The Resilient Mind - When Your Attitude Changes, Everything Changes (Original Seminar) - Zig Ziglar

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

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. Zig Ziglar published over 45 books and inspired over 250 Million people in his life. Speech licensed from https://mindsetdrm.com/You can find more powerful messages from Ziglar at:Website: https://www.Ziglar.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZigZiglarYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ZiglarLifeTake action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient 🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind 🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now, folks, I don't read minds. Neither does anybody else. But if I could, as you listen to this tape, and those of you in the live audience, I'm going to tell you what's on a lot of your minds right now. Well, now, Zieg. I mean, fellow, that's a little much. I mean, you're making an awful lot of claims.

You expect me to make all of those claims? Why, Zig, even if I've got the seeds, those seeds are awfully small. and awfully weak. I'm so weak in most of them. How could I honestly do that? You can honestly do it because in the book of Joel. Old Testament, the book of Joel,

the third chapter and the tenth verse verbatim says this. Let the weak say, I am strong. Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I was in Los Angeles. Vegas. Lady came up to me and she said, Mr. Ziegler have three daughters. Two of them honor students.

Every year, honor students. My other one also went to school. Now, she said she was so overwhelmed by the older two that she just knew she didn't have a chance. And she bought this philosophy that you're talking about right now. She bought this qualities of success idea. She bought the idea of looking herself in the mirror and claiming these qualities. Mr. Ziegler, I'm here to tell you that last year, by a minute fraction of a point,

she beat both of her older sisters. Now, ladies and gentlemen, am I saying this makes you smarter? Absolutely not. But I want you to notice what the qualities are. I'm honest and intelligent, and I'm a hard worker. As she started claiming these, she started seeing herself in that light, she started visualizing, she started thinking better, she started working harder, and yes, then, she released what was there.

Turn to the Citry down in Beaumont, Texas. A man had bought some property. And the oil companies came to him and said, hey, we believe we got all there. Let us drill for it. We hit it. We'll pay your royalties. He had nothing to lose, everything to gain.

And so they started drilling. And the whole well came in. And the first year, it pumped out 18 million barrels out of that field. It was spindle top. Most productive, single, all well, all field in history, all well in history spindletop was and the man became an instant millionaire or did he?

You see, it'd been a millionaire ever since he'd acquired the property but really until the oil was discovered and brought forward that had no value until you recognize, confess, and develop the qualities you have, you might as well not have this old story, you know the person who won't read is no better off than the person who can't read, the person who won't use the qualities they got no better off than the person.

person who hadn't got the quality. And so what I'm really saying here is yes, there are so many things that can happen. Now, I'm going to simply give you a couple of other little stories because I think they're so significant. In October of 92, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, doing a public seminar. A gentleman came up to me and he said, Mr. Ziegler, I was in Montgomery three years ago when you gave this qualities of success talk. He said, you didn't put the card in the tapes in those days, so I put my own. I've got this 5 by 7 card here, and he pulled it out,

and it was pretty well dog-eared. He said, every morning and every evening, for the last three years, I have claimed these qualities. I said, well, tell me what's happened. He said, well, number one, my income is up over 500%. Last year alone, over 300%. Now, he sells real estate.

Do I need to tell you where the real estate market was in 1990, 1991, and 1992? But he said, let me tell you something else. Every other facet of my life is dramatically better. My relationship with my family is so much better. My friend, you know, one of the qualities that we put up there is that I am punctual. He said when I read the album, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever read in my life because he said, you see, I've never been on time for anything.

I was late more times for school than any kid who ever graduated from the high school in Montgomery. I was late for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was late for church appointments. A golf game. I laid for everything. Matter of fact, the joke was, hey, if you want to have lunch with him at 12, tell him it's 11.30, and then he'll be there by 12. He said, I'd only been doing this a few days when I realized that that was a choice. But I didn't have to be late. I could choose to be there on time. He said, Mr. Ziegler, I haven't been late for anything in over three years.

And you'd be amazing how much better I get along with my friends and family as a result of it. There's no question about the effectiveness of what we are talking about. In the second paragraph, I, John Jones, I'm a compassionate, respectful, encourage you, who is a considerate, generous, gentle, patient, caring, sensitive, personable, attentive, fun, loving person. I am supporting, giving, and forgiving, clean, kind, unselfish, affectionate, loving, family-oriented human being. and I am a sincere and open-minded good listener and good finder who is trustworthy. These are the qualities which enable me to build good relationships with my associates, neighbors, mate, and family.

Now, something interesting about that. You see, again, Josh Brothers says you cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way that you see yourself. Well, you see, when you claim to be kind and gentle and loving and affectionately caring and then chew you wife or your husband out or somebody in a restaurant or somewhere else, the minute you do that, your conscience will be pricked and you'll say, hey, that is not me. And you will change the behavior. I'm talking about something that is psychologically and theologically sound, folks,

something that will make a difference in your life. There's no question about it. Every day you do this, morning and night, I'm a person of integrity with the faith and wisdom to know what I should do, and the courage and convictions to follow through. I have the vision to manage myself and to lead others. I am authoritative, confident, and humbly grateful for the opportunity of life offers me. I am fair, flexible, resourceful, creative, knowledgeable, decisive, and an extra mileer with a service attitude who communicates well with others.

I am a consistent, pragmatic teacher with character and a finely tuned sense of humor. I am an honorable person and am balanced in. in my personal family and business life, have a passion for being, doing, and learning more today so I can be and do more tomorrow. Then you wind it up, these are the qualities of the winter I was born to be. Tonight I'm going to sleep wonderfully well. I will dream powerful and positive dreams.

Tomorrow I will awake and refresh, and it's going to be an absolutely magnificent day, and you will sleep better, and you will dream better dreams, and you will awake and refresh and optimist. The last thing you put in your mind at night, that's what the mind is going to be dreaming about and dwelling on and developing. Your creativity goes up.

The next morning, you start the day with exactly the same procedure. You do that every day for 30 days. Let me tell you another story. A couple of years ago, I spoke in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. Thursday afternoon, my executive assistant Laurie Major's got a telephone call from a young man. out there. He said, Larry, I was there Tuesday morning. I bought the set of tapes. I got the card. I've been claiming these qualities every morning and every night. When I claimed them Tuesday night, I was doing good until I got to the word integrity. And it bothered me. The next morning, when I got to the

word integrity, it bothered me again. Wednesday night, it bothered me so badly when I claimed to be a man of integrity, I could not sleep. This morning, when I read it again, Laurie, I knew I had to call you and tell you something. You see, Laurie, I bought the set of tapes and paid for them, his whole how to say motivated series. And he said, when I got back home, there in the bottom of my bag were the videotapes developing the qualities of success. And he said, I hadn't paid for them. And I'm embarrassed about it. I'm calling you to tell you, I want to pay for him. And Laurie said, oh, don't be embarrassed about it. It said, actions happened to everybody. Long pause. Laurie, it was not an accident.

When nobody was looking, I put them in the bottom of my bag. You see, folks, the eyes are the windows of the soul. You cannot look yourself in the eye and claim one thing and then behave in an entirely different way and it not get to you. I'm talking life-changing stuff. That's what this is all about.

Do it every day for 30 days. Then at the end of 30 days, pick the strongest quality which you have, and let's say that you are a very good, positive thinker. But let's say that your organization skills can use some help. You take a three-by-five card and you write on it, top quality, I am tremendously positive in my thinking. And I'm getting better organized every day of my life. Now, an amazing thing is going to happen.

Every time you see, well, for example, many of you've ever noticed that when you buy a green Buick, everybody in town, all of a sudden starts driving Green Buick's. Can I say your hands, please, all right? What's going to happen is every time you pick up a newspaper of magazine, there's going to be an article in there. How do you get better organized? You go to a coffee shop and the people in the next booth are talking about how do you get better organized? Why even turn on the television? And they're talking about how do you get better organized? The company calls a meeting. Hey, we're going to have a seminar on how to get better organized. You're going to become convinced very quickly that there's

a conspiracy out there, absolutely put together to help you get exactly what you want out of life and you know what, you'll be right. Because when you get right and you have direction in your life, you're going to be amazed at the number of people who not only will step aside to let you go, but they will give you a boost and make you get there even faster. When your attitude changes, everything about your life is going to change. Why is it important? Why is it important? important that this be taught, not only in our family, but in our companies, in our companies that we can teach the development of these qualities and values, according to the United States Chamber of Commerce, between $20 and $30 billion worth of merchandise is stolen by employees every year.

50% of the bankruptcies. Now, understand, 98% of all businesses have 50 people or less. 50% of all bankruptcies are the direct result of employee theft. But in addition to that, according to Robert Half International, employees steal between $220 and $230 billion worth of time. Now, the same person who would never think of putting a staple in their briefcase and taking it home thinks nothing about making personal telephone calls or taking their time at work to write a few personal letters or spend an extra 20 minutes in the restroom, although they were there just 10 minutes ago. They don't think about that as being theft, but in reality it dramatically impacts the productivity, and that's where we get in a lot of economic trouble.

Now, it obviously takes time and money to train people properly on qualities and other skills, but the reality is, and some companies say to me, why did I train my people and then lose them? Well, there's one thing worse than training people and losing them, and that's not training them and keeping them. We can measure training costs. We cannot measure how much it costs you not to train your people. Now, the interesting thing is, all of these things that we're talking about

are applicable in so many areas of life. You can use it for weight loss, you can use it for golf game, You can use it for anything you want to. One of my goals is to be the world's number one husband. I ask the redhead, sweetheart, if you could identify your dream husband, what qualities would you want him to have?

And over a period of three or four days, here's what she put together. She wants me to be spiritually sound and committed and faithful. Now, see, she does not want me to be relatively faithful. You know, you hear a lot about relativity nowadays. She wants me to be faithful, period. Want me to have integrity, respect her, be unselfish, a good father, sense of humor. I think one of the reasons we get along so well is the fact that I do have a good sense of humor.

She has a fabulous sense of humor. She doesn't tell jokes. She's never told but three since we've been married and she blew the punchline on two of them. We were on a, but just to give you an example, we were sometime back, we started, you know, every night before we turn out the lights, we'd just spend a moment or two just looking at each other. A couple of years ago, we were on vacation, and we'd been driving that day a long way,

and we got in bed, and a few seconds later, I turned the light out. She said, straight up in bed, turn the light back on. She said, you didn't look at me. I said, sweetheart, I did too. She said, no, you didn't. I said, I promise you, I'll look at you. Okay, how do I look? How did I look?

I said, you're beautiful. You're absolutely gorgeous. Your eyes are just sparkling. You're sexy. She said you did look. Now, she wants me to be a good listener. Fellas, that's what your wife wants, just about most of all, to be sensitive, compassionate, ambitious,

considerate, generous, affectionate, gentle, patient. wants me to have good manners to be sober and to be wise. So you know what I do? I put that on my three by five card, and I regularly look at it, and I ask myself that I do it today. See, it's a reminder, folks. We don't need to be told, but we do need to be reminded.

How do you get to accomplish those things? Bottom line is, my wife and I are more in love today than we've ever been. And as I tell folks, if that woman ever leaves me, I guarantee you I'm going with her. There'll be no question about that. Well, the question, the question comes up then. Ziegler, you talk a whole lot about psychological, theological, and physiological. You've talked about the things that everybody wants. You want to be happy and healthy and reasonably prosperous and secure.

And our friends, peace of mind and good family relationship. I can't begin to tell you, folks, as I indicated earlier, I lost my oldest daughter on May 13th of this year. Toughest thing any father or parent or mother's ever called on. Though the grief is intense, the tears are many. They're bearable simply because we have that peace that passes all understanding. We know where she is, and I equally will know that we will see her again. Psalm 2414, I enjoy becoming wise, so there is hope for me and a bright future lies ahead for me. Again, as I have said earlier, failure is an event. It is not a person. I believe with all my heart at this moment, you have the keys to a much greater and brighter future.

I believe with all my heart that if you will claim and develop these qualities and develop the specific skills your job are proficient, demands that I really will see you. And yes, I really do mean you. Not just at the top, hey, I'm going to see you over the top. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.