Over the last few decades, Professor Charlie Harary has become a household name among Modern Orthodox teens. Professor Harary’s motivational speeches and videos on the outreach website Aish.com attest to the quality of his unique wisdom in business and Torah, and Syms students enjoy learning from Professor Harary firsthand in his popular leadership classes. But Professor Harary is taking his lessons to the next level with his new show, the Elements of Success, soon to premier on The Jewish Channel. The Observer had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Harary about his show and the secret to true success.
Over the last few decades, Professor Charlie Harary has become a household name among Modern Orthodox teens. Professor Harary’s motivational speeches and videos on the outreach website Aish.com attest to the quality of his unique wisdom in business and Torah, and Syms students enjoy learning from Professor Harary firsthand in his popular leadership classes. But Professor Harary is taking his lessons to the next level with his new show, the Elements of Success, soon to premier on The Jewish Channel. The Observer had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Harary about his show and the secret to true success.Observer: Success comes in many forms, and can mean different things to different people. What is your definition of success in The Elements of Success?
CH: Success to me is the approach that you use as you engage in life. In everything that you’re doing, there’s a mentality that moves you to do the best you can, to accomplish, to overcome, to achieve in every scenario. And if it’s a process, it can be studied. There are people that over their lifetimes have achieved a certain amount of material-value based success. They’re heads of industries; they’ve created products that have made a difference in peoples’ lives; they’re philanthropists; they’ve defended people; they’ve grown and overcome challenges to be where they are. So in various areas they’ve achieved a certain level of success, and the question is… can you capture it? Can you scale it? Can you teach it? Is it something you can take to students and say, “okay, if you can do these things, you can increase your chances of success? If you can not do these habits or these things, you can decrease your chances of failure.” So that’s really an idea which turned into a show.
What was it like to film the show? How long did it take?
What’s amazing about anything on a screen is that it takes so much longer than you think. If you’re shooting a four minute video and you want to do it well, it’s going to take double, triple, five times that amount. If you’re shooting a thirty minute show, you want to get two and a half hours or more of footage. So you’re cutting scenes double times, you’re doing voiceovers, you’re constantly working to take your four-five hours of content and honing it into twenty six minutes of great stuff, or of the best stuff you have. But that’s how it works. What’s amazing to me is that whenever you do something on a screen, it always has the illusion that it’s sort of natural. It’s really not.
Is there an underlying message that drives your motivational speaking?
My underlying message and goal in every speech is that I want everybody to live an awesome life. If you really look at the science of it, most of peoples’ ability to have an experience called “an awesome life” comes from their ability to strengthen that which they have—their mind, their focus, their perspective, and to navigate through life’s ups and downs. We think that we are more susceptible to the outside world than we truly are. We have more control. We have more capacity. We have more ability. When we redefine success as an effort-based system, we’ve got more enjoyment of life. So much of the things that we want, we could have if we just learned some basic skills. And I want more than anything in the world for everybody to have the best life they can. I don’t care if they get it from my videos, and I don’t care if they know my name. I just want people to walk around and have great lives, because that’s what I think G-d wants them to have, and if we as people can help each other do that, I think we’re doing what He wants from us.
Is there anyone you would consider a role model for your road to success?
I look a lot to biblical figures for their strength. I look at Yoseph who was in the middle of nowhere, getting basically the wrong messages from G-d, because every time he did something great, he got knocked down. And the ability for someone like Yoseph to climb out of every challenge and hold on, and this is all before he was thirty…I think that’s inspiring. Look around to some characters in our history, and you learn life lessons.
What could you tell Stern students to do now to increase their chances of future success?
First and foremost is to realize that so much is determined by their mentality. Science shows that, actually, happiness leads to success. Success doesn’t lead to happiness. The way you approach life is what you’re going to get out of life. You can be stressed about the final and freak out, or you can be stressed and get excited by the challenge. Your perspective is going to shape what you do. When we start being proactive and engaging in the world in a more empowered state, we start being able to do much more. The company Hewlett-Packard was famous for saying, “fail often and fail fast.” Fail. Try. But don’t get hung up on it. Do the best you can. Take on a tough class. Get up in the morning, try again. And if you fail often and you fail fast, you’re allowing yourself to live a successful lifestyle.