This Is Why You DON'T SUCCEED! (Don't Let This HOLD YOU BACK From Success) | Les Brown
Summary
TLDRMotivational speaker Les Brown details his inspiring life story, overcoming labels like 'educable mentally retarded' and adversity like growing up in poverty with a single mother. He discusses critical mentors like his high school teacher who saw potential in him and pivotal mindset shifts like realizing your thinking creates your reality. Brown stresses having hunger to better yourself, surrounding yourself with 'only quality people', developing communication skills, and maintaining self-awareness and self-approval. He advocates tuning out cultural programming and finding your unique interests and talents. Brown aims to inspire audiences worldwide, driven by his selfless mother's example and commitment to contribute to humanity.
Takeaways
- 😀 To achieve your goals, surround yourself with supportive, high-quality people and mentors who believe in you
- 😧 Overcome challenges and setbacks with faith, determination and an unstoppable attitude
- 🙏 Live a life of contribution that positively impacts others
- 👩🏫 Continuously work on yourself through learning and new experiences to discover your full potential
- 💪🏾 Defy limiting labels and opinions others have placed on you
- 😤 Be relentlessly driven by your hunger and passion
- 📚 Read books and listen to messages that inspire you and expand your thinking
- 👥 Build relationships that challenge you to reach higher
- 🌟 Set bold dreams that stretch you outside your comfort zone
- 💡 Transform your mindset to see possibilities beyond your circumstances
Q & A
What was the defining moment in Les Brown's childhood that showed him the injustice that existed at that time?
-When Les Brown was 5 years old, he drank from a "whites only" water fountain in public. His mother severely beat him out of fear of what would happen if authorities saw him break racist laws that existed at the time.
How did Les Brown's adopted mother, Mamie, demonstrate determination and resilience in raising her children?
-As a single mother with limited education and resources, Mamie did whatever it took to provide for her children - including working multiple jobs, selling moonshine when she lost work, and going to jail. She always found a way to keep food on the table, a roof over their heads, and raise her children with love.
What core advice did Les Brown's high school teacher give him that had a major impact on the rest of his life?
-His teacher told him that 1) he needed to change his mindset and realize he could achieve anything he set his mind to 2) surround himself with high quality, positive people and 3) develop strong communication skills.
How does Les Brown recommend dealing with negative self-talk and limiting beliefs?
-He says you need to have a maintenance program to continually renew your thinking. This includes activities like reading inspirational materials, attending seminars, spending quiet time in self-reflection, and surrounding yourself with positive mentors/coaches.
What was the key thing that allowed Les Brown to eventually view himself as capable of being a professional speaker?
-Over time, through experiences like attending personal development seminars and having positive mentors/coaches, he began to peel back the layers of negative conditioning and self-doubt instilled in him earlier in life. This allowed him to connect with his innate talents and potential.
What is Les Brown's viewpoint regarding making money from speaking engagements?
-Unlike others, Les says his priority is using his speaking ability to change lives rather than viewing it chiefly as a way to get rich. He speaks from genuine passion because someone spoke words that transformed his life early on.
What does it mean to live a heart-centered life according to Les Brown?
-It means pursuing goals and activities that align with your authentic passion and purpose rather than being overly swayed by societal programming or expectations.
Why does Les Brown believe we must live lives that outlive us?
- Because the positive impact we have can continue changing lives for generations after we die. He wants his life's work to be a major contribution to humankind.
What was the key trait Les Brown learned from his relentless door-to-door sales experience?
-The hunger and determination to keep pushing himself outside his comfort zone to achieve his goals, no matter how many times he faced rejection or adversity.
What is Les Brown's life philosophy he aims to fulfill daily?
-"Aspire to inspire, until I expire."
Outlines
😊 Overcoming Life's Challenges
This paragraph discusses how to overcome life's challenges by having goals outside your comfort zone, surrounding yourself with supportive mentors, and continuously fighting for what you want in life.
😤 Battling Cancer with Defiance
This paragraph describes Les Brown's experience being diagnosed with cancer, his defiant mindset to beat it, and how he endured significant pain but did not let fear consume him.
😎 Using Speaking to Impact Lives
This paragraph explains how Les Brown uses storytelling in his speaking to distract people from limiting beliefs, dispute assumptions, and inspire them to rewrite their life's story and reach their potential.
😞 Overcoming Cultural Biases
This paragraph discusses how marginalized groups face cultural messaging designed to destroy their self-belief, and the need to escape limiting inner conversations by discovering your best self.
😍 The Power of Relationships
This paragraph emphasizes the importance of supportive relationships with coaches and mentors who see your potential and push you to places you can't reach alone.
🌟 Leaving a Lasting Legacy
This paragraph encourages leaving a lasting, world-changing legacy by living a heart-centered life of contribution that builds on your unique talents and passion.
📚 Recommended Reading List
This paragraph recommends books like The Road to Your Best Stuff, Live Your Dreams, The Secret of the Ages, and As a Man Thinketh to transform limiting mindsets.
😤 Refusing to Quit
This paragraph tells a powerful story highlighting Les Brown's relentless determination to provide for his family no matter the obstacles or time required.
😊 The Power of a Mother's Love
This paragraph explores how Les Brown's adoptive mother deeply impacted him through her unconditional love, determination, faith and sacrifice.
🔥 Staying Hungry
This closing paragraph encourages staying fiercely determined to improve yourself, contribute value, and make a difference during challenging times of economic uncertainty.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Toxic Relationships
💡Comfort Zone
💡Mentorship
💡Self-Transformation
💡Limitations
💡Power Voice
💡Adversity
💡Motivational Influence
💡Self-Discovery
💡Resilience
Highlights
Life is a fight for territory, and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don't want will automatically take over
When something happens to you you don't deny it you defy it
You have to have a program that will increase your sense of self reading, doing good work, volunteering constantly looking for ways in which you can improve all the dimensions of your life
If your achievements outgrow your sense of self you will unconsciously engage in self-destructive behavior
I believe that we're taught be not conformed to this world be transformed by the renewing of your mind
Have a strategy to continuously find ourselves reaching higher
You earn within two to three thousand dollars of your closest friends
Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality
You have to work on yourself and you have to have an unstoppable attitude and no excuse is acceptable
You will fail your way to success
As life knocks you down trying to land on your back because if you can look up you can get up
We should be ashamed to die until we've made some major contribution to humankind
When you go for a walk with someone, something happens without being spoken. Either you adjust to their pace, or they adjust to your pace. Whose pace have you adjusted to?
If information could change people everybody would be skinny rich and happy
I aspire to inspire until I expire
Transcripts
[Music]
many people never achieve their goals
because they have too many toxic
negative energy draining people in their
lives and you have to have goals outside
of your comfort zone that will challenge
you because in order to do something
you've never done you've got to become
someone you've never been and you've got
to have a mentor who's experienced who
who's been there done that and and as a
result of that relationship because you
can't see the picture when you're in the
frame muhammad ali said i'm the greatest
but he never won a championship without
angelo dundee and michael jordan never
won a championship without phil jackson
so you've got to have someone that can
see something in you that you can't see
that that that can take you to a place
within yourself that you can't go by
yourself
[Music]
[Music]
hey everyone welcome to impact theory
today's guest is a best-selling author
and one of the most lauded and
sought-after speakers on the planet but
nobody would have predicted that given
where he started born on the dirty floor
of an abandoned building he and his twin
brother were later adopted and raised as
two of seven children to a single mother
who struggled to make ends meet he was
deemed teachable but mentally [ __ ]
when he was a kid and classmates
referred to him as the dumb twin despite
all of this however one day while
shining shoes he paid attention to the
powerful words of the motivational tapes
one of his most successful customers was
listening to the message made him
realize that with enough effort he could
turn his life around he began reading
and drinking in as much wisdom as
humanly possible and after years of
relentlessly improving his skill set and
receiving encouragement from mentors he
stepped into what he now calls his power
voice
since then he has hosted popular
national tv and radio talk shows won a
chicago area emmy spoke into crowds as
large as 80 000 people written
best-selling books and received the
national speakers association's most
prestigious award the golden gavel he
was named by toastmasters international
as one of the top five outstanding
speakers in the world and he's been
featured by nbc success magazine inc and
the washington post to name but a few
so please
help me in welcoming the man who refused
to accept the limitations placed on him
by others the multiple term state
representative for ohio who can count at
t disney and ibm among his staggering
client roster one of the most powerful
orators and teachers of our time
les brown
[Applause]
man great thank you thank you it's a
pleasure to be here dude it is so good
to have you you are
an unparalleled motivational preacher
and and i use that word very
intentionally you have a way of
conveying a message with such
chills inspiring goosebump giving power
it's really really extraordinary to
witness and becomes all that much more
powerful knowing that you didn't start
there
that that wasn't sort of naturally you
know your your beginning and you've
called life a a battle for territory
yeah what do you mean by that
that the things that you get in life you
know frederick douglass said we might
not get everything that we fight for but
everything we get it will be a
fight so
and i love the quote that life is a
fight for territory and once you stop
fighting for what you want what you
don't want will automatically take over
like getting ready to come here to see
you
i want to just first of all thank you
for the great work that you're doing i
watch you and i study you and
you have had some incredible guests
impacted my life and and preparing to
come here i'm being treated
by
cancer centers of america for fourth
stage cancer which i've been kicking
cancer's butt for 27 years and i've been
working on getting a six-pack before
getting here i still got one pack
and i've been working to get some
muscles so i could wear my t-shirt but
they weren't large enough so i wore a
long sleeve
that's amazing man talk to me about
cancer you've had such an upbeat
attitude about it it's really pretty
extraordinary
was that your initial reaction did you
go through a trough of despair when you
first got diagnosed like how have you
framed that
doctor
alfred golson
who since passed
was a very unusual guy and he told me
that mr brown
you have cancer i said can you give him
a second opinion he said yes and you're
ugly too
i said oh my god
so
i didn't have a chance to have fear
because
those three words you have cancer three
of the most feared words
in seven different languages i saw it as
a fight and and and from that time to
this time you know my psa was
four 2400
and that stands for prostate specific
androgen and and now it's below zero and
metastasized in seven areas of my body
which was a good thing because seven is
my lucky number okay so it no i i never
was fearful that i was gonna die from it
and and i think
that i read something by
dr norman cousins he wrote a book called
the biology of hope
and he talked about the fact that when
something happens to you you don't deny
it you defy it and i was defiant that
i'm going to beat this i'm going to
handle this that there are people who
many times when something happens to
them that they embrace it from a place
of fear and it takes them out and
elsie robinson said things may happen to
you and things will happen around you
but the most important things the things
that happen in you and you have to stand
up inside yourself and deal with it and
handle it so fortunately
that never bothered me but i had
cytokine pain
that had me speaking in unknown thugs
and i was in a wheelchair for several
months speaking from the milk a
wheelchair and it was something that i
dealt with that frightened me will this
ever end it was 24 hours i lost a lot of
sleep
it was exhausting going from all types
of specialists in and out of the country
and just one day
it stopped
and i'm glad that i'm past that you know
i just i i feel like
when when you go through some stuff you
just there's some certain things
that you don't want ever to see or get
it that's what i ought to ever see again
but
fear has not been the biggest challenge
that i've faced with the things that
i've been dealing with in terms of my
health well talk to me about the process
that you go through mentally so there
have been a few times in your life in
getting to know your story where
they seem like really key inflection
points um being told that you were
teachable but mentally [ __ ] that for
sure is something that would define most
people and they would have a hard time
escaping that um being told that you
have cancer that it's stage four
that um they don't know how to treat it
like that's something that consumes most
people
how do you
build that resilience so maybe by the
time you get to cancer you've already
done so much work so i get maybe how
that when you're you're protected by the
mechanisms you've built but in the
beginning how did you crawl out from
under the labels that people were
putting on you the easiest thing i've
done was to get out from under the
labels and to live the life that i live
the most difficult thing i've ever done
was to believe
that i can do it what's the difference
the difference is that when you don't
know what's impacting you
and it's it's something that that's
holding you down and you're not aware of
it the great anthropologist margaret
mead was in a restaurant in london
and and a guy was serving her and said
there's several americans here tonight
and she said is that right yes let me
know when you serve them dessert i'll
tell you exactly how many are here he
said oh you couldn't possibly
and so he came back and said okay i've
done it and
she got up and she walked around
and she came back and she said
they're around
25 here
and he looked at the roster how did you
know that say in america
we eat differently from you when we eat
a dessert you eat it from the crust
toward the tip we eat it from the tip
toward the crust when you eat a slice of
pie how do you eat yours i definitely
yeah from the the tip back to the crust
for sure yeah okay and so so there are
things that when you
in my situation you live in a dominant
culture that is designed to destroy your
sense of self and your belief in
yourself and
and you have to learn ways in which you
can begin to connect with this power
that you have within yourself to handle
where you are
the key is to be
constantly in a perpetual process
of discovering the truth of who you are
and
fighting constantly to
look for ways in which you can escape
the inner conversation i speak to
audiences around the world and i and i
train speakers as well and i i tell them
that
when you speak
that there's a there's an objective that
you want to achieve when you speak to an
audience because how people live their
lives as a result of the story
they believe about themselves so
you as a speaker when you speak in this
program when people see you
what you do is distract dispute and
inspire you distract people from their
current story with your guests and the
questions that you ask through the
process of the ongoing questioning and
the way in which they respond and the
things they have learned you dismantle
their current belief system and inspire
them to to create a new chapter with
their lives and so but that's an ongoing
process of of constantly interrupting
that conversation what psychologists
call your self-explanatory style because
life is going to beat up on you in so
many ways and many things they come back
you know negative thoughts and and how
you feel about yourself
they don't die they they come back once
you stop doing the maintenance work on
your mind
listening to motivational messages going
to seminars and workshops spending time
quietly listening to the still small
voice within who am i really is this
really me am i giving my best
am i just reflecting what's around me
because all of these various things
affect how we show up in life and so
having a strategy to continuously
find ourselves reaching higher or robert
schuller had a book is not very popular
but i loved it it's called peak to peak
you p-e-a-k
to p-e-e-k
because you're constantly reaching
higher to find out and discover your
your better self yeah i want to talk
about that difference between so you
have the notion of figuring out who you
really are and i assume you mean beneath
the labels so people are telling me that
i'm not smart but that's not necessarily
true so i want to get down to that layer
of what i'm really capable of but you
also talk about we have this profound
ability to change and you talk about
people needing to be relentless like to
relentlessly pursue that growth i i find
that juxtaposition incredibly
interesting where you've got there is a
real you which maybe you would call
potential
and then there is the actualized
potential is that how you see it or is
there something else absolutely there's
a real you you know richard wright said
it best he said the impulse to dream
has slowly been beaten out of me through
the experiences of life so when you live
in a culture that
is designed to destroy your sense of
self to where you are marginalized where
you you have a feeling of being hopeless
and powerless
and you're terrorized i remember going
downtown with my mother and
i saw water fountain i think i was about
five years old and i ran and i drank
from the water fountain all of a sudden
she grabbed me by the neck and said
don't you ever do that again and start
punching me in the back of my head and
my face and and got me down on ground
was punching me relentlessly
relentlessly and i said mama please it's
me mama it's me with this crazed look in
her eyes
and then a white policeman came and he
had a
nightstick in his hand he was hitting it
in his left hand
he said okay
all right
you beat that little [ __ ] boy enough
now
i won't have to beat him with this night
stick and he walked away laughing
and my mother broke down and started
crying and saying leslie i'm so sorry
i'm so sorry
i said mama why'd you beat me like that
she said this water fountains are for
white only son
and if that carpet hit me with his
nightstick
he would have to kill me
i'd have fought him till he killed me
and i left you and your brothers and
sisters by
themselves to raise themselves i'm so
sorry
and
the book called learned optimism
sillaman talk about the fact that
between ages
0 and 5 we determine what's available to
us
and what's not available to us and so
that was a defining moment i knew
there are certain things i could not do
certain places i could not go they used
to have signs on miami beach that said
jews
dogs and cullets not allowed and so now
you have to operate within
the constraints of the dominant society
and the things that they have created
for you and
it's a challenge to see yourself beyond
that and to work to get outside of that
even after
those laws have changed because that has
become so much a part of you
you unconsciously operate within the
parameters
of what has been put in place like you
go to you're driving on the expressway
the four or five and
and you'll get off on an exit that you
weren't going in that direction but you
unconsciously did it because you've done
it so many times that many people
because
they're not
making a conscious deliberate determined
effort
to think outside of what life has thrown
at them they end up doing the same thing
over and over and over again einstein
said the thinking that has brought me
this far has created some problems that
this thinking can't solve and so through
relationships through reading through
studies through goals and dreams beyond
your comfort zone it allows you to begin
to live out of your imagination as
opposed to out of your history disney
said the imagination is a preview of
what's to come
and so as a kid i i dreamed a lot about
taking care of my mother i used to go
with her to work to clean homes and and
she she kept her children and she cooked
for these wealthy families my mother
could bake a sweet potato pie so good
you couldn't eat it with your shoes or
you had to take your shoes off so you
could wiggle your toes and i used to
look at these big beautiful mansions and
said mama what is it leslie when i
become a man i'm gonna buy you a big
beautiful home just like this
oh you don't have to do this i said i
know but you didn't have to adopt us
either and
you did and so i'm here with you because
the two women one gave me life the other
one gave me love god took me out of my
biological mother's womb and placed me
in the heart of my adopted mother and
because of
her example and my love for her and the
passion
that i felt
in my heart i've got to do something
to to make her proud i've got to do
something to put myself in position to
be able to take care of her
that drove me nietzsche said if you know
the wife of living you can endure almost
anyhow
jesus man that was uh
a lot i want to go back to this notion
of dominant culture you look so young i
forget how long you have been walking
this planet 75 i'm 75 years old it's
[ __ ] incredible man so thank you you
have so much optimism you're so positive
you're so quick to laugh going back to
the way that
the dominant culture can dismantle so
many people what are ways that the
dominant culture is dismantling people's
creativity
their their very spirit today that
people should be watching out for well
just think about
if you're an immigrant
and you're watching television
and you see people who can come from
white cultures with no problems
whatsoever
like the president's in-laws
but
brown people coming from
other countries they're separated from
their children and and put in cages
and there's a silence
there's not millions of people
protesting and saying this is not who we
are as a country
this is inhumane
i believe that all of us have a
responsibility
that
we want to live a life
that will outlive us
the work that you're doing
there are people that you will never
meet whose lives that you've transformed
that you you're living a life
that will out live you just think about
the fact that this program has given a
lot of people hope and there's hope in
the future it gives you power in the
present every 40 seconds someone commits
suicide but because of something you say
or
some guest that you've invited in and as
they share their story you interrupt
that story of being hopeless and
powerless and and not wanting to be here
anymore and because
they took the time to watch you create
an experience oliver wendell holmes said
that once a man or woman's mind has been
expanded with an ideal concept or
experience it could never be satisfied
to going back to where it was and so at
the end of the program at the end of one
of your presentations there are people
who
because of you
their lives will be transformed and they
will become a pencil as mother teresa
would say in the hand of god and start
writing a new chapter with their lives
i want to talk about that
writing a new chapter so you've talked
about the little voice that people have
the need to create quiet space to hear
that
combine that with the notion of the
culture sort of chipping away at people
and whether it's
based on you know race and oppression or
whether it's just the school system
teaching you to be a good cog in the
machine or whatever other things people
have to fight against how can people
that are listening to this now
especially if they're an adult that's
got all those labels put on them that's
had their creativity squished
what process do they do to hear the
voice
what sort of communion can they do to
create that imagination that's going to
allow them to
get out of that and move towards
something new that's the reason why you
designed this program you and your team
for them to do that that they have to
expose themselves to something
that will give them a different vision
of themselves and in addition to that
they have to put themselves in a
community of what i call oqp
only quality people a gentleman who
dramatically transformed my life i was
a junior at booker t washington high
school in miami florida and i went in
his class looking for another friend and
and he said go to board and work this
problem out for me i said sir i can't do
that he said why not i said
i'm not one of your students he said do
it anyhow.
and and the other kids started laughing
saying he's leslie he's dt
and he said what's dt he's his brother
is smart but he's the dumb twin
and and i said i am sir and he came from
behind his desk and he pointed at me
said don't you ever say that again
someone's opinion of you does not have
to become your reality and he taught me
three things he said if you want to
become successful in life young man he
said number one you got to change your
mindset he said you don't get in life
what you want you get in life what you
are
number two practice oqp
only quality people you earn within two
to three thousand dollars of your
closest friends i found that out i left
all my broke friends i said you all got
to go
because i used to be so broke i passed
the bank and tripped the alarm you know
and the third thing that develop your
communication skills because once you
open your mouth
you tell the world who you are he said
those are three major things that you
want to work on that will liberate you
from living in liberty city living in
poverty and over town
it will help to
escape
out of where you are right now because i
see you watching me and i know you want
more i can see the hunger
in your eyes that's why my book is about
to come out called you got to be hungry
i love that notion i love that title so
how do people get hungry
you get hungry by finding something
that's you
i believe that all of us are born unique
but most of us
dye copies
you've got to find out what is it that
turns you on what resonates with you
one of the things that i realized and
what allowed me to become successful as
a speaker the speaking industry has been
hijacked by people who speak
to sell and it's it's okay to do that
and make money i speak to change lives
because somebody spoke
and changed my life so this is my
passion this is my drive this is
something that i feel in my heart and
and so the key
to that hunger driven life
is a heart centered life i didn't do
what i'm doing for years because of my
programming because of the culture in
which i was raised in i would see other
people with with degrees and phds and
and mbas and credentials i don't have
and i convinced myself i couldn't do it
but mr washington
on that day we became friends and and he
taught me not only someone's opinion of
you just does not have to determine your
reality he said that you have to work on
yourself and you have to have an
unstoppable attitude and no excuse is
acceptable and you've got to to
make it a a priority a non-negotiable in
your life and hold a constant vision of
what it is you want to achieve see it
accomplished and go all out find a way
to win
in spite of the setbacks in spite of the
disappointments in spite of your
failures
i tell people when i'm giving
presentations you will fail your way to
success i have a saying as life knocks
you down trying to land on your back
because if you can look up you can get
up
and so
those experiences of of going after
goals that's beyond your comfort zone
and having relationships that will
challenge you and surrounding yourself
with coaches and mentors who can take
you to a place within yourself that you
can't go by yourself because you can't
read the label when you're locked in the
box
and so those experiences they challenge
you to go to that next level and
continue to move forward in your life
doing new and exciting things that eye
has not seen ear has not heard knows in
the heart of mankind what god has in
store for you when you live a
hard-centered life deciding that you're
going to live a life that will outlive
you you're going to live a life that
counts a life that will build a legacy
and change the planet you know horror's
man said we should be ashamed to die
until we've made some major contribution
to humankind and so my goal is to make a
major contribution to humankind i am a
father of ten five boys and five girls
i'm i'm suing the people who came up
with the rhythm method the method to
work you know i've got rhythm but
arithmetic does not work okay
and i have 15 grandchildren and four
great-grandsons
and so every day when i get up
my mindset is what is it that i can do
to touch and impact somebody's life
today what is it what does that look
like like seeing you i'm so excited i
started doing push-ups i said well i'm
going to go on he's going to see that i
got muscles too
man what you've done with your mental
muscles is is so extraordinary i don't
know that you need to worry about
anything else
talk to me about your grandkids your
great-grandkids like if you had just
an hour to spend with them what would
you give them in terms of setting them
up the way that mr washington set you up
like what are those core principles that
you think are most impactful
one get to know yourself
that i believe that we're taught be not
conformed to this world be transformed
by the renewing of your mind
is because i mean like that sounds slick
as hell but i don't actually understand
i know it what it means is that
don't live the life that has been given
you
by the culture by your parents by their
circumstances
by the people that's around you
that sydney port here wrote a book
called the measure of a man and he said
when you go for a walk with someone
something happens without being spoken
he said either you adjust to their pace
or they adjust to your pace
whose pace have you adjusted to
and so the things that we pick up and we
think that they're our choices but
they're the choices that we've been
programmed by life
to to do
when we leave our homes in the morning
we're bombarded with over 6 000
advertising hits
through facebook through twitter through
instagram through television through our
phones and through our communities
and through the computers and so all of
these things are impacting us every day
so if you don't have a program for your
mind then your mind is going to be
programmed and you'll find yourself
doing things that you did not know
and and that they affected you that they
through marketing techniques and
strategies
that
they will create a thirst within you i
came up in an era that said if you built
the best mouse trap the world will be
the path to your door but if you know
marketing
people will sleep outside your store
to buy a telephone they've never touched
or seen but because of the marketing
they said i've got to have that and when
they get it it's a smart phone with
their dummy because they don't know how
to work it and that is me
i got a smartphone but all i could do is
do text messages on it
hey that's already pretty good all right
so we've got our grandkids in a room we
tell them don't be programmed by the
culture you gotta figure out you've got
to get to know yourself you want to
spend time reading reading is very
important give me some powerful books
one of the books i enjoy is by my mentor
mike williams he saw this less proud
before i saw him i was a disc jockey
wvko radio station in columbus ohio and
he said hey brownie i said yes he said
you know why you go see robert schuler
and and tony robbins and zig ziglar i
said because i like the message he says
no
he said that's who you are man you can
do that
and he said you know why bert charles
gives you so much hell here
i said well he just doesn't like me no
because you've outgrown this place
there's something else for you to do
you can do what those guys do but at
that time
i was suffering from possibility
blindness i couldn't see it i had
the conversation in my head of being
labeled educable mentally [ __ ] and
and failing twice in school but over the
years
experiences
continue
to peel away and you wax the floor you
don't put wax on the existing floor you
you strip it first since over the years
the seminars the workshops the examples
the things that are observed like people
like yourself begin to peel away and
penetrate and connect with that part of
myself that says
i can do this i can do more and i
deserve more and so i would teach my
kids
that you have to transform your mindset
you have to continuously upgrade your
relationships my youngest son john
leslie
poses a question he said when you have
goals and dreams you want to achieve he
said ask yourself the question who
should i count on and who should i count
out and so many people never achieve
their goals because they have too many
toxic negative energy draining people in
their lives and you have to have goals
outside of your comfort zone that will
challenge you because in order to do
something you've never done you've got
to become someone you've never been and
you've got to have a mentor who's
experienced who who's been there done
that and and as a result of that
relationship because you can't see the
picture when you're in the frame
muhammad ali said i'm the greatest but
he never won a championship without
angelo dundee and michael jordan never
won a championship without phil jackson
so you've got to have someone that can
see something in you that you can't see
that that that can take you to a place
within yourself that you can't go by
yourself so i would tease them the value
of having a life coach that life is an
adventure and it's going to be a
challenge
and get ready
because you're going to fail your way to
success you're going to get slapped
around by life and don't spend time
complaining about it and telling
everybody eighty percent don't care and
twenty percent glad it's you
too true uh i wanna close the loop on
the books really fast so give me two or
three books that you think everybody
should read
the road to your best stuff by mike
williams i wrote the forward to that
live your dreams vivee it's a very good
one another one that's a little known
book that people
don't talk about it's by robert collier
called
secret of the ages that's a book that
really inspired me that mr washington
gave me secret of the ages
another book that is the secret of the
ages the secret of the age is that you
have the power to do more than you can
ever begin to imagine
don't underestimate yourself
you don't know enough about yourself to
become a cynic and so you've got to
challenge yourself to access that power
that you have within you you're more
than a conqueror
and the other one is a little small book
that i i don't care how many times i
read it i always get something of value
james allen as a man thinketh and they
have a female version of it as a woman
thinking
those are books that that i enjoy very
much what is it about as a man thinketh
i tried reading and to be honest i
couldn't get into it but i've heard a
lot of people that i respect a lot say
that that book really has something what
am i missing you know he died in prison
and in spite of all of the things that
he went through because he was a guy
that was ahead of his time
his his
his
experience in the in the area where he
was
and being in prison because of his
philosophy of life
didn't make him bitter you know we we've
all heard the saying things in life will
make you bitter or they'll make you
better
and and he became better he did even
more profound work while he was
incarcerated before he ultimately died
and so
his his
focus on the value of not only just
changing your mind but having a program
to do maintenance work on your mind
because those negative thoughts will
come back with a vengeance once you stop
the ritual of whatever you're doing
that will hold those negative thoughts
in check negative thoughts are like
weeds you can't kill weeds you can you
can
hold them down for a minute but once you
stop doing the things to overpower those
negative thoughts because we've been
taught to to
dislike ourselves
that that if i said to you tom you can't
do this show
you just don't have what it takes you
you have a face that only a mother could
love tom you can't do this then mit did
this study somebody else has to come
along and say tom don't pay any
attention you can do it tom you can do
this don't listen to him you can do this
listen to me linda you can do this
17 times to neutralize that one time
and and so
when we think about him and his work and
he did a lot of profound work it's it's
focused on how to begin to
get under
those conscious thoughts and impact that
subconscious mind to create an ongoing
process
of renewing how we see ourselves yeah i
want to talk about that process that i
think that's really powerful it's a
great analogy that the negative voices
like weeds are going to keep coming back
and the moment that you stop tending the
garden
you're going to be in trouble again
what does your process of tending the
garden look like what do you do on a
daily basis to keep it clean well we've
developed a program called
four steps to greatness and it's a
cyclic process
one
self-awareness where you you you
constantly uh every day when i get up i
i read i i get up and there's a there's
a scripture i love because all things
work together for good for those who
love god and for those who are called
according to his purpose
and so i meditate on that and i
visualize myself doing some good stuff
in the planet
the next step is not only self-awareness
but the next thing is
is self-approval that
you have to have a program that will
increase your sense of self reading
doing good work
volunteering constantly looking for ways
in which you can improve all the
dimensions of your life being a better
father being a better husband a wife or
being a better person because we want to
have a holistic approach to life because
if your achievements
outgrow
your sense of self you will
unconsciously engage in self-destructive
behavior and we're witnessing that now
on a national level
yeah you're touching on the thing that i
find maybe most distressing in life
i want to know about your mom
and how you were able to see her so well
in the way that you know this kid
couldn't see his father what was it
about your mom you've said you've quoted
um
abraham lincoln is saying everything
that i have or ever will have is a
result of my mother and you said you
feel the same way
what was it about her her spirit what
she did that so impacted you
one
she
i believe that she
lived a heart-centered life because
i don't feel i was given away i've never
done a search for my
birth parents until recently
out of because of
these various advertising on television
you know
and and they said something happened to
you or some of your children you want to
know if this is something that runs in
your family
but
a reporter asked her one time how did
you know
as a single mother third grade education
that you could raise seven children by
yourself and her response was i just
felt that the lord would make a way
somehow
and so whenever i go after a goal even
though
i don't have the money even though i
don't have the resources
even though i don't have the connections
i remember
sending up
one of my messages to guntherenker who
had a commercial for tony robbins
personal power
every 30 minutes on television so i sent
them one of my motivational cassette
tapes at that time
and and they sent me a load of access
you got an inspiring story but you're
black
and i i wrote back and said thank you
for telling me i never would have known
that and you've not reminded me
so and i at the end of it i wrote i'll
see you from the top
okay
and and so because my mother
she made a way out of no way she
promised our birth mother
she said our birth mother mr moore said
your mother
was confronted by your birth mother i
took her in liberty city on 62nd street
in this abandoned building
and and word was this lady had twins and
didn't want them separated and when i
brought mamie in there my mother
your your birth mother got up and got in
her face and got close to her nose and
said
are you the one
will you take good care of my boys
and mama said yes you promised never to
separate them she said yes
you're going to be good to him
she said
yes i promise you i swear to god yes
and and
she and he said that there was a
look of determination
on mama's face
as she was holding us in a light blue
blanket
coming out of there
that she was going to do this
no matter what
so i learned to become a no matter what
from my
mother and i learned the power of faith
and of of relationships she never met a
stranger she would talk to anybody talk
to a telegram folks you know
and and and i admired how when things
happen
that when she lost a job she couldn't
couldn't
work anymore
and
and she
she started selling
home brew
and moonshine
to keep food on the table
and she was arrested you know she went
to jail for us
and i was 10 years old and
they said i was an old man because
i became a man then
i sold
copper and aluminum
at pepper's junk yard
i cut grass
i shined shoes i sold newspapers
to provide until mama came back
and when she came back because i opened
the door
because like this guy who came to a
house and he was what you call
an undercover agent today
during that time we call him a stew
pigeon
and uh and he said i want to surprise
your mother
don't let her know
that i'm here i've got some friends i
want to meet her and
and i opened the door and he threw me
against the wall and and and he hit me
and they went in the back and they
brought mama on handcuffs and
and um
she said i told you never open the door
without letting me know and i said
i'm so sorry mama i'm so sorry
and when she got out she never she never
mentioned it she never brought that up
but
mama
she sacrificed
mama
we never went to bed hungry
mama
kept a roof over her head when she got
out
she kept children she baked sweet potato
pies she cooked for people
she found another way to generate income
for us
so that's why
i admire so much
yeah that's incredibly powerful you have
really lived that in your life which is
extraordinary you told one story one
time which i was really moved by about
the by any means being relentless not
stopping not making excuses
selling door to door and you and another
guy started at the same time i think it
would be really powerful especially
given that context of how much your
mother planted that seed in you
yeah this is a time where you have to be
hungry
[Laughter]
because
the over according to the department of
labor over 20 000 people lose their jobs
every month
and being replaced by artificial
intelligence
and so
i used to sell television sets or a guy
named sam
on the door hello
hi would you like to buy a good working
television set no money doubt
they know you're going from door to door
and
and
he would call the guys together when it
gets so late and say okay we gotta go
and he would call everybody to the car
and he said wait a minute he kind of hit
hey
leslie's not here and and i could hear
him saying hey leslie come on come on to
the car
and i said no sam
why not
i said i'm not going to stop until i
sell a television set
i haven't sold yet no nobody sold
anything yet i don't care sam
i've got to do this i made a commitment
i'm going to
make enough money to put groceries on
our table
and now knock sometimes 10 30 at night
and hi would you like to buy a nice
working television set no money dial do
you know what time it is yes i do
i'm going to buy a grocery store family
somebody's going to buy
a nice working television set from me
tonight and it might as well be you
and they say come on in here fool it
better be a good one
so i learned how to be unstoppable when
he came to pick the other guys up we had
to wait till they got dressed but i
would be standing out front
looking for him waiting
because i was hungry they were getting
money just to have a good time to party
on the weekend
i was earning money so that we could eat
that's all really incredible in terms of
just having a vision knowing what
motivates you going out being relentless
and pushing
how do you
you talk about making people thirsties
you've the oft quoted you can lead a
horse of water but you can't make them
drink so how do you make the horse
thirsty
you make the halls thirsty by finding
out what is it
that
will create that thirst one of the
advantages that i had coming into the
speaking industry
it's governed by the philosophy of the
dale carnegie course which is a great
course
tell them what you're going to tell them
tell them and then tell them what you
told them
mike williams my mentor said brownie
never let what you want to say
get in the way of what your audience
wants to hear
conduct communications intelligence
ask them
listen to what they're telling you
and then craft and create
a story
out of your experiences and things you
observe and learn
to begin to allow them
to see a vision of themselves
differently than what they had when you
came in
orchestrate an experience
that experience is major if information
could change people everybody would be
skinny rich and happy
i love that quote
you've talked about how for people to
make real change you have to give them a
significant emotional experience where
can people connect with you to get that
significant emotional experience they
can go to les brown.com we do a variety
of seminars and workshops discover your
power voice
getting unstuck
and the power of a larger vision that's
how they get in touch with me i love it
what is the specific impact that you
want to have on the world
i aspire
to inspire
until i expire
nice and simple yes guys if you haven't
already listened to this man's talks on
youtube you are missing out you probably
have by the way since he's basically the
meat and potatoes of virtually every
motivational compilation that is out
there it is truly extraordinary if you
haven't seen his georgia dome talk which
is the one he did in front of 80 000
people check it out it is
extraordinary and if you haven't already
be sure to subscribe and until next time
my friends be legendary take care
last that was [ __ ] extraordinary
thank you
how does a firefighter
go into a burning building
when there's this enormous adrenaline
and an epinephrine you know that could
stop most people dead in their tracks
they learn
here's the feeling it's normal
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