Jim Rohn is one of the foremost business philosophers that ever lived. in this part two of the work of Jim Rohn, I explore Jim’s talks one Personal Development and Goal Achievement.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Don’t blame all you’ve got
Not what happens key is what you do about it
Can’t change circumstance can change you
4 major lessons of life
Changing seasons
Life and business is like the seasons. You cannot change the seasons, but you can change yourself.
Things are not going to change. The next 10 years will be pretty much like the last 10 years.
Short description of human history: Opportunity mixed with difficulty.
SEASONS OF LIFE
You can’t change seasons
- Learn how to handle the Winters (they come after Fall)
- Learn how to take advantage of the Springs (they follow winter) – Spring = Opportunity.
- In the Summer, nourish and protect – become capable and powerful.
- Reap in the harvest (Fall) without complaint or apology – must take personal responsibility.
Feeding and nourishing the mind takes time.
Your library needs to show you are a serious student. Can’t live on mental candy.
Keep a Journal – don’t trust your memory.
If you hear something or come across something important, write it down.
Buy empty books and fill them with valuable notes. Go back over them and let it instruct you and feed your mind and soul again.
3 Treasures that you leave behind
- Pictures – take a lot of pictures
- Library – books that taught you to become healthy, wealthy, powerful
- Your Journals – the ideas you picked up, be student enough to write things down
- Study is a keyword for life change
- If you wish to be successful, study success. If you wish to be happy, study happiness
- Learn from your own life
- Make your own life one of your most important studies
- Be sure to study the negative as well as the positive. Our failures serve us well when they teach us valuable lessons
- All leaders are readers. Like most successful people have in common is that they’re constantly reading and learning and have an endless curiosity. Start a library
- Take care of yourself. Some people don’t do well because they don’t feel well
- Make sure the outside is a major reflection of what’s going on inside
- If you do believe in spirituality, study it and practice it regularly
Motivators: Peers, Family, Authorities, Humankind
Success and Happiness
Short list to the good life
- Productivity
- Good Friends
- Spirituality (study practice teach)
- Don’t Miss Anything
- Inner Circle
- Ask for God’s help
Success: It is both a journey and a It is both the steady, measured progress towards a goal and the achievement of a goal
The Five Abilities to develop
- The ability to absorb
- Learn to respond
- Learn the ability to reflect
- Develop the ability to act
- Develop the ability to share.
Change
- Emotions are powerful for life change. They can build or destroy.
- Some people are too cautious. “What if this happens?” is the language of the poor. In reality, it’s all risky.
- Life is risky. Don’t ask for security, but adventure. It’s not how long you live, it’s HOW you live.
- Pessimism: looking on the dark side. Trying to figure out all the reasons why something won’t work. Looking for problems, not virtues. Looks out the window and doesn’t see the sunset but the spots on the window.
- Our lives are affected by the way we THINK things are, not the way they actually are.
Emotions that turn your life around:
- Disgust – normally associated as negative, but can be positive. It is when you say, “I’ve had it. No more. Enough is enough.” If you can add an act to it, that helps.
- Decision – Inner Civil War. you can make a decision that turns your life around.
- Desire – wanting to bad enough. Sometimes desire waits for a trigger (like meeting someone, or not being able to do something that you want). Welcome all experiences because you never know which one will turn everything on.
- Resolve – saying “I will.” Do or Die. Promising yourself you will never give up. “Until,” do it until you succeed.
Goal achievement
Setting Goals
- You need a list of goals.
- Goals are your vision of the future.
- You can either face the future with apprehension or with anticipation. Most face it with apprehension.
- If you don’t make plans of your own, you will fall into someone else’s plan.
- Need to make a “Not Much” list. If economy improves, if taxes get a little smaller, if you get a small raise at your job, if your negative relatives become positive, if the “right” political party got in power, etc, it would not do much for you. And too many people are counting on this list.
- Count on your ability to design the future. If the promise of the future is clear and powerful, the price is easy to pay. The price is a few small disciplines practiced every day.
- It is this simple: Decide what you want and write it down. Thats it.
- Keep your list year after year so you can go back and look at it.
- Get together with your spouse, your kids, your colleagues and come up with some goals.
- Put “Become a Millionaire” on your list, for what it will make of you to achieve it.
- Major question to ask on the job is not “What am I getting here?”. The major question to ask is “What am I becoming here?”.
- Don’t compromise. Don’t sell out. Count the cost.
Reasons can change your life.
- Reasons come first, answers come second. Life hangs on to answers and gives them up to people inspired by reasons.
- Reasons for doing well:
- Personal reasons (respect, love the feeling, joy, satisfaction, etc).
- Family reasons (this is powerful. People can greatly affect others. Sometimes people will do things for others they won’t do for themselves) Random person: “If I had a million dollars, I’d never work a day in my life” Jim: “That’s probably why the Good Lord saw fit not to give you that million.”
- What’s your goal? What’s got you fired up? What’s got you turned off?
Divide goals in two parts:
- Long range: dreams for the rest of your life. You gotta keep dreaming — Bible: “Without dreams, people perish”
- Short range: tomorrow, this week, month, year.
Divide goals into 3 categories:
- Economic: plays a big role in everyone’s life. Plan it meticulously well.
- Things: Put everything on the list. It’s fun to check it off. When you check off something major, celebrate!
- Personal development: Stronger, more decisive, learn a language, improve your skills in some way.
Write your goals down
- In your journal. Because:
One of the major people you want to study is YOURSELF.
- What goals did you have before? How did that change?
- The future doesn’t get better by hope, but by plans. Get serious about your goals.
Check the size of your goals — how big they are, what kind they are, how they affect you?
- Your goals are always affecting you: your personality, dress, style, etc. Lousy goals have bad effects.
- People who give up on life join the Thank God It’s Friday club.
- Learn the art of asking. The Bible even says “ask.” Asking is the beginning of receiving.
- Receiving is like the ocean. You can receive it with a teaspoon or a bucket.
- 2 ways to ask:
- 1) with intelligence: don’t mumble, be clear. Describe what you want
- 2) with faith: believe you can get what you want. Like a child. Adults are too skeptical.
- Remember: you won’t get everything you want. Sometimes it hails on your crops. But you can still get plenty.
- Well defined goals are like a magnet. The harder you work on them, the stronger the pull
- Goal setting questions:
- What do I want in the next 1 to 10 years? Make a list of 50 things you want
- Write a number next to the goal corresponding to how many years it will take to achieve it
- The way you enjoy life best is when you wrap up one goal, you immediately start on the next one
- What do I want in the next 1 to 10 years? Make a list of 50 things you want
- Next step: pick out the four most important 1-year goals, four most important 3-year goals, four important 5-year goals, four important 10-year goals
- Describe in detail each one of these 16 goals on paper. Describe why each goal is important to either talk yourself into or talk yourself out of it
- Set aside time every week to review, reevaluate and edit your goals
- It is very important to celebrate progress.Celebrate when you check off a short range or long-range goal
- Goal setting questions:
Financial independence
Get paid bringing value to marketplace
Work harder on yourself than do on your job
Financial independence is the ability to live from the income of your own personal resources
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- The Richest Man in Babylon. The theme is what you do with what you have is more important than what you have
- Don’t think if you had more money you would have a better plan
- In reality, if you had a better plan, you would have more money
What should a child (or an adult) do with a dollar?
Don’t spend more than $0.70 of every dollar.
If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall.
What to do with the other $0.30?
- $0.10 – Charity: Helping people who can’t help themselves. Nothing teaches character better than generosity. Best to start with small amounts. Easier to give $0.10 out of a $1 than to give $100,000 out of a million.
- $0.10 – Active Capital: Try to make a profit yourself. Profits are better than wages.
Wages will make you a living. Profits will make you a fortune.
Keep strict accounts. Now where your money is going. Don’t let it “just get away from you.”
Get a new attitude.
“Hate to pay my taxes,” get past this. Taxes help pay for democracy, liberty, and freedom that is the goose that lays the golden eggs.
“Hate to pay my bills,” get beyond this. Bills reduce your liability and increase your assets.
Everybody must pay, even if its only pennies.
Leadership
Communication
Effective communication is how to affect people with words.
Words can work miracles. They are powerful and can have dramatic effects.
Have Something Good to Say, Be Prepared
Interest
Show interest in the subject.
Then go beyond that and show fascination. Turn frustration into fascination if you can.
Sensitivity
Understand other people. You have to be touched and moved by the drama in other peoples lives so you connect with them where they are. This involves emotion.
Knowledge
Take notes. Gather knowledge. Don’t be lazy in learning.
Say It Well
- Sincere, Repetition, Brevity, Vocabulary
Read Your Audience
- What your see – body language
- What you hear – kids will tell you
- What you feel – emotional signals (women naturally better at this than men)
Intensity
Your words need to be mixed with emotion. It has an incredible effect. Put more of you into what you say.
RELATIONSHIPS
- Who do you surround yourself with?
Some Quotes from Jim Rohn
“Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Rohn
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Jim Rohn
“Life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohn
“All leaders are readers.” Jim Rohn
“Poor people spend their money and save what’s left, rich people save their money and spend what’s left.” Jim Rohn
“Life is not just the passing of time. Life is the collection of experiences and their intensity.” Jim Rohn
“You cannot change your destination overnight but you can change your direction overnight.” Jim Rohn
“Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.” Jim Rohn
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.” Jim Rohn
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.” Jim Rohn
“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” Jim Rohn
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” Jim Rohn
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Jim Rohn
“Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.” Jim Rohn
“Everyone must choose one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” Jim Rohn
“To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask? ” Jim Rohn
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan, and guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” Jim Rohn
“If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary.” Jim Rohn
“For every disciplined effort, there is a multiple reward.” Jim Rohn