If hope is not the most important factor of success, it is at least the first step and foundation. Without hope we either don’t ever take action, or we take weak action that does not produce success. With hope, we achieve astounding things. So, here you go, start your New Year off with the first step in your quest for success, however you define it. Thanks to Blue Apron and ZipRecruiter for supporting this episode!
[00:00] Welcome to The Ziglar Show, episode 447. To kick off the New Year I’m bringing you one of the most downloaded shows from our past, with over 61,000 downloads. The title is, “Your future, your success - equals the size of your hope. You must have more.”
[01:15] Hi, everyone, I’m your host of The Ziglar Show, Kevin Miller. Fulfilling the requests we get to feature some of our most popular episodes, I’ve got a great one for you today. Anytime a show gets over 50,000 downloads, it’s pretty significant. But we have some of the clips 60,000 downloads or more. We posted the following show in June of 2015. It’s 13 minutes of Zig talking about one of his foundational, most beloved topics: hope. Following his message I sat down with Tom Ziglar, Ziglar’s CEO and Ziglar’s son, to dig in further on how we can all, literally, increase the size of our hope.
[01:56] There is much debate regarding issues of success and what is most important. Is it hope? Well, if it is not, it’s at least first sequentially. Without hope, we either don’t ever take action, or we take weak action that does not produce success.
[02:14] So, here you go, start your New Year off with the first step in your quest for success, however you define it:
[02:23] What is winning? The reality is that all of us want basically the same thing. And I will be talking about this a whole lot. Everybody wants to be happy, everybody wants to be healthy, everybody wants to be at least reasonably prosperous.
[03:04] Love for money is the root of all evil.
[03:35] Everybody is interested in money. Everybody wants to be secure, they want to have friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and they have the hope that the future is going to be even better. What part does hope play in all of this? I believe it is the basis of everything.
[03:55] If there is hope in the future, there is power in the present (John Maxwell). How happy can you be if you have no hope? How healthy would you be if you had no hope? How prosperous could you be if you had no hope? How secure will you be if you have no hope?
[04:28] Hope is the key to a lot of things. You do not develop champions on a feather bed.
[07:25] The two things that mean the most to me are, “I love you and I believe in you.” I cannot begin to tell you what it feels like to me to have a cheerleader cheering every day for my life and praying for me every night. That encouragement and support meant it all.
[09:02] One of the reasons I believe that I am qualified to make suggestions, make differences in your life is, you see, I have walked in your shoes. I remember when I was a new salesman in Carolina, struggling, my life was down. I had my telephone disconnected. I had my first baby in the hospital and the bill was $64 and I didn’t have $64. I had to go out and make two sales in order to see my own baby.
[11:13] It is not the color of your skin, it is not the place of your birth, it is the size of your hope that is going to determine where you will be going in life.
[12:15] How do you get all the things, what is it about? If you all really want to be happy and healthy and prosperous, and secure, have friends, peace of mind, good family relationships and hope, let me tell you that you’ve got to deal with all the areas of life; you’ve got to deal with your personal life, your family life, and your career; you cannot separate them.
[13:19] You go for quality of life first, and there the standard of living goes up. But if you just go for the standard of living, there is no assurance that quality of life will go up.
[17:26] So then Ziglar asks, what is winning? For most they want to be 1) Happy, 2) Healthy, 3) Reasonably prosperous -- and the classic Zig stands: he stated that Christ was the significant focus in his teaching on physical and financial well-being. And for that, he quoted the Bible, which does not say that money is the root of all evil, but rather that the love of money is the root of all evil.
[18:45] My question for you, Tom, is how do you see people’s devotion to keeping things secure robbing them of greatness?
[19:05] Until you let go of the drive for status, you can never achieve the greatness. And it is like -- whether it is in church or in business -- some people are just addicted to the status.
[22:30] Zig says that most of us are striving for an abundance of money, friends, peace of mind, family relationships and hope for the future to be better. And he asks what is the role of hope in all of this. And he quotes John Maxwell, saying that if there is hope in the future, there is power in the present. So, I am gonna ask everyone listening, if you are staring at the face of little power, purpose, meaning, joy in the present, is it possibly because you have lost hope in the future? You just don’t see too much in the future? So, Zig said look for the answer to the question of how happy can you be if you have no hope? How healthy can you be if you have no hope? How prosperous can you be if you lose hope? How secure can you be if you have no hope?
[24:24] Self-employment is just a vehicle for people to better their lives, and the reason they fail is not due to better business ideas, plans, etc., it is primarily due to lack of belief and, again, hope. Do you actually know what hope means? The definition of hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
[25:30] If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time. So, if somebody has a vague hope, there is no compelling reason to take action. There is no physiological reason for those who live to have lived and those who die to have died. In fact, it didn’t have to do with the health condition they were in or the survival instincts. The bottom line, in most cases, is those who lived never gave up the hope; they were certain that they would be rescued any minute.
[27:44] Hope is everything, but it has to be about the certain things. So, when I tell people to clarify your dreams and goals, it is not about “I wanna do great things someday,” or “what great thing do you wanna do?” How do I come to be the person who can do great things? How do I become that person? What character qualities do I need to have? Who do I need to associate with in order for me to become that great person? When you become that great person along the way, then that great person you will become will do the great things.
[29:55] A primary ingredient for success that overcomes, like you have said, you know, the physical aspects, how brilliant you are, your IQ, your circumstances -- everything is hope. If we want to have more success, we have to increase and establish our hope. That is the point here. “Increasing and establishing your hope.”
[30:46] Zig said when you discipline yourself to do the things you need to do, when you need to do them, the day is going to come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them. I mean, who doesn’t want to be the person who earns that kind of freedom?
[31:57] The road to the top goes through lots of valleys. You don’t develop champions on a feather bed. You gotta go through trials and difficulties in order to grow the muscles and qualities. You have to be the right person before you can do the right things; you’ve got to do the right things before you can have what you believe is right and worthwhile.
[33:24] My favorite Zig book is the autobiography of Ziglar, which you can get at Ziglar.com. A lot of his books I read I loved, but the one that impacted me is the autobiography of Ziglar.
[34:35] What are some tipping points you see in people’s experiences that finally got them to stand up and serve and lead others in a big way?
[34:44] The tipping points usually occur in one of two ways. One is, they are all of a sudden put in situations where they’ve gotta provide something for somebody they love that goes beyond whatever financial capabilities they have dreamed of. But there is no option.
[36:18] I think the first tipping point in some people’s life is there is somebody they love and care about. They not only stand up, they are going to rise up, and they are going to win the fight. The second thing is kind of an internal self-realization, where they say, “Wait a second -- I was put on Earth for a reason,” and they start having the hope that, “Wait a second -- if there is a reason for me beyond this, then what is keeping me away from it?” And then they buy into the idea that the only thing between them and what they want is a 100 percent commitment to discipline to make it happen.
[37:27] "You cannot determine your future, but you can determine your habits -- and your habits will determine your future.” Hope is when we realize that we have the power to do something. We can all do something to make our life better. You can think that, “Hey, I am gonna build my habit to make things better,” because habits can change everything. That is the tipping point. The tipping point is when you come to the realization of creating something better than this. “I am gonna create that habit that allows me to achieve that.”
[39:22] We are gonna start asking questions for the show, start doing some different types of shows, too, but start asking the questions on Facebook. If you are not on our Ziglar Facebook page, we are gonna start posting questions once a week, getting your feedback and talking about your questions, your ideas, your input, in regard to these messages right here on the show.
[41:00] It is the size of your hope which determine how far you will go in your life. What is the size of your hope? When I ask people to start reciting self-talk cards daily, what about putting a sign on your bathroom mirror, or car dashboard, near your work computer, that boldly asks daily, “What is the size of your hope?” Is this not where the fuel of life resides? How would you rank it?
[41:36] Hope is so powerful! I think hope is the fuel -- or maybe adding to the passion, motivation, desire on which hope runs, so hope is the vehicle on which we run, and it takes us where we wanna go.
[43:25] The food which you grow in the valley is what you are gonna eat on the mountaintop (Fred Smith), what I am going through right now, that is gonna help me to be more successful in life.
[44:07] What is the road to hope? Have you gotten locked into your life and lost the picture of hope? A good story is made up by the character who wants something, overcomes conflict, and gets it. I see many people who just don’t want anything significant. But not all of you who are listening are in the same boat. The Ziglar message is that you are more than you are or any of your experiences. You haven’t scratched the surface. Deep inside, you know that you have more to offer and desperately want to offer it. And that is why we are gathered here.
[46:25] Zig said that you are designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, endowed with the seeds of greatness. That is so powerful. That’s who we are.
[47:20] In my words, I would say that you have to change your inputs, right? People who feel that way, it’s because all the inputs they have ever gotten have told themselves they can’t achieve.