- There is no one who doesn't
have obstacles in their life.
Even Bill Gates has obstacles.
He's got to figure out
how to keep all that money.
Why is it that so many
people act like animals?
Why do they just react
to what's going on
rather than to plan and strategize?
Because if you don't accept excuses
pretty soon people stop giving them,
and they start looking for solutions.
There's no such thing
as useless knowledge because
you never know what doors
it's going to open for you.
Almost any accomplishment
in the history of the world
has come at the hands of
people who have taken risks.
Some people hate spiders.
Some people hate snakes.
I hated poverty I couldn't stand it.
If you have an average brain
you're capable of almost anything.
Be nice to people because
once they get over their suspicion
of why you're being nice
they'll be nice to you.
Real success involves lifting up
those who are around you.
- He's a retired American neurosurgeon,
and former presidential candidate
of the United States.
He has authored numerous books on
his medical career,
and political stances.
He was a Director of
Pediatric Neurosurgery at
the John Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.
He's Ben Carson,
and here is my take on
his top 10 rules for success.
- You know, I'm reminded of a very
successful young businessman.
He loved to buy his mother
these exotic gifts for Mother's Day.
He ran out of ideals,
and then he ran across these birds.
These birds were cool, you know,
they cost $5,000 apiece.
They could dance, they could sing,
they could talk to you.
He was so excited he bought two of them,
sent them to his mother,
couldn't wait to call her up
on Mother's Day.
"Mother, mother, what did you
"think of those birds?"
And she said, "They was good."
(laughter)
He said, "No, no, no.
"Mother, you didn't eat those birds.
"Those birds cost $5,000 apiece.
"They could dance, they could sing,
"they could talk," and she said,
"Well, they should have said something."
You know, that's where we end up, too,
if we don't speak up
for what we believe.
There is no one who doesn't
have obstacles in their life.
You know, even Bill Gates has obstacles.
He's got to figure out
how to keep all that money,
so, you know, everybody's got problems.
It really is how you
face those problems.
If you allow it to be
an insurmountable wall
then you become the victim.
If you say this is a piece of cake
I'm finding my way over, under,
around, or through this obstacle
one way or another,
and you gear yourself to solutions
that's always the answer.
Always be thinking about
how I can do something rather than
why I can't do something?
So many people lead
their lives by reacting
rather than by thinking,
and really when you think about it
why do we have these
incredibly sophisticated brains
with these big frontal lobes?
Because we're the only creatures
that God made with the ability
to extract information
from the past and the present,
and to project it into
a plan for the future,
so we don't have to react.
You know, animals they're just
whatever is happening they react to it.
Why is it that so many people
act like animals?
Why do they just react
to what's going on
rather than to plan and strategize?
We have the ability to figure out
where we want to be a year from now,
five years from now,
10 years from now,
and to begin to organize things
in a way in order to
accomplish those things,
and when we don't do that
we place ourselves in tremendous
jeopardy because we place ourselves
in a situation where we can only react.
I had a horrible temper,
poor self-esteem.
All the things that you
would think would preclude success,
but I had something very important.
I had a mother
who believed in me,
and I had a mother who would
never allow herself to be a victim
no matter what happened.
Never made excuses,
and she never accepted
an excuse from us.
If we ever came up with an excuse
she always said, "Do you have a brain?"
If the answer was yes, then she said,
"Then you could have thought
"your way out of it."
It doesn't matter what John,
or Susan, or Mary,
or anybody else did or said.
It was the most important thing
she did for my brother and myself
because if you don't accept excuses
pretty soon people stop giving them,
and they start looking for solutions.
That is a critical issue
when it comes to success.
I would get on the bus,
and I would go downtown
to the Detroit Institute of Arts,
and roam through those galleries
until I knew every painter
who painted a picture,
and when they were born,
and when they died,
and what period it represented,
and I was always listening
to my portable radio
listening to classical music.
I'd be walking down the streets
of Detroit listening to classical music,
and people thought I was nuts.
This guy is crazy,
but years later
when I decided that
I wanted to be a neurosurgeon
I wanted to go to the place
that's best known for neurosurgery,
and that would be Johns Hopkins,
but as I said before
they only took two people a year
out of 125 applicants,
but when I got an interview,
and I went there
the fellow who was in charge of
the Neurosurgery Residency Program.
George B. Udvarhelyi,
was also in charge of
Cultural Affairs at the hospital.
Somehow the conversation
turned to classical music,
and we talked for over an hour
about different composers,
and their styles, conductors,
orchestras, orchestral halls.
There was no way he
wasn't taking me in the program
because he had to have somebody
to discuss these things with,
but what I emphasize to
young people all the time is
there's no such thing
as useless knowledge
because you never know what doors
it's going to open for you.
The more you know
the more options you have.
Almost any accomplishment
in the history of the world
has come at the hands of
people who have taken risk.
People who are willing
to push the envelope.
People who are willing
to explore the unknown.
Even if you go and you look in the Bible
the people that are
held up as the heroes
they're not the ones who are sitting
in their tent under an olive tree,
you know, they were people who
were going out there doing stuff.
The key thing about
taking risk is learning,
and if something doesn't
work out learn from it,
and then you're able to move further.
We have to always recognize that
knowledge frequently comes at a price.
Thomas Edison said he knew
999 ways that a light bulb did not work.
Many of us are familiar
with the cleaning Formula 409.
Why did they call it that?
The first 408 didn't work,
but you just put these
things into perspective,
and you learn from them.
Walter Dandy the great neurosurgeon
at Johns Hopkins many decades ago
was the first one to do operations
on the posterior fossa
of the back part of the brain.
No one thought it could be done.
The first 13 patients all died.
Now can you imagine how
devastating that was?
I can't even imagine what he said
to the 14th patient when they said,
"How did the other 13 do?"
The fact of the matter is
we now are able to do that operation
routinely and safely.
I did one last week.
We just have to put all these
things in perspective,
and recognize that we will
never make progress
unless we're willing to take risks,
but we have to take them
in an appropriate fashion because
there's a large group of people
who never get anywhere
because they're afraid to take a risk.
There's another group of people
who never get anywhere because
they take too many of the wrong risks.
They're always getting
not back into the pond,
so that's where this
tremendous brain comes in
where you are able to analyze.
One of the things
that I hated was poverty.
Some people hate spiders.
Some people hate snakes.
I hated poverty I couldn't stand it,
but, you know, my mother couldn't
stand the fact that
we were doing poorly in school,
and she prayed and she asked God
to give her wisdom.
What could she do to get her
young sons to understand the importance
of developing their minds,
so that they control their own lives,
and you know what?
God gave her the wisdom
at least in her opinion.
My brother and I didn't think
it was that wise because
it was to turn off the TV.
Let us watch only two or three
TV programs during the week.
With all that spare time
read two books apiece from
the Detroit Public Library,
and submit to her written book reports,
which she couldn't read,
but we didn't know that.
She put check marks and highlights,
and stuff,
but, you know, I just hated this.
My friends were out having a good time.
Her friends would criticize her.
They would say,
"You can't make boys stay in the
"house reading books.
"They'll grow up they'll hate you."
I would overhear them and I'd say,
"Mother, you know they're right,"
but she didn't care, you know,
but after a while I actually
began to enjoy reading those books
because we were very poor,
but between the covers of those books
I could go anywhere,
I could be anybody,
I could do anything.
I bean to read about people
of great accomplishment.
As I read those stories
I began to see a connecting thread.
I began to see that the person
who has the most to do with you,
and what happens to you in life is you.
You make decisions.
You decide how much energy
you want to put behind that decision.
I came to understand that I had
control of my own destiny.
At that point I didn't hate
poverty anymore because
I knew it was only temporary.
I knew I could change that.
It was incredibly liberating for me.
It made all the difference.
You know, the human brain
if you have an average brain
you're capable of almost anything
because of the complexity of our brains.
Billions and billions of neurons.
Hundreds of billions
of interconnections.
It can process more than
two million bits of information
in one second.
It never forgets anything
you've ever seen,
anything you've ever heard.
You know, with something like that
sitting up here
why would you ever
utter the words I can't?
- What do you mean by Think Big?
- Each one of those letters
means something special.
The "T" is for talent
which God gives to everybody,
and everybody has their own
unique set of talents.
Develop those, use them,
and let those carry you where they will.
The "H" is for honesty.
If you live a clean and honest life,
and you don't have a bunch
of skeletons in the closet
it's really hard for them to come up
if you don't put them in there,
and it really uncomplicates
your life quite substantially.
The "I" is for insight,
which comes from listening to people
who have already gone
where you're trying to go.
A lot of the adults in your life
have been through the very things that
you're going through right now,
and if you can talk to them,
and see what lessons they learned
maybe you don't have to
repeat the same things.
Maybe that will allow you to move
much further and faster than they did.
The "N" is for nice.
Be nice to people because
once they get over their suspicion
of why you're being nice
they'll be nice to you,
and you can get so much more done
when you're being nice,
when they're being nice,
and not get caught up
in the meanness and the selfishness
that is promoted by many
segments of our society.
The "K" is for knowledge,
which is the way that you
make yourself more valuable,
and no one else can do that for you.
You have to actively participate
in the process of
becoming knowledgeable.
The mechanism for doing that
is the next letter "B" books.
You know, some people say
"I don't like reading books.
"Besides that I can learn anything
"I need to learn from watching
"DVD's and videos."
That's like saying that you can
develop your muscles by watching
somebody else lift weights.
It doesn't work that way.
You have to exercise your brain
if you want it to work for you.
Reading is a perfect way of doing that.
The second "I" is for in-depth learning.
Learning for the sake of
knowledge and understanding
as opposed to just learning some
answers so that you can
put them down on a quiz.
That superficial learning
doesn't last very long.
The last letter "G" is for God,
which is such an important part
of each of us as individuals,
and the fabric of our nation.
We make a grave error when we
allow the secular progressive
movement to push God out of our lives.
We shouldn't try to force God on them,
but by the same token
we should not allow them
to remove God from our lives.
- [Interviewer] Maybe some parting
words for our viewers.
- Well, my parting words would involve
what do you really want in your life?
What do you want to accomplish?
Are you complacent,
and are you happy just to be doing
what you're doing,
or do you think
there's potentially more?
If you think there's more
why not use that tremendous brain
that God gave you
in order not only to envision it,
but to make it happen
not only for yourself,
but for those people around you
because real success involves
lifting up those who are around you,
and making your environment
a better place than it was
before you got there.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because
Rachel Alley asked me to,
so if there's a famous entrepreneur
you want me to profile next
leave it down in the comments below,
and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know
which of Ben's top 10 rules
hit you the hardest,
had the biggest meaning for you?
Leave it in the comments,
and I will join in the discussion.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Continue to believe,
and I'll see you soon.
- What are you particularly gifted in?
Do you have any special
gifts and talents?
You know, everybody has special
gifts and talents.
I started analyzing my own life,
and I said what really
unusual things have happened to you
because usually those very
unusual things have something
to do with your gifts and talents.
I remembered that
I became a Foosball champion
in college.
Go off to a big prestigious
Ivy League school like Yale,
but I remembered
being a Foosball champion.
That was a great thing,
but that required a tremendous
amount of eye-hand coordination.
I remember working one summer
at a steel factory,
and as a college student
they let me operate the crane.
Now these cranes are very complex.
They had a whole bunch of levers
that you had to push and pull
because you were maneuvering
these multi-ton steel packages
through very narrow aisles,
and stacking them
on the backs of trucks.
If you made even the slightest error
you could make a multiple
thousand dollar error.
These people trusted me having never
worked one of these things before
after seeing me play with it
for just an hour or so,
and I had that job for the whole summer.
I said, "Those people must have had
"a tremendous amount of confidence
"in me a college student
"who was the only college student
"working at the steel factory."
So I started thinking
I want to do something
that requires a lot
of eye-hand coordination.
Then I was also
a very careful person.
I never knocked things over,
and said, "Oops,"
which is a great characteristic
for a neurosurgeon I got to tell you.
(laughter)
I had the ability to think
in three-dimensions.
Most people think in two-dimensions,
but to think in three-dimensions
to be able to keep your
spatial orientation very, very
important if you're in somebody's brain
because it's just like mush.
It's just a big pile of mush
that doesn't have a lot of structures
in it to tell you where you are,
so if you can't keep in mind
where all the little nuclei,
and tracks and things are
all of your patients will come out
looking like that,
so you don't necessarily
want to do that either.
Then I loved to dissect things.
I always loved to dissect things.
You know, when I was a kid,
and I would be sitting
at the table eating
I would have my fork and my knife out
dissecting out all the little
neurovascular bundles out of the meat,
and putting that in a pile.
My mother would be saying,
"You can't eat with us.
"You go sit on the landing."
(laughter)
Always, if there was
a little bug around or a little
rodent or something that I could catch
I always knew what was inside.
I loved to dissect things,
so I put all that together,
and I said,
"You'd be a terrific neurosurgeon."
It doesn't mean that I couldn't
have been a good dentist,
or a history professor,
or even, God forbid, a lawyer.
(laughter)
I probably would not have been
excelling to the same degree
because I wouldn't have taken advantage
of the special gifts and talents
that God had provided.
