school and rules about holding hands with our girlfriends on the way to school. When I did fight those things and had to take the consequences, my mother was always supportive of that.
SP: Is your mother that kind of a person to this day? Wayne Dyer: Yes. She’s almost seventy and still one of the most positive, fun, up people I know. She’s also very responsible about money and always was. She taught us never to look in other people’s pockets to decide whether or not we were happy – never begrudge anyone else’s wealth. She encouraged us to figure out a way to earn what we wanted.
SP: Did you always work – even as a kid? Wayne Dyer: Always. And we were never told to contribute any of it to the family, but we always just gave a certain percentage of it to my mother.
SP: It sounds like motivation was a climate that was created for you as a youngster and now you’re responsible for creating that climate for yourself. Wayne Dyer: Even when you don’t have that climate, you’re responsible for your own. Each person is responsible for his own inner development. You can’t always take responsibility for your outer development – a lot of things may come along that you have no control over – but your inner development must always be in your control.
SP: How do you teach that or help someone develop it? Wayne Dyer: What I do with my own children is to teach them that they have an inner candle flame that must never flicker even though the worst may go before them. The outer flame can be blown out at any time. If you love yourself and are positive in that, then – no matter what or who comes along to try to convince you otherwise – that inner flame must never flicker.
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SP: And who would you say motivates you now? Wayne Dyer: Oh, it is always myself. And whenever people tell me that my book changed their lives, I just say, “Look, you changed your own life. I don’t want the credit for that and I don’t want the blame when things go wrong either.”
SP: How would you classify motivation- al books or tapes then? Where would you put them on a scale of value? Wayne Dyer: A book or lecture or tape is like a mechanic’s manual when your car is broken. If you wait for another guy to come along to fix it, you might be stuck forever. But, if you take the information that’s in the manual, you can fix the car and be on your way.
SP: What advice would you give to managers who have to create a climate for motivation for others? Wayne Dyer: If you want to help people become motivated, you have to help them create images. You have to help them tap into the wealth of mental images they have stored away in their subconscious.
SP: Can you give an example of that? Wayne Dyer: One day my nine-year- old daughter was cutting a piece of birthday cake for me. I asked her to bring it over to where I was sitting. She said, “If I bring it over there, I’ll drop it.” Sure enough – on the way over – she did. So I told her to go back and get another piece and then imagine herself bringing it over without dropping it. See, you can picture yourself doing something in a positive way just as easily as you can in a negative one.
SP: Where does this concept come from? Wayne Dyer: Well, there are lots of roots, but the German writer Goethe talked about treating people as if they already are what they are capable of becoming. I try to do that.
SP: That’s a good management philosophy. Wayne Dyer: Yes, it is. And it can work for a salesperson too. If he goes into a sale with negative expectations and mental pictures of the sale not working out, he is probably not going to close. It’s as if he were practicing not making the sale. When you have negative thoughts, it’s almost like having a negative experience. Everything gets fed into the subcon- scious and it doesn’t distinguish between reality and fantasy. The more positive images you feed into your mind the more likely you are to have positive experiences.
SP: Is the imagery enough to be a success? Wayne Dyer: No, it isn’t. But, if you have enough positive images in your mind or you help your people have them, then they will start acting on those images.
SP: When was the last time you used creative visualization in your own life? Wayne Dyer: The most recent was hitting a backhand on the tennis court. It may not sound like much to you, but I’ve been playing tennis a long time and have always had a poor backhand. Arthur Ashe helped me overcome this with two exercises. One was to put a piece of Velcro® on my right wrist and another on my left hip. Every time I went to hit the ball, I visualized the two pieces touching. Then I imagined a table with all kinds of bottles in front of me and, if I swung my backhand too high, I would hit one tall bottle. But I had been told to clear the table with my swing. Those two images helped me hit my first really strong backhand.
SP: Do you use visualization at other times? Wayne Dyer: I always visualize an audience that I’m going to speak to as liking me and liking what I have to say. I ask questions about the audi-
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