At first, the waves are big and they're plentiful. Then the waves get smaller and they get further apart. But you don't let it control you. You control it. And so when we're talking about people like the Wright brothers and Edison or,

you know, Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest, we use those as examples of people who did not get discouraged and kept going. it seems to me that those people probably had normal human emotions of disappointment or discouragement that came upon them in the moment that, say, the next invention failed. using their human endowments that you talk about, imagination and creative thought and all those different things. They use those to process that emotion into a place that becomes useful for them. Yeah, and I think they understood that missing the mark and the failures are a normal part of success, of winning, of growing. I had the good fortune of working with Hillary on two or three occasions. So I was able to get to know him a little bit, and he's no different than you or me. And that led me to understand that Edison isn't any different.

The Wright brothers are no different. They just understood something that everybody else doesn't understand, or a lot of people don't understand. When we can understand, we've got that greatness within us. We can do great things, and we've got to realize they're no different, and we can learn from them, and that's who we should learn from. We don't want to listen to the guy next door. Be nice to the guy next door. Have a conversation with him, but if he's never done anything of any consequence, I'm not going to learn life's lessons from him. I want to learn life's lessons from someone who's

done what I love to do in a much greater way than I've Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallyn, really. Yeah. No, really. Go to really, no, really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. It's called really no, really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that's really important, that idea that they're not different than us so that they're going to feel some of the things that we feel, but they have a, back to your point earlier, a paradigm that says, yes, things are not going to go the way I expect every time. they go. I think that a lot of times some of the success literature makes it sound like we should never feel any of that stuff. And then when we do, we feel like we're not cut out, we're not made the same way. Yeah, well, some of that literature shouldn't be written. I remember Dr. Ken McFarland, who was a wonderful speaker for many, many years. He traveled for General Motors. He was the great educator from Great Horseman

down in Kentucky. I used to love listening to him. And he said that one time he said that the university down in Kentucky had done a lot of research into self-help books. And he found that they were all full of sound and original ideas. But he said most of the ones that were original weren't sound and most of the ones that were original weren't sound, and most of the ones that were sound weren't original, you know. So there's, you know, everybody wants to be an author, so they're all pumping out books. I think we've got to say, do they have something to write about? Have they done it? Are they out there in the marketplace? Are they making it happen? in the marketplace? Are they making it happen? So I like to read folk people, you know, that have really done something. You recommend biographies of great people a lot, don't you? Absolutely. No question about it. One of the great ones is Albert Schweitzer. I love reading

his biography, or Lincoln or some, any of them, any of the great authors. Thomas Troward, for the thinkers, if you're not a real deep thinker, you might not enjoy it, but he wrote wonderful books on this. And, you know, I think the people that have really made it happen are going to give something to us that's of value. It's the same as where you study. I am very fortunate. I've had some phenomenal mentors, really incredible people. But I learned very early to listen to the people that were doing it.

See, I started to listen to Earl Nightingale and study Napoleon Hill. And they were both tuned in. They both teach the same thing. And so that's who I started to get my information from. And I don't think, you don't ignore everybody, but you don't necessarily follow them. Everybody's got opinions, and most of them are a little weird. In the book, you have an analogy that you use that I really like. The room of mirrors versus a room of windows. Yeah, well, we keep looking back at ourselves, you know.

And I think we've got to open our mind. We've got to look at the truth of who we are and that this is an orderly universe that we are a part of. And the universe operates by law. I believe the law is God's modus operandi. It's how everything happens. And if we study that and understand we're an expression of an infinite power, we're the, as James Allen said, the offspring of a deathless soul.

power, where the, as James Allen said, the offspring of a deathless soul. We've got such phenomenal potential, and we want to be developing all the days of our life. I think that's why we're here. We're here to grow. And so the room of mirrors versus the room of windows is the idea that in a room of mirrors, we reflect everything back onto ourselves. Everything we see, we see through our own lens, we see through our own lens, we see through our own perception. All we see and think about is us. And the room of windows is what you're saying. It's expanding and opening our mind. It's looking outside of ourselves. It's seeing things through different perspectives. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

There's another thing in the part in the book that you like, and this one has been so helpful to me over the years, and it's where we have a tendency to say, I have to do this thing. I have to do that. I have to go to work today. I have to go pick up the kids from school. And you say there is nothing you have to do. Everything you do, you choose to do. I use two ridiculous examples. I said, you don't have to breathe. You could put a bag over your head. You don't have to pay taxes. You can go to jail or go to a tax-free zone. We choose to do everything. J. Martin Coley wrote a marvelous book. I don't know if you're familiar with it, Your Greatest Power. And your greatest power is your ability to choose. We say we have to do this. I have to work on you. I'm going to be late. I have to do

this. I have to do that. No, no. You're choosing to do it. Yep. I find that so personally helpful in my life because it's very easy to slip into, at least for me, the obligation mindset. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I remind myself, I don't. I mean, I don't have to go pick up my kid from school. I don't ever have to see him again. Now, I don't. I mean, I don't have to go pick up my kid from school. I don't ever have to see him again. Now, I don't like the consequences of those choices, but it is still a choice. We've got to understand that no is a complete sentence. One other thing that you have a line in the book, and it's a question that I bring up a lot on the show and I think about a lot. It's these things that are sort of paradoxical, sort of, and it is the idea of,

you say you should never be satisfied, happy, but not satisfied. And I think that's a really interesting distinction because I think a lot of us are caught so much in the striving that we never enjoy any of what we have. And yet that striving, clearly, as we talked about earlier in the conversation, does seem to be a pretty fundamental part of our nature, that desire to grow and expand. So tell me a little bit more about that happy but not satisfied. Well, when I was a little kid,

my grandmother pretty well raised me. My mother raised three of us by herself, and grandma was there helping out. And whenever we asked for anything, grandma would say, don't ask, don't ask, you should be satisfied with what you've got. Well, when I got older and started to study and understand this, grandma was wrong. Now, you see, we have a hard time, first of all, thinking grandma would be wrong because grandma is like the deity to a little kid. But grandma was wrong. Dissatisfaction is a creative state. It was dissatisfaction that gave us the ability to carry on this conversation the way we're doing. It's dissatisfaction that gave us air travel. It gave us the smartphone, the TV, the knowledge of the laws. It's dissatisfaction that gave us air travel. It gave us the smartphone, the TV, the knowledge of the laws. It's dissatisfaction that gave us the golden age that we're living in. Now, dissatisfaction is going to cause you to want to do better.

You see, Edison wasn't satisfied with a kerosene lamp or a wax candle. He wanted to illuminate the world, so he did. Well, dissatisfaction is a creative state. You should be satisfied, never satisfied with what you've got, but you should be happy with it. And there's a difference. I can be very happy with my results, but dissatisfied with them. Like I am happy with the results I'm getting in my life, but I'm going to tell you something. I'm not at all satisfied. I know I'm capable of doing a heck of a lot better than I'm doing, and every day I get up and I attempt to improve what I'm doing. I want it to be better. I want this interview to be better than the last one. I

want the next one to be better than this one. This is the best one, probably, Bob. It's all downhill from here for you. There you go. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I agree, and I think that's a very, that's another one of those things that's sort of paradoxical and completely true and is one of those things that I think I struggle with finding that right balance of happiness while being dissatisfied.

We're raised to believe you should be satisfied. And if you're not satisfied, then you're greedy. That is not true at all. Dissatisfaction is a creative state. It's what causes us to want to improve. And if we've got infinite potential, why, nothing is as good as it can be. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be happy with what we've got. We should enjoy what we've got, but we want to improve it.

You say that the two most important ingredients for a successful life are goal and persistence. Well, they are. But also, you've got to get in to understand the paradigm. The goal and the persistence are going to enable you to change the paradigm. And you want to understand yourself. You've got to have goals that's going to cause you to stretch, and you cannot let conditions or circumstance control you. That's where the persistence comes in. Napoleon Hill said there may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence, but he said the quality is to the character of the human like what carbon is to steel.

It'll keep you going when everything's beating you back. And that's how you change the paradigm. By persisting. Absolutely. By persisting to accomplish something beyond where you're at. Because the paradigm's going to have you producing the same as you've got. And that's where most people are. There's incremental little improvements, but the average person is about the same place today as they were a year ago.

And they could read and then get into positive thinking. A positive think isn't going to do it if they don't internalize it and get the paradigm shifted. Got it. Well, Bob, thank you so much. This has been a very informative and enjoyable discussion for me. I thank you for taking the time to come on the show. Eric, it's been a pleasure. Get everybody to go and buy the ABCs of Success, 67 different subjects. We will have links for it on our show notes at OneYouFeed.net. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Bob. Okay, take care.

My pleasure. Okay, take care. My pleasure. Okay, bye. You can learn more about Bob Proctor and this podcast and also get the free resource guide of Bob's three favorite books of all time, his three songs to stay inspired by, and his three favorite books he has written at oneufv.net slash Bob.