Michael Beckwith, Lisa Nichols, Jack Canfield, John Assaraf, and Bob Proctor

LEWIS HOWES: This is episode 836 on the secret of the law of attraction.

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LEWIS HOWES: Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. Each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today, now let the class begin.

[MUSIC]

Rhonda Byrne said, “We become what we think about. Energy flows where attention goes.” Welcome to the special episode where we’re talking about the secret of the law of attraction. Now if you have heard about the book The Secret or the movie “The Secret,” the movement that have became—the Law of Attraction became something that a lot of people talked about a decade ago. It became more mainstream and it’s becoming more mainstream even today. But so many people haven’t mastered this. And so many people think that, “Okay, if I just think about something, it’s got to come to me. If i think about a million dollars, I’m going to have a million dollar check the next day.” That’s not the case. There is a power to the law of attraction. 

And I wanted to do a special episode where I bring you some of the key individuals who are in the movie and in the book who talked about this. Who have lived it, who have acted on their actions for decades, and helped millions of people collectively around the world manifest more greatness in their life. So we are bringing you some of these key individuals from The Secret. 

We’ve got Michael Beckwith who is a minister, author, and founder, and spiritual director of Agape International Spiritual Center. He’s done some incredible work, he’s been featured in every news site you can think about. From Dr. Oz to Oprah to Larry King—he’s been all over the world and helped millions of people. 

We’ve got Lisa Nichols. International motivational speaker, bestselling author, philanthropist, and founder and CEO of Motivating the Masses. Again, also been all over the place on Oprah, Steve Harvey, Dr. Phil, CNN, and spoken in front of hundreds of thousands of people. 

We’ve got Jack Canfield who’s a multiple New York Times bestselling author, and founder and chairman of the Canfield Training Group which trains entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, and motivated individuals how to accelerate their achievement of their goals. Also created Chicken Soup for the Soul series which blew up and sold a ton of books as well, if you remember those series. 

John Assaraf who has built five multimillion-dollar companies, written two New York Times bestselling books, featured in eight movies including The Secret as well. 

We’ve got Bob Proctor we just had on. New York Times bestselling author, speaker, coach, and co-founder of Proctor-Gallagher Institute. Doing the work for more than 40 years. One of the biggest names in prosperity and personal development.

We’ve got these key individuals to bring you wisdom on the secret of the law of attraction. In this interview and episode, we talked about visualization as a tool to stir emotions and then become action. Because it’s not just thinking about something, it’s the action and intention behind the action is what’s going to manifest it. The difference between anger versus righteous indignation. How to program your brain to become more disciplined. It’s a lot of distraction going on in the world right now, how do we program our brain to be disciplined? Negative self-talk and the effect it has on your brain and body. How detrimental it actually it is for you. And how using our imaginations correctly can break us from our conditioning.

I am so excited about this. If this is your first time here, make sure to share this with a friend. Text one friend this link whether you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you’re listening, text them this link and say, “Hey, I think you should check this out. It’s going to help you in your business, your life, your relationships. Check it out right now.” And tag me @lewishowes on social media when you’re listening so I can connect with you over there.

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Without further ado, let’s dive into this episode. The secret, the law of attraction.

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IVEE: People have a tendency to care more about what other people are thinking about them than what their soul wants. So they live—”What is someone going to think of me? What’s my mother going to think of me? What’s the society going to think of me?” And inside, everyone has a destiny. Beautiful destiny. The soul is calling us to greatness—the name of your show—to be great beings, to be great lights, to live fully. Oftentimes people will dim their light in order to fit in to someone else’s paradigm and end up with crisis, end up with disease, end up with prolonged sadness—when you can just step out of that. There’s so much life to live. I think a lot of people just run by what others are thinking about them rather than what their soul wants.

LEWIS HOWES: Yeah, powerful. I think when we shine our light, the challenge is sometimes there are people that try to take us down. How do we handle that when—it doesn’t matter how much positivity you try to put in the world and how much good you try to do, someone’s always gonna try to take you down. How should we handle that?

IVEE: Well, first of all, we have to be aware that mediocrity always attacks excellence. It’s kind of a rule. No one’s attacking a couch potato. So if you sit on the couch eating potato chips and getting fat and doing nothing, no one says anything. But the moment you start to walk toward your dream and you start to break habits, you start to change relationships that no longer serve that dream, you start to be talked about. Then many people are afraid of failure which means that they’re afraid of being ridiculed. But once you become aware that you’re going to be ridiculed if you fail, and you’re going to be talked about if you succeed, then you’ll be able to put that aside. Because you know you’re going to be talked about either way. If you go forward and you fall— “Oh, he went forward and he didn’t make it.” But if you go forward and succeed, they’ll say, “Ah, it was luck.” Whatever they say about you. 

So once you get out of your mind or become aware that people are going to talk about you either way, then you go for it. You’ll see. And at the end of the day, you are different because you went for it. That you’re going for it. Actually brings out latent powers and gifts and talents within you that can’t come to bloom unless you go for it. So when you reach your next mountaintop—and mountaintops are endless—when you reach your next peak, who’s with you are the people that are supposed to be with you or could be with you based on what you have become. Now, you go for another peak. And then the people that are supposed to be with you there are with you. And all the naysayers—

LEWIS HOWES: You might shed some people who came with you from the—

MICHAEL BECKWITH: [inaudible]. Yeah.

LEWIS HOWES: Some people might come with you to the next mountain but some people might be left behind, right?

MICHAEL BECKWITH: Absolutely. You keep your heart open but you never just [inaudible] people out of your life. Your heart is open. But you’re constantly growing and unfolding. So I think that when you’re going for a goal, it’s not just achieving the goal, it’s actually who are you becoming in the way to bringing that goal into manifestation. And then your new becoming, you have a different vibration. And now that people in that vibration are hanging with you. They support, they love, they appreciate you, they cheer you on [inaudible] than tear you down. If you’re living in a paradigm of scarcity and lack, you tear people down. If you’re living in a paradigm of abundance and [inaudible], there’s enough for everybody. You cheer people on. So your success makes me happy! “Oh, oh, look [inaudible]. That’s great, that’s fantastic.” I’m not in the paradigm of thinking that because you succeed, there’s less for me. I’m in the paradigm of thinking if you succeed, that’s a shining example. “What he did is possible…”

LEWIS HOWES: I can go do that or something else.

MICHAEL BECKWITH: I can do what I can do in my life.

LEWIS HOWES: What’s the thing that you’re most proud of of who you’ve become on all the mountaintops you’ve reached?

MICHAEL BECKWITH: I think I have a deep sense of compassion for people. I have a very deep well of forgiveness when people are concerned.

LEWIS HOWES: You forgive quickly…

MICHAEL BECKWITH: Nothing sticks. Nothing sticks to me. I was just recently with a good friend of mine, Cicely Tyson, she comes to Agape when she comes in town. We had a conversation. She was indicating—there was some things that had been done to her recently. She had no bitterness about it. And she’s 94.

LEWIS HOWES: Wow. Like someone attached her or did something wrong to her…

MICHAEL BECKWITH: Somebody stole some stuff from her, and they preyed on her because she’s a senior citizen. She said, “I don’t have time to let that burden me. I have too much life to live.” And she’s 94 years old. I want to be like that. I don’t have the time to hold the burden of anger or resentment [inaudible] something or whatever the case may be. I think I’ve always had a deep well of that, but being with her recently made me [inaudible] to go a little deeper.

LEWIS HOWES: Wow. Is there ever a time to be angry in life?

MICHAEL BECKWITH: Yeah, I think there’s a difference between just anger and righteous indignation. Righteous indignation, and we should be indignant when we live in a country and there are people that can’t eat. We live in a country of so-called wealth and we still have people that don’t have universal healthcare or just the basic needs that can be provided by our society. Or the way we treat women. Or the things in that particular nature. I think that as righteous indignation, there’s difference from just being angry or living at a high level of [inaudible] all the time that only since toxic chemicals do our body temple. So sometimes anger can be a masking emotion for fear. People can actually be afraid and they mask it with anger. So I think there’s righteous indignation. With time, that we need to act. [inaudible] that we need to make a difference [inaudible] voice speak about things that need to be changed.

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LISA NICHOLS: I love doing visualizations because—and it’s really important to individuals. You can’t see it over there, you have to see it right here. You gotta feel it right here like I am. It’s all I am. I am in my dream home. I am in my dream relationship. And then unpack with that looks like. But most importantly, unpack what it feels like. And when you have that emotion in this moment, all of a sudden, you stir up something that I don’t think will ever go back to sleep. That will go, “Okay, let’s go get that.” And what it really does is it sets up a state of cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is when you see something in your mind, and you see yourself in a way that your behaviors are not currently leading to it. So your mind becomes disrupted, and it goes, “Okay, can we get there? I’m not there right now, and that’s not comfortable.” Your mind wants to literally be congruent—what it thinks is what you’re doing. What it thinks is what you’re doing. 

So when you set up a constant—and abundant thinkers like you and I, we do it unconsciously—we’re constantly keeping ourselves in a state of cognitive dissonance. Meaning, “Okay, what else? And I’m seeing Lisa over there,” and I’m going, “Okay, let me go.” While being grateful for my now. It’s not in that “I’m going to be whole and complete when I get over there,” I’m whole and complete now. I just know I’m supposed to be over there so let me do what’s necessary to get over there. And let me evict any behaviors or characteristics that are stopping me and let me adapt any nuance that I need.

LEWIS HOWES: How does someone discover their unique calling? Did you talk about that in the book, discovering your unique calling. What if people are like, “I don’t even know what I want, I know I want to be out of the place I’m in, I wanted to be abundant, wealthy, healthy, great relationships, but I don’t know what my purpose or calling is right now.” 

LISA NICHOLS: I think people put too big a notion on purpose. And that they think that it has to look like Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa or Oprah or you or I. And a lot of times what you’re really good at is right in front of you. What you’re really great at is right in front of you. And to recognize that you’re calling and your purpose can change. That it can change. You have a  long lifetime. It’s not going to be the same calling the whole time. And so allow yourself to evolve, allow your purpose to evolve. What’s that thing you do effortlessly that you give no credit to? Because you’re just looking past it. “Oh, it can’t be that because it’s not hard.” Well, how about it doesn’t have to be difficult? How about the fact that you’re a great listener? How can you take that and use that and expand that?

And don’t compare yourself to someone else. I think Benjamin Franklin said comparison is the thief of all joy. When you look left or right—people are always comparing me to Oprah Winfrey or [inaudible] Les Brown or Tony Robbins. If you want me to give you Oprah or [inaudible] or Tony or Les, I’m always going to, 1000%, fail you. But if you’re ever interested, I do a damn Lisa Nichols. I do a good Lisa Nichols. So when you look at “What are my gifts? What are my unique gifts?” I knew very early on, I was a gifted speaker. I wasn’t certified as a gifted speaker, I haven’t passed any courses as a speaker, as a matter of fact, the last time I took a speech class, I got a D-. And my speech teacher told me, “Miss Nichols, I recommend you never speak in public, that you get a desk job.” That was in my freshman year of college, the last speech class I took.

So a lot of times, your gift and your purpose, you’ve discounted it either because someone else discounted it or what’s more common is you don’t know how to monetize it. Sometimes the greatest gift you have to give is not for fee, it’s for free. You watch people like you and I and go, “God, can I get paid for it?” Well, not every gift you’re supposed to get paid for. Nelson Mandela did not get paid from leading 27 years when he got out of prison. He got paid after that. But he was a great leader while he was in prison. And Martin Luther King, he got paid from the church, but his fight for civil rights, that was a free one. And he paid the highest cost. And you can go on and on and on to some of the greatest leaders. Mahatma Gandhi, they want no paycheck. I know we’re scaled down to our version, but don’t get attached to having to get paid for your gift.

LEWIS HOWES: Right. I started this podcast as a way of “I’m going to do this for free for a year, I’m not going to take any sponsors [inaudible] do anything. I’m not going to [inaudible] anything, I’m just going to create and facilitate great conversations, and that’s it. And now the money is coming in because of how it’s impacting people’s lives.

LISA NICHOLS: And your intention was in the right place.

LEWIS HOWES: Yeah, but I wasn’t like, “How can I do this right now to make money?” It was, “How can I serve the mass number of people?”

LISA NICHOLS: That right there. When people live in a place of servant leadership—my grandmother said when I was 24, “If you live in how you can serve the most people—” When I sit with my team, I go, “How can we serve more people?” Last year, we were able to touch 30M people. And that’s all our question. Now as we serve, our platform [inaudible] how can we serve [inaudible] tell me how we can make more money. I’m not interested in that. [inaudible] how can we serve more because if I do the right thing for the right reasons, everything I [inaudible] will be a byproduct of that. So I think we get caught up, and society has us looking at possessions. So we begin to measure our joy and our abundance on possessions. I have a friend, he’s worth $14B. How do you even write that? I had to write it down so I could see it.

LEWIS HOWES: [inaudible] zeroes [inaudible].

LISA NICHOLS: Right, right. A lot. He’s worth $14B. I check my email on my phone before we started, and he’s on my phone asking me, “Please come visit me.” Because he’s lonely. He’s rich but he’s not abundant. He flew to Canada to come to my house for New Year’s just to be around people who were celebrating and wanted nothing from him. So don’t pursue the things, pursue the acts of service, and everything you need will come, I promise you.

[MUSIC]

JACK CANFIELD: Well, we’ve actually seen studies done where when somebody yells at themselves, going, “Gosh, darn it. Why are you so stupid, Jack? I can’t find my keys.” It actually affects the brain in a negative way. It actually creates a vibration—I wouldn’t say destroys brain cells, but [inaudible] on a recent video, actually showed some brain cells dying when people were thinking negative thoughts. [inaudible] some of the new neuroscience out there. But more interestingly, Dr. Masaru Emoto who did all this work with water, he actly…

LEWIS HOWES: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Would put the negative words on them.

JACK CANFIELD: Yeah, he puts negative words on the bottle. But his first experiment was to put a bottle of water, like a little Evian water, have all of his students send negative energy: “I hate you,” “You’re stupid,” “You’re a fool,” took that water, froze it in little petri dishes, bring it out, stick it under a microscope with a camera on top, and as the crystals start to melt, if forms these big, ugly, black blobs. Take the same kind of water, another bottle, on a different day, send positive energy to the water, freeze it, put it under the petri dish when it’s melting, forms beautiful snow crystals. Two things were fascinating: 1.) Water has memory. 2.) 85% of your body is made up of water, your brain is made up of even more water, a high percentage. So when you’re saying negative things to yourself, you’re affecting yourself in a physiological way. If you say, “I am sick,” you’re actually creating sick in the future.

See, a lot of people think when they’re describing the present—”Well, I’m sick.” But the fact is, you’re prescribing the future by describing the present as it is. And most people never get. So this is why the people that lived the most effective lives are always acting as if they’re in the future and the future’s perfect. Not waiting to get there. I do this demonstration on stage when they teach us, they say—someone walks out and say, “I feel bad today.” [inaudible], “Oh, you want to feel bad? We’ll give you bad.” [inaudible]. “Now, I feel worse.” “Oh, you want worse? We’ll give you worse.” And then pretty soon, I’m crawling across the stage. But it all started with “I don’t feel good.” You know, we’ve all learned to say things like, “I’m having a healing crisis.” “I’m cleansing.” Instead of saying, “I’m sick,” I said, “Basically, anything you say with the words ‘I am,’ your subconscious will then take that as a command.” And so we’re constantly programming our subconscious. We think we’re describing it, but we’re actually prescribing it.

LEWIS HOWES: Are there studies of people that are constantly saying self-negative talk or expressing negative things against people who are positive constantly, who die earlier ages or who have more cancer, are there any studies about that, about the actual lifespan of someone when they—

JACK CANFIELD: I don’t know studies about negative self-talk but I do know that negative self-talk creates people being unhappy. There are tons of studies that happy people live longer, they recover from diseases faster, they don’t get as many diseases, their marriages last longer, they live longer—people that are in a positive space. Every statistic is better. No matter what it is.

LEWIS HOWES: How can someone be positive when they’re broke and people are cheating on them and they’re coming from a bad family or they’re in a bad neighborhood? How does someone come from that place of— “Oh, the future is great. The future is perfect. I am healthy,” when they’re not?

JACK CANFIELD: It’s a choice. You simply have to choose it. See, once I learned—early on, I was in graduate school, and I read a book called Seth Speaks. It’s about all the stuff we’re talking about. It was a book [inaudible] by this woman named Jane Roberts. It just rung true as truth. I was just, “This feels right.” What she was teaching is that your beliefs are a choice. We think our beliefs are the result of seeing something outside of us. We say, “I believe if a spider bites you, your skin turns red because that’s what I saw happen.” But we could hypnotize people, tell them, “My thumb is a poker,” hid them on the hand, and their hand will form a blister. We can tell people that this is poison ivy and give them maple leaves and they’ll do that and their skin will break out in a rash. Tell people that poison ivy is a maple leaf, run the poison ivy on it, nobody breaks out in a rash. So we know that so much of our internal behavior and our feel-good are created by beliefs.

Now, then the question I have was, “Well, what should I believe?” What if I believe the wrong thing and I’m going to get myself in trouble? I was afraid to believe anything for a while. And then I realized the only beliefs to make any sense are the beliefs that will take you from where you are to where you want to go. So what are the beliefs that successful people believe? Look at Oprah Winfrey. Born into poverty, sexually abused as a child, but she believed she could get to where she wanted to go. Someone else without that belief didn’t try. So simply the belief. And it’s a choice. Everything is a binary choice. You’re either believing something that takes you where you want to go or something that takes you away from where you want to go. You’re choosing love or you’re choosing the opposite which is fear. It’s like a computer code. 0 or 1. Which do you want to choose?

Now you have to become conscious because most people around you are unconscious and they’re just agreeing with everything that’s negative that’s why you want to hang out with positive people. But if you read books like this, if you go to seminars, and you meditate, and you listen to podcasts, surround yourself with positive energy, pretty soon you get engulfed in this positive thinking. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, transformed.

[MUSIC]

JOHN ASSARAF: Beliefs are the lamps by which we can actually see the world, and by which we behave. So if you want to change your results, don’t focus on changing your behaviors, change the focus on the beliefs that drive your behaviors. So the next question though is well great, what kind of beliefs do I have? Well, we have two types of beliefs. This is where it can get a little bit heady, and that is when you start talking about my brain. It’s an organ. It’s like your heart is an organ—you can speed up your heart, you can slow down your heart. You can speed up the brainwaves in your brain, you can slow them down. You can tune in, you can tune out. We haven’t been given the users manual for the most powerful tool that we’re aware of. I know you being an athlete and a successful businessman, you have discipline. You cannot achieve results without some kind of discipline.

So we know there’s some fundamental truths to achieving success. And every successful person will tell you—and Jim Rohn, he’s like—I know you love Jom Rohn, he said, “You need to pay the price of discipline or you need to pay the price of regret. Discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tons.” But the thing is, can you teach discipline? The answer is yes. You have to have a willing participant. If the participant’s reason why is big enough, if they know I want to achieve X. And the reason why, the motive for their action, motivation, the motive for their action is a reason beyond just themselves, chances are they will do more to achieve that success than if it was just left up to their own. But there are some people that are born with incredible drive. They just have this insatiable drive, and they’re just, “I’ll do whatever it takes for the things that I want.” And there’s other people that want things, but they just don’t have this insatiable drive. 

As much as I hated school, I love to use school as an analogy. In the game of life where there’s health, wealth, relationships, career, business, spirituality, fun experiences, you have to decide, what level of the game do I want to play at? Is it the grade school level, the kindergarten level, the high school level, the university level, or the pro level? Because each one of those levels requires a totally different mindset and totally different skillset. They’re building blocks on each other but if you are extremely talented but you’re not prepared to practice and rehearse and drill and fall and fail forward to the next attempt, you will never make it as a pro. You will never make it as a pro business person, you will never make it as a pro husband or wife or athlete or musician. You just never will. So just get used to that if you’re not prepared to pay the price.

If you are prepared to pay the price and you have the aptitude and the talent, now, we’re talking about some real potential here. And what we don’t know is what’s in your heart. What is the fire that stirs you, that you wake up saying, “I will do this even when I don’t feel like it?” “I will do whatever it takes to overcome my temptation for mediocrity, my temptation for excuses, my temptation for reasons and circumstances that hold me back. I won’t allow those to be in my way.” And if you have that within you, you’ll achieve whatever you choose. So the question you asked before is how do you develop them? Start small. So if you don’t have discipline, show yourself that you can give yourself one command and one follow through. You know what, right now I’m going to get up and I’m going to do two push-ups. Right now. Not later, now. Can you give yourself a simple command? One sit-up? Right now I’m going to go get a glass of water. You start with something ridiculous. I learned many years ago: reduce it to the ridiculous. So for reduce it to the ridiculous, I start, I say, “Can you do that? Great. Will you?” Because that’s the difference right there, is that’s the razor’s edge.

[CROSS-TALK]

JOHN ASSARAF: Great. When?

LEWIS HOWES: Now. Yeah.

JOHN ASSARAF: Right. So if you develop that skill—specifically from a brain plasticity, neural plasticity perspective, as soon as you do that, you give yourself a command and you take the action, you have just created a neural patterns—you give yourself a command then take action. That just maybe one time. Well, what if you did that every hour by putting a little L on your computer? And every hour, like if my computer’s open, every hour, it would say, “it’s 12:00,” “it’s 1:00,” and I take 60 seconds just to be in control of my mind. I don’t care where I am. Stop, take six breaths and just get centered, “Am I on track? Am I off track? Am I doing something I shouldn’t be doing?” versus a high-impact activity I need to be doing. Every hour, I’ve trained myself to just reset. I didn’t always do that. I just started with one a day. Then two. Then three. Then it was working so well, I said, “Great, let’s do this every hour.” But more importantly is as soon as you become the person who believes in themselves—you see, everything you do or don’t do leaves an imprint on your self-worth and self-esteem scale. And you know it. You know it. 

LEWIS HOWES: Everytime you have that cake or you have that cookie—either you believe in yourself or you don’t believe in yourself. 

JOHN ASSARAF: Everytime you’re voting with every decision, you’re disqualifying what every negative belief, you’re qualifying with every positive. Same with behaviors. So you start getting aware of “Am I qualifying myself to move forward or am I disqualifying myself [inaudible] say I want and what I do or don’t do over and over and over.” Because thought patterns become emotional patterns become behavioral patterns. Our brains pick up on our thought, emotional, and behavioral patterns and says, “Hey, you know what? You’ve done that one enough. I’m just going to make that automatic for you.” So all of a sudden—if you’re a person who has a lot of positive thoughts but you suck at taking action, your brain says, “Let me make that a permanent pattern for you so you don’t have to think about it anymore. But I’m also going to create some neural tension and I’m going to make you pissed off at yourself now. Now you’re going to start talking to yourself about how you don’t want to not take action but you’re still taking action.”

[MUSIC]

BOB PROCTOR: I’m different things. Like I used to watch him all night and yell “record.” When I first went to work for him, he had a recording studio would be like this if there was a window. My office, I could look in when he was recording. One day I realized, “He’s talking to that damn microphone.” It was a microphone. And I thought, “That microphone’s a person to him.” And you [create?] all the great broadcasters, they just talk to one person. That you people or you folks or—talk to you. But they’d be talking. And I realized, “He’s talking to a microphone.” So [inaudible] recording, I talked to one person. [That’s a ?] microphone. [inaudible] I said I talked to one person. It’s these little lessons that I picked up to get better at what I was doing. Remember, if a person’s negative in an audience, real negative, there can be 500 people in that audience, that one person’s energy is so strong…

LEWIS HOWES: It stands out, yeah.

BOB PROCTOR: And there was a woman that I met, Beverly [inaudible] years and years ago, and I was at [inaudible]. I asked her one time, she was the speaker, I asked, “Beverly, what are you doing if there’s a negative person in the audience?” She smiled and she said she’ll talk to the light, not the dark. I was like, “Wow.” So obvious, why did I miss that? So if I’m [inaudible] and there’s a negative or few negative, I just take one person that’s super positive and then I [inaudible] like a [inaudible] person, I’m like a [inaudible]. And talk to that person. 

LEWIS HOWES: So focus on the positive.

BOB PROCTOR: Always.
LEWIS HOWES: Always. You won’t try to put your attention on the person and try to get them to being happy and smile, you just—

BOB PROCTOR: If they just open their mind for a minute, you’re in. You’re going to get the information into their subconscious mind. 

LEWIS HOWES: I think one of the faculties you said was the most challenging was imagination. Is that one of the most challenging—

BOB PROCTOR: It’s not the most challenging, it’s something we really want to gain an understanding of because most people they use their imagination, they use it the wrong way. They imagine what won’t work. They imagine something bad happening.  

LEWIS HOWES: What should we imagine more often? Everyday?

BOB PROCTOR: We should imagine you should see yourself where you want to be. You got to live there. There’s a great book you may be familiar with. Stella Adler’s book The Art of Acting? Oh gosh, you got to get it. Stella Adler was a great acting teacher. She was a method acting teacher. She studied under Stanislavski, the Russian acting teacher that originated method acting. 

LEWIS HOWES: Marlon Brando wrote the foreword in her book.

BOB PROCTOR: He was the first method actor to reach superstardom. 

LEWIS HOWES: And he wrote the foreword in your book?

BOB PROCTOR: Nope. Stella Adler never actually wrote a book. A man named [inaudible] took all of her teaching, all of her lessons for teaching, and he put them into a book. So when you read her book, you’re going to her acting classes. Shakespeare said, “We’re all actors, the world’s a stage.” And that’s true. Well, when you reach your goal, you’re going to act like you’re already there. It’s already happened intellectually the second you think about it. It’s already happened emotionally when you’re emotionally evolving. So it’s only a period of time until it manifests in physical form. But because it’s not in physical form, we act like we haven’t got it yet. That’s why most people stay stuck, because they act like they haven’t got it yet. Or I can’t act like that. Lewis would see that I haven’t got that result, he’ll think I’m funny. I got to quit worrying about what Lewis thinks and start concentrating on what Bob thinks. You see yourself, your imagination, you’re going to be that person. [inaudible] said that. [inaudible] said, “Before you can do something, you must be something.” So you’ve got to be it intellectually, you’ve got to be it emotionally.” [inaudible] a person’s [inaudible] is in their heart [inaudible] emotional [inaudible]. Well, [inaudible] don’t manifest physically, that’s one of the first laws of the universe is the perpetual transmutation of energy. Energies moving into form. Always. [inaudible] form, moving into forms, [inaudible]. So we cause it all to happen the way we think and the way we stay locked and [inaudible]. 

LEWIS HOWES: How should people be developing their imagination on a daily basis in a positive way?

BOB PROCTOR: Well, they should take time to image what they want. I have a business partner, Sandy Gallagher, who’s a brilliant woman. She rides horses, gated horses. She’s in Kentucky right now [inaudible] shows there. She images herself as a world champion. Everyday, she takes a time and she sees herself as a world champion. She sees herself getting the roses. Getting the whole thing. And that’s why [inaudible] do it. I think you build an image of what you want. I mean, you obviously imaged this studio before you ever built it. I mean everything you see here was part of the image in your mind. But everything you create, you create twice. One’s in here, one’s out here. So you never get an original painting, you always get a duplicate. The picture’s in here.

So we have to see ourselves of what we want here. And we’ve got enormous deterrent in our paradigm. We’re conditioned genetically and environmentally, and that conditioning’s controlling most people’s lives. That’s why brilliant people are broke. Brilliant people are unhappy. Brilliant people never really accomplish very much. They’re absolutely brilliant, but their paradigm is controlling them. It’s all about intellect. The smart people. But you got to consider where we come from. A little particle of energy from another little particle of energy [inaudible]. That’s [inaudible].

[MUSIC]

LEWIS HOWES: There you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Powerful wisdom from these icons in this industry and this space on the power of the law of attraction and abundance in your life. 

If you enjoyed this, please share this with one friend. Text one friend the link from Spotify or your Apple Podcast player, or just text them the link lewishowes.com/836, that will take them right to the episode. You can be a champion and a hero in someone’s life when you pay this forward and you add value into someone’s life. So text one friend, post it on WhatsApp group chat, post it on a Facebook group chat you have, tag me on Instagram stories, @lewishowes. I try to connect with as many of you over there when you tag me and you screenshot that you’re listening to it or you share your thoughts. I reshare a lot of this as well over on my Instagram. So share with your friends, text it to one friend, and post it on social media by being a champion to someone else in helping them improve their life today. 

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And we are three weeks away from Summit of Greatness. Oh my goodness, going to be exciting. I am pumped. Make sure you get your butt to Columbus, Ohio, September 5-7. We’ve got people flying in from around the world so it doesn’t matter where you live, people are flying in from your country, and you’re going to meet some of those fascinating attendees, speakers, workout leaders, workshop leaders, performers, they’re coming to present and attend. Summitofgreatness.com, check it out right now. I can’t wait to meet you and say and see how your life has transformed and improved after attending in three weeks.

Again, Rhonda Byrne said, “We become what we think about. Energy flows where attention goes.” The truth is that the universe has been answering all of your life. And the truth is that the universe has been answering you all of your life but you cannot receive the answers unless you are awake. I hope you’re reflecting every single day on your life. On what’s working, on what’s not working, on where you want to improve, and where you want to be heading towards, and what you want to be manifesting in your life. The more aware and attentive we are to our thoughts, the more we can shift and adapt and change to manifest what we want. I hope you’re doing that every single day, I hope this podcast is supporting your life and helping you improve and guide you the way it does for me. This is as much for me as—the reason I do this show is to help me improve. I’ve got a lot of things I have to work on all the time, and it continues to help me improve my life in every area. So I hope you’re enjoying this. And as always, you know what time it is. It’s time to go out there and do something great.