HL November 27,12

The speaker emphasizes the importance of taking 100% responsibility for one's own success. Blaming others or external factors for failure is a hindrance to achieving one's full potential. Successful individuals face challenges but don't let them stop them from pursuing their dreams. They seek out information and tools to improve themselves and their skills. The speaker encourages listeners to focus on their strengths and work on their weaknesses. They argue that even in tough economic times, there are opportunities for success and growth. Taking ownership of failures and learning from them is key to personal development. The speaker advocates for continuous self-improvement as a lifelong commitment. Hey, good day, everybody. Hey, listen, I got something I think is so important to becoming highly successful, if you will, that I think is holding a lot of people back. It's that real 1% holding you back. Look, if you believe that even 1% of your failure to produce the results that you want is someone else's fault, you will never, ever, ever be as successful as you could be. Look, until you decide that you and you alone are 100% responsible for the results that you're producing right now, you will never produce the results that you're capable of, folks. It's a harsh truth, but it's the truth nonetheless. Look, believing that even 1% of the responsibility for your life and your results rests with someone else or something else provides enough of an excuse that you won't be as successful as you might. Look, you have given yourself an out. Every time you have even 1% of an excuse for why you're not where you wanna be, you've absolved yourself of some of the responsibility for your life, your situation, your condition, your results, your success, or your failure, folks. Look, it's an all or nothing proposition. Let me repeat that. It's all or nothing. You have to take 100% responsibility. If you're a 99%-er, that group that looks outside themselves to blame others for their results. Look, you know how they have this thing, really, 99%-ers and the 1%-ers, how they were trying to bash the 1%-ers, the wealthy, the successful people, the 99% were trying to bash? They're trying to make the excuse, right? They're blaming the 1% for their lack of success and their lack of getting what they want in life and their lack of being where they want, right? They're blaming that 1% where the 1% is not blaming anybody. They're taking total and complete responsibility. That's what 1%-ers do. They take all the responsibility for their situation. Does that mean they don't have challenges and difficulties along the way? Of course, everybody that succeeds has tons of challenges along the way. One of the things that has helped me to succeed in a big way, especially from a mental perspective, is I've read hundreds and hundreds of autobiographies over the years of successful people. By the way, you never see autobiographies or biographies written about unsuccessful people, okay? They're always about successful people. I don't know if you've got a clue about that, but I've read just tons and tons of them. One of the things I found, all highly successful 1%-ers, well, really successful people, is all of them had lots of challenges, lots of problems, lots of difficulties, right? Things that normally would just throw people off track and make them quit. They would just keep on going. That's what 1%-ers do, right? They all have the same kinds of issues, challenges, fears, doubts, anxieties, worries as other people, except they don't allow that to stop them from pursuing their dreams, from going after what it is they really want and creating the kind of life that they dream about having. That's what 1%-ers do, and you need to become a 1%-er, okay? Don't leave a single percent or anything greater, all right? You can decide to believe that you missed your number because you don't have a great upline, a great manager, right? Or that you don't have the tools available to you. Well, we know the tools are everywhere, right? Go to POL, go on the internet. The tools for you are everywhere. The problem is you don't go after them. You don't look for them. You don't try to find them. You don't spend every waking moment searching out the information. One of the questions I get all the time is, can you recommend one book or one thing I could do to help me be successful or to do better? There isn't one book or one thing. There's a multitudes of things you have to do. It's really about making a commitment to every day searching out whatever material you need. What you need to do is you need to figure out what are my strengths? Okay, great, let's build on those. But what are my weaknesses? What's holding me back? Is it my time management? Go find out information on how to get better time management skills, right? Franklin Planner or somebody like that. Is it your leadership? Well, go read John Maxwell's stuff on leadership. Is it your sales skills? Well, listen to Tom Hopkins or get my How to Overcome an Objection CD at hectorlamarck.com, right? Whatever it is, there is information. There are tools that are available, but they're not gonna come to your house while you're sitting in your Bark-A-Longer. You're gonna have to go get them. The serious ones of you, right, those of you who are serious about winning, you'll go find the information. You'll seek it out. Even if you have a so-called upline or a manager that isn't any good, it doesn't provide you any leadership or doesn't provide you any skills, it doesn't matter. That can't hold you back. If you're serious, you'll go find the information. It's there. How did all these other people do it? They went and found it. They went and got it, okay? I don't have the technology. I didn't get enough training. My upline didn't train me, but in the end, you still missed your number. If you're a 100%-er, you'd empower yourself to act in a way that ensures you make your number with or without a manager, with or without an upline, with or without a spouse that's supportive, right? With or without parents that are supportive, with or without having gone to college or not, with or without whatever. It doesn't matter. The tools, the technology, or the training, or the education, right? It's all there if you avail yourselves. You can tell yourself that you lost that recruit or you lost that transaction because maybe your competitor undercut your prize or you weren't trained well enough or whatever, right? You can tell yourself you lost that internal political battle in an attempt to absolve yourself from the responsibility for the loss, but you still lost that transaction. You still lost that recruit. You still lost it. You did that. If you were a 100%-er, you would instead believe that you could have created more value, that you could have prepared better, that you could have been more prepared for that particular objection, that you could have done a better job of shifting the decision from price to cost, that you would have done a better job of creating value, you would have done a better job explaining your position and why it makes more sense than what they're currently doing. You could have done a lot of things. You could have built the relationships that tilted things in your direction. Look, you can brainwash yourself with disempowering belief that the economy is responsible for your disresults. A lot of you right now are blaming the economy. People don't have jobs. They don't have money. You know, people are canceling appointments, whatever. You got all kinds of excuses, right? But every time you do that, you deny yourself the gift of your own resourcefulness, your ability to find a way. The 100%ers found a way, they find a way, and some of them increase their earnings during economic downturns. Look, folks, there's people right now in this economy, it's not a great economy, I'll give you that, all right? There are people right now making fortunes. There are people doing well. There are people that are taking advantage of this tough economic time and sitting down with you and showing why it's even now more important that they get their financial house in order, that they put a plan together, that they do an F&A, that they become a client, that they have a debt reduction elimination program, that they start a business of their own part-time to make sure if they get laid off or their hours cut or fired or whatever, that they have a fallback position, right? This is a time where you can really explode if you're thinking about it in the right way. Look, with every adversity, there's an equal or greater benefit. This is a big key right here. If, and a huge if, if you aren't looking for it, it's always there for those of us who are looking for it. There's always a silver lining. There's always an equal or greater benefit, no matter what the situation, no matter what the challenges, if you're looking at it, but if you're a blamer, if you're a 99%-er and you're always blaming somebody, then you look for some other reason why, outside of yourself of why you were where you are. Look, it's true that taking 100% responsibility for your life and your results, it's a scary proposition, folks, because if you alone are responsible, you have to own up to your failures and your mistakes and you have to take ownership of those things, but it's also supremely empowering. The 100%-ers look to their losses and their failures for lessons. So whenever I had a problem, when somebody quit, somebody didn't buy, when I had a dark house, when things didn't go well, when I had a bad month, whatever, okay, bad week, bad month, whatever, I didn't look outside, look for the lessons. How could I get better? How could I get better so that the next time this excuse, objection, issue doesn't become an ongoing situation for me? What deficiency do I have that if I shored up, that I made better, I turned it from a deficiency into a strength, could prevent this from happening in the future, right? How could I have explained that in a more coherent, clear way so that they could have seen why it's in their best interest to do business with me or join my business, right? That's the way you look at all these situations. How could I get better? Because for things to get better, I have to get better. I understood that concept. And so then what I did is I made getting better an hour-by-hour situation, a lifelong commitment, something that I do all the time, that I never stop working on me. Even today, debt-free, financially independent, I'm wealthy, I don't ever let one day go by that I'm not growing me, that I'm not trying to get better, that I'm not trying to increase my awareness level in relation to how to grow my business and grow other people and develop my business, okay? I'm doing it every day, and I mean that. I mean literally every day. Folks, I have a Kindle app on my iPhone. I have it on my iPad. I have it on my computer. I have a Kindle. I don't go anywhere where I don't have something to read. Now what's so awesome about the Kindle app on your iPhone or on any kind of smartphone that you have that you could be anywhere, it doesn't matter where you are, if you have five minutes here, 10 minutes there, anytime, we'll go to a restaurant and let's say Jan's ordering, it's one of those kind of takeout places or something, and she's ordering, I'll take that five minutes that I have and I'll read as much as I can read in a book that I'm reading around to grow myself. I literally do that, folks. I do it every day. You might think that's a little fanatical, but all I know is that kind of focus, that kind of commitment has allowed me to have and create the kind of life that I dreamt of having, and it will for you too because look, you wanna attract better people, you have to get better. Look, you weren't born with certain gifts or talents, right? If you weren't born with certain gifts or talents, right, so what? So what? You're not born, the doctor doesn't smack you on your rear end when you're born and say, this person's a leader and a professional salesperson, this person's gonna play the NBA, this person's gonna be a doctor, this person's gonna be an attorney, this person's gonna be a truck driver. That's not what happens. What happens is we make choices along the way and every choice we make has a consequence. The choice to start college but not finish has a consequence. The choice to start college and finish has a consequence. The choice to go on to get a master's or a PhD, that has a consequence. The choice to start a Primerica business and quit has a consequence. The choice to start a Primerica business and then master all the seven fundamentals and work and continue to get better and continue to grow yourself and continue to becoming a great teacher of all these principles has a consequence. Every choice you make, even when you think you're not making a choice, you're still making a choice, folks, right? You're still making a choice and every one of them has a consequence. You better pay attention to every choice you're making. Tough childhood? Look, I've seen worse. Have you had a messy divorce? So what? So have a lot of other people. You had a bankruptcy? So what? So have a lot of people who had bankruptcy and gone on to make millions. Donald Trump filed bankruptcy, okay? No college education? Rick Susie doesn't have a college education. Chris Howard doesn't have a college education. Mark and Sue Younger don't have a college education. Gary McCarmon doesn't have a college education. So what? They're all multimillionaires today. It doesn't matter. If you believe that the past events of your life are in any way responsible for your results, you deny yourself your future. Let me say that again. If you believe that the past events of your life are in any way responsible for your results, you deny yourself your future. If you believe that the events of your past are even 1% to blame, you got problems, okay? I can point to countless people who are successful in every way because they take 100% responsibility for producing the results that they desire. Look, folks, I know people that I've recruited that were super sharp, super intelligent, right? That should have been superstars, but they quit. And I know people who are making huge money in Primerica right now that don't have anywhere close to the talent level of some of the people I've recruited, but they never quit and they took full responsibility and they become super successful. I know people with unimaginably horrific childhoods who have set that childhood down and now are successful and happy because they took 100% responsibility for their lives. You know these stories too. You may even have one of your own. What's the 1% of blame you need to reclaim now so that you can empower yourself by taking 100% responsibility for your life and your results, right? Here's some questions. Who's responsible for your losses and failures? Look, we're responsible for each of them. You've got to stop blaming your parents, your wife, your children, your upline, your boss, whatever, okay? The government, the economy, stop it. All it's gonna lead to is mediocrity. Why do we wanna shift the blame when we fail or when we lose? Because when we do, we don't have to take responsibility for our lives. What would happen if we took responsibility? You know what? Life would change for the better because the delusion would end. Most people are delusional. How could accepting 100% responsibility for your life and your results empower you? By putting 100% of the responsibility where it belongs with you. What 1% or greater blame have you passed off to someone or something else do you need to reclaim? Think about that. Stop it. From this point on, take charge and decide to win. Does that mean it's gonna be a cakewalk? No. Does that mean it's gonna be easy? No. Does that mean you're not gonna have any more problems? Of course not. If you're gonna be alive, as long as you're alive, you're gonna have issues, challenges, and problems, folks. They don't stop. They're never gonna go away. The key is you gotta get better at handling them. You gotta get better at handling them, folks. That's the key to this whole thing. Take responsibility.