Many people in the world don’t have goals. They just continue living the life that they’ve been dealt with, not even daring to look for something extraordinary. Dan McCormick’s guest on today’s show is the complete opposite. Patricia Acosta likes to dream big. Growing up in Colombia in a humble family as the youngest of seven children, Patricia decided to travel to the United States to pursue the American Dream. Working full time while learning the language, she finally accomplished everything she wrote in her dream after only six years. Today, she shares her motivation for achieving her goals as quickly as possible, highlighting what she learned about success and leadership.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Dreaming Big With Patricia Acosta

It is Wisdom Wednesday. We have an amazing guest. If you’re new to The Greatest Salesman podcast, my name is Dan McCormick, the ambassador of the Og Mandino Company. I could not be more thrilled to welcome you, wherever you may be joining from. Paty, you’ve got friends that are chiming in here. I wish that I could speak the Spanish language and make everybody understand me. I’m happy to have you here.

We’ve known each other for several years. We met in Newport Beach, California. She is Paty Acosta. She is in the hot seat as I like to call it. She is in that seat that I call The Greatest Salesperson in the world. You’re going to share some wisdom with us. This is our 23rd episode of The Greatest Salesman show. We don’t work together closely anymore because you moved from Newport Beach back to your home country, Colombia. Tell us three things that you think have shaped your success in life and/or each day of your life.

One of the three things that I love and changed my life completely was to dream big and visualize my success before I succeed. That’s important, to keep a perfect picture always. In life, you have ups and downs. When you’re down, you don’t want anything. You have to dream clearly and you visualize those every day. You repeat those every day. That’s your gasoline for you every day. That is one of the best. The second one was one of the scrolls of Og Mandino, which is, “I will live this day as if it is the last one.” Sometimes, we don’t value the time and that’s the only thing that we cannot record. To live life as if it is the last one is amazing.

I learned from one of my mentors too, Alan Nagao. He has been here in The Great Salesman. He always was happy. I have been putting that into practice. I feel happier because I feel grateful. That’s the other thing that has been important in my life. The third one is to focus on my results and not on my excuses. I focus on what I want and not on my excuses. Every time that I want to do something, if I don’t complete it, I find what is the excuse I have and I focus on my results. It’s important because that is helping me to accomplish all the goals that I want.

If we stop the show right here, I could listen to that all day long. I love that because you have a picture in your mind. I love the dream and visualization. I was reading something from Tony Robbins, “The person that has the ability to keep that state of mind strongest and clearest will always win.” Thank you for sharing that. That is brilliant. “I will live this day as if it is my last,” is scroll number five. Focus on the results and not the excuses. Many things can distract people in the world. If I could come back with a question for you on that, what are some of the things that help you with the visualization in the picture each day?

I’m a business administrator. I went to university for five years and after it, I went to study marketing and business for ten years at the university. I studied in the best universities. No one told me about personal development. When I started getting to this work several years ago, the person who was helping me to get to the point that I wanted to be asked me about my goals. I was focusing on my financial goals because it was a part of my life that I was missing. He told me that the goals are not just on the financial side. I have to take in my physical goals, my spiritual goals and my relationship goals.

I was reading a book that said that I had to do my dream board. I did my dream board. It’s important that you do that. I will highly recommend it to do your dream board. The dream board is important because that allows you to visualize what do you exactly want. That is going to help you to get out of your comfort zone. I learned that if we stay in the comfort zone, those are not our real dreams. Our real dreams are outside of our comfort zone. When I learned that, I try to visualize exactly what I want without thinking. If you think too much, maybe you’re going to say, “How can I get the house in front of the beach? How can I get many investments so I can have more residual income?” Set your thinking. Do not stop your mind. Dream as if you are like a little kid. That’s what I did. I decided to dream without thinking because they said, “Paty, you need to dream big.”

When I was fifteen years old, I wanted a house that is paid for. I didn’t want to have a house that I had to pay for. Usually, the ones that own the house are the banks. I didn’t want that. At fifteen years old, I wanted a house that was fully paid, a car that is fully paid. I was born in Latin America and it is not easy to even have a car. I wanted a person that loves me. Those were my goals when I was fifteen years old. When they told me that, I decided to dream big. I said, “I don’t want a house that is paid for. I want ten houses that I could pay for. I want to travel around the world.” At that point, I was being in two countries, Colombia and the United States. I decided to dream big. After that, I decided to look for those dreams in magazines. Now, Google it or something.

At that point, I looked at a lot of pictures and I did my dream board. In the beginning, it looked like a complete lie. It looked like nothing was true. After six years, even the crazy dreams that I put there, they’re 100% complete. I would say that do your dream board. It’s not just doing your dream board. You have to visualize that every day. Before you go to bed, as soon as you wake up, all the time, visualize that because that’s your perfect picture and that’s your gasoline. Your dreams are the ones that help you to wake up every day and to have energy. I love what Tony Robbins said, “Keep a good state. Manage a good state,” which is one of the most important things for me too.

We’re here interviewing the greatest salespeople in the world that have experienced some degree of Og Mandino’s incredible pearls of wisdom, and you mentioned that for your number two thing with that particular scroll. I wonder because I don’t know the answer to this, growing up speaking Spanish, when you read in Spanish, can you read and say English that easily?

Kind of.

The reason I’m asking is because when I look at, “Today I begin a new life,” I wonder if you look at that scroll in your book. We’ve worked together in the Nu Skin enterprises for years. Where were you before that? What kind of an eye-opening was this personal development? It says right there at the beginning, “Today I begin a new life, but today I shed my old skin which has too long suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity.” What was life like before the dream board coming true, if you will?

Dreaming Big: Your dream board is important because it allows you to be specific about what you want, which helps you get out of your comfort zone.

Before, I had this amazing book in my life that completely changed my life. I’ve already been reading it 5 or 7 times. I was reading over the weekend again. It’s something that I love. For me, honestly, this is like the bible of personal development. It’s incredible. All these scrolls are going to change your life and your family life and that’s why it’s important. I’ve been giving this book to all the people I know as a present because I’m thinking that I’m giving the best gift for them.

Before that, my mind was not programmed for success. I was programmed on what people do. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world don’t have goals. They’re us looking for something normal. They are not looking for something extraordinary, especially in Latin America. For some of you that live in the United States or Europe, we are a third world country. The economy is not good. When people here graduate as professionals from a university, they expect to get $500 a month after going to a university for five years. Our mind is in another state.

My parents gave me a lot of love, which is one of the most important things. I love that part of this scroll because they give me a lot of love and this is important. You have to have love for yourself, for your family, for all the things that are around you. My father used to tell me when I was a little kid, “Paty, that’s for the rich people. Paty, we don’t have money for that.” Those were the things I heard when I was a little kid. When I was fifteen, I decided that my goal is to have a house, to have a car and it will be okay. I was not around financial abundance at that moment. That’s why I decided to study business administration because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I said to myself, “If I’m an entrepreneur, I want to be better.”

I went to one of the best universities here in Colombia. When I graduated, I thought, “Everything is going to be okay. When I graduate, I’ll have the title of business administrator plus a big government loan.” I studied with a government loan so I had a huge debt. When I started doing the interviews, the first thing that they asked me is if I speak English. One of the things that I will tell you is when you have a goal, you need to expect difficulties. The good thing is you have the mentality to change any difficult thing into an opportunity. I decided the best opportunity is to go to the United States. One important thing is the word decision. I decided that I will go and study English even though, at that moment, when I was 24, I didn’t have money. I had debt. I didn’t know anybody in the United States. I didn’t even know a family member that went to study in another country.

It doesn’t matter where you are right now. You need to decide what you want and the big dreams that you want. If you decide based on your conditions, it’s not going to be okay. I decided that I will go to the United States. When you decide, magic happens. Remember that. Deciding is not like, “I will do that.” When you decide, you feel it inside of you. You feel your energy. I decided that I will go to the United States and when I did that, my visa was approved. I went to the United States with $700 and I didn’t know anybody. When you’ve already decided, when you already have your dream, you go clear and you need to be willing to take action. That’s important. That’s in the scroll. You need to act now. I said, “If I go to the United States and If I had to work in the morning or the afternoon, I will do that. I will complete my goal to study English.”

I went to the United States and I had a job in the morning and I had a job in the afternoon. At night, I studied in a community college because I didn’t have money to pay for the university at that point. I was an employee in the United States for six years because I wanted to continue to study. I studied marketing. I studied international business. I studied management. I was happy. From studying business to opening my own business. After that, I opened my own business in real estate. I started having financial success.

After all these things that I went through when I was having financial success, I wasn’t happy. I was not happy because I was missing my family. I’m close to my family. I’m the seventh of seven kids. In Latin America and around the world, family is important. We love to live close. It’s important. I was not happy and that is when I asked for an opportunity to be close to my family. Several years ago, I found this amazing international business to be a part of. When I started this business, I thought I was already prepared because I went to a university and I knew how to do business and I got successful in business. I realized that I was missing all this personal development. I used to read books on business, but not about personal development.

When I started to discover this amazing work, I was like, “Oh my God.” It was like a before and after. When I was reading all the books on personal development, especially by Og Mandino, I realized many things. First, I didn’t have successful habits. Even though I thought I was successful, I didn’t have successful habits. I found out that I was carrying my past a little bit. When you carry your past, it’s not good. You can carry the good things, but you cannot carry those bad things. I decided that I will make a new story and that’s important. You need to decide to create a story that you want. All of us have a story. We are a masterpiece. We can create a new life. We are the authors.

When I started to discover this amazing work, I was like, “Wow.” For me, I felt like I discovered life years ago when I started reading all these books. I realized all the potential that all of us have and we don’t discover it. We don’t have people around that are helping us to be a better person. They step in our dreams or they are used to a normal life. They don’t want to start another life. They don’t want to go the extra mile. They don’t want to do an extra effort to have an amazing life. I realized that I will keep five people around me. Those are not the people that are physically next to you. I realized that these people are going to be like Og Mandino or Alan Nagao, he’s one of my biggest mentors, all the mentors like Dan McCormick.

I went to the training of Tony Robbins. I decided that these will be my mentors, all these people that have been successful. It’s important that you decide who you want to listen to. I feel that I was born several years ago. It has been a new life. All my nieces and nephews are reading one book per month. I had to wait until I was 35 years old when I found out this. All the people need to know about those amazing secrets on how you can discover the real potential that you have to be a leader that this world needs.

You are in this seat for a reason. You are the greatest salesperson in the world. You are the person that sits in that chair and I get to interview you and talk to you about how and why. As soon as you said the three things, I can see why you had millions of dollars in volume going through your organization. Thousands of people, new millionaires on your path, all because of your leadership. You give credit to your mentors and the books you read. You came alive several years ago. You made a decision.

When you looked at your favorite scroll, you point out in your second thing here, “I will live this day as if it is my last.” It is an interesting thing how you can make every day count and you can fill up the cup of others. Og says, “I will live this day as if it is my last. What shall I do with this last day?” He says, which remains in my keeping, “First, I’ll seal it up in a container of life so that not one drop spills.” You quoted scroll number nine, “I will act now.” What about this scroll that is specific to your vision, if you will?

Dreaming Big: When you have a dream, you need to be willing to take action.

I realized, in life, sometimes we don’t value our time. We think that we are going to live forever, that we have life insurance, but we don’t. We don’t know when is going to be our last day. Hopefully, we get to the 80s, 90s. Time is the most valuable thing that we have and it’s the only resource that we cannot recover. First, I learned that I was missing a lot of things during the day. I decided to live that part of the scroll, to be grateful for everything. We read. We go to the conference. We listen to those motivations. We know a lot, but it’s not about knowledge. It’s putting it into practice. That’s the most important thing, putting it into practice. As soon as I wake up, I say, “Thank you for these amazing days.” I decided to thank at least ten things, the bed that I am in, the pillow that I love. Many people around the world don’t even have a bed.

I love to help. That’s one of my passions. We are helping more than 2,500 kids here in our country. We will take them together with the team and with our amazing company in Latin America. When I go and visit those kids, they don’t have beds where they can sleep in. They don’t have a house. They don’t have a floor. Believe me, they don’t have a restroom to go and do their necessities or take a shower. It’s incredible. When you go there, you start appreciating what you have. What I do as soon as I wake up is being grateful for everything that I can see around, even the water, the food. I realized that I’m grateful for everything that I have in my life. Tony Robbins says, “Change your expectations for appreciation.” A lot of people say, “When I have that, I’m going to be happy.” When you are there, you want another big thing. That has been helping me to live every day as if it is the last one. When we are little kids, we are slaves of our emotions. Sometimes we have emotions here. We have to be a slave of our successful habits.

You have so much good going on. I want to share with everybody at the Og Mandino Company what we try to do is give away value. We know that the Og Mandino Company has an assessment for you. It’s something that’s going to challenge your brain. It’s a little bit funky. It’s a little bit odd, but it’s going to scientifically and mathematically nail you perfectly. If you go to HabitFinder.com/podcast, you’ll get this $199 value for free on behalf of the Og Mandino Company. Hopefully, you already have the book. Maybe you have the journalized version, which is The Greatest Secret in the World.

Paty, you have given us so much. I feel like I could write a book on what you’ve taught through example. I love when people share that personal example of what you had to fight for and what you had to train the mind to become and how you decided and how you hold the vision and all of these things. I love how you validated this scroll, “I will live this day as if it is my last.” Og says, “I will not waste a moment.” It sounds to me like you’re good at time management and visualization. Are you someone that has a schedule? Do you write things down? You’re organized in that way.

Yes. After I read the book, I learned this big lesson that we don’t have to waste any time because time is gold. I have to tell you that I was not organized before. I used to lose a lot of time. Now I have a clear agenda of the hobbies that I do in the morning. I wake up early in the morning. I love to do that because I realized that I can be more effective and I can enjoy more of the day. I have a clear agenda on what I do with my first hour. My first hour is for me, it’s for personal development.

The first thing that I do is to be grateful. I do exercise for twenty minutes. I read the first twenty minutes of the book that I’m reading at that moment about self-development. After, I meditate, I visualize my next dream board that I’m working on, the next dreams that I’m doing. I repeat my goals every day in the morning. After that, I have my breakfast. I connect with my breakfast. I connect with the food and I’m grateful for the food that I’m having. I’m tasting it and feeling it. Sometimes, we’re eating and we forget about that because it became a habit not to appreciate what we have.

If I’m with my family, I connect with them. It’s different to be with them, to connect with them. I’m blessed to have my parents. If I’m with them, I’ll listen to their stories. We have time for breakfast and it’s not just a running breakfast, we have one hour. After that, I have blocks of my time. I have something at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, and something at 12:00. I have my lunch scheduled. Before, I used to drink juice when I was hungry and that’s okay. I have a lunchtime. I have time for me and I have time for my family. I have time for my team. I feel that I’m living a happier life because I’m not just focused on my financial goals, I focus on my physical goals. I focus on my mind to be even more powerful every day. More than that, I’m being happy. That’s the most important thing, being happy with whatever you’re doing. Be happy every day.

There is a scroll that says, “Smile every day.” As soon as I wake up, I’ve got a smile on my face. I smile every day. There are things that happen in life. We lose things. Life is not like that. It’s a decision to be happy. It doesn’t matter what happens, you need to be happy. In life, we can even lose family members. One of my biggest fears, I have to confess to you, is to lose my parents because I’m close with my parents. I decided to have time with them. For that, I worked hard that now I’m blessed to be close to my family. It’s not to be with them, it’s to connect with them. Connection is important.

I’m giving my best that if something happened to them, I will be happy. Why? Because I have the opportunity to be with them, to connect with them, to tell them all the time that I love them. Love the people that are around you. Have that connection. Tell them, “I love you.” This is important. Love is one of the strongest forces in the world. I learned that to love others, you need to love yourself and that’s one of the things that I realized too.

Even though I’ve always been a person that’s working, I was a good student at my university, I tried to be the best, I realized that I was not loving myself. I always criticize myself. Usually, leaders criticize themselves. For us, sometimes it’s not enough. At the end of the day, it’s not enough, “I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t do that.” I was not happy. I decided to start loving myself and say, “Good job, Paty.” Since that day, when I started loving myself, I realized that I was able to connect more.

One of the things the book said is if you love yourself, you can start loving others. I’m grateful to have this amazing book that changed my life completely. You should have a big campaign because I want everybody to read this book. As the book says, it’s not just for the salespeople. When I heard the title at the beginning, I was like, “This is for salespeople.” Every human being needs to read this book because this book is going to help you to live life to the fullest. Live every minute of your life.

If we were to turn on the news and listen to the world, what a different view we get from Paty Acosta. Can I nominate you as the chief visionary officer for the world happy program, the world energy program? You are good. I’m happy for your team. Everybody is happy that you’re their friend, coach, mentor and business partner. You have a great radiance about you. I want to close with this. You’ve mentioned many times how you’ve read the books. You have maybe the book of the month that you’re doing with your team. If you’ll open up your book, I get a sense that you don’t read your book. You study your book. You’ve read it maybe 5 or 7 times and you’re rereading it over the weekend. Anything new that popped into your mind as I asked you to prepare for this? Was there something new, a different angle to see something? It’s beautiful.

One of the things that I realize and what I’m telling my team is, “Read the book, highlight, and do another resume. You read the rest of it and you highlight the things that you are going to keep on mind all the time.” Sometimes we read and we forget. When I was reading the book over the weekend, I remembered all the scrolls, the titles, but I realized that I remembered some things that I already forgot. To me, this is like the bible of personal development. If people will put in practice those ten scrolls, believe me, you will find all the success that you want. You will complete all the dreams that you want. You will be happy, which is the most important thing. The most important thing is you are going to leave a legacy. That’s why we’re here, to inspire others to do the same, to inspire many people that they can accomplish all their dreams.

Dreaming Big: Discover the real potential that you have to be the leader that the work needs.

In the house of my sister, she is at the top of the company too. I came here to look for a new apartment. She has the dream board and all of my niece and nephews are doing that and that’s amazing. We are here to leave a legacy to the world. We don’t have to wait until we die to do that. We need to do that now. We need to be an inspiration now. The power of duplication is incredible. I want to say that I’m grateful. Dan, thank you so much for calling me. I was excited. I couldn’t believe it. I was telling my husband, “I carry this book all the time.” I always wanted to read it again and remind myself about how important all these lessons are. This is the best gift that you can give to others. Tell them.

There is no coincidence in life. My sister, in the book club, she’ll say, “Paty, they are reading this book. I’m excited to do that.” Coincidentally, I’m going to be speaking for the Og Mandino, The Great Salesman. I’m grateful to Og Mandino and with you, Dan, and with all the people doing this because it’s incredible. I want to find a way that we can translate this to Spanish because, believe me, we will have 2,000 people. We can find a way to speak Spanish. We can have you at a conference and all the things. I know that all people can learn more about themselves to grow. It’s incredible. It’s worth it.

Dan said, “Paty, how was your life years ago?” I live in a state of gratefulness. It’s incredible. I can’t believe all the things that I have and more than the material things is the person that I am now. I’m in the process of growing because I never stop. We need to learn every day. We need to grow one person a day. Happiness is equal to the growing part that we are having. If we stay, we are not happy anymore. We are in that stage of being in our comfort zone. I want to encourage everybody to be on all these shows to learn from many people. Be here not just to read the book but to study the book. Dan, thank you so much. For me, it has been an honor to be here.

It’s an honor for me. You said some great things and I won’t try to add to what you closed with because it was beautiful. You talked about how it was a bible. Og was a fan of the Bible. He listed the Bible with his top ten favorite books of all time. He was a great man of principle. He was a great writer. He had a philosophy for living that you can see has found its way and seeped into your life and you embody it beautifully. Forever in the history of time, you will be found in the Og Mandino show. You’ve been such a delight and transformation.

If you’re new with us on the show, we encourage you to take the assessment. Measure your thoughts, see if you can get them a little more aligned, not just reading the words, studying the assessment, asking how you can be more effective in every area of your life. I cannot thank you enough. I can’t wait to see you again soon here in America, perhaps. Congratulations and thanks for your contribution to the show.

Thank you, Dan. We can’t wait to have you here again in Colombia.

She’s Paty Acosta. If you want to reach out to her, you can find her on Facebook. We look forward to sharing the journey with you. All the best. Congratulations again.

All the love and all the blessings to everyone.

Important Links:

• Og Mandino
• Paty Acosta – Facebook
• Alan Nagao – Past episode
• HabitFinder.com/podcast
• The Greatest Secret in the World

About Paty Acosta

Experienced Distributor Support Representative skilled in English and Spanish, Microsoft Excel, Customer Service, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Outlook. Strong support professional with a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from Columbia College and Associate of Science (AS) focused in Information Systems from LDS Business College.