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Career Advancement – Movie Comment B

Hello this is A.J., welcome to the movie commentary lesson.

Birds of a feather flock together. This means the same kinds of people like to be around each other. Negative people tend to be around other negative people and to join with other negative people. Positive people tend to hang out with other positive people.

Les Brown, when he was talking was really focused on the toxic people, the negative people and getting them out of your life. He talked about the negative, terrible effects that toxic people can have on your life and indeed he is correct, one bad apple can indeed spoil the whole barrel. One negative person, one toxic person can indeed destroy your life or at least make you much less happy and much less successful. But the good news is that this effect also works in a positive way.

Back when I was just out of college, I’d graduated from undergraduate school, University of Georgia and I was working part-time for a non-profit. I was going door to door, knocking on doors and asking people to donate money. It was a very difficult job and paid very, very badly.

So it was a hard time in my life. I had almost no money at all. I could just barely pay my rent. In fact, I had to use credit cards sometimes to pay for food or groceries or gasoline for my car.

There were lots of tough things happening in my life and I was feeling quite down, low energy, quite negative but a friend influenced me to sign up for a speaking course. I’d always wanted to be a public speaker and I realized that the ability to speak in public was a very powerful skill.

It gives you a lot of influence. So I joined the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking Course. I remember walking into the room, looking around and immediately feeling uncomfortable, because at that time I was probably 23 years old. I didn’t have a real job. I was working parttime, trying to raise money for a non-profit. I was dead broke, super poor.

I looked around and this course, this class had about 30 people and everyone else in the class was wearing a suit. They were all older than me, over at least 30 years of age and there were some in their 40s, 50s and even older. These were professional people working in professional white collar jobs. A white collar job is an office job. So I immediately felt uncomfortable because I thought oh, all these are kind of serious people. They all have successful careers.

Because the course was quite expensive so most of those people could afford to pay for it. I used my credit card to pay for the course, since I had no money. It was a big risk for me.

A lot of people thought I was crazy to do it. I was broke and completely poor and I used my credit card to pay for this public speaking class, because I’d hoped it could help me become more powerful, more positive and help me turn my life around. The other people in the class were obviously making good money, they paid for the course themselves they didn’t need to use a credit card. So I was surrounded by all these successful people I felt quite nervous and of course the first day my first speech was terrible. I was super nervous, just a horrible public speaker.

I’ve talked about this many times. I talk about this in my book that my voice was tight, my hands were shaking and this wasn’t actually just the first week but probably the first few weeks where I felt so terrified to go up and especially speaking in front of these older people, more professional people. I had all these negative ideas in my mind about that. It was very uncomfortable. But something interesting happened.

The power of that course, I think it wasn’t really the techniques they taught us. They taught us a basic formula for giving a speech. They taught us a few techniques for giving speeches, which were useful, good and positive, but that wasn’t really the true power of the course when I think about it now. Because, I made an amazing change. The course was 10 weeks long, and I just told you what I was like in the beginning with hands shaking, voice and neck tight, feeling terrified, feeling like I didn’t belong there, feeling like I couldn’t really do this, I would never accomplish this. I’ll never be a great public speaker.

At the end of the 10 week period I was super enthusiastic, super excited about speaking. I loved being up in front of the audience and I had tremendous energy. In fact, that was the famous thing about me in the class was that everybody gave me an award for being most enthusiastic in the class, for having so much energy, because I couldn’t just stand there and give my speech I was always moving around and acting out my stories with tons of energy and excitement.

How did I make that massive change? What caused that huge change in my speaking skill, that incredible accomplishment, that huge change in my attitude? It wasn’t the little techniques they taught us, it was the fact they created an incredibly positive environment, that all the people in that class were super positive, so that every week when I was around them they were saying all these positive things after every speech I gave, even the terrible bad ones, lots of them would come up to me and say hey, you did a good job and if I said no I don’t think so.

They’d say don’t worry about it it’s just your second speech. You did a great job. You had good energy. I enjoyed your story.

So I was constantly getting this positive input. The leaders and trainers were the most positive.

They created an example. That’s great leadership. They created this example of being incredibly positive and energetic and enthusiastic and caring. The people in the group, these other 29 people were also extremely positive, complimentary; meaning, they gave lots of compliments, said lots of nice things. I realized it was just being around those people that created most of my success that led to most of my success, that I almost absorbed their attitudes, their energy, their emotion by osmosis almost.

To absorb by osmosis, it’s kind of an idiom that comes from science, but the meaning is that it means to absorb something or learn something unconsciously. You’re not trying it just happens. It just comes into you without trying. So when you’re around these positive people, super positive people, you’re around them a lot they’re attitude, their beliefs will come into your mind. They will come into you without you even trying. Naturally they will influence you. You will become more positive just by being around them, just by hearing them and seeing them again and again and again. This is what happened to me.

Here I was this young kid with no success in my life at all and no confidence and suddenly I was around all these other people who were more successful than me. They were older and more mature than me. They were super positive. They were very enthusiastic and even more so, because of the leaders, the Dale Carnegie trainers, so they made the whole group super positive. It’s like they all pulled me up just by seeing and watching them. Watching them every week trying their best, doing their best for their speeches, because of course, many of the other people were also nervous about speaking. They were also afraid to speak, it wasn’t just me.

When I saw them I could see they were afraid, but then I saw them get up and give a speech anyway and do their best. It inspired me to try harder and do better as well.

This is the positive affect, the positive side of what Les Brown was talking about in his speech.

He was focusing on the danger of toxic people and it’s a good warning, you have to be careful of toxic people and absolutely, I agree with him, get them out of your life.

In your own career you want to do better in your career, in your job, whatever, even as a parent. Well, one of the worst possible things you could do would be to hang around people who are not successful. There’s this image in American culture called the ‘water cooler’ people. Water cooler in an office, like in a business is like a jug, a container with water and people walk and fill up a cup and get a drink. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s this image or idea of people standing around the water cooler, standing around where the water is, so they use it as an excuse, I’m gonna go get some water.

But then they stand there and they talk, chat and gossip. It’s kind of an idiom now to stand around the water cooler. It means you’re standing around gossiping at work. Maybe you’re not really near a water cooler, maybe you’re in the cafeteria. Maybe in a break room or having coffee, but in a lot of jobs/companies, there are a group of negative people or people who are low performers who don’t do well and in most jobs, in most places that you work or that people work, those people love to gossip. They love to complain, so they’ll get together in someone’s office. They’ll get together in the cafeteria. They’ll get together near the water cooler and they’ll complain and gossip.

That is a very dangerous group to be around, because they will convince you the company is terrible. The bosses are terrible. It’s impossible to succeed here and they will fill your mind with negative toxic ideas, beliefs and emotions. You don’t want to be around those people. Even if you don’t like your job, even if it’s not a good job I understand, I worked so many terrible jobs, so I know there are lots of terrible jobs, lots of jobs that just suck.

But still, it doesn’t help you to sit around with a bunch of other negative people and complain about it all the time and focus on how bad it is. That will not help you succeed in your career in the long-term. If you’re in a bad job then you want to get out of it. If you’re stuck in a bad job, because you have to make money right now, you have to eat and pay your rent, it happens and sometimes it’s necessary. You don’t want to stay in that job forever, you want to rise up and get a better job in the same company or a better job in a different company.

Either way, to get a better job you have to become a better person. You have to become more positive, more influential. You have to become a better communicator. You have to become more confident. You have to learn more skills and become better at those skills. You have to connect with other successful people. So standing around the water cooler gossiping with the other negative people will pull you down and keep you stuck in a bad position. It will prevent you from going forward. You want to do the opposite in your career. You want to look around your company or even in other companies or maybe in groups like Toastmasters or Dale Carnegie’s speaking courses, wherever.

You want to look for the successful people. You want to look for the positive people, the motivated people, the energetic people, the wildly enthusiastic people. Surround yourself with those people. You want to be a successful salesperson, hang out around other successful salespeople. Take them to lunch. Do stuff with them socially. Volunteer to help them out, whatever you can do to be around them, because you will learn so much and improve so much just by being around them and spending time around them. You’ll automatically be influenced by them.

You’ll learn specific skills, but more importantly, you’ll learn their attitude, their way of thinking and it will change your way of thinking, your attitude and you will become automatically more successful just by being around successful people. By the way, this is also true for parenting. I see this.

My sister complains about this, for example. She has five children and she complains that when she goes to school around the other parents, she talks about how most of the other parents are super negative, they just complain about their own children all the time. My kid’s always bad. My kids’ won’t behave and focusing on all the negative things about being a parent and then all the other parents join in and agree, that’s right, and they’re all negative.

Indeed, my sister said, they’re not very good parents.

They’re not very strong with their kids. They don’t provide the necessary discipline and leadership for their kids. They don’t provide positive examples for their kids. So it’s true as a parent too, if you want to be a fantastic parent then look around at the other parents that you know in your family, among your friends, at the school where your kids go and see who the great parents are that you see. I know there aren’t many out there but there are a few. Who are the ones that just seem amazing, so positive, so energetic, who combine deep love and care for their children with the necessary leadership and discipline and strength, who have both of those.

Those are the parents you want to hang around. Those are the parents you want to talk to.

Those are the one’s you’ll learn from. They will make you a better parent. Of course, if you’re positive and if you also have these great attitudes and you’re committed to getting better than you’ll help them as well. This is kind of a universal law in life, so in your career, as a parent, in anything in life. You want to be healthy. You want to be strong and have a good body. You want to be thin.

Let’s say you’re overweight, fat and you want to be thin, strong and healthy. Who should you hang around other fat people? Hell no What do fat people do? They get around and complain how hard it is to lose weight. It’s so hard to be healthy. You’re not going to learn anything from them. They aren’t going to lift you up. Who do you want to hang out with? Hang out with the thin people. Hang out with the athletes. Hang out with the people who are strong and energetic, who have an amazing amount of energy, physically. Hang out with them they’re nice, don’t be afraid of them.

Most people who are healthy and strong and athletic, they’re happy to talk to people who also want to be strong and healthy. Hang out with them and you’ll learn so much. You’ll be inspired by them. Their standards are so much higher and just by hanging around healthy people, fit and strong people, your attitudes and beliefs and eventually your behaviors will automatically change just by being around them again and again. Because they do think differently than unhealthy people.

So it’s true in any part of life, no matter what it is you want to improve, no matter what part of life you want to be better or happier or more successful. Find the positive people. Find the successful people and hang around them and avoid the toxic people. Simple- powerful.

See you next time. Bye for now.