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Chapter 1

Planning, Preparing and Expecting to Win

How to Stay Motivated; Developing the Qualities of Success, is literally for everyone. Whether you’re a mechanic or a physician, a college professor or a kindergarten student, this information is something you will benefit from. This book is about hope. Alfred Adler said that hope is the foundational quality of all change. It’s my conviction that encouragement is the fuel of that hope, and so this entire book is designed to encourage and inform.

With this in mind, I encourage you to let the entire family and, for that matter, the people you work with, read this, regardless of their age and regardless of what they do. Countless adults have shared with me that these concepts have had a dramatic influence in their lives. In this book I will give you an idea which you will agree is absolutely significant. I will give you four concepts that, if you apply them, will make a difference in your life.

Let's start with this. Do you honestly and sincerely believe there's something you can do in the next two weeks that would make your personal life, your family life, and your business life worse? Do you believe there is something you can do that will make all of them better? Do you believe that the choice is yours? Do you believe that every choice has an end result? Do you believe making the right choices is your responsibility?

Whether you realize it or not, you have just said, “Regardless of how good or bad my past has been, regardless of how good or bad my present is, there is something I can specifically do now that will make my future either better or worse—and the choice is mine.”

Everything is a choice. For example, for 24 years of my adult life, by choice, I weighed well over 200 pounds. Now, the reason I say “by choice” is simply because I have never accidentally eaten anything. It’s always a choice. Now, if I choose to eat too much, then I choose to weigh too much. You are where you are in many ways because of a series of choices you have made.

Let me say something I think is very important. You made the observation that the responsibility is yours to make the right choices. Responsibility carries a lot of weight in life. Barbara Tuchman, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner said, “The number one need we have in our society today is people who will accept responsibility.” That is so tremendously true. Most people I speak to think I'm in my early thirties, but actually, I'm 68. What that means is I was raised during the Depression. My dad died when I was five years old; there were six of us too young to work. I come from a small Mississippi town, Yazoo City; we don't even have a village drunk—we share with the little community next to us. But it’s exciting. About once a month a train comes through town and I know that doesn’t sound like excitement until I explain we don’t have tracks there. We used to hang a mirror at the end of Main Street to make the town look bigger.

Now, let me say something here. I can tease about my hometown for one very good reason; it’s an amazing little town. The former president of the American Medical Association is from Yazoo City; the former president of the American Bar Association is from Yazoo City; the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention is from Yazoo City. The former editor of Harper’s magazine is from Yazoo City. The former Secretary of Agriculture is from Yazoo City. The chairman of the Republican Party is from Yazoo City. Jerry Clowers is from Yazoo City. Now, I have no idea what happened to the other three, but I can tease about my hometown because it has been so productive. We’re going to use humor throughout this book because it helps people learn faster, learn more and remember longer. The major point I'm making is we can tease about that little town because of its productivity. People who are confident and productive, they don’t mind you kidding them along—good, clean kidding and humor definitely has a place.

Now, I don’t need to tell you that as the tenth of 12 children, six of them being too young to work, in the heart of the Depression in a small Mississippi town, we had a tough time financially. Other families had it tough too, but I'm so grateful that, for whatever reason, I did not choose to notice what we did not have. What I did notice was what a lot of people did have in that little town. Even in those times, I noticed some people wore nice clothes, they drove nice cars, they lived in a nice house, and they took nice trips. They even had dinner out. Some of them played golf at the country club. You know what I’ve noticed in every decade of my life since—and this is the message I really want you to get—I’ve noticed, that regardless of the economy, there are some people who don't pay any attention to it at all. As you well know, the media has accurately predicted 27 of the last two recessions. There are some people who just don't pay any attention to what other people are doing. For example, I've noticed that in some instances, when the economy is absolutely magnificent, there is a bunch of folks going broke. I have noticed that in some instances when the economy is absolutely horrible, there is a bunch of folks getting rich. How many of you have noticed exactly the same thing? Now, this is major point number two. Major point number one is, you do have a choice. You can do something now about your life, making it either better or worse, and the choice is yours.

Number two is this: it is not what is going on out there. A lot of that you cannot change. There is something you can do about you and your future and that's what I want to talk about. It’s not what happens out there that makes a difference in your life, it’s what goes on between your own two ears. That's what makes the difference.

Neil Rudenstine was the president of Harvard University. His mother was a part-time waitress and his father was a prison guard. It’s not who your mama and your daddy might've been; it’s not what they have done. The question is what kind of legacy will you leave to your children and your grandchildren? It is what you do. A lot of times we encounter people who have a pity party on a regular basis. They have what we call the PLOM disease—PLOM, that’s “poor li’l ol’ me,” and the problem with pity parties is that very few people come, and those who do don’t bring presents.

Let me point out, there was a study of 300 world-class leaders. Now, I'm talking about Roosevelt and Churchill; I'm talking about Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. I’m talking about Clara Barton, Helen Keller and Mother Teresa. Seventy-five percent of them were either raised in poverty or abused as children, or had some serious physical impairment. They understood point number three: it’s not what happens to you—it’s how you handle what happens to you that is going to make the difference.

I think of the Edsel automobile, which many people recognize as being by far the most profitable motorcar that Ford built. Now, I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking, ‘Ziglar, that sucker was a dog! Why, you know, it cost ‘em a whole lot of money! They stopped production! Whaddya mean it was the most profitable one?’ Remember I said a moment ago it’s not what happens to you, it's how you handle it? Out of the Edsel came the Mustang; out of the Mustang came the Taurus. They took the mistake, learned from it, capitalized on it, and look at what happened as a result. It’s not what happens to you, it's how you handle it.

John Foppe was recognized as one of the Top Ten Young Americans by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce. I met John when he was speaking for the Department of Defense up in Colorado Springs. He had admirals and generals, CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies in front of him. As a 19-year-old young man, he spoke with confidence, clarity, conviction and power. John had graduated from college three and a half years cum laude, working his way partially through. You ought to see John drive a car and scramble eggs and go skiing and paint portraits and do those sorts of things. You ought to watch him just eat. You see, John Foppe was born without any arms. But as John said to me one day, “You know, Zig, if I had the longest, strongest arms ever put on a human being, there’d still be only so high I could reach, only so much weight I could lift. I don’t care how long and tall and strong and big your arms might be, they have a limit. But, Zig, you know, I’ve faced more situations every day where I have to use my creative imagination than the average person does in a month, and there is no limit to what we can do internally.”

Now this message, basically, is the power of hope, because if there's hope in the future, there is power in the present. My objective in this book is to share with you how you can get more of the things money will buy and all of the things money won't buy. Money is important. There are some people who are literally struggling for survival. Part of our objective is to help those people. All of us—at least in one or two instances in our life—have been in that situation where if we had a flat tire it was a financial disaster; if we spilled something on a dress or tore a suit or something, it really represented difficulty.

I want to share with you how to move from survival to stability, from stability to success, and from success to significance. Money is important. Now, don't misunderstand, it’s not everything, but it rates reasonably close to oxygen. It's got to be in the picture. Anybody who says they’re not interested in money is going to lie about other things, too. A lot of people just don't have any concept about money. They talk about cold, hard cash, which is silly. It’s neither cold nor hard; it’s soft and warm. It feels good! Feel it.

I confess I like the things money buys. I like to wear nice clothes, I like to drive a nice car, I like to live in a nice house, I like to take nice trips, I like to take my wife out to nice restaurants. I like all of those things, and all of them cost money. But I love the things money won’t buy. Money bought me a nice house, but it’ll never buy me a home. Money will buy me a bed; it won’t buy me a good night’s sleep. Money will buy me a companion; it won’t buy me a friend. Money will buy me a good time but it won't buy peace of mind. All of those things are available. Now, I’ll never tell you it’s easy, but they are available.

I want to share with you in this book how to achieve employment security in a world where job security no longer exists. And I think everybody would recognize that, and we’re going to look at that very carefully. How do you live well and how do you finish well? I think it’s very important we understand that. How do you develop the qualities that are necessary to accomplish all of these things, and do you have what it takes?

I’m going to give you an awful lot of stories and examples. The Center for Creative Research out of Greensboro, North Carolina, said that the parable—the story, the example—is the best way to teach, particularly if you are teaching values. Seems that a couple thousand years ago somebody else used the parable quite effectively in teaching the truths that really do make a difference. I think of the thoughts that might go through your mind as you sit there reading this, wondering, ‘Well, you know, Zig is saying some pretty significant things there about what is available. I wonder if poor li'l ol’ me can accomplish those things?’

Well, let me tell you about Vince Robert. He was thirty-seven years old and had a fifth grade education. He drove a taxi. The question is, where do you think Vince Robert was going to end up in the minds of a lot of people? I know many would say, “Well, there’s the perfect candidate for governmental assistance before he passes on.” But one day when Vince was waiting on a fare at the airport or downtown in front of a hotel, lightning struck. I don’t know what happened, but he bought a book. It was a dictionary. A fifteen-pound Webster's Dictionary. Vince Robert put that dictionary on the front seat of his automobile, and starting on word one, page one, he started learning those words. By the time he’d barely gotten into the dictionary, maybe an eighth of an inch thick, all of a sudden he started understanding things he’d only heard; understanding things he'd only read. Now, this is validated by Georgetown Medical School, which said in their studies that in one hundred percent of the cases when your vocabulary increases, your IQ goes up—every single case. You can build a magnificent vocabulary and not invest any time at all. All you’ve got to do is get your dictionary and put it in the bathroom. Now, when you analyze what I just said, it really will take you no time at all. That IQ goes up.

Let me tell you what happened to Vince Robert. As he started hearing things and listening to things, he started understanding them. He started investing in the stock market, took every dime he could spare. He ended up buying a nineteen-car cab company. He kept investing. Today he’s a wealthy man, and travels Canada telling people how he did it.

You know what I believe with all my heart? There will be tens of thousands of people like Vince Robert who will listen to what I just said and say, “If that guy can do it, I can do it, too!” That’s what this is all about.

I want to share with you a basic concept which you will hear me repeat over and over—namely, that failure is an event, not a person; yesterday really did end last night. Today is a brand new day, and it gives us another choice to do with it whatever we wish to do.

One of the things I'm going to cover in the series is how do you get along with other people? How do you get along with that bloodsucker of a boss who wants to squeeze every ounce of blood out of you and only pays you minimum wage because it’s the law? How do you get along with that lazy, irresponsible employee who wants all the benefits and does none of the work, who thinks they ought to show up when they want to, where they want to, how they want to and do what they want to?

How do you get along with that man I’m married to that no human being alive could ever tolerate? How do you get along with that woman? How do you handle that irresponsible, lazy teenager? How do you get along with all of these people?

How do you handle a job you hate? Now, I know you love your job, but there are a lot of people who have jobs they’re just not very excited about. I was going through the Dallas Fort-Worth airport, through the security bit, and this young man was there and I said, “Thank you very much. How ya’ doin’?”

He said, “Just awful! I hate this job!”

And I smiled at him and said, “Well, you know, that’s interesting. I'm certain that there are literally thousands of people in Dallas, Texas, alone who would love to have this job that you absolutely hate.”

The young man did a quick double-take and said, “You know, I never thought about that.”

I said, “Well, don't you really think you ought to think about it just for a moment?”

How do you learn to love a job you hate, and if you can’t learn to love it, how do you get to be productive?

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a guy named Richard Oates. Now, Richard Oates was a superintendent with one of the nation's largest homebuilders. For five years he worked with them; the last three years he was under such intense pressure that he said, “You know, I hated Sundays.”

I said, “Well, why on earth did you hate Sundays?”

He said, “Because Sunday was the last day before I would have to get back in the rat race, and I was under so much pressure I was stressed out to an incredible degree.”

In the five years he was there he only missed four days because of illness. In the last three years he was there, he was never late a single time, regardless of the weather, regardless of how he felt, regardless of what the car trouble was. He never used the complete vacation time. The last year he was there he was recognized as one of their top superintendents; would undoubtedly have gotten the award as being the best, but he had, in the meantime, accepted a better position, and they just don't give those awards to people when they have left the company they were with.

Perhaps the most amazing thing, though, is that although he had four hundred home units that he was in charge of, fifteen to twenty homes going up at all times, in the last ten months he built and closed eighty-three homes without missing a single move-in date. Now that is absolutely unbelievable. I asked him, “Well, how’d you do it?” He said, “Well, first of all, you know, there is a question of survival. I do have responsibilities; I just love to eat. I have a responsibility to my wife. I have other responsibilities. I had a responsibility to my company. I’m known as ‘a company man’. My responsibility was to give them the very best I had, regardless of how I might be feeling at the moment.”

Now, folks, that’s what we call character. Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed. That is accepting responsibility. He said, “Not only that, but I had a mentor, Stan Sermonak, who had really taken me under his wing, had made it possible for me to get this particular job, had been my mentor and encourager. I did not want to let him down.”

Now what is all of that saying, folks? There are some absolutes in life.

So, how do you change all those people I’m talking about? You don’t. You change you. And when you change you, that’s when the world begins to change. See, God said to build a better world and I said, “How? It’s such a cold and lonely place, and I’m so small and useless. There’s nothing I can do.”

But God, in all His wisdom said, “Just build a better you.” That’s what this is about—building a better you, because you’ve got to be before you can do, you’ve got to do before you can have. You’ve got such a wide range of choices and we are filled with them.

I read a story of some twins. One of them was an alcoholic. One of them was enormously successful. Their father was an alcoholic. In separate interviews they asked the alcoholic twin, “How did it happen that you became an alcoholic?”

He said, “I had no choice. You see, my father was an alcoholic.”

They asked the very successful young man, “How’d you do it?”

He said, “I had no choice. You see, my father was an alcoholic. I didn’t want to be like him.”

The choice, you see, is ours and we go through life with that.

Now as you can tell, I do tell a lot of stories. I’m going to share a lot of philosophy with you. Philosophy simply means the love of wisdom. One of the things I will say over and over is that you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. I’ll be quoting an awful lot of people. I’ll be quoting Fred Smith, I’ll be quoting John Maxwell, John Johnson, Mary Kay, Mary Crowley, Solomon, Lincoln, Confucius, Emerson, St. Augustine, Christ, Helen Keller, Mother Teresa, Dr. Forest Tennant, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver. I’ll be quoting Mahatma Gandhi and many, many others. I try to give credit when somebody gives me information. I do that for three reasons. Number one, it is the right thing to do. Number two, it indicates I’ve done my research. Number three, if it’s wrong I can always say, “You know, that fella ought to have known better than that!”

Let me say to you without any fear of error that you were born to win. But in order to be the winner that you were born to be you’ve got to plan to win, you’ve got to prepare to win, and then and only then can you legitimately expect to win. Dr. Lewis Terman, in 1920 at Stanford University, started a study on 1440 gifted youngsters. When he retired, another professor was assigned to them. They followed them to the end of their life. Many of them were extremely successful; brilliant young men and women. Many of them went on to great success. Not a single one attributed their IQ to their success. What they attributed to their success was their ability to focus on the issue at hand. You see, a lot of people, when they’re working on the job, are thinking about other things. They’re thinking about the family. When they’re with the family, they’re thinking about the job, and they’re not doing either job very effectively. You really need to be able to focus on what’s going on.

Now, let me simply say this. You were born to win. But you’ve got to plan, you’ve got to prepare and you’ve got to expect to win. Bobby Knight, who has won three national championships at basketball at Indiana University, says that the will to win is nothing without the will to prepare to win. In the National Football League—and I’m not a football expert; the only thing I know about football is that when the official calls a foul on the Cowboys, he is wrong! But I do know one other thing about it, and that is this: In the last two minutes of the half and in the last two minutes of the game, they score twenty percent of all of the points that are scored during the entire 60 minutes. And the reason they do is because they have the two-minute offense. They plan to score, they prepare to score and, consequently, they expect to score. Then, incredibly enough, the defense cooperates with them to help them score. And I know you’re thinking, ‘Now, Ziglar, that’s crazy, man! Why, all week long they practice that defense.’ They have what they call the prevent defense. They take the linebackers out, they send in their nickel backs, they put in their two best pass rushers; they get in a bend but don’t break mode. Well, let me ask you a question: Is it prevent or permit? What do you think?

A few thousand years ago a fellow named Job said something profound. He said, “That which I feared greatly has come to pass.” They’re afraid they’re going to score, and that fear comes to pass. Now, psychologists will tell you in a New York minute (and, for your information, that’s 32 seconds), that you move to the strongest impression in your mind. And if you’re afraid they’re going to score on you, then the chances go up that they will score on you.

Let me give you a specific example. How many of you remember the tragedy that took place in San Francisco in 1982 when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys in the upset championship game? Now, I know a lot of you folks reading this are not going to think that was a tragedy, but believe me, it was! Do you remember what happened? Dallas had just gone ahead; they’d scored a touchdown. Now they kick off with two minutes to play. Montana leads the 49ers all the way down the field. We’ve got our prevent defense in there and you know what the play was. He sends Dwight Clark into the end zone. He throws him the pass. Clark doesn’t realize he’s trying to throw the ball out of the stadium. He jumps 28 feet straight up in the air, makes the catch, the 49ers win the game. Now, when the Cowboys got back the next day, Tex Schramm, who was the president of the Cowboys at that time, was being interviewed by the media, and they asked him, “Tex, what happened?” And he gave us a lesson in life with his answer: He replied, “The Dallas Cowboys went out there determined not to lose the game. The San Francisco 49ers went out there determined to win the game.”

See, in this book I want you thinking, “How do I win the game?” Yes, I believe that you were designed for accomplishment; I believe you’re engineered for success. I believe you’re endowed with the seeds of greatness. You are born to win, but you’ve got to have a plan if you are going to win.

But what is winning? Well, the reality is that all of us want basically the same thing. Everybody wants to be happy. I’ve never yet met anybody who said, “No, I want to be miserable!” Everybody wants to be healthy. Everybody wants to be at least reasonably prosperous, and I know many of you want to be unreasonably prosperous. That’s okay. I’ve had money and I haven’t had it, and I’m here to tell you—it’s better to have it, folks. There’s no question about it. A lot of times some of my Bible-reading friends will misquote the Bible and say, “Well now, you know, Zig, the Bible says that money is the root of all evil,” and, obviously, it doesn’t. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. Two-thirds of the parables Christ taught had to do with our physical and financial wellbeing. Two-thirds of the success stories had to do with that subject. There’s a lot more talk about success in the Bible than there is heaven. The Good Samaritan never could have put that old boy up at the inn after he’d been mugged if he hadn’t had some money to do it with! Now, all of that said, yes, everybody is interested in money. Everybody wants to be secure. They want to have friends, peace of mind. They want to have good family relationships, and they want to have hope that the future is going to be even better.

What part does hope play in all of this? I believe it’s the basis of everything. You see, John Maxwell says if there’s hope in the future, there’s power in the present. Answer these questions as you read:

How happy can you be if you have no hope?

How healthy would you be if you had no hope?

How prosperous could you be if you had no hope?

How secure are you with no hope?

How many friends would you be able to accumulate if you were the kind of person who was always moping and griping and complaining?

How much peace of mind would there be, and how would your family relationships be?

I think hope is the key to an awful lot of things. Let me emphasize a point; I will never tell you that acquiring these things is going to be easy. I know that life is tough. But I also know that when you’re tough on yourself, life can be tremendously rewarding to you. When you discipline yourself to do the things you need to do, when you need to do them, the day is going to come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them. But, my friends, the road to the top goes through lots of valleys. You do not develop champions on a feather bed. There has to be those trials and difficulties in order for you to develop the muscles and the qualities that are going to make such a difference in your life. One of the things I will be saying over and over is you have to be before you can do and you have to do before you can have.

Some years ago I was coming in on a plane—which is generally the way I fly—and I was seated next to an old boy. I couldn’t help but notice he had his wedding band on the index finger of his left hand. A little unusual. I said, “Friend, you’ve got your wedding band on the wrong finger!”

He said, “Yeah, I married the wrong woman!”

Well, I don’t know if he married the wrong woman or not. I’m delighted to be able to say I did not marry the wrong woman. Last November, the Redhead and I—now, when I talk about my wife, at her suggestion, I always call her The Redhead. When I’m talking to her, it’s Sugar Baby. Incidentally, her name is Jean. Now, The Redhead has been inducted into the MasterCard Hall of Fame, and she is so excited! She made the All-Mall team at Prestonwood Shopping Center eight years in a row, and last year she was MVP—Most Valuable Purchaser. A lot of times people say to me, “Does your wife know you say all of those things about her?” I tell them, “Shucks, she helps me write the material!”

Let me point something out. She never gets offended. If she did, I would not say it. But the reason she doesn’t get offended is she knows my heart. You see, we’d been married over 27 years before I was able to give her even financial stability, much less financial security. And yet, during all of those years, not once do I ever remember her saying, “Honey, if we just had more money, here’s what we could do.”

See, there was one five-year stretch when I was in seventeen different deals, and that’s all they were—just deals. But during all those years she would always say, “Honey, tomorrow’s gonna be better. You can do it!” Then the two things that meant the most to me, “I love you,” and “I believe in you.” I cannot begin to tell you what it meant to me to have a cheerleader cheering for me every day and praying for me every night of my life. I can tell you without any reservation, no fear of error, that had it not been for her, I would not have written this. That encouragement and support meant it all. She knows, and I know about her. First of all, half the money is hers. The ONLY time she goes berserk is when she’s shopping for the grandchildren. And, had we known grandchildren were going to be so much fun, we certainly would have been nicer to their parents! But anyhow, she knows I delight in seeing her go shopping because she’s very responsible and it’s a delight to be able to have her do that because for so long she could not.

One of the reasons I believe I’m qualified to make suggestions that will make a difference in your life is that I’ve walked in your shoes. Today I was reminiscing about something. The Redhead brought three twenty-dollar bills downstairs that I had left upstairs. And it reminded me of when I was a young salesman in Lancaster, South Carolina, when we were having such a struggle. I’d had my lights turned off. I’d had my telephone disconnected. I had to turn a car back in that I didn’t want to turn back in. My first baby was born, and the hospital bill was $64. I didn’t have $64. I had to get out and make two sales in order to get my own baby out of the hospital. And I so vividly remember one day, as I was struggling with how do I eat and how do we put gasoline in the car to go make the sales calls, and I was going through some of my drawers at home, and there were two twenty-dollar bills and a ten-dollar bill. It looked like all the money in the world!

I’ve been confused many times in my life. I didn’t know what I’d be doing tomorrow, much less next week, next month or five years down the path. I don’t believe there’s anybody who’ll ever read this who has been as despondent on occasion in those early years, and as puzzled and as curious. I’ve been down that route. Yes, I’ve hurt—as much as anybody, I believe. On May 13^th of 1995 my oldest daughter went home to be with the Lord. I know what it is to feel pain. I’ve felt your feelings; I’ve walked in your shoes. I know what does work. I know what does not work, and that’s the reason I believe hope is such an important ingredient. John Johnson put it this way: “It’s not the color of your skin. It’s not the place of your birth. It’s the size of your hope that’s going to determine where you’re going to go in your life.”

John Johnson was born in a shotgun house with a tin roof in Arkansas City, Arkansas. For those of you who don’t know what a shotgun house is, let me tell you. It’s a house with a roof on it and it’s so named because you could point a shotgun and fire it through that house and it wouldn’t hit anything at all because it’s just a shell. Today John Johnson lives next door to Bob Hope part of the time; he lives in a high rise on the Gold Coast overlooking Lake Michigan the rest of the time. He’s been a guest in the White House with every president since Eisenhower. One of the 400 wealthiest people in America. Owns his own insurance company, own cosmetic company, and Ebony magazine. And when he says, “It’s not the place of your birth or the color of your skin, it’s the size of the hope," I take him very seriously because I do believe he knows what he is talking about.

How do you get all of the things? What’s involved? If an individual really wants to be happy, healthy, prosperous, secure and have friends, peace of mind, good family relationships and hope, you’ve got to deal with all facets of life. You’ve got to deal with your personal life, your family life and your career—you cannot separate them. The January 8, 1990, issue of USA TODAY said the number one cause of a productivity decline in America today is marital difficulty at home. You can’t have a knockdown drag-out at home and go to a job and be as productive as you otherwise would be. You cannot get fired or chewed out by the boss on the job and go home with the same attitude as you’d have if you had just been given a significant raise or recognition. You cannot separate all of these things.

I will attempt to make one thing crystal clear: You go for quality of life first; invariably standard of living goes up. But if you just go for standard of living, there is no assurance that quality of life is going to go up.

The principles I’m going to teach are the principles that made our country great. Did you ever wonder why it is that in 1776, three million Americans produced Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Franklin and the whole bit? And why it is that in 1995, two hundred sixty-five million Americans produced….I’ll let you fill in the blank, as you read this. I don’t think you can name one person with the stature of the individuals I have just named. Let me ask you: Could it be what they were taught?

As you reflect on it, do you believe that what you teach has anything to do with what you believe, and what you believe has anything to do with what you do, and what you do has anything to do with what you have? Well, let me tell you what they were taught. According to the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute, in the 1770s over ninety percent of all the educational thrust was of a moral/ethical/faith basis. Solid foundation stuff. That’s the reason we produced all the people we did in that period of our history. So many times people think, “Well, I’m just a….” and then they say an accountant or a bookkeeper or a salesperson or a household executive or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. “What can I do?” Let me tell you something which I believe has genuine significance. Now, I’ll precede by saying again, yes, you were designed for accomplishment. You were engineered for success. You were endowed with the seeds of greatness. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You literally were born to win, but it takes a plan.

As I conclude this first chapter, I want to do so with a story. I had finished writing my book, Over the Top. My daughter was the editor and we had fun writing that book together. She’s the best editor, by far, I have ever had. We had completed the manuscript, we’d sent it to the publisher, and he promptly packed it up and sent it back and said, “How can you tell people how to go ‘over the top’ when you haven’t identified what ‘the top’ is?” I thought to myself, ‘Well, that will be a snap!’ I worked for two solid months! I would write and, No, that’s not it! I’d write some more, No, that’s not it! I’d try again. I’d get out and take long walks and nothing was happening. I mean, I didn’t have a clue. And then one day the Redhead and I were in Shreveport, Louisiana. We were there visiting her sister who is in a nursing home; she had MS. Many of the people in that home are beyond human help. When we walked in there, somebody said, “Here’s a problem.”

I said, “Step number one is this, step number two is this, step number three is that.”

Some of those people, unfortunately, are beyond that human help I spoke of.

The Redhead is not burdened with the belief that she’s got to solve people’s problems. She just walks in and grabs them and hugs them and tells them how pretty they are, how much she loves them, how glad she is to see them, and they gather around her like bees at a hive. And on that particular day I watched it and I couldn’t handle it. I walked out. And as I walked out I was praying, I said, “Lord, give me that kind of heart. Make me have that kind of compassion for my fellow human being. Touch me so I will have that kind of spirit.” In a few minutes I felt better. I walked back in—they were in the big meeting room. My wife and her sister were seated at the table. I walked in and sat down and all of a sudden it started to come. The only piece of paper I had was the back of the motel bill which I had just paid. I took the sheet of paper out, the bill out, and I started writing. Ninety percent of what this is what I wrote in a few minutes after I’d struggled for two months.

You are at the top when you clearly understand that failure is an event, not a person; that yesterday ended last night. Today is your brand new day.

You are at the top when you’ve made friends with your past, are focused on the present and are optimistic about the future.

You are at the top when you know that success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t break you.

You are at the top when you are filled with faith, hope and love, and live without anger, greed, guilt, envy or thoughts of revenge.

You are at the top when you are mature enough to delay gratification and shift your focus from your rights to your responsibilities.

You are at the top when you know that failure to stand for what is morally right is the prelude to being the victim of what is criminally wrong.

You are at the top when you are secure in who you are, so you are at peace with God and in fellowship with man.

You are at the top when you make friends of your adversaries and have gained the love and respect of those who know you best.

You are at the top when you understand that others can give you pleasure, but genuine happiness comes when you do things for others.

You are at the top when you are pleasant to the grouch, courteous to the rude, and generous to the needy.

You are at the top when you love the unlovable, give hope to the hopeless, friendship to the friendless, and encouragement to the discouraged.

You are at the top when you can look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion and up with gratitude.

You are at the top when you know that he who would be the greatest among you must become the servant of all.

You are at the top when you recognize, confess, develop and use your God-given physical, mental and spiritual abilities to the glory of God and for the benefit of mankind.

You are at the top when you stand in front of the Creator of the Universe and He says to you, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

After I identified the top, I realized what I’d really done. I’d identified the bottom. That’s the base; that’s the foundation upon which you can build any kind of career, whether it’s in education, athletics, business, medicine, law, accounting, computers, or whatever. I believe these are principles that will make a difference.

What happens to people when they have no hope? I have a good friend, her name is Pam Lontos. Pam was an overweight, depressed housewife. She had been under the care of a psychiatrist for five years, who assured her every time they got together that she would always need him because, You are never going to get any better. I am your only hope. Bottom line is she slept from twelve to eighteen hours every day. She only got up to prepare breakfast for her children and husband, and then she went back to bed. She got up again to prepare their dinner and she went back to bed. That was her daily routine and this had been going on for several years.

And then one day she heard an advertisement on the radio, and the advertisement was about a health club and it kind of piqued her interest. For the first time in a long time, she caught a glimmer of hope. As a story within a story, General Robinson Risner is a friend of mine. He was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton for about seven years—five and a half years he was in solitary confinement in a minute cell. The way he kept from losing his mind was that he would jog by the hour right there in place in his cell. And it still, on occasion, was so depressing in there, he would take his underwear and shove it in his mouth and scream at the top of his voice. He did not want the enemy to know they were getting to him. And he said one day, in the depth of his despair, he was down on the floor in this little cinder block cell and he started crawling around and putting his eye up against the wall, hoping he could see something on the outside. There was a minute crack and he saw a single leaf. And in one of our classes, our Born to Win Seminar, he said, “You will never know what it meant to me to see a single green leaf after having seen no sign of life other than my tormentors all of these years.”

I don’t know how the story impacts you, but that day I made a new resolution. And that was I’d be very careful about what I complained about and very sensitive to the things that I have to be grateful for.

Pam Lontos that day, listening to the radio, caught somewhere just a glimpse, a glimmer of hope in what the commercial said. She decided to get up and go down to that club and she watched the people there and everybody was smiling, everybody was busy, everybody seemed to be in a good mood and having fun. She decided to join. Well, you see, that’s step number one, and that’s so important. We’ve all got to have that first step. My friend Joe Sabah says, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you’ve got to start to be great.” And so Pam saw that; she’d taken that first step. She joined the club. And when she started exercising, she started feeling so much better. As a matter of fact, she got a job selling the enrollments in that club and was very successful at it, but she was very spasmodic. She was up and down, she was on the rollercoaster, because you don’t cure depression like that, just by a few exercises and a few weeks, and so her manager gave her a set of my tapes which contained the information I’ll be sharing with you. She started listening to those tapes and that was the encouragement she needed to fuel the hope. She stabilized her productivity, which consistently got better and better, and then she decided she wanted to sell radio advertising because she really loved radio.

She applied to her favorite station. They weren’t even interviewing anybody, wouldn’t even talk to her. So all she did, because she had that hope (and if you’ve got hope you’ll take action), she just showed up at eight o’clock when the manager got there, sat just outside of his office, from eight o’clock until five o’clock when he left. She did it one day, two days, three days, four days, and on the fourth day the manager said, “You know, I believe this girl wants a job.” He interviewed her and she sold him. She got the job and almost immediately she became number one in production, the number one salesperson there. As a matter of fact, a few months later she was out-producing the other four salespeople combined! And then she got a big break—she broke her leg. And it was a serious break. She was in a cast from her hip to her ankle. The doctor said it was going to be “ten months before you’ll be able to go back to work.” So ten days later she showed back up at the radio station on crutches, hobbling around, hired a driver to drive her around, but it was so difficult getting in and out of the car, she knew she had to do something else. But she was being fed with hope! She saw what she was able to do. She saw the changes that came to the inevitable question: What can I do now? People with hope get to be pretty creative, you see. What can I do now that will enable me to retain my productivity?