be dead lots longer than you’re going to be alive.
The April 28, 1986, issue of Fortune magazine did a study of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. Over fifty percent of them came from lower middle class or poor families. Ninety-one percent of them were either Catholic, Jewish or Protestant. There was evidence that they were at least semi-active in their faith, meaning they got their ethics, their morals, their judgment, their values, and their wisdom out of the Bible. Now, as the great LBJ would say, “Come, let us reason together…” though that was not an original quote! What I would like for you to think about is this; if Steven Covey or Tom Peters or Zig Ziglar or anybody else were to write a book, and ninety-one percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies said, “That’s the one I read, right there!” We all know what would happen, don’t we? We know everybody would go down and get a copy of that book.
You ever wonder why sixty-five percent of college graduates, seventy-two percent of Rhodes Scholars, seventy-five percent of military academy graduates, sixty-five percent of US congressmen, eighty-five percent of airline pilots, eighty-five percent of FBI agents, and eleven of the twelve astronauts who walked on the moon were all Boy Scouts, according to The American Scholar in the autumn 1992 issue? Well, let me see if I can explain to you why that is. First of all, Boy Scouts talk to themselves. I was a Boy Scout. Now all of us talk to ourselves. I’m going to do a lot of talking about self-talking because that is one of the keys to success. Every Thursday night in Yazoo City, Mississippi, I used to stand up there as a Boy Scout and say, “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” Boy! That is good stuff! And when you look at the Scout Law, it says, “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”
Let me tell you something else the Scouts did. Every Thursday night in Yazoo City—I say every Thursday night—one Thursday night a month we had Court of Honor, and that was when we were given merit badges for what we had been doing all during the last go-around. That was a goal we had. We knew exactly what it took to be a first-class Scout. We had the merit badges all laid out. That’s goal setting! We knew what it took to be an Eagle Scout. And Eagle Scouts are successful in all facets of life that go far, far beyond the numbers of them. I tell you, if I were raising a young boy or a young girl today, I’d have them in the Boy Scouts, the Cub Scouts, the Girl Scouts—I would have them taking that training. You know their motto is Be Prepared. And you know what they say? Do a good deed every day. Understand now, you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. They teach leadership. I spoke with Scout executives just this week and they explained to me at that the first camp they have somebody teaching the young Scouts how to drive the stakes and set the tent up. At the next Scout camp, this kid who was learning is now teaching! That’s the way you learn things. You hear/you forget; you see/you remember. But if you see it and hear it and do it, you understand. And you are successful at it. Do a good deed every day.
Now, what’s all this self-talk about? Well, here’s what it’s about. The most important opinion you have is the opinion you have of yourself. And the most important conversation you will have today is the conversation that you will have with yourself. These are values that make such a difference. But before we’re through, we’re going to have you talking to yourself.
In the March 1990 issue of US AIR magazine they had this study that validated that what you say to yourself has a direct bearing on your performance. Dr. Joyce Brothers says you cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself. A lot of people say, “Well, I don’t talk to myself,” but, interestingly enough, the same person talks to the driver of another car three blocks away…with considerable feeling, I hasten to add. You’re not going to believe it, but some people even talk to golf balls…”Go in the hole,” “Stay in there.” You know exactly what I’m talking about there, don’t you?
There was a sixty-five year old lady in Dallas who watched an exercise video. She got all motivated. She went home, she told everybody, “Now, I’m gonna start an exercise program. Gonna start walkin’. Gonna walk five miles a day every day the rest of my life, startin’ today.”
Well, her family tried to talk her out of it. They said, “Now, you know, that’s too much! You don’t start with five miles! Start with one mile.”
“Nope, gonna walk five miles a day every day for the rest of my life.” She is now eighty-three years old and her family doesn’t have a clue as to where she is.
Now, we’re going to talk about change.
Change is stressful—but so is unemployment. And bankruptcy. One of the old statements from AA simply says that one definition of insanity is to think you can keep on doing the same thing and somehow or another get different results. The truth is if you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep on getting what you’ve been getting! If you like what you’ve been getting, that’s fine, but if you don’t like what you’re getting, maybe you need to explore some change.
I want you to think big. Let me share with you our mission statement at The Zig Ziglar Corporation: Be the difference-maker in the personal, family and business lives of enough people to make a positive difference in America and the world. Now, I know that’s pretentious. Small company. But that’s our mission. And let me tell you why it’s not impossible.
I love the story of the grandfather walking the beach with his grandson. And every step or two the grandfather would reach down, pick up a sand dollar and throw it out to sea. He’d take a couple more steps, pick up another one and throw it out, and another one, and finally the grandson said, “Granddaddy, what are you doin’?”
And the grandfather said, “Son, these sand dollars are living organisms. If I don’t throw them out to sea they’ll die in the hot sun. They’ve been washed ashore by the tide.”
The grandson said, “But, Granddaddy, there are thousands of them. What possible difference can it make?”
And the grandfather reached down, picked up another one, threw it out to sea and said, “To this one, it makes all the difference in the world.”
We’re going to be talking about significant things. We’re going to explore why it is that legal immigrants are four times as likely to become millionaires in America as are the people who are born here. It was explained to me in minute detail by a four-year-old girl. Three or four years ago, I got aboard an aircraft in Dallas headed for Norfolk, Virginia. I was the first passenger aboard. I was seated in seat 2C. A mother and her three little ones got aboard right behind me. She was carrying the infant, leading the toddler, and the four-year-old was following behind. The four-year-old got aboard and she looked left into the cockpit and saw those three impressive figures with all the boards and she saw the electronic gadgetry there, probably more than she’d ever seen in her lifetime. When she turned around those little eyes were as big as the proverbial saucers. I don’t know why this child did it, but she put her hands on her legs just above her knees and she bent down and she looked down that long fuselage and said it all with one word: GOSH!
Gosh! That’s what immigrants say when they get to America. They’ve left it all behind them—friends and family and support group, climate and culture and language. They come into this land without the things that so many of us have. One of our key people at our company, Krish Dhanam, got here with nine dollars in his pocket ten years ago, but he came with that dream that we’re going to talk about so much more.
The first thing they do when they land in America is get the daily paper and look at the jobs that are available and say, “There’s two hundred and ninety-one jobs advertised today! Some of them paying
