Executive TLDR
Leadership means building leaders, not managing followers
You are either growing or dying, stagnation does not exist
Quit or recommit is a daily split-second decision
Eliminate doubt and fear while building belief and confidence
Goals demand change and intentional transformation
Association elevates or limits your growth
Awareness, acceptance, affirmation, and action drive reinvention
Video Summary
Bill Whittle teaches that long-term success comes from becoming a leader who develops other leaders. Leadership is a learned skill that requires growth, intentional coaching, and continuous personal development. He emphasizes that stagnation does not exist — you are either growing or dying. Every leader faces daily moments where they must choose to quit or recommit, and success belongs to those who consistently recommit.
He explains that many people operate from limiting beliefs formed early in life, often living subconsciously through past conditioning. To grow, leaders must renew their thinking, remove excess baggage, and intentionally transform their mindset. True leadership eliminates doubt and fear while building belief and confidence in others. Association plays a critical role — surrounding yourself with energized, growth-focused individuals strengthens momentum, while negative environments create limitation.
Whittle outlines a practical transformation process: awareness of weaknesses, acceptance without denial, affirming a new identity, and taking consistent action. Goals demand change, and desire fuels discipline. Leaders who confront challenges, reject compromise, and recommit daily position themselves for nonstop growth to the top.
FAQs
What does it mean to build leaders instead of followers?
It means developing independent, confident individuals who can think, teach, and lead others rather than relying on constant direction.
Why does Bill Whittle say you are either growing or dying?
Because stagnation is an illusion. If you are not intentionally improving skills, mindset, and leadership capacity, you are declining.
What is the “quit or recommit” principle?
Every day presents moments of difficulty. Leaders must consciously choose to recommit to their goals instead of allowing obstacles to justify quitting.
How do leaders eliminate doubt and fear in their team?
By breathing belief into people, reinforcing confidence, recognizing progress, and modeling resilience.
What are the stages of leadership transition?
Moving from small to medium to large levels of impact requires new thinking, new habits, and releasing old limitations that no longer serve growth.
Why is association so important?
The people you consistently surround yourself with shape your mindset, standards, expectations, and ultimately your results.
What is the first step to personal transformation?
Self-awareness — honestly evaluating your thinking, behavior, and habits before making intentional changes.
Glossary
Recommit
The conscious decision to continue pursuing goals despite obstacles or discouragement.
Learned Helplessness
A psychological condition where individuals believe they cannot change outcomes due to past failures or conditioning.
Personal Development Program (PDP)
A structured system of reading, learning, affirmations, coaching, and reflection designed to promote continuous growth.
Servant Leadership
A leadership approach focused on serving, uplifting, and developing others rather than seeking status or control.
Excess Baggage
Limiting beliefs, negative associations, habits, or attitudes that prevent growth and elevation.
Association
The influence of the people you spend time with and how it impacts your mindset and results.
Awareness
Conscious recognition of current behaviors, habits, strengths, and weaknesses.
Affirmation
Intentional repetition of empowering beliefs to reshape identity and behavior.
Goals Demand Change
The principle that achieving higher levels of success requires new behaviors, new thinking, and personal transformation.
Transcript:
You know, I was thinking about. I was watching back behind stage, and last night I talked to my wife and my son Blake, and I talked to my daughter, and were just talking about this event, and I talked to several guys in my hierarchy, and I was just bragging on y’all two things, bragging on you for what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve done. I look at the $9 million income earners that are here, and I think about the collaboration is a big thing in leadership. You know, can you get a group to come together when they’re really not together, where they’re separ. You know, and being a coach and playing most of my life and having that coaching background, I try to take the coach approach to all my business.
So my mindset is that of a coach, and I bring that over in my parenting. I bring it over into my business life. And, you know, one of the biggest challenges you’re gonna have as leaders, and that’s your job, is to be a leader that leads leaders, leader that builds leaders. And John Max says it takes one to know when, it takes one to show when, it takes one to grow one. So. So therefore, you have to become one. And leadership is a learned skill. It’s a trait. It’s something you can learn. And so when you come to something like this, like, I still, once again, I shared this for the RVP’s yesterday. I still, at my age 74 next week, I’m fired up about that. Two weeks from now. Two weeks from now.
And so any gifts, things like that, just send them to my address. I’ll put that on the screen later. But, you know, I’m still trying to get better because I know I still need to grow. And, you know, I have a growth coach. And you ought to do the same thing. You ought to have a personal development program. Pdp. Personal development program. But if you look at all coaches, all your great coaches, once you start growing, you really are dying. That’s not just true in business. True in your personal life and anything else. And I thought about what I’ve seen out here and getting a group like this to come together. I was telling Andy how proud of I was, him and Bret, and I was watching what they’ve done here, and y’all come together like this.
And it’s also a testimony to the leaders here, because part of leadership is to getting people to voluntarily subject themselves to other leaders. Does that make sense? I know at our place called HPC arena, it’s called Healing Place. I thought it was such a Weenie title for a church. Healing place for a hurting world. Until I started realizing, because it used to be Trinity Church, it’s a huge mega church. And I’ve always been financial supportive, helped start that church there. And. But when the pastor left and we changed the name to hpc, I thought, that’s kind of a weenie type name. And then I started realizing, no, it really is. Cause people out there are hurting, right?
And if you can bring people into an environment where they can feel healed, where they can feel together, and you had something to do with that, and you put your healing hand on people’s lives, that’s servant leadership, you know? And so that church, looking at how we’ve got eight different people on our staff, already opened up eight different satellite churches. And so the growth of that thing’s been unbelievable because Mike Hayman, the pastor there, has grown individual church leaders. So if there’s something where Mike isn’t there, he comes to my office every Wednesday morning, leave a Bible study at our office every Wednesday morning. Then when my guys and gals go out and open their own offices, they also start their own Bible study. So it’s like my personal ministry. And they spread the gospel and they do it like that.
But it’s also a leadership thing. So he’s got eight different. And his staff that’s now being mentored and developed. So when they go out, they’re ready when they go out. So as you’re sitting in an audience like this, you ought to be thinking and studying everything, okay? And I know this is a little psychotic, but I would do this, all right? I really would do this. I was watching Jerry Byer behind stage. I was watching Jimmy last night, and I was laughing my butt off back behind stage when I was hearing Jimmy go through the names of everybody. Cause he. Did you see me? Did he butcher. I mean. I mean, he butchered it up, right? But in my office, in my fast starts goes, they won’t even let me.
If the names are Joneses and Smiths, it’s like, no, don’t let a widow do that. He’ll screw that thing up, you know? And I was listening to Jimmy back there. I swear to God, I was laughing so hard I almost died backstage. But I thought. But you know what? You didn’t notice that because his energy level was so high and he’s so fun. And so you ought to be thinking about that, okay? What is that? What is the uniqueness of these leaders? The energy level, the fun, the excitement. I was watching Jerry, and I would Just I’m enamored by people like Jerry. And I watched some of the things he was doing up here, like what he was teaching up here. He’s a great teacher. And once again, that is a sign that all great leaders are great teachers.
The greatest basketball coach in the history of mankind was Johnny Wooden. And Johnny Wooden, his background was. He was a teacher. And so you need to learn what are the traits, what are the skills of teaching. Now, let me tell you what a teacher does versus a communicator. I’m getting off my topic. I gotta get over here. But a great teacher, a communicator and a teacher, and people that just talk, that’s a whole separate type thing, okay? Like an educator. Let me give you an example. An educator, like a college professor. People like that, they’re usually not great teachers, okay? They’re just educators. They just talk and talk and talk, okay? There’s a difference between that and really a teacher. Because if it’s really a good teacher, like, I had a college professor and this guy was like, in zoology or something like that.
It was a pretty tough subject. And it was like, if you got a 50, you would get a C or a B or something like that. And I came in after I got my grade, I came in, I said, let me tell you something. I said, you’re really a horrible professor that says, where I’ve got my grade. You don’t want to do this before you get your grade, okay? And he said, what do you mean? I said, I got a B in your class. And my grade point, I got a 60% was the highest I got. He said, well, that’s because you did so good. I said, no, you’re a horrible teacher. I said, you can’t tell me all of us were that bad, that dumb, that you couldn’t communicate them information good enough for us to get it.
You gotta do the same thing with your children. If they’re not getting what you’re doing as a parent, you’re a horrible parent. If your team is not good at sales, the QBI’s bad, their attendance is bad, their dress code’s bad. Whatever it is, you gotta look in a mirror, not out the window. Remember, it’s about the mirror, not the window. You look in a mirror, you don’t look out the window at everybody else. You look in a mirror at yourself. Michael Jackson, the Man in the mirror. And you ought to do that. You got to look at yourself and say, what do I need to do to become A better teacher. And then study great teachers. Study the people on this stage. I had Andy came and did my fast start school a few months ago, just lit it up, okay?
And the moment I walked in those doors last night, I felt this. And if you don’t, you should feel when you go to an event like this, it’s not only what you hear, it’s not only what you sense, it’s what you feel. You should feel it. You should feel the warmth, the camaraderie in this room, the energy being put into everything here. The attention to details, that’s by design. Nothing happens in life by default. It’s all by design. And you need to do the same thing. You need to be paying attention today. Look at everything. How did he do this stage? Andy said, bill, I came to your event. I saw the unbelievable recognition you do. We do the best fast start schools. I promise you that. Anybody in the entire nation. Best recognition. Anybody in the entire nation. You know what?
That’s by design. Now, it’s also a lot of money out of my pocket and stuff like that, but that’s by design. It’s not an accident. And I get it because there’s a payoff to it, okay? So you gotta look at this. Why did they do the recognition? Why did they have the different people speak? How did they do the promotion? Stuff like that. Then I watched, like, when Julie and Ken got their promotion, and I started thinking, feel that. Okay? One of your jobs as a trainer, a leader, once again, educate, motivate, tolerate, communicate, build relationships. Well, that’s motivation. You gotta realize there’s different things that motivate different people. You say, well, I don’t need recognition. I promise you, most people do. Now, you may be a weird duck and you say, well, I don’t need recognition. First of all, you’re lying.
The way you know if somebody needs encouragement is if they’re breathing. Everybody wants to be felt special. Now, you may have an ego, you may have kind of a negative attitude about yourself, but I promise you, if you don’t get to the point where you want to feel special, be recognized, and it doesn’t mean anything to you. You’re slapping the face of somebody who’s trying to make you feel special. You ever given somebody a compliment? Oh, no, it’s no big deal. Hey, you look nice. Oh, this old thing I got on this, that and the other. You’re not doing it. That’s a self. Self deprecation. You don’t really care about yourself and you’re slapping other people in your face. So one of the things you gotta do is you look at Julie and Kenny got promoted. Did you see the energy in her face?
Did you see her jumping around? That smile on your face? See, that should bring back memories. I remember when I got promoted by Art Williams in Jackson, Mississippi and he called my name. I was sitting back in an audience, I cried all the way up to the front. I remember that moment, that was the most special moment of my career. And I’ve gotten every recognition and more than anybody’s ever gotten, I think in the history of the company. And I remember that moment. That was the most special moment. I relived that moment. And you know why? Part of it is the way Jerry did that whole thing. But the way she accepted it, you don’t think that made Jerry feel special? And Rhonda, it makes you feel special, it makes them feel special.
So remember this, when you’re trying to make people feel special, you gotta be intentional about that. And the Bible says never withhold good. Whether it’s when you’re powered to do good. So ask yourself. Now some of you writing this stuff down, which means you’re not growing, you’re not learning anything, you’re not gonna remember all this stuff. So you’re gonna leave here and go back doing the same thing. You don’t wann. So if you gotta go out of your way to try to find, I call it being a gold digger. You know, you wanna. The way you find gold is to remove a lot of dirt. The dirt’s there. In whose life? Everybody’s life. Our lives, Their life, everybody’s life. Your job’s to remove the dirt and find the gold. Be a gold digger. Everybody has a redeeming factor.
I don’t care how big of a scumbag you think somebody is. And a lot of people are scumbags. But you know what? There is a redeeming factor. What’s your responsibility? Find it. Remove the dirt. Now what do most of us not want to get our hands what dirty? You’re a leader. If you’re not willing to get down, get out, you’re never going to be a leader. I see people do it when they get, they get into leadership and they get pretty well. I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do that. Anything you say you’re not going to do. That’s called limitations. You’re gone, you are toast. The moment I see a leader start saying, well, I’m not going to go to a meeting or I’M not going to do that or I’m not going to. It’s too hard. This, that.
And you need to get out. You’re already toast. You are done. You’re done. So I wanted to encourage you. Stay excited, stay energetic. Find something that motivates you so that you can be the shining example. The Bible talks about, Take the lamp off your light and let it illuminate the path for other people to follow. That’s your job in leadership. Let your light shine to the world so they’ll see the light and the path and the way to greatness. And you’re that example. You’re that shining example. So let me get started on this thing here. Cause I’ve already shot my mouth off a bunch of stuff right here. So this is called the transition. And you’re always going to be in transitional state in Primerica. I think that’s true in everything in life. And Art Williams always said, you’re either growing or you’re dying.
So if right now your business is stagnated, okay, think about that. What’d he say? You’re either what, growing or. So is there such a thing as stagnation in Primerica? No. Either what? Growing or dying. So when you’re at that stagnation stage, you gotta say, oh, Lord, I’m fixing either grow or I’m fixing to die. I do a host presentation. One of my good friends wrote a book called the Split Second Choice. It’s an incredible book, okay. Wrote about 40 years ago. He and I are really good friends. He lives right there in Baton Rouge. He was with Dale, Carnegie Group and this, that and other great, unbelievable books. But we all get to a point where we have to make that split second choice. Do we stay or do we leave? That’s true in everything in life. Do I stay on my diet?
Do I break my diet? Do I stay in this marriage? Do I get out of this marriage? Do I stay loyal? Do I stay committed? Do I stay humble? Do I get egotistical? But there’s always that split second choice. And once you make that choice, I’m telling you, it’s unbelievable. And think about this. The only time you can coast in life is when you’re going downhill. So when you’re like this, okay, if you’re gonna go up in life, all success is a struggle. That’s not a maybe, it’s a fact, okay? It’s just the way it is. Like losing weight, okay? You gotta stay on that diet. You gotta make yourself force yourself and you gotta start pedaling all uphill, and it’s forever, by the way. The struggle isn’t like a temporary thing.
This is gonna be that way the rest of your entire life or career. Cause they’re all tied together. Now, if you want to coast, you want life to be easy, then you’re going downhill. Guys, this ain’t a maybe. This is factual. So if you look at the transition of what we’re going to cover today, and you look at the. Okay, went blank here. Okay, okay, here we go. Okay. Okay, here we go. All right, now. Now, this is not. I don’t have time to do this, but it’s another presentation I had wanted to have time to do with you. But some of y’all, right now you’re in a small phase of your business, okay? And you’re having. You’re making a decision to go to the. And you want to get big, okay? Now, to get.
Go from small to big, you’re going to have to go through the medium stage, okay? That means you’re going to have to leave the small stage. Okay? Now think about that. If you’re leaving this stage. Somebody asked me this question yesterday, okay? Do you keep doing the same thing to get to the next stage? No. Okay. Whatever got you to the stage you’re at will not get you to the next stage. Now will some of those things still go there with you? Will they? Yeah, like in basketball, passing, shooting, dribbling, doing all things, the fundamentals don’t change. But how you do those fundamentals have to change? Do you have to do them the same way? Do you. No, you have to do them. What? Remember that presentation we did last night? To be the best, you have to beat the best.
To beat the best, you have to know what the best have done, and you gotta be willing to do it. So what is your objective? What should be your objective this weekend? Find out what. What the best do. Make sure you’re taking notes of it and say, I need to do that. Grade yourself on everything we’re talking about today on 1 through 10. And be honest with yourself. So if you’re bad at some of these things we’re talking about, say one and check it. If you think you’re really good, put it down. You’re good. But here’s what you need to do. Don’t assume that you’re right. Go ask somebody else what is their opinion of you. And ask two or three people that you respect and get a realistic answer and then go to work on those different things.
So you gotta make changes, right? And then you’ll go to the medium stage. You won’t have the same people with you, same thoughts, the same ideas. We’re gonna talk about that. And then you’ll make it the large stage, okay? And so if you look at us, when you go into business, you birth an idea. You go build a family, you build a business, you’re birthing an idea, you have this bright idea. Now let me ask you a question. When you were born, how many thoughts did you have? When you were born? None. How many belief did you have? None. No values, Nothing. It was a clean slate. So where’d you get it? It’s called imprinting. You got it from zero to three. You get it from your parents and this, that and the other.
So if you grew up like my daughter Lauren, she had a grandson, my grandson Beckham. And I noticed when I was staying with him, cause I got a house two doors down there in Florida. I bought a place down there, two doors down there so I could be there all the time to advise them. No, they wanted us to be down there. So it’s really exciting. We’re a lot of fun. And I noticed that every time Beckham, now he’s starting to walk and stuff like that. But I kept hearing the word not so much from Loren. But Adam, my son in law, he’s very, very protective. Incredible human being. Most loving person I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Ex professional baseball player and this, that. And a very successful real estate broker.
I mean mortgage broker and most successful mortgage broker in that area. And so I hear it kept saying no, he’d reach for the cabinet. No, he’d redo this. No, no, no. Now what’s happening? It’s being what? Imprinted. Programmed to what? No, stop, don’t try now. He’s a kid. Are they going to fall? Are they going to bump their head? Now you don’t want them to run out in the street, okay? But at some point in time, you got to give them a little chance to make a mistake. Do this, that and the other. And so you’re being programmed. And then all of a sudden from three to eight now you have different experiences from other people’s experiences. Eleanor Roosevelt said, you’re not who you think you are, you’re not who other people think you are.
You ultimately become who you think other people think you are. Now all of a sudden you’re getting the experience of other people who’s basically telling you who you are. You’re a good student, you’re not that good student I knew growing up. I was not a really good reader initially, didn’t think I was. So they put me in remedial reading. My dad got killed when I was 11, so I had a kind of bad attitude about that. But then, now I read five, six books a day. I mean, a week. I’m very astute in my reading. I can read. I’m a speed reader and stuff. But you know what? I had those skills. But I was being told all this time that I was limited. I wasn’t limited. I just didn’t have anybody tell me what my limitations were.
So then you have the other people’s experiences being pushed upon you now. Parents, this is what’s happening. Some of y’all are sitting here, you’re living the life of a child. You’re still living the life of a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 year old. And that ain’t who you are. So what do you gotta do? You gotta kinda reinvent yourself, by the way, people you associate with. Cause if you keep hearing this stuff over, some of you ain’t write it down again. You’re not gonna change. You’re still living like this. You’re limiting yourself. So you gotta focus on this stuff, right? And that’s the only way you’re gonna start growing. So you have this birth. You’re excited, you’re all pumped up, you’re energetic. And all of a sudden you hit this curve and things get tough, gets tough, and you abort, you quit.
Some of y’all at that stage, right now, you’re really thinking about quitting. Now, you’re not gonna say it. Cause you wanna save face. So you’re looking for all the reasons to justify, rationalize quitting. You know, you’re that place right now. Doubt, fear, write this down. Your job of leadership, when you recruit somebody immediately, is to eliminate as much doubt and fear as you can and raise up as much belief and confidence you can. That’s true with parenting. It’s true in business. Eliminate doubt and fear and get them to experience belief and confidence. Vince Lombardi said, the number one responsibility of a coach is to breathe belief into the players. Parents, your number one job, breathe belief into the kids. Not doubt, not fear, not never, ever. What are you speaking? How are you living? What are they seeing from you? Okay?
And then the other chance, you have the same situation, you birth the idea, you birth the concept. You’re fired up. And then all of a sudden you get. Instead of quitting and aborting your mission, you bust through it. And you persist and you recommit. That’s your whole purpose of life. Okay, now let me go through that. Here’s what that looks like. So what is it? Because if you look at the word quit and the word recommit in the word is it? And the word quit and recommit it. So what is it? And you ever hear anybody said that’s it? Anybody said that? That’s it? That’s it. What do you mean, that’s it? What are they saying? That’s it. That’s going to cause me to what? Quit. Oh, that’s great. It caused you to quit. That it? That’s a little bitty tiny word, it.
But it caused you to quit. Give up, punk, out, weenie, out, sissy, out. I didn’t see Jesus do that. He went through a lot more than me and you go through. Nobody ever nailed you to a cross. We use that terminology. Eh? It’s not the same. I don’t see holes in your hand or feet. And he did it for scumbags like me and you. Isn’t that something? My daily devotional this morning. He loved me before he even knew me. I thought, how’s that possible? He didn’t know how bad of a scumbag I was gonna be. But you know what? He loved me. When do you clean a fish? After you catch it. See, that’s what you ought to do with your people. You’re going to have to clean them up, but you got to catch them first, right? So here’s what it is.
So here you are. You have that idea, the concept. Here’s the it. So whatever you say you want, okay? So your goals, your dreams, your quality of life for your family, time and money, desires, all the things you say you want to have, okay? Because remember, desire drives discipline. Don’t worry about the discipline. So I’m not. Boy, I wish I. I was a discipline as Bill or Jimmy Myers or John Lavin. You ain’t got to worry about that. You got to have the desire that we have. We’re no more disciplined than you. We just have things we want more than you. We care about people more than you. We love our family more than you. It’s not. That ain’t fair. It’s honest. If that was the case, you would be doing all things we do. It ain’t about discipline. It’s about desire.
Who and what means something to you, okay? And then, you know, things like a dream home or dream cars or travel, entertainment, education for your kids. You’re changing your family tree you create a legacy, okay? Compensation, competition, recognition, promotions, making money, okay? Now if you look at that, you ought to write these down, because there’s got to be something that blows your skirt up. Something’s gotta motivate you. Something’s gotta get you excited enough to get up in the morning and keep going. When everybody else is laying in bed, you gotta get up and get going. Something’s gotta become important to you. Surely to God. There’s gotta be someone or something in your life that’s important more than laying in bed or being lazy, okay? Something’s gotta drive you every day, right?
I mean, I don’t care about your political affiliations, but I’m looking at a guy like Donald Trump, and I’m thinking, this guy’s a multi billionaire, one of the most powerful men in the world, and he’s working a job. You couldn’t give me enough money to have that. A lot of other people run for political. I hate politicians. I was asked to run for governor a number of years ago, and I’d have won, but no, I’m not saying that I would have because I had a lot of. I would have won, there’s no question about it. But. But there’s no way I’d be in that scud. I did it for about two months, went on tour and this, that, and the other. And then they started talking about, you know, well, you gotta make decisions. And I said, well, you’re right.
You’re really saying I gotta compromise. That ain’t gonna happen. I said, the reason you asked me to run. Cause I had the name in the state of Louisiana, I had the money, I couldn’t be bought this. I wasn’t gonna compromise. And all of a sudden you’re. Well, you gotta. I said, no, I’m not. I’m out of here. 99% of your politicians, they’re in for one reason, money. You look at the last two or three administrations, what a joke. So I think you got to look at yourself and say, what is the motive of why you’re doing what you’re doing? And most of you all, you got an honest motive, right? So these are things that you ought to look at. Look at your people. Challenge them with the competition, the compensation, recognition and promotions. Find out what they want. That’s the it.
And you challenge them and say every time you talk to them, bring this up. Not shoving their face, but bring it up, right? So you start, all right, here you are, and all of a sudden you birth the idea. And all of a sudden you Hit a wall, a brick wall. Now, here’s where you get a choice. Now, you’re gonna quit. You’re gonna recommit. So what’s that brick wall. You hit that wall, somebody says, no. Now, all these goals and dreams you said you wanted, how important they were, your family, your kids. I mean, as soon as I recruit somebody, I give me a list. Well, I want to retire my mom. I said stop right there. You ain’t going to do that. It’s just insane. Well, you know, I want to change the world. How about changing the sheets on your bed first?
Right? Guys, get down to reality. If anybody tells you all that stuff, they’re already setting themselves up for failure because they’re putting the things out there so big, they know they’re not going to do it. They know they’re not going to pay the price. But it looks so grandiose that nobody’s ever going to say anything to them. Guys, your job is to keep this in front of their face and constantly remind them. And somebody needs to be doing that tonight. Most people in this room, that Nobody has anybody doing this to you. So somebody says, no, you failed a test. Can you imagine somebody quitting on their dreams and goals? Cause they failed a test. Well, you know, I think the Lord’s just speaking to me. Yeah, he’s telling you to get off your butt and study.
Okay, that is BS Lord speaking to me. Okay? You got a dark house. You got a friend quits. You got Upline quits. You got rejection. By the way, number one reason people quit is rejection. You got no support. Well, once again, like I said yesterday, the reason you don’t have support is cause you’ve probably quit everything you’ve ever done. You’re never gonna get support. Why would somebody support you when you’re a quitter? Don’t do that. Stop being a quitter. Start staying with something. Be a winner. That’s the first step of being a winner, not to be a Twitter. It’s not that complicated, guys. This ain’t that hard, right? You ran out of names. Okay? Somebody says it’s a scam or God’s leading me somewhere else. Let me help you out. Scripture says the Lord is not a lord of confusion.
He doesn’t bring you one place, and all of a sudden, well, you know, I think I made a mistake. It wasn’t fair for you this, that, and the other. No, you made that decision. You made that decision. Now, if you’re gonna run like. I didn’t leave coaching to leave coaching. I left Coaching to run toward Primerica. This was what was best for me and my family. But I didn’t leave coaching cause I was afraid of that. Cause I was getting ready to go into college. Cause I was very successful at that. This was something that was right for my family. But it wasn’t like every, you know, like ever wind of Doctrine where I bounce from here to here to here. I’ve been doing this 45 years. I’ve been married 49 years.
You gotta plant your feet and stay there to make this thing work. Okay? You can’t vacillate every other day, right? And so then you abort and you quit. That was the it that caused you to keep from getting the it that you told everybody in the world that you wanted, right? So then you’re all the things we talked about a while ago. We put those back up. You re entertain those. And then you. What do you do? Then you bust through the dadgum wall and you recommit. Every day you gotta ask yourself, am I gonna quit or am I gonna recommit? It’s a split second choice of quitting and recommitting. And when is that? Every day. Art Williams said, I want to quit every day, but did he? No, no, you don’t do that. You just simply recommit. Alcohol’s anonymous.
What’s these other Jenny Craig and stuff like that? What did it do? I can’t stop drinking forever, it says. But I can stop drinking today and then the next day and then the next day. You build habits. Quitting is not something. Winning is not something that you do. It’s something that. That you are. Either you’re a quitter or you’re a winner. That’s. It’s not a maybe, it’s a fact. You’re either a quitter or you’re a loser. I mean, a winner. You’re either a loser or you’re a winner. Guys, this ain’t a maybe. It’s a way of life. And these are all things you got to practice. Okay, so let’s go through this thing real fast. Got to hurry up because y’all asking too many questions here. Okay, so then we go. Okay, so the transition.
Okay, so to make this transition and go nonstop to the top, that’s what you want to do right now. You want to go as fast and as high as you possibly can. You’re going to have to eliminate some things. You have to realize excess baggage. So if you think about a hot air balloon, they got These bags there, you got to throw some of these bags over the side so the balloon rises up. So some of these things you got to throw over the side is, you know, your habits, the way you think, your beliefs, all the things, all this excess baggage that you’re bringing with you, some of your limiting beliefs, some of your all these excuses and all these negative things. But also you might have to do some of your associate.
They say the only thing more powerful than the power of association is the power of disassociation. You have to know who to disassociate with. And sometimes you gotta love people, but you love them at a distance. And one of the things I learned early on is you just gotta tell people, look, baby, look, dude, I love you, but I can’t afford the. I can’t afford to be around you anymore. You’re bringing me down. Now here’s the key. You wanna make sure you’re not one of those kind of people. That’s what a lot of us do. Once again, we look out the window. We don’t look in a mirror. We’re bringing people down. We’re excess baggage. We’re negative, we’re naysayers. You can’t. I was watching back in the back and it’s so exciting about getting around like minded people.
You just can’t get around those dudes in the back and not fill up. I mean, I’m like, I mean, you know, my pacemaker’s jumping around, all this stuff like that. I’m around Jimmy, you know, he just got a pacemaker and it’s kind of like you’re not cool if you don’t have a pacemaker, you know, and so. But I’m thinking the energy level back there, I’m thinking it’s unbelievable, the energy level. You know, here’s Jerry’s like two days older than Methuselah, but he’s back there bouncing around this, that and the other. And part of it’s cause he’s married to Rhonda, that keeps him going for, I don’t know, for a while, I don’t know, a few seconds. I don’t know what it is, but it’s so exciting to see that.
And I see all the new people and I see John Lavin back here with Patty and they’re all lovey dovey stuff like that, you know. And I’m thinking that’s the way life should be lived. That’s who you want to associate with the moment you get around people and you don’t feel that Energy, you don’t feel excitement. And the moment you get around anybody that starts any kind of gossip or criticism, disassociate with that person. And if they’re getting around you, wanting to share with you. Nobody in the company ever calls Bill Whittle with a scoop. What? Did you hear this about that? No, and I don’t want to hear about it. Even my wife. Well, you didn’t tell me about what happened to so and so. Why would I tell you that? That ain’t who I am.
If I go to an MIT meeting, I see the guys over there. I never go associated with that. I know what they’re talking about. It’s about somebody else’s somebody else. I don’t need to be a part of that stuff. Disassociate with people like that. You don’t need to have that in your life. Oh, well, I just. I’m so important they’re going to give me the information. No, they think you’re that big of a scumbag. I’m telling you guys, do not associate with these type of people. Become different. Okay? Now that’s going to be hard. I promise you it is. But you got to do that right? Okay? So anytime you make a choice, it’s going to be challenged. You got to teach this to your children, too. Anytime you make a choice to live right, do what’s right, do something special.
Life, anytime, it’s gonna be challenged. Now, mediocrity, that’s not gonna be challenged. Failure, not gonna be challenged. You’re gonna fit right in. So right now, if nobody’s challenging you, what’s that mean? You’re not doing anything. You’re headed downhill. You’re part of the in crowd, which is called losers. No, I’m just telling you. You’re so easy to get along with. Cause you’re not challenging anybody the way you’re living. You’re not being challenged by somebody else. That’s being, living, that’s doing something special. So you gotta realize this and what do you got? Your choice then at that time says, do not get caught. Conforming. And don’t get comfortable compromising. That’s a tough thing. You look at your physical life, you look at your marriage, you look at your spiritual life, what do you. How you living that life? Are you compromising? Are you comfortable compromising?
Are you conforming to everybody else? So in that stage, you can conform to what everybody else does. You can compromise and just kind of adjust and do good when you’re around good people, bad when you’re around bad people use four letter words. When you’re up in front of an audience, you think it’s cute. I got sick of my stomach when down in leadership meeting, we got one of our key leaders get up there and starts cussing and all kind of stuff like that. And I told some people, I said, you know what’s sad about that? First of all, it shows lack of intelligence. Cause you don’t have. You can’t even think about another thing to say. It’s lack of intelligence. And the second thing is, what do you think that does for other people? And they think that’s cute.
They can see if people laugh this, that and that. What do you think they’re gonna do when they get on stage? See, I think you gotta be thinking about that. That’s not the way you should be living. It’s not that complicated, not that difficult not to use that type of language. So you don’t compromise. So you gotta confront it. So the key is confront these things. Anytime it comes up, you gotta be a leader. You gotta confront that, Right? So let’s look at this. So making the transmission, it says it’s a biblical principle, says, do not conform to this world, but be transformed by renewing their mind. So you’re gonna read this book. It’s called Reinventing Yourself. Great book. And you ought to get that book. You ought to read that book. So you gotta renew your mind. Why?
Remember, you’re born with a clean slate. Then what happens? You’re bombarded with all this information, beliefs, values. And that’s who you become. Right? Doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. That’s just who you become. So what you gotta do is like, you ever seen an exosketch? How do you pronounce it? Exasketch. Whatever it is, okay, we shake that thing. Some of us need to do that with our brain. We gotta shake it because we got all that stuff in there. And we need to clean the slate and then rewrite the script. Does that make sense to everybody? So that’s what you’re doing, kind of doing this weekend. You’re getting a new way of thinking. You got to get Patti LaBelle. I always play this when I start the year off.
I was gonna bring it here, but I didn’t wanna see all you white guys dance. And so it’s a new attitude by Patti LaBelle. And if you just read the thing, a new attitude. The way you view the world, the way you see the world, a new attitude. And once you could get that Attitude in there. And OEM’s always said, attitude is everything. If you could clean this thing, get a new attitude, your whole life could change like that. And it all starts with a new attitude, right? But you gotta create that thing. So on that, let’s look at this. So you got. It says, to make that transition, all goals demand change. I wrote a book on that, and it’s entitled Goals Demand Change. Great book, and I think it’s really easy. If you want a copy, I’ll send you a copy.
Or I’ll send you a group of copies of it. I don’t do it. Make a profit every time. It goes to church and charities around the world. But it’s a great book and a brilliant author. Oh, that was me. Okay, so change now. There’s also another great book. It’s kind of funny. It says, change is easy. You go first. That’s the title of the book. It’s really cute. So you ever think about how hard it is to change now? Why is it so hard to change? Once again, how did thoughts and everything come into your mind? They’re imprinted. And the. More. Now just visualize. Maybe draw notes. Draw a picture if you’re taking notes here. But think about a tabletop. So draw just a round or rectangle, whatever it is. You got a tabletop. Right? Now, what holds that table up? Legs.
Okay, now what? The top of that table is your beliefs. So where do those beliefs come from? Remember the imprinting came from when you were first being born. 0 to 3, then 3 to 8, then your experiences in life. The legs are holding up your belief system. So everything that comes in your life is designed to stabilize those legs to hold up your belief system. Now, what if your belief system’s been wrong? You’re not a loser, you’re not a dud, you’re not dishonest, you’re not this, you’re not that. What if it’s been wrong? But all your life, you’ve taken every step that you possibly could to substantiate those beliefs. The legs of the table. And you know that. You studied that, probably in psychology. It’s called your reticular activating system. Ras that anything. You’re just looking for reasons to be the way you are.
You have everybody say this, well, that’s just the way I am. Dr. Phil says, well, how’s that working for you guys? You can’t go there. Well, that’s just the way I am. Well, then change. You have the power to change. So now, how do you change? That should Be a big thing. So in that, why don’t people change? Why don’t people change? You ever ask yourself, why do you don’t change? And you say, well, I don’t know if I can change. That’s not true. That’s not true. So let’s look at this. I’m glad you asked. They don’t believe they need to change. You ever see anybody say that? They just don’t. They really don’t believe they need to change. It’s unbelievable. Number two, they don’t want to change. They’re just not willing to change. They can change, but they just don’t.
They’re not willing to change. They don’t care. They really don’t care. So that might be you, or it might be somebody else. But once again, don’t look out the window. Look where in the mirror. Number three. This one says, not willing to change. Up until now, no one or nothing has been that important enough for them to change. The moment somebody or something becomes important enough to you will change. So when you see people not change their habits, not change their skills, what’s it really saying? What’s it saying? No one or nothing is that important to them. Nothing. So they’re not going to change. Now, you got to look at yourself, not other people. But this is the case. You got to help people in this, okay? When the desire to eliminate pain or to experience pleasure becomes strong enough, you’re going to change.
In other words, like last night, I was in my hotel room, and I like my hotel rooms pretty cold. And it got where it was a little warm. So what did I do? Okay, I changed. But what did I do? I got up. I got up, took action, and I went over to thermostat and changed it. What happened to the temperature in the room then? I was comfortable and I went back and laid down and I slept all night. Okay, remember this. Here’s how it works. Your mind is determined by what thoughts. These are thoughts. Then your body, your subconscious follows your conscious, your mind. So what did I do? I thought about it being what? Warm? I thought about it. Then I took action consciously, and I walked over to thermostat and I turned it down.
Then I walked back over to my bed and said, that’s better. I don’t snore. Yes, I do. Okay, my wife says the deal. Okay, you do the same thing. Here’s the deal. Whatever you tell your mind to do, your thoughts, your body will follow. Now watch. Write this down. 95% of the people in the world, 95% live subconsciously unconscious. In other words, they’re living in memory, in the past. So all these negatives, all the things like that’s the past. Only 5% of the people in the world live with vision in the future. Which means they’re creative. They’re always doing something to get better. Now think about that. Why is that? Because most of us, we establish these habits, these beliefs, and then everything we do in us. To do what? Reinforce the habits and beliefs. And we never ever consciously change.
So if you’re sitting here today and you start thinking about the way you’re thinking, think about the way you think. Think ink. Always think ink. Write it down. And you’re writing it down. You’re thinking about the way you think. You do your autopsy every day and you think about, how did I think today? How did I act today? Look at my activity today. I did the same thing as I did yesterday. Slap the dog stink out of yourself. Well, stop thinking that way. Start thinking this way. And you command yourself to think a certain way. You take back over control of the way you’re thinking. And you stop letting your subconscious and your past determine your future. Things change like that, immediately they change, and you’re in control of your life. Okay? You’re not animal. You’re in control.
So number three, they don’t believe they can change. Now, this is called. It’s a psychological term called learned helplessness. You just don’t believe you can change. You ever seen or studied? I’ll just use a female for example of they’re married to an abusive male. Nine times out of ten, this is psychology. You can study this. This is factual things. Nine times out of ten, when they leave, if they ever have the courage to leave that person, what would they do with the next relationship? Exact same relationship. Why? Learned helplessness. They don’t believe anything they do is going to make a difference. They bring it on themselves. They find the people the legs to substantiate the belief that they’re worthless. They’re no good, they’re no count. Nobody will love me, I’m worthless. A great book. I’m trying to. I’m drawing a blank on her name.
The book’s called Worthy. Anybody? It’s a great book. You ought to read it. Phenomenal book. I can’t remember the girl’s name. What’s her name? Yeah. Lima. Right? It’s incredible book for males, females. Absolutely fabulous. You ought to get it. Cause you ought to raise your kids with this. Stuff, too, okay? They don’t believe it can change. Okay? Like that puppy. I did a speech on this years ago about an electronic collar and about this little puppy, and they kept running out in the street, running out in the street, chasing cars. You ever thought about what’s a. What’s a dog going to do to a car once it catches it? I mean, what an idiot. Okay? But we do the same thing. We do the exact same thing, right?
So what they did with the dog, they put this electric wire under the ground, and they put this electric collar on the dog. So the dog’s on the porch, and every time he’d run out to go chase the car, boom, it hit that wire underneath the thing. It’d shock him, and it do this and run back, get on his a. He did that a few times. And guess what the puppy would never do after that? Leave the porch. That’s where some of y’all are right now. You won’t leave your porch. Your income level, your physical level, your emotional level, your spiritual level. You’re on the porch like that little puppy shivering. Isn’t that sad? What do you need to do? This is what I did when I gave this speech. I had a collar underneath my shirt. I reached down. I had to.
They didn’t know I had it on, and I reached down and I ripped that thing off and I threw it down. Some of y’all need to do that yourself this weekend. You’re not that puppy sitting on that porch. There’s no electrical wire down there. Rip it off. And it might be a wire down there, but you got control of this collar on your neck. It ain’t somebody else. Don’t expect somebody to come free you up. That ain’t happening. What if they don’t show up? Then he’s going to free you up. You got to take control of your life. So then a barracuda. You’ve seen this. They did an experiment on this. Not experiment, but an experiment, okay?
And they had these barracudas and barracudas like mackerel, and they put them in a huge aquarium, and every time a little mackerel swam by, that barracuda, it get that sucker and eat it, right? And then they put a plexiglas divider in the aquarium, and all of a sudden, this barracuda. I mean, this mackerel becomes swimming toward the barracuda, and the barracuda, boom, it hit its nose. And then, boom, it hit his nose. And then a little macro bee na. Na, na. And it boom, boom. Guess what it stopped doing? Trying to get to that mackerel. Then they moved the Plexiglas divider, and little mackerel would just swim all around the barracuda. And guess what the barracuda never did. Never tried to attack it. Isn’t that something? We start coexisting with things we should never coexist with. There’s no plexiglass.
Some of y’all right now have so many limitations. Why can’t people prospect? I can’t pass the test. I can’t do this. Guys, you got to pull that glass up. That’s not true. You got to be like that barracuda again. You got to get that competitive spirit and start attacking that thing again. You’re there. You got to start loving. You got to start forgiving. Well, they hurt me, they hurt me. Grow up, guys. I’m not trying to be mean. This is the way the world works. Everybody in the world’s been hurt at some point in time by somebody and somebody else. And 90% of our hurts in life we brought on ourselves. This ain’t a maybe, this is a fact. Life doesn’t happen to you. 90% of the things that happen to you brought on yourself. Bad health. You brought it on yourself.
90% of the time. Anything you can find out, your financial situation, relationships, you brought it on you. You got to change you. Okay, the other 10%, the Lord will take care of that. Then the last one, the elephant, you know the thing with the stake and the big old elephant starts off as a little baby elephant. You put a little rope around its leg and you tie him to the stake, but it’s that and he can’t move. And he can’t move. And as he gets bigger, then guess what? He doesn’t even try. Now he’s a big old 2 ton elephant and they got a little stake there, but he won’t even try. Learned helplessness. Identify some areas in your life where you have learned helplessness. You’re not even trying. You gotta break free of this stuff. So just.
You ought to write some notes on this, okay? They don’t know how to change. That’s why they brought in Bill Whittle today. I’m gonna help you. They don’t know how to change. So here it is. Transition number one. You gotta have awareness. Everything starts with awareness. Everything starts with awareness. So self observation. You gotta look at yourself, you gotta look at your life. Gotta look at everything around you. You gotta be totally aware of how you’re living your life, how you’re acting. Now, for most of us, we’re not mature enough to do this on our own, so we need other people’s awareness. So you need to ask for help. Have you ever asked anybody, how do I look? Anybody ever done that? Okay, you’re asking for them to be aware, for them to help you to see how you look.
Does this look good on me? How’s this? Is that you ever had a lady or a man? Does it look like I’m gaining weight? Or is this it? Or how does this taste? Or how’s that? Or whatever it is. And I know that I try to do this with all my guys, and I do the same thing. I take notes on them. When I coach my son, my grandson, I take notes on this. When a guy asked me the other day, I was over in Houston, Texas, playing a tournament, and who’s the guy? Perkins. Sports announcer. Okay. He and Blake, my son, were good friends in college and stuff. So he was over there. He was at the tournament, and were talking, and all these coaches, stuff. Were noticing me sitting on the bench taking notes and stuff.
He said, well, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing? He said, we think we know. What are you doing? I said, well, I take notes, and after the game, I go with each of the kids and I show them each of the things they were doing right or wrong so it can get better. He said, let me ask you a question. How many of these kids ever come ask you if they can see the notes? I said, well, only the ones that want to get better. I said, well, here’s what’s even more innocent. The guy interrupted me. One of the dads, he’s a college coach or a pro coach or whatever it is. He said, I bet it. It’s all the ones. He said this. He said, I bet very few parents ask you.
He said, even with your track record, you won all these state national championships. He said, isn’t it interesting? You’re sitting there taking notes. You care more about their kids than they do. They could come to you and say, what are you seeing I could do to help my son get better, and yet they’re not doing it. Okay, let me ask you a question. What are you doing to go to your upline, to your leader, and ask them to observe you and tell you what you need to do to get better? As God is my witness, I do this with all my downline. I bring them in. What do I need to do to get Better. What did I do wrong when I got up in front of a group, who did I offend? What could I have done better? I want to get better.
I can’t get better by myself. No man is an island. I’ve got to ask for help. So what does that do? You got to drop your ego, drop your pride and ask for help. So then acceptance. Once you become aware of it, accept it. Okay, this is the way it is. I gotta accept it, then I gotta do something about it. So, okay, no denial. Okay? You can’t have a fantasy, oh, it’s not that bad, or it’s gonna get better on its own. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. Okay. No. You ever hear anybody tell someone, oh, I know, I know, I know. Obviously you don’t see, that’s lack of humility. You gotta drop that stuff. The Bible says pride becomes before the fall. You gotta drop it or you’re gonna fail. It’s not a maybe, it’s a fact.
Okay, Gotta drop all that stuff. Okay, so then, affirmation. You gotta affirm it. You gotta affirm the way you want it to be. Speak it into existence. Affirm it, write it down. Affirmative. Every morning, every night. Every morning, every night, Every morning, every night. I program my mind. I affirm, I speak into existence. I want to be. Then I go back, you know, if I write down I’m a positive, excited, energetic, highly competitive, whatever it is, I’m writing down as a leader. And that’s who I attract and grow and develop. Now at the end of the day, I got to go right back and review that. And I say, did I act like that today? Was I really like that today? And do a true, honest autopsy. And I ask people, was I like that today?
And I write it in my daily planner on my autopsy. And then I go back to self improvement. Okay, what did I read today? What could I done today? Who could I call today to get better than it today? And if you do, if you stuck together 365 days of that, you think you’d get better over the course of a year? How about 10 years? Now, I guarantee there’s not one person in this room that’s done that in the last year. I ask people, did you go? Did you do your affirmations? Well, I did it once in a while. Once in a while I have to take 12, 13, 14, 15 heart medications. Isn’t it weird I don’t forget that now? Why do I not forget it? It’s a matter of Life and death. I forget it. I’m dead, so I don’t forget it.
Isn’t that interesting? Why would you forget something this important when it’s life giving not only to you, but to everybody else around you? You’re the giver of life. That’s a big responsibility. Take it serious. Okay, so you know, what do you do? What do you want your business to look like? Really write that down. What do you want your business to look like? Really write it. Take some time to really write it down. What do you want it to look like? Like, as a coach, I always write down what I want my team to look like. And I was very good at doing that kind of stuff. Like, and you ought to do the same thing. What do you want or you need or what do you need to become for your business to look like that?
I just realized I’m running out of time. Action plan. Get you an action plan. Be specific and detailed. If you don’t know it, ask for help on that. Get it in writing. Always think ink. And then take action steps. Hit the road running. And if it doesn’t match it, then it’s not really an action step. And you can do that by using your day planner. Accountability. Get yourself self accountability. Get yourself a great day planner that you can keep yourself accountable and then get yourself an accountability partner, a mentor, a coach, somebody that’s gonna hold you accountable and keep you on track. Does that, does that make sense? Okay, so I had probably another three hours information. I just realized I just ran out of time, so. But I had some. You would have loved the stuff I was fixing to cover with you.
But we’re not going to get to you. And I really apologize because seriously, I had some unbelievable stuff, but there’s no way they could squeeze it. I run my mouth too much. But I just want you to know you made my weekend. I was just so enjoyable. I talked to my daughter this morning. She said, dad, how was it last night? I said, baby, I said, let me tell you something. I said I could go another 10 years on what I got last night by being around this group, this crowd, by being around like minded people. People love it like, I love it. So I love y’all. Thank y’all for letting me share time with you guys. I love y’all. Thank you very much. Thank you.
