Episode #193- Feeding Your Mind- w/Zig Ziglar

We really get to choose what enters our minds , so we should be feeding our brains on a regular basis with nothing but positive , empowering or educational inputs . What we feed our minds on a consistent basis will dictate the course of our lives .

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I think many of us spend a good deal of our lives with our brain just kind of on autopilot , you know , Just randomly consuming inputs from the world around us , Whether it's listening to crappy conversations from the negative people around us , bitching and complaining or talking trash about others , or maybe it's watching mindless reality TV shows or playing some extreme

violent video games or simply letting ourselves get glued to the non-stop doom and gloom worlds , coming to a narrative on the mainstream news stations . We are not standing guard at the door of our mind , as Jim Rohn quoted and warned us of many times . We are not paying attention to what we are feeding our minds .

We are letting the world around us program us , dumping its garbage into our heads like a dumpster in the dark with no lid . What we should be doing , because if we actually put a little effort and discipline into it , we really get to choose what enters our minds .

So we should be feeding our brains on a regular basis with nothing but positive , empowering or educational inputs . What we feed our minds on a consistent basis will dictate the course of our lives . It's simple the more positive inputs we feed our mind , the more positive results we get .

I found this clip from my favorite motivational speaker and coach , Zig Ziglar , and I thought I would share it with all of you . Zig explains with great detail and a little humor what it means to feed your mind and the benefits of doing so . Here's Zig .

And so he said to himself you know , I wonder if this is a coincidence or if this is characteristic of Indians . He did a study on every American Indian tribe living on reservations and he could not find a single Indian that stuttered , not a single one .

And then he decided to do a study on the Indian languages and dialects and when he had completed the study , then he understood completely why there were no Indians that stuttered because in the Indian language and in the Indian dialects there is neither a word nor a substitute word for stutter .

Now follow me real good , if there's no word for stutter , how could they stutter ? And you kind of snicker as you listen , or you might even grin and you say well , that's cute , ziegler . But so what ? The so what is a very simple , a very significant , a very important point .

You see , if there's no word for stutter , they could not stutter , because a word communicates a picture and the mind takes that picture and completes that picture . Now follow me on this .

If you were , for example , not necessarily to increase your vocabulary , but to change your vocabulary , if you were to remove the negatives and substitute the positive , if you were to take the word hate and take it out of your vocabulary don't read it , don't see it , don't think it , don't say it . In its place , put love . Say it In its place , put love .

If you were to take the word prejudice , remove it from your vocabulary and in its place put understanding , I wonder what the results would be If you were to take the word negative , remove it from your vocabulary and in its place put the word positive . Oh , there are a hundred different words that you could make changes on .

And what you're really doing is you're changing your mental diet . That's so important because your mind acts on what you feed it . And if we first reduce , then eliminate the negative input , then it's just a question of time before we reduce and then virtually eliminate the negative output .

It is a fact that an incredible number of the most successful business owners , nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies , top-earning professional athletes , entertainers and industry leaders like Microsoft's Bill Gates , former President Bill Clinton , oprah Winfrey , richard Branson , amazon's Jeff Bezos and Salesforce's Mark Benioff all have one thing in common they all have at

least one coach and some have several that they work with on a consistent basis , someone that helps guide , mentor and support them , challenge them , help them set and achieve goals that move them forward and then hold them accountable to follow through , driving personal and professional growth . Working with a coach has many substantial benefits .

Just for an example , 80% of coaching clients report improved self-esteem or self-confidence thanks to coaching . 99% of individuals and companies that hire a coach report being very satisfied and 96% would do it again . If , deep down , you know it's time to make those improvements in your business or your personal life that you've kicked down the road year after year .

If you're tired of knowing there's a better version of you waiting to shine , but unsure of how to bring that version to light . If you're tired of wanting to enjoy a more successful business but not sure how to start . And if you don't want to go another 12 months without better results , but you don't want to go it alone , then take the first step .

It's super simple . Sometimes talking to the right person can make all the difference . Go to wwwrixelovercom contact and I'll set you up with a free consultation . Call with me to see if one-on-one coaching is right for you .

And so we stop planting the negative and stop letting others plant the negative and we put the positive in the positive in . And many times people say well , zig , you know I'm a busy gal , or I'm a busy guy , man alive , I'm running just to stay , even right now . When am I going to have time to do all this mental eating ?

When am I going to have time to feed my mind , like you're suggesting ? When do I read all of those books ? When do I listen to all of those recordings that you're suggesting that I listen to ? Well , first of all , let me ask you a question . Did you hear about the woodcutter whose production kept going down because it didn't take time to sharpen his axe ?

That's kind of the situation that you find

yourself in . Let me pursue this one more step . I have no earthly idea what you girls spend at the hairdresser . I don't want to know . I'm afraid that if I found out what my own sugar baby was spending down at that hairdresser , maybe I'd be a little disturbed , I don't know . So I don't want to know . But this I do know .

I know that the average man spends approximately $200 a year dressing up the outside of his head . Some spend a great deal more than that . Now I'm talking about shaves , haircuts and the gook that goes with all of these things . Okay , now he spends $200 dressing up the outside of his head . The average professional man spends over $1,500 a year on clothes .

Some spend a lot less , some spend an awful lot more . That's to dress up a body that costs about $1.65 . The average professional man and again , girls I apologize for not knowing the figures for you , I just don't know them , but I imagine they would compare the average professional man spends in excess of $3,000 a year on transportation .

Okay , now that's to get them to where they're going . Now , after getting all of this money has been spent , okay , what have we done ? We've got a well-groomed , well-dressed , mobile professional individual . Now doesn't it make sense to know what to say and what to do after you get to where you're going , does it ? Ladies , would you say yes ?

Okay , then I'm going to suggest that we start feeding their mind with the proper mental diet , and I'm going to start talking first of all about cassette education . Now , obviously , since you've got this course , you've already made an investment in cassette education . My next statement might well sound like an exaggeration .

Please believe me when I say that it is not . It's actually an understatement . Personally , if I could not replace my cassette recorder , $5,000 would not even come close to buying it . Two other statements I do not personally know a self-made millionaire who does not have and use on a regular basis a cassette recorder to listen to . When do they listen ?

They listen while they shave . They listen while they apply makeup . They listen while they boil the beans . They listen while they do 101 other things . They listen while they clean house . They listen while they boil the beans . They listen while they do 101 other things . They listen while they clean house .

They listen on the way to the office or on the way to a sales call . They listen at any time . They're not physically having to pay attention to what they're doing . Driving a car , for example , is a tremendously effective time to do it .

University of California , several years ago , discovered that if you lived in Los Angeles and obviously most of you who listen to this will not be living in Los Angeles , but I use that example because they gave it to us that in a three-year spell , if you're an ordinary person in Los Angeles , california , in going to and from your normal activities , in a

three-year span while in the car , you can acquire the equivalent of two years of college education . I can tell you with certainty that Alan Bean and some of the other astronauts , for example , listened to cassette recordings while they were on the space platform circling the earth and on their way to the moon .

I can tell you that HL Hunt , the billionaire , when he was past 80 years old , was still listening to daily recordings . I can tell you that my friend , bernie Lofchick , in Winnipeg , canada , at a recent national convention , they had 19 winners in a particular contest .

Of their top 19 people , 17 of them including the top 11 , listened on an everyday basis to cassette recordings . Are they important ? I believe they're critical .

I personally have in excess of 300 hours of cassette material that I've accumulated over the years from an awful lot of people and I never go anywhere by myself that I am not listening to these cassette recordings . Over and over and over , we fill it in our minds . Let me see if I can clarify a couple of things .

First of all , you can never get the information in one listening . Another major university discovered , for example , that if you hear something just one time , two weeks later you will only remember 2% of what you've heard . They discovered that if you listen to it six consecutive days , that two weeks later you will remember 62% of it .

But of infinitely more importance , you will be more inclined to take action on what you have heard , to take action on what you have heard . I've come to discover that you need to listen to something about 16 times in order to get the complete message .

And we've also discovered that even after you've heard something 20 or 30 or even 40 or 50 times , that you are still responding emotionally to the message itself . And let me remind you that our thinking brain is only 10% as large as our feeling brain . We need to keep feeding in that positive reinforcement so that we feel and are excited and are motivated .

We , as salespeople , know the tremendous importance of that . When I'm out of town , I always call my wife every night and one of the things I try to persuade her of is the fact that when she said I do nearly 29 years ago that that was the smartest thing she ever said , and she tries to persuade me of the same thing Now .

When I call her , I always tell her how much I love her , for two reasons First of all , it's true , and second , I don't want her to forget . Now .

The truth of the matter is I don't educate her when I say I love you , but what I do is I keep the account open and I keep it up to date and I keep her enthused and I keep her inspired and I keep her motivated .

The same reason that you need to listen to the same recording over and over and over , john said a long time ago said we don't need to be told , but we do need to be reminded . You see , nobody is smart enough to remember everything they know . So you keep putting it in the same thing over and over and over .

Now a lot of people have another erroneous idea about cassette recordings or motivational books or inspirational books . They believe that they're excellent to read or to listen to when you're down . Well , I would agree . They will have a tendency to pick you up . But let me emphasize something that might have escaped you as you've gone through your career .

The best and most opportune time to listen is often when you're at your very peak , when you're riding high , when you're the most enthusiastic , when you're going full speed ahead , when you are so positive that nothing is buying you . That's the best time to listen . And the reason is very simple .

The first few times you listened , it brought you up to one level of awareness . I have a friend , sandy Bregner , who's one of the most enthusiastic , most motivated people that I've ever seen , and Sandy says you know , zig , a lot of times people listen to something and that brings them to one level of awareness .

Then a month later they hear the same thing again and because they're at a higher level , it moves them even further . A very significant point A lot of times when you are down , you will reject some of the most productive ideas as not being applicable to you .

But when you're riding high and the idea is presented to you into your subconscious mind forcefully and enthusiastically , then you say , hey , that's exactly what I've been looking for . And now you accept an idea that you had previously rejected because you were a little bit lower . Let me emphasize a point .

These books and recordings can serve as stepping stones to get you out of the dump . I'm not saying don't listen while you're down . By any means Do , because they do get you out of the dumps .

They can also serve as a step ladder to get you off mediocrity row out of the crowd at the bottom , or they can serve as an unencumbered escalator to take you all the way to the top . Now I want to emphasize something Initially , because this is a good habit , like getting up in the morning .

You've got to force yourself to do it , you've got to remind yourself to do it , you've got to write yourself those little notes . You've got to really force yourself into taking the action .

As I mentioned in an earlier recording , when I started the running program , when I set the goal of losing those 37 pounds , many times when that alarm clock would sound off I fussed about it . I said I don't want to get up .

But then I would look down at that 41-inch waistline and I would say to myself Sigrid , do you want to look like you or do you want to look like that picture you got hanging in the bathroom mirror . I didn't want to look like me , so out of bed I'd get .

And then , after I forced myself to do it for a while , as I mentioned earlier , one day I found out I was having fun doing it . Then the third step will take place . You'll find that you are learning from doing it and then you're going to find , eventually , that you will instinctively start doing something about it .

So , ladies and gentlemen , the four steps are very simple Get up in the morning , enthusiastically , establish those symbols , the positive symbols , set your goal lights and feeding your mind on a regular basis .

I'll leave a link to it in the show notes . Thanks again for tuning in . I really appreciate your support and I hope you have a great week . I can always be reached at wwwrickselovercom , where you can find all my social media links podcast episodes , blog posts and much more .