Zig Ziglar Biography

“You can have anything in life you
want, if you’ll just help enough other
people get what they want.”
–Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar is the world’s foremost authority on motivation. An internationally renowned speaker and authority on high-level performance, His I CAN course is taught in more than 3,000 schools; and hundreds of companies and businesses utilize his CDs, books, and video training programs to motivate and train their employees effectively.
As a sales trainer, he has lifted the careers of many thousands with effective strategies to not just make a sale, but to create a sales professional. “Selling is not something you to do someone, it is something you do for someone.” Zig’s Secrets of Closing the Sale audio training program is a must-have for anyone involved in the world of selling.
Zig Ziglar has taught his values-based principles for becoming a more effective persuader and person to sales organizations, church groups, schools, and businesses. And he has reached thousands more through numerous television and radio appearances and through his popular audio and video training programs. For many years, his Sunday school class held at First Baptist Church, Dallas, was broadcast each Sunday morning, via satellite.
Years ago, Zig Ziglar walked away from a record-setting sales career to help other people become more successful in their personal and professional lives. His background in successful direct sales has made Zig one of the world’s foremost Sales Trainers. His name is synonymous with confidence, motivation and success. A master at motivational speaking, Mr. Ziglar has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Fortune, Success and Esquire magazines, and has appeared on the Today show, 20/20, 60 minutes and The Phil Donohue show.
Zig Ziglar’s unique brand of logic and enthusiasm are overwhelming. Just a brief exposure to Zig makes a fan of anyone. He has that rare ability to make audiences comfortable and relaxed, yet completely attentive. As an author, he has produced dozens of successful books, audio CDs, and video programs, including his flagship product, How to Stay Motivated. As a concerned citizen, Mr. Ziglar has been recognized in the Congressional Record of the United States for his many contributions to the American way of life.
Over the last 30 years presenting himself and his motivational ideas, he has developed a national following. He has grown from a one-man show to chairman of the Zig Ziglar Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, with a staff of more than 60 employees — an organization which is committed to helping people more fully utilize their physical, mental, and spiritual resources. Zig has traveled more than 3 million miles throughout the world as a speaker and lecturer.

Let top motivator and sales trainer, Zig Ziglar, help you be a winner in every area of your life.

November 28, 2012

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Zig Ziglar, an exceptional speaker, educator, and motivational trainer, earlier today.  He was 86 years young and energetic to the last. Zig’s values-based principles for becoming a more effective persuader and person are used in sales organizations, church groups, schools, and businesses all over the world.

Zig Ziglar was a popular contributor to our MindPerk One Minute Motivators newsletter. Of all the hundreds of motivational trainers out there, my all-time favorite, the one I have recommend to more people and organizations than any other, is Zig Ziglar.  Why?  Not only did he have great ideas and solutions, he presented them with energy, humor, and enthusiasm.

I’ve met Zig and watched him teach in person. What an amazing experience! A few years ago, I attended a live seminar that Zig had customized for a company. At the time, he was approaching 70 years old. I was amazed that he had more energy and enthusiasm than I did at 40!

Zig Ziglar has had a profound influence on my life and I thank him for what he has taught me over many years.

At MindPerk, we express our love, respect, and condolences to the Ziglar family. Zig’s message has positively impacted the lives of millions and will continue to inspire and educate generations to come.

Bill Mansell, President
MindPerk,Inc.

Stay Positive and Move Forward: Avoid Dealing with Mistakes the Wrong Way

Everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question is “Do you stay positive and move forward from life’s inevitable ups and downs?”

Here’s how you can learn to maintain positive thinking and benefit from your mistakes in the face of adversity.

This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself and to move forward from the troubling things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

Stay Positive

There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They can’t move forward, don’t expect a lot and don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.
On the other hand, people who practice positive thinking see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive thinking and expectations. They stay positive, expect a lot and are seldom disappointed.

Flex Your Mental Muscles with Positive Thinking

When you develop positive thinking and the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move forward. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.
Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?

Cut Your Losses and Move Forward

The fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses, stay positive and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision—and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision—that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful.

Learn From Your Mistakes

The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.
Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to move forward, stay positive, and develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition.
By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.
Thank you for reading this post on how to stay positive and move forward by avoiding common mistakes in handling life’s adversities. How do you apply positive thinking in your life? Please comment and share below!

From My Mentor
Brian Tracy's Blog

9 Success Factors for Personal Growth: Moving Forward to Achieve Your Best Life

There are nine success factors that you must know in order to start moving forward in life.  Each one of these success factors has been proven to be critical in the achievement of the best life possible for any given person. By systematically implementing one or more of these success factors into your life, you can put your foot on the accelerator of your own career and achieve the best life for yourself.

1. Education

The first of the nine success factors is education. In our society, the highest paid people are those who know more than the average. They know more of the critical facts, ideas and information than the average person in their field. As a result, they can make a more valuable contribution in a knowledge based society and live the best life possible. They are valued more, respected more and ultimately paid more money and promoted more often.
The rule is that, “to earn more, you must learn more.” If you want to increase your level of income and achieve the best life for yourself, you must increase your level of intellectual capital and thereby the value of the knowledge component in what you are doing.

2. Skill

The second of the nine success factors that you can use to achieve the best life possible is simply “Skill.” Your level of ability in your field will determine the quality and quantity of your results. The better you get at what you do, the easier it is for you to start moving forward to get a particular level of results.
As you increase your skill, through study and experience, you get better and better at doing the small things that increase the speed and predictability of your results.

3. Contacts

The third success factor for moving forward and achieving the best life is by developing an ever widening circle of contacts. You will find that every major change in your life is accompanied by a person or persons who either opens or closes doors for you. The possibility of the best life for you will be determined by the number of people who know you and like you and who are willing to help you.
In order to broaden your network of contacts, you must network continually, at every opportunity. There seems to be a direct relationship between the number of people you know and how successful you are.

4. Money

One of the most important of the success factors, is “money.” Having money in the bank gives you greater freedom and the ability to take advantage of opportunities when they come along. If you are broke, or in debt, you have very few options open to you.
One of the most important things I ever learned in life is that you are only as free as your options. If you have no options, you have no freedom. If you are stuck in a dead-end job that you cannot leave because you have no money set aside, you have put a brake on your potential. You are locked in place and have no option for moving forward. You can end up spinning your wheels and losing months and years of your time by the very fact that you have no choice but to accept whatever is being handed to you.

5. Good Work Habits

The fifth of the success factors that enables you to get far more done in a shorter period of time is simply “good work habits.” Your ability to increase your ROTI, or “Return on Time Invested” can enable you to accomplish vastly more in a shorter period of time than another person who is disorganized and sloppy.
Developing good work habits requires that you think before acting. You make a list and set priorities on the list before you begin. Good work habits require that you consider the likely consequences, positive or negative of what you are doing.

6. Positive Mental Attitude

The sixth success factor for your career and life is to reduce the amount of time that it takes you to achieve your goals is by developing a “positive mental attitude.” A positive mental attitude is very much a decision that you make. Remember, you become what you do. If you engage in the same activities that positive, confident, optimistic people engage in, you will eventually become one of them and live your best life possible.
Anyone can remain positive when things are going well. It is your ability to look for the good in every situation that you see positive and start moving forward in life.

7. Positive Image

The seventh of the success factors you can incorporate into your lifestyle, and one that can help you achieve the best life for yourself, is the development of a positive image. People judge you by the way you look on the outside, by the way you appear. The fact is that you judge everyone else by the way they look on the outside, as well. Taking time to present an attractive image in your person, your clothing, your grooming and your accessories can have an inordinate impact on the doors that open for you and the people who are willing to help you start moving forward in your life.

8. Creativity

Creativity is another wonderful way to start moving forward in life and to increase the speed at which you achieve your goals. Creativity is something that requires that you continually look for better, faster, easier, cheaper ways to get the job done. Remember, one good idea is all you need to start a fortune.

9. Character

Perhaps the most important of the success factors to accelerating your life is your character. Self-discipline combined with honesty will open countless doors to you. Trust is the foundation of all relationships. When people know you and believe in you and are convinced that they can trust you to keep your word and do what you say you will do, they will feel that they are far more likely to get the things they want through you, to get the things they want, faster, sooner, easier and with greater certainty.

Thank you for reading this article on moving forward and living the best life possible. Do you know of any other success factors that can help accelerate your life and career? Please share your thoughts and comment below!

My Mentor,
Brian Tracy

Critical Success Factor: Developing a Moral Character to Achieve Greatness

No matter what you do, your ultimate goal, beyond what you are trying to accomplish at the moment, is to achieve your own happiness and become a good person. An individual can exercise a key success factor for developing a moral character to achieve the kind of happiness everyone longs for.
People are successful in life to the degree to which they can organize their world in such a way that they are genuinely happy. The only difference between people in this area is that some people are better at achieving their own happiness and others are not particularly successful. Some people make choices and decisions that make them unhappy and worse off than they ever would have been if they had done nothing at all. But always, happiness is your goal.

Strive to Become a Good Person

In his time, Aristotle examined the human condition and came to a remarkable conclusion.  He said that, “Only the good can be happy, and only the virtuous can be good.” This is one of the major breakthroughs in philosophy. Imagine! You can only be happy if you are a good person, and you can only be a good person, and you can only be a good person if you practice the virtues that are associated with goodness.
What this means simply is that, if you want to have a wonderful life, you must continually strive to become a good person. Any deviation from this course will lead you to lower levels of happiness and dissatisfaction. Every single time you act consistently with the highest virtues that you know, you feel happy and strong inside, your self-confidence and self-esteem go up and you become more effective in your relationships and in your work.  Virtue is its own reward.  It pays for itself in the inner feeling of pleasure and contentment you have when you live consistent with the best you know.

Develop a Moral Character

In order to achieve happiness and become a good person, you must know that character is the greatest success factor of all. If you want to change your outer world, you must go to work, like a computer programmer at a keyboard, to reprogram your subconscious mind, your world of values, beliefs, and inner convictions so that the person you are inside is exactly the mental equivalent of the life you want to enjoy on the outside.
Your reputation is your greatest asset. Your reputation can be defined as how people think about you and talk about you when you’re not there.  As you know from your own experience, when people talk about you in either positive or negative terms, and you find out about it, it has a major impact on your thinking and your emotions, either positive or negative.
Because of the Law of Attraction, as you develop a moral character, and live more and more by the highest and best virtues that you know, you will become a happy and good person. You must always strive to exercise this success factor and develop a moral character.

Success Factor for Greatness

If character is the greatest success factor to your life, the fundamental component of one’s character is trust. In relationships, trust is the glue that holds it all together. It is impossible for us to proceed in any kind of a relationship unless we trust and feel confident with the other person.  All good friendships are based on trust. All strong families are based on trust. And in companies, which are larger business families, trust is the fundamental ingredient that determines the success and prosperity of the enterprise.
The very best companies to work for have high-trust environments. Everyone in the company, at every level, absolutely trusts and believes that what people say is true. In almost every company of value, telling a lie can be a sufficient reason for losing your job.
The ultimate expression of trust is truthfulness. Your very best friends and closest associates in life will always be those who tell you the truth. The willingness to be absolutely truthful with yourself and others is the critical mark of a person of outstanding moral character. If integrity is the core quality then truthfulness is the most obvious expression of integrity.
Shakespeare said, “And this above all, to thine own self be true. Then, it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  You must always be absolutely be true to yourself. This means being true to the very best that is in you. This also means that you always do your very best in every situation, especially at work where people are counting on you.  If the inner expression of integrity is truth, then the outer expression of integrity is quality work and quality behavior under all circumstances.
In Abraham Maslow’s studies of self-actualizing people, he found that one of the characteristics of the most advanced people he found was that they were extremely objective and truthful about themselves, about their strengths and weaknesses, and about their situations in life. They never tried to convince themselves of things that weren’t true. They exercised the success factor of character and “lived in truth” with themselves. As a result, they were able to live in truth with others.
Refuse to compromise your moral character. Refuse to pretend or wish or hope that something is not true, when in your heart, you know it is.
This means that you live in truth with everyone around you. You state your truth simply and honestly. You do not stay in relationships that are wrong for you, or do things that you do not agree with or believe in. You do not say things to people that are not honest and sincere expressions of your true beliefs. You adamantly insist on living in truth in every aspect of your life and strive to become a good person.
What are your thoughts on the greatest success factor of all? Do you agree that an individual’s moral character is important for one to develop in order to achieve happiness in life? Please comment below and share with others if you enjoyed this post!

My Mentor
Brian Tracy

The Potency of Enthusiasm

“Nothing,” someone once told me, “is as contagious as enthusiasm.” He was quoting Edward Bulwer Lytton though I didn’t know it as the time. It is a thought that has stayed with me over the years and I have no doubt of its truth. Let’s face it, if you can’t get enthusiastic about your own ideas and projects, how do you expect others to get excited?

When I first started writing songs, as a young man still thinking I might become a pop star, I would sometimes go over to the piano or pick up my guitar and begin a new melody. With the song only half figured out, I would then often leave it for a day or two. After a couple of days, either I could remember that song or I couldn’t. And that was how I would test to see if the song was worth finishing; whether or not it was something I might be able to get enthusiastic about.

Do you have enthusiasm for your work, the job or business in which you are presently engaged? If so, that great; if not, are you doing the right thing? It is said that most people will spend about 72 thousand hours in their day jobs. That’s a lot of time to be doing something for which you have no enthusiasm don’t you think?

Without enthusiasm, it is impossible to give of your best. But with that magic ingredient, whatever you do will come to life. I remember, at my last place of work, seeing a colleague teach a course with passion and enthusiasm. Other people taught the same material, but just did not get the same results in terms of customer satisfaction. Everybody loved the enthusiastic guy and indeed, he was a role model for many.

Here’s a couple more questions for you to contemplate:

1. If you somehow inherited enough money to live comfortably without ever working again, would you continue to work?

2. If you answered ‘yes’ to the first question, would you continue to work in your present field of expertise?

If you answered ‘yes’ to both of the above questions, I bet you also answered ‘yes’ to the question about having enthusiasm in your current job. If we are engaged in what we want to do, it is easy to be enthusiastic. If, on the other hand, we are going to work for entirely the money, then perhaps we may not be quite so enthusiastic.

However, even in your present job, whatever it is, if you could just be more enthusiastic, I guarantee the world would perceive a different person and your results would improve, no matter what you do.

What Can Enthusiasm Do for You in Your Present Job?

Within ten days, enthusiasm took me from $25 a month to $185 a month(nb:that was in 1920′s)-it increased my income by 700 percent. Let me repeat-nothing but the determination to act enthusiastic increased my income 700 percent in ten days! I got this stupendous increase in salary, but not because I could throw a ball better-or catch or hit it better, not because I had any more ability as a ball player. I didn’t know any more about baseball I did before. … Enthusiasm alone did it; nothing but enthusiasm.

The above quotation is taken from the book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger.

So how can you become more enthusiastic about what you do? I love Zig Ziglar’s answer to this question. You can watch him speaking about it here.

He suggests that you take a piece of paper and write at the top the following heading: 20 Things I Love About My Job. Then you have done that, make a list. Force yourself to do it if necessary, but find 20 things you, at least, like about your present job. Zig usually starts people off by suggesting that number 1 on your list might be that ‘they pay me’.

Zig then suggests that you use that list to craft 20 positive affirmations about your job. Say them every day to yourself (and don’t worry, they can’t lock you up for it) with enthusiasm and as Zig says, you won’t believe how the people around you have changed

Will Edwards
Whitedovebooks

Be the Best You:7 keys to a Positive Personality!

our physical diet has a large impact on your health and energy levels. If you eat fresh, healthy, high-quality foods of all kinds and avoid the foods that are bad for you, you will have more energy, be generally resistant to most diseases, sleep better, and feel healthier and happier.

In the same way, your mental diet largely determines your character and your personality and almost everything that happens to you in life. When you feed your mind with positive ideas, information, books, conversations, audio programs, and thoughts, you develop a more positive and effective personality. You become more influential and persuasive. You enjoy greater confidence and self-esteem.

Those who work with computers use the expression “GOGO,” or “garbage in, garbage out.” But the reverse is also true, “Good in, good out.”

When you make a clear, unequivocal decision that you are going to take complete control over your mind, eliminate the negative emotions and thoughts that may have held you back in the past, and become a completely positive person, you can actually bring about your own personal transformation.

Be the Best You Can Be

Mental fitness is like physical fitness. You develop high levels of self-esteem and a positive mental attitude with training and practice. Here are the seven keys to becoming a completely positive person:

1. Positive self-talk: Speak to yourself positively; control your inner dialog. Use affirmations phrased in the positive, present, and personal tense: “I like myself!” “I can do it!” “I feel terrific!” “ I am responsible!”

We believe that fully 95 percent of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself as you go throughout your day. The sad fact is that if you do not deliberately and consciously talk to yourself in a positive and constructive way, you will, by default, think about things that will make you unhappy or cause you worry and anxiety.

As we said before, your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.

2. Positive visualization: Perhaps the most powerful ability that you have is the ability to visualize and see your goals as already accomplished.

Create a clear, exciting picture of your goal and your ideal life, and replay this picture in your mind over and over. All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. As you “see” yourself on the inside, you will “be” on the outside.

3. Positive people: Your choice of the people with whom you live, work, and associate will have more of an impact on your emotions and your success that any other factor. Decide today to associate with winners, with positive people, with people who are happy and optimistic and who are going somewhere with their lives.

Avoid negative people at all costs. Negative people are the primary source of most of life’s unhappiness. Resolve that from today onward, you are not going to have stressful or negative people in your life.

4. Positive mental food: Just as your body is healthy to the degree to which you eat healthy, nutritious foods, your mind is healthy to the degree to which you feed it with “mental protein” rather than “mental candy.”

Read books, magazines, and articles that are educational, inspirational, or motivational. Feed your mind with information and ideas that are uplifting and that make you feel happy and more confident about yourself and your world.

Listen to positive, constructive CDs and audio programs in your car and on your MP3 player or iPod. Feed your mind continually with positive messages that help you think and act better and make you more capable and competent in your field.

Watch positive and educational DVDs, educational television programs, online courses, and other uplifting material that increases your knowledge and makes you feel good about yourself and your life.

5. Positive training and development: Almost everyone in our society starts off with limited resources, sometimes with no money at all. Virtually all fortunes begin with the sale of personal services of some kind. All the people who are at the top today were once at the bottom, and sometimes they fell to the bottom several times.

The miracle of lifelong learning and personal improvement is what takes you from rags to riches, from poverty to affluence, and from underachievement to success and financial independence. As Jim Rohn sald, ”Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

When you dedicate yourself to learning and growing and becoming better and more effective in your thoughts and actions, you take complete control of your life and dramatically increase the speed at which you move upward to greater heights.

6. Positive health habits: Take excellent care of your physical health and wellness. Resolve today that you are going to live to be eighty, ninety, or one hundred years old and still be dancing in the evenings.

Eat healthy foods, natural and nutritious, and eat them sparingly and in proper balance. A nutritional diet will have an immediate, positive effect on your thoughts and feelings.

Resolve to get regular exercise, at least two hundred minutes of motion per week, walking , running, swimming, bicycling, or working out on equipment in the gym. When you exercise on a regular basis, you feel happier and healthier and experience lower levels of stress and fatigue than a person who sits on the couch and watches television all evening.

Especially, get ample rest and relaxation. You need to recharge your batteries on a regular basis, especially when you are going through periods of stress or difficulty. Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Some of the factors that predispose us to negative emotions of all kinds are poor health habits, sleep deprivation, lack of exercise, and nonstop work. Seek balance in your life.

7. Positive expectations: Practicing the Law of Attraction is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to become a positive person and to ensure positive outcomes and better results in your life.

Your expectations become your own self-fulfilling prophesies. Whatever you expect, with confidence, seems to come into your life.

Since you can control your expectations, you should always expect the best. Expect to be successful. Expect to be popular when you meet new people. Expect to achieve great goals and create a wonderful life for yourself. When you constantly expect good things to happen, you will seldom be disappointed.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave a comment and share with your friends!

From My Mentor,

Brian Tracy