How many times have you argued with a feeling and lost?
I almost didn't air this interview with Bob Raybould. I got off the call and told my husband I didn't think I could put it out. I was a mess the whole time. I'm in a rough stretch of postpartum hormones with three boys under six, and Bob was walking me through his process while I cried and tried to follow along. I could barely tell what I was even doing.
Then I started recapping the call for my husband, and I caught myself repeating the words Bob had given me. I took them on a walk and cried again. There was this resistance in me, and I was almost mad at the process. Then it softened and went away.
What I saw on that walk was how I'd been getting stuck. My state starts as a feeling. My mind builds a story to back it up, and then I spiral inside the story. I'd spent weeks trying to think my way out of something my thinking had built.
That was about a month ago. It's now the tool I use when I need to pop out of something fast. I went into this call skeptical, and I'm still a little surprised.
Who is Bob Raybould and what is Success by Emotions?
Bob is 90 years old. He got an MBA at the University of Utah, tried selling life insurance, spent a couple of years working in New York, then came back to Utah and went back to selling. He was doing okay and wanted more.
Then he found a recording called “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale, made in 1953. It says if you change your thinking you can change your results. The part that stuck was a different instruction: picture yourself doing what you'll be doing after you've hit your goal.
Bob couldn't picture himself succeeding. So he went to a Porsche dealership, sat in a Porsche, and touched the steering wheel. For the next three weeks, every time he held the wheel of his Volkswagen, he felt like a man who drove a Porsche. On day 21 he knew he'd reach his goal of four times his income, even though he didn't know how. He did it.
He turned that into a method he calls Success by Emotions. You write down a goal, a completion date, a few benefits, and three or four emotions you'll feel once you're on the other side. Then you say those emotions out loud, over and over. By his account you move through four stages. You start to believe it, then you're convinced, then you know it, and then you're willing to do whatever it takes.
He has two books, Success by Emotions and Believing by Emotions, which is the same book with the higher power language added back in. He also has a 28 video program, and he still teaches it at 90.
Why can't you think your way out of a feeling?
Bob's claim is that the false ideas we carry about ourselves are held in place by emotion. That's why you can't think through them. He said it plainly on our call: “Nobody logically commits road rage.”
If an old idea is held up by a feeling, an argument won't move it. You have to build enough of the opposite feeling to outweigh it. He also says the old ideas fight back while you do this, which is where that resistance I felt comes from. They're trying to hang on.
I'm very good at the other approach. I can build a convincing case for why I should feel better, and it has never once worked. My mood comes first and my brain goes looking for evidence.
Bob learned this the hard way. When he was born, his father was in a veterans hospital getting shock treatments for what he went through in World War I. His mother learned to shut her feelings off completely. He remembers hitting his thumb with a hammer as a little kid and being told to suck it up and think a good thought. He told me he grew up not feeling much of anything, and that he could read what customers were thinking but not what they were feeling. He says he can feel emotions now.
Is Success by Emotions just the law of attraction?
It's a close cousin, and I won't pretend otherwise. The idea that you can change your results by changing your thinking goes back to a recording from 1953. If that's an eye roll for you, it was one for me too.
What was new to me was something small. I've always tried to reason my way into a feeling. Bob just says the feeling out loud until it lands.
Bob also brings in a higher power, and he says that's where the real power comes from. If that's not your language, he says to use the powers of the universe instead. Take it or leave it. I'd rather tell you it's there.
Does saying your emotions out loud actually work?
On the call, I picked a goal on the spot: getting my hormones under control in 30 days. Bob had me picture myself 31 days out, past the hard part, feeling two things. Gratitude. Happiness. Gratitude. Happiness. Over and over, out loud, for around 15 minutes.
I was crying within a few minutes. At one point I told him he must have gotten me on a hard day. When he asked what my chance of succeeding was, I said a hundred percent.
I'm not going to call that a study. It's one person, and Bob's results are his own account. I'm not saying it treats anything. What I can tell you is that a month later I still reach for it, and I still feel myself resist for a second before something softens.
How do you try Success by Emotions yourself?
Here's how Bob walked me through it.
- Pick something you could finish in about 30 days. A big goal takes much longer to feel, so he suggests starting small.
- Write the goal and a completion date. As he put it, “If you don't have a completion date, you don't have an after.”
- Picture yourself the day after it's done. Pick two to four emotions you'll feel, like gratitude and happiness.
- Say them out loud, back and forth, until something lightens. Mine took about 15 minutes. He says a bigger goal can take a few hours spread over a few days.
- When the resistance shows up, keep going. He says that's the old idea trying to hang on.
Resources and links from this episode
- Bob Raybould's website: bobraybould.com
- Success by Emotions by Bob Raybould
- Believing by Emotions by Bob Raybould
- “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale, the 1953 recording that started it for Bob
Take this work deeper
I'm still practicing this, and it goes better with someone in my corner. Inside the free Mind Love Collective we meet once a month for themed calls, and it works like an accountability buddy who actually gets it. Join us at mindlove.com/collective.
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