What do you value most in life and why?
The three things I value most in life are my family, my health, and the opportunity to help people to realize their full potential for success and happiness.
My family, including my wonderful wife, my four beautiful children, their wives and husbands, and my grandchildren, are the most important parts of my life; the parts that make everything else worthwhile.
My health is what makes everything else possible. For that reason, I exercise daily, eat well, get ample rest and recreation, and never take my health for granted.
My great motivator in life is to help people realize their full potential for success and achievement. My way of achieving this goal is to give people practical tools, in the forms of ideas, methods and strategies that they can use to get better results and achieve their goals in every area of life.
What are your three major learnings in life?
The most important thing I ever learned was that each person has virtually unlimited potential that can be unlocked and channeled by doing more and more of what other successful people have done in the past
The second thing I learned is that all skills, in every area, are learnable. You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. The third and most important is that you control your entire life by the way you think. If you change your thinking, you change your life. The most important thing that I have learned and relearned over the years is the importance of personal freedom and personal liberty. The greatest challenge facing our world today is the “something for nothing” philosophy; the idea that people can get money and rewards that they do not deserve and which they have not earned. The desire to get something for nothing lies at the root of almost all of our problems, both socially, economically, nationally and psychologically. Another thing I learned as a young man is the importance of accepting personal responsibility for who you are, and for everything you become. The acceptance of responsibility is the mark of the leader, and of the truly honest person.
Many of our problems, both personal and social, are caused by the tendency of people to blame the problems in their lives on other people, and then to demand that those other people be taxed, regulated or punished in some way for he shortcomings of the individual. When you accept complete responsibility, set clear, written goals for your life, make plans to achieve them, and then work on them every day, you will accomplish five times and ten times as the average person in the same period of time.
What is your recipe for finding your own path in life?
Each person is born with the potential to develop certain talents to a very high degree. One of the great goals of life is to find out what it is that you are designed to do, and then throw your whole heart into becoming excellent in your chosen field. People are only successful when they discipline themselves to do what they love to do, and then work every day on becoming better and better in that area.
How do you set goals and evaluate personal progress and achievements?
A person with clear, written goals and plans will accomplish ten times as much as a person without goals and plans. You cannot hit a target that you cannot see. You cannot achieve a goal if you have not decided what that goal is. The key is to be very clear about your end goal or destination, and then be flexible on the process of achieving that goal. As you get new information, be prepared to try new ways to achieve the same goal.
What are the situations in life you would say you should give up, if any?
One of the principles we teach in our seminars is called “zero-based thinking.” In zero-based thinking, you ask this question: “Is there anything in my life that I am doing that, knowing what I now know, I would not start up again today if I had to do it over?” Look around you at every part of your life. Is there anything you are doing today that you would not get into again today if you had the choice? Are there any relationships, personal or business, that you would not get into again today? Is there any part of your business, your career or your daily activities that you would not begin again today, knowing what you now know?
What would you say contributes toward great success the most?
One of the main differences between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people practice “long-term thinking?” Successful people think forward five and ten years. They become very clear about their long-term goals, and then they come back to the present and decided what they will need to do, starting today, in order to achieve those long-term goals. It takes between seven and ten years for an individual to become excellent at their field, whatever they choose to do. Everyone wants to be more successful, so the competition is very difficult. To achieve more than the average person, you must be willing to work very hard for many years, to get ahead in life. All great achievements in life are preceded by long hard years of concentrated work, attention and focus.
The most important decision you can make is your choice of a career or occupation. If you are doing something that you enjoy doing, and constantly becoming better in your chosen field, you will enjoy every step of the process, as well as the ultimate achievement of your goal.
