Pod Insights The School of Greatness 5 Principles For A Wealthy & Happy Life (Loving Memory Of Bob Proctor) EP 1227 About this episode Today’s episode is to honor my good friend Bob Proctor who passed away on February 4th 2022. He was an entrepreneur, best-selling author, lecturer, and one of the greatest minds in the personal development field. He was also a friend of mine. To honor his life and legacy, I wanted to bring together some of the best moments from my conversations with him. I had the opportunity to interview him 3 different times, and we were setting up our 4th interview just a few weeks ago. Bob was showing up every day to do the work he felt called to do up until the end, which is incredibly inspiring. I had previously asked him what he thought about death and if he was afraid of it. He shared that he wasn’t afraid of death and although you’ve left your physical being, your spiritual being is omnipresent. Bob’s memory will live on in his books, speeches, interviews and all the personal ways he transformed our lives. In this episode Bob shares how he thought about building real wealth, how to find control in the middle of chaos, how to overcome self-doubt, how to thrive in your life, how to prime your imagination and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1227Bob's previous episodes:www.lewishowes.com/835www.lewishowes.com/950www.lewishowes.com/1090 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 17,151 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lewis Howes? This is episode number 1,227 with the legend Bob Proctor. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.
0:32 Lewis Howes? Welcome back, my friends. Today's episode is a special one. We are here to honor my good friend Bob Proctor, who passed away on February 4, 2022. He was an amazing entrepreneur, a bestselling author, lecturer, and one of the greatest minds in the personal development field. He impacted millions and millions of people around the world, and he was also a friend of mine. To honor his life and his legacy, I wanted to bring together some of the best moments from my conversations with him. I had the pleasure of interviewing him
1:12 Lewis Howes? three different times. And we were just on the phone about a week ago, talking about setting up our fourth interview together, coming up here. It was supposed to be in a few weeks. We were supposed to do it together in person. And Bob was showing up every day to do the work that he felt called to do, up until the very last day. He was a man on a mission. He cared deeply about others. He cared deeply about service. He wanted to teach. He wanted to coach. He wanted to empower. He wanted to inspire. And he wanted to live a long life. And continue to have this mission that he was driven by.
1:55 Lewis Howes? And I had previously asked him about what he thought about death and if he was afraid of it. And he shared that he wasn't afraid of death. And although he's left his physical body, his spiritual being is omnipresent. And Bob's memory will live on through his books, his speeches, his interviews, and all the personal ways he transformed our lives. I'm so grateful for his example. I'm so grateful for his commitment, his dedication, his,
2:31 Lewis Howes? his real passion to teach and lift others up. And I think it's just a beautiful life that he created and that he will have so much to leave behind. I'm so saddened, but also inspired by the continued symbol that Bob will represent throughout the world. And in this episode, we put together some of the top moments that I got to sit down and have with Bob. And it was some beautiful moments. I mean, these interviews went viral. He was so electric, so eloquent and inspiring. And here's a guy who just, he read over and over again passages.
3:12 Lewis Howes? He, he, not only did he understand his message, he embodied it. He was it. He, he drank it in, he, he ate it up and he shared it with the world. So clearly, and it resonated to me, and I hope it resonates to you. In this episode, Bob shares about how he thought about building real wealth. He talks about how to find control in the middle of chaos in your life. We talk about overcoming self doubt, how to thrive in your life, how to prime your imagination and so much more. Just beautiful words you're about to hear, beautiful messages. I really hope you take it in.
3:56 Lewis Howes? I hope you listen to these over and over. Please share this with your friends. And this is all about honoring Bob and sharing some of the most inspiring moments we had from the multiple interviews I got to sit down and experience with Bob Proctor. So just enjoy this, take it in. And in just a moment, the one, the only Bob Proctor.
4:24 Lewis Howes? In this first section, Bob shares how he was able to transform his mind around building wealth. And he believed deeply that everyone could become wealthy, but that most people misunderstand the path they need to take. And I think this is a powerful place to start because people came to Bob about mindset and abundance. And they learned incredible strategies, how to generate more wealth in their life. So I hope you enjoy this first section. You were making around $14,000 a year after that, shortly after that.
4:57 Bob Proctor? No, I went from earning $4,000 a year to $14,500 a month.
5:02 Lewis Howes? Exactly.
5:03 Bob Proctor? Now, if you annualize that, I was 175 a year. So I went from earning $4,000 a year to 175. I hadn't earned 175 that year. I got it up to 14,500 a month. So if you annualize it, that's a change, phenomenal change.
5:17 Lewis Howes? Is it possible for anyone to go from poverty level to extremely financially successful?
5:26 Bob Proctor? Absolutely. I think earning money is one of the simplest things I ever learned. And it's one of the most misunderstood things. Wealthy people historically have always had multiple sources of income. They don't have one. They have many. I was cleaning floors. I thought the answer was work harder. Cause I really wanted to earn some money.
5:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah, of course.
5:47 Bob Proctor? And I thought it was all important. Today, my attitude towards money has changed dramatically. But I thought the answer was get another office to clean.
5:57 Bob Proctor? Well, I was working so hard, I passed out on the street. I would have been maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. I literally passed out on the street. I was working so hard. I came to, and there's a great big cop looking at me. I was laying there, it was scary. There was a group of people around me. I saw lights flashing, then I saw a guy, a couple of guys in uniform with a stretcher. And it was scary. I had passed out, I guess they thought I had dropped dead. I had a heck of a time getting away from them, but I did get away. They didn't take me to hospital, I talked them out of it. I got away, and I got thinking, I'm not doing this right. Mm-hmm.
6:42 Bob Proctor? Working harder, working more hours is not the way. No. Yeah. In fact, Napoleon Hill wrote that in Think and Grow Rich. He said, "If you are one of those people who believe that hard work and honesty alone will bring riches, perish the thought, it is not true. Riches, when they come in huge quantities, never come as a result of hard work. They come, if they come at all, in response to definite demands, based upon the application of definite principles, and not by chance or luck." So you've got to find a demand and fill it, but you've got to follow definite principles to do it. In other words, you've got to be in harmony with the law. You've got to give more than you get. If you're trying to get, forget it. Yeah.
7:25 Bob Proctor? Well, I got by myself, and I thought, I'm doing something wrong. I was earning more money, but here I'm passing out, it's not, this is not normal. And it's like a little voice in my head said, "If you can't clean all of them, don't clean any of them." So I got all dressed up. People now accused me of sleeping in my suit. I got, I wouldn't take a suit off. It didn't matter where I was. Because I knew the cleaners were tired, and I would go around, I got other people cleaning offices. And I knew pretty well where they'd be, so I'd drop around, I'd bring coffee and donuts, and I would drop in, and I would talk to them about goals. And I'd go to the next person.
8:08 Bob Proctor? But I always was dressed up, because I knew how tired you get, and if I was in working clothes, they'd expect me to help them so they could finish and go home. Interesting. But when I had shiny shoes and a suit and shirt and tie, they didn't expect me to help them clean. So I'd go on to the next place, and then to the next place. And that's when I started to open offices.
8:26 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
8:27 Bob Proctor? I went from Toronto to Montreal to Boston to Cleveland to Atlanta to London, England.
8:32 Lewis Howes? And you hired cleaners.
8:33 Bob Proctor? Uh huh, everywhere I went.
8:34 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
8:35 Bob Proctor? Yeah, I had people cleaning.
8:37 Lewis Howes? What should someone think about if they're struggling financially right now, or they feel like they're, they've been struggling for many years, and it feels like they're just surviving week after week, month after month, they're not sure how to get to that kind of sense of freedom for at least a six-month runway or beyond, what should they start thinking about?
8:54 Bob Proctor? You know, what you've just described, I believe, the majority of people are living that way.
8:59 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
9:00 Bob Proctor? The majority. Now, that's rather sad, but I think it's true. And it's because we only have one problem in the whole world, and that's ignorance. They're living in ignorance. They don't know that what they're doing is going to keep them where they are. And they keep doing it, because they don't know how to change. They're overwhelmed with the debt.
9:21 Bob Proctor? People are saying, "I need the money." They haven't got it.
9:25 Bob Proctor? They want to take their family on a vacation, they don't have the money to go. So they may borrow and go anyway. Now they got more debt.
9:33 Bob Proctor? They have to understand that they don't have to live that way.
9:38 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
9:39 Bob Proctor? I wrote a book called, "You're Born Rich: The Truth Is You Are." Most people are just a little short of money, but you are born rich, rich in potential. Anybody can go to our site, go to bobproctor.com, you can download the book, "You Were Born Rich," free. It won't cost you a cent. And chapter two is, "How Much Is Enough." There's a, it's described very well how to get out of debt.
10:01 Bob Proctor? You've got to create a debt repayment program, where it's all done automatically.
10:04 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
10:05 Bob Proctor? And then you focus on prosperity. You've got to have a financial goal, you've got to work toward it, and you've got to understand that you can earn more than you're earning.
10:16 Bob Proctor? And wealthy people don't have one source of income. They have more than one. I was earning money all last night while I was sleeping.
10:24 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
10:24 Bob Proctor? You can actually earn more money when you're sleeping than you can spend when you're awake.
10:28 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
10:28 Bob Proctor? You know, it sounds like a cute line, but it's true. There's no end to what we can earn. If you are not getting information from someone who is already wealthy, then you're probably getting information from the wrong people. Most people ask their brother-in-law, the guy next door, the girl they know, "How do I earn more?" Hell, if they knew, they'd be earning it. They don't know. And most people talk to people that don't know. Carlisle put it very well. He said he did not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. And that's where most people are getting it, from people that know any more than themselves. I think you have to go, that's why these seminars are so important today. People have the opportunity to go and learn. Most people won't pay to go.
11:12 Bob Proctor? I tell people, "Listen, you invest in this, it'll probably be, borrow the money to do it, it's probably the last time you'll ever have to borrow money." We, I know, our seminars are not rah rah, it's not, nothing like, our seminars teach people about themselves. It's like when Bill Goff said, "If I want to be free, I gotta be me." I'm thinking, "I better know who me is." I didn't know who me was. I was doing a lot of things, I was doing them right, and I was earning money, but I didn't know who I was. I started to study me. And the more I know me, the better I know you. You only have to study yourself, you'll know what everybody, because we're all the same. It's our behavior that's different, our results that are different.
11:50 Lewis Howes? I heard a friend of mine, Dean Graziosi, I don't know if he coined this, or someone else said it, and he said it from someone else, but he said, "Those that pay, pay attention." And when you invest in yourself, you're paying attention to what you're doing.
12:03 Bob Proctor? You know, I never heard that before, but that is the truth.
12:05 Lewis Howes? Those that pay, pay attention. But if you don't pay for it, you're not gonna pay as much attention. If you pay more, you'll pay more attention to learning.
12:11 Bob Proctor? I had an aunt and uncle, who were as poor as church mice. I mean, they just didn't have anything. And they had a whole house full of kids. And I used to drop by their house periodically. I was doing very well, and I was teaching seminar. And I remember it was around Christmas time, and he was rushing around trying to get credit cards from some big stores so they could buy presents for the kids. And I said, "You know something?" He said, "Never mind, next year will be different." I said, "You know something? Next year's gonna be exactly the same as it is this year, because you never change you."
12:47 Lewis Howes? Wow.
12:48 Bob Proctor? I said, "You should get into the seminars and learn something. I know something you don't know." Well, they came to the seminar, he got paid every two weeks. So that meant, three times a year, I think, he'd get paid three times, maybe four times a year. He'd get paid three times in a month. That one pay was extra, because they were budgeted for two pays. I made them pay to come to it. Something said, "I made them pay." And I think they thought I should have comped them into it. But you know, Mark thanked me, my aunt, I don't know how many times that I charged them. She said, "We wouldn't have kept coming." I didn't even know what you were talking about. I was running seminars, it was seven evenings, from seven to ten. We ran over a series of nights, years ago.
13:32 Bob Proctor? And she said, "I wouldn't have kept coming."
13:36 Bob Proctor? But she said, "Because we paid, I came."
13:38 Lewis Howes? Of course.
13:39 Bob Proctor? He's right. If they pay, they pay attention. That is so true. And if they don't...
13:43 Lewis Howes? You're not gonna be, you're not gonna care. When you hear something you don't like, eh, this is not for me. Let me get out of here. Eh, I got something better to do.
13:50 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
13:50 Lewis Howes? Especially in L.A., I wanna go to the beach. This is too hard work.
13:54 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
13:54 Lewis Howes? It's confronting my ego. Eh, I don't need this.
13:59 Bob Proctor? I'm firmly convinced, if a person doesn't understand a paradigm, a paradigm is a, is nothing but a multitude of habits. They're programmed into your subconscious mind to control your behavior. It's got nothing to do with how smart you are. It's got nothing to do with what your formal education is. It's got nothing to do from which side of the tracks you come from. It has to do with your paradigm. The paradigm is a program in your subconscious mind, it's both genetic and environmental, that's controlling your behavior. Everyone that can hear my voice knows how to do better than they're doing. And they may wonder, "Why don't I do it?" It's because you're programmed to do what you're doing.
14:37 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
14:38 Bob Proctor? And until you change the program, nothing's gonna change. Paradigm has to be changed.
14:43 Lewis Howes? I love that. What would you say are the... If you could share three key habits for people that, if they want to continue to grow every day, be more prosperous, be more abundant, happier, joyful, healthier in their life, what are three key things, habits, every day, not talking about morning routine, but just overall habits, every single day? What should people be focusing on consistently?
15:07 Bob Proctor? They should study every day.
15:08 Lewis Howes? Study.
15:12 Bob Proctor? They should have a mentor. Someone that has already accomplished what they dream about. They might not even know the person, they could get introduced to them. And ask them. What are half a dozen things I should do every day? Ask them, they know. Most people are getting advice from people who don't know any more than themselves. Yeah. And the third one, you've definitely got to have a goal. And when you write it, you've already got it intellectually. So you operate intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Well, your intellectual mind, the second you say, the second you decide on it, you've got it.
15:55 Bob Proctor? It tells you in the Bible, before you speak, I'll hear you. It's because the thought always precedes the word. The second you get emotionally involved, you've got it emotionally. Yep. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally, it's only a period of time till you've got it physically. Be do have, yeah. That's right. But the have comes in a period of time. So it's not overnight? Every seed has a gestation or an incubation period. When a woman gets pregnant with a child, it takes 280 days. The husband doesn't come home a month later and say, come on, where is it? He waits, as James Allen said, as one who understands. You understand, there's a gestation period.
16:38 Bob Proctor? Where I come from, if you plant a seed for a carrot, it takes approximately 70 days for it to manifest. All physical seeds have a gestation or an incubation period. We know that now, but we didn't always know that, we weren't always aware. No one knows what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and an idea is a spiritual seed. But we do know that it operates by the same laws.
17:06 Bob Proctor? And the laws of the universe are precise. They can be studied. They can be understood. We operate by law. Our life is governed by laws. Like, we know it's gonna get dark tonight. We don't wonder if it is. You know when the tide goes out, it's coming back. Winter never follows winter. We know these things. That's all expression of law. Well, when we bring our life into harmony with the laws, we're gonna enjoy more of life. If we fight it, we're gonna lose.
17:39 Lewis Howes? This is amazing. What is something that you are proud of that most people don't know about you?
17:52 Bob Proctor? I don't really know. I spend all my time thinking of how to teach this, you know? I'm proud of our company. I'm proud of the people I work with. Proud of my family. I just love what I do. I just love it so much. I think it's such a shame when people don't study.
18:20 Lewis Howes? Yeah, that's your first habit, yeah.
18:23 Bob Proctor? Well, there's so much of Otis that we don't know. And we can do anything. Life is pretty special.
18:35 Lewis Howes? It's amazing.
18:37 Bob Proctor? Oh, really, yes.
18:38 Lewis Howes? It's incredible. Do you have any fears?
18:43 Bob Proctor? Oh, I have lots of fears, yeah. I mean, if you're anything, you don't know, but you don't let them control you. I think...
18:56 Bob Proctor? Someone said that courageous people don't have any fears. Eddie Rickenbacker said, "There's no courage without fear." Courage gets you to face the thing you fear. I have fears. Anytime I go to do anything that I've never done, I'll be afraid. But that doesn't stop me. In fact, I call that hitting a terror barrier. A terror barrier? A terror barrier. You get a new idea. Let's suppose a person's got an idea. They're gonna quit their job and start their own company. That's an exciting idea. They're intellectually involved with it, that's all.
19:40 Bob Proctor? I mean, they can play with that all they want. In their minds. Nothing's ever gonna happen, because it's just intellectually. They take the idea and they get emotionally involved with it. Now all hell breaks loose. They hit the terror barrier. It's like a field of fear. And if you don't go through the terror barrier, where do you go? You're right back into safety. Bondage, and that's where most people live. Because they don't know how to do it. They don't know where the money's gonna come from. They don't know where the help's gonna come from. I heard one time, a thing when Damaharashi was gonna take TM to the world.
20:22 Bob Proctor? One of his advisors said, "Well, where's all the money gonna come from?" He says, "Wherever it is right now." I love that, because that's where the money's gonna come from. So when people hit this fear, because they haven't got the money, they don't know how, they wanna realize the way is already here. If nothing's created or destroyed, if all the powers 100% evenly present all placed at the same time, everything we've got is, we've got it right here, it's right here. We just don't understand it. So you hit this terror barrier. If you don't go through it, you're toast. So.
20:54 Lewis Howes? You always stay in your comfort zone. You'll never be able to.
20:56 Bob Proctor? Yeah, so if something doesn't scare me, I know I'm not growing.
21:00 Lewis Howes? It's something, you know, as an athlete, or did you play sports growing up at all?
21:04 Bob Proctor? Not a lot, no.
21:05 Lewis Howes? Some recreational stuff, yeah. As an athlete, I was in pain almost every single day. We would, our coaches would push us to a
21:13 Bob Proctor? Sure.
21:13 Lewis Howes? a limit that we didn't want to go to.
21:15 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
21:16 Lewis Howes? They want to hurt us, you know, where we'd be broken bones, but it was painful. I'd much rather be laying on the couch, playing video games or whatever it is, having fun. But that pain threshold, you know, breaking through that pain barrier and discomfort always made me feel a little more confident in myself, like, wow, I was able to do that. I didn't think I could push that far, but now I can do a little more tomorrow. And doing that every day over years is conditioned me to want pain every single day, in a healthy way.
21:43 Bob Proctor? That's where the coach played an integral role.
21:47 Lewis Howes? Yeah, huge.
21:47 Bob Proctor? The coach is the mentor, you know, and that's what they play. And if you, I think if you have the right coaching for a period of time, then you said, now.
21:58 Lewis Howes? It's in me.
21:58 Bob Proctor? You see, it's part of you now. Well, that's where it is. It's part of me. Like, fear would never stop me. Um, in fact, if it doesn't scare me, I know I'm probably not going in the right direction.
22:08 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
22:10 Bob Proctor? You know?
22:10 Lewis Howes? Should we face a terror barrier every day? Is it too much to do it every day?
22:15 Bob Proctor? No, I don't think so. I don't think so.
22:17 Lewis Howes? Is it helpful if we're looking for things that scare us every day?
22:20 Bob Proctor? Well, yeah, you should be going that way, you know?
22:24 Bob Proctor? And you'll realize after you go through it, you step through fear into, into safety.
22:32 Lewis Howes? In this second section, Bob shares how to control your thoughts amongst a chaotic environment that leaves you feeling overwhelmed. And so many of you have felt the overwhelm that has come through our lives and the world's lives over the last couple of years. And Bob was able to stay cool and controlled with his thoughts. And he taught himself how to do this, and he's going to share you how to do this right now.
22:59 Bob Proctor? This is one of the best pieces of literature I have ever read. I'm going to read it through. It's only about 20 lines.
23:09 Bob Proctor? And then we'll talk about it for a few minutes. Great. My mind is a center of divine operation. The divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression. And this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in past experience though proceeding out of past experience by an orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner in me. Consequently, in my own special world, in which I am the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions always in advance of any that has gone before.
23:53 Bob Proctor? I'm going to, um, I'm just gonna photograph, I'll take a picture of this page and I'll, I'll, I'll send it to you. That, please. The start of this is the key. My mind is a center of divine operation. Now, if I held a basketball here, there's only one point in that basketball that's center, isn't there?
24:16 Bob Proctor? And that's determined by the other measurements of the ball. Agreed?
24:21 Bob Proctor? There's only one center in this studio. I don't know where it is. I don't even know how to find it, but I know somebody would know how to find it.
24:30 Bob Proctor? In all things, there is only one center. This literature says, "My mind is a center," which would indicate there's more than one center.
24:40 Bob Proctor? So if you study this long enough, and I finally figured out why, this, the man that wrote this is one of the most brilliant writers I think I've ever studied, Thomas Troward. "My mind is a center." When you're dealing with divine operation, you're talking about infinite, there is no utter ring, so any point's center.
25:01 Bob Proctor? Your mind, Lewis, is a center of divine operation. And the divine operation's always for expansion and fuller expression.
25:13 Bob Proctor? This means a production of something beyond what's gone before. So there's something coming, it's gonna be better than everything in the past. I'm gonna send this to you, I want you to read it every day for 90 days.
25:24 Lewis Howes? Okay, yeah, send it to me.
25:25 Bob Proctor? This will stretch your mind. When you say, "What are you studying?" "I want to expand my awareness, I want a greater awareness of my relationship with the whole scheme of things."
25:37 Lewis Howes? Isn't it crazy that
25:40 Lewis Howes? we are standing on a moving ball in the middle of infinite space?
25:45 Bob Proctor? Yes, yeah.
25:47 Lewis Howes? When we think about that sometimes, that it's, we're on a little ball, a little dot on a little ball that's rotating
25:54 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
25:54 Lewis Howes? in the middle of infinite space.
26:02 Bob Proctor? Moving at a ridiculous speed.
26:08 Bob Proctor? You know, the more you study this, the more you realize what a magnificent creation you are.
26:20 Bob Proctor? When you stop and just take a look at your hand, there's enough potential energy in that little finger to light up this building for probably a month.
26:31 Bob Proctor? There's about 11 million kilowatt-hours per pound potential energy locked up in the electrons and the atoms of the body.
26:40 Bob Proctor? We are a living dynamo.
26:46 Bob Proctor? The blood circulates through your body, hundreds of miles of passageway, every 33 seconds, carrying all the food and all the garbage out, boom, like that, in one sweeping change.
27:01 Bob Proctor? For you to move any part of your body, you must activate brain cells. The brain is an electronic switching station.
27:10 Bob Proctor? The more we study and look at this, the more mind-boggling it is. You know, we're taught we're God's highest form of creation.
27:21 Bob Proctor? That's taught in all religions. There's only a half a dozen religions. There in California, you've got, I think, 500, but everybody starts their own.
27:31 Bob Proctor? And the truth is, you can start your own religion there, and many do. But there's a half a dozen major religions. They all teach essentially the same thing. We are truly God's highest form of creation.
27:43 Bob Proctor? And we act, sometimes not much better than some of the animals that we keep as pets.
27:56 Bob Proctor? You, I think, shows like yours, you do such an enormous amount of good.
28:04 Lewis Howes? Thank you.
28:05 Bob Proctor? Well, what you really do, you provoke people to think
28:11 Bob Proctor? about a lot of different things. And if people begin to think, thinking is the highest function we're capable of. And thinking can be taught. Unfortunately, it's not being taught, but it can. You know, it's the highest function we're capable of. So it's
28:37 Bob Proctor? it's worthwhile learning.
28:39 Lewis Howes? Absolutely. I think a lot of us are, we're not taught to think. We are conditioned to react to what's happening around us. And we react. We don't think before we react. We just react. And so that's what causes us a lot of stress and overwhelm.
28:55 Bob Proctor? You know, Viktor Frankl wrote a marvelous book, Man's Search for Meaning. I don't know if you're familiar with it.
29:01 Lewis Howes? Yep.
29:01 Bob Proctor? He, well, he was a marvelous author. And he said, "In every situation, between the situation and your response, there's a space." It might only be a millisecond, but in that space, you have the ability to choose how you're going to react or respond.
29:25 Bob Proctor? When you react, whatever you're reacting to is in control of you, whether it's another person, a condition, or a circumstance. When you respond to the same thing, you stay in control.
29:39 Lewis Howes? So when you react, they're in control, the environment is, when you respond, you're in control.
29:45 Bob Proctor? Yeah. Sandy Gallagher, my partner, she was, she has a niece. Her niece was at her house one day and I happened to phone and she says, "Would you talk to Anna for me?" And she was having a problem with her mother. And I was thinking, "Well, probably you're right, but I would imagine your mother thinks she's having a problem with you." You know? And what they were doing, she was reacting. And I got, I got explaining to her, I said, "Listen, doesn't matter what happens, doesn't matter what happens. You have a choice. You're either going to react or respond. When you react, you have lost control of you and you've given control to the other person
30:30 Bob Proctor? or the conditions or the circumstance. When you respond, exactly the same situation, nothing's changed, only you respond. You could say, "I wonder why she's saying it like that. I wonder why she wants me to do that now. I wonder why she's upset with me." Well, her mother apparently, if I get this story right, apparently got a hold of Sandy and wanted to know what the hell was going on with that when she went home. She was so different. That's what, that's a huge lesson to learn.
31:10 Lewis Howes? In this next section, Bob shares how to overcome self-doubt so that you can live the more purposeful life you deserve. Self-doubt is the disease that keeps people from living their dreams. It keeps them stuck in a prison for so long and it cripples them. And this is the antidote to that crippling self-doubt. I've been researching this more and just trying to learn from people like yourself on how you have dealt with self-doubt over the years and how you think anyone who feels like they're doubting themselves, what can they do to go from doubt into confidence? What do you think is the path?
31:48 Bob Proctor? Okay, that's a good question. It ties in with the previous question, yes. What do we do with fear? Fear comes from the doubt. So the doubt becomes the cause of the fear. Which is the cause of the anxiety, etc. The doubt is the cause, fear is the effect. What is the polar opposite to doubt? Understanding. It's understanding. That's the opposite of doubt. So what is it we want to understand? Well, if it's me that's entertaining doubt, why am I entertaining doubt? If I were to find out who I really am, and I believe everything that's been taught down through the centuries, I would have no doubt.
32:32 Bob Proctor? I would be realizing that I could do anything. And the only thing that's causing the doubt is a lack of understanding. So I'm gonna keep studying, I'll gain a better understanding. I don't doubt myself. I don't doubt what I can do. Does that mean that I can do everything? No. When doubt appears, I'll eliminate it. And I'll eliminate it fast, because I'm gonna figure out how to do whatever it is I'm doubting. And you see, if it's me that I'm doubting, it's because I don't understand me well enough. I did a broadcast the other day, it was all over the place, we had thousands into it, on self-image. And we've got to get a better image of ourself. We have to get a true image of ourself.
33:16 Bob Proctor? Understand who we are, how our mind functions. Realize this physical instrument we're living in is nothing but an instrument. It's the instrument of the mind. And the mind expresses itself with and through this thing we call our body. Well, let's understand that better. This thing, you're gonna have power in your one hand to light up that building you're in for probably a month. There's about 11 million kilowatt-hours per pound potential energy locked up in the electrons and the atoms of the body. Well, that's the invisible power that's in me. I want to understand that better. How, what, that's the physical side. What's the higher side? Higher side is my intellectual side.
34:00 Bob Proctor? And that is the intellectual factors that I run through earlier. Perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. There's six of them.
34:10 Bob Proctor? As I understand those more, as I understand my intellectual factors, I'm using the things and I'm utilizing and developing the things that separate me from all the rest of the animal kingdom of which I'm a part. Then I can tap into the spiritual essence of who I am. Because we're spiritual beings, and that's where the greatness lies. It lies in understanding the spiritual essence of who we are. You see, our spiritual DNA is perfect. It requires no improvement, it requires no modification. Our spiritual essence is perfect. And that perfection is within us. So the trick is figuring out how to express it in a greater way.
34:53 Lewis Howes? Yeah, and not get trapped into a different type of expression through bad news, or friends, or parents' beliefs, or whatever it is that tries to shut us down, correct?
35:03 Bob Proctor? Exactly. And they will try and shut us down, because we're coming up and we're saying, "I'm gonna do this." They'll say, "You gotta be out of your mind. You're gonna quit that good job? Are you crazy? We gotta be strong enough to say, 'I'm gonna follow my dream.'"
35:17 Lewis Howes? Amen to that. I'm a big believer in that.
35:19 Bob Proctor? Like Martin Luther King, "I have a dream." He didn't say, "I have a plan," he didn't say, "I have a bank account," he didn't say, you know, "I have a dream. I have an image in my mind, I have a beautiful picture that I want to execute in my life."
35:36 Lewis Howes? Self-image. I love this topic about self-image. How do we reshape our self-image to serve us as opposed to bring us down?
35:47 Bob Proctor? Well, it's interesting. Maltz, Maxwell Maltz, actually discovered self-image as we know it today. He was a cosmetic surgeon. And he found, if he operated on a person, maybe they had a distasteful scar on their face, and he removed the scar, he said, "Sometimes there was a phenomenal change in the person's personality."
36:15 Bob Proctor? But he said other times they'd remove the scar, it was very successful. No change in their personality. That led him to postulate that we not only have this physical image that reflects back from the mirror, we have an inner image of ourself. It's how we see ourself. Now that inner image is an idea. And that idea is generally planted in our little life when we're infants. And it's planted by virtue of the environment that we're surrounded by. How we're raised. If a child's raised with praise, they're gonna grow up very confident individuals.
36:56 Bob Proctor? If a child's raised with criticism, they're gonna grow up very insecure. So you see this image that we have, it's a picture of how we see ourself. But most of us, that image was planted by people that didn't know what the hell was going on. They didn't know the war was over, and they were planting, they were developing a little mind. It was a mind, they were shaping it like fresh clay. They didn't understand that, it was a kid, they're looking after him, we feed him, we keep him warm, what the hell? You know, that's our responsibility. No, it was a mind, and they were developing that mind. And if they didn't understand, what were they gonna put in? Well, all they could give to the child is the insecurities that they had themselves.
37:39 Bob Proctor? So that was the picture that the kid grows up of themselves. Now, I grew up very insecure. I was born during the Depression. When I first went to school, the Second World War had just broken out, so everybody's rationed for everything. It was hard times, all the men were away fighting in Europe or South Pacific. There was no men doing anything. The women that were there were driving the trucks, they were cops, they did everything. So it wasn't a whole lot of time used for developing a little mind. So I just grew up and picked up what I could. I grew up very insecure. It wasn't until I met a man that gave me this book and gave me some damn good instruction, that I started to pay attention to who I was.
38:21 Bob Proctor? And I have never stopped being fascinated with studying me.
38:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
38:28 Bob Proctor? I am the most fascinating subject that I've ever come across. And I have found out that you and I are exactly the same. We only appear to be different. Our physical body looks different. We choose different vocations. Some earns more or less than the other. But our potential is exactly the same. We both live in a physical body. We both have these higher mental faculties. We're both spiritual beings. We've both drawn an infinite source of supply. We're the same. So the trick, I think, for the person that has insecurities, that hasn't got the strongest image they want, they should find a damn good mentor. That's what changed my life.
39:13 Bob Proctor? That's what the School of Greatness is for doing for people that are tuning into it on a regular basis. Because I don't think you have any schlocks on here. I don't think you have people coming on here don't know what the hell they're talking about. I don't think you have people come on here just to make a noise. I think you come on to pick the best of their mind. You're gonna pick their mind for their listening audience. You've got a big name out there. So, you know, it's a lot of people listen to you. Pay attention. So, and that's why, because you're giving them the right information. So as we start to gather this information about ourself, our image starts to change. And I started to see, I'm not this skinny kid that doesn't know what the hell's happening, that did poorly in school.
39:55 Bob Proctor? I'm a spiritual being. I have a marvelous mind. I can think. If I can imagine it, I can hold it in my hand. I can do anything that I want.
40:10 Lewis Howes? In our next section, Bob shares how to adapt into all of the situations life throws at you so you can thrive in your life. Life will continue to throw adversity at you. Things are going to happen each year. You'll be thrown into the fire. It's all about how you respond and how you show up with the adversity in your life that really makes a difference or not. What are the habits of those people thriving versus the other people that maybe, who were successful but fell off a little bit over the last year? What would you say are some of those habits that differentiate the successful during challenging times?
40:46 Bob Proctor? Well, it's, it's, it's really obvious.
40:50 Bob Proctor? You know, the law of the animal kingdom is adapt or die. And if you let the outside world control you, you're toast. Because when anything goes wrong, it's in control. When you control from the inside, like we're in control of ourself, we're in control of our world. So it doesn't matter what happens, you figure out how to get to where you're going. The goals don't change. Sometimes the methods of getting there do. But I have never, I think probably I had great teachers. I had a half a dozen phenomenal mentors. And I think I was raised the right way. You stay in control regardless, you know?
41:35 Lewis Howes? Yeah. What would you say are some of the habits that you have that people wouldn't expect that you would have? Maybe they would expect certain things like waking up early, or journaling, or, you know, getting eight hours of sleep. But what are some habits that you do differently that maybe are unexpected in the personal growth space?
41:55 Bob Proctor? I study every day. Every day. I've studied every day now for 60 years. I started to study this book in 1961. And I read it every day, same book, Think and Grow Rich. I have, just here behind me, I've got the Laws of Success, the original ones that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1928. And then he come up with this in 1937. And the man that gave it to me, he said, if you'll study this every day, he said, you're gonna have a wonderful life. And he pointed out Napoleon Hill spent his whole life studying the lives of 500 of the world's most successful people.
42:39 Bob Proctor? He was mentored by Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. And he said, since he spent his whole life putting this together, he said, it would be a prudent move on your part if you spent the rest of your life trying to understand and apply what he was teaching.
42:53 Lewis Howes? Right.
42:54 Bob Proctor? You know, that just seemed to make some sense to me. And that's what I started to do, and I've never stopped.
43:00 Lewis Howes? If there was only one principle inside of Think and Grow Rich that you could only live by and only talk about, and you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else inside the book, what would that one principle be?
43:13 Bob Proctor? Persistence.
43:17 Bob Proctor? He said in the book, "There may be no heroic connotation to the word, but the quality is to the character of the human, like what carbon is to steel." See, I think the trick, Lewis, is get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. Because
43:38 Bob Proctor? you're either gonna grow, or you're gonna die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And some people think they can just hold it where they're at, but they can't do that. You're either gonna go ahead, or you're gonna go backwards. It's create or disintegrate. And so, if you have good habits, you're gonna keep growing.
44:00 Bob Proctor? Way back, I think around 1938, 39, Albert E. N. Gray worked for The Prudential, and he wrote
44:12 Bob Proctor? "The Common Denominator of Success." It's a great article. And he said, "The common denominator of success is informing the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do." And he was speaking one time, a young guy said, "Why do successful people like doing these things?" And he said, "They don't. That's why they've turned them into habits." I thought that was beautiful. He said, "That's why they've turned them into habits. They don't like doing them."
44:42 Bob Proctor? And of course, a habit is...
44:42 Lewis Howes? What do you think...
44:43 Bob Proctor? Well, a habit is something we do automatically, without any conscious thought. We just... It's part of our paradigm. We're programmed.
44:52 Lewis Howes? What do you think are the three most difficult habits to develop that actually will support us for the most growth long-term, if we can take these habits on?
45:03 Bob Proctor? One of them, I think, the most difficult is repetition of studying the same thing.
45:10 Bob Proctor? I have a...
45:13 Bob Proctor? A book here on my desk. It's in a book holder.
45:18 Bob Proctor? And
45:20 Bob Proctor? when I went to visit Earl Nightingale way back hmm 1968. Six, no, it was earlier than that. It was around 66. And I saw he had this book stand on his desk and I asked him what it was. He said it was a book holder. And I said, why do you have it? He says, because I want to read those two pages. Every day for the next month, maybe two months.
45:46 Bob Proctor? I said, really? The same thing? And he said, yeah. He said, then they'll become a part of me. And he said, that's really the secret of success is repetition of an idea. You see that in sports, you play ball, I mean. It's definitely part of your game. You know.
46:08 Bob Proctor? How many, how many plays would you have in your head?
46:12 Lewis Howes? Who?
46:15 Lewis Howes? Well, a lot of different plays, but in football, there's really only like nine different routes a receiver can run.
46:21 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
46:22 Lewis Howes? As part of the tree of running a route, but there's so many different variations within plays that that one receiver could run. And then another person could run in tandem with that.
46:33 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
46:33 Lewis Howes? So you have to, there's a massive playbook that you go through at the beginning of the season and you've got to remember a lot of different things, but if you typically know the route you need to run and what other people are doing around you, then you can, you can figure it out.
46:47 Bob Proctor? But it's repetition that enables you to do that, isn't it?
46:50 Lewis Howes? Over and over and over and over again, same route over and over.
46:54 Bob Proctor? That doesn't just apply to football. I think that applies to life. And if a person will really understand that, it's through repetition that you program your subjective mind. And it's your subjective mind that controls your behavior. Doesn't make sense to some people, but if they would study it and start to understand it, they would start to do it.
47:18 Lewis Howes? What's the most important thing on those two pages that you have up in front of you?
47:22 Bob Proctor? Most important thing here. Read it to you.
47:27 Bob Proctor? The lesson to be learned from the practical aviation of the present day is that of triumph of principle over precedent, of working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experiences to the contrary. With such a notable example before us, can we say that it is futile to inquire whether by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are the back of external and visible conditions? And then by bringing these unseen causes into a better order, make practical working
48:08 Bob Proctor? reality of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams. They're talking about the Wright brothers. He said there was a secret they got off the ground because nobody knew how to fly, and neither did they until after they got it in the air. But he pointed out that it was principle over precedent. And we let precedent control us too often.
48:36 Lewis Howes? What's the difference between principle and precedent?
48:42 Bob Proctor? Well, precedent, you're letting something that has happened in the past control you. The principle is that there's always a better way. Doesn't matter what you're doing, better is a beautiful word.
48:59 Lewis Howes? What's something in your life that took a long time where you were holding on to the precedent of something for a while? Maybe it was months, maybe it was years, decades, that eventually the principle finally started to fly and you had a breakthrough? Is there an area of your life you can think of?
49:20 Bob Proctor? Oh, absolutely, absolutely, just as soon as you said it, yeah. You see, when I started in this, when I first got this book, I was such a loser. And I mean in every...
49:35 Bob Proctor? Every way you look at it. I, um, I went to high school for two months. And I didn't quit, they kicked me out. They didn't want me there. Um, and I was kinda happy, cause I didn't like it there anyway. Um, I held dumb jobs. I never had a half decent job. The idea that I could even get a good job, never entered my mind. I had such low self-esteem. I didn't understand that at the time, I didn't even know what self-esteem was. And
50:08 Bob Proctor? letting go of the fact that I didn't have a formal education, that I never had any business experience. The man that gave me the book, he said, "None of that matters, Bob, that's the past." Said, "Let it go." Well, I had a difficult time letting that go. Because we're programmed that if you don't go to school, you can't get a good job.
50:36 Bob Proctor? That if you're gonna earn a lot of money, you gotta be really smart. Well, you see, I didn't think I was very smart, and I didn't have any formal education. That's a hard thing to let go of.
50:50 Bob Proctor? But through the repetition of studying this, over and over and over. And as he pointed out to me, Edison had grade three.
51:02 Bob Proctor? And he pointed at different people that had no formal education. And I finally made a break, got it, left it behind. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but I let it go.
51:18 Lewis Howes? What would you say are some deciding factors that can help someone with their self-esteem? Because you and I are very similar, where my childhood, I didn't, I didn't have much confidence in myself or esteem, because I was in the bottom of my class in school, because I was, you know, had tutors and special needs classes, because I just wasn't able to understand it and comprehend that well, and felt awkward and goofy in my life. What are some, some things you think people that in their teens or even in their 40s and 50s who don't have confidence yet, what are the things we can be doing differently to gain confidence, to build self-esteem? Because I think this is one of the key factors of successes, believing in yourself. It doesn't matter if the world believes in you, if you don't believe in you. What can we start to do to change that?
52:02 Bob Proctor? Well, I think a person has to start to study themselves. Most people know very little about themselves. They think they're their body. You're not a body. You have a body. And you have a marvelous mind. And when I first started to study this, I thought, you know, studying the mind, that's for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists. And the man that told me, he said, "No, it's not." He says, "That's for anybody. That's for little kids." And so, I think as we start to understand something about our mind, and something about our higher faculties. See, we're, we're all programmed to live through our senses. We go by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch.
52:44 Bob Proctor? Well, I've got a little dog at home that can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. All the animals in the world, they're, they're completely at home in their environment. They blend in. You operate by instinct, which is perfect.
53:01 Bob Proctor? We had instinct removed and we had higher faculties put in our place, in their place. And if we would study these and gain an understanding, your self-image would automatically start to improve. You have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition.
53:23 Bob Proctor? Those six faculties
53:27 Bob Proctor? will give you the ability to create your own environment. See, we're totally disoriented in our environment, where all the other little creatures are completely at home in theirs. And we're, we're disoriented in ours because we can create our own, but we don't know that. School doesn't teach us that. School is more interested in, in the development of your intellect than in the development of awareness.
53:53 Bob Proctor? Like,
53:57 Bob Proctor? a person doesn't earn a hundred thousand dollars a year because they want a hundred a year. They earn a hundred a year because they're not aware of how to earn a hundred a month. Awareness is really the key. And when we become aware of who we are and what we've got working for us, you know, marvelous things start to happen to us. And that's really what happened to me. I never went back to school.
54:25 Bob Proctor? I
54:28 Bob Proctor? I built a very successful company that operates all over the world.
54:35 Bob Proctor? I didn't do it myself. I have a tremendous team of people. I've got a, just an absolute genius of a business partner, a woman who's an attorney. I mentioned to you before, you should have her on sometime. You'd, she, you'd be fascinated with her. She's that interesting. But it was a group of people. We've attracted a phenomenal group of people in our company. And we're operating now in 91 countries.
55:02 Bob Proctor? Teaching this information.
55:05 Bob Proctor? It's, I don't know another company that teaches what we teach.
55:12 Bob Proctor? Like, I think
55:15 Bob Proctor? Tony Robbins has probably done more for our industry than any individual. The Secret has probably done more for it, as much as Tony has. The movie.
55:30 Bob Proctor? But there's, I don't know anybody else teaching what we're teaching. And what we're really doing is teaching people how their mind functions and
55:40 Bob Proctor? how to expand their understanding of how it operates.
55:45 Lewis Howes? What are the six faculties again? You shared this before, which I, which I love. And I think if people really understood this, it'd help them build their self-image.
55:53 Bob Proctor? Perception, the will, imagination, memory,
56:02 Bob Proctor? reason, and intuition.
56:06 Lewis Howes? Which one is the hardest for people to?
56:09 Bob Proctor? I don't think any of them are.
56:11 Lewis Howes? Build awareness.
56:12 Bob Proctor? They're all equally valuable.
56:17 Bob Proctor? You take your imagination, think of this for a minute, Louis. Nothing is created or destroyed. Look here, here's a little cellphone.
56:27 Bob Proctor? What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it.
56:30 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
56:31 Bob Proctor? Well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a phone because we didn't have any money, for the first reason. But the second, not everybody could have a phone. We were not aware that there was an infinite number of frequencies.
56:51 Bob Proctor? Today, there's what a zillion phones? Because there's an infinite number of frequencies. This phone is on its own frequency. Yours, it's on its own frequency. If I have your number in here, and I hit send, you and I connect. We're on the same frequency. It won't matter where you are. We can see each other, we can communicate. Because we get on the same frequency. Well, the good that we desire is already here. It's on a frequency. The way to build this has always been here, we weren't aware of it. But somebody took their imagination and went off into no place. What they were really doing is going on to a higher frequency.
57:36 Bob Proctor? And if you'll stay on that frequency, you'll attract everything that you require. That's why Dr. Werner von Braun, when President Kennedy asked him what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a man to the moon, and then bring him back safely to Earth, von Braun said, "The will to do it." The will is the mental faculty that gives you the ability to hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions.
58:07 Bob Proctor? See, if you take your imagination, do it. You have goals. Take your imagination and then take yourself there. See yourself already have completed the goal.
58:21 Bob Proctor? And then, hold that picture with your will. When you go there with your imagination, there is a place. Whatever it is you want, you went there with your imagination, there is a place. You stay there in your imagination. You will attract everything that's required for the manifestation of that picture.
58:44 Bob Proctor? You saw Brady doing it last Sunday.
58:47 Lewis Howes? Yeah, he's a machine.
58:48 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
58:51 Bob Proctor? Absolutely phenomenal.
58:54 Lewis Howes? So, holding the imagination, the picture that you want in your mind, and then attracting it on the steps to get there.
59:00 Bob Proctor? Yeah. You see,
59:03 Bob Proctor? we don't work toward the goal, we work from the goal. You get the goal in your mind. Our problem is, we measure everything on the physical. And you look at the physical and you say, "Well, I haven't got it yet." If you think, your conscious mind, if you get an image there of your goal, you've already got it intellectually. If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me, but if you have it, you can share it with me. You can share with me the idea that you've got in your mind. So, you've already got it there, haven't you?
59:41 Lewis Howes? Right.
59:42 Bob Proctor? As you get emotionally involved with that idea, you've got it also on an emotional level.
59:49 Bob Proctor? You've got it there. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. The only place you haven't got it is physically. Now, there's a period of time must elapse for that idea that you have intellectually and emotionally, for that idea to move into physical form. We understand.
1:00:05 Lewis Howes? How much time?
1:00:06 Bob Proctor? Pardon?
1:00:08 Lewis Howes? How much time does it usually take?
1:00:09 Bob Proctor? We don't know. We don't know. That's the only thing we don't know, is the gestation period for an idea. We know what the gestation period is for wheat. We know what it is for a carrot. We know what it is for a baby. Moment of conception is about 280 days. We didn't always know these things, but we do now. We don't know what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and that's what an idea is. But it grows by exactly the same law. And so if we hold that idea in our mind, it must by law manifest in form. It moves into form. Now that is called the perpetual transmutation of energy. It's one of the laws of the universe.
1:00:54 Lewis Howes? Wow. There was something that you shared just a moment ago that reminded me of an interview I did with Joe Dispenza recently, where he said, "We're really good at remembering the past and actually building a story in our mind about something traumatic that was actually way worse in our mind than it actually probably was in person. We're really good at remembering these stories. But what we need to do," he said, "is to remember the future." And when he said that, it kind of triggered something different. It's like what you just shared. It's like have an idea of the future of what we want to manifest and hold on to that idea and remember the memories of the future as opposed to holding on to the memories of the past
1:01:39 Lewis Howes? so we can move into that as opposed to be stuck in the past.
1:01:42 Bob Proctor? That's what that is, yeah.
1:01:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And it's hard. Why is it so hard? Why is it hard for us to hold on to or maybe not hold on to, but keep in our minds and imagine the idea of a greater future for us as opposed to constantly being stuck in the past? Why is that hard for so many of us?
1:02:05 Bob Proctor? Because we're programmed to go the other way. You know, what language do you speak?
1:02:12 Lewis Howes? I barely speak English.
1:02:15 Bob Proctor? How about Russian?
1:02:18 Lewis Howes? "Привет, как дела?" That's all I know.
1:02:22 Bob Proctor? Well, the point is, you were raised with the English language.
1:02:26 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:02:27 Bob Proctor? You don't know another language. I was raised with the English language. I don't know another language. I was working with people over in Kuala Lumpur a number of years ago, and they had a little boy, four years old. That little boy could speak four languages. They thought nothing of that.
1:02:44 Bob Proctor? There's people speak many more than four languages. Because that's the way they're raised. We're the product of our environment from the time we're born. But prior to that genetically we're programmed. You're genetically programmed at the moment of conception. You got all mom's DNA and all dad's DNA. And God knows how far it goes back on either side. Well, that is programming, that's in our subconscious mind.
1:03:13 Bob Proctor? And
1:03:16 Bob Proctor? that's called a paradigm, that's what it is. It's a program in our subconscious mind. Now here's the crazy part. You have programs in your phone or in your computer. The people that write the code for these programs are really smart. When it comes to writing code. They really know what the hell they're doing. The people that wrote the code for our bio computer had no idea what the hell they were doing.
1:03:43 Bob Proctor? They don't, they did not. They were writing a code for my subconscious mind and for yours. That's our paradigm. And that probably controls our life to an enormous degree. It did with me until I was 26. Now, I was fortunate. When I met Ray Stanford, he got me into the Think and Grow Rich book and that led me into God knows what else. I have been working at changing that program since I was 26. I'm 86 right now. So I've been at it for a long time and I work at it every day.
1:04:19 Bob Proctor? Most people don't even know that they have the problem. So they stay stuck their whole life. Listen, you interview some pretty interesting people. And I watched the interview here, a billionaire a while ago.
1:04:37 Lewis Howes? Which one?
1:04:38 Bob Proctor? I forgot, I forgot who it was.
1:04:40 Lewis Howes? Ray Dalio, Charles Koch.
1:04:43 Bob Proctor? It was a pretty interesting interview anyway. But the point is anybody can become a billionaire if that's what you want to do.
1:04:53 Bob Proctor? You say, well, wouldn't everybody? No, everybody wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put all my energy into that. Now, does that mean I don't want money? No, hell, I earn all kinds of money. And I probably want to earn more, but that's not my focus.
1:05:09 Bob Proctor? We are programmed to live a certain way.
1:05:14 Bob Proctor? And rarely do we change that. Now, I change it, and I teach people to change it. But most people don't. Stop and think of how few people are really well off. Three, four, five percent maximum, if that.
1:05:34 Bob Proctor? And ninety-five percent are struggling. And these are, some of these are really bright people. You've got people that have a doctorate degree in commerce and finance, and they're broke. How the hell could that happen? Well, they never learned how to earn money. They learn how to count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn it. School doesn't teach us how to earn money.
1:06:00 Bob Proctor? It's absurd when you stop and think about it. They teach us all kinds of stuff, that's, a lot of it's useless. They don't teach us about how to earn money. And money is a medium of exchange that's negotiable all over the world, you know?
1:06:13 Lewis Howes? Yeah. What do you think of the programs, or the programming, that hold us back the most? Maybe the two or three things that are programmed?
1:06:22 Bob Proctor? Well, we were talking about earlier, the self-image, that's programming. And...
1:06:31 Bob Proctor? I have a little great-granddaughter. And her mother and father are really fascinating. I'm watching them, how they treat this little girl. It is fascinating. Her name is Nora. And if they do anything, they'll say, "Thank you, Nora." Nora, that is really good. And this kid, I think, is going to grow up with just a phenomenal self-image. Now, they have been studying this all their life, and now they've got a little baby. And the two, watch the two of them working with her, it's phenomenal. But I think self-esteem has to be one of the biggest problems. That's not really taught in school, it's not taught in many homes.
1:07:18 Bob Proctor? You take and, get into, into any of the sports leagues, they don't teach much about the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind's controlling how well you play the game.
1:07:34 Lewis Howes? What is the thing that's been on repeat for you every single morning to help program your subconscious mind in your favor? Is there a thing you say? Is there a mantra? Is there meditation? Is there a practice that helps reprogram in a positive way?
1:07:49 Bob Proctor? I have a goal card.
1:07:52 Bob Proctor? Carry a goal card with me all the time. My goal is on the card.
1:07:56 Bob Proctor? I touch that. When you have a goal and you write your goal, you paint a picture with words. Your goal is a picture in your mind. And you paint the picture with words. When you're writing it, you impregnate it into a group of cells in your brain.
1:08:13 Bob Proctor? I carry this in my pocket. When I touch it, a sensory factor touches affected. It's a light message goes flying through my body and it resonates with those cells in my brain and the picture comes on the screen of my mind. This is a ritual. I've been doing this since 1961.
1:08:34 Lewis Howes? What's on your goal card before I get to the next thing?
1:08:37 Bob Proctor? I want to do $100 million in business.
1:08:42 Bob Proctor? We don't do that now.
1:08:45 Bob Proctor? I'm doing it in here. Physically, I haven't got there. This is Sandy's goal and it's my goal and we both got the card signed. It's written in present tense.
1:09:00 Bob Proctor? All your goals should be in present tense. The only thing you put a date on is you're guessing at the date. You don't know what the date is.
1:09:13 Lewis Howes? In this next section, Bob shares how most people use their imagination in the wrong way and how we can prime our imagination to focus more on the positive rather than the negative. You mentioned, I think, one of the faculties you said was the most challenging is imagination. Is that one of the most challenging for people?
1:09:28 Bob Proctor? It's not the most challenging. It's something we really want to gain an understanding of because most people use their imagination, they use it the wrong way. They imagine what won't work. They imagine something bad happening.
1:09:43 Lewis Howes? What should we imagine more often, every day?
1:09:45 Bob Proctor? We should imagine you should see yourself where you want to be. You've got to live there.
1:09:52 Bob Proctor? There's a great book, you may be familiar with Stella Adler's book, The Art of Acting. Oh gosh, you gotta get it. Stella Adler was a great acting teacher, she was a method acting teacher. She studied and understands Lasky, the Russian acting teacher that originated method acting. Marlon Brando wrote the foreword in her book. He was the first method actor to reach superstardom. And he wrote the foreword in her book. Now Stella Adler never actually wrote a book. A man named Kissel took all of her teaching, all of her lessons for teaching, and she put them into, or he put them into a book. So when you read her book, you're going to her acting classes.
1:10:36 Bob Proctor? And like Shakespeare said, we're all actors, you know, the world's a stage, and that's true. Well, when you reach a goal, you're gonna act like you're already there. It's already happened intellectually, the second you think about it. It's already happened emotionally, when you're emotionally involved with it. So it's only a period of time until it manifests in physical form. But because it's not in physical form, we act like we haven't got it yet. Well, so that's why most people stay stuck, because they're acting like they haven't got it yet. Or, I can't act like that. Lewis would see that I haven't got that result, he'll think I'm funny. I gotta quit worrying about what Lewis thinks, and start concentrating on what Bob thinks.
1:11:18 Bob Proctor? And so you see yourself, your imagination, you've gotta be that person. Goethe said that, great philosopher, he said, before you can do something, your universe must be something. So you've gotta be it intellectually, you've gotta be it emotionally. As Solomon says, as a person thinks, it's in their heart, the emotional mind. Well, it's only a period of time until it manifests physically. That's one of the first laws of the universe, is the perpetual transmutation of energy. Energy is moving into form, always. To form, moving into form, through form, back into form again. So we cause it all to happen the way we think, and the way we stay locked into ideas.
1:12:00 Lewis Howes? How should people be developing their imagination on a daily basis, in a positive way?
1:12:06 Bob Proctor? Well, I think they should take time to image what they want. I have a business partner, Sandy Gallagher, who's a brilliant woman. And she rides horses, gated horses. And she's in Kentucky right now in big tournaments, shows there. She images herself as a world champion. Every day, she takes the time and she sees herself as a world champion. She sees herself getting the roses, getting the whole thing. And that's where you should do it. I think you build the image of what you want. I mean, you obviously image this studio before you ever built it.
1:12:51 Bob Proctor? Right. I mean, everything you see here was part of the image in your mind. But everything you create, you create twice. Once in here, once out here, you know? So you never get an original painting. You always get a duplicate. The picture's in here. Wow. So we have to see ourselves with what we want here. Now, we've got an enormous deterrent in our paradigm. We're conditioned genetically and environmentally. And that conditioning is controlling most people's lives. That's why brilliant people are broke. Brilliant people are unhappy. Brilliant people never really accomplish very much. They're absolutely brilliant, but their paradigm is controlling them.
1:13:36 Bob Proctor? It's all about intellect. They're smart people. But like, you gotta consider where we come from. A little particle of energy from mom, a little particle of energy from dad comes swimming along. That's the nucleus of us. Then that goes on for 280 days, attracting more energy until you make your debut on the planet. And then you're programmed environmentally by your environment. So everything that's going on is going right into your subconscious mind. So you're programmed genetically. We don't know how far it goes back, four or five generations possibly. Like, when I was a young man, I had red hair. My mother didn't have red hair, my dad didn't have red hair.
1:14:21 Bob Proctor? I got a brother and sister, and they don't have red hair. And it causes you to think, well. But my mother's father and all his brothers had red hair. So sometimes it jumps a generation. That's why we look like our relatives. It's genetic conditioning. And then there's environmental conditioning. We know almost all welfare recipients are fourth, fifth generation welfare recipients. So this is passed down generation to generation. Now unfortunately, we're all, or fortunately, we're all exactly the same. We got exactly the same potential. Our spiritual DNA is perfect.
1:14:59 Bob Proctor? But that perfection never expresses itself properly because of this paradigm. It's conditioning in our subconscious mind. You see so many brilliant people and they don't make it. I had a good friend of mine, Milt Campbell. He won the gold medal in decathlon. Wow, I was a decathlete. Were you? I was an all-American decathlete. Well, Milt won in Melbourne in 56. Wow, okay. And he, uh, he won in 52 in Helsinki. Wow. Bob Mathias won his second gold. He won the gold in 48 and then in 52. Wow. Milt told me, if he told me, once he told me a thousand times, every time I was with him.
1:15:42 Bob Proctor? You know, there was a lot of athletes in schools that were better than me, but they quit. Yeah.
1:15:48 Bob Proctor? Well, our paradigms get us to quit things. Why? Because of programming. You're programmed. You have to ask yourself, why don't they do that? I went, I did a lot of work with the Prudential of America. In fact, I got stuck in the insurance companies for a number of years. I was so effective at what I was doing. And we raised their sales by, one VP said, over a billion dollars. And all I was doing, getting them to change their paradigm. I was having them change the way they worked.
1:16:23 Bob Proctor? A paradigm, a culture is a paradigm.
1:16:28 Bob Proctor? Every country has a culture. Every family has a culture. Every company has a culture.
1:16:37 Bob Proctor? Well, in the insurance industry, years ago, they had what they called debit agents. They went around collecting the money. And there would be a little book, like the one you're working with, that would have a record in there. I remember we had a book on top of our icebox, was right near our back door. Mr. Spenceley was the insurance man when I was a little kid. He'd come in, there was a little book and a little box with some money, and there's always just pennies. And he would collect the debit, mark the book, and he'd be on his way.
1:17:10 Bob Proctor? And that's how the insurance business operated. They were called debit agents. Well, then, as time moved along, people started to sign a little shit of paper or something, and they would automatically draw it out of your bank account.
1:17:27 Bob Proctor? But the agents didn't change. The agents would just go and sell at night when mom and dad were both there. Because you couldn't sell mom if dad wasn't there, you couldn't sell dad if mom wasn't there. This was a programming. So here we are, in the seventies, agents are still going to their office every morning. And they wouldn't go out and sell to anybody, because you sell at night. They collected their debit through the day. There was no debit to collect. This had been, for years, they were still doing this. And I'd ask them, I'd say, "Why do you go to your office?" "Well, you have to go to the office." And they'd be there, and I'd say, "Why do you have to go to your office?" "Because we have to go to the office." They didn't know why they had to go. Then they'd go to lunch, they'd go with another agent. I'd say, "Did you ever sell another agent any insurance?" "No."
1:18:12 Bob Proctor? I said, "What the hell are you going to lunch with them for?" I got them to do this. I said, "You gotta be like this. You gotta be skin to skin with the person before 9:00 a.m., and you have to ask every person to buy at least a hundred thousand dollars worth of insurance. You're not even enough to sell them. Just ask them to buy." Well, I got them doing that. They were selling more hundred thousand dollar policies in a week than they previously sold in a year in almost every office.
1:18:38 Bob Proctor? You see, that's conditioning, that's paradigm. That's the way they were working. They've been doing it for years. Nobody ever thought to change it. Largest insurance company in the world. And the head office was trying to figure out what I was doing because wherever I went, the salesmen were crazy. I was showing them how to change paradigm. Your paradigm is your conditioned behavior. How do we know when we need to change our own paradigm? You always need to change your own paradigm. How often are you changing yours? I'm working on it right now, every day. Really? Yeah, I work on it every day. But you should only try and change one or two things at a time. Don't try and change everything at once. Well, you know what your paradigm is. Just study your own behavior. Think of your results. You want to improve your results, don't you? Sure. You probably want to earn more money. Sure.
1:19:23 Bob Proctor? You probably want this show to be bigger than it is. Sure, yeah. How are you gonna do that? You gotta change the paradigm. That's right. You're gonna change your habitual way of dealing with these things. So you take a look at the results and say, what do I want to change? The results are an expression of the paradigm, not the intellect. See, the conscious mind is where all our intellectual information is. You know how to do better than you're doing. You know how to do better than you're doing. I know how to do better than that. Why aren't we doing it? The subconscious is programmed. It's your conscious mind where the intellect is and that's where our knowing is. Person knows, but they're not doing what they know. Just say, why do you do that? I don't know. Well, you know better than I know. Why are you doing it? I don't know. Well, I know.
1:20:08 Bob Proctor? It's their paradigm controls their behavior. So you take a look at your results and you say, what's causing that? So you've got to take back your behavior pattern. Why are you doing that? Because you're programmed to do it. Right now, the last time we did a paradigm shift seminar in Los Angeles, which was a number, two or four months ago, we gave everybody a ring binder. It's a damn thing, it's about that thick. And on every page, every page is the same. At the top of the page, you write 10 things you're grateful for. And then, there's a statement that you write. I am so happy and grateful now that I know my spiritual DNA is perfect. And that perfection is within me.
1:20:55 Bob Proctor? Every morning, I look for ways to improve my paradigm. I have to write that with my left hand. I'm right-handed. I'm on my forty-first day today.
1:21:06 Lewis Howes? Writing left-handed?
1:21:07 Bob Proctor? Writing left-handed.
1:21:08 Lewis Howes? Why?
1:21:09 Bob Proctor? It's changing the paradigm. I could be just as proficient with my left hand as I am with my right. But I've got to change my paradigm. I'm programmed. Now, when I'm writing, when you're writing, you just write. You don't think. You just... That's why graphical analysts can tell a lot about your personality through your handwriting.
1:21:23 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I'm sloppy handwriting.
1:21:25 Bob Proctor? Well, if you're writing with your left hand and you're right-handed or your non-dominant hand, you've got to consciously pay attention to every stroke, every move your hand's making. And the second you stop, it looks like it was Chinese art that you're drawing.
1:21:41 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:21:42 Bob Proctor? But I know through repetition, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. It'll probably take me a year.
1:21:47 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:21:48 Bob Proctor? But I'm learning how strong the paradigm is and how hard it is to change it. So a year from now, I'll probably be as proficient with one hand as I am with the other. But then I'll stick to it.
1:21:57 Lewis Howes? Wow. What's the thing you want to change the most within yourself to get to the next level of results that you're looking for?
1:22:03 Bob Proctor? I want to be more effective in selling on a larger scale.
1:22:08 Lewis Howes? So not one-to-one or one-to-a-few, but one-to-mass?
1:22:12 Bob Proctor? Yeah, like I have a sales staff. We've got a pretty mature company. We have about seventy employees in our company. So we've got about ten sales, twenty salespeople. Say ten, we have twenty. I want to have a larger sales force. I want to create more leads for them. Because I think what we do is so important. We literally change people's lives. And I'll work until I die. I have no intention to ever retire. I think it's a despicable idea even. So I'm forever... Now, I worked on an idea last night on the plane. And it's sort of similar, maybe it was because I was, you know, I was coming in here. Maybe that triggered this because we've been trying to come in here for over a year.
1:22:54 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:55 Bob Proctor? Somebody keeps telling me, you know...
1:22:59 Lewis Howes? Dates change, everything else.
1:23:00 Bob Proctor? Yeah, well, we just wasn't... We weren't able to be here until today. Anyway, I'm on the plane and I'm thinking...
1:23:09 Bob Proctor? How can I get more people? I have a studio in Toronto. If you're ever in Toronto, you'll have to come and see it. I wanna see it, yeah. We have a beautiful studio. It's a, it's a like a, it is a television station. I had a couple of people from a TV station in one day and I said, "Sir, like a television?" And they said, "No, Bob, it is a television." I can run four cameras simultaneously. Young Scott there, he could, he could operate the cameras from right in here on his computer.
1:23:36 Bob Proctor? I can stream all over the world. It's fifty feet from my house. Wow. And we can stream all over the world from there. And so, I'm thinking, I'm gonna do, it'll be like a webinar, but it won't be a webinar. Like a live cast? It'll be a live cast, yeah. And it'll stream. And I'm really gonna teach the people something. I'll use, I'll use maybe two or three PowerPoints. I'll use a PowerPoint just as a trigger to get the thing going, get them focused on something. And then I'll open it for questions and I'll have chats. Because people learn something on chats. They listen and say, "Damn, I didn't see that." You know, so they'll have a chat on it. And I'll start doing that right away. And I got people working on it. Wow.
1:24:19 Bob Proctor? And I'm calling it Studio 333.
1:24:25 Bob Proctor? There's a story in a book I wrote, 333. And we say, "We 333 an idea. You only think of how you can, you can't think of why you can't."
1:24:34 Bob Proctor? The guy raised three million, three hours, three days later. And a radio station in Toronto threw an idea we taught them. Wow. So we call it 333 Idea. So I've called this, we had them at 333.com, Studio333.com. That's cool. So that's the way it'll come up. And we'll stream it all over the world. And I'll be teaching this information, not in an organized way, but in, probably in a disorganized way, based on the people we're talking to.
1:25:02 Bob Proctor? Because they ask questions, that's, that's telling me what they wanna learn. Rather than me saying, "This is what you should learn." I wanna find out what you wanna learn.
1:25:13 Bob Proctor? That's something that I'm building now. I want to make it big.
1:25:16 Lewis Howes? That's great. Do you feel like you'll ever get close to reaching your potential?
1:25:21 Bob Proctor? No, I know damn well I won't. It's not who I think, I know. Neither will you. I think that's the ultimate aim of man.
1:25:32 Bob Proctor? We are created in God's image. Now, everybody's got a different image of that. But we're capable of doing anything. We have infinite potential. Our spiritual DNA is perfect, so there's perfection within us. And spirit's always for expansion and fuller expression, never for disintegration. The disintegration we bring about. So spirit's always for expansion and fuller expression. We're spiritual beings. So that perfection is trying to express itself through us. We stop it. It's when we get tuned in and we let it come out.
1:26:08 Bob Proctor? What we could part the seas, we can do anything. We are all powerful. All the power, all the knowledge, is 100% evenly present in all places at the same time. So that's within you, within me. There's no limit to what we can do. That's really what I teach. I teach it, I'll break it down into small bites for a person. But you...
1:26:33 Lewis Howes? What's the closest we can get to our potential, do you think? What's possible?
1:26:38 Bob Proctor? Well, the closest you'll get to your potential is where you are right now. And then you've got to take it, you've got to expand it. You want to do better at what you're doing. Like, you've got a great reputation on this show. I think you know that. But there's all kinds of people who've never heard of it.
1:26:53 Lewis Howes? Of course, lots of people.
1:26:54 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:26:55 Lewis Howes? I want the world to hear it.
1:26:56 Bob Proctor? Well, then, there you go. You want the world to... How will you do that? There's your opportunity to develop more your potential. How will you do that? How can you get more millions? You know?
1:27:11 Lewis Howes? You've got to use my imagination.
1:27:12 Bob Proctor? You do. That's where you're going to start.
1:27:15 Lewis Howes? Imagination, will, tuition, everything.
1:27:19 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:27:21 Bob Proctor? So you're gonna learn how to utilize those, how to develop them. So you work at it every day. I mean, you're in a, many people would say you're in an enviable position. I think I am too, because you're talking to people who know quite a bit about whatever they're doing. So you're gonna learn all the time.
1:27:38 Lewis Howes? It's the greatest game.
1:27:38 Bob Proctor? You're in school every day.
1:27:39 Lewis Howes? It's the greatest game.
1:27:40 Bob Proctor? You go to work, you're in school.
1:27:41 Lewis Howes? Yeah, it's amazing.
1:27:41 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:27:42 Lewis Howes? Very grateful.
1:27:44 Bob Proctor? Tiffany, you're getting an education, probably you couldn't.
1:27:46 Lewis Howes? She's been here for, what, three years now, three and a half years. And she's grown tremendously, just, she's listened to everyone.
1:27:52 Bob Proctor? Our marketing director, you would love to meet her. She is Mikey Stellar. She was Mikey Euler. She got married since she's joined us, had two children too. She was a nanny when she started to work with us. Now she's our chief operating officer and our marketing director.
1:28:13 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:28:14 Bob Proctor? Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. She had never, never really went to school. But she committed, she just, she'd be something like you. I mean, you're getting exposed to great information all the time.
1:28:26 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:28:26 Bob Proctor? And Tiffany, you've got the same potential as I got. You know, you look different, you sound different, but we're exactly the same. You see? I teach that in a seminar. I'll say, like, if I asked you, you'd probably tell me you're black. You know, if I asked somebody else, they'd probably tell me you're black. The truth is, you're not. And they'd tell me I'm white. The truth is, I'm not. My shirt is white. If you ever saw a white person, you'd probably scream and run. My God, they're white, you know? If, I don't know if I've ever seen a black person. Why do they say, we don't see with our eyes, we see through our eyes. We've been programmed to see black. And you're not black. You see? I think your shirt's black, isn't it?
1:29:10 Lewis Howes? Yeah, it's pretty black.
1:29:10 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:29:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:29:11 Bob Proctor? You're not the color of the shirt. So why do we say Tiffany's black and Bob's white? Because we're programmed to see that. Now, if we're seeing something that isn't there when we look at another person, how many other times do we look at saying, see something that's not there? That's where our perception has to be shifted.
1:29:28 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:29:30 Bob Proctor? We're all exactly the same. Now, you're not too tall. You're a different shade. And you're a different gender. So you say, well, you're nothing like Bob. You're exactly like Bob. It just doesn't appear that way. But the truth is very rarely in the appearance of things. There's so much we can learn. And school's not teaching us. School's not doing the job.
1:29:54 Lewis Howes? What's the thing you feel like you haven't learned yet? Eighty-five years old right now, as I've said?
1:29:58 Bob Proctor? I'll be eighty-five next Friday. A week Friday, yeah.
1:30:03 Lewis Howes? Very young. Happy early birthday.
1:30:04 Bob Proctor? There you go.
1:30:05 Lewis Howes? So what's the thing you feel like you still haven't learned?
1:30:08 Bob Proctor? Well, like, everything I'm teaching, I only know a bit of it. I don't know all there is to know about our higher faculties. I don't know all there is to know about perception, or the will, or reason. There's so much I don't know. Of what I'm doing. So I study every day. I want to get, I want to learn more. So I've got to go to somebody that knows more, you know? I study a lot of Thomas Troward's work. He's a wonderful author. He wrote The Edinburgh Lectures of Mental Science, The Dory Lectures of Mental Science, The Law and the Word, Bible Mystery, Bible Meaning. He was a great author. And there's a woman, Genevieve B. Rand.
1:30:51 Bob Proctor? She wrote Your Invisible Power. She was Troward's only student. She went and studied with him from nineteen twelve to nineteen fourteen. And she, it cost her twenty thousand dollars. That must have been an enormous amount of money back then. But she was his only student. And she, she wrote a book, Your Invisible Power. It's a great book.
1:31:19 Lewis Howes? Your Invisible Power?
1:31:20 Bob Proctor? Your Invisible Power. I will send you a copy. I will send you a copy. It's a great book.
1:31:25 Lewis Howes? What's your top three recommended books for people? Of all levels?
1:31:29 Bob Proctor? Well, that's not one of them, but I will, that is, maybe it should be.
1:31:33 Lewis Howes? Think and Grow Rich.
1:31:34 Bob Proctor? Think and Grow Rich.
1:31:42 Bob Proctor? As Man Thinketh by James Allen.
1:31:44 Lewis Howes? Uh huh.
1:31:45 Bob Proctor? You familiar with that?
1:31:45 Lewis Howes? Yep.
1:31:46 Bob Proctor? Such a great book.
1:31:47 Lewis Howes? Yep.
1:31:50 Bob Proctor? And You Squared by Price Pritchett.
1:31:52 Lewis Howes? You Squared?
1:31:53 Bob Proctor? Yeah, it's a little book. You familiar with it?
1:31:56 Lewis Howes? Not sure. You Squared.
1:31:58 Bob Proctor? You'd be sure if you knew it, if you had read it, you'd be sure. It's a great book.
1:32:02 Lewis Howes? Okay.
1:32:02 Bob Proctor? Absolutely.
1:32:05 Bob Proctor? There's thirty-five pages. Every page is better than the last page.
1:32:09 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:32:10 Bob Proctor? Every page is dealing with a new subject.
1:32:12 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:32:13 Bob Proctor? And they're mind-boggling.
1:32:14 Lewis Howes? I gotta get that one too.
1:32:15 Bob Proctor? I will send you that.
1:32:16 Lewis Howes? You'll send me your top favorite.
1:32:21 Lewis Howes? In this final section, Bob shares how he thinks about death and loss of loved ones over his lifetime, as well as how his experience as an entrepreneur changed over his lifetime. The older we get, the longer we live. Unfortunately, a lot of people in our lives start to leave this earth.
1:32:39 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:32:39 Lewis Howes? And I'm assuming you've had a lot of great relationships that those people are no longer with us.
1:32:48 Lewis Howes? What does that do for you when you realize that you're outliving a lot of people that you maybe grew up with, or you did partnerships with, or that were influential in your life, you know, at the same time that you've been around? What does that do for you? How does that make you feel and think about when you realize that?
1:33:08 Bob Proctor? You know, I read a book many years ago, Dry Those Tears. Dry Those Tears by Robert Russell.
1:33:16 Bob Proctor? It's on death and dying. It's a phenomenal book. After I read that, everything changed.
1:33:24 Bob Proctor? You are a soul. You don't have one, you are one. Moved into your body, you'll move out of your body.
1:33:31 Bob Proctor? If nothing is created or destroyed, there's only one, that's one theory, life. There is no such thing as death. And I think as we start to understand this, then we handle death totally different. Birth and death are both transitions. You moved into the body, you'll move out of it. Why are we joyous when somebody moves into a body, a new baby, but we're so upset when they move out of it? Well, we lose the physical part.
1:34:00 Bob Proctor? You...
1:34:03 Bob Proctor? I think you gain a better understanding of death as we know it, and change your concept of it. It's, I don't see anybody as gone. I just see, gone physically, you can still communicate with them. And you communicate through thoughts. Spirits omnipresent. It's in all religions. It's not a new idea. I don't hang around many old people, though. I hang around, somebody asked me how I stay young. I hang around young people. It's true.
1:34:48 Bob Proctor? You know, it was a joke when I first said it, but it's not a joke, it's the truth. I, I, I mix mostly with young people. The, we've got a phenomenal team of people in the company, and they're, they're great individuals. They really are. And people stay in our company for a long time. Like, my assistants worked with me for 34 years. And, and we, we help the people in the country company grow. Like, I often mention, we've got a chief operating officer. She's also the marketing director. She was a nanny when she came to work with us. She had no business experience at all. And she just grew up in the company.
1:35:32 Bob Proctor? But we see a lot of people in our company like that. And the longer we're around, the more we develop people like that, you know?
1:35:41 Lewis Howes? Is there, is, is death something you think about? Or is it something you're afraid of or concerned about at all?
1:35:46 Bob Proctor? Oh, I'm not at all afraid of it, no. Sometimes I look forward to it. And then I smarten up and I, wait a minute. When the time comes, it's gonna come.
1:35:56 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:35:57 Bob Proctor? You know? I am, I am so damn interested in what I'm doing. Like, I often say I'd be pissed off if I died right now, because I've got so much to do. I'm working on a lot of projects right now. And I got a lot of work to do. We've got...
1:36:15 Lewis Howes? And what, what year were you born again?
1:36:18 Bob Proctor? 1934.
1:36:21 Lewis Howes? What's the, what's the thing that's inspired you the most that you've witnessed? In the world, in America, innovations, ideas?
1:36:32 Bob Proctor? Oh, just, just the constant evolution of change. It's, everything changes so fast, you know? Eric Hoffer one time said,
1:36:48 Bob Proctor? that
1:36:52 Bob Proctor? if we, how do you put it?
1:36:59 Bob Proctor? Everything's changing so fast, we've got to, we've got to keep up with it. We can't let the change stop us.
1:37:13 Bob Proctor? Kind of forgotten, it was a quote that was fresh in my mind and it just left me now. But he was so right. You've got to, you've got to stay with it, you've got to keep changing. You know, if you, if you don't, you're sunk.
1:37:28 Lewis Howes? Was there a decade that was hardest for you to adapt to or change?
1:37:33 Bob Proctor? Well, the 60s, the 60s, the 60s was hell on wheels for me. Because that's when I get into this book, you see? And man, I had my past trying to pull me one way and the books and the people were trying to pull me the other way. And I mean, I felt like I was in a tug of war with myself, you know? 70s had got pretty good. But the 60s was, that was a, it was a rough decade.
1:38:00 Lewis Howes? What about the, what about the advancement of, of technologies from just cars to planes to having phones, the cell phones, you know, social media, all these things that are, you know?
1:38:12 Bob Proctor? I've tried to stay up with it, you know? I'm, I'm not as proficient as I'd like to be with computers. I'd like to be able to know more how to work with them better. But, you know, I've got a couple of phones and I've got a pad and computer going all the time.
1:38:28 Bob Proctor? I make PowerPoints myself, you know? I try and stay up with what's going on.
1:38:37 Lewis Howes? So you're on TikTok yourself, huh, Bob?
1:38:40 Bob Proctor? No, I'm not. No, you know the truth, I don't get on any of the things myself because we've got a staff looking after all that. And if I get in, I might screw up one of the routines that they've got, they've got a, a pattern that they're working. So like, I don't even go on Facebook.
1:38:58 Lewis Howes? Yeah, but your team, you've got a team that's up to date with everything for you, which is nice.
1:39:02 Bob Proctor? Yeah, we've got, we've got some excellent people that are on top of that all the time. Like I was saying, we got, um, we picked up the million viewers on YouTube. We got the, this plaque here from a while ago.
1:39:18 Lewis Howes? You got the, it's a gold plaque, right?
1:39:21 Bob Proctor? Pardon? Yeah.
1:39:22 Lewis Howes? It's a gold plaque, yeah. We just hit a million, so we'll, hopefully we'll get that in the mail soon.
1:39:28 Lewis Howes? I love that. What's been the, the most exciting, uh, decade or innovation that's happened for you in your life? Where things started to evolve and change beyond the, beyond the seventies, what's the, the innovation that's been exciting for you? That's really supporting you?
1:39:47 Bob Proctor? I think this, the time we're in right now is the best. I mean, I just love it.
1:39:54 Bob Proctor? There's so much going on. And I used to sit out here in the backyard under, under a big umbrella. And I'd sit out there and I'd look at the back of the yard and I'd get an idea, kind of, if I built a little place there and I could put a camera in it. Sandy said, let's do it. So, I don't know, we got over a million dollars in this place, I guess. And, but we've got cameras all over the place, like you, the camera you're on comes out of the ceiling. I got a monitor over here I can see, and I've got another one here.
1:40:25 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:40:26 Bob Proctor? I've got one, two, three, four, five, six cameras right in this area. And then there's a control, and this is a, what you call a floating cell. This is the building inside the building. So the outside doesn't touch the inside. And, um, and then there's a control room down there where Scott Edwards, he's the program director, he's over in Manchester, England right now. But he can take all this that's recorded, he could edit it back there in the control room, do it all, ship it out wherever we want to go. And we've got just all kinds of material and memory back there. We broadcast, we do a seminar. I think the last we did, it was 119 countries we went into.
1:41:09 Lewis Howes? Hmm, wow.
1:41:11 Bob Proctor? Yeah.
1:41:12 Lewis Howes? It's inspiring.
1:41:13 Bob Proctor? So this is, this is an interesting time for me. And what we're doing now, we're bringing some young people in that really understand how to do some pretty jazzy stuff, you know? And I love, just love getting up on it and doing it.
1:41:31 Lewis Howes? And I want to acknowledge you, I love acknowledging you, Bob, because you've been an inspiration to so many people. Uh, I think a lot of people really mainstream in the world got to know about you over a decade ago and with The Secret, uh, and, uh, since then have gotten to know you even more. And I'm just appreciative of your, your young heart, your curious minds, your, your ability to stay in repetition on things that are meaningful over and over and over again. So you can improve. And your willingness to teach them, uh, so many people. You know, you continue to show up and serve and serve and serve. And you, you've set a great example for me. So I'm just appreciative of you, I'm appreciative of our friendship, I'm appreciative of how you are in constant giving mode.
1:42:14 Lewis Howes? And, uh, I hope people enjoyed this, this interview. But is there any, any other final thoughts before we wrap up today?
1:42:21 Bob Proctor? A leader of the quote came to me that I was trying to think of. Eric Harper said, "The learners will inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." The learners will inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with the world that no longer exists. See, there's no such thing as a learned person. You're either learning or you're not. That's it. Learning isn't something you fill up and put a cap on. Beautiful truth. Just keep learning.
1:42:51 Lewis Howes? Again, a big thank you for listening to this tribute of the iconic, the inspiring, the legend, Bob Proctor. If this inspired you in any way, please spread this message forward. Share this with friends. There are millions of people that were inspired by Bob, by his message. And I hope we were able to captivate and capture his message in a beautiful way here in this tribute episode. I got to spend some quality time with him in person. I got to do some Zoom calls with him where we recorded for these episodes. I got to talk with him privately and text with him. And I just feel like he was such a great example for me.
1:43:36 Lewis Howes? Towards the end of his life, his last few years, when I got to meet him, he continued to show up. He continued to share. He continued to mentor me. He continued to inspire people and nothing stopped him. He was just such a beautiful example and he had so much passion and excitement. When I talked to him, he said, you know, I want to live a long time. And he said to me, he put a deposit down for an event that he wanted to do many years in the future that would inspire him to continue to live a healthy, meaningful life for the last five, 10 years that he'd been planning for this event. And I just thought that was such a cool example that he was continuing to live his message. He was putting his own money, his own stake at risk with this deposit for an event in
1:44:20 Lewis Howes? the future to give him something to look forward to, to give him something to be excited about. And I think that's really cool. He continued to live that way where he was excited about his life. He was excited about his mission, his purpose. He was investing in himself still. He had a trainer that he was working with to help him on his health. All these different things, he kept living his message and his mission all the way to the end. And that inspires me deeply. So again, To everyone out there who was a fan of Bob for many years, or maybe you've never heard about Bob and this is your first time getting to experience him. I hope you continue to think about his message. I hope you continue to share his message.
1:45:04 Lewis Howes? Get his books, check out his website, you know, learn about all the stuff that they're up to over at Bob Proctor and his community. Follow him on social media because his legacy will continue on. His message will continue to be shared. And I hope you continue to enjoy the message, the life and the legacy of Bob Proctor.
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