Brian Tracy's Success Is a Journey Speech

thank you I can't tell you how delighted I am to be here I believe in this industry I believe in life insurance and I believe in you I think that life insurance people are some of the finest people in the world and I mean that from the bottom of my heart I'm just delighted to be here leading it was not always fun many years ago I had different ideas about life insurance when I was younger and foolish and about seven years ago a friend of mine took me out for lunch and introduced me to a life insurance agent who is here in the audience today and he asked me a few questions and gave him a few answers and he caught me up a few days later he said why do we get together for lunch again so I thought that was pretty good I could use a free lunch at that particular time in my life so he took me out for lunch when we had lunch in him he took out his folder and he had prepared a proposal for me and he said based on everything that you told me I think that what you need is a million dollars worth of life insurance my heart almost stopped look I said if it's lunch the problem I'll pay for the lunch I said look I got $100,000 worth of life insurance if something happens to me the house is paid off my wife and my children have the house free and clear well he explained to me that that's not a sufficient answer that they're going to have to go to school and they're gonna have to eat and things like that I said yeah yeah yeah I said look I don't get a gamble against myself I'm not going to you know pay money to bet against myself surviving so we explained that away and I gave him every objection that you could imagine I don't care how many objections you've heard I'd give them all to him and he answered them all just sort of like a boxer just going boom boom boom well finally I was still determined I wasn't gonna buy like that I said okay you've answered every question but tell me give me one reason why I should buy a million dollar life insurance policy and this is what he did he folded up his stuff he put it aside folded his arms he leaned across the table and he said Brian he said you're simply too important the person to have anything less than 1 million dollars in licensure well I looked at him and he looked at me and the thing was demented I asked him last night as a matter of fact that he assured me yes he did mean it and I couldn't argue with him what I guess say no I'm really quite insignificant and unimportant and so I said well I said can you make monthly payments and he said yes so I took the insurance now that's not the important thing the important thing is that after I'd watch the policy and I never never regretted it for a second oh by remorse something happens to me and I pass this on to you because I think that you should all sell a million dollar quality because when I walked away with that policy I felt like a million dollar person I'm I am you self-images you know that your outer life is like your inner life we all know that myself having to change instead of being a struggling business person with family responsibilities and too many bills and not enough money I was a million dollar person but I thought I'd signed a loan application and I find quite a few I put down there Jarrod's 1 million dollars I started to think about that something happened to me my family could live in style for life I didn't think that I was worth more dead than alive but but I thought a companion dollar person you know something over the years the inner became the outer and now I'm a million dollar person on the outside as well as on the inside and I'm sure that being sold that million dollar policy has something to do with it so don't sell it for yourself tell this to the person because there's nothing better than to have a million dollar policy to walk around knowing you're a million dollar person now three years later Jordan came back to me and sold me another million dollars worth of insurance this time permanent life all right Denny Bart I want to tell you how much I believe in this industry last night I just paid the deposit check for 2 million dollars more I like I didn't I believe in my concern anyway did you ever stop and ask yourself why some people are more successful than others why some people make more money live longer have better relationship while the great mass of men as Thoreau said live lives of quiet desperation when I was 15 I set out on a lifelong journey to find the answer to that question why are some people more successful than others you see when I was growing up my family never seemed to have enough money my parents grew up during the Depression and I heard the same thing over and over again throughout my childhood we can't afford it we can't afford it we can't afford it I don't know if you heard that when you were growing up it seems to be the national anthem I was not a great student I passed out of high school when I was 18 I stay passed out because uh rather than graduated because that's what happened I passed out in the half of the class that made the top half possible the person in front of me and there's a lot of people out here in the same half the person in front of me on the stage and the person in back of me receive diplomas and I got a leaving certificate when you open it up it says goodbye and that's what they meant goodbye don't ever go back anyway since then I've traveled and worked in more than 80 countries on six continents I've sailed on all the great oceans I've been around the world two or three times I became fluent in French German and Spanish as well as learning to get along in several other languages when you need to eat you and you learn anyway I started off as poor as I could be searching for the secrets of success and over the years I've read and studied for over 30,000 hours in business economics psychology philosophy religion metaphysics and history to find the secrets of success and I'm happy to say that I eventually found the answers I was looking for today I live in a million-dollar house on a golf course in Southern California and I have business interests in nine countries today I know and I've proven that success in any field including this field is as predictable as the Sun rising in the east and setting the west and my purpose in speaking with you today to share with you some of the most important things I've ever learned however is Aristotle once said you can't teach a person something that they don't already know you were already high achievers and great successes in your careers you're already the cream of your profession so many of you already know what we're going to talk about and the rest of you will recognize these principles as soon as you hear them about five years ago I met a wise and wealthy man who had spent his entire life studying success and he'd reached a clear conclusion concerning the reason for success in life and especially in visiting he's dead now but I'll never forget what he told me because I immediately recognized that he put the finger on my reason for success and yours as we'll talk about in a minute he said the key to success was to set a goal and then to stay with it until you achieve success in at least one important thing he said that your subconscious mind will then accept that success experience and store it as a pattern like a template and then your comment on your subconscious will drive you and direct you and guide you to repeat the pattern of success in other things that you attempt another way of saying it is that nothing succeeds like success psychologists have demonstrated that achievement brings you a natural high once you've experienced your first great success and not only you unconsciously programmed or repeated but nothing else will ever give you the same wonderful sense of satisfaction all high achievers know that anyway I learned the truth of this idea many years ago when I first started traveling I spent eight years traveling around the world and in many ways a trip or a journey is a metaphor for life my first big trip was that and much much more it has such an enormous impact on me that I've never really gotten over it my whole life has been different as a result of what I saw the Sahara crossing let me let me tell you about aya when I was 18 three friends and I decided we'd wasis to the world we were well out of high school and we were laboring in sawmills on the west coast this is a 1960 tree and a lot of our friends were headed for Europe to travel around with backpack so we decided to do something different nobody else was going to Africa so we decided we go to Africa of course it never occurred to us to ask why it was that no one else was going to Africa and that was our first mistake after working in saving for a year the four of us piled into the whole 1946 Chevy and drove out of Vancouver bound for Montreal via Toronto actually we just passed a couple of blocks from here on our way on that trip it was late at night when we left it was pouring rain we were all 20 years old and we were off to do world anyway I learned later that almost every great venture begins with an act of fate like driving into the dart into the unknown in a way nature protects us by shielding us from knowledge of the difficulties and obstacles that lie ahead if we really knew all the problems we would face is dead fact the suffering the temporary failure and the disappointments many of us would hesitate about ever even starting out at all and our plan was to drive across country to Montreal get jobs on ships to work our way across the Atlantic and then hit South across Europe to Africa free basic plan however has it happened in Montreal one of the guys decided to give up and go home and so we left it well that left street the other two after one day still remember that after one day of looking for work on the waterfront decided to quit decide to quit trying and to spend their limited savings to pay their way across the Atlantic rather than to work their way I tried to talk about it I told them that quitting is a habit if you quit the first time you run into difficulties you'll always quit when the going gets rough you will in effect establish a pattern for failure rather than a pattern for success but their minds are made up so we split our savings and they took passage on a ship to England I worked on a construction site in Montreal hauling heavy things for the entire winter and then I got a job on our Norwegian freighter out of Halifax and a late February and arrived in England in mid-april as I predicted my friends had quit and stayed in England working at odd job however we soon made up good buddies again once more we headed for Africa this is at this time we all we had was an eight and a half by 11 inch page about this side that had Europe and Africa all on the same map on the same page and it seemed to be a very simple thing to go from London which is up here the Johannesburg which is down here it's just one page where we sort of do a straight line or going on well oh yes there was a little orange part right across sort of a band right through the middle there called the Sahara Desert but we thought well we just whip over that and get down to the green part on the map I said I'm without a word about life this is true we didn't stop to think that the total distance was about 8,000 miles see we were big picture people we didn't let ourselves get bogged down with details we were young and we hadn't learned that it's the details that get you every single time so we took a train down to London there we bought bicycle see we'd never heard of anyone riding from London to Johannesburg on bicycles so we decided that we would do it first and become famous that was another mistake as soon as we soon learned that when you ride bicycles across France in the springtime you find that the hills are all uphill and the wind is always in your face likewise I found that when you embark on any new venture you often find the same thing everything seems to go wrong usually the worst possible time and in the worst possible and most expensive way when like starting a new business or in a career anyway after two weeks of grinding along on bicycles uphill the whole way which seems like a geographical impossibility but it's true we said the heck with this we loaded the bikes on a train and we wrote across France and Spain to Gibraltar there we sold the bicycles and bought a Land Rover with our last caller we had definitely learned why no one had ever crossed Africa on bicycles it was our near impossible to cross France on bike Darabont anyway so now we have no problem we were out of money we'd exhausted our meager finances buying a Land Rover we didn't have enough money for fuel and equipment so we all sat down we consider it those great writers of that time we all sat down wrote letters everybody that we knew pleading for money telling them how desperate our case situation was sitting here looking across the Straits of Gibraltar to Africa all we needed was just a little bit of money to get us over there anyway we got it eventually we've got a little bit of money here a little bit of money there and then we got one big score I'll never forget this an uncle of Jeff but he's only seen once in his life sent us 100 pound hundred pounds at that time was $300 worth more than $1,000 today and we were ecstatic and we were saved so this is another lesson nobody ever makes it on their own great lessons of life we all need help from others to get over the rough spots on the journey of life well with the additional money we loaded up with food and supplies we took the ferry over to Tangiers in Morocco and then we headed out Tangiers toward the Atlas Mountains in the Sahara full of excitement seen as we drove down the road 20 miles out the radiator blew out the Land Rover had never been driven on the open road it expanded whole working life tooling around the narrow streets of Gibraltar and once on the open road it began to fall apart the radiator was just the beginning over the next candidates experienced bent through the front wheels out of alignment so the tires blew one by one we had trouble with the carburetor in the ignition system we were so poorly equipped if you can believe it we didn't even have a jack or a lug wrench when we got a flat tire we got lots of flat tires we had to sit by the side of the road patiently sometimes for hours until somebody came along with the proper tools to help us change the tire but we pressed on anyway as we drove deeper into Morocco and over the Atlas mountain and onto the sahara escarpment we headed into a world that had changed very little in a thousand years there were long long stretches of barren country roads and an occasional way that surrounded by primitive farm which was irrigated from wells underground rivers and that began an experience that I still remember quite clearly and I think you'll be able to relate to this by this time I was speaking French fairly well we did converse with the natives in this occasionally small town that we passed through and it went down earlier in our early in our slow halting trek across Morocco someone asked us where we were headed and we told them that we're going to cross the Saharan into Africa and he said oh no he said you can't do that did you'll die in the desert I looked up my dictionary quickly given a knife and expression whose la Maria's Andaluz who the late Maria's darling would okay usually you know you will die in the desert we then began to hear this on a regular basis everywhere we went we stopped in a small town and people would bring their friends up to us and introduce us as the young men we're going off to die in the desert well they think white cheerful about it but but after a while we found it kind of irritating I mean and by the way these were not your average Eric these were Bedouins and touring these were desert people members of tribes that lived in the Sahara for a thousand years I mean they were in a position to know what they were talking about and I learned a valuable lesson from it I learned then and for the rest of your life whenever you try to do something out of the ordinary people will line up to tell you that you can't do it why you can't do it that you lose your time you lose your money that you will in effect die in the desert even people who should know better will try to discourage you to achieve anything greater worthwhile you must train yourself to rise above these people and Naurang them and pressing on towards your goal regardless [Applause] these are great guys I love it we accept we cross from Morocco into Algeria and drove south to the town of a drawer on the edge of the Sahara but this time her vehicle was falling apart and with the cost of repairs and gasoline and food we'd almost run out of money again one of the guys sick from dysentery decided to give up he took his money and his belongings in a hitchhike to the Mediterranean 500 miles north and then back to England that left two of it we began wondering what are we doing here we were two young men 20 and 21 years of age thousands of miles from home sick tired and almost broke with thousands of miles ahead of it we couldn't even remember why we started out in the first place except that we set it as a goal and we do dumb the changes anyway but one of the things that kept us going was a book of poetry by Robert W service Robert W service had driven an ambulance in World War one and he'd written poetry to cheer up the soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front and it was one poem that we read over and over it always gave us a boost and the determination to go forward it was called carry on and it started like this it said it's easy to fight when everything's right when you're mad at the thrill and glory it's easy to cheer when victory is near and wallow in fields that are gory it's a different song when everything's wrong when you're feeling infernally mortal when it's ken against one and hope there is none buck up little soldier and chortle carry on carry on there isn't much punch in your blow your glaring and Starion is now blind you're muddy and bloody but never you mind carry on carry on you haven't the ghost of a show it's looking like death but while you put bread carry on my son carry on well by this time we were in the Sahara the largest desert on earth it stretches across the Tropic of Capricorn from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea more than 5000 miles and the part that we faced they had was the Tunisia the emptiest single stretch of the Sahara 500 miles of nothing not a fly not a blade of grass and splat at the table top 511 the enormity of what we had embarked on finally finally began to think in we learned that more than 1300 people had perished in the semester off' in the last 20 years 42 vehicles had broken down in the desert and many of their drivers were never seen again alive by this time Jeff and I were once more out of mine all our tires were straight bald and they needed to be replaced we needed additional tanks so we could carry enough gas and water for the crossing we needed a tool to do repairs we needed a jack and lug wrench so we can change some blood grants we could change tire obviously for three weeks we stayed in the drawer Jeff hitchhike north to Algiers to wire for more money more creative writing and while I sold all our supplies except for a bare minimum with that money and by stripping abandoned vehicles I got the Land Rover repaired and properly outfitted with reasonably good tires a reserved gas tank proper tools and supplies for the problem its amazed you know enterprising you become when your survival is at stake by the way this story took place 24 years ago today the Sahara Desert in June is hot how hot is it very hot it's damla at midday it reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit an exposed man can die of dehydration in less than 20 minutes when the French ran Algeria they required travelers to carry five gallons of water per person per day for the crossing that's how much you drank it because of the heat you can only travel before 10:00 a.m. and after 4 p.m. the midday Sun is so hot that we could drive your engine oil boiled it becomes as thin as water and your vehicle seizes up and I'll never run again six weeks after crossing from Gibraltar we were ready Jeff came back with some money from his parents and the vehicle was a perfect condition for the crossing we realized that if anything did go long and we couldn't fix it we would most certainly die in the desert three days before the big push the actual crossing we met five Germans in a Volkswagen bus who were waiting for a truck convoy that would cross in a few days they were going to play it safe and cross this convoy safety in numbers we told them we were going convoy or no convoy and they decided to cross with the Audion government stamps your passport out of Algeria 500 miles north of the border from there on you're on your own and they couldn't care less what happens there far as they're concerned you don't exist anymore so we set out and I remember this clearly we set out at sunset on a Thursday following the pieces which is the French word for track a very accurate version track that led straight south across the desert we drove through the night as we drove through the night about 50 miles out our troubles begin the Germans vehicles sunk in and started to get bogged down in the fine sand that is blowing on the track and it also began to break down mechanically it started getting sand in the carburetor everything I began to delay us our by Allah we had to get across the five hundred miles in two days or we be out of water so we pressed on as fast as we could over and over the German vehicle got stuck and we had to stop and drag it out with our four-wheel-drive Land Rover losing time and using precious fuel Jeff and I took turns driving the Land Rover while the German vehicle drove parallel with us across the flat wasteland and we kept their self motivated by quoting the poem carry on back and forth to each other and the next verse goes like this and so in a strike of the Battle of life it's easy to fight when you're winning it's easy to slave and starve and be brave when the dawn of success is beginning but the managers can meet despair and defeat with a cheer there's the man of God's choosing a man who can fight the heavens on height is the man who can fight when he's losing carry on carry on things never were looming so black but show that you have is a cowardly streak and though you're unlucky you never are weak carry on carry on race up for another attack it's looking like hell but you never can tell carry on old man very honored by morning by morning we only made 150 miles and we were all exhausted in a bit 10 there was an abandoned army fort in the middle of the desert and we hope the shelter there from the midday Sun in one of the empty buildings and now it was too late the Sun had begun it's implacable climb of the eastern sky still we hurried on he couldn't fortunately couldn't get lost crossing the Sahara in the daytime the track across the desert is marked by 55 black 55-gallon oil drums located every 5 kilometers which is exactly the curve of the Earth's surface you can always you drive you can always see two oil barrels the one you've just passed into when you're heading for me so all you have to do to cross the biggest desert on earth is to take it one or barrel at a time of course traveling at night if you wonder from the piece if you wander from the track you can get lost in the desert and drivers they run out of gas and many people who died that way as we would approach each oil barrels really needed to approach each oral barrel we come to this oil bear we just come parallel with it the next door will barely just pop up on the horizon and as we passed this oil barrel the one behind us would fall off the horizon has already been shot in the shooting gallery but it's really neat so in the years since then I found that you can achieve on any goal you set for yourself if you simply take it one oil barrel one step at a time if you go as far as you can see you will then see far enough to go further now the Sun really became the enemy it sat on the horizon like a big evil yellow cat and then it began to rise and extra bleep getting hotter and hotter as we race south the temperature grew hotter and hotter finally at 9:30 a.m. at reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit and the vehicles began costing them stalling we signaled between the two vehicles and agreed to stop and wait out the heat right there in the middle of that 25,000 square mile parking lot he never felt so small in their entire - I'll never forget that day hour after hour we sat in our vehicles like sitting in a Bake Oven prostrate from the pounding heat of the Sun that reached 140 degrees Fahrenheit by noon and seemed to hang there seemed to stay there forever we drank court after quart of water our throats going bone-dry minutes after gulping down a full canteen it was worse outside so we just stayed in the vehicle and suffered our after hollering finally is the afternoon wore on the temperature slowly slowly began to fall by 4:00 p.m. was down to 105 degrees but it finally got the law 100 degrees Fahrenheit at 5 p.m. we started on but now we were racing the clock we only made about 200 miles in the last almost 24 and we still had 300 miles ago there's a small Oasis an army post on the other side of the semester and we knew we had to get there before the midday Sun caught us again we hadn't slept since Thursday morning was now Friday evening we pushed on over the desert but the Germans veil kept breaking down all night exhausted we work to get the Volkswagen bus with the Germans across to the other side we were both desperate and scared we knew that we could not last another day our water was almost gone when the Sun rose slowly on Saturday morning we were still struggling with the Germans vehicle finally at 9 a.m. with 20 miles to go their vehicle broke down for the last time we quickly abandoned it we loaded the five Germans in the back of the Land Rover and headed for the fork and the Oasis an oasis by the way it's a place where there's one well with a bucket of toys it was further than we thought but we made it just before the heat forces to stop we were all aware how closely come to actually dying in the village go there to do what they were talking about so we set out to heat that day in a native plant near the fort and then we went back that evening and told the Volkswagen bust into the army course we had done it we were over the Sahara we hadn't slept we hadn't slept for two and a half days but we had made it I won't go into the details of what happened on the rest of our trip across Africa except to say that we did finally get to Johannesburg three months later I won't trouble you with I won't trouble you with how we had to cross two countries illegally with the police and the army on orders to shoot to kill that they saw and I won't go into how we were almost killed under the boots and Lipa butts of a mob of soldiers in the Congo that was another close one and I won't talk here about the experience of meeting and working with dr. Albert Schweitzer in his hospital village in Lambrini no I'll wrap up the story here by telling you what I learned about life and success in mr. Heric Rafi here are seven rules you can apply to any challenge that you face in achieving anything you desire rule number one the most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and then launch get started take action do something move a twelve-year study at Babson College concluded that the act of taking the first step is what separates the losers from the winners or the winners from the losers we set out at the age of 20 with $300 each across three continents and travel 17,000 miles from Vancouver on the west coast to Johannesburg in southern Africa and we made it in just under 12 months but the most important step was the first one all the rest follows a minute number two once you've launched towards your goal never consider a possibility of failure the Germans have a scene it's informing me sitting in more for nee needs to it and it means always forward never backward always forward never backward never consider the possibility of failure every person here is here because they refuse to quit when the going rock your ability to persist in the face of setbacks and disappointment is vital to all great achievement and it's always a decision that you make it's not the external environment it's always the internal environment number three the biggest goal in the world can be a conflict if you just take it one oil barrel at a time Thomas Carlyle once wrote that our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand the only time you will ever have is now if you live every day every hour the best you can the rest will take care of itself as the Bible says sufficient unto the day are the care Sarah number 4 watch out for the naysayers the negative people around you are always telling you that you'll die in the desert get around positive people get around winners like people in this room fly with the Eagles and refuse to listen to objections and reasons why you can't succeed someone once said that if every possible objection must first be overcome nothing will ever get done and truer words whatever is broken number 5 welcome obstacles and difficulties is valuable and inevitable step on the ladder success remember the difficulties come not to obstruct but to instruct difficulties come not to obstruct but to instruct our trip to Africa was one problem after another we ran out of money over and over we strained every muscle of our bodies trying to ride bicycle across France and Spain our Land Rover broke down again and again we suffered from dysentery and heatstroke and exhaustion but when it was time we were ready for the Sahara crossing in retrospect we saw clearly there without a lessons that we had learned from our mistakes we would have surely died in the desert and when you look back on any achievement you will find it was preceded by many difficulties and many lessons they are the price that you pay for your success and no success is possible without number six be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it be willing to change to try something new keep your mind open and fluid flexible be willing to accept feedback from your environment and correct your course this is a key quality of peak performers they're not rigid they're flexible remember it's not what you have but what you do with what you have that separates winners from losers it's not what happens to you but how you respond to what happens to you at counter in the final analysis your response to the adversity of life is the real measure of who you are and what you're made of the Greek philosopher addictiveness once said that circumstances do not make the man or woman they merely reveal him to himself and you find out who you really are to face adversity and remember number 7 last rule is nobody does it alone at every step in our journey across Africa people helped us with advice and with food and with assistance and with money but especially with warmth and with kindness and with generosity when life is over it will be the people that we live and last in love with that we remember more than anything else so don't be afraid to ask for help from others it's a mark of strength and courage and character and don't be reluctant to give of yourself to others generously it's the mark of caring and compassion and personal greatness the reason the Sahara story was so relevant for me was it because after the Sahara I never felt that there's anything I couldn't do I felt program for success for life although it took many years to understand it and the reason why this story may be of interest to you is because I believe that everyone has a Sahara the cross perhaps more than one many of you are crossing your own Sahara's right now everyone eventually goes through periods of great difficulty their own private health their dark nights of the soul but it is by facing whatever life gives us the courage and determination that we grow more surely toward the Stars let me leave you with the last verse of carry on there are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt and some who in negativities wallow there are others I know who in piety gold because of a heaven fall but the laborers that and to give up your best for the sweetness and joy of the giving to help folks along with a hand in a song why there's the real sunshine of living carry on carry on fight the good fight and true there's big work to do believe in your mission greet life with a cheer there's big work to do and that's why you're here carry on carry on let the world be the better for you so at last when you die let this be your cry carry on my soul carry on ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen if you will resolve with whatever life hands you to carry on there is nothing that can stop you from achieving a greatness for which you were created thank you [Applause]

Channel: Khoa Bui

Views: 51,485

Keywords: brian tracy, success is a journey, 7 rules to success, success, speeches, seminars, khoa bui, you be relentless

Id: H2A1TCA-HjY

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2017