Interview with Dr. Robert C. Worstell
Dr. Robert C. Worstell with “The Midwest Journal”
Midwest Journal:
Hello and welcome to our program. Ever notice that all the books and
tapes on self-help and self-improvement seem to be saying the same
thing over and over? Did you wonder how people can buy these books and
tapes and make their authors bestsellers? Have you thought you could
write your own bestseller? Our next guest has been that route and has
written and published over a dozen books in just a few months. He says
that all the bestselling self-help authors are really writing the same
book, describing the same self-help system that you can learn and use.
More from our guest after this…
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Midwest Journal: Thanks for tuning in. Today we are
talking to Dr. Robert C. Worstell,
author of “Go Thunk Yourself” and a
dozen other books. Dr. Worstell, is it correct that you say that all
these self-help authors are basically writing the same story?
Worstell: That’s right. I did a
study over several years and compared all the great writers in history
– Napoleon Hill,
Norman Vincent Peale, Wallace Wattles,
and even Stephen Covey (among other great writers) and found that there
was a common thread that ran through their books. That for more or
less, they all told the same self-help system.
MJ: And you write about this in
your books.
Worstell: Yes, I first wrote “Go Thunk Yourself” as part of that study, just to show how it could be done, how anyone who knew the system could write a book about it. Once I had proved the same system existed and worked, then I was bit by the writing bug – it helped that I had to write tons of papers in college.
MJ: You went back to college late in life…
Worstell: That was a choice I made. I never liked school, always thought it was set up to just keep people in lockstep and prepare them for factory and cubicle work. I was always a bit of a rebel, never really fit in to all that school work. So I left Missouri and twenty years later I came back and found that the “good” jobs needed sheepskins. I got back into college at a community college and then took some online classes to fill it out. Along the way, I started this study in order to sort out my own life and get closure from the many things in my past which had been bothering me. The result was this book and then some more books and more degrees.
MJ: Now you say these bestselling authors just wrote the same principles in different formats, how come they don’t just come out the same?
Worstell:
People come from
different backgrounds, different lifestyles. I grew up on a farm. You
may have grown up in a city…
MJ: Actually, a suburb.
Worstell: …so we would have different approaches to the same world. If
we met in a coffee shop or on the street, we’d have different reactions
to the same situation. A bus passes by and we both nearly get splashed.
A person can get angry at the bus driver or a person can smile at the
good fortune of not getting splashed, then get the lesson of not
standing so close. People have developed different approaches to how
they live life. Writers write from what they know. Wattles wrote his
“Science of Getting Rich” for local coal miners. Napoleon
Hill wrote his “Think and Grow Rich” to help people out of
the Depression. Norman Vincent Peale wrote from his religious
background – and very nearly didn’t ever publish his “Power of Positive
Thinking”. Earl
Nightingale was a successful radio announcer before he
recorded “The
Strangest Secret”. But all these authors talk about the same
basic principles, they’ve all discovered the same basic system the
Universe operates from.
MJ: You say the Universe
operates on some basic secrets?
Worstell: Actually they aren’t
so secret. Most people know a few or all of these principles. They just
haven’t taken the time to study them and work it out for themselves.
But along the line, they’ve also picked up some other bad habits along
with these good ones. These are what trip them up. All I did was to
take all these bestselling authors and put what they wrote on a chart.
That’s how I found out they are saying the same thing. Of course I was
looking to prove if there was a basic system, so I found it. You could
also “prove” that this stuff doesn’t work. And as Henry Ford said,
either way you would be right. If you’re looking for secrets, then get “The
Secret” DVD. That’s a really good summation of how this
universe works. Great stuff.
MJ: So if people already know
these principles, why They just haven’t should they read your book or
anybody else’s?
Worstell: All books like mine do
is provide a structure people can use. Like your parents provided you
the best structure they could for your life. This is why some people
can take online classes and others need to go to regular classrooms
with teachers in front of them. I tell people through my books to get
other authors and read them. Wattles, Haanel, Napoleon Hill – all these
authors wrote probably the most complete systems of thought and
self-improvement. You can download all of their books. I’ve made them
available though Lulu.com so anyone can get them.
MJ: How do you expect to make
your book a bestseller if you are telling people to read other books?
Worstell: I tell them to BUY and READ the other books, as well as mine.
It’s really more important that people understand the world the
themselves. My style of writing isn’t perhaps the best way for someone
to find what they are looking for. Some people like recordings – get
Nightingale’s “Strangest Secret”. If you like to watch movies, get “The
Secret” DVD. If you are religious, get Norman Vincent Peale’s
book. Stephen Covey has a different approach – as well as seminars and
tapes. The thing is to tell people to go ahead and improve their lives
they way that makes the best sense to them, the way that appeals to
them the most. That’s what they will get the most out of.
MJ: Should they have to start
with your book, then?
Worstell: It’s a good idea. On
Lulu, I’ve got a short version of it that they can download and print
out for themselves to get them started – it’s only 20 pages, condensed.
The trade paperback or the hard back versions are more readable. I’m
working on some downloadable MP3′s of the book as well.
MJ: But what makes your book so
special? Why should people buy it?
Worstell: Because it speeds up
the process – makes it faster for people to improve themselves. There’s
no need for anyone to have to take the six years I did to compare
self-help books and find the best ones. In my book, “Go Thunk
Yourself”, I give what the key points a person should be looking for in
any self-help book. I also reference the seven or eight really useful
books. Now you have to know that I only studied dead authors, outside
of Stephen Covey (who is very much alive). So a lot of newer authors,
like Wayne Dyer, aren’t included. But they can compare any newer author
against these 14 points and see how that author stacks up.
MJ: Why only dead authors?
Worstell: I wanted to study only really successful books. Too often,
you can have an author who has unusual charisma and marketing skill,
who can make his own book go and stay at the top of bestseller lists.
Once that author dies, no one takes over and the book drops out of
sight. In the cases I’ve studied, these authors are flukes. They don’t
really have a grasp of what makes people get better. They just know
they can sell anyone on anything. Now you take someone like Napoleon
Hill. Did you know he interviewed and studied over 500 successful
businessmen and millionaires to distill his system? His book is still
selling today and still popular. Wallace Wattles
died in the early 1900′s and probably has more books in circulation
today than he sold during his entire life. These bestselling authors
are successful not because of how they act or how they look, but
because of what they studied and wrote about.
MJ: How did you come up with 14
points? Why not 6 or 30?
Worstell: Those 14 points were
found by pure comparison. There are probably between six and ten really
key points. Charles Haanel
wrote a twenty-four week course, one lesson per week, each lesson
covering a different point and building on the earlier ones. Napoleon
Hill had really only 12 or 13 points in his “Think and Grow Rich”.
Wallace Wattles boiled down all success to just 16 short chapters in
his book. I picked 14 so that people could do a study of all the
self-help basics in just two or three weeks. I included daily drills so
that people could apply what they learned as they went along and so get
more out of what they were studying.
MJ: Did you find that religion
or belief in God played any part of this?
Worstell: Most people believe in
some sort of Supreme Being or Higher Power. The rest mostly don’t know
or don’t have any proof one way or another – agnostic. Even atheists
will admit something seems to have planned all this out. But this was
found by research to be one of the 14 points in this book. I’d like to
say here that I tell people to test these out for themselves all
through this book. Just because I say so or some long-dead author wrote
it before they were born doesn’t mean it is gospel truth. Truth, as the
Polynesians say, is only as useful as it is effective. “Effectiveness
is the measure of truth.” You have to try these things out for yourself
and see if they help you or not.
In the follow-up book in the “Go
Thunk Yourself” series, I go into this area in more detail. But for
now, people should just buy the book, read it, and see if it helps them
in their life.
MJ: But isn’t that what
self-help is all about?
Worstell: Certainly. You hit it right
on the head. A person doesn’t get
better because he drives a certain car or eats a certain breakfast
cereal or because she buys and wears certain clothes. Yes, this is what
the advertisers would have you believe. But the people who believe
those datums aren’t really working to improve their lives and are the
ones who are satisfied with their cubicle or factory job. They are
already happy in general with their lives and really don’t want to
change much. But for the rest of us, there is always something in the
back of the mind – some itch that needs scratching. Somehow things
don’t add up and there is always some idea that things could be better.
That is who I wrote this book for. My itch was working twenty years in
counseling people and kept running up against some common ideas and
ways that people actually ran their lives. I started seeing the same
situations occur over and over. People didn’t know they had the same
problems as other people around them. They thought their problems were
unique.
So the first chance I got, I
started studying authors who made a living helping people improve their
lives. Figuring that there might be common denominators to what they
were writing about gave me the reason to read their works and find that
system. Stephen Covey did this same process in his own way when he read
over 200 years of self-help literature before he wrote his bestselling
“7 Habits”. It’s no wonder that he had most of these 14 points in his
book.
MJ: You’re saying that there is
one system underlying all this, that all you have to do is find that
system and you can improve anything in your life?
Worstell: Basically, that’s
right. I go into that in more detail in later books. But in “Go Thunk
Yourself”, I lay out a 14 day program that contains the basics of that
system. You can try this out and see if it helps you in your own life.
Pick out something you want to improve and then apply these 14 steps to
it – see if you aren’t able to improve it.
Any self-improvement program has
this caveat: You only get out what you put in. So if you just try it
for a little bit, you will only get a little bit out. It only works to
the same degree you invest yourself into it. That’s true of any system
of thought, any religion, any philosophy. It’s also true of where you
work – if you want better pay, you have to do better work.
MJ: You also blog considerably.
Worstell: I have blogs for every book
in the series. Just type in the
name on Blogger and you’ll get there. I wrote the blogs so that people
could find out about the books and help write them – add in their own
stories or correct anything they feel is in error. These blogs are a
great way to read the book before buying a copy. They are also
downloadable from Lulu.
MJ: Lulu is a self-publishing
company…
Worstell: It’s actually quite
more than that. It’s actually Print on Demand, which makes editing
books very simple. They also enable artwork and MP3′s to be distributed
through the Internet. They even have calendars and comic books. Yes,
the author is responsible for their own marketing. But Lulu does all
they can to make the process seamless and simple. You do the writing,
they publish it for you. There are even textbooks available there –
making it simple for a teacher to update a text for her students from
semester to semester. With my blogs, I can update an edition in minutes
from the point someone tells me about a needed change. I can add pages
or graphics as easily as opening up a word-processor and a browser.
It’s a great way to feed your muse. I got my first print contract
because I published my books through them first. And it doesn’t cost
you anything to get started!
MJ: In closing, what advice
do you have for potential readers?
Worstell: You can be, do, or
have anything you want. The only limits in your life come from your own
mind. As Earl Nightingale said, “You become what you think about.” Oh,
and Good Luck!
MJ: And good luck to you. We’ve
been interviewing Dr. Robert C. Worstell,
author of “Go Thunk Yourself”. Where would you tell people how to get
your book?
Worstell: Just search on Google
for “Go Thunk Yourself” or on Lulu or Amazon or Barnes & Noble..
MJ: Thank you Dr. Worstell.
Worstell: My pleasure.
Visit http://gothunkyourself.com
for more information and copies of all of Dr. Worstell’s books.
