Brian Tracy on Goal Setting
Want to set yourself up to achieve your goals in 2022?
Check out this conversation I had with Brian Tracy — he shares some of his most effective strategies on goal setting on the Productive Insights podcast.
Ever since I spoke to Brian (which was a few months ago now as I write this update), I've been writing down my goals every single day.
Not for 30 consecutive days like he recommended on the podcast. But for the last six months!
And the change has been phenomenal!
Here's what's happened for me since I've been writing my goals down each day:
- I've been a lot more focused on fewer goals that really matter
- I've developed a sense of urgency around those goals
- I've developed more agency (because I write the goals in the past tense as if I've already achieved them)
I recommend trying it for yourself.
About Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy is a motivational speaker, business trainer & author of the best-selling series “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time”.
Brian's sold millions of copies of his books and he's written 90 of them around business, sales, and productivity!
So it's fair to say that Brian's an authority on these topics!
After you've checked out this content, you might also want to check out our recent blog post where we show you how to set SMART goals.
In this article, we talked about key points in his new book, “Eat That Frog! For Students: 22 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Excel in School”.
Maybe you can pick up on some things and apply them to your life!
Brian's a firm believer in “Turning Points”. These are moments that change your life for the better. While some of them just happen, several of them are a result of changes you actively choose to make.
Ok, so what do frogs have to do with Goal Setting & Time Management?
I couldn't help but wonder and I asked Brian how he came up with this catchy line. Turns out, it came from Mark Twain.
Mark Twain once said that “if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long”.
Mark Twain also had two recommendations for eating frogs:
- If you have two frogs, eat the uglier one.
and
- If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.
The frog represents the most important task that you'd most likely (otherwise) procrastinate on. If you identify it and conquer it as soon as you can, this leads to accomplishing more.
# 1: Thinking on Paper, and why it works
These days, the good old paper and pen seem to have been relegated in importance. Our devices have taken center stage.
However, Brian and I agreed on the importance of documenting your ideas through the practice of writing in running hand.
Brian explained that the act of writing sends the prompt from your subconscious mind to your superconscious mind. This helps you shift focus and work on what you’ve written down.
He added that in his training for entrepreneurs, one of the first tasks he gives them is for them to write down 10 goals each day for 30 days, from memory.
This practice achieves 3 things:
- Refines your goals
- Reorganizes your priorities
- Internalizes your goals (and harnesses your subconscious)
These goals you write down each day should be attainable in the next 12 months. I think that it’s a great exercise to practice, especially when you’re looking to grow your business or brand. Maybe after reading this article, you can spend 3 to 4 minutes of each day (for the next 30 days) writing down your own 10 goals for the coming 12 months.
# 2: Compulsion to Closure and Achieving Goals
Several of us tend to have a bunch of half-completed projects sitting around. Brian puts this down to juggling too many priorities and multitasking — both of which don't help matters at all.
He said that we have to practice “single-minded focusing”. I like to call this single-tasking.
Throw away the idea that opening all your tasks and doing it all at the same time makes you productive. It actually lessens it! (spoke about this with James Clear, ep. 175; also with Perry Marshall, ep. 186).
Multitasking causes context switching and that's one of the biggest obstacles to being effective. Context switching actually decreases your productivity!
It takes an average of 17 minutes for you to effectively shift from one task to another! That’s a lot of time taken away from you.
Focusing on one task at a time will also help you increase your motivation.
Don't get me wrong. You can still focus on multiple projects. Just work on one at a time and give it your full attention.
Get this right and you'll excel - whether you’re a student or a professional.
Brian shared a quote from Goethe J.W., “anything is hard before it is easy”.
Breaking away from how you work is definitely a challenge, but by practicing single-minded focus, it’ll make the easy automatic.
# 3: Reward Structure: How to develop Urgency & Momentum
One of the best ways to develop a sense of urgency and momentum is to create a reward/incentive structure for yourself.
Your reward could be something as simple as allowing yourself to take another sip of coffee after every sales call or writing another paragraph on your blog post.
It could also be a larger reward tied to a milestone, like hitting a quarterly sales target and rewarding yourself with a vacation.
The key is to only give yourself that reward when you do accomplish your goal (you set yourself earlier).
You could even print it out and place it on your workspace to help you be motivated and remind yourself of what’s waiting on the other side.
So go and write your ten goals, and circle the first one you think is most important.
You may learn more about Brian Tracy here, https://www.briantracy.com/.
Links Mentioned
- https://www.briantracy.com/
- https://www.productiveinsights.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/productiveinsights
- [Amazon] Eat That Frog! for Students: 22 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Excel in School
Related Episodes
Goal Setting with Brian Tracy — Transcript of YouTube video conversation
Brian Tracy: (00:00)
I said for the next 30 days, I want you to pick up your workbook and every day, write down 10 goals the next day, write down 10 goals again, and you'll keep doing this. And in 30 days, your life will have changed forever.
Ash Roy: (00:15)
No goals. Brian, let's talk a little bit about convulsion to closure, I think is a very important approach, especially in today's world, where we're bombarded with tons of distractions. A lot of us start things, but don't complete them. Welcome back to the Productive Insights Podcast. This is Ash Roy. I'm the founder of productiveinsights.com and the host of the Productive Insights Podcast. And I'm delighted to introduce you to our latest guest today. And that is Brian Tracy. Brian Tracy is a top-selling author of over 70 books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His most recent book is called Eat That Frog For Students, 22 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Excel in School. Brian has consulted to more than a thousand companies addressed more than 5 million people. In 5,000 talks as a keynote speaker at a seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year. He speaks to corporate and public audiences and speaks on the subjects of personal and professional development. He also speaks to executives and staff in many of America's largest corporations. He speaks four languages is happily married and has four children. So I'm delighted to welcome Brian Tracy from briantracy.com. And we are going to talk about his new book called Eat That Frog for Students, 22 ways to stop procrastinating and Excel in school. Welcome to the Productive Insights Podcast.
Brian Tracy: (01:44)
Thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be back in Australia. I've traveled all over the country. I've spoken in every major city and several minor cities. I have so many friends in Australia and so it's a delight. It's a delight to be with you. Wow.
Ash Roy: (02:03)
Brian, I've been reading your books for a long time now and I find them to be very useful. I actually specifically enjoyed your earlier book called eat that frog 21. Great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time. It was a simple and quick read. So could you start by explaining to our listeners and viewers, if you're watching on YouTube, uh, you can access this episode@productiveinsights.com forward slash YouTube? Uh, could you explain to our listeners what you mean when you say eat that frog and why it's important to all of us for those who are not initiated, who haven't heard that term? If okay.
Brian Tracy: (02:40)
Many years ago, I'm a voracious student. I read, uh, at least three hours a day. I've I've studied and written and researched 150,000 hours in the course of my life. And many years ago, I came across this story from Mark Twain and Mark Twain was the most successful professional speaker and author of his time. He was wealthy and respected any filled rooms and he was entertaining and funny. And, uh, he came up with this little one-liner. He said, uh, in traveling, he he'd, he'd written a couple of books on frogs. He said, what I learned is that the first thing you do in the morning is you eat a live frog. You'll have the satisfaction of knowing that that's probably the worst thing that could happen to you all day long. And then he said, and there are two corollaries to this law. One is that if you have two live frogs to eat, eat the ugliest one first.
Brian Tracy: (03:40)
And, uh, and then his second recommendation was, if you have to eat a frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long. So this, this was, and I read it many, many years ago. And, uh, when I was writing my book on time management, I've got a call from my publisher. He said, uh, do you have a book that you could suggest to us? And I said, well, one subject that's always popular is time management. And I worked with salespeople and I had a book called 21 grade ways to double your sales and a double your time off. And I sent it to him and he said, Oh, well, it's it's okay, but we need to focus it. I like chapter 15 with that, eat that frog idea. If you could take that up and make it the theme that runs through the whole book that might work.
Brian Tracy: (04:33)
So I said, okay, when you are a writer and you want to get published, you always say yes, okay, right away, or whatever, whatever you want. Um, because their publisher is w is going to take a tremendous risk, spend enormous amount of time and money to promote a book. And so you really have to work with them. And I, and so I took it all back and I rewrote the whole book as eat that frog 21, great ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. And Ash, I tell you, it must have hit a nerve because we thought it would sell a few thousand copies sort of as a sideways book. And it started to sell and sell and sell and sell. And that was about 12 years ago, 12, 13 years ago, we have now sold almost 3 million copies in 51 languages.
Brian Tracy: (05:28)
It is the best selling book on time management in the history of the world, which makes me the best authority on time management in the world. And I wrote it sort of on the side, I was busy working in sales and management and marketing and strategic planning and everything else. And so I wrote this book quickly and send it off to the publisher and got back to my real work. Well, now here we have the real work. If you like, maybe has an eat that frog for students. We started to think, you know, it says, this is so popular for adults who have a jobs, what is another big market? And, and the answer was students because there's millions of things working their way through school and college and, and so on. And they're overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time and a lot of stress.
Brian Tracy: (06:17)
And if they miss the boat, if they don't get into the right schools, they don't get the right grades. And then, and it will hurt them for the rest of their lives. So, uh, in conjunction with our co-editor Anna Lineberger, uh, who works with my publisher Berrett-Koehler we rewrote the book and we decided that we were not just simply throwing a little bit of change per chapter. We would rewrite the whole book and take every chapter and rewrite it. So it was really focused on students and what students need to succeed. And we did, and the book has come out and it turned out absolutely great. One of the things that I love to talk about in life, each person has turning points and the turning points are something that occurs that you had not expected, and you changed the direction of your life and you're going in a different direction and you never come back.
Brian Tracy: (07:18)
Right? And this has happened to you. It happens to me. We go to a party in the evening and on the other side of the room, there's a person standing there and our eyes hit named Isaiah meat. And we ended up marrying that person and having children and living with them for the rest of their lives. By the way, an interesting point is they say, if their eyes do not meet at the first moment of contact, where that other person, it will never happen. Wow. Whenever I mentioned that everybody sort of looks back on their, their own marries their own wedding. And they remember everybody remembers that moment when they met, when their eyes met across a crowded room, what's happened for me or calling on a company or, or something. There was that instant connection and Gibran. Now that wonderful writer said, yes, yes.
Brian Tracy: (08:19)
And he says, in that, he said, talk to us of love. And he says, the moment of love does not occur at that first moment of meeting. It will never occur. You read collegial. Um, you remember that? It's just a wonderful thing because it's the same thing in life. You have, you have turning points. And one of the turning points is the course that you take. There's an incredible story. Oh, Warren buffet. Now one of the richest men in the world, he went to university, as I understand Columbia. And he, um, wanted to take history. He wanted to be a teacher and course was all filled up. And the only thing he could take was a course on finance, teaching Ben Graham's methods of investing. And so he had no choice. So he took that course instead and fell in love with investing and became easily the most successful investor.
Ash Roy: (09:14)
Oh, Steve jobs when he dropped into his calligraphy glasses.
Brian Tracy: (09:17)
Yes. Yes, exactly. So you, so it was a turning point and it's completely unexpected, but when you turn, there's a, there's a beautiful line from Robert Frost, the poet, and he said, two roads diverged in a word, yes. Knowing I could not travel both and be one traveler long, I stood and looked down the one to where it turned in the undergrowth then took the other, there was justice fair and perhaps more deserving because it wanted where he said, and I should be telling this with a sigh mirrors and years, hence that two roads diverged in a wood. And I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Yeah.
Ash Roy: (10:09)
There's, there's a great book called the road, less traveled, which is also a great read, but it's on a slightly different topic. I just wanted to mention that the, what you call those turning points. I think of them as points of inflection, the founder, I think of Intel had written a book around reflection points and talked about that in a corporate sense. So I definitely agree with you. Points of inflection are critical and those points of inflection require our focus. I just want to mention that a lot of our listeners are business owners and often parents. So this book might be very useful to their children who are probably going through homeschooling at the moment, if you're living in the United States or given the pandemic and so on. So this book is very relevant to your children. I dare say it's relevant to anybody who reads it because you share some great principles in the earlier book, eat that frog, which I believe are probably repeated in this book as well.
Ash Roy: (11:10)
One of which is thinking on paper. And I really liked that. And I'm actually writing notes down as we speak on paper. And I I've always been right. There we go. Yeah. So, so there's something Brian about in my experience about physically handwriting stuff, it appears to engage a different part of the brain. And for that reason, I bought the latest iPad pro where I can hand write stuff and then it can convert into text the act of handwriting, as opposed to typing somehow creates a certain sense of urgency and agency, which we'll touch on it in a couple of moments. But can you talk to us a little bit about your views on thinking on paper? You actually talk about this in your earlier book. And I think it's very important for our listeners to understand
Brian Tracy: (11:59)
Well, w Ash, I'm so glad you brought that up because it is one of those turning points. When I, what I'm going to explain to you is, is a life changer for me and for other people. And it's something happens between the head and the hand. That is almost a miracle, and you can never get that. As you say, from typing, it comes from writing. And so what I do in almost all of my seminars, I have people take a page of paper and write down 10 goals that they'd like to accomplish in the next 12 months, and then select one goal. The goal that can have the greatest impact on all the others and focus on that one goal. Don't try to achieve everything, focus on the single goal. And I explain how to organize it and so on because here's what happens when you write a goal, it's like programming it into your subconscious mind and your subconscious mind sort of like a team of computer operators, then hands it over to your superconscious mind. And your super conscious mind has been discovered for more than, and talking about it for more than 4,000 years. Very few people know about it, but once you study and you obviously understand the superconscious mind, you're in a way never the same again. And what I have discovered, which was like a miracle to me is that when you write down a goal, you're actually writing it into your superconscious mind.
Ash Roy: (13:31)
Wow. That's powerful as an idea.
Brian Tracy: (13:34)
Yes. And, and what that means is down your superconscious mind takes that goal and begins to work on the goal 24 hours a day, right? You could just, you could just go about your life, but things will start to change. And I remember when I was poor and living on the floor of a friend's one room apartment, and I was reading a magazine article. And instead, if you want to be successful, you have to have goals. So I took a scrap of paper and I wrote down 10 goals, and I prompt me lost both the magazine and the list of goals. But in the next 30 days, my whole life changed. My goals were to increase my sales, increase. My, I am gonna have my own place to live, have this fixed salary and so on. And every single goal, I forgot the goal. I lost the paper, but they all just came true. And I remember I said this, something going on here, because, uh, here I was a lost alone knocking on doors, living from day to day and so on. And then I wrote down the calls and my whole life started to change.
Ash Roy: (14:39)
So Brian, do you recommend writing your goals down each day? Would that make it even better?
Brian Tracy: (14:45)
There were thousands of, uh, business, small business owners who were struggling and when things were, you can do anything and be successful, but they were now struggling. And I also realized that these business owners man did not know key business concepts, like, like strategic planning and personal effectiveness. So I started a course and I gave it for seven years and I trained more than a thousand business owners. And I, uh, can only get them to attend if I unconditionally guaranteed that they would double their income and double their time off. It was a one-year course. Every three months you came, spent a full day with me and a group of others, 20 or 30 others. And you've worked together and discussed and wrote down and worked out a plan for the next 90 days. I'm sure the next 90 days, and after 90 days you came and we viewed your, your progress.
Brian Tracy: (15:38)
Well, I had to give a guarantee that they would double their income and double their time off. So I said in my first day, I said, I want to introduce you to your new best friend and your new best friend is a spiral notebook. So people would take this and I would have them write out 10 goals that they wanted to accomplish sometime in the next 12 months, these are not 50 year goals. These are not sort of one-year goals because according to the psychology, I was a year away. It's not close enough to the motivational and far enough to be challenging. And so some of the goals were one month goal. Some of the goals were three month goals with basically 10 goals. I said, for the next 30 days, I want you to pick up your workbook and every day, write down 10 goals the next day, turn the page.
Brian Tracy: (16:31)
And without looking at your previous page, write down 10 goals again and write down. And so don't, in other words, you're not just copying from day to day, right? Reread from memory. And this rewriting from memory, what will happen is the description of your goals will change because you won't remember. And the order of priority of your goals will change. And you will keep doing this. And in 30 days, your life will have changed forever. If you've got half a brain, just do it every day. It takes three to five minutes for you to quickly write down your 10 souls and you will start to achieve the goals. I mean, it started here and replaced them with other goals. At the end of the month, your whole life will have taken this rapid change. And at the end of the year, you'll be a different person. You will beat you up or be earning more money than you ever dreamed possible. You will be accomplishing goals. You never thought you will be meeting people. And your superconscious mind is going to be working and attracting and drawing all of these forces and people and ideas into your life. Most amazing thing. And you'll have more points. And the more you feed your mind with ideas, the more likely it is, you're going to have great ideas. That's great. So speaking
Ash Roy: (17:50)
Of goals, Brian, let's talk a little bit about achieving the goals and compulsion to closure. I really liked that, which you're talking about compulsion to closure, I think is a very important approach, especially in today's world, where we're bombarded with tons of distractions and a lot of us start things, but don't complete them. We're spending a lot of energy on half completed projects. So what's your advice for somebody who tends to start lots of projects, but doesn't finish them?
Brian Tracy: (18:20)
Well, one of the things that I've learned, I call this single minded, uh, focusing is that your ability to focus single men on one thing is essential. And in order to do that, you must discipline yourself not to do something else. So for example, I speak French, German and Spanish. You mentioned that. And I learned them over the years in traveling. I could read it and read them and write them and speak them. And when I lived in those countries, I was quite competent at the languages, but then I made a mistake. I, that I love languages. I think I'll work on Russian and Chinese and Russian and Chinese for an English speaking person are the hardest languages of all to learn. I thought, well, I learned the both. And what happens is you just sort of burnt out, fuse out, you know, because you cannot learn two languages at once.
Brian Tracy: (19:14)
You cannot learn two subjects at once. What you have to do is you just have to pick one and work on it and Excel and, and th and this single focus, what happens is you move faster towards your goals and the actual movement towards your goals motivates you and excites you. It makes you more positive to, um, move forward. And then you achieve more of your goals, but you achieve them one at a time. So everywhere you look, you see examples of the single focus of focusing on one goal, one target, and then disciplining yourself to work only on that until it's done and refusing, refusing to do anything else, except that one thing until it's complete, if you can discipline yourself to do this soon, it becomes a habit good to the German. Philosopher said, everything is hard before it's easy. Yes. And he's speaking, especially about habits. Aristotle said that success then is a matter of habit. It's a, it's a matter of developing the success habits so that you do them automatic and, and good to said, everything is hard before it's easy, but then it becomes automatic and easy. So it's actually easier to do them then not to do them.
Ash Roy: (20:33)
Brian, you know, I interviewed James clear the author of atomic habits on episode one 75. And it was a wonderful conversation. James has done some really good work in this area. One of the things that he said that struck was your environment has a big impact on what habits you perform and what ones you're done. So, for example, if you want to watch less TV, don't have your lounge facing the TV. You have it facing away from the TV simple, right? You want to check your phone less often, have your Facebook app about three levels deep inside your phone. Don't have it on the first screen, have it on the sixth screen. So you're increasing friction to access. And these are simple ways in which you can rearrange your environment to incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors. That was a really good conversation. And another really useful one was with Perry Marshall, who wrote a book called 80 20 sales and marketing.
Ash Roy: (21:32)
Essentially the 80 20 rule also is relevant here because 20% of our effort delivers 80% of our results. But if you take that one level further, 20% of 20% is 4% and 80% of 80% of 64. So 4% of your effort delivers 64% of your results. And then further, still 0.8% of your effort delivers 51.2% of your results. And on and on it goes it's fractal, right? So it's very important to not get caught up in the whole multitasking thing. I personally don't believe in multitasking, I believe in single tasking. And I believe in approaching things in a serialized way. Now that doesn't mean to say we don't have multiple projects running at once. That does happen. It's unavoidable to an extent, but give yourself completely to the task at hand. And this is where I believe something like a mindfulness practice is very valuable because when you operate from an area of centeredness and you operate from an area of intention and purity, you achieve more, I have always believed that true freedom lies in complete commitment to one goal, right? The paradox of choice is a trap. Having too many options is actually quite debilitating. I'm totally with you
Brian Tracy: (22:51)
Just before you ask you a question, I've read all the books of the two writers that you just talked about, and I've been valuing about them for more than 20 years. Um, the idea of the 80 20 rule, and then the 4%, uh, rule and so on. But, uh, one of the things that I read in a book on it just focused on in single minded, it said that there's no such thing as multitasking. There's only task shifting. And yes. And so what you do is you are shifting and then you have to shift back. And if you're working on a task, it takes an average of 17 minutes to shift back and get. And so I just love what you just said, because it's so important.
Ash Roy: (23:36)
And Todd Herman I'm stretching my memory here, but I think episode one 76, Todd Herman talks about this exact thing, which is context, switching and context. Switching is one of the biggest enemies of productivity. What you just described when you're switching from one task to the other, he actually talks about it in one of his courses or something where if you're working on say, one project say you're 80% effective, but if you're working on two projects at a time, it drops to something like 60% or something like that. And then three projects that drops to something like 20% because of that requirement to switch back and forth. And exactly, as you said, it costs you time in switching from one task to another. So my next two questions for you, Brian are how does one then develop a sense of urgency and momentum? And I think the answer already is part of it is be focused on one task, but how do you develop a sense of urgency and momentum to achieve these goals that you talk about these 10 goals to write about each day? And if there's one specific action you would like to leave with our listeners, what does that action that you recommend?
Brian Tracy: (24:51)
Well, a very simple action is to set up a reward structure for completing a task. In other words, say, I will take myself out for lunch. After I've made three phone calls to potential clients, I will give myself a cup of coffee. And so what you do is you set up a reward structure. And once you make and complete this proposal for this client, you'll take your wife or husband out for dinner. So what you can do is in a fun way, train yourself by setting up a reward structure. You could even take a picture of it if you like and put it there. And then you say, I'm going to give myself that reward, but I will not give myself that reward until I have finished certain things and get into the habit of just rewarding yourself. And many people do that. They take themselves away on a vacation once they have finished a major project, but you can have it as a good friend of mine from Australia, Alan, Pete, he was talking about how each time you make a phone call, you get a sip of coffee or a sip of tea, but you don't get it until you make the call.
Brian Tracy: (26:03)
Even knows. All of his friends were all kind of talking and wasting time and so on. So he would come in, set the coffee down in front of him, smell it, steaming beautiful, but he couldn't sit it until he called and made contact and spoke his way.
Ash Roy: (26:18)
Oh, that's a very good way to get momentum. And we are far more motivated by our environment and incentive structures. Then we would like to believe, I think we all think we are so driven by, uh, intellect and yes, that's important, but we are also driven by the sensory incentives. So that's a great point. And I've read a lot of L and Peter's books. Great to know that guys are friends. Brian, let's talk a little bit about your most recent book and where can our viewers, if you're watching on YouTube, that's youtube.com forward slash productive insights. Where can our viewers find out more about your book?
Brian Tracy: (26:58)
Well, I'm happy to say that I just got a hundred copies in a box yesterday. So, uh, and so I have a couple here, a couple there, but the very best place is Amazon. You know, Amazon just basically accounts for most of the books. It's easy, it's cheap, it's quick. So that's where you get it. And it's called eat that frog for students and what it will do, just like eat that frog in general. What it will do is change your life. It will give you insights and ideas that will make you think about yourself and who you are and where you're going and what you want and what you'll have to do to get there. And you'll never be the same, but not only that time is the primary tool of success. And what this does is that it gives you this tool for the rest of your life. You can now use this to achieve any goal that you want. Your time is the primary tool or resource of accomplishment. And if you could control your time and manage your time, you own future.
Ash Roy: (28:01)
I'll tell you what else, Brian, if you can achieve your goals, it will bring a level of happiness into your life. It'll bring a level of contributing because really we aren't islands. We live in a community. And one of the most important things I believe as a human is not to be the richest man in the grave or richest woman in the grave, but rather to be the person of greatest impact and have delivered the most value. So that's another important reason you would want to achieve your goals. So Amazon, can they get it on Kindle as well? Is it available in Kindle?
Brian Tracy: (28:37)
Yes. You can get it on Kindle and download it so you can read it on your own computer or your own iPhone. And by the way, one of the things that every person wants is to reach the point where they don't worry about money. Now, everybody is, everybody has a different threshold, but you, you have to know that you can reach the point in your life where you don't worry about money. You're okay. With gentlemen came up to me in my seminar and I was talking about time and money. And he said money. He said, it's like sex, but he was from Holland. When you have as efficient quantity, you don't think about it, but when you don't have as efficient, find it, you sink of nothing else.
Ash Roy: (29:23)
Yeah, that is so true. And by the way, that's a very good Dutch accent you have there. But I completely, I was actually thinking that just as you were speaking, that it is one of these things that in management, they call a hygiene factor. You know, you need a certain amount of it to get by, and you don't think about it beyond that amount, but I completely agree with you that if you don't have it, it does make your life miserable. So it is something that is essential up to a point. And then far beyond that point, it can become a burden depending on how you deal with it. And depending on your mindset and so on and so forth. 70% of people, I believe in a bankrupt about a year after they win the lottery, they get depression because they can't deal with the lifestyle changes. But if you're somebody who has a strong center and you have clear habits and you have clear goals, you're self-directed and you understand what you want out of life, then you're more likely to use that money, whether you want it from a lottery or whether you win it through hard work, you're likely to use it for the purposes that you would want it to be used rather than being a very reactive cycle of using that money.
Brian Tracy: (30:32)
Quick. One liner, I read a study of a group of women who worked in low level jobs in this large company, and they pooled their money to buy lottery tickets. And they hit one of the best lotteries. They won something like six or $8 million. I'm one of those tickets. And then they got together and they said, what are we going to do with the money? Well, obviously we divided up equally, but then somebody pointed out that most people who win the lottery, they lose it all because they just go completely off the board. And it's quite common because we'd go out of our self-concept level of income. And whenever we do, we do everything possible to get back. And I teach that. They said, okay, what we'll do is we'll take the money and we'll hire a lawyer and we'll put the money away for a year and nobody will be able to touch it for a year, nor will we be able to encumber the money in any way.
Brian Tracy: (31:31)
And then after a year, they came back and after a full year, they'd had a chance to think about it and think about their families and what they really wanted and what was important. And then they parceled out the money and those people allocated the money carefully and it improved their lives mostly forever. And I just thought of that when you mentioned that, how wonderful is they allowed them their minds to rise up to the level of the money and then, and then they were, they were capable of making good decisions rather than going wild,
Ash Roy: (32:04)
Right? And that applies to so many things in life. Doesn't it, Brian, our phones, our possessions. It's okay. As long as you own your possessions and your money and all these things, but when they start to own you, that's when it becomes a problem. And so it's important to have that level of mindfulness, that level of awareness, that, that centeredness that focus on what are my goals? What do I want to achieve from life? What is it that I want to do in this life? And by writing down those 10 goals every day, you become more self-directed and developing that habit of writing down your goals daily is a very powerful idea. So thank you for sharing that with us, Brian, it was wonderful to have you on the productive insights podcast. And maybe we can have you back on again, sometime
Brian Tracy: (32:52)
It would be a pleasure. I so much enjoy talking to you. You are an area dive man, and that you have done your homework. You have, as I have all my life, I just love to read and learn. And obviously it's, you're the same kind of person. And if we can get back together, I'd love to do it.
Ash Roy: (33:12)
Thank you, Brian. That means a lot to me. Uh, so yeah, let's, let's set it up. I'll organize something with Michelle and we'll set something up.
Brian Tracy: (33:21)
We'll create an excuse. I'm just finishing my 91st book. So I have a lot of books that we can discuss.
Ash Roy: (33:31)
And you know what, Brian, clearly you do the work and this is something Seth Godin talked about in episode 200. It's about showing up and doing the work. And I really respect that about you, your work ethic, uh, Stephen King wrote a great book on writing and he says inspiration strikes every day at 9:00 AM. When I sit down to write and you know, the key here is inspiration comes from action. Not the other way around.
Brian Tracy: (33:56)
That's right. That's right. That's very good. I, I read all of this material and you're right. You get the roads are, if you want to be a writer, just write. Yes, yes. Right. And don't just sit down there and just write. And even if you have to write, you know, uh, uh, all good dogs, go to heaven, all good dogs, go to heaven, all good dogs at a certain point, something happens like starting an engine and you start to write stars. You must discipline yourself to sit down. As you say, at a certain time every day, which I don't always follow. I just, but, uh, just right. And, uh, and we'll all come through and read just as you have done read about writing and how writers write, I read and read and read and read and read the books on writing. I now teach how to write a book and get published. Right. Uh, and at one time I couldn't write a paragraph.
Ash Roy: (34:54)
Well, Brian, we could talk for hours. Look, I really enjoyed this conversation and I'll set something up and we'll have you back on.
