The Resilient Mind - Live A Full Life - Les Brown

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Les Brown is a dynamic personality and highly-sought-after resource in business and professional circles for Fortune 500 CEOs, small business owners, non-profit and community leaders from all sectors of society looking to expand opportunity. Book: ⁠You've Got To Be HUNGRY: The GREATNESS Within to Win⁠Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Live a Full Life with Les Brown. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Everybody let us say together, live full. Die empty. And the people in this room have decided to live full. The people in this room have decided to die empty.

The people in this room have decided to live life on their terms. than not to be a volunteer victim. When you say yes to this industry, you're saying yes for a bigger life. You're saying yes, I'm tired of playing small. You're saying yes, I'm really too ready to be empowered to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. You're saying yes to providing for yourself and your family.

There's something that's in you that says, I'm not mentally fit to work for somebody for the rest of my life. You're saying yes to your life, yes to your dreams, yes to your unfolding future. Give yourselves a round of applause. Give yourself a round of applause. I didn't do this for years. I would go in the balcony of auditoriums

and watch Jim Rowan and Dr. Dennis Waitley and Zig Zigler. And my heart would beat so fast because I love helping people. How many of you love helping people? Raise your hands.

I love helping people. And my heart said, I can do that. But then when I would leave there, and as I was walking to the car, my mental conditioning began to speak. And it would say, Les Brown, you can't do that. You don't have a college education. Les Brown, you can't do that. What makes you think that you have something to say that somebody would listen to you?

Les Brown, you can't do that. What makes you think that you can speak for you? 18T, Procton Gamble, McDonald's Corporation, IBM, you've never worked for a major corporation. Les Brown, you can't do that. You're adopted. You don't even know who your parents are. How many have you ever thought about something you wanted to do? You felt it in your heart, and then your mind talk you out of it. Raise your hands, please. I convinced myself that I couldn't do it. I learned something from that experience. Whenever there's an argument between your heart and your mind, Follow your heart.

There are things that the heart can understand and feel that the mind cannot relate to. Maybe that's why my favorite book says, Lead not unto thine own understanding, and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path. There are things that you feel, that you know in your heart of hearts that's not logical,

it's not practical, it's not realistic, but there's something in, you that says, I can do this. I can do this. After facing defeats and disappointments and failures again and again, there's still something in you that says, I can do this. Operating out of a thinking when life knocked you down, try and land on your back, because when you can look up, you can get up. I can do this. I can do this. When you present and people say, oh yes, I'd like to be a part of that. Yes.

They have the personality and they need it and they don't show up. You end up being a babysitter. You have to be a counselor and a psychologist and a minister. They challenge you to pray to Jesus and Yahweh and Melchazidic and Buddha. They get on your last nerve, have you chanting, nomi yoho, rengue, kiio. It's interesting. when you talk to people about securing their future and you can't help them to become actively engaged in their own life a friend of mine named Lorraine had me to come

to do an intervention with her brother that was addicted to drugs and and he told us to get out of his house and as we're going down the steps I said I'm sorry I fail I I'm so disappointed and she said something that I'll never forget I won't you to remember, she said, Les, most people won't participate in their own rescue. Wow. Most people won't participate in their own rescue. You have a vehicle that will allow them to create their own job. You have products that people need. You have training and coaching. where they're being business for themselves, but not by themselves. You have leadership of people who've proven that it's possible.

You can live your dreams. It's possible you've got a shot at creating a fortune. Everybody's not going to do it. We can't predict performance. And all you are saying, hey, listen, here's an opportunity. And don't take it personal when people say no to you. They're not saying no to you. They're saying no to themselves.

They're saying no to living a bigger life. They're saying no to what's going on in their head because they're suffering from possibility blindness. They can't see themselves doing more. They don't want to do that extra work. So they're saving you sometimes. They know they're trifling and don't want to work. Don't try and convince them to say yes. A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.

This is hard work. H-A-R-D and H-E-A-R-T. Hard work and heart work. You've got to gut this out. You've got to make know your vitamin. You've got to fail your way to success. You've got to be unstoppable. You have to operate like Willie Jolly, who setback as a setback,

as a setup for a comeback. You've got to be relentless when you're building a business. You've got to be able to have courage after you face rejection and again and again and again. After somebody tell you they're going to show up and then they don't come, they don't return your calls. It takes courage. You go out and start talking to people. It takes courage when creditors are breathing down your neck and family members saying, oh, there he goes again with another pyramid scheme. Am I making sense to you? What I'm doing?

I didn't do this for 14 years because I didn't have the courage. I was afraid of being rejected because I don't have a college education. I had a tremendous inferiority complex and something else in order to make this business successful

to go from a nine to five to five until you, faint. It's a different mindset. It requires a radical change. How many of you know there's hard building a thriving residual income on a monthly basis? Raise your hands, please. Yeah. That's why most people won't say yes. It's much easier to complain about the economy. It's much easier to complain about our elected officials. It's much easier to talk about the recession. That's much easier to come up with the economy. to come up with excuses.

Why you can't do it. That's where I was. That's where I set up station for a long time. My mentor said something to me, Mike Williams. I want you to write this down. He said, anybody can complain. He said, if you do what is easy, that's complaining. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard.

But if you do what is hard, your life will be easy. Come on now, that's strong medicine. If you do what is easy, complain about your situation and your circumstances. If you do what is easy, stand around and be a volunteer victim like everybody else. If you do what is easy, surrender and give up on your dreams. Become depressed and bitter and angry. Anybody can do that. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, keep coming back again and again and again.

again and again and again. If you do it's hard approaching strangers talking to people in shopping malls, get up dressed every day, going out prospecting, knowing some way, somehow, with a spirit of expectation, somebody's out here looking for an opportunity. You can go outside right now and see some pigeons, but you're out hunting for eagles and they are not common. And if you do that over and over and over again, somebody's going to show up. Somebody's going to say, the one. Dr. Herman, I love him so much. What a great writer.

He said, there's something in each and every one of you that waits and listens to the voice of the genuine in yourself. It will be perhaps the only guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, all of your life, your days will be spent on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. And I submit to you that you invested the time and money to go to the airport to fly across country. I suggest to you, some of you drove here, I suggest to you, you showed up because you said, I'm going to pull my own strings, I'm going to control my own life.

Nobody will ever pull my strings again. Give yourselves a round of applause. I want you to write this down, choosing your future. It's a program that we've created that's designed to put in place for you to work on yourself. A systematic process changes your mindset. It's possible. It's necessary. It's hard, it's worth it, it's done.

It's six CDs. Repeat after me, please. It's possible. You see, the easiest thing that I do now is come up on stage and speak to you. That's easy. But the most difficult thing that I've ever done, and it took me years to do, was to believe that I can do it. To believe that I could stand up and not be afraid and speak from my heart and think. and be able to present to believe that that was possible for me.

For 14 years I didn't do it. Mike Williams said, last, you can do more than what you're now doing. But I didn't believe it. I just couldn't see myself doing it. I'm saying to you, there's some things that you can accomplish that you can't see right now. My favorite book says, I has not seen, ear has not heard, nor is in the heart of mankind, what God has in store.

God has in store for you when you're willing to say yes, when you're willing to move forward, you're willing to come back again and again and again in pursuit of your dream. Life will respond to you. You discover some things about yourself. Mindset transformation is very important. Be not conformed to this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You don't want to think like everybody else.

You want uncommon thinking. Here's the other thing. Expand your skill set. This is the age of what the late Peter Drucker calls the era of the three scenes. Accelerated Change, overwhelming complexity, and tremendous competition. So you have to expand your skill set to stay ahead of technology and cheap labor abroad. When I was a kid, you got on an elevator, I was an elevator boy. What floor please? We operated elevators manually.

Then we're going through creative destruction. Somebody created an elevator that didn't require a person being there employed to close the door and take the people to the deserations. take the people to the designated floor. When I was a kid, girls would say, what do you want to do when you become an adult? I want to be an operator, a long distance operator. Years ago, when you made a long distance call, you had to call a long distance operator. Then somebody created technology that you can dial direct.

Am I making this up? Anybody remember you use that call a long distance operator? It's called creative destruction. Somebody created technology that we don't have to do. We don't have to do that anymore. So today what multi-level marketing does allow you to secure your future, to stay ahead of technology and cheap labor abroad. You can hire a PhD or an MBA in the Philippines, India, for $2.60 an hour.

So what you're doing is you're staying ahead of the game because we're going through continuously creative destruction. I think about Mr. Washington. Young man, yes sir. What do you want to do with your life? I want to buy my mother home, sir. I want to take care of my mother. You do?

Yes, sir. I want to make my mother proud. How can you say you want to make your brother proud and you were in the dean's office the other day for fighting? Sir, they called me D.T. the dumb twin. So you're going to fight them? Yes, sir. Why?

Brown? Why? Angers are wind that bled. out the lamp of the mind. How do I get even, sir? Tell me. They pick on me all the time. Because it takes me longer to learn things than others. I'm not like my sister at the University of Miami. I'm not like my brother. They always compare me to him. Mr. Brown, you want to get even? Yes, sir. He said you have a good memory, young man. Yes, I do. Yes, I do, sir. Remember these words by Frank Sinatra. The best revenge is massive success.

become massively successful. That's how you become even. Thank you, sir. Mr. Brown? Yes, sir. Why did you sign those papers? What are you talking about? You're the first student in special education

that was labeled Educable Mental Retarded, put back from the fifth grade to the fourth grade. You failed in the eighth grade. I fought for you. I saw something in you. You've got greatness in you. I know you're not as fast as your brother. I know you're not like Marguer and your sister.

But there's a hunger in you, sir. And I fought for you to get that and I saw your name. I couldn't believe it. When you signed it to somebody else? Why did you do that? Several teachers met with me and said that. He wouldn't be with me at Florida University to help me. Mr. Washington, they said, if I didn't make the honor roll at Bougatee Washington High School,

I would not make it at Florida N.M. You've been like a father to me. I never would want to bring embarrassment to your name. Mr. Brown, I know it's harder for you. But once you learn something because of your hunger, you got it, you master it. He said, I don't care what they said. But did you believe that you could go there and graduate? To be honest with you, sir.

No, sir. Not without you, sir. Mr. Brown? Yes, sir. Listen to me, yes, sir. Sometimes you have to believe in somebody's belief in you until your belief kicks in. Sometimes you have to believe in somebody's belief in you

until your belief kicks in. Whoever recruited you to become involved in their organization, they saw something in you. Whoever asked you to be a part of their team, they saw greatness in you. Thank you for tuning into this episode. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.