S7:E9 | Success Nuggets that Will Blow Your Mind

The wisdom of Dr. Herbert Harris will "blow your mind". Dr. Harris offers groundbreaking insight on how to start where you are,  shape your mind to overcome any obstacle in relationships, change your financial circumstance, and win in life. Grab a cup of java and join Tony and Toni Henson on Black Family Table Talk with this incredible author of the "Twelve Universal Laws of Success."  A book that has sold close to a million copies around the world. 

Sponsored by: The Ms. Pat Show. Season 2 is now streaming only on BET+. To learn more, visit BET.plus  Stream Black culture.

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Herbert: The heart is often identified with the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind is in the book. We try to put all these ideas in succinct quotes. There are three levels of mind. The conscious mind, what we think about, what we see, what we say, what we do. The subconscious mind is like the sleeping mind. That mind that operates all the time with dreams comes from our subconscious mind. But the subconscious mind is like a garden. And so any thought that you plant in the subconscious mind will grow, whether it's a thought that's a flower thought or a weed thought. 

[00:00:31] Tony: Welcome to season seven of Black Family Table Talk. We are your hosts, Tony and Toni. Join us on our journey to discover ways to build a strong black family. 

[00:00:40] Toni: This season is sponsored by ABTF Travels. Join us as we travel each year beyond borders, off the beaten path to immerse ourselves in cultures that celebrate our Pan-African heritage. Each journey is specially curated to provide you with what promises to be a bucket list transformative experience. 

[00:01:05] Tony: I can't wait until we go again. 

[00:01:08] Toni: Me neither, Tony.

[00:01:09] Tony: In the meantime, we have a very special guest joining us at the kitchen table this week. Listen up. Welcome to the Black Family Table Talk. 

[00:01:18] Herbert: Man, I've heard great things about your program. 

[00:01:21] Tony: Is that right? 

[00:01:22] Herbert: Yeah.

[00:01:25] Toni: Well, we are honored to have you, Doctor Harris. You are a very active person. 

[00:01:34] Herbert: Well, I tell you, I'm the renaissance man. 

[00:01:36] Tony: All right. 

[00:01:37] Toni: There's nothing wrong with being a Renaissance man. Tell us, you want to impact 1 million people a day. Did I read that correctly?

[00:01:46] Herbert: I'd love to, yes. Well, social media now is so powerful that people of my generation may not necessarily plug into it as much, but on social media now, you can impact millions of people. I mean, you look at some of the tweets, millions of folks, sometimes I wonder, what are the folks doing that they have time to even be watching this stuff? But it's very possible. 

[00:02:13] Toni: That's true. Now, you are the creator of something I think is revolutionary, The Twelve Universal Laws of Success. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to develop this popular book. 

[00:02:30] Herbert: Well, I'm a retired attorney and an always student. I guess as a child, one of those people that say you thought you were a child prodigy was really smart when I was a kid. And then the older I got, the more I realized I was not that smart. So I'm a retired attorney. I came through the civil rights era. I actually went to school with one of the Greensville 4 and attended Columbia University.

[00:02:59] Herbert: In those days, very few black folks went there and they were looking at the time going through the south. I attended a segregated school system and so they were looking at gifted children from the south. And I went to Columbia after my junior year of high school and my major there was Physics. I eventually left that arena and moved into Law, practiced Law in New York City, I guess for about 20 to 25 years. But I've always been on a spiritual path.

[00:03:29] Herbert: I've always been a reader and a self-taught person. And I wrote my first book, it was a book called How to Make Money in Music. It was written in 1978 and I was a part of that music era. I have songs right now on iTunes and Spotify. I came through the era of music. The Dells, the Finishing Touch, Isaac Hayes, we came through that era and operated out of Broadway, New York City, and then got into more spiritual growth. Music is one of those areas that when you really get into it, you want to get a bigger understanding of things. 

[00:04:08] Herbert: And so my first book was called How to Make Money in Music, and it's still available online by Herby Harris. That was my music name, H-E-R-B-Y and Lucien Farrar, my old partner. And we took the music business and we wanted to put it in the hands of people who could read it and figure it out. So it was a Bible in the music industry for years, and you can still buy it online. I see copies for like three to $400 sometimes. But eventually, I moved to work, and I think a turning point was working with Reverend Ike, and I worked with him for a couple of years as the director of the Science of Living Institute. And they got a real experience in spirituality, and religion, but then practical applications.

[00:04:54] Herbert: That was what Reverend Ike was really all about, and that evolved now. And at one point the book came about as a result of a mindset. In my meditation one morning I said I wanted to teach, and the moment I went out to jog that day, I ran into Dr. Mattie Cook, who was the head of Malcolm-King College at the time. And I said, ‘Dr. Cook, I'd like to teach a course in personal development.’ She said, ‘What's the type of the course?’ And I told her, ‘Achievement motivation.’ And so she said, ‘Great. Can you start Monday?’

[00:05:31] Herbert: And so it was an excellent example of when you put something out there in the universe and you put it out with conviction, you become magnetic. I went there that Monday. We sat down and worked it out. And as I began preparing for the class, the students there were people who had been out into the world. It was more of a junior college. And so as a result, they didn't really take to think and grow rich, just a format of the way the book was written. And so we developed a set of class notes, and those class notes eventually evolved into a newspaper column called Thoughts for Success, 

[00:06:04] Herbert: Which evolved into a book called Power Thoughts for Success which, once I retired from the law practice, I went to Cleveland and spent almost two years focusing on and writing The Twelve Universal Laws of Success. From that time until now, it's been like there are over 800,000 copies in print that I know about. I found that we are in nine languages. And so once you license it in another country, you just have to depend on what they say they sold. I saw a version from Ghana that I definitely didn't license, but a person sent me a picture of it and I'm like, at least it's worth stealing.

[00:06:54] Tony: Dr. Harris, you talk a lot about the mindset. Could you go into that a little deeper? How do you change someone's mindset? And what's the benefit of having a different mindset?

[00:07:05] Herbert: Well, that's an excellent question, Tony. The first law of success is the law of thought. The scripture says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And that is in every aspect. I like to make it universal as a person thinks in their heart. And the thought is everything begins in thought. And so your mindset determines your emotions. If you have a negative state of mind, it's hard to have positive emotions. Your mindset determines your habit. If you don't have a disciplined mindset, then you can have unproductive habits.

[00:07:37] Herbert: Your mindset determines your relationships. I represented a pickpocket once, and he said, you know who to rob by how a person moves and carries themselves. And so the mind is the heat to it all. Every religion has basically said the same thing. Buddha says it's the thoughts, your life evolves from your thoughts. Earl Nightingale, you become what you think about most of the time. And so our minds give us great power, but our minds are like a knife. It can either carve out a beautiful future or can kill a dream. 

[00:08:10] Tony: Wow.

[00:08:12] Toni: Wow. That's definitely worth swallowing, so to speak. The description does say what you think in your heart, the heart condition is definitely a part of that. How do you get to the point where you can become, there's a lot of toxicity in this world, that's what I guess I'm saying. And we've been exposed to a whole lot of stuff that contaminates our thoughts from a very young age. Recently we were talking about a podcast or somewhere I read, where there's a study where our mind is shaped before even the age of three, where we begin to take on and absorb our environment. So what is it that we can do to shift or guard ourselves? I don't know, filter out? What is your advice?

[00:09:10] Herbert: Well, you said a lot there. Number one in the description says as a man thinketh in his heart. And the heart is the feeling of nature. The heart is often identified with your subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind is in the book we try to put all these ideas in succinct quotes. There are three levels of mind the conscious mind, what we think about, what we see, what we say, what we do. The subconscious mind is like the sleeping mind. That mind that operates all the time with dreams comes from my subconscious mind.

[00:09:41] Herbert: But the subconscious mind is like a garden. And so any thought that you plant in the subconscious mind will grow, whether it's a thought that's a flower thought or a weed thought. And so when we talk about as a man thinketh in his heart, whatever your thought is, there's a corresponding emotional part to that thought. So you may be talking about the past, talking about success, and walking in the grass feeling like a failure.

[00:10:12] Toni: Tell us something today.

[00:10:18] Tony: I'm going to have to read your book. Dr. Herbert. 

[00:10:23] Herbert: Well, I tell you, the book has transformed so many lives. I mean, we have it in French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Chinese, and Saudi Arabian. So the idea is, the mind is so impressionable. Now, the other part of your thought, Tony, you said, how do we as a child, the child begin forming? In The Twelve Universal Laws of Success, we talk about the four stages of life. And the first stage of life is the 1st 20 or 25 years. And that's what we call the stage of education.

[00:10:59] Herbert: And it is in this stage that you learn your value system, what is right and wrong, your emotional development. And especially those first six years, they've done studies where when a child is in the womb, the baby, the fetus, responds to negativity, responds to noise, responds, to fear. Those first five or six years, the challenge is that whoever we're around, the nature of a child is to be a sponge, to soak up whatever's there, whether it's positive or negative. And so in those first years, the first words a child learns are no, stop and don't. And then once they start talking, they learn to shut up.

[00:11:45] Herbert: And these four negative pillars are there to protect the child, but they can also imprison the child. And so in those first five years, the child has no defense against bad knowledge or bad emotions. It does not yet have the mental clarity to discriminate. When you're 20 years old and somebody says, ‘You're a loser,’ you go, ‘No, I'm not.’ But when you're three years old, you say, you're a bad kid, you're a bad kid, you have no defense.

[00:12:15] Herbert: And so you absorb all of that. And so this first stage of life can be a garden of flowers or a garden of weeds. It all depends on who's around us, who loves us, and who elevates us. So that first stage of life is critical, and so much is determined from that point. I read that they determine how to build, and how many prisons to build based on the number of children in the third grade, especially minorities.

[00:12:42] Tony: Wow. 

[00:12:43] Herbert: So that question is a profound one. Many times we spent our entire lives getting over what happened in those first five or six years. There are some young people that experience trauma. Trauma has a way of locking you into the present. So when you have children who have experienced extreme trauma, a lot of times their development, their emotional development stops right there. That trauma can be like an anchor. And no matter how full the ship, as long as the anchors drop, they ain't going nowhere. 

[00:13:12] Tony: Dr. Harris, this is the Black Family Table Talk. Toni and I put this podcast together to try to help families progress in life and move forward. You said a lot. I hate to think that if you experience a certain environment growing up, are you doomed, or can you overcome it? 

[00:13:33] Herbert: You can overcome it. That's the beauty when we talk about black families. You know, Tony, that's why when I saw your program for four years, Sandra and I taught in public housing and we developed a class called Parent Empowerment. And our theme was better people make better parents. And we focused on self-image, attitude, communication, goal setting, time management, and life planning. Those are six years we focused on. And over four years we impacted over 1000 families.

[00:14:14] Herbert: And they did some statistics and I mean many of them went out to get out of public housing, to get jobs, to buy homes. And so whatever happens to you in that early stage, that first stage of life, you can overcome it. The second law of success is the law of change. And it's scriptural, it says be not conformed to this world, but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the idea is that whatever that situation was in your young years, if it was negative, if it was traumatic, you have the ability to change that.

[00:14:49] Herbert: Be not conformed to this world. Don't be stuck in whatever the conditions were of your childhood. Don't be stuck in whatever the conditions were of your last failure. Don't be stuck in whatever the situation was in your last relationship you can change your thinking. And that's the most powerful thought that people have. You can change your life by changing your thinking. 

[00:15:14] Toni: Trauma is a big, huge part of what it's a buzzword for today, and rightfully so. You went through the civil rights movement. Do you think that we're experiencing more trauma in this generation or do you think it was more in past generations? What's the difference? How do you compare and contrast

[00:15:36] Herbert: In past generations, we knew the trauma. We understood how to deal with the trauma. So I grew up in a segregated era. When I went to Columbia, I was telling them that at 16 years old, I'd never had a meaningful conversation with a white person. Grew up in North Carolina. 

[00:15:54] Herbert: And so in the old days, our parents [did] not [teach] us how to deal with the trauma, how to deal with survival. That's almost survival in a foreign country. And so we had black businessmen, we had black plumbers, we had black electricians, everybody, black restaurants, we had more black businesses than we have now. So they understood the trauma. They may not have been able to articulate it.

[00:16:20] Herbert: One of my good friends, former president of one of the colleges, used to say, it's interesting that our parents who were uneducated were able to send so many of us to school to become educated because they valued education as a way out. And so in the old days, that was the thought when we came along and said, hey, you got to be better. Don't worry about why. Don't worry about whether it's right or wrong, but you got to be better. If the white guy works 10 hours, you got to work 12 to get less paid, but you're working okay.

[00:16:52] Herbert:  Now, with the new era, many of these younger people, it's almost like a tree that does not know the roots. And so the trauma is still there but I don't know that we're equipping them to deal with it because you don't have mother wisdom, grandmother wisdom, your grandmother [thinks] about it as you grow up. I guarantee you that there are times when things happen, you go, I remember my granddaddy used to say, I remember my grandmama used to say

[00:17:18] Toni: Yes.

[00:17:19] Herbert: And so many of the younger generation don't have that connection. There's one of the things that has happened with the whole social media is that young people don't have the same frame of reference. They have a frame of reference on TikTok or Facebook or these social media platforms that are mom, dad, grandma, and Susie. So both of us, the younger and the older generation [have these] handicaps but I think the older generation was probably better able to deal with a lot of the trauma than the youngest generation is now.

[00:17:53] Herbert: The other aspect of it is if you don't know you are sick, you don't try to get well. So, our education system [has masked] the trauma and the injustice that many of the young people don't even know there's a problem.

[00:18:10] Tony: So how do you see making that connection? It's a generational connection with so much social media, so much I mean, everything is fast-paced, and technology is changing. Do we have time? Is there enough time in 24 hours to make that connection? Your parents, your grandparents, your family set aside some time to kind of get that back?

[00:18:34] Herbert: We who have seen the light, must share the light. I was on at 08:00 every Saturday morning, I do a class called The Success Mentorship, and one of the people [in] the class is sharing that every Sunday night, she and her husband get their family together and they take The Twelve Universal Laws of Success and they discuss topics in it and they use it kind of as a platform to create a common understanding.

[00:18:58] Herbert: And so we, as that generation, we like the first strength. It's really on us to go back and connect with them. See, if you don't know your loss, you're not going to try to get found. But if we know that many of our young people are lost, not intentionally, but the system was designed to create that illusion, and so now we have to go back. We have to say, hey, we got to catch up with you. We got to understand where you're getting your information. You got to get on. I haven't quite made it to the TikTok yet.

[00:19:29] Tony: Yeah.

[00:19:29] Herbert: I guess when you call it the ‘ticktock’ that dates you right there.

[00:19:36] Toni: Well, Doctor Harris, you can't be everywhere all the time, but you can make an impact. And I see you making an impact and I'm so impressed with how you've been able to just take your knowledge and what you know and bring it back to help out the community and that's so important, and that's what we like to do. We like to highlight people who are working in the trenches in our community.

[00:20:01] Toni: The thing that comes to mind right now is parenting, one of the things as having raised four children, Tony and I, I realized that the same kids can grow up the same way in the same household and one can go off the rail or vice versa. So I know that there are good parents and lousy kids and there are some lousy parents with good kids. Can you speak to that?

[00:20:33] Herbert: Well, you know, each child, we as parents above the vessels through which the child passed. Each child has [their] own destiny. God gave each child, each seed, its own destiny. And so no matter how much we may want for it, our talk this morning was on desire, the topic [of desire is a powerful] tool for success. And one of the key points we were making is it's got to be your desire.

[00:21:00] Tony: Okay.

[00:21:00] Herbert:  In other words, as a parent, my child is not going to live my desire. They have a desire already inside them that was placed there by the Creator. I was the vessel through which they passed. But just the fact that God created this being gives it its own consciousness. Sandra had 12 brothers and sisters and her mom told her once, her sisters gave her more trouble than all the other 11 put together. And they [were] all raised in the same house, they ate the same food.

[00:21:31] Toni: Sat at the same table.

[00:21:33] Herbert: What is it? But each child has a seat. What we have to do is nurture them in a way that they can understand. Many times, the best thing we can do for [a] child is to be an example, you know?

[00:21:47] Toni: Wow.

[00:21:48] Herbert: You're not listening to a word I'm saying. You know, I had a friend and he said his son was committed to being broke. He said no matter what I tried to do, I bought him this, I bought him that. But I'm like, he may not be committed to being broke. He's committed based on your frame of reference. You need to get in his mind, see what his seed is, what his vibration is. And so each of us as a parent, we can just be an example, because sometimes that's the one thing that they see.

[00:22:17] Herbert: You see, one of the challenges of parenting is telling them one thing and doing another. And you know, the children will tell you right away, you don't do it, Mom. You don't do it, Dad.

[00:22:27] Toni: Yes.

[00:22:29] Herbert: And so many times, the best thing you can do as a parent, let me just be an example.

[00:22:33] Toni: Yeah.

[00:22:33] Herbert: Because when I've seen my children are like 20 years apart, you know, I have one in the early 40s and then one in the late 20s. So each time along the way, I got to be a better parent.

[00:22:47] Toni: Oh, okay.

[00:22:49] Herbert: I was learning how to do this thing better, and so, what I realized is that they see how we live, and when they wrap back around with my middle son, he's in his mid-40s, he says, you know, Dad, you do this, you do that. I didn't realize he was paying attention.

[00:23:05] Toni: Wow. They say more, I have a good friend who says more is caught than taught.

[00:23:11] Herbert: That's right, that's right. And then the other thing is, we got to really be patient to talk less. Many times, children, I have a lot of young people who hang around and they say, you know, Dr. Harris, we just like being here because you don't make us do anything. And I'm like, no, I don't think that's true.

[00:23:30] Herbert: We diagnose it. What they were saying was, I listened to them. And so rather than lecturing, I listen. And so it's parents to create a space for them to start talking, more confident and says, look, because sometimes they'll say something you want to say, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You're going straight to jail if you do that.

[00:23:52] Toni: Yes.

[00:23:53] Herbert: Okay, but working with Reverend Ike, Reverend Ike was the person that used to say this, I'm not going to pay you and tell you how to do it. If I thought enough of you to hire you, then I hired you for your expertise to do what I need to have done. He also said, don't bring me a problem without a solution. So if you come and say Reverend, the roof is leaking, then you need to call five roofing contractors, got an estimate, and have a recommendation on how to handle it.

[00:24:20] Toni: I love that. I will definitely take that.

[00:24:27] Herbert: And so when we listen to the kids now, make them feel comfortable talking when they start asking you, then you know you've made a breakthrough. And so that's kind of the reference. What I like to do is say when they share, I said was there anything else it talks about?

[00:24:43] Herbert: One of my great lessons was to stop adding my values to their actions, wanting to give advice and recommendations. And one of the things I found is that when I give advice, I ask permission. I said, Tony, I hear what you're saying, and if I may, may I give you my cut on it? If they say no, then I'm like, cool. But if they say yes, they've now opened the door.

[00:25:08] Herbert: If I just gave them my cut, listen to that problem and start out, okay, listen, this is what you should have done, and you should have done that. Okay? But by asking permission, now they open a receptive and they're here.

[00:25:23] Toni: I have to admit I'm guilty of the former, not the latter, but I love that.

[00:25:31] Tony: I love it too. I'm guilty as well. But yes, that's a great nugget to take away.

[00:25:36] Herbert: Well, you know, many, I have parents who are coming to see The Twelve Universal Laws of Success, that's the first book my child ever read. And I wrote it so that most, it's written probably on the fourth or fifth-grade level. I try not to put it in, I wanted everybody to be able to read it and just putting it there. It's one of those books that people, the book finds them and then they find it.

[00:26:00] Herbert: I've had folks calling that saying Dr. Harris, because I have an 800 number in the book and so people call, and it's weird. Most of the time it goes to the answering machine or the lady who [is] the office person. Sometimes I'll answer that phone, and that was just the right one. And the first guy called one day, is Dr. Harris still alive? I said, hold on, let me check.

[00:26:28] Toni: I love that.

[00:26:29] Herbert: And when I got back on the phone, it was a man from England who's a world-renowned minister. This minister speaks to three, four, five million people. He has these huge rallies around the world. And he said, I got this book and I read it, and everything I wanted to say was here.

[00:26:48] Toni: Wow.

[00:26:48] Herbert: And so it's a book that gives it to a young person and tells them. And I've told young people I've given it to them, and I said, look, don't read the book. I said don't read the book until you find yourself in the corner and you look around, that's the only thing left, then read it and that happens to so many people. They'll call you. I mean, I've heard stories.

[00:27:11] Herbert: A lady called, she said, your book saved my marriage. Like 04:00 on a Saturday afternoon. Normally nobody's in the office. That day, I was there so I answered the phone and she starts talking. She says, is this Dr. Harris? I’m like, yes. You saved my marriage. Okay, thank you.

[00:27:32] Herbert: I appreciate I could help. She said yeah. She said, me and my husband hit the rocks, and we decided we were going to split up, and he was moving his stuff out. We decided, I got the kids, I understand he's moving out. And so he's cleaning out the closet.

[00:27:48] Herbert: He's taking stuff out the top of the closet, and the book falls down on the floor. She said, he said to me, this must be yours. She said, no, I've never seen that book before. He said, well I didn't buy it. I can't tell him how the book got there.

[00:28:02] Herbert: Okay, maybe somebody gave it to him. But anyway, when that book fell off, he picked it up and he opened it. And whatever page he opened to it, it fits too, that was what he needed and he started reading. And then he called her and he said, have you read this here?

[00:28:18] Herbert: She said, no, he should read this. And that book gave them a common platform to communicate. And now they're still together. She's making a lot of money. He's happy that she's making money and all this.

[00:28:31] Tony: Well, it certainly seems like it's in a book that has been anointed by a man who has been anointed. It is called The Twelve Universal Laws of Success. You do workshops, you do coaching, you're a speaker. Thank you so much for taking the time out to be a part of the Black Family Table Talk. I really appreciate you.

[00:28:54] Herbert: Well, it has been my honor and I really appreciate it. I didn't mean to cut you off, Tony. I'm sorry.

[00:29:00] Tony: Oh, no, I just wanted you to let people know how they can get in touch with you.

[00:29:05] Herbert: Absolutely. One, we have a website, www.herbertharris.info and that gives you a link to our books, to our music, to our website, to some of our entrepreneurial things and it talks a lot.

[00:29:19] Herbert: One of the things that we're highlighting right now is our home Study course because we realize that people learn at their own pace. Many times kids will come to school and they'll do poorly. It's not because they're dumb, but it's because they have a different learning style and they learn at a different pace. And so we put together what's called a New You For New Year home study course.

[00:29:39] Herbert: And the purpose of that course is [to] let you go at your pace, to help you assess where you are and address those issues that you need to fix and then to set some new goals and then get busy accomplishing them. So all that information is on our website, www.herbertharris.info and we have a lifeline of 800 number.

[00:30:01] Herbert: Like I said, people call that number when they're in the time of need, and that's 1-800 5-7-0-4-0-0-9, 1-800-5-7-0-4-0-0-9, and that way you can reach us. And of course, you can always email us, I'm still into old school, but Herbert, at herbetharris.com. You know, these people don't put their address on anything anymore. They don't even put the phone number like here's my email, so Herbert, herbertharris.com.

[00:30:01] Toni: Well, all that information will be available in the show notes. Thanks again. Dr. Herbert Harris. What a pleasure.

[00:30:40] Herbert: My pleasure to keep up your great work. You got a world of work to do, and I know you're qualified to do it.

[00:30:48] Tony: This is Black Family Table Talk.

[00:30:50] Toni: Fast. What's up?

[00:30:51] Tony: All right.

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