By Vic Johnson
Q: Can you tell our readers how you came to the approach of helping people set goals as your prime educational focus?
A: Well out of desperation, Michael. I don't know how much of my story you read. But 10 or 11 years ago, I didn't have people wanting to know how I had succeeded or looking to me for any kind of advice or anything, because my family and I had been evicted from our home in 1996. And later we lost our last automobile and we were at a point of desperation. I began to study to try to figure out a way out of my dilemma. And after several years of pretty diligent work and reading a lot of books, listening to a lot of audio tapes, going to a lot of seminars, I figured out that part of the problem in my life was I never really ever sat down and figured out what I wanted. I knew what I didn't want and unfortunately because I focussed on what I didn't want, that's exactly what I got – because one of the greatest and oldest principles is whatever you focus on expands.
But I came to understand all of that and began to acquire a large number of subscribers on the internet, marketing materials for some of my heroes like Jim Rohn, Bob Proctor and Brian Tracy and others and people started to ask me: “How did you accomplish what you accomplished, and how did you turn it around and what did you do”? So I began to share those principles. But none of those principles are mine. I copied every single one of them.
Q: Describe the real turning point for you in the context of life success.
A: I can take you exactly to the day and the spot and the place and the time. And it's ironic because so much of what it appears that your magazine is focussed on was exactly the lesson that I learned. I was sitting in a seminar in Jacksonville, Florida in October of 1997 and on Saturday night the speaker on stage said thirteen magic words that changed my life. They came from the book, The Magic of Thinking Big. And those thirteen words that changed my life are: “The size of your success is determined by the size of your beliefs.”
Q: So you are a fan of thinking big?
A: I'm a huge fan of thinking big. I think that you know, Napoleon Hill says: “The very first – the beginning of all achievement is desire. And underneath everything lies desire.” So the bigger the desire, the bigger the dream, the bigger that you can believe, the more likely you are to be successful. And I've never known anybody who was hugely successful who wasn't also someone who knew how to think big.
Q: Do you think you need adversity before you can think big?
A: I needed the adversity for that. I think I already fantasised and certainly, like a lot of people had the big dreams. But I think what I needed was to know how to learn some lessons in regards to the basic principles. I don't think I was living life by the basic principles. And one of those, of course, being the Law of Cause and Effect, realising that everything that occurred in my life was created by me and caused by me. We create our own adversity but we don't do it consciously obviously. Until people learn financial responsibility, they will continue to suffer the same problems that are caused by financial irresponsibility. Only when they're learning the lessons that are attached to the results – in other words, they're not happy will the results – will they look at them. But they don't look deeper to the cause. As Brian Neville taught, every effect has a cause. They don't look at the cause. They're only looking at the result. They're trying to change the result. They're working in the wrong place. You've got to work on changing the cause. What was the cause of that result? Until you canlook at the cause and change it, the obstacle is going to continue to present itself. If you address the cause, you change the cause, there's no more need now for the obstacle and it will pass away and a new one will replace it.
Q: Keeping a journal is a common theme in your teachings. Can you explain about the use and purpose of keeping a journal?
A: Well a journal is a tremendous tool because there's something about the kinetic – you know the kinetic movement that takes place between the writing and the brain. I'm not a scientist. I can't explain and I don't know whether many people can really explain what happens. But we know that writing a goal down increases the odds of success many times over. If someone wants to have about 10 times the odds of achieving success, they simply begin by writing it down. That in itself – that action of writing it down – has been demonstrated countless times that it increases the odds for success. I heard for many years how important it is to write your goals down. Did I do it? No. I ask audiences to raise their hands if they write down their goals. I used to embarrass them by asking if they had heard of journaling but don't do it. It's amazing how powerful that concept is. I don't know anyone who doesn't teach some type of journaling – nothing more than keeping some type of daily planner.
Q: You've said it's important that people think independently. How do you suggest that people integrate themselves and still act and think independently?
A: Well you definitely should associate with like-minded people especially if your goal is to become a person of significance. So much of what we talk about when we discuss success is attached to money – but success is so much more. It's about being significant. If you want to become a person of significance, then you need to make the decision that you're going to associate with likeminded people. You're going to associate with other people who are seeking significance.
I don't mean that you become so independent in your thinking that you're rejecting what others say. What I'm saying is you must become the gatekeeper of your thinking. You can't just consciously and subconsciously allow other people's thinking to guide yours. And most people do. You've got to become the gatekeeper. You have to allow in what you approve of or something that you've at least given some thought to. If you're not the gatekeeper and are allowing someone else to do the thinking in your life then it's not possible for you to live the life that most people want to live. What I mean is that you need to become diligent about what goes in. If you're diligent about the input, you'll learn to distinguish between what is a good source and what isn't.
Q: Can you define success?
A: Stop and look at how we reward – take any profession you want and look at the people who are at the top, even if you want to take celebrities and use them as an example. Now go to the base of their success and you'll find it's always rooted in one thing: the more you serve, the more you're rewarded. If it's a popular musical entertainer they serve more people through their music or whatever it is they do and therefore they receive a bigger reward for it.
See future editions of thinkbig for more from Vic Johnson. For more information visit www.vicjohnson.com
