The Resilient Mind - Overcoming Limitations - Zig Ziglar

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Zig Ziglar was a best-selling American author and speaker who uplifted millions with his motivational message. One of his infamous lecture "See You At The Top" talks about why a positive mental attitude is critical for your success.Take 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 Overcoming Limitations with Zig Ziglar. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. You must know how to train fleas. And so my question in this live presentation here in front of all of you folks, how many of you in this audience, and all I want you to do is be honest with me, How many of you do not know how to train fleas?

Can I see your hands, please? Hey, you got here just in time. I know you heard the one about the two fleas at the bottom of the hill, and one of them says, well, do we walk or take a dog? But anyhow, you train fleas by putting them in a jar, and you put the top on the jar, and you watch those fleas, and they'll jump up and they'll hit the top over and over and over and over and over and over. You watch them jump.

And finally, after they've been jumping a long time, you will notice that even though they continue to jump all of a sudden they are no longer jumping high enough to hit the top Then it's an absolute fact you can just take the top off of the jar and they'll keep on jumping and jumping and jumping and jumping But they cannot I repeat cannot jump out You see they have conditioned themselves to jump just so high and once they've conditioned themselves to jump just so high That's all there is. There ain't no more man is the same way he's still starts out in life to climb the mountain, to write the book, to break the record, to do something with his life. But along the way, he bumps his head, he stubs his toe, and he becomes what I call

a s-na-op. Now that's spelled S-N-I-O-P. And that's a person who is susceptible to the negative influence of other people. Personally speaking, let me tell you something. First two and a half years I was in sales, and that's where I got my professional start. I was not what you'd call an overwhelming success. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even a whelming success. Now that doesn't mean I didn't sell a lot because I did. I sold my furniture, saw my car, and that is reasonably close to the truth. We had a very difficult time and as time goes on I'll share a little more about that but then one day I went to a meeting. It was in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a meeting

I came within a net's eyelash of missing because at 5.30, the next morning when I suppose go to that meeting. I'd been there the day before, spent the day didn't learn a thing. Have you ever been to one of those all day, not learn a thing? I didn't. Next morning at 5.30, the alarm clock sounded off.

Now, in those days, it was an alarm clock. Now, of course, I recognize it as an opportunity clock. Because if you hear it, I got an opportunity to get up and go. If you can't hear it, that might mean you don't got up and gone. Well, anyhow, you know, every day is a good day. And if you don't believe it, you just try missing one. of them all right so opportunity clock got me out of bed except that day it was the alarm clock

force of habit got me up I cracked the Venetian blinds we were living this luxury apartment three bedrooms or three rooms rather above a grocery store just to emphasize the luxury part of it I looked outside and the weather said Ziegler no sane human being would get up and go out there in that weather I was driving a little Crosley automobile that didn't have a heater in it so I did what any intelligent person would do, I lay down and we get back in bed. But as I lay there, the words of my mother came back to me from my childhood, and words are so incredibly important. They changed lives. As a child, she had said, your word is your bond. And if your word is no good, eventually, you're no good. When they had given me the job, which it took me over two months to get,

they just didn't think I could sell. And the first two and a half years, all I did is prove they was about right. When they had given me the job, they had made me promise that I would attend all sales meeting and all training sessions. And in two and a half years, not only had I never missed one, I had never even been late for one. I rolled out of bed. I went to the meeting. That day changed my sales career dramatically. My hero was conducting the meeting that day.

His name was P.C. Merrill. Mr. Merrill had said all of the records. He had written the training program. He was a man of absolute integrity. Now, why he chose to do this, I will never know. But when the meeting was over, there were only 21 of us there that day. But he pulled me aside and said, I want to talk with you personally. I was truly flattered.

Here was a man whom I loved and trusted and respected, and he chose me out of 21. Now, why did he? I don't know. The year before, I probably had not been in the top 4,000 out of all of the salespeople in that 7,000 salesperson company. He got me aside, and it was a very short meeting. He said, Zig, I've been watching you for two and a half years. I have never seen such a waste. And I said, well, Mr. Merrill, what do you mean?

He said, I believe you could be a great one. I believe you could be a national champion. I believe you could go all the way to the top. I believe that someday, if you just believed in yourself and went to work on a regular schedule, that you could, number one, be the national champion, number two, someday you could become an executive in this company. Now, folks, you've got to understand my background. I'm the 10th of 12 children.

I asked my mom one time, I said, Mom, why so many? And she said, well, son, where do you think I should have stopped? Well, I'm glad y'all have got such a great sense of humor. I might as well tell you when having an inclination of laugh, you ought to do it because if you don't, the laughter reverses itself, comes back inside and spread your hips. So you ought to be sure and get with the program there. Well, anyhow, as a youngster, my daddy died when I was five years old. There were six of us too young to work.

We survived because we had five milk cows and a large garden. I was very small as a child. I weighed less than 120 pounds fully dressed when I entered a 12th grade in high school. I used to fight everything that moved. My dream was that someday I was going to be able to retire there in Yezzar City, Mississippi. I was going to have my own butcher shop, an acre of ground on the outskirts of town, so that I could have a big garden there because everybody, retired at 65 and nobody had as much money then as they did before that was my dream the dream

of a little guy from a little town mr. Merrill said you could be a great one I respected him enormously I believed him when I left that meeting that day an entirely different person was driving that little car back home I finished the year the number two salesmen in America out of over 7,000 salespeople at the best promotion the company had to offer the new Next year, I had the best promotion that was available and was the highest paid field manager in the United States. What had happened? Well, it's very important you understand a couple of things. First of all, in two and a half years, I'd learned the sales skills.

I knew how to get prospects, make appointments, handle objections, conduct demonstration, and close the sales. The salesperson was technically ready. But until the person got ready, nothing was happening. The picture you have of yourself is so important. The words my mother used on me as a child were enormously important. The words Mr. Merrill said to me were enormously important. What I want to say about words is very simple. Helen Keller, after the great Anne Sullivan had spent some time with her,

her first real day of school, here's what Helen Keller wrote. I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were, but I do know that mother and father and sister and teacher were among them. Words that were to make the world blossom for me like Aaron's rod with flowers. It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my bed at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys that had brought me and for the first time longed for a new day to come. Folks' words make such a dramatic difference. When the picture changes, then every facet of your life is also going to change.

You've got to be the right kind of person. You've got to do the right things in order to have all that life has to offer. Now, what is that? A reasonable amount, even a large amount, of the things that money will buy. Now, money is not the most important thing in life, but it is reasonably close to oxygen. Because I believe this is a story. of life I believe it's your story I believe it's the story of America I believe it's the story of success I got a couple of good friends who many many years ago were riding around in the

South Alabama foothills it was a hot August day and they got thirsty Bernard Haygood was driving Jimmy Glenn was the passenger they pulled behind this old abandoned farmhouse and Bernard hopped out he ran over and there was an old pump on the well and he grabbed the handle and he started to pump. How many have ever used one of these old-fashioned water pumps? Can I say your hand please? Okay well he had to have a pump in a way you know it after about three or four minutes he said Jimmy better get that old bucket over there and dip some water out of the creek we're going to have to prime the pump. How many of you know what I'm talking about when I say you got to prime the pump? Well for you underprivileged non-pumpers that just means you got to put something in here

before you get something out there. See unfortunately a lot of people stand in front of the stove of life and they say now stove you give me some heat then I'll put some wood in you that ain't the way it works you got to put something in before you can get anything out so many times you know the employee goes to the employer and say give me a raise and I'll start coming to work on time or so many times they will come to them and say make me the boss now I know I haven't been here very long don't really deserve to be the boss but I just function better when I am in charge of the thing you reward me now and then I promise you I'll learn what this business is all about later on. Reward me now and I'll produce later. It doesn't work that way. Can't you just see a

youngster in school saying, teacher, if I take a failing grade home, my parents are going to skin me alive. Pass me on this quarter and next time I'll study more than anybody else. Reward me now, I'll produce later. It doesn't work that way. Can't you just see an old farmer standing out in the fields in October and saying, Lord, I know I didn't plant a thing this year, but if you give me a big crop this year, I'll plant more than anybody next year. It ain't that way, folks. You've got to put something in before you can expect to get anything out. Well, he's just a pumping away. That's hot.

It's August. I mean, the question is, how much pumping are you going to do for a drink of water? And finally, old Bernard said, you know, Jimmy, I don't believe there's any water down there. Jimmy said, yeah, it is Bernard. You know, in South Alabama, the wells are deep. Oh, we're glad they're deep because the deep of the well, the cooler, the cleaner, the sweeter, the purer, the better tasting the water. And isn't that true of life? Isn't it too that if you could become an MD by six weeks of summer school that the rewards

would be almost minimal or nothing and how many patients would you have? Isn't it true that if you become a sales expert in three days of a training school, that the rate of pay would go down rather radically? Isn't it true that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly? Until you can learn to do it well. We'll never know how many kids have missed. the college scholarship because they didn't study an average of 10 more minutes a day. We will never know how we come so close to promotion, but we grew discouraged and quit too

soon. We'll never know how much more success we would have had had we just had a little more pumping in there and pump and pump and pump and pump. Well, finally, old Bernard just got disgusting. Thruber's hand. He said, Jimmy there just no water down there. Jimmy said, don't stop, Bernard! Don't stop. If you stop the water's going to go all the way back down. you're going to have to start all the reality is folks and I'm totally convinced of this this is the story of America this is your story this is a story of success this is the story of life I believe with all of my heart that if you will pump long enough and hard enough and enthusiastically enough that eventually the reward is going to follow the effort and then once that water starts to flow

all you got to do is just keep a little easy steady pressure on it and you're going to get more water than you can possibly use. The basic problem is this. So many times people get involved in something and they'll say, well, I'll give it a try. And if it works out, that'll be good. And if it doesn't work out, I mean, hey, I ain't going to kill yourself.

You know what I mean, fellow? Well, I got to tell you something, folks. You're going to pump forever like that before anything happens. When you get into something, grab that sucker and get with it. And then once the water starts to flow, then ladies and gentlemen, That's what Strategist for Success is all about. You just listened to Overcoming Limitations with Zig Ziglar. Continue strengthening your mind by checking out our other episodes.

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