INTRODUCTION

Hello, everyone.  This is Jerry "DRhino" Clark at www.ClubRhino.net bringing you another issue of Power Tips: your regular dose of energy and power.  And on this particular segment, we are definitely standing on the shoulders of another giant, Mr. Denis Waitley.  Mr. Denis Waitley is an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, he's a consultant, he's a former chairman of psychology for the U.S. Olympic Committee's Sports Medicine Council, and he's written many best-selling audio programs that many of you probably have in your library right now if you take at look at your bookshelves, you probably have "The Psychology of Winning," which is one of the best-selling programs of all time as far as personal development and motivational and so forth.  "Seeds of Greatness," which is one of the initial programs I got a number of years ago that made a tremendous impact in my life.  "Being the Best," "The New Dynamics of Winning," "The Winner's Edge," "Empires of the Mind," "The Power of Resiliency," I mean, I can keep going on and on because this individual has created programs that have impacted literally millions of people all over the world.  And we have an opportunity to really just be able to tap his brain and find out what's going on in there and what can we get from there to go ahead and make just a little bit more of a contribution to us as well.

INTERVIEW

JERRY CLARK:

So Mr. Denis Waitley, we want to welcome you to the program.

Denis Waitley:

Well, thanks very much.  It's great to be with you.

JERRY CLARK:

Excellent.  Now, the question that I have for you is that most of the programs, I've noticed, that you've put together over the years, they all have one thing in common, typically, which is they all tend to focus on the internal communication aspects of development.  In other words, I have a program I teach called The Success Triangle, and there are three angles--the internal communication, which is the base, basically how people communicate with themselves, then external communication, which is how people communicate with others, and then the technical know-how, which is the specific strategies necessary to build whatever kind of business people are working on building, whether it's direct sales or network marketing or insurance or real estate or whatever kind of business they have.  And you've pretty much focused on the internal communication.  I mean, where did that come from as far as your understanding of how important it is to focus on the thinking processes and belief systems and the philosophies of individuals.

Denis Waitley:

Well, I'm glad you mentioned that.  You know, my background--I'm a psychologist, so I've got my doctorate in human behavior, and my doctorate was why no American prisoner ever escape from a minimum security camp.  And I began to understand how interviewers interview people, and you can always tell if somebody is specific, focused.  They have answers to your questions, they kind of know where they're going, they know what they're about.  You can learn a lot from people by the way they talk about themselves.

So I got interested not only in the way you talk to yourself, but the way that you describe yourself and the way that you explain yourself, and that's why I've always felt that the mindset of a champion that at the world class level that it was always mind over muscle and mind over money and the mind over menu that it really was an internal dialogue that you develop, just like the habit of brushing your teeth or driving your car that is the real difference between people who succeed and others who are just kind of in the field but not at the top.

JERRY CLARK:

Why did you decide to major in psychology in the first place?  Did it have something to do with the whole process of the internal motivation or beliefs, or was it that you were just interested in that area?

Denis Waitley:

No, I think it came from a dysfunctional childhood.  I think I was in a family where my father died as an alcoholic, lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.  He never amounted to anything and he left home when I was nine years old and I became kind of the man of the family at age 9.  And I didn't have good self-esteem, but I felt that there was something inside of me that could be said or could be done.  And my grandmother gave me a lot of encouragement and my coaches and teachers did, and I found that if I could develop my self worth, that maybe I'd have a better net worth.  So I always believe that your self-worth determines your net worth, and that if you don't believe you deserve to be successful in the first place, it's really hard to overcome childhood routines and prejudices that we live with, and we're kind of in a flower pot.  We're like a redwood tree planted in a flower pot.  We're root-bound. 

JERRY CLARK:

Wow.

Denis Waitley:

And I had to get out of my early beginnings and the way I did that was to read books and study people who were successful by overcoming handicaps in their own lives.

JERRY CLARK:

So are you saying that you were not born into a wealthy family?  You were not born into a family that gave you positive affirmations every single minute of the day?  Are you saying that you come from an average and ordinary family, like most people, get the average and ordinary type of programming that most people get, thus, typically get, you know, average and ordinary results that most people end up getting in life, which is really not very much.  Are you saying that you came from that type of background and you were able to get yourself out of it?

Denis Waitley:

I wasn't impoverished, but I did have only one pair of shoes for three or four years and I got chicken sandwiches without the chicken for lunch. 

JERRY CLARK:

Denis Waitley:

You know, it was just two pieces of bread and mayonnaise and lettuce and I looked inside and I said, "Mom, there's nothing in there."  And she said it was a chicken sandwich but you have to go get the chicken.  And I said, well, the only way to do that is to mow lawns.  And she was very negative because my father had left and didn't amount to anything, and so she complained a lot and I had to overcome that by having a flip side.  Everything was negative to her so it was positive to me.

And my father gave us the input, "you'll never live in a house like that."  That's where the rich people live and they're born that way or crooked.  So I always felt as a young man, a young boy, that you had to be slick or born with it or slightly manipulative to be successful and it wasn't until I was in my 30's that I finally had the courage or belief with the knowledge and skills that I was getting that maybe I could break out of this, if you will, stay in the Navy and get your pension routine. 

JERRY CLARK:

Got it.  And so, at that point when you were in the Navy then, because I know you went to the U.S. Naval Academy--

Denis Waitley:

Sure.  That's the only way you could get an education in our family.  You know, we had no money and my dad said, you know, there's a war on.  Better to die a couple of months later as an officer than to die right away as an enlisted man.  So anyway, so I ran for Annapolis, you know, and Ross Perot was our upperclassman, and we watched him.  You know, he had a lot of confidence for a little guy, and I found that learning to fly a jet airplane and being a carrier pilot at least gave me the idea that you can set goals, simulate, rehearse, practice, and get there, so if you do it right in drill, you'll do it right in life.  And I took that experience as a Navy pilot and began to be more interested in the psychological aspects of that instead of being a warrior to defend people, I wanted to be somebody to build people.

JERRY CLARK:

Wow.  And so let's take a closer look at what you just mentioned here.  It's very important and I want to make sure everyone got this.  You said that you understood that you can set goals, you can simulate, you can rehearse, and you can practice.  Now are those the steps that you typical take in order to be able to take something from nothing and create something out it?  Bring it to physical manifestation?

Denis Waitley:

Absolutely.  As a Navy pilot, we practiced even in our rooms.  We imagined what it was like to put the power on.  We had to do that, because you went through ground school and you had to learn by reflex action how to do things without thinking.  And so it became like second nature.  I got into the Apollo program as a simulator and realized that an astronaut is going someplace that no one has ever gone before, that's only been on paper, that's only been on a computer.  And they're asking them to go someplace entirely new and very dangerous with only simulation--which is doing within when you're doing without.  So my whole premise is winners are busy doing within when they're doing without.  And that applies to a world class athlete, or a sales executive, or somebody planning a wedding, or anyone who lives their life has to realize that habits are cobwebs that grow in the cables with practice. 

JERRY CLARK:

Boy, that was pretty deep.  Can you repeat that one?

Denis Waitley:

Habits are flimsy ideas, just offhanded conversations, and then with practice, the habits turn from cobwebs into unbreakable cables.  But unfortunately, many of the cables are shackles rather than bonds of strength, and most people are victims of their habits because they don't realize they're in one until it's too late to break one.  And you really don't break habits; you replace them with new ones.  That's why it's so important to hang around successful people, to read and to go to seminars and to listen, because it begins to rub off on you.  It's like MTV, fashion determines lifestyle.  When you observe and imitate and internalize the behaviors of others, it subconsciously becomes your nature.  Even though you hadn't planned on it, just the mere repetition of it creates in you this reflex action.

That's why I say why do we do what we do when we know what we know.  We do what weve learned, and what we learn, we learn by observing and imitating.  And we know better, but we do it anyway even though it may not be good for us, we just happened to buy into some kind of celebrity role model or somebody that we think is cool and we do what they do, and then we internalize that behavior.  After a while, it just becomes us.  So you have to be very careful, I guess, who you pick. 

JERRY CLARK:

Wow.  So you're basically saying that TV and the news and the newspapers and the radio and all of this is very important what we put in because that's what's going to get assimilated even if we think, oh, no, I'm bigger than that.  That's not going to make a difference if I stay up and watch all the deadly news that's taking place.  You're saying that it really does affect a person, even if they don't realize it's affecting them.

Denis Waitley:

I absolutely know that to be true.  From all the studies from the copycats, second hand violence is just as bad as second-hand smoke, so it really is true that you observe, you imitate, you practice, you internalize, you reflex, you become.  And you do that even though the person that you're looking at and watching isn't somebody you want to be like and you say, well, I don't pay any attention to the lyrics, or the commercials don't have any impact on me.  Well, if the commercials had no impact, why would they spend $1.5 million for 30 seconds at the Super Bowl?  They spend the $1.5 million for the 30-second spot because it gives you a manipulation in your buy decision and you make a decision to buy into that product or lifestyle without even thinking about it at the time that you do it.  And that's what I think--programming your mind with positive, reinforcing beliefs and hanging around real winners whose lives are proven track records rather than just people who can talk about it.  People who have actually lived it.

JERRY CLARK:

And I think this is one of the reasons why it sounds like you have definitely put so much attention and focus on the internal communication aspect of it, because it sounds like this determines everything we do.  Our actions are determined by what's happening internally.

Denis Waitley:

Well, a lot of it, except through the years I really believed that.  And why I really like your triangle is that external communications and what you do externally also can have a tremendous influence on your life.  So let's say you did come from a poor family.  Let's say you had a dysfunctional childhood.  Let's say that you never really accomplished anything even through high school, didn't go to college, and suddenly you find yourself in your 20's, caught in all these bad habits.  I'm not saying you have to believe before you can achieve.  There are two schools of thought.  One says you have to believe it before you achieve it.  And then there's another one that says "seeing is believing."  And I actually believe that a person can get involved with a group and go to a program, can change their lifestyle, can change their hygiene, their habits, they can change externally, and it will have the same impact by having this internal feedback be a lot better, because they'll start succeeding and they'll say wait a minute.  I'm starting to do some good stuff here.  I'm starting to have things work out for me, and they gain more confidence.

END OF PART 1...

PART 2 WILL BE POSTED SHORTLY...