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Lewis HowesThis Daily Habit Will Let You ACHIEVE ANYTHING You Want! (Law Of Attraction)| Bob Proctor
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EVERY SPOKEN WORD
100 min read · 19,553 words- 0:00 – 6:34
Almost Missing The Secret: The Garbled Voicemail Story
- BPBob Proctor
Most people don't make the decision because they don't know how to get it. You don't have to know how to get it. That's why Von Braun said when Kennedy asked him how to get to the moon, the will to do it.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
You're gonna make the decision. You don't make the decision when you've got enough money or when you've got all the resources. You make the decision. When you make the decision, you flip your brain onto a higher frequency, and then you're on the frequency, you begin to attract everything on that freq- that's where the Law Of Attraction comes in. [upbeat music]
- LHLewis Howes
Welcome everyone back to the School Of Greatness podcast. We have the legendary Bob Proctor in the house. Good to see you, sir.
- BPBob Proctor
Good to be here, Lewis.
- LHLewis Howes
Super glad that you're here. You've been, uh, an inspiration to so many people since the '60s.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
But really, I learned about you from The Secret, which I think a lot of people learned about you-
- BPBob Proctor
Sure
- LHLewis Howes
... in the mainstream world.
- BPBob Proctor
Mm-hmm.
- LHLewis Howes
And we were just having a conversation off-camera about how you almost missed being in The Secret. So I'm curious if you could tell that story, how you-
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah. [laughs] It was an interesting story. I, um, I had a message on my phone, but the message was very garbled. I didn't delete it. I hit pound and just-
- LHLewis Howes
This is the-
- BPBob Proctor
Yep
- LHLewis Howes
... this is the recording box. Voice message-
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah
- LHLewis Howes
... recording. Yep.
- BPBob Proctor
And-
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... I was in an airport and the message thing was full, so I phoned Gina. Gina, [coughs] Gina Hayden's been my-
- LHLewis Howes
Right
- BPBob Proctor
... assistant. She's been with me for 33 years-
- LHLewis Howes
Wow
- BPBob Proctor
... next week.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Anyway, I said, "Gina, my phone's full. Help me clean it up." I was in an airport. [coughs] And so, uh, I said, "I think this is the number. It sounds like an Aussie number." And I said, "I think this is the person's name, uh, Glenda." Uh, it was Rhonda Byrne made The Secret. Glenda was her sister, and she was doing the heavy lifting, I guess.
- LHLewis Howes
Uh-huh.
- BPBob Proctor
So anyway, Gina... And I said, "And they said something about a movie," but I said, "All, everything I'm telling you could be wrong." Well, she phoned me back in an hour and she said, "No, everything you're telling me is right."
- LHLewis Howes
Huh.
- 6:34 – 8:09
A Useless Kid: Growing Up in the Depression
- LHLewis Howes
Why do you think you were such a loser? 'Cause I feel like we're brothers then-
- BPBob Proctor
Well, well, I-
- LHLewis Howes
... because I felt like-
- BPBob Proctor
I was... [laughs] I've thought about that many times.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I was born during the Depression.
- LHLewis Howes
Oh.
- BPBob Proctor
I've been around a long time. I'll be 85 next week.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, so I was born during the Depression, and, uh, the war, the Second World War broke out. I was just five, six years old.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
My dad went overseas, so I never really knew my dad. I had a brother and sister, sister older and brother younger, so I was in the middle.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
And I had my grandmother sort of, like, buddied up with my brother, and my mother with my sister, and I felt like I was sort of l- lost, you know?
- LHLewis Howes
And your dad was gone.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah. Well, there was no father.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I mean, he'd come home after the war, and then he was gone again. So I didn't have any real direction-
- LHLewis Howes
Mm
- BPBob Proctor
... as a kid. And I, I was very thin. I was always underweight. Um, I guess I had very low self-esteem.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
I knew nothing about who I was. Nobody ever taught me anything about that. See, in those days, I mean, things were tough for everybody. You know, during the war-
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... and during the Depression, your parents... I guess my mother was happy just to be, be able to feed us and put a roof over our head.
- LHLewis Howes
Survive, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah. And, um... Now mind you, she was really a phenomenal woman, because she did everything on her own, and she made it happen.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
So my brother and sister and I talk about her, we always say, "God bless Mother," because she kept going, you know?
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
And so we look back, and I think we had good gene there, you know?
- 8:09 – 11:58
Generosity and the Lessons of His Mother
- LHLewis Howes
What was the biggest lesson your mom taught you?
- BPBob Proctor
I think the biggest lesson she taught me was to be generous. She was, she was a great, she was a very generous person. Um, I give a lot of money away.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
I give a lot. I give, uh, uh... I'm considered a very generous person, and I think I learned it from her. I remember we were kids, and there was a family on the street over from ours. I lived in the Beaches area in Toronto. And in the winter, it was very cold, and we heated the house with coal, and they didn't have any coal.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
So their house was cold.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
And I told my mother about it, and I remember she tem- sent me to the corner with a $20 bill-
- LHLewis Howes
That's a lot of money then
- BPBob Proctor
... to get two 10s. It was a hell of a lot of money. [laughs]
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
And she gave me $10 to take to the other family to buy a ton of coal.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
She didn't even know them. And that stuck in my head. Well, I'm still talking about it 65 years, 75 years later.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
She was very generous, even when she had little.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah, and I think, I think that was something that she instilled in me.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
Probably in all m- m- my brother and sister as well, you know?
- LHLewis Howes
Did she end up, um, kind of making it? Or, or, or earning the money or-
- BPBob Proctor
Well, no. Well, she did. I mean, she kept things going.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, she never... She didn't, she didn't really understand the rules for success or winning or anything.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Hers was probably more survival.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah, of course.
- BPBob Proctor
And she did that. So she did a, she did a great job with what she had, you know?
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- 11:58 – 18:38
Waking Up: Think and Grow Rich and the Gold Card
- LHLewis Howes
What happened when you started to wake up?
- BPBob Proctor
Oh, well, that's... I mean, it, it was dramatic what happened.
- LHLewis Howes
[laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
There was a... I was on the fire department in a suburb of Toronto, and there was a man near there who, who became a friend of mine. Um- He was a friend of a lot of people. I mean, I just was fortunate enough to meet him. Ray Stanford. He gave me a copy of Think and Grow Rich, and he said, "Bob, do you ever read anything?" And I said, "No, I can't read." Now, that wasn't true. I could. I found out I read about as well as most people. I think the average person reads at about a grade seven level, and they learn to read by the time grade sei- grade seven, and then they never improve upon it- Mm-hmm ... from that point on. But he said, "If you do exactly what I tell you and read this book every day, you can have anything you want." Well, I mean, I was unhappy, I was sick, I was broke. And, you know, in event, you know what? I thought it was nonsense. But he said something else. He said, "Listen, my way's working, yours isn't." Right. [laughs] He was happy, healthy and wealthy. Guy always had money on him. And big healthy guy, and he said, "You're unhappy, sick and broke." So he said, "I must know something you don't know. Why the hell don't you do what I tell you?" Mm. Well, I think something clicked. Now, people had tried to reach me. I was 26, since I was a kid- [laughs] ... and none of them ever did. And so I started to do what he suggested, and he said, "What do you really want?" Well, all I wanted was some money. I, I was earning $4,000 a year at the time, and I owed 6,000. [laughs] I mean, if I, if I had paid everything I earned for 18 months, I would've just broken even. Wow. It was an impossible situation, and I was just looking at what was. I couldn't see beyond that. Wow. So that's what had made it impossible. And he said, "Listen, write what you want on a card." Now, I got a gold c- gold card in my pocket. I've carried one ever since. He said, "Write what you want on the card. Name everything you want." So he said, "What do you really want?" And I said, "I want some money." I figured if I had enough money, [laughs] all my problems would go away. [laughs] Everybody, I would get on the phone, "Where's the money?" You know, they're always after me, the people I owed money to. [laughs] So I wrote that I wanted to have $25,000. And now, if I had got together all the people I know or knew at that time, and put all their money together, we wouldn't have come up with $25,000. We probably wouldn't come up with a thousand. I mean, it was an enormous amount of money. It was nuts. So I wrote that on the card. He says, "You gotta read it every day." And he'd keep saying, "Did you read it? Did you read it?" You know? So he got me reading it. And I learned something. Reading, reading the book or reading the card? No, no. Read the gold card. The card. Read the gold card. The $25,000. Yeah. Just the gold card. Read the gold card. I'm so happy and grateful now that I have 25,000. And I learned something very important from it. All I thought about prior to that was debt, because people are always phoning me, "When are you gonna pay me?" [laughs] If you think about debt, you're gonna be in debt forever. Yeah. You become what you think about. Well, this gold card got me thinking about earning money. I never thought of earning money before. I thought about debt all the time, and it got me thinking of earning money. So I started to hear people talking about earning money, and because I heard them talking about it, it got me thinking about it. And some guy said, "There's good money cleaning floors." I said, "I'm up for it. I'll clean floors." I was prepared to do anything. I wanted to earn this money, [laughs] you see? I wanted to earn money. Yeah. So I started cleaning one office, and by the end of the year, I was earning $14,500 a month. What? I was on the fire department. The chief was only earning 11,500 a year. Wow. I was earning 14,500. This was in a year from the start. Wow. I started to clean one office. It was Canada Starts. I'd wash the floor twice a month, $15 a time. I got $30. Then I got another one, Kirby's Construction. I get 65 a month. Well, do you know, in less than five years, I was cleaning offices in Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, London, England. I mean, the thing's going like a rocket. And I was listening to Earl Nightingale's recordings. I was thinking, listening to, or reading, read Think and Grow Rich. And every cleaner, I had them studying the same stuff I was studying. Wow. Well, none of us knew much about cleaning floors. We just did a good job. We cleaned. But if somebody asked me what I was doing, I'd say I was cleaning offices. It, it was almost incidental to what I was doing. I could've been selling siding for houses. Didn't matter. It was what I was studying and what I was doing with it. I was getting the other pe- people to study it. Mm. And I was very irresponsible. I was earning all this money. [laughs] I was earning well over a million a year. I just g- I was living in London. I'd go down to the Playboy Plu- Club on Park Lane, play roulette. I didn't even care if I lost, 'cause I... And I hardly ever did. I almost always won. I knew, seemed to know where the money was. And one day, I thought, "You know, this isn't very responsible." I don't know what the hell triggered it in my mind. Mm. And I thought, "How did this happen?" And I didn't know. I didn't know how my life had changed so drama- but it had changed dramatically, and in a short time. I'd been raised to believe if you're gonna earn a lot of money, you gotta be really smart. Mm. I knew I wasn't very smart. Mm. And I was [laughs] earning a lot of money, so I thought, "That's not true." I was raised to believe if you're gonna get a good job, you gotta go to school. Well, I hadn't gone to school. I didn't have a good job. I owned the whole company. Right. So I thought, "That's not true." So I started to wonder about all the things that I believed. Are they true? They're not true. And so then I had to know what happened, and I couldn't find out. It took me nine and a half years to figure out what I actually did. How you got to where you were. Yeah. Yeah. You were talking prior to starting this about mentors. I believe they're essential in life. Mm-hmm. And as I look back, I have been fortunate enough to study with some absolutely brilliant people. I mean, giants. And, uh, any success I've enjoyed is because- Mm ... I've had great direction. Wow. And starting with the first, and he says, "Do exactly what I tell you until you find out I'm lying or I don't know what I'm talking about." So that's sort of a rule I followed. When I pick a person that I'm gonna choose as a mentor, I do exactly what they tell me.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Until I find out they're lying or they don't know what they're ta- they're talking about, and they don't lie and they do know what they're talking about. So I've had great, great instruction in my life. And, uh, it works.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- 18:38 – 20:27
Mentors and Having No Dreams as a Kid
- LHLewis Howes
Who's the most memorable mentor for you?
- BPBob Proctor
Well, Ray Stanford, first of all. But they're all very mem-
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... all very important.
- LHLewis Howes
In different ways.
- BPBob Proctor
Uh, Earl Nightingale, huge. Um, I started to study his recordings and then I wanted to work with him, and I saw where he had distributors and so I became a distributor.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
And I eventually, I left my business. I was prepared to pay them to let me work there.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
I wanted to work with him, because I knew if I could work with him I could watch him, you know? And I'd see what he did, and I'd get to think what he's thinking, and... 'Cause he was a giant in my mind. I mean-
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conant literally started personal development as we know it today-
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... in recorded fashion. And he started on this Strangest Secret record. Um, so he was, he was really huge. But I studied with Bill Gove, who's a great speaker.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, um, Gal Van Der Waal, um, Dr. Roder. I've had just phenomenal mentors.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, most of them people that you wouldn't really recognize their names-
- LHLewis Howes
Sure
- BPBob Proctor
... but they were giants at what they did.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
Do you remember having big dreams as a kid? Or did you just always-
- BPBob Proctor
No
- LHLewis Howes
... think you would amount to nothing-
- BPBob Proctor
No
- LHLewis Howes
... you were a loser, and...
- BPBob Proctor
I never had any dreams when I was a kid. Um, I think the area I grew up in, we were so poor, things were so rough. But you gotta remember, that was during the Great Depression in the '30s. I mean, there's not too many people alive [laughs] that lived through that-
- LHLewis Howes
Oh, yeah, yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... anymore. And we didn't have dreams. We just, y- get by was the deal.
- 20:27 – 29:53
The Six Higher Faculties and Shifting Perception
- LHLewis Howes
What do you think is the most powerful principle in the book? Obviously, there's a lot of them. What, for you-
- BPBob Proctor
Well-
- LHLewis Howes
... what's the thing that stood out?
- BPBob Proctor
There's a number of them, but imagination is, you know... And, and I had learned... See, I was studying many things at the same time. Our higher faculties, um, school teaches nothing about them. Even many seminars don't teach you much about them.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, we talk about you becoming what you think about, but there's, you've gotta go further than that. Most people live through their senses because we're programmed to do that.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Literally, we're, we're programmed genetically and then environmentally to go by what we hear, see, smell, taste, touch. But, you know, I have an ani- I have a dog at home that can hear, see, smell, taste, touch. All animal life operates through senses. We've been created in God's image. We have these higher faculties. We are creative beings.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Literally. We have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. They're, they're the faculties that make us separate from everything else. Like, all the other little creatures on the planet are completely at home in their environment. We're the only creature that's totally disoriented in our environment.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
And that's because we've been given the faculties to create our own environment.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
But we've never been taught how to use them. Now, we teach that in our company. We teach how to develop your perception, the will. You change your perception, you change your life.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
You know? And the will, um... When John Kennedy asked Dr. Wernher von Braun what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a person to the moon, bring them back safely to Earth, von Braun said, he answered him in five words. He said, "The will to do it."
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Now, many people would hear that, they don't really understand what he said. The ability to hold that picture on the screen of your mind and nothing else, 'cause the will is what gives you the ability to concentrate. Energy flows to and through you. Through concentration, you increase-
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm
- BPBob Proctor
... the aptitude of vibration when the energy leaves you. Um, that's how absentee healing's done, through the will.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You know, a practitioner'll hold the idea, and they'll have the subject relax, be very quiet. They transfer that thought right into the person's subjective mind. And so it affects the body.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Well, the will is very important. So we've gotta understand these things, you know? Intuition. I can walk by a person, and like, I could tell, as soon as I walk in the room, I know exactly what you're like. You operate, y- you probably studied this, but you operate from almost evenly between the right and left hemisphere of your brain.
- LHLewis Howes
Oh.
- BPBob Proctor
You got an interesting mix in your personality.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I don't know if you know that, but-
- LHLewis Howes
Sure
- BPBob Proctor
... you know, I could feel it. Um, y- you're almost an even balance between the two, and-
- 29:53 – 37:48
Intuition, Interest in Others, and Overcoming Speaking Fear
- LHLewis Howes
Which one was the hardest for you to learn how to utilize, and which one do you think is the hardest for the majority of people?
- BPBob Proctor
Intuition.
- LHLewis Howes
Was for you and everyone else?
- BPBob Proctor
No, not for me. Because-
- LHLewis Howes
Intuition for everyone else.
- BPBob Proctor
No. Yeah, um, because I made up my mind [laughs] I was gonna study that one.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I saw a guy that was very intuitive, and I wanted to be like that.
- LHLewis Howes
[laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
And I thought it was... You know, I would've said when I first saw it, he was psychic. Well, the truth is, he was psychic, but we're all psychic.
- LHLewis Howes
We are.
- BPBob Proctor
Psychic is just Greek word for mind. And so I was fascinated with what he did. He could just look at you and read the situation.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
And, uh, I wanna learn how to do that.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
So I, I made up my mind I was gonna study it, and y- In a seminar, if I'm teaching this, the one thing everybody wants to know, how do you develop your intuition? Because you can get... Intuition is a feeling that you pick up. Intuition reads feeling. Feeling is conscious awareness of vibration, so you're reading vibration. Vibration's a natural law of the universe, like your body vibrates. Your vibration, by high speed of vibration. Well, you gotta take your mind off yourself if you're gonna read the other person's energy.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You gotta focus on the other person.
- LHLewis Howes
So you can't be insecure when you're trying to be intuitive.
- BPBob Proctor
Oh, no.
- LHLewis Howes
You can't be doubting yourself.
- BPBob Proctor
Uh-uh.
- LHLewis Howes
You can't be lacking something.
- BPBob Proctor
You have to give all of your attention to the person you're working with.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
And of course, that's a secret for speaking, too.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You know. Um, most people don't do that. We're, we're more concerned what's he think of me.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Does she like me, and is my tie straight? Is this-
- 37:48 – 43:45
Borrowing Confidence: Role Models, Self-Image and Talking to the Light
- LHLewis Howes
How do people build that confidence if they don't have it?
- BPBob Proctor
Well, you build confidence by learning, don't you? I mean, that's the only way you get confidence.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I went to a, a nightclub in London, England back in the '60s, um, The Talk of the Town. It was the largest supper club in the world.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
And the show they had was The Wild, Wild, Wild West. The Wild, Wild West. And it was like a Vegas show, and they'd bring in... Uh, that show may run for two or three years, and they'd bring in the stars to work it. And I went one night, and I had a seat right by the stage. There was 1,000... They'd, they'd seat 1,000 people down to dinner in The Talk of the Town.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
It's not open anymore. Wayne Newton was the star.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Wayne Newton was a kid. He was 20, maybe 21. His brother was playing with him, playing guitar in the little group of his. He walked out on that stage, bang, just like that. He owned that place. I never forgot that. That guy was so confident, and he had that audience in the palm of his hand right away. Whenever I go to speak, I will find a place, if I'm speaking to a group, maybe go in the kitchen and sit down. I've learned if you're dressed, they'll think you own the place. They'll just leave you alone.
- LHLewis Howes
[laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
And I'll sit down there, and I'll... I see Wayne Newton walking out on that stage as a kid.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
And that's what you gotta do. You gotta really fall in love with the idea of helping the audience, and you own the place you work, and you're gonna be... And deliver. And any time you see a star come out, they own the place [snap] when they walk out. But they've fallen in love with helping you.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You know?
- LHLewis Howes
Something else, it sounds like you've mastered the power of alter ego. For me, as an athlete, I used to be scared to perform, uh, to play in front of, uh, big games, and I used to tap into Jerry Rice. Because I was a wide receiver, and Jerry Rice-
- BPBob Proctor
Sure
- LHLewis Howes
... was, you know, the best. And so I was just, like, mimicking him. I was like, "How would Jerry Rice do this?"
- BPBob Proctor
Mm.
- LHLewis Howes
How, you know, how did he carry his body, his chest? How did he walk on the field, his swagger, his confidence?
- BPBob Proctor
Mm.
- LHLewis Howes
And I just acted like I was Jerry Rice. I became him-
- BPBob Proctor
Mm
- LHLewis Howes
... when I stepped on the field, and it helped overcome the insecurities or the nerves-
- BPBob Proctor
Sure
- LHLewis Howes
... by just embodying the energy of Jerry Rice.
- BPBob Proctor
Mm-hmm.
- LHLewis Howes
It sounds like you've been doing that with Wayne.
- BPBob Proctor
I do that in different ways-
- 43:45 – 50:13
Imagination: Acting As If and Creating Twice
- LHLewis Howes
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?
- BPBob Proctor
It's not the most challenging. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's something we really wanna gain an understanding of.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Because most people use their imagination, they use it the wrong way. They imagine what won't work.
- LHLewis Howes
Ah.
- BPBob Proctor
They imagine something bad happening. Um-
- LHLewis Howes
What should we imagine more often every day?
- BPBob Proctor
We should imagine, you should see yourself where you wanna be.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You gotta live there. There's a great book, you may be familiar with Stella Adler's book, The Art of Acting.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Oh, gosh, you gotta get it. Stella Adler was a great acting teacher. She was a method acting teacher.
- LHLewis Howes
Uh-huh.
- BPBob Proctor
She did, she studied under Stanislavski, the, the Russian acting teacher that originated method acting.
- LHLewis Howes
Okay.
- BPBob Proctor
And Marlon Brando wrote the forward in her book. He was the first method actor to reach super stardom.
- LHLewis Howes
Okay.
- BPBob Proctor
And he wrote the forward in her book. Now, Stella Adler never actually wrote a book. A man named, uh, Kissel took all of her teaching, all her lessons for teaching, and he, she put them into, or he put them into a book. So when you read her book, you're going to her acting classes.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob 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 gotta 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
But because it's not in physical form, we act like we haven't got it yet.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Well, so that's why most people stay stuck, 'cause they're acting like they haven't got it yet. Or if I can't act like that, Lewis would see that I haven't got that result, he'll, he'll think I'm phony. I gotta quit worrying about what Lewis thinks and start concentrating on what Bob thinks. And so you see yourself, your imagination, you gotta be that person. Go- Goethe said that. Great philosopher, he said, "Before you can do something, you first must be something."
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
So you've gotta be it intellectually. You've gotta be it emotionally. As Psalm says, "As a person thinks in their heart," the emotional mind. Well, it's only a period of time then until it manifests physically. That's one of the first laws of the universe, is the perpetual transmutation of energy. Energy's moving into form, always.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
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, you know.
- LHLewis Howes
How should people be, uh, developing their imagination on a daily basis in a positive way?
- BPBob Proctor
Well, I think they should take time to image what they want. I have a business partner, um, Sandy Gallagher, who's a brilliant woman, and she rides horses, uh, gated horses.
- 50:13 – 56:20
Paradigms: Conditioning, Insurance Agents, and Writing Left-Handed
- LHLewis Howes
Why?
- BPBob Proctor
Because the programming. You're programmed. You have to ask yourself, why don't they do that? I went... I, 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-
- LHLewis Howes
[laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
... I was so effective at what I was doing. And we raised their sales by, one VP said over a billion dollars.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
And all I was doing, getting them to change their paradigm. I was having them change the way they worked. A paradigm, a culture is a paradigm. Um, every country has a culture.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Every family has a culture. Every company has a culture. Well, in the insurance industry years ago, they had what they called debit agents. They went around collecting the money, and it would be a little book like the one you're working with. It would have a record in there. I remember we had a, a book on top of our ice box. It was right near our back door. Mr. Spenceley was the insurance man when I was a little kid. He'd come in, and there was a little book and a little box with some money, and there's always just pennies.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
And he would collect the debit, mark the book, and he'd be on his way.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
And that's how the insurance business operated. They were called debit agents.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
Well, then as time moved along, people started to sign a little sh- sh- cheaper sheet of paper or something, and they would automatically draw it out of your bank account.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
But the agents didn't change.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
The agents would just go and sell at night when mom and dad were both there, 'cause 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 '70s, agents are still going to their office every morning.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
And they wouldn't go out and sell anybody, 'cause you sell at night.
- LHLewis Howes
Hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
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, 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
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.
- LHLewis Howes
There's no reason, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Then they'd go to lunch. They'd go with another agent. I said, "Do you ever sell another agent any insurance?" "No." I said, "What the hell do you want to have 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 AM, and you have to ask every person to buy at least $100,000 worth of insurance. You don't even have to sell them. Just ask them to buy." Well, I got them doing that. They were selling more $100,000 policies in a week than they previously sold in a year in almost every office.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
You see, that's conditioning. That's paradigm. That's the way they were working. They had been doing it for years. Nobody ever thought to change it. Largest insurance company in the world, and the, uh, head office was trying to figure out what I was doing, 'cause it seemed wherever I went, the sales went crazy. I was showing them how to change a paradigm. Your paradigm is your conditioned behavior.
- LHLewis Howes
How do we know when we need to change our own paradigm?
- BPBob Proctor
You always need to change your own paradigm.
- 56:20 – 1:06:43
Infinite Potential, Studio 333, and Books to Read
- LHLewis Howes
What's the thing you wanna change the most within yourself to get to the next level of results that you're looking for?
- BPBob Proctor
Uh, I wanna be more effective in selling on a larger scale.
- LHLewis Howes
So not one-to-one or one-to-few-
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah
- LHLewis Howes
... but one to mass.
- BPBob Proctor
Large, yeah. Like, I have a sales staff. We've got a pretty mature company. We have about 70 employees in our company.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
So we, we've got about 10 sales, 20 sales people. I say 10, we have 20. I wanna have a larger sales force. I wanna 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. Um, so I'm w- forever. Now, I worked on an idea last night on the plane. Um, and it's sort of similar, maybe it was because I was, you know, I was coming in here, maybe that triggered this.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
'Cause w- we've been trying to come in here for over a year.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, somebody keeps telling me, you know, and-
- LHLewis Howes
Dates change, everything else. Yeah, yeah
- BPBob Proctor
... yeah. Well, we, we just wasn't, we weren't able to be here until today. Anyway, I'm on the plane and I'm thinking, "How can I get more people?" I have a studio in Toronto. I- if you're ever in Toronto, you have to come and see it.
- LHLewis Howes
I wanna see it, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
We have a beautiful studio. It's a, it's a, like, a tel- it is a television station. I had a couple of people from the TV station in one day, and I said, "It's sort of like a television." They said, "No, Bob, it is a television."
- LHLewis Howes
[laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
I can run four cameras simultaneously. Um, um, young Scott there, he could, uh, he could operate the cameras from right in here on his computer.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Um, I can stream all over the world. It's 50 feet from my house.
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
And, uh, 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Like a live cast.
- BPBob Proctor
It'll be a live cast, yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
And it'll stream. And I'm really gonna teach the people something. I'll use, I won't, 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. 'Cause people learn something on chats.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
They listen and say, "Damn, I didn't see that."
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
You know? So the, so we'll have a chat on it, and I'll start doing that right away. Now, I got people working on it.
- 1:06:43 – 1:16:51
Earning Money and Escaping Financial Struggle
- LHLewis Howes
I wanna a- talk about money for a top, uh, for a moment, 'cause you mentioned how you were making 4,000-
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah
- LHLewis Howes
... something dollars a year. Your expenses were 6,000, I think.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
Something like that. And then you started making 14-
- BPBob Proctor
No, my expenses run 6,000. I owed 6,000.
- LHLewis Howes
You owed 6,000.
- BPBob Proctor
I owed everybody that I, [laughs] that I knew.
- LHLewis Howes
And you were making around $14,000 a year after that, shortly after that.
- BPBob Proctor
No, I went from earning $4,000 a year- To $14,500-
- LHLewis Howes
A month
- BPBob Proctor
... a month.
- LHLewis Howes
Exactly.
- BPBob Proctor
Now, if you annualize that, that was 175 a year. So I went from earning 4,000 a year to 175.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
I hadn't earned 175 that year.
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
I got it up to 14,5 a month. So if you annualize it-
- LHLewis Howes
Got it, got it, got it
- BPBob Proctor
... that's, that's a change. Phenomenal change.
- LHLewis Howes
Is it possible for anyone to go from poverty level to extremely-
- BPBob Proctor
Absolutely
- LHLewis Howes
... financially successful?
- BPBob 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
I was cleaning floors. I thought the answer was work harder.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
'Cause I wanted to, I really wanted to earn some money.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah, of course.
- BPBob 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. Well, I was working so hard I passed out on the street. I would've been maybe 27, 28. 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 in the hospital. I talked them out of it.
- 1:16:51 – 1:20:49
Daily Habits and Seed Gestation
- LHLewis 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?
- BPBob Proctor
They should study every day.
- LHLewis Howes
Study.
- BPBob Proctor
They should have a mentor, someone that has already accomplished what they dream about. They might not even know the person, but they could get introduced to them and ask them, "What are half a dozen things I should do every day?"
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Ask them. They know.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Most people are getting information from people that don't know any more than themselves.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
And the third one, you've definitely got to have a goal, and when you write it, you've already got it intellectually. See, you operate intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Well, your intellectual mind, the second you say, second you decide on it, you've got it. It tells you in the Bible, "Before you speak, I'll hear you."
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm. Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
It's 'cause the thought always precedes the word.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
The second you get emotionally involved with it, you've got it emotionally.
- LHLewis Howes
Yep.
- BPBob Proctor
So you've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. It's only a period of time till you've got it physically.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm. Be, do, have. Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
That's right. But the have comes in a period of time. So-
- LHLewis Howes
It's not, it's not overnight? [laughs]
- BPBob Proctor
Every seed has a gestation or an incubation period.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
When a woman gets pregnant with a child, it takes 280 days.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
The husband doesn't come home a month later and say, "Come on, where is it?"
- LHLewis Howes
Right.
- BPBob Proctor
He waits, as-
- LHLewis Howes
Right
- BPBob Proctor
... James Allen said, as one who understands.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
He understands there's a gestation period. Where I come from, if you plant a seed for a carrot, it takes approximately 70 days for it to manifest.
- 1:20:49 – 1:30:28
The Terror Barrier, Affirmations, and the Law of Attraction
- LHLewis Howes
Do you have any fears?
- BPBob Proctor
Oh, I have lots of fears. Yeah, I mean, you fear anything you don't know, but you don't let them control you.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
You know? Um, I think someone said that courageous people aren't, don't have any fears. Eddie Rickenbacker said, "There's no courage without fear." [laughs]
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
You, courage gets you to face the thing you fear. So I have, yeah, I have fears. To do, any time I go to do anything that I've never done, I'll be afraid, but I won't, I, that doesn't stop me.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
In fact, I call that hitting a terror barrier, you know?
- LHLewis Howes
A terror barrier.
- BPBob Proctor
A terror barrier. That's, you gotta... Like, 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Now, I mean, they can play with that all they want.
- LHLewis Howes
In their mind, yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
Nothing's ever gonna happen, 'cause it's just intellectually. They take the idea and they get emotionally involved with it.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
Now all hell breaks loose.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
They hit the terror barrier.
- LHLewis Howes
Ooh. They start to feel the fear.
- BPBob Proctor
Ha ha. And if you don't go through the terror barrier, where do you go? You run right back into safety. Bondage, and that's where most people live.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
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. It's... I don't know, I heard one time a, a thing when, uh, Maharishi was gonna take TM to the world. One of his advisors said, "Well, where's all the money gonna come from?" He says, "Wherever it is right now."
- LHLewis Howes
Wow.
- BPBob Proctor
[laughs] I love that, 'cause 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 want to realize the way is already here. If nothing's created or destroyed, if all the power's 100% evenly present in all places 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.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
So-
- LHLewis Howes
But you always stay in your comfort zone. You'll never be able to grow, expand.
- BPBob Proctor
Yeah. So if something doesn't scare me, I know I'm not growing.
- LHLewis Howes
It's something, uh, you know, as an athlete, or did you play sports growing up at all? Anything?
- BPBob Proctor
Not a lot, no.
- 1:30:28 – 1:42:53
The Three Truths, Gratitude, and Closing Thoughts
- LHLewis Howes
I wanna ask a few final questions. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So I want to imagine that you get to pick the last day on this physical Earth for you. At some point you gotta go, and it could be 100 years, 300 years, could be tomorrow. Whatever it is you want it to be, you get to pick the day, and you've... Imagine you've created everything you wanna create, or close to it, and you, you feel grateful for it all. You've done everything you wanna do. You've had the life, the relationships, but for whatever reason, you gotta take it all with you. Everything you've created has gotta go with you when you leave. However, you get to write down on a piece of paper three things you know to be true that you would leave behind for the world, three lessons that you would leave behind, and this is all people would have to be remembered by you or your messages. I call it the three truths. What would you say are yours?
- BPBob Proctor
That's an interesting question. Uh, live in the now
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm
- BPBob Proctor
If this was my last day and I was doing what I wanted to do, I'd be right here doing what I'm doing right now
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
Because that's what I'm doing
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah
- BPBob Proctor
I'm doing what I wanna do. So I think you have to do the thing you wanna do
- LHLewis Howes
Mm
- BPBob Proctor
You've gotta be... See, if you ask a person two questions, where are you and what time is it, they're always gonna give you the same answer. I'm here, it's now. That's where we should live. Everything else is an illusion. There isn't any such thing as time. That's an illusion. It's something we use for our physical benefit, but we're not physical beings, we're spiritual beings
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm
- BPBob Proctor
So I'm here, it's now. L- live in the now. Be grateful. Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich said, "Gratitude..." On the first page of his, it's chapter seven. I'll never forget when I read this. "The entire process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude." So it doesn't matter how disturbed you are, it doesn't matter what's bothering you, you can solve whatever it is. You can be forgiven for whatever it is through gratitude. Just sit. What are you grateful for?
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
And number three is give. Yeah.
- LHLewis Howes
Simple.
- BPBob Proctor
See, in, in all the programs, we run a number of different programs, and that's what it's all about. That's what our company's about. In this business that I'm in, I think you go one of two ways. You try and... For self-aggrandizement, you wanna be a bigger star. I've never wanted to be a star. I never wanted to be a speaker. I don't see myself as a speaker. I wanna teach more people, so I'm teaching people to teach people. We operate in over 100 countries now. Um, we have representatives-
- LHLewis Howes
Wow
- BPBob Proctor
... in over 100 countries. We will stream this seminar. We'll... Last time we streamed it into 115 countries. That's really what I think this is all about.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
It's not about me. It's really about you. And so if we can get into the habit of helping the other person m- just understand themselves a little bit better, enjoy a little bit more of life, I think we're on the right track.
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah.
- BPBob Proctor
So I think your three questions, th- that's a good, that's a damn good question, you know? Live in the now. Be grateful. You're gonna be gr- like, that's the first thing I do in the morning
- LHLewis Howes
Yeah, me too
- BPBob Proctor
I write down what I'm grateful for. And, uh, we teach people to do it. Where I really started to do that... I have a wonderful business partner in Sandy Gallagher. She was a, um, a securities attorney, and a very bright one. She, I mean, she was damn good. She'd buy banks, sell banks, turn banks public. Um, worked in s- in community banks, but a lot of money. And, um, she came to a seminar around the time The Secret come out
- LHLewis Howes
Mm
- BPBob Proctor
And I kept hitting people, "What do you really want?" Now, although she had been very successful, she graduated as the top banking lawyer in every university in the United States. She was number one. She studied in Europe, in England. And, um, she had never thought of what she really wanted. Her dad was a banking lawyer. She sort of followed suit. And, um, um, she'd be a damn good person for you to interview sometime.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm-hmm.
- BPBob Proctor
Larry, Larry King interviewed her one time. Um, she's, she's really a bright gal. And, um, financially, she's, lives in a different frequency altogether.
- LHLewis Howes
Mm.
- BPBob Proctor
She's very, very bright. But, um, I've forgotten now why I started to talk about her. She, uh, she's made a bigger change in our company than anybody. She came to this... Oh, the gratitude-
Episode duration: 1:43:01
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