See You At The Top Zig Ziglar

[Staci Mauger]

TZWhat is that catalyst for change? What is it that kind of gets us to stand up and charge? And I came up with these three words, desire, hope, and grit. And there's a little metaphor that I use. And I'll just paint it real quick. Imagine a hot air balloon. And the basket of the balloon, that's where we are. What I want you to do is, in this balloon, this is your transportation device. It's going to take you from where you are to where you want to go. In this balloon, in the basket, you put your why, you put your dreams. You put your aspirations, your goals, your objectives. Everything you've ever wanted to be, do, or have, just load it into that basket.

And then the second thing that you do is you identify and put all your skills, gifts, and talents in there as well. American Idol is on for a new season, and you always hear the singer who can't sing. And they're shocked when they can't sing. And so I think it's important that we identify things that come easy to us, that we're natural at, that we're kind of gifted. It's the way God created us. And when what we're good at rubs up against what we want to accomplish, who we want to become, it kind of ignites a fire. And that fire fills the balloon of hope. If desire's the basket, then hope is the balloon itself.

And this is why it stalls. It takes more than gifts and talents to get over the mountain. And that's when we notice on the furnace of the balloon, this is the third part, the furnace of the balloon has a knob. And that knob is grit. And grit is that hard work, that discipline, that I get knocked down 100 times, I get 101. And I'm sure Angela Duckworth, and her book, Grit, that's really the epitome of it. What we do then is we turn the knob of grit and apply that grit to our gifts and talents. And it's like rocket fuel that takes our balloon high enough to get over the mountains and across the ocean. And so it really takes those three things.

We've got to have hope and a vision for where we're going. We've got to connect what we're good at with our skills and talents. And then we've got to work like crazy. When we do those three things, then we have a chance. Now it's just a matter of: How do I maximize the grit? And that's really what the whole book is about, are the habits that we can choose that will give our balloon rocket fuel to take us to where we want to go.

TZ: Here's one of the greatest thinkers in my mind, just kind of unpacks things in a way that we can understand it. But he had the grit to work on his communication so that more people would have an opportunity to benefit. That's what we're really talking about, is he had natural talent as a presenter. He was probably a six or a seven already. But that grit took it to the level, to now. How many millions of views has he had on YouTube and the different things?

KK: The book is about transforming your life one simple choice at a time. Second two of your book, The Seven Choices Plan, you talk about mental, spiritual, physical, family, financial, personal, career. What are some of these areas that we can start to choose to get better in?

TZ: Well, first off, let's talk about the sequence. They're in a sequence for a reason. I go mental, spiritual, physical, and then family. Family's fourth. Family happens to be right in the middle. There's seven of these. Family is number four. After family is financial, personal, and career. The idea in family is we've got to be the right influence and the right example first before we can really have an impact in our family, which means that we've got to get our mental thought life right, the story we tell ourselves, our beliefs, our self-image. Then we've got to get our spiritual life right, which for me is all of our character qualities, all the intangibles, all the things that are not physical, including faith, so character, integrity, love, honesty, loyalty, compassion.

We limit ourselves into what we can accomplish. But those are big and theoretical and hard to put our hands on. But every chapter also gets extremely tactical and practical. I'll talk about career. In career, we actually have identified 50 habits that you can work on that will improve your performance, 11 attitude habits, 19 effort habits, and 20 skill habits. And the assessment is really simple. It takes about 10 minutes to do. But here's the context. I love this quote. And it's not mine. Gosh, I wish I knew who said this. If you know, man, tell me, so I can give them credit. Maybe you'll take credit for it. A tree's fruitfulness depends on its root-fulness. So as a leader, whether it's at your business, or in your home, or in the community, doesn't matter, what's the fruit that you want to see in your life?

What's the word you want to be spoken about you behind your back? In your career, hopefully, some of the fruit has dollar signs on it because we want our career to bless us financially. I mean, the more problems we solve, the more money we should receive. But what are the fruits that you would like to see in your career? And then what are the roots that feed that? Well, the tree has seven roots. We already talked about them, the seven choices, mental, spiritual, physical, family, financial, personal, and career. What nourishes a root? Habits. What are the habits in my career that I need to nourish, the root of career, to get the fruit that I want?

My friends and professional associates recognize this habit in me, so it makes it easy. But the reality is that it's a choice. The book is called Choose to Win because when we own our performance, we then own the habits that create our performance.

My biggest challenge is self-discipline. I think Dad, that was his natural makeup. He was just a disciplined human being. Man, I'm kind of the opposite. I can go with the flow. And I like the comfortable chair. And so what I talk about is, so the two habits that I created for myself was, the first habit was choosing the right input. But then I realized I needed more discipline, so I chose the habit of the perfect start. That's a whole section in the book of how you start your day. And so my discipline habit is the perfect start.

If I start my day off right by putting the right input in, by prioritizing my day, by reviewing my goals, by doing a mental model, by filling up my spirit with a devotion and quality input that I then think about, when I do that before the rest of the world wakes up, it's just not fair for everybody else. But when I don't, then I don't have the capacity, the energy, and whatever you want to call it, to go through the day and make a difference wherever I go. My hang-up is discipline. My habit is the perfect start, and it starts with the input.

We're going to start. Hey, I'm committed, and I'm going to make something happen. I'm going to leave a legacy by design, and then I'm going to start every day off right. In my legacy by design, there are character qualities that I want my family to be known for. And so every day in my input, I'm reading on different character qualities and how I can integrate them into my life. And that's part of my perfect start every day.

TZ: I do four or five things. The first thing I do is I have what I call two chairs. Bob Bodine, a good friend of mine, wrote the book Two Chairs. And basically, I start off five minutes where I ask God three questions. Hey God, do you know what's going on? Yeah, he does. He's God. Are you big enough to handle it? Yeah. It's God. He's big enough. And the third one is: What's the plan? So I listen. Five minutes just listening. And then I go to the next one which is, okay, I need to input. Right? So now I'm getting the good stuff in. I'm setting the foundation. Number two is the right input, so that could be reading a good book, scripture, a devotional.

Anything that's important, just spend 60 seconds on it, how you want it to go. What's the personality of the people in the room? What are the questions they might ask? What are the problems they're facing? What is the audience that they have? How can I serve them? And then the final thing, so that takes like 45 minutes, that section. And then the next section is: What's the one thing? What's the one priority that's not necessarily urgent, but super important, that if I get this done, it raises the water level for everything else? And the more you do it, the more it becomes a habit that you look forward to. It just juices you. But if you've never done it before, don't start with three hours, or even an hour and a half. Start with 15 minutes. Get some good thought in. Plan your day. And then figure out what the one thing is you want to accomplish, and then go for, even just a couple of minutes.

TZ: Absolutely. Well, for the book, it's easy. Go to choosetowinbook.com. And there are a couple of options there. You can get an autographed version by hitting the first link. Or if you prefer Kindle, or Amazon, or Audible, all those links are there, so wherever you like to get books is great. And then for me, I'm at ziglar.com.

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