“Practice within when you’re without” is one of my 5 credos.
Practice being successful. How many people listening to this today
practice being successful today? Before I had any money
I used to go to the Rolls Royce dealers, and sit in the cars and smell the leather,
touch the leather. And these days, this was 40 years ago,
I went to million dollar houses, and my wife and I would
walk through the house. And they’d say
“when are your parents getting here, kids?” “No. We are the buyers.”
What does it mean to practice being successful? Through affirmations.
Through going to the Rolls Royce dealer. Maybe Lamborghini, maybe something else.
In my particular case, it was Rolls Royce. And within a year of me
going to the Rolls Royce dealer, I had a Rolls.
Within 19 months of me dreaming and
adding it to my goals a castle on an island,
I owned Guthrie Castle. I devoted myself
to feeling successful – I was wearing suits like this
before I could afford them. By the way, Andrew Carnegie,
arguably the richest most successful entrepreneur of all time,
he said that “the best thing that you can have for a
child” “is him to be born into poverty.”
And I agree. Ted Turner just gave his 75th anniversary
party on CNN a few months ago.
And he makes a couple of comments and he says “no. 1,” -
and I’m not suggesting this for everybody. it’s how I lived though. -
“The first 10 years of my starting CNN,” “I slept on my couch.”
“I didn’t have an apartment.” Bill Gates
slept in the office. Steve Jobs
slept in the office. And I can go down a whole list.
Now these are super successful
mega-wealthy guys. I slept in my office.
Not everybody’s willing to make that sacrifice. I’ve tried a lot of things.
Nobody’s failed at more things than I have.
And the 1st $100 million are successes but I could write a book about failures that’d
be like Churchill’s Volumes of History of World
War II, I mean because I’ve tried a lot of different
things. Because failure is just testing.
And one of the reasons I’ve been so successful in generating this equity and value in my
kids, and I call you all kids,
is because I convince them that making a mistake is okay.
Your parents probably told you you can be anything you want.
But you can’t. You can’t.
“You can be anything you want” – you can be president and
not have gone to an Ivy League school? Not likely.
You can be Prime Minister and not have gone to
Oxford, Cambridge, University of Edinburgh?
Not likely. But what you tell ‘em is,
you can do anything you want that you have passion for.
Because that eliminates most of the crap. Because most people don’t follow their dream.
“You can’t have a dream come true” “unless you have a dream.”
Now I still dream, I dream in Technicolor,
I say my affirmations and goals every single night.
I interviewed a guy a few months ago
who used to be the personal assistant to Tom Cruise.
Just give me an average week from Sunday morning
to Saturday night. He said 80, 90 hours
not shooting movies. 80, 90 hours.
He gets up every morning like he never made a successful picture,
goes after every project like he never did a project before,
after 30 years of success. Just like J.Lo,
approaches every single project like she never made a successful song,
never made a successful picture. Just imagine you drove your car,
through life, with the emergency brake on.
It’s bad for the transmission, It’s bad for the tyres,
it’s bad for the universal. Then you take
“oh geez, the emergency brake’s on.” Then you release the brake.
What happens? Surge ahead.
Right? Most of us go through life
with our emergency brakes on. And he says most of us,
keep the emergency brake on because
we want a reason not to test ourselves.
Because one of the things you learn as a young
combat infantry officer is: time costs lives.
Fred Smith, who I like a lot, who’s a similarly trained officer like I
was, who’s a marine officer,
he said that “when I learned that” “mistakes weren’t costing arms and legs,”
“and life and death,” “making decisions was easy.”
Similar for me. We overanalyze because we’re unsure.
We don’t overanalyze because we’re not sure if it’ll work or not.
We’re more worried about on the emotional side,
it embarrassing us. Because we have 2 bank accounts in life.
We’ve got an emotional bank account and a financial bank account.
Most of us, not me, but most of us worry about the
financial bank account. But it’s your emotional bank account
that you’re gonna run out when it’s cold and windy,
at night with nobody there to wipe your tears away.
It’s your emotional bank account whether you can suck up your pantyhose,
a phrase I use, man up.
Those are the guys that make it, and the people that can’t man up don’t.
You know the most contagious thing in the world
isn’t a positive action, it’s a negative thought.
A negative thought. Because that can grow geometrically
and kill deals, kill even companies for that matter.
It’s bloody hard to be a high performance person.
You know, we only make changes for 2 reasons: Desperation or inspiration.