one of my great MENTORS
Jim Rohn — In Person As one of today’s most respected speakers, Jim Rohn appears annually in front of dozens of audiences ranging from civic and church groups to sales organizations and Fortune 500 companies.
Introduction … The Day That Turned My Life (jim rhorn) Around Shortly after I turned twenty-five I met a man by the name of Earl Shoaff. Little did I know how this encounter would change my life … Up until then my life had been embarrassingly typical of the vast majority of people who lead gray lives of little achievement and even less happiness. I did have a wonderful start, growing up in the loving environment of a small farming community in southwestern Idaho, just a short walk from the shores of the Snake River.
When I left home I was filled with the hope of carving for myself a good-sized chunk of the American dreapromptly went to college. But at the end of one year I decided I was smart enough, so I quit. This turned out to be a major mistake — one of many major mistakes I would make during those early days. But I was impatient to work and to earn, figuring I wouldn’t have any trouble getting a job, which turned out to be accurate. Getting a job wasn’t hard. (I was yet to understand the difference between merely making a living and making a life.) Shortly afterward, I got married. And like the typical husband, I made my wife lots of promisesm. However, things did not turn out quite as I’d expected. After graduating from high school I promptly went to college. But at the end of one year I decided I was smart enough, so I quit. This turned out to be a major mistake — one of many major mistakes I would make during those early days. But I was impatient to work and to earn, figuring I wouldn’t have any trouble getting a job, which turned out to be accurate. Getting a job wasn’t hard. (I was yet to understand the difference between merely making a living and making a life.) Shortly afterward, I got married. And like the typical husband, I made my wife lots of promises about the wonderful future which I knew was just around the corner. After all, I was ambitious, I was very sincere about my desire to succeed, and I did work hard. Success was assured! Or so I thought … When I turned twenty-five, I had been working for six years, so I decided to take stock of my progress. I had a nagging suspicion that things weren’t going quite right. My weekly paycheck amounted to a grand total of fiftyseven dollars.
I was far behind in my promises and even further behind with the growing pile of bills strewn across our rickety kitchen table. By now I was a father saddled with ever-growing responsibilities for my expanding family. But most of all I realized that gradually I had settled into quietly accepting my meager lot. In a moment of honesty I began to see that rather than making progress I was falling further behind financially with each passing day. Something clearly had to change … but what? Maybe hard work alone doesn’t do it, I thought to myself. This, for me, was a shocking realization, raised as I was to believe that reward comes to those who earn their living by the sweat of their brow. But it was plain as day that although I was “sweatin’ plenty,” I was on my way to ending up at age sixty like so many people I saw around me: broke and in need of assistance. This terrified me. I couldn’t face that kind of future. Not in this, the richest country in the world! Still, I had more questions than answers.
What should I do? How could I change the direction of my life? I thought about going back to school. Only one year of college doesn’t look good on a job application. But with a family to look after, going back to school seemed impractical. Then I thought about starting a business. Now that was an exciting option! But, of course, I didn’t have the needed capital. After all, money was one of my biggest problems; I always had far too much month left over at the end of the money. (Have you ever been in that position?) One day, I lost ten dollars. It upset me so much that I felt physically ill for two weeks — over a ten-dollar bill! One of my friends tried to cheer me up. “Look, Jim,” he said, “maybe some poor soul who needed it found it.” But believe me, that did not cheer me up. As far as I was concerned I was the person who needed to find ten dollars, not lose it. (I must admit that at that time in my life benevolence had not yet seized me.) So that’s where I was at age twenty-five — behind on my dreams without a clue as to how to change my life for the better. Then one day good fortune came my way. Why did it appear at this point in my life? Why do good things happen when they do? I really don’t know. For me, this is part of the mystery of life … Anyway, my good fortune came when I met a man — a very special person by the name of Earl Shoaff. I first saw him at a sales conference where he was conducting a seminar. I cannot tell you what he said that evening that captivated me so, but I can still remember thinking to myself that I would give anything to be like him.
At the end of the seminar it took all the courage I could muster to just walk up to him and introduce myself. But in spite of my fumbling, he must have seen my desire to succeed. He was kind and generous and eventually took a liking to me. A few months later he hired me to join his sales organization. For the next five years I learned many of life’s lessons from Mr. Shoaff. He treated me like a son, spending hours teaching me his personal philosophy, which I now call the Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness. Then one day, at age forty-nine, and without any warning, Mr. Shoaff died. After mourning the loss of my mentor, I took some time to assess the impact he’d had on my life. I realized that the best thing I’d received from him was not a job or even the opportunity to grow from a sales trainee to executive vicepresident of his company. Rather, it was what I’d learned from the wisdom of his philosophy of life and his fundamentals for successful living: how to be wealthy, how to be happy. During the next few years I incorporated his ideas into my life … and I prospered. In fact, I made a great deal of money. But the most gratifying experience was sharing those ideas with my business associates and employees. The response was enthusiastic and the results immediate and measurable. Although I saw myself as primarily a businessman and not as an author or speaker, I felt drawn to the challenge of communicating to others, simply and directly, those ideas that make a difference in how a person’s life turns out. As you read this book, imagine that you are shopping. Take and use only those ideas that apply to you now. You certainly don’t have to “buy into” everything any one person says. But do give yourself a chance. Read the following pages with an open mind. If something makes sense to you, try it. If it doesn’t, discard it. Remember, in whatever you do be a student, not merely a follower.
CHAPTER 1
Five Key Words
All the ideas in this book stem from a group of key words. To understand this book, therefore, and to receive maximum value from its contents, it is essential that we reach agreement on the meaning of each one. FUNDAMENTALS First, let’s take a look at the word “fundamentals.” I define fundamentals as those basic principles on which all accomplishment is built. Fundamentals form the beginning, the basis and the reality from which everything else flows. It’s a contradiction of terms to talk about new fundamentals. That’s like someone claiming to have manufactured new antiques. One would be suspicious, right? No, fundamental principles belong to the ages. They have been the same from biblical times and will continue to remain so until the end of time. Let’s use the word “fundamentals” and apply it to the concept of success. If you are looking for fundamental success, the kind of success that lasts, that is built on a solid foundation, then you shquld avoid exotic answers. And believe me, there are lots of exotic answers being offered these days, especially in southern California where I live. So in spite of rumors to the contrary, success is a simple process. It doesn’t fall out of the sky. It is neither magical nor mysterious. SUCCESS IS NO MORE THAN THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF CONSISTENTLY APPLYING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SUCCESS TO LIFE. The same is true of happiness and wealth. They, too, are no more than the natural consequence of consistently applying the fundamentals of happiness and wealth to life. The key is to stick to the fundamentals. A Half-Dozen Things Mr. Shoaff, my mentor, said to me one day, “Jim, there are always a half-dozen things that make eighty percent of the difference.” A half-dozen things … what a key thought. Whether we are working to improve our health, wealth, personal achievement, or professional enterprise, the difference between triumphant success or bitter failure lies in the degree of our commitment to seek out, study, and apply those halfdozen things. For example, for a farmer to reap a plentiful harvest in the fall, the half-dozen basics he must concentrate on are fairly obvious: soil, seed, water, sunshine, nourishment, and care. Each component is of equal importance because only together do they bring to fruition a successful harvest. Thus, a good question to ask before undertaking any new project or setting new objectives is this: WHAT ARE THE HALF-DOZEN THINGS THAT WILL MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE TO THE OUTCOME? Whether the enterprise is in the fine arts or in music, mathematics or physics, sports or business, it’s those half-dozen fundamentals that count. The understanding and application of this simple principle is the first intelligent step toward accomplishing your dreams and objectives.
WEALTH
The second key word to define is wealth. Wealth is a controversial word because it brings to mind a wide variety of images and sometimes conflicting concepts. After all, each of us views wealth from a different perspective. To one person, wealth may mean having enough money to do whatever he or she wishes. To another, it may mean freedom from debt — freedom from the constant claim of obligation. To yet another, it may mean the opportunity to grow and to achieve. But out of this diversity comes creativity, and creativity can help each of us find unique ways to work for a life of abundance. To the majority who probably haven’t spent too much time thinking about the subject, wealth is simply symbolized by one word: millionaire. Now there’s an exciting word! It rings of success, freedom, power, influence, pleasure, possibility, and benevolence. Surely, being a millionaire is not a bad mental image to hold! Likewise, the word wealth embodies more than economic concepts. One can talk of the wealth of experience, the wealth of friendship, the wealth of love, the wealth of family, and the wealth of culture. However, for our purposes here, we shall focus on the kind of wealth that brings with it financial freedom — WEALTH THAT COMES FROM THE CONVERSION OF EFFORT AND ENTERPRISE INTO CURRENCY AND EQUITY. For each of us, the specific amount required for us to feel wealthy will differ. Yet I’m sure that our basic dream is the same: to be free of financial pressures, to have freedom of choice, and to enjoy the opportunity to create and to share. What does wealth mean to you? How much money will it take for you to feel financially free? These are not idle questions. As you’ll soon see, the more clearly defined your concepts about material wealth are, the more useful the ideas in this book will be to you. HAPPINESS Happiness embraces the universal quest. It’s a joy that usually accompanies positive activity. Like wealth, however, it, too, has a variety of often contradictory meanings. It’s both the joy of discovery and the joy of knowing. It often accompanies those who are fully aware of the colors, sounds, and harmony of life. And it’s the joy that comes to those who painstakingly design their lives and then live them with artistry. Happiness is the skill of reacting to the offerings of life by perception and by enjoyment. It’s achieved by both giving and receiving, reaping and bestowing. It’s being able to feast on harmony as well as food, on ideas as well as bread. Happiness comes to those who deliberately expand their horizons and experiences. It resides in the houses of those who have the ability to handle disappointment without losing their sense of well-being. It belongs to those who are in control of both their circumstances and their emotions. Happiness is also the freedom from the negative children of fear such as worry, low self-esteem, envy, greed, resentment, prejudice, and hatred. Those who experience happiness often have a grasp on and an awareness of the tremendously positive power of life and love. But happiness is more than a general feeling. It is also a method of thinking that organizes feelings, activities, and lifestyle. In other words, it’s a way of interpreting the world and its events. Happiness is having values in balance. It’s contentment with daily tasks, including those unpleasant chores from which few of us are free. Happiness is a life well-lived and filled with people of substance. It’s a wide variety of experiences and memories that become priceless forms of currency to spend and to invest. Happiness is activity with purpose. It’s love in practice. It’s both a grasp of the obvious and an awe of the mysterious. Yet most of us think of happiness as something either lost in the past or a peak to be arrived at in some distant future (I’ll be happy as soon as …). Few understand that happiness can only be experienced in the now. And, yes, like all good things, happiness is often elusive. But I promise you that it is not impossible to capture. So how does one latch onto the bluebird of happiness? Curiously, by understanding and applying a concept which is rarely associated with happiness … discipline.
DISCIPLINE
If there is one critical ingredient for your successful quest for both wealth and happiness, it is discipline. And yet when it comes to this concept, most people reject it as they conjure images of everything from a tough drill sergeant to a strict schoolteacher waving a ruler. Yet I assure you that the acquisition of discipline holds the key to your dreams and aspirations. Surprised? Then perhaps we should take a moment to define what is meant by discipline. Discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment … the glue that binds inspiration to achievement … the magic that turns financial necessity into the creation of an inspired work of art. Discipline comes to those with the awareness that for a kite to fly it must rise against the wind; that all good things are achieved by those who are willing to swim upstream; that drifting aimlessly through life only leads to bitterness and disappointment. Discipline is the foundation on which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure. Yet, curiously, many do not associate lack of discipline with lack of success. Most people envision failure as one earthshattering event, such as a company going bankrupt or a house being repossessed. This, however, is not how failure happens. Failure is rarely the result of some isolated event. Rather, it is a consequence of a long list of accumulated little failures which happen as a result of too little discipline. Failure occurs each time we fail to think … today, act … today, care, strive, climb, learn, or just keep going … today. If your goal requires that today you write ten letters and you write only three, you are behind by seven letters … today. If you commit yourself to making five phone calls and you make only one, you are behind by four phone calls … today. If your financial plan requires that you save ten dollars and you save none, you are behind ten dollars … today. The danger comes when we look at a day squandered and conclude that no harm has been done. After all, it was just one day. But add up these days to make a year and then add up these years to make a lifetime and perhaps you can now see how repeating today’s small failures can easily turn your life into a major disaster. Success follows exactly the same pattern … in reverse. If you plan to make ten calls and you go beyond your quota to fifteen, you’re ahead by five phone calls … today. Do the same with your correspondence and your savings plan and soon you’ll see the accumulated fruits of your diligence over a year and, eventually, over a lifetime. Discipline is the master key. It unlocks the door to wealth and happiness, culture and sophistication, high self-esteem and high accomplishment, and the accompanying feelings of pride, satisfaction, and success. What does it take to acquire discipline? First, it requires that you develop an awareness of the importance of discipline in your life. Start by asking yourself: “What do I want to accomplish in my life? What changes do I need to make in order to attain my goals?” Second, ask yourself honestly: “Am I willing to do what it takes?” If you answer “yes,” then you need to make a long-term commitment to maintain your discipline wisely, deliberately, consistently. Finally, your commitment will be tested when circumstances emerge that could interfere with your commitment to your new discipline — when you will have to perform, come rain or come shine. Certainly discipline will do much for you. But of even greater importance is what it will do to you. It will make you feel terrific about yourself. Even the smallest discipline can have an incredible effect on your attitude. And the good feeling you get — that surging feeling of selfworth which comes from starting a new discipline — is almost as good as the feeling which comes from the accomplishment of the discipline. A new discipline immediately changes the direction of your life, like a ship turning in mid-ocean and heading toward a new destination. There are those who believe that discipline is unnatural — that just being is enough. They consider the need to accomplish to be a neurotic, man-made exercise. But the fact is that discipline cooperates with nature — where everything strives. How tall will a tree grow? It fights the powerful force of gravity and keeps reaching toward sunlight to become as tall as it can be. True, this striving by a tree is not a conscious act — trees don’t have brains. But you and I have been given the ability to consciously choose to strive and to become all that we can be. Discipline attracts opportunity. Exciting opportunities invariably come to those who have developed skills and who have the ambition to act. And those who through discipline and commitment set their sights high will grab on to opportunities that forever remain unseen by more timid souls. Discipline is that unique process of intelligent thought and activity that puts a lid on temper and a faucet on courtesy … that develops positive action and controls negative thoughts … that encourages success and refuses to accept failure … that promotes health and curbs sickness. Anyone can begin the process of being disciplined. You can do it by degrees, one step at a time. The exciting news is … YOU CAN START … TODAY! Don’t say, “If I could, I would.” Say instead, “If I would, I could … If I will, I can!” So start the new process and start small. And then learn to stick with your new commitment. Out of this seemingly unimportant beginning you’ll learn how it feels to be disciplined. And from there, the sky’s the limit. Action vs. Self-Delusion In recent years there have been a number of books which promote the idea that if one verbally affirms what one wants on a daily basis, success will magically emerge. I’m completely opposed to this mode of thinking. In my experience, affirmations without the discipline to act upon those things which are affirmed cause men and women to delude themselves into thinking they’re making progress when, in fact, their daily activity leads them nowhere. Why do people say one thing and then act in direct contradiction to their affirmations? The man who dreams of wealth and yet walks daily toward certain financial disaster and the woman who wishes for happiness and yet thinks thoughts and commits acts that lead her toward certain despair are both victims of the false hope which affirmations tend to manufacture. Why? Because words soothe and, like a narcotic, they lull us into a state of complacency. Remember this: TO MAKE PROGRESS YOU MUST ACTUALLY GET STARTED!
So, to have a prosperous life, start a prosperity plan. To become wealthy, develop a “wealthy” plan. Remember, you don’t have to be wealthy to have a wealth plan; a person without any means can have a “becoming rich” plan. There are so many other types of plans which you can create: • If you are ill, start a health plan. • Do you feel tired all the time? Then start an energy plan. • Feel a bit under-educated? That’s right! Start an education plan. • You say you can’t? Then start an “I can” plan. ANYONE CAN! Even a bad person can start reading good books. The key is to take a step … today. Whatever the project, start TODAY. Start clearing out a drawer of your newly organized desk … today. Start setting your first goal … today. Start listening to motivational cassettes … today. Start a sensible weight-reduction plan … today. Start calling on one tough customer a day … today. Start putting money in your new “investment for fortune” account … today. Write a long-overdue letter … today. What the heck! Get some momentum going on your new commitment for the good life. See how many activities you can pile on your new commitment to the better life. Go all out! Break away from the downward pull of gravity. Start your thrusters going. Prove to yourself that the waiting is over and the hoping is past — that faith and action have now taken charge. It’s a new day, a new beginning for your new life. With discipline you will be amazed at how much progress you’ll be able to make. What have you got to lose except the guilt and fear of the past? Now, I offer you the next challenge: Make this — the first day of your new beginning — a part of the week of new beginnings. Go ahead, see how many things you can start and continue in this, your week of new beginnings. Then, make this the month of new beginnings … and then the year of new beginnings. By the time you’ve completed your first year you’ll never again be claimed by the past — past habits, past influences, past regrets, past failures. As the Bible says, you’ll now be ready to “fly with the eagles.” SUCCESS Success is the fifth key word. And like each of the concepts already discussed, it has multiple layers of meaning. Success is also an elusive notion, a paradox. After all, it is both a journey and a destination, isn’t it? It’s the steady, measured progress toward a goal and the achievement of a goal. Success is both an accomplishment and a wisdom that comes to those who understand the potential power of life. It’s an awareness of value and the cultivation of worthwhile values through discipline. It’s both material and spiritual, practical and mystical. Success is a process of turning away from something in order to turn toward something better — from lethargy to exercise, from candy to fruit, from spending to investing. Success is responding to an invitation to change, to grow, to develop, and to become — an invitation to move up to a better place in order to gain a better vantage point. But most of all, success is making your life what you want it to be. Considering all the possibilities, considering all the examples of others whose lives you admire, what do you want from your life? That is the big question! Remember, success is not a set of standards from our culture but rather a collection of personal values clearly defined and ultimately achieved. Making your life what you want it to be for you — that is success. But how does one go about doing that? That’s precisely what this book is about.
STRATEGY ONE Unleash the Power of Goals Chapter 2 Goals: What Motivates People One morning, two weeks after I started working for him, Mr. Shoaff and I were having breakfast together. Just as I was about to finish my eggs, he said, “Jim, let’s take a look at your list of goals so that we can review and discuss them. Maybe that’s the best way I can help you right now.” “But I don’t have a list with me,” I replied. “Well, is it out in your car or at home somewhere?” “No, sir, I don’t have a list anywhere.” Mr. Shoaff sighed. “Well, young man, looks like this is where we’d better start.” Then, looking directly into my eyes, he said, “If you don’t have a list of your goals, I can guess your bank balance within a few hundred dollars.” He guessed right. And that really got my attention. I was astonished. “You mean that if I had a list of my goals my bank balance would change?” I asked. “Drastically,” he said. That day I became a student of the art and science of goal-setting. Of all the things I’ve learned since those early days, goal-setting has had the most profound effect on my life. Every aspect of my existence — my accomplishments, my income, my bank balance, my lifestyle, my donations, even my personality — changed for the better. I am so convinced that mastering goal-setting can have a profound effect on your life that I’m going to devote a great deal of space to discussing this often misunderstood process. In fact, I urge you to do more than just read the following chapters. Study them. And if you have a notebook handy, so much the better. THE POWER OF DREAMS Each and every one of our lives is affected by several factors. One of those factors is our environment — where we live, what kind of parents we have, which schools we attend, who our friends are; each plays a role. We are also shaped by the events in our lives. A war, for example, can wrench all certainty from our psyche. Knowledge, or the lack of it, will also shape our lives. So can the results of our efforts — we can either be elated or deflated based on our ability to achieve those desired results. But of all the factors that affect our lives, none has as much potential power for doing good as our ability to dream. Dreams are a projection of the life we wish to lead. Therefore, when we allow them to “pull” us, our dreams unleash a creative force that can overpower all obstacles hindering the attainment of our objectives. To unharness this power, however, dreams must be welldefined. A fuzzy future has little pull power. To really achieve your dreams, to really have your future plans pull you, your dreams must be vivid. Now, there are two ways to face the future: You can face the future with anticipation or you can face it with apprehension Guess how many people face the future with apprehension? Right, most do. You’ve seen the type — always worrying, worrying, worrying. Why are these individuals so apprehensive? Because they haven’t spent time designing their futures. In many cases, they live their lives by trying to win the approval of someone else. In the process, they end up “buying into” someone else’s view of how life should be lived. No wonder they are worried — always looking around, seeking approval for everything they do. On the other hand, those who face the future with anticipation have planned a future worth getting excited about. They can “see” the future in their mind’s eye, and it looks terrific. The future captures their imagination, and it exerts an enormous pull on them. THE POWER OF WELL-DEFINED GOALS Dreams are wonderful, but they are not enough. It’s not sufficient to have a brilliant painting of the desired result. To erect a magnificent structure one must also have a step-by-step blueprint of how to lay the foundation, support the structure, and so on. And for that we need goals. Like a well-defined dream, welldefined goals work like magnets. They pull you in their direction. The better YOU DEFINE them, the better YOU DESCRIBE them, the harder YOU WORK on achieving them, the stronger THEY PULL. And believe me when I say that when the “potholes” of life threaten to stall you on the road to your success, you’ll need a strong magnet to pull you forward. To understand how crucial goals are, observe the vast majority who do not have any goals. Instead of designing their lives, these misguided people simply make a living. They fight every day of their lives in the war zone of economic survival, choosing existence over substance. No wonder Thoreau said, “Most people live lives of quiet desperation.” REASONS Mr. Shoaff said to me, “Jim, I don’t think your current bank balance is a true indicator of your level of intelligence.” (Boy, was I happy to hear that!) He continued, “I think you have plenty of talent and ability and that you’re much smarter than you realize.” And that turned out to be true; I was smarter than I thought at the time. “Then why isn’t my bank balance bigger?” I asked. “Because you don’t have enough reasons to accomplish,” answered my friend. And then he added, “If you had enough motivation you could do incredible things; you have enough intelligence but not enough reasons.” A key thought, indeed: HAVE ENOUGH REASONS. Since then I’ve discovered this: Reasons come first, answers second. It seems that life has a mysterious quirk of camouflaging the answers in such a way that they become apparent only to those who are inspired enough to look for them — who have reasons to look for them. Let’s put it another way. When you know what you want and you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way to get it. The answers, methods, and solutions you need to solve the problems along the way will be revealed to you. Hey, what if you had to be rich? What if the very life of someone you love depended on your being able to afford the very best medical care? Let’s further suppose that you just learned of a book or a cassette tape that would show you how to make a fortune. Would you buy it? Of course you would! Because you are already reading a book on success, it should come as no surprise to you that there are many good books and tapes on the subject of creating wealth. But if you don’t have to be rich you probably won’t read them or take the time to listen to them. There is an old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” How true! With that in mind, always work on your reasons first and the answers second. FOUR GREAT MOTIVATORS The big question you’ll need to answer for yourself is: “What motivates me?” Different things motivate different people. We all have our own “hot buttons.” And if you do a bit of soul-searching, I’m sure you’ll come up with a compelling list of your own. What are some of the great motivators for excelling? Aside from the obvious desire for financial gain there are four other big motivators. The first one is RECOGNITION. Great companies and savvy sales managers know that some people will do more for recognition than they will for material rewards. That’s why successful sales organizations, especially those involved in direct sales, take great pains to give recognition for any accomplishment, large or small. They know that in our overcrowded world most people feel that nobody cares, that they don’t matter. And recognition is a kind of validation for their worthiness. In effect, those who recognize others are saying, “Hey, you are special, you make a difference.” I believe that if more companies took greater care to recognize their employees — not just the salespeople but also the executives, the secretaries, and the maintenance people — they would see an unbelievable surge in productivity. The second reason some people excel is because they like the FEELING of winning. This is one of the best reasons. If you must be addicted to something, make it an addiction to winning. I have some friends, all millionaires, who still work ten to twelve hours a day making more millions. And it’s not because they need the money. It’s because they need the joy, the pleasure, and the satisfaction that come from their “wins.” To them, money isn’t the big drive; they already have plenty. You know what it is? It’s the journey — the exhilarating feeling that comes from winning. Once in a while, usually just after I give a seminar, someone will come up to me and say, “Mr. Rohn, if I had a million dollars I’d never work another day in my life.” That’s probably why the good Lord sees to it that people who say things like that never make a fortune. They would all just quit. The third great motivator is FAMILY. Some people will do for their loved ones what they will not do for themselves. I once met a man who told me, “Mr. Rohn, my family and I have a goal to travel around the world. To do everything we want to do will take a quarter of a million dollars a year.” How incredible! Could a man’s family affect him that much? And the answer is, “Of course!” How fortunate are those who are so profoundly affected by love! BENEVOLENCE, the desire to share one’s wealth, is the fourth great motivator. When the great steel magnate Andrew Carnegie died, his desk drawer was opened. Inside one of the drawers was a yellowed sheet of paper. On that slip of paper, dated from the time he was in his twenties, Carnegie had written the main goal for his life: “I am going to spend the first half of my life accumulating money. I am going to spend the last half of my life giving it all away.” You know what? Carnegie was so inspired by this that he accumulated 450 million dollars (which is equivalent to 4.5 billion dollars today!). And, indeed, during the last part of his life he had the joy of giving it all away. NITTY-GRITTY REASONS Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be motivated to achievement by such a lofty goal as benevolence? I must confess, however, that in the early years of my struggle to succeed my motivation was a lot more downto-earth. My reason for succeeding was more basic. In fact, it fell into the category of what I like to call “nitty-gritty reasons.” A nitty-gritty reason is the kind that any one of us can have — at any time, on any day — and it can cause our lives to change. Let me tell you what happened to me … Shortly before I met Mr. Shoaff I was lounging at home one day when I heard a knock at the door. It was a timid, hesitant knock. When I opened the door I looked down to see a pair of big brown eyes staring up at me. There stood a frail little girl of about ten. She told me, with all the courage and determination her little heart could muster, that she was selling Girl Scout cookies. It was a masterful presentation — several flavors, a special deal, and only two dollars per box. How could anyone refuse? Finally, with a big smile and everso-politely, she asked me to buy. And I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to! Except for one thing. I didn’t have two dollars! Boy, was I embarrassed! Here I was — a father, had been to college, was gainfully employed — and yet I didn’t have two dollars to my name. Naturally I couldn’t tell this to the little girl with the big brown eyes. So I did the next best thing. I lied to her. I said, “Thanks, but I’ve already bought Girl Scout cookies this year. And I’ve still got plenty stacked in the house.” Now that simply wasn’t true. But it was the only thing I could think of to get me off the hook. And it did. The little girl said, “That’s okay, sir. Thank you very much.” And with that she turned around and went on her way. I stared after her for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, I closed the door behind me and, leaning my back to it, cried out, “I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’ve had it with being broke, and I’ve had it with lying. I’ll never be embarrassed again by not having any money in my pocket.” That day I promised myself to earn enough to always have several hundred dollars in my pocket at all times. This is what I mean by a nittygritty reason. It may not win me any prize for greatness, but it was enough to have a permanent effect on the rest of my life. My Girl-Scout-cookie story does have a happy ending. Several years later, as I was walking out of my bank where I had just made a hefty deposit and was crossing the street to get into my car, I saw two little girls who were selling candy for some girls’ organization. One of them approached me, saying, “Mister, would you like to buy some candy?” “I probably would,” I said playfully. “What kind of candy do you have?” “It’s almond roca.” “Almond roca? That’s my favorite! How much is it?” “It’s only two dollars.” Two dollars! It couldn’t be! I was excited. “How many boxes of candy have you got?” “I’ve got five.” Looking at her friend, I said, “And how many boxes do you have left?” “I’ve got four.” “That’s nine. Okay, I’ll take them all.” At this, both girls’ mouths fell open as they exclaimed in unison, “Really?” “Sure,” I said. “I’ve got some friends that I’ll pass some around to.” Excitedly, they scurried to stack all the boxes together. I reached into my pocket and gave them eighteen dollars. As I was about to leave, the boxes tucked under my arm, one of the girls looked up and said, “Mister, you’re really something!” How about that! Can you imagine spending only eighteen dollars and having someone look you in the face and say, “You’re really something!” Now you know why I always carry a few hundred dollars on me. I’m not about to miss chances like that ever again. Let me give you another example of a nitty-gritty reason for wanting to do well. I have a friend by the name of Robert Depew. Bobby used to be a schoolteacher in Lindsay, California, the olive capital. After several years as a teacher Bobby was looking forward to making a break and starting a new career. One day, without telling anyone, he quit teaching and jumped into sales. When his family found out about it he became the butt of lots of criticism. But the worst reaction came from his brother, who seemed to be getting great pleasure from harassing him. “You’re going to go right down the drain,” mocked his brother. “You had a good teaching job. Now you’re gonna lose everything you’ve got. You must be outta your mind.” Bobby’s brother kept taunting him every chance he had. As Bobby relates, “The way my brother acted made me so angry that I decided to get rich.” Today, Bobby Depew is one of my millionaire friends. This story, as well as my own “cookie” story, demonstrate that even anger and embarrassment, when properly channeled, can act as powerful nitty-gritty motivators to achieve. Do you have something to prove? Do you have some old embarrassment you want to wipe off the slate? You know, that old saying “Massive success is the sweetest revenge” is true. As you can see, there are almost as many reasons for people to do well as there are people. The key is to HAVE ENOUGH REASONS. How does one find the “hot button” (or buttons) that can transform a life of modest accomplishment into a life of wealth and happiness? That’s the subject of the next chapter. Chapter 3 Goals: How to Set Them In chapter one we discussed the importance of discipline. And now I’m going to ask you to start exercising this positive trait. If you haven’t yet done so, get out a notebook or a diary. I want you to transform yourself from spectator (reader) into participant (writer). The kind of homework you’re about to do here is a little unusual in that it lasts a lifetime. The subject is goals, and as you’ll soon learn, goals are a lifelong preoccupation — ever-evolving, ever-changing. Why should you put yourself through this? Because by doing the work involved you’re taking the first steps toward developing the kind of life you’ve always dreamed about but never believed would happen for you. So let’s get on with it. The sooner you exert the discipline, the sooner you’ll enjoy the results. And once the results come in, I promise you won’t mind one bit that it took some extra work and discipline. LONG-RANGE GOALS In your notebook or on a sheet of paper, write the heading, “LongRange Goals.” Your task is to answer the question, “What do I want within the next one to ten years?” The key to doing this exercise effectively is to take as little time as possible writing down as many items as possible. Take between twelve to fifteen minutes for the whole exercise, and try to write down about fifty different items. To help you get started, consider the following half-dozen questions as guidelines: 1. What do I want to do? 2. What do I want to be? 3. What do I want to see? 4. What do I want to have? 5. Where do I want to go? 6. What would I like to share? With these half-dozen queries in mind, answer the primary question: “What do I want within the next one to ten years?” Allow your mind to free-flow. Don’t try to be detailed now; this will come later. For instance, if you want a gray Mercedes 380SL with a blue interior, just write “380” and move on to the next item. After you have completed your list, review what you’ve written. Next put the number of years you believe it will take for you to achieve or to acquire each item on your list. Next to the items you think you’ll reach in a year or so, write the number “1.” Next to the goals you believe will take approximately three years to accomplish, write the number “3.” Next to those you think will take five years, write “5.” And finally, next to those items you estimate will take ten years to attain, write “10.” Now, check to see if your goals are in balance. For example, if you find that you have lots of ten-year goals but very few one-year goals, this could mean you’re putting off having to act now by postponing the target date. On the other hand, if you have very few long-term goals, perhaps you haven’t yet decided what kind of life you want to build over the long run. The key here is to develop a balance between shorter-term and longer-term goals. (A little later we’ll discuss true short-term goals. These are goals that take less than a year to accomplish.) Are you a bit bewildered by the idea of having too many goals? Are you the kind of person who is more comfortable focusing on one goal at a time? Actually, there is a good reason for developing multiple layers of goals. Without many and varied types of goals, you could fall prey to the same thing that happened to some of our early Apollo astronauts. Some of them, upon returning from the moon, experienced deep emotional problems. The reason? Once you’ve been to the moon, where else do you go? After years of training, visualizing, and anticipating the lunar flight, that moment, glorious as it was, was gone. All of a sudden there seemed to be an end, a finish to their life’s work, and depression set in. As a result of this experience, later astronauts were trained to have other major projects “on the fire” after their space work was done. Happiness is elusive. It seems that the best way to enjoy life is to wrap up one goal and simultaneously begin work on the next one. It’s dangerous to linger too long at the table of success. The only way to enjoy another meal is to get good and hungry. All right, now that you’ve reviewed and balanced your list, choose the four goals from each of the four time categories (one-year, three-year, five-year, ten-year) that you consider the most important to you. You now have sixteen goals. For each, write a short paragraph which includes the following: 1. A detailed description of what you want. For example, if it’s a material object, describe how high, how long, how much, what model, what color, and so on. On the other hand, if it’s a position or a business you want to start, give a detailed job description including salary, title, budget under your control, number of employees, and so on. 2. The reason why you want to achieve or acquire the item described. Here you’ll find out if you really want it or if it’s just a passing fancy. If you can’t come up with a clear and convincing reason why you want it, you should categorize this item as a whim, not as a true goal, and replace it with something else. You see, what you want is a powerful motivator only if there is a good reason behind it. You may find that some goals you once considered important no longer have appeal simply because you are unable to find a good enough reason for wanting them. That’s good. Doing this assignment is causing you to reflect, refine, and revise. And that’s the whole point behind this: to help you plan your future. Once you have settled on your sixteen goals, copy them onto a separate sheet of paper or into a permanent journal and carry them with you at all times. Review them once a week to see if they’re still important and if you are taking active steps toward their realization. As you can see, goalsetting is not a one-time task with the results set in concrete. Instead, it’s a continuous, lifelong process. SHORT-TERM GOALS I define short-term goals as those which take anywhere from a day to a year to achieve. And these goals, although by necessity they are more modest than long-term goals, are of equal importance. A ship captain may set his long-range course toward his final destination, yet along the way there are many short-range points of arrival which must be reached for the voyage to be successful. Now, just as in the case of a sea voyage, the short-term goals must be related to your long-term achievements. But they have the distinct advantage of being reachable in the foreseeable future. I call these kinds of goals “confidence builders” because their accomplishment gives you confidence to go on. So when you work hard, burn the midnight oil, and complete a specific, short-term task, you can enjoy your “win” and be re-inspired to continue your journey. That’s why I urge you to write down in your notebook or journal your short-range projects as well. How you organize this is up to you. You may, for example, arrange them by day, by week, or by month. Or you may position them as subcategories of your long-term goals. Part of the fun of having a list is the ability to check things off. And when you check something off as completed, take time to celebrate your achievement. This celebration could be a moment of satisfied reflection when you finish a small task or a major reward when the accomplishment calls for it. Regardless, do take time to enjoy your victories. It will only inspire you to do more. But just as I urge you to partake of the heady wine of success, I have another, less popular recommendation: MAKE LOSING PAINFUL. You see, we grow from two kinds of experiences: the joy of winning and the pain of losing. So if you set yourself on course to complete a project and you fooled around instead, find a way to pay for your laziness. Take responsibility for both positive and negative behavior. In addition, surround yourself with people who won’t put up with your usual baloney. Don’t join an easy crowd. Go where the expectations are high, where the pressure to perform is high. That, too, is part of your overall strategy for wealth and happiness. SLIDING I want you to succeed! That’s why I’m a little concerned. You see, I know that most of those who read these pages won’t persist in setting and refining their goals. Why? Because it’s time-consuming, thought-demanding work. And yet, it’s ironic that the many men and women who work hard day in and day out at jobs they don’t necessarily like, when asked to take time to design their own futures, often reply, “I don’t have the time.” They let that, their future, slide. I know that most people don’t make definite plans, but don’t you be a part of that most. Don’t you go around with your fingers crossed and a worried look on your face, hoping things will get better. Whether you accept it or not, you are, right now, one of the players in the game of life. And believe me, if you don’t have goals to shoot at, you aren’t playing a very exciting game. No one will pay good money to watch you play a game where nobody’s keeping score. The “guy” says, “You work where I work, by the time you get home it’s late. You’ve got to have a bite to eat, watch a little TV to relax, and get to bed. You can’t sit up half the night and plan, plan, PLAN.” And this is the guy who’s behind on his car payments. He’s a good worker, a hard worker, a sincere worker. But, friends, I’ve discovered that you can be sincere and work hard all your life and wind up broke and embarrassed. You’ve got to be better than a good worker. You’ve got to be better than sincere. You’ve got to be a good planner, a good goal-setter. Writing your goals down shows that you’re committed to growth, that you’re serious. And to do better you’ve got to get serious. You don’t have to be grim, but you do have to be serious. Hey, everybody hopes to do better. But hope, unaided by clear planning, can actually hurt you. As the Bible says, “Hope long delayed makes the heart sick.” It’s a sickness … I know. I used to suffer from the illness known as passive hope. It’s bad. The only thing worse than passive hope is happy passive hope. That’s when a man is fifty and broke, and he’s still smiling and hoping. Now that’s really bad. So get serious. Put your goals on paper. My suggestion to you — from experience. Chapter 4 Goals: Making Them Work for You The Bible says, “Without dreams and vision, we perish.” How true! But you know, the opposite is also true. With dreams we can be transformed in unique and unprecedented ways. In the previous chapters I showed you how to choose your goals and to start reaching for them. Now you’ll learn how to let your dreams mold your very existence. First, you need to understand that once you set goals that really matter to you, you are no longer the same person. Real goals will affect almost everything you do all day long. And they will be with you wherever you go. Your handshake, your manner of dressing, the tone of your voice, the way you feel — all will change once you have goals. That’s because when your goals matter, everything you do becomes related to their accomplishment. But for goals to really move you, to take charge of your life, they must be worthy. I once asked a man, “What are your goals for the month?” He said, “If I could just scrape up enough money to pay these lousy bills …” That was his goal! Now I’m not saying that paying the bills can’t be a goal — it can. But it’s such a poor goal. I certainly wouldn’t put it on the list of life’s most inspiring motivations. You don’t jump out of bed on Monday morning and say, “Oh, boy, another chance to go out there and scrape up enough money to pay these lousy bills.” To have your goals transform you, you must set them high. Set them enough out of reach to cause you to grow and to stretch; set them high enough to excite your imagination and motivate you to action. But just as you must set them high enough to pull you, don’t set them so far beyond you that you lose heart before you begin. THE TRUE PURPOSE OF GOALS Let me share with you an intriguing thought. The real value in setting goals is not in their achievement. The acquisition of the things you want is strictly secondary. The major reason for setting goals is to compel you to become the person it takes to achieve them. Let me explain: What do you think is the greatest value in becoming a millionaire? Is it the million dollars? I don’t think so. No, the greatest value is in the skills, knowledge, discipline, and leadership qualities you’ll develop in reaching that elevated status. It’s the experience you’ll acquire in planning and developing strategies. It’s the inner strength you’ll develop to have enough courage, commitment, and willpower to attract a million dollars. Give a million dollars to someone who does not possess the attitude of a millionaire and that person will most likely lose it. But take away all the wealth from a true millionaire and in no time he or she will build a new fortune. Why? Because those who earn their millionaire status develop the skills, knowledge, and experience to duplicate the process again and again. As you can see, when someone becomes a millionaire, the least important thing is what they have. The most important thing is what they have become. Here’s a question you should spend some time pondering: What kind of person will you have to become to get all you want? In fact, why not write down a few thoughts on this in your notebook or journal. Write down the kinds of skills you’ll need to develop and the knowledge you’ll need to gain. The answers will give you some new goals for personal development. Remember this rule: INCOME RARELY EXCEEDS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. That’s why all of us must subject ourselves to selfexamination. I often look at my life and ask, “Well, here’s what I want, but am I willing to become the kind of person it will take?” If I’m too lazy, if I’m not willing to learn, read, study, and grow to become what I must become, then I cannot expect to attract what I want. Now, when faced with a choice, I must decide to either change myself or change my wants. DON’T BECOME OVERWHELMED When setting goals, especially for the first time, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the process. My advice to you is, relax. If you don’t feel you’re equipped to get what you want, remember this: YOUR ABILITY WILL GROW TO MATCH YOUR DREAMS. This is the magic of goal-setting. The more you work on your goals, the more new opportunities will present themselves to you. And inside each new opportunity will be the seed of solution to a previous, seemingly unsolvable problem. So don’t be afraid to get started. The journey will take you far beyond your wildest imagination. I know. The person I was twentyfive years ago when I met Mr. Shoaff is, today, a stranger to me. I am no longer that person. I’ve changed. So can you. Many people are afraid to get going because of past failure and pain. They carry heavy burdens on their souls, burdens that unless unloaded will weigh them down forever. My friend, there is nothing you and I can do about the past. It’s gone and buried. But you can do a great deal about your future. You don’t have to be the person you were yesterday. You can make changes in your life — absolutely startling changes in a fairly short period of time. You can make changes you can’t even conceive of right now, if you just give yourself half a chance. Your abilities will grow. You’ll draw on untapped potential and talents that you never knew existed. And as time goes on, you’ll draw from new reserves deep within your creative mind. Before you know it, you’ll be able to accomplish things that now seem impossible to achieve. You’ll be able to handle things you never thought you could handle. Your mind will give birth to new and creative ideas. Why are goals so powerful? How can they cause all this to happen? I don’t know. I guess this question falls into that special category I call “the mysteries of life.” All I can tell you is that it does work. Find out for yourself. Give yourself the chance to become all you can become and to accomplish all you can accomplish. ASKING There’s a command in the Bible that teaches all you need to know to get what you want. This is what it says: “Ask.” That’s it — ask. Of all the important skills to learn, make sure that you’ve got this one down. What does “ask” mean? Ask means “ask for what you want.” And the complete formula is staggering. It is: “Ask, and you shall receive.” I think we’d better look into that … First, asking starts the process of receiving. Asking is like pushing a button that unleashes incredible machinery, both intellectual and emotional. As I said before, I don’t know how or why it works, but I do know it works. There are a lot of things that work equally well whether we understand the mechanism behind them or not. Just work them! Some people never get started because they’re always studying the roots. And then there are others who choose to pick the fruit while they study the roots. It all depends on which end you want to start with. I recommend that you start asking. Second, receiving, the other part of the formula, is not a problem. You don’t have to work on receiving. It’s automatic. So if receiving isn’t difficult, what’s the problem? It’s failing to ask. The “guy” says, “Yes, but you work where I work, by the time you struggle home it’s late. You’ve got to get a bite to eat, watch a little TV to relax, and then get to bed. You can’t sit up half the night and ask, ask, ASK.” And this fellow is behind on his bills. He’s a good worker, a hard worker, a sincere worker. But you’ve got to do better than work hard and be sincere all your life, or you’ll wind up broke and embarrassed. You’ve got to be better than a good worker. You’ve got to be a good asker. “I see it now,” he says. “I got up every day this past year and hit it hard. But nowhere in my house is there a list of the things I ask of life.” How about you … how is your list? Third, receiving is like the ocean — there’s plenty. This is especially true in this country. It’s like an ocean here! Success is not in short supply. It isn’t rationed so that when your turn comes they already gave it all away. No, no! If that’s true, what’s the problem? The problem is that most people go to this ocean of opportunity with a teaspoon. Have you got the picture? A teaspoon! In view of the size of the ocean, may I suggest that you trade in your teaspoon for something bigger? How about a pail? It may not be the best you can do, but at least kids won’t make fun of you … Two more thoughts about asking … First, ask with intelligence. The Bible may not say, “Ask intelligently.” But I have no doubt that this is what is meant. So don’t mumble. You won’t get anything by mumbling. Be clear … be specific. Asking intelligently includes answering how high, how long, how much, when, what size, what model, what color. Describe what you want. Define it. Remember, well-defined goals are like magnets. The better you chisel them, the stronger they pull. Second, ask with faith. Faith is the childlike part. It means believe that you can get what you want. Believe as a child believes. Believe without the skepticism and cynicism of the adult in you. You see, many of us have become too skeptical. We’ve lost that wonderfully innocent, childlike faith and trust. Don’t let this stop you. Believe in and have faith in yourself and your goals. And get excited —just like a child. Childlike enthusiasm — there’s nothing more contagious. Children think they can do anything. They want to know about everything. How wonderful! They hate to go to bed at night and can’t wait to jump out of bed in the morning. Children can ask a thousand questions. And just when you think you’re ready to climb the wall, they’ll ask a thousand more. They will drive you to the brink. But, of course, their curiosity is really a virtue. When you rekindle your own childlike sense of curious enthusiasm, you will be well on your way to becoming a masterful asker. GOAL-SETTING AND TIME MANAGEMENT Time management is a popular topic these days. All kinds of books, tapes, and seminars are offered to a public that is hungry for information on how to use time more productively. How about you? Would you like to become a better time manager? Then you need to understand this: UNLESS YOU HAVE GOALS, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE YOUR TIME EFFECTIVELY. Productivity is a result of well-defined objectives. The allocation of time is not critical if objectives are not firm and vividly planted in the mind. It’s that simple. This is one of the many reasons why writing goals down on paper is so important. PRIORITIES One of the difficulties we face in our industrialized age is the fact that we’ve lost our sense of seasons. Unlike the farmer whose priorities change with the seasons, we have become impervious to the natural rhythm of life. As a result, we have our priorities out of balance. Let me illustrate what I mean: For a farmer, springtime is his most active time. It’s then that he must work around the clock, up before the sun and still toiling at the stroke of midnight. He must keep his equipment running at full capacity because he has but a small window of time for the planting of his crops. Then comes winter when there is less for him to do to keep him busy. There is a lesson here. Learn to use the seasons of life. Decide when to pour it on and when to ease back, when to take advantage and when to let things ride. It’s easy to keep going from nine to five year in and year out and lose a natural sense of priorities and cycles. Don’t let one year blend into another in a seemingly endless parade of tasks and responsibilities. Keep your eye on your own seasons, lest you lose sight of value and substance. Majors and Minors An important part of setting priorities is learning to separate the minors of your life from the majors. Here is a good question to ask yourself whenever you have to make a decision. Is this a major or a minor? By asking this, always with your goals in mind, you’ll reduce the risk of spending major time on minor projects. In sales we are taught that there exists only one major time. That’s the time we spend in the presence of a prospect. Any time spent on the way to the prospect, no matter how essential, is minor time. Too many salespeople spend more time “on the way to” than “with.” And their incomes reflect this. That’s why in sales we teach, “Don’t go across town until you’ve gone across the street.” The majors and minors concept has another application. It also says, don’t spend minor time on major things. It’s easy to get values all mixed up. A parent spends three hours watching TV and only ten minutes playing with the children. A manager spends most of the day filling out forms and very little time encouraging his employees. These are people who have lost a sense of what’s important and what’s trivial. This same concept also applies to money. Don’t spend major money on minor things, and, conversely, don’t spend minor money on major things. Some people spend a fortune on food for their bodies and very little on food for their minds. If you spend more on candy than on inspirational books and tapes, that would be foolish, right? The best use of time and money comes from putting maximum value in it. It’s called careful investment for maximum results. CONCENTRATION Any professional athlete can tell you about the horrible costs of lack of concentration. Just a momentary slip of concentration and “they put one by your feet.” And there goes first place and the big money. Don’t let it happen to you. Put maximum attention to everything you do. When you write a letter, concentrate. Trying to solve a problem? Concentrate. Having a conversation? That’s right, concentrate. You won’t believe the effect this will have on your life. Naturally, there is a time to let your mind wander. But do it during a period that you’ve set aside especially for doing just that. And when you wander, do nothing else. Go off for that walk on the beach or that drive in the mountains — away from the pressures of life. Let the breeze blow through your hair and let your mind soar. Daydream. That’s good for you. But do it only at the time you designate as “daydreaming time.” At all other times, concentrate. A DOSAGE OF REALITY There is a last point to consider … Even with the most carefully thought-out plan of action, you won’t get everything you want. I know. How can I possibly say this after spending so much time showing you how to get everything you want? Am I speaking from both sides of my mouth? Why won’t you get everything you want? Because, my friend, it’s not that kind of world. Sometimes it will hail on your crop and rain on your parade. Sometimes the termites of life will gnaw at your foundations. It’s not fair, you say? Perhaps not. But because you and I were not consulted in the initial planning, we have to accept the way it is. The good news, however, is that there is plenty of good news, too. If you work the system I’ve just shared with you, you’ll get more than plenty. More often than not you’ll get what you want. And those are pretty good odds — the best out there. Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. There’s no telling what will happen to you when you act upon them. Just try this system for ninety days. Just try it! It may work even better for you than it has for me. I wish that for you. STRATEGY TWO Seek Knowledge Chapter 5 The Path to Wisdom One of the fundamental strategies of living the good life is knowing what information you need in order to achieve your aims. And once you know what you need to know, it’s also helpful to know how to go about gathering that knowledge. One of the best things Mr. Shoaff did for me in those early days was to instill in me the value of study. He said, “If you wish to be successful, study success. If you wish to be happy, study happiness. If you want to make money, study the acquisition of wealth. Those who achieve these things don’t do it by accident. It’s a matter of studying first and practicing second.” Would you like to guess how many people make wealth a study? Right, very few. Considering the many men and women who seek wealth and happiness, you’d think they would make a careful study of them, don’t you agree? Why they don’t is yet another in that special category I call “mysteries of life.” Many years ago I learned that some of the best advice ever given comes from the Bible. There’s a phrase in this amazing book that says, “If you search, you shall find.” So that is the way to discover new knowledge that creates new ideas. Search. In order to find something, you must first search. Need a great idea to change your life? Rarely will it come out of nowhere. But if you make a diligent search for the knowledge you need, the right idea will come your way, often when you least expect it. CAPTURING THE TREASURES OF KNOWLEDGE Here is another fundamental word for you to ponder: capture. Great ideas pass by quickly and are easily forgotten … as can be true of those moments that make life worth living. That’s why it’s so important to learn to capture those things that really matter. First, learn to capture special moments. Use a camera. Take lots of pictures. Being able to capture an event in a fraction of a second is a twentieth-century phenomenon. And how easy it is to take phenomena for granted! Let me tell you about a recent experience. Over the past three years I’ve been invited to lecture annually in Taiwan. On my most recent trip to give a weekend seminar, there were about a thousand people in attendance. Now, if there were one thousand people in attendance, guess how many cameras were also in the room? Right — one thousand! Everyone brought a camera to capture the moments, the new friends, the new experiences. I ended up spending a big part of my time there posing for pictures. Have you ever looked at the pictures of a few generations ago? Unfortunately there are relatively few still in circulation. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if, instead, we had enough pictures to tell the whole story of what life was really like a hundred years ago? So don’t be lackadaisical. Make sure you leave behind your whole story through a treasury of photographs and videos. Another way to capture knowledge is in your own personal library. I don’t mean the books your interior designer bought because they match with the blue decor. I mean those books that are dog-eared and well-marked — the ones you chose to study and underline; books with notes written in the margins; books that helped shape your philosophy of life values. That is truly a treasure worth capturing! Today, with our expanded concept of communication, I’d also include in this treasure all the cassette tapes and videotapes that are shaping our lives for the better. That, too, is a special legacy to our children. Finally, you’ll want to capture all the knowledge you gain as you live your life. That’s why I encourage you, as a serious student of wealth and happiness, to make use of a journal or diary as a gathering place for all the ideas that come your way. What will gradually emerge is an incredible treasure — business ideas, social ideas, cultural ideas, investment ideas, lifestyle ideas. Can you imagine the value in this? Certainly this kind of treasure is a more valuable heirloom than your old clock! HOW TO GAIN WISDOM There are two ways to gather wisdom. One way is to learn from your own life. The second is to study the lives of others. Personal Reflection Go over your life experiences. Learn the skill of reflection, which is the act of pondering life’s events with the intent of learning from them. I call this process “rerunning the tapes.” The events of your life are some of the best sources of information. So don’t merely go through your days — get from your days. Be aware of what’s going on around you so that you’ll drive the grooves in the record of the day deep into your consciousness. There is a time and a place for everything. There are times to act and times to reflect. Most of us don’t take the time for serious reflection. With our busy schedules we often neglect this crucial part of the formula for success. At the end of the day take a few moments to review the happenings of the day — where you went, what you did, what you said. Ponder what worked and what didn’t, what you want to repeat and what you want to avoid. Try to remember incidents as vividly as possible. Remember the colors, the sights, the sounds, the conversations, the experiences. You see, experience can become commodity, currency, coin — an incredible source of value. But it can become all those things only if you take the time to record the experience, to ponder it, and then turn it into something of value. After all, it’s not what happens to a person that makes the difference in how his or her life turns out. Rather, it’s what he or she does with what happens that determines the outcome. And to do something positive about life, we must glean valuable information from it. Another good time to reflect is at the end of major periods such as a week, a month, or a year. At the end of the week take a few hours for reflection to ponder the events of the past seven days. At the end of a month take a day. And at the end of a year take a week … to review, ponder, and reflect on everything that has happened in your life. Sophisticated people have learned how to gather up the past and invest it in the future. When my father turned seventy-six I said to him, “Dad, can you imagine what it’s going to be like to gather up the last seventy-five years and invest them in your seventy-sixth!” Have you ever thought of life this way? That’s how it can become productive and ever-exciting. Don’t just live another year. Instead, gather up the years and invest them in the next one. Don’t just have another conversation. Instead, gather up all your past conversations and invest them in your next one. So start up a new discipline. Find out, by observing your life, what and how things work in this world. Never let it be said that you lived life without finding out about it. You may not be able to do all you find out, but make sure you find out all you can do. You don’t want to live your life only to find that, ultimately, you lived only onetenth of it, that you let the other nine-tenths go down the drain. In studying your life, be sure to study the negatives as well as the positives, your failures as well as your successes. Our so-called failures serve us well when they teach us valuable lessons. Often, they’re better teachers than our successes. One of the ways we learn to do something right is by doing it wrong. Doing things wrong is a valuable course in life. Now, I would suggest that you not take this course for too long. If you’ve been doing something the wrong way for the past ten years, I wouldn’t recommend another ten. But if you can learn quickly, there is no better, more emotionally effective way to learn than from personal experience. When I met Mr. Shoaff I’d been working for six years. Shortly after we met he asked me, “Jim, how long have you been working now?” I told him. “How are you doing?” he inquired further. “Not very well,” I said, a bit annoyed at having to admit this. “Then I suggest you not do that anymore,” he replied. “Six years is long enough to operate the wrong plan.” Then he asked, “How much money have you saved in the past six years?” “None,” I admitted sheepishly. Raising his eyebrows, he said, “Who sold you on that plan?” What a fantastic question. Where did I get this disastrous plan? Hey, everyone has bought someone’s plan. The question is, whose? WHOSE PLAN HAVE YOU BOUGHT? Now, I must tell you that those initial confrontations with your own past experiences will be painful. This is especially true if you’ve made as many mistakes as I have. But think of the pay-off! Think of the progress you can make when you finally confront those errors! Learning from Others Another way you can gain knowledge is vicariously, through other people’s experiences. And you can learn from other people’s successes as well as from their failures. One of the reasons the Bible is such a good teacher is because it’s a collection of human stories on both sides of the ledger. One list of stories is called “examples.” The message is: Do what these people did. The other list of stories is called “warnings.” The message is: Don’t do what these fools did. What a wealth of information! But perhaps there is even another message. If your story ever gets into somebody’s book, make sure it’s used as an example, not as a warning … There are three ways one can go about learning from others: 1. Through published literature such as books and audio tapes or videotapes. 2. By listening to the wisdom and folly of others. 3. Through observations of winners and losers. Let’s discuss each of these areas one by one: Books and Tapes All the successful people with whom I have had contact are good readers. They read, read, read. It’s their curiosity that drives them to read. They simply have to know. They constantly seek new ways to become better. Here is a good phrase to remember: ALL LEADERS ARE READERS. There used to be a time when publishing always referred to printed matter, such as books. But today we can learn through the miracle of electronic publishing as well. I’m referring to audio tapes and videotapes, both of which are excellent ways to acquire knowledge. Many of the busiest people I know use audio cassettes to learn during unproductive times. For example, they often listen to tapes while driving in their cars. Listening to cassettes is an easy way to pick up innovative ideas and new skills. Did you know there are thousands of books and tapes on how to be stronger, more decisive, a better speaker, a more effective leader, a better lover; develop influence; find a mate; become more sophisticated; start a business — and thousands of other useful topics? And yet many people do not use this wealth of knowledge. How do you explain that? Did you further know that thousands of successful people have committed their inspiring stories to paper? And yet people don’t want to read. How would you explain that? Our “guy” is busy, I guess. He says, “Well, yeah. But you work where I work, by the time you struggle home it’s late. You’ve got to have a bite to eat, watch a little TV to relax, and go to bed. You can’t stay up half the night and read, read, READ.” And this is the guy who is behind on his bills. He’s a good worker, a hard worker, a sincere worker. Hey, you can be sincere and work hard all your life and still wind up broke, confused, and embarrassed. You’ve got to be better than a good worker. You’ve got to be a good reader. And if you don’t like to read, at least you can listen to a good cassette on the way home, right? Now you don’t have to read books or listen to tapes half the night (although if you’re broke, it’s not such a bad idea). All I ask is that you devote just thirty minutes a day to learning. That’s all. You want to really do well? Then stretch your thirty minutes to a full hour. But at least spend thirty minutes. Oh yes, here’s one more thing: Don’t miss. Miss a meal, but not your thirty minutes of learning. All of us can afford to miss a few meals, but none of us can afford to lose out on ideas, examples, and inspiration. The Bible teaches us that humans cannot live on bread alone. It tells us that next to food, our minds and souls must be nourished by words. Unfortunately, most people suffer from mental malnutrition. Recently I told my staff, “Some people read so little that they have rickets of the mind.” Not only should you feed your mind, you should make sure you have a wellbalanced mental diet. Don’t just feed your mind the easy stuff. You can’t live on mental candy. Think of your reading time as “tapping the treasure of ideas” time. And if somebody’s got a good excuse for not tapping the treasure of ideas for at least thirty minutes every day or not investing some money on the acquisition of knowledge, then I’d like to hear it. Some excuses you would not believe!… I say, “John, I’ve got this gold mine. I’ve got so much gold I don’t know what to do with it all. Come on over and dig.” John says, “But I don’t have a shovel.” “Well, John, go out and get you one.” He says, “Do you know what they’re asking for shovels these days?” Hey, invest the money. Get the books and tapes you need for your self-education. Don’t shortchange yourself when it comes to investing in your own better future. Mr. Shoaff got me started on books from the beginning. He said, “Become self-educated. Standard education will bring you standard results. Check the income figures of those with a standard education and see if that’s what you want. If it isn’t, if you want more than the average, you must become selfeducated.” So I went to work on building a library. And today I have one of the best. Mr. Shoaff recommended a couple of books to get me started. One was the Bible, which I already had. It consists of sixty-six books and my parents saw to it that I was well-acquainted with them, so I figured I had a pretty good start. But he also insisted that I get Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. If you haven’t yet read it, I suggest you run right out and get a copy. I must have read this great book several dozen times. I needed to. Mr. Shoaff said, “Repetition is the mother of skill.” And the way my bank account was, I needed lots of skill. As I look back, the information in the book has been worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. And yet I bought it for pennies. This taught me a powerful lesson: THERE CAN BE A GREAT DEAL OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COST AND VALUE. Before I met Mr. Shoaff, I used to ask, “How much does it cost?” But he taught me to ask, “What is it worth?” When I started to base my life on value instead of price, all kinds of things began to happen. Remember: YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ. One of the first things I do when I visit someone is to look through his or her library. I find out more by looking through someone’s book and tape collection than I do through idle conversation. Mostly, a library, or lack of one, tells me what a person is thinking or if he or she is thinking at all. The choice of books and tapes reveals a person’s predominant thoughts, desires, and values. What does your library say about you? You see, reading books is not some leisure-time luxury; it’s a necessity for those who want to grow. So don’t be like some of my friends who thought that graduating from high school or college gave them license to never read a book again. Start reading. And especially read the kinds of books that will help you to unleash your inner potential. Are you now thinking about all the books you should read? Then here’s some good news: You don’t have to read all these books at once. Try reading two books a week. And if that seems like a lot, choose two thin books to start with. Do this for ten years and you’ll end up reading over one thousand books! Do you think that acquiring the knowledge inside a thousand books will influence the many dimensions of your life? Of course it will. Now it’s also true that if you haven’t been reading two books a week for the last ten years, you are a thousand books behind those who have. Are you beginning to understand the incredible disadvantage you’ll have in ten years if you stride into the marketplace two thousand books behind? Why, for some of the more sophisticated confrontations you will serve as cannon fodder. They will chew you up and spit you out. But that’s not all. You’ll also miss out on some terrific opportunities because of lack of knowledge. And your philosophy will be too shallow to sustain you through life’s hardships. Missing skills, missing knowledge, missing insight, missing values, missing lifestyle are all a result of not reading books. Remember, the book unread is the one that can’t help you. You can’t read too many books but you can read too few. Listening Listening is a wonderful way to learn. Let me propose to you an outrageous idea: Choose a really successful person and take him or her out to dinner. A poor person (and we’re all poor compared to someone, no matter how well we’re doing) should invest in feeding a rich person. And then do what? That’s right — listen. Go ahead, try it. Spend fifty, sixty, eighty, even a hundred dollars. Go for the full nine courses. Start with the hors d’oeuvres, and ask questions. Eat the salad (it will take about fifteen minutes) and keep the conversation going. The biggest steak in town will take forty-five minutes to demolish — keep asking questions. Order dessert. See how long you can stretch the meal. Try for at least two hours. If you get someone like this to talk with you for two hours, you can learn enough strategies and attitudes to multiply your income and change your life. But of course you’re right. Poor people don’t take rich people out to dinner. That’s probably why they’re poor. The “guy” says, “If he’s rich, let him buy his own darn dinner! I’m not coming up with any money. And besides, if you work where I work, by the time you struggle home, it’s late. You’ve got to have a bite to eat, watch a little TV to relax, and get to bed. You can’t spend all that time trying to find a rich man to feed.” And this man is behind on his payments. Behind! He’s a good worker, a hard worker, a sincere worker. But you can work hard and be sincere all your life and still wind up broke and unhappy. You’ve got to be better than a good worker. You’ve got to be a good listener. Observing The third way to learn from others is to observe. Watch what successful people do. Why? Because success leaves clues. Watch how the successful man shakes the hand of someone else. Watch how the successful woman asks questions. People who do well own the habits of success. They create patterns of winning behavior just as the straggler creates patterns of losing behavior. You want to be promoted? Observe your superiors. Want to make as much money as your uncle? Observe how he manages his money and his lifestyle. One of the reasons it’s a good idea to attend seminars given by successful people is because you can observe them. No book or cassette, no matter how good, can convey the silent power of nonverbal communication. This is why videocassettes are becoming wonderful tools for total communication. So become a good observer. Don’t miss any clue that can help you change your life for the better. INVESTING IN THE FUTURE The search for knowledge is one of the strategies for wealth and happiness. What a powerful thought, to spend time in a consistent, disciplined, purposeful search for knowledge. But as with everything else that’s worthwhile, there’s a price to pay. And this, unfortunately, stops some dead in their tracks. The search for knowledge involves making an investment. In fact, there are three kinds of investments it will take for you to successfully embark on this journey: First, it will take the expenditure of money. It does take some money to purchase books and cassettes and to attend seminars. That’s why I recommend you set up your own educational fund. Each month, set aside a portion of your income and invest it in your search for knowledge. Spend the money to cultivate the sleeping giant inside you. The money — that’s a small price. The promise is unlimited potential. More important than money is your next expenditure: time. Time is a major expenditure. I understand that. It’s one thing to ask a person to spend money, but it’s an entirely different thing to ask him for his time. Alas, there are no shortcuts. Until such time that a machine can be hooked up to pour knowledge into the brain, it will take time — precious time. Fortunately, life has a unique way of rewarding high investment with high return. The investment of time you make now may be the catalyst for major accomplishment. Finally, you’ll be making an investment of effort. There is a great deal more effort involved in serious learning than in casual learning. In everything you do, be it self-observation, reading, or observing others, the intensity of your efforts will have a profound effect on the amount of knowledge you gain. A focused mind is like a mental rifle shot that strikes an idea target. And to be that focused takes much concentrated effort. But it is precisely this effort that will open the floodgates to the place where great ideas can work their special magic to bring you closer to wealth and happiness. STRATEGY THREE Learn How to Change Chapter 6 The Miracle of Personal Development One day Mr. Shoaff said, “Jim, if you want to be wealthy and happy, learn this lesson well: Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” Since that time I’ve been working on my own personal development. And I must admit that this has been the most challenging assignment of all. This business of personal development lasts a lifetime. You see, what you become is far more important than what you get. The important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming?” Getting and becoming are like Siamese twins: What you become directly influences what you get. Think of it this way: Most of what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today. So here’s the great axiom of life: TO HAVE MORE THAN YOU’VE GOT, BECOME MORE THAN YOU ARE. This is where you should focus most of your attention. Otherwise, you just might have to contend with the axiom of not changing, which is: UNLESS YOU CHANGE HOW YOU ARE, YOU’LL ALWAYS HAVE WHAT YOU’VE GOT. Income rarely exceeds personal development. Sometimes income takes a lucky jump, but unless you learn to handle the responsibilities that come with it, it will usually shrink back to the amount you can handle. If someone hands you a million dollars, you’d better hurry up and become a millionaire. A very rich man once said, “If you took all the money in the world and divided it equally among everybody, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before.” IT’S HARD TO KEEP THAT WHICH HAS NOT BEEN OBTAINED THROUGH PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. VALUE In my early days there were several things that used to puzzle me. I used to wonder, “Why would one person be paid two thousand dollars a month and another be paid four thousand a month when they both work for the same company, handle the same product, work the same number of years, and come from the same background?” What a puzzle! Why would one person do twice as well economically? In the area of compensation, what’s the difference between two thousand and four thousand a month? (And don’t tell me “two thousand dollars.” That kind of difference I could’ve figured out even back then.) “It must be a matter of time,” I thought. “Some people do much better because they have more time. Mary ought to do well. She’s got a lot of time. If I had all of Mary’s time, I could also do well.” Now that’s got to be dumb, right? You can’t get someone else’s time … A man once said to me, “If I had some extra time, I would make some extra money.” I said, “Then you’ll have to forget it. There isn’t any more time. Where would you find any?” Listen, my friend, when the clock strikes midnight, that’s it! It’s all over. There isn’t any more time. And if you insist on finding more than twenty-four hours in one day, they’ll come and take you away. So if you can’t create more time, what could you create that would make the difference in economic results? The answer is value. Value makes the difference. You can never create more time, but you can become more valuable. This concept of value is a primary lesson in economics. Whether you work on the assembly line or sell goods or services, you get paid for the value. Now I know that you’ll spend time bringing value to the marketplace. But you don’t get paid for the time, you get paid for the value, for your productivity. Mistakenly, the “guy” says, “I make twenty dollars an hour.” That’s not true! If it were true, he could just stay home and have them send over the money. No, he doesn’t get paid twenty dollars for the hour. He gets paid twenty dollars for the value which has been placed on the hour he works. Paying by the hour is simply a convenient way to measure anticipated value. That’s why it’s important to ask, “Is it possible to become twice as valuable and make twice as much money per hour? Is there a way for me to become three times or even four times more valuable within the same hour?” And the answer is, “Of course!” You can become more valuable if … (And there is always an if, right? Life is known as the “Big If.” Harry Truman once said, “Life is ‘iffy.’ ”) if you go to work primarily on yourself. You see, it’s easy to get “faked out.” The “guy” says, “I’ve got ten years’ experience. I don’t know why I’m not doing better.” What he hasn’t realized is that he doesn’t have ten years’ experience. What he has is one year’s experience repeated ten times. He hasn’t made a single improvement, a single innovation in nine years! Everybody wants more money. But most people look for it in the wrong places. Our “guy” says, “I need more money. I’m going to work on my boss.” Hey, I’ve found that bosses are notorious for not playing fast and loose with the company’s till. I’ve never seen a boss get suddenly excited and for no reason triple somebody’s wages. Some people say, “We’ll strike for more.” The problem is that once you start striking you’ll almost always have to strike the next time the contract is up. Besides, by demanding, all you’ll get will be little bitty pieces — barely enough to get by. Forget the methods that will only help you to barely get by. Listen, you can get by with a crust of bread and a pair of shoes. But that’s not for you. You aren’t reading this book to get the crumbs that fall off life’s table. You want the feast, right? I know some salespeople who always look for the angles. They say, “We’ll get some of those sales books that teach the tricky sales. We’ll lay it on the prospects, dazzle them with the sizzle, and grab their money before they know what happened to them.” Well, I guess you can try that. But my experience shows that unless you give fair value, you’ll wind up at the bottom of the economic ladder. It’s not what you get by tricks that counts. It’s not what you get by demanding that counts. It’s what you get by productive performance that counts. I used to think that performance came from outside reasons. But I found out that real performance comes from those who have the right stuff inside them. I always looked for the answers outside. Then I learned that success and happiness are not values to pursue; they are values to develop. People often ask me, “How do I develop an above-average income?” The answer is, become an above-average person. How? For starters, develop an above- average handshake. Some people who say they want to succeed don’t even work on their handshake. As easy as it would be to improve, they let it slide. They don’t understand. Do you want to be above-average? Then develop an above-average smile; develop an above-average interest in others; develop an above-average intensity to win. That will change everything. There is nothing more pointless than looking for an above-average job with above-average pay without becoming an aboveaverage performer. I call this frustration. I used to say, “I sure hope things will change.” That seemed my only hope. If conditions weren’t going to change I was in serious trouble. Then I found out nothing was going to change, and I felt like I was drowning. Not long ago I did a seminar in Honolulu for a group of oil company executives. We were sitting around a huge corporate table flanked with top executives from all over the world when one of them said, “Mr. Rohn, you know some important people around the world. What do you think the next ten years will bring?” I said, “Gentleman, I do know the right people. I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen.” When I said that the room became very quiet. I continued, “Based on the people I know, and based on my life’s experience, I’ve concluded that in the coming ten years it’s going to be like it’s always been.” (Now aren’t you glad I’m sharing this with you? It’s not everyone who get’s to hear this.) I must admit that I said this to take some of the air out of this pompous group of big shots. But I also said it because it’s absolutely true! The tide comes in, and then what? That’s right … it goes out. It’s been that way for at least six thousand years of recorded history, and probably for much longer than that. It gets light and then what? It turns dark … That’s the way it’s been for at least six thousand years. We are not to be startled by this anymore. If, when the sun goes down, a man says, “What happened, what happened?” we’d surely know that he just got here, right? The next season after fall is … right again. And pray tell, how often does winter follow fall? Every time, without fail … for at least six thousand years. True, some winters are long and some are short; some are difficult and some are easy. But no matter what, they always come after fall. It isn’t going to change. Sometimes you can figure it out, sometimes it’s a puzzle. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it’s a disaster. Sometimes it sails along, sometimes it gets all tied up in knots. You see, it’s not going to change. After six thousand years of recorded history, life is a mixture of opportunity and difficulty. That’s the way it is. The “guy” says, “Well then, how will my life change?” And the answer is, “Your life will change only when you change.” Whenever I speak, whether I address business executives or high school kids, my message is always the same: “The only way it gets better for you is when you get better.” BETTER IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WISH; IT’S SOMETHING YOU BECOME. THE SEASONS OF LIFE Here are two phrases I want you to consider: The first is, “Life and commerce are like the seasons.” The second is, “You cannot change the seasons but you can change yourself.” Now, with these two phrases as guides, let’s take a look at the seasons of life and how you can best handle them: Winter: A Time to Grow Strong First and foremost, learn how to handle winters. There are all kinds of winters. There are economic winters, when the financial wolves are at the door; there are physical winters, when our health is shot; there are personal winters, when our heart is smashed to pieces. Wintertime. Disappointments. Loneliness. That’s how the Blues were written. So the big question is how do we handle the winters. Some people go to the calendar, tear out the month of January, and pretend it isn’t there. But that’s the childish approach. It solves nothing. Let me tell you what mature people do: They get stronger. They get wiser. They get better. Not a bad idea — to use the winter for personal development. Before I understood this, I used to spend my winters looking for summers. I didn’t understand. Then, finally, when I was going through a sales slump, Mr. Shoaff said, “Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less of a challenge, wish for more wisdom.” Since then I can’t honestly tell you that I’ve welcomed the winters, but I can tell you that I’ve used them to gear up for spring, which always comes after winter. Spring: A Time to Take Advantage Learn to take advantage of spring. What a great place for spring to be, right after winter. Opportunity follows difficulty. Expansion follows recession — just like clockwork. God is a genius. Spring is the time to take advantage. Make a note of these two words. TAKE ADVANTAGE. Don’t let the balmy weather confuse you. If you want to look good in the fall, this is the time to plant the seeds. In fact, we all have to excel at one of two things. Either we become good at planting in the spring or we learn how to beg in the fall. So get busy in the spring. There is just a handful of springs for each of us. The Beatles wrote, “Life is so short.” And for John Lennon on the streets of New York, life was extra short. Summer: A Time to Take Care Learn to nourish and protect your crops all summer. You can bet that as soon as you’ve planted, the insects and weeds will try to destroy your crop. And they will succeed, unless you prevent them. Part of succeeding is learning to protect what you’ve created. And that’s the greatest lesson of summer. Here are two truths you’ll learn during your summers: First, you’ll learn that all good will be attacked. Don’t press me for the reason. I don’t know why. But I do know that it’s true. Every garden will be invaded. Not to understand this is naive. Second, you’ll learn that all values must be defended. All values — social, political, marital, commercial — must be defended. Every garden must be tended all summer. Unless you defend what you believe in, come fall you’ll have nothing left. Fall: A Time to Take Responsibility Fall is the season where we reap the results of our springs and summers. Maturity can be defined by our ability to take full responsibility for the crops we have tended, either bountiful or meager. Accepting full responsibility is one of the highest forms of human maturity — and one of the hardest. It’s the day you pass from childhood to adulthood. Learn to welcome fall without apology or complaint — without apology if you’ve done well and without complaint if you’ve not. It’s not easy, but it’s the mature thing to do. I used to have a lot of problems in this area, back in those early days. Just in case anyone asked, I used to carry with me a list of the reasons I wasn’t doing well. My list, which I predictably called “reasons for not doing well” included lots of alibis. I blamed the government. The government was at the top of my list. I blamed taxes. “Look what you’ve got left after they take everything out.” I blamed prices. “You walk into a supermarket with twenty dollars and come out with half a bag of groceries.” I blamed the weather. I blamed the traffic. I blamed my car and the car manufacturer. I blamed my negative relatives: “They are always putting me down.” I blamed my cynical neighbors. I blamed the community. Hey, I had lots of good reasons for not doing well. At least I thought I did. Mr. Shoaff was very kind, but he was also blunt. One day he looked up at me and with a quizzical expression on his face asked, “Jim, just out of curiosity, tell me why you haven’t done well up to now.” Excellent question, right? Well, so that I wouldn’t look bad, I decided to run through my list. How I ever had the nerve I’ll never know, but I did. I went through the whole litany — the government, taxes, prices — everything. He listened patiently as I went through it all. When I was finished he peered at my list for a few moments. Finally, shaking his head, he said, “There’s only one thing wrong with your list … You ain’t on it.” Afterward, I quickly tore up my list of “reasons for not doing well.” Then I got a fresh piece of paper and put one word across the top: “Me.” There’s a Negro spiritual that says it all: “It’s not my mother nor my father nor my brother nor my sister, but it’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.” I used to blame everything outside me for my lack of progress until I found that my problem was inside. It’s not what happens that determines the outcome. What happens, happens. And it happens to everybody. Two brothers have an abusive, alcoholic father. One becomes a criminal, the other a judge. The same event — different results. How can that be? It’s because it’s not what happens but rather what you and I do about it that matters. Anything can happen, right? I’ve heard all the stories; I’ve been one of these stories. We could all tell war stories for days on end … Have you heard of Murphy’s Law? Murphy has this law that says, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” And it does! I, too, have fallen out of the sky many times — once, to the tune of two million dollars. Devastating! (It took me a while to get over that one.) Now I admit that to some people a couple of “mill” isn’t all that much. But it was all I had. That’s a lot, any time you lose all you’ve got. There was a time when once you ran out of money and got to zero you were through. Heck, today they’ll let you whistle by zero on borrowed money. These days they’ll bury you with credit. But those are happenings … Everyone’s got his or her story. Someone says, “Yes, but you don’t understand the disappointments I’ve had.” Come on! Everyone has disappointments. Disappointments are not special gifts reserved for you. The question is, what are you going to do about them? * SELF-IMPOSED LIMITATIONS To be successful we must all work to eliminate those selfimposed limitations that are stunting our personal development. And no matter who you are, there are three self-imposed limitations you have to contend with. Let me tell you about them. The first limitation is procrastination. Procrastination is especially dangerous because of its accumulating nature: When we put off doing some minor task, it doesn’t seem to be all that important. And if we let a few things slide during the day, it doesn’t seem like such a bad day. But let enough of those days pile up and you have the makings of a disastrous year. Blame is another self-imposed limitation. At one time or another all of us have blamed someone for something. We have had long training in this self-imposed limitation going back to a certain fruit garden where the man said, “It was the woman. She got me into this.” And the woman blamed the serpent. Why do we point fingers instead of looking within? The ego strives to defend itself. Therefore, when we blame outside forces we don’t have to face our own weaknesses and failings. This must have been my reason for keeping my infamous “list of reasons.” One of my favorite items on the list was the high cost of everything. One day, after some inane statement I made about the cost of an item, Mr. Shoaff cut me short. “Listen, Jim,” he said, “cost is not your problem. It’s not that it costs too much. The problem is that you can’t afford it.” And he was right. It’s never the fault of it. If you keep shifting responsibility to it you’ll always be broke and disillusioned. You’ll never earn enough. But when you start thinking in terms of “me” instead of “it” you’ll experience a surge of personal growth and income. Excuses, the third self-imposed limitation, is a close relative of blame. Guess how many excuses exist? Right, millions! And people create a million more in the course of their lives. In fact, people go to tremendous lengths to avoid facing the truth — which is that they are responsible. I guess they’d rather create a million excuses than create a million dollars. (You can’t have both.) So here is the fundamental question you must answer: What are you going to do, starting today, to improve yourself? It really boils down to this: If you don’t get rid of some of your own self-imposed limitations, the next five years will be about the same as the last, except that you’ll be five years older. But by taking responsibility and getting rid of your selfimposed limitations, you can, instead, become five years better. Now, doesn’t this sound more exciting? There are many who have little faith in their own ability. They ask themselves, “What am I capable of doing? What can I do to make a difference in how my life turns out?” Let me first give you the broad answer to these questions. You can do the most remarkable things, no matter what kinds of winters life throws your way. People can rise to unbelievable heights when called upon: A woman lifts a two-ton car to save her child; a man survives starvation and disease in a concentration camp because he dreams of seeing his family; immigrants start their new lives by washing dishes and within five years, by scrimping and saving, own their own thriving businesses with scores of native-born on their payroll. Remarkable! I also found out that kids can do remarkable things — that is if they have remarkable things to do. Just get them away from the TV and challenge their minds and bodies; they will grow to be remarkable people. (I’ve also discovered that if they don’t have remarkable things to do, there’s no telling what they will do. But that’s another matter …) Human beings can do remarkable things because they are remarkable. You and I aren’t amoeba, fish, birds, or dogs. We can turn nothing into something, pennies into fortune, disaster into triumph. In contrast, when a dog starts with weeds he ends up with weeds. The reason? He’s just a dog. He doesn’t have the ability to create. So accept the fact that you are remarkable. Thrive on your uniqueness! Reach down inside yourself and bring out more of your remarkably human gifts. They are there, waiting to be discovered and used. Once you bring out all your gifts, you can change anything you need to change: If you don’t like how it is for you now, change it. If it isn’t enough, change it. If it doesn’t suit you, change it. If it doesn’t please you, change it. Remember: YOU CAN CHANGE ALL THINGS FOR THE BETTER WHEN YOU CHANGE YOURSELF FOR THE BETTER. After all, you aren’t just a plant or an animal, completely dependent on instinctive behavior. You are a human being, a most remarkable creation. You and I are too sophisticated to think that we can change simply by reading this bit of philosophical insight. It will take lots more than that. What will it take? Perhaps I should first tell you what isn’t going to do it … Some people will tell you: “Enthusiasm makes all the difference.” We hear a lot about enthusiasm these days. The old cliche perseveres. In the typical sales meeting one still hears it being chanted in staccato unison by a chorus of bleary-eyed salespeople: “To.be.en.thu.si.as.tic.you.must.feel.en.thu.si.as.tic.” But, you see, enthusiasm by itself won’t help. I’m sorry. After you have leaped about, jumping and shouting, there are still some things waiting for you to do. And unless you do them, things simply won’t change. A man can get all excited about lifting twohundred-pound weights — until he gets to the gym. Then he needs a new kind of excitement, long-term excitement that will keep him in training until he can lift the two hundred pounds. We call this kind of excitement discipline. Frankly, discipline is the only thing that will do it. It is the only vehicle for real progress. If there is one thing to get excited about, it’s discipline. Get excited about your ability to do the necessary things for growth. That’s true excitement, not just hopeful panic. HOW TO CHANGE No one understands as I do the inherent difficulty in changing old and persistent habits. But habits begin to change when we begin to change our perceptions. Most of us don’t experience a huge cataclysmic transformation. No, for most of us change comes as an evolutionary process of almost imperceptible changes. We just keep nudging ourselves in the right direction, forming one or two better habits here and there, until finally we realize we have turned around a major area of our life. The Three Areas of Personal Development In your quest for personal development, there are three areas for you to consider: You can look at developing yourself spiritually, physically, and mentally. Spiritual Self-Development I must confess that I consider myself an amateur in this area. Because I was raised in a home filled with deep faith (my father is a preacher, a fact which makes me — for better or for worse — a PK, or preacher’s kid), I was imbued with a love for God’s creation. But regardless of your background (this book is written for people of all backgrounds and beliefs), I think you should evaluate what growth and change you want to make in this vital area. Spiritual and ethical values will help build a strong foundation underneath your quest for wealth and happiness. Physical Self-Development The Bible teaches that we should treat our bodies like temples. And, indeed, the Jewish laws for hygiene are elaborate and specific. But beyond hygiene, I think we need to make a point of “draping our temple,” dressing in a way that’s appropriate to our desire to succeed. Let’s face it, how we appear to others does make a difference in terms of our ability to function well in the marketplace. In fact, there is another biblical phrase that tells us to take care of the outside for people and take care of the inside for God. People look on the outside, at least initially, and God looks on the inside, always. Now maybe you think people shouldn’t judge you by your personal appearance. Well let me tell you, they do! And because they do, you should make a point of looking your best. (There are lots of good books on this subject, so check with your bookstore or library.) Another aspect of physical development has to do with staying in shape. The body and mind work together. And for your mind to have the stamina to strive, your body should be in as good a shape as possible. Do you have a regular exercise program? If not, find one you can follow and get started. In addition, make sure you pay attention to the foods you eat and the supplemental nutrition you take. Mental Self-Development For most people mental development stops at an early age. Once they have a good job, it’s easy for many to stop pursuing mental development. Have you heard about the accelerated learning curve? From birth to age eighteen our learning curve is dramatic. We learn a staggering amount quickly, but as we grow older and find our niche in the marketplace, our learning curve reaches a plateau. In the past, if all you wanted was an average life, this non growth mentality was acceptable. I say was because that’s no longer true. The last few decades of the twentieth century are demanding constant growth and learning. As technology keeps accelerating the pace of change, no one can simply hold on to a job and expect that job to remain the same for forty years. The my-grandfatherused-to-work-here-my-father-workshere-and-now-I-work-here mentality is dying, killing with it the hopes of those who are not willing to accept the need to grow and to adapt. On the positive side, can you imagine what you can become if you keep up an accelerated learning curve throughout your life? Can you imagine what skills you’ll develop, what insights you’ll have? THE EASY WAY TO DISCIPLINE Because forming the habit of personal growth will require the consistent effort that only discipline provides, let me give you a key to discipline. Start with the little disciplines and begin to string them together. Gradually, you’ll discover that by tackling many small disciplines you’ll have mastered a big one. I urge you to take on a small challenge, something you can do right now. And then take on another. After awhile, when the big challenges come your way you’ll be able to handle them with complete confidence. Do you want to lose weight? Start by eating your bread unbuttered. Do you want to go to Europe? Start by setting aside twenty dollars each week. Do you want to be punctual? Start by getting up a half hour earlier. Do you want to make a milliondollar sale? Start by making a fiftydollar sale. As Robert Schuller says, “Inch by inch everything’s a cinch.” But if you never take the small steps, no one, including yourself, will trust you with the big ones. Don’t be like the man who struts out of his house determined to straighten out the profit picture of the corporation when he hasn’t even straightened out his own personal budget. Who is he kidding! You see, everything affects everything else. Every discipline, or lack of one, affects every other discipline. Mistakenly, a man says, “This is the only place where I let down.” That cannot be! Every low standard will adversely affect the rest of your performance. Why? Because doing less than you are capable of doing creates lack of self-esteem. And lack of self-esteem is the greatest deterrent to success. SELF-MOTIVATION Recently I was on a lecture tour in Australia and was interviewed by the news media. They asked, “Mr. Rohn, are you one of those American motivators?” I said, “No, I’m a businessman. I can share my ideas and my experiences, but people have got to motivate themselves.” It took me a while, but I finally realized that you can’t change others. Lord knows, I’ve tried. Once I was managing a group of uninspired salespeople. Feeling challenged, I said, “I’m going to make them successful if it kills me.” Guess what? I almost died. Good people are found, not changed. Sure, they can change themselves, but you and I can’t change them. People ask me, “How do I recruit good people?” and I answer, “You have to find good people.” That’s the best answer I can give. Here is the first rule of successful management: DON’T SEND YOUR DUCKS TO EAGLE SCHOOL. Why? Because it won’t work. All you’ll get are unhappy ducks. They won’t soar like eagles. They’ll just quack, quack, quack. And then they’ll “poop” on you. I know … I’ve tried. Recently a full-page ad for a hotel chain caught my eye. The headline said, “We don’t teach our people to be nice.” Now that got my attention. And in smaller print the ad continued, “We simply hire nice people.” Wow! What a clever shortcut! Motivation is a mystery. Why does one salesperson see a first prospect at seven in the morning and another salesperson is just getting out of bed at eleven? I don’t know. It’s part of the mysteries of life. I give a lecture to a thousand people. One walks out and says, “I’m going to change my life.” Another walks out with a yawn, muttering to himself, “I’ve heard all this stuff before.” Why is that? Why wouldn’t both be affected the same way? Another mystery. The millionaire says to a thousand people, “I read this book and it started me on the road to wealth.” Guess how many go out and get the book? That’s right … very few. Isn’t it incredible? Why wouldn’t everyone get the book?… a mystery of life. Now, you’ve already got a lot going for you. Your reading this book proves that you’ve got the inner motivation to grow and to change. I urge you to build on this foundation to become all you’re capable of being. I know you will! STRATEGY FOUR Control Your Finances Chapter 7 How to Achieve Financial Freedom Money is an emotional topic, and most of us have ambivalent feelings about it. On one hand we want the security and comfort it can bring; on the other hand we fear financial success will somehow corrupt our ethics. Certainly, TV and movies do their parts to characterize wealthy people as scheming and evil. When was the last time you saw a program that depicted a rich person as the “good guy?” In religious circles one often hears the Bible misquoted by wellmeaning people. Instead of, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” some people tell us that “Money is the root of all evil.” Obviously, it is the complete quotation of the Bible which is correct. If you make money your love and you pursue affluence to the exclusion of or at the expense of other values, you have lost, not won. However, let us consider this question: If you could do better, should you? Within the time you’ve allocated to gainful work, shouldn’t you try to accomplish the most you can? I believe the greatest satisfactions of life come to those of us who make a habit of doing the best with what we’ve got. In fact, doing less than our best has a way of weighing on our psyche. We humans seem to be creatures of enterprise. We’re challenged by the seasons. We see the soil and the sun and the rain and the seed and we feel them urging us to harness them. It’s as if life and nature are saying, “Do you have the genius to make something unique of us? We are the raw materials. What splendid things can you create while you are here?” You and I, as creatures of enterprise, shouldn’t be reluctant to go for it — for high productivity, for the full employment of our genius, for the full development of our potential in all areas of our lives — including the area of creating wealth. That is the essence of life. Sophisticated people know that it isn’t the amount that matters; it’s doing all that we can do with our God-given abilities that really counts. This last thought — doing all that we can with what we have — is the essence of a special book. It’s called, The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clay son. It’s a small book which can be read in one sitting, but it covers the basics. I call it, The Appetizer for the Full Discourse on the Subject of Financial Independence, and I recommend it to you. Our actions and acquisitions say a great deal about us. They reveal our philosophy of life, our attitude, knowledge, and thoughts — even our character. Because the outer always reflects the inner, they provide a running commentary on our ability to weigh and to perceive. There’s even an adage that says, “What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” There’s no escaping it: Everything is symptomatic of something. It’s either symptomatic of something right or it’s symptomatic of something wrong. That’s why it’s such a wise policy not to ignore symptoms. In case something in your life isn’t working as it should, they act as an earlywarning system, proclaiming to anyone willing to listen that something must change. For example, you could take a look at your lifestyle in relation to your income. If you’re spending more than you’re making, you may be committing slow financial suicide. Your next “toy,” purchased on the installment plan, could be no less than another dose of poison served to you on a silver platter. Look at what you’re doing with your present income. Are you using it in a wise manner, spending no more than seventy percent of your total income? Or are you living a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a month above your earnings? Take a look at the symptoms before it’s too late. I remember saying to Mr. Shoaff, “If I had more money I would have a better plan.” He quickly answered, “I would suggest that if you had a better plan you would have more money.” This is a statement of major importance! You see, it’s not the amount that counts; it’s the plan that counts. It’s not how much you allocate but how you allocate it. DIVIDING THE FINANCIAL PIE When was the last time someone taught you how our economic system works? I don’t mean in some theoretical textbook way but in terms of real-life, everyday economics? Has anyone ever told you the wisest way to allocate every dollar you earn? I certainly wasn’t taught any of this until Mr. Shoaff patiently took me by the hand and explained it to me. Real-life economics must be one of the most glaring omissions in our educational system. I say this because in my travels to lecture throughout the world, I constantly run into otherwise well-educated people — doctors, lawyers, top corporate personnel, even entrepreneurs — who haven’t the vaguest notion as to how to manage their finances. These otherwise sophisticated people may be able to read complex annual reports, but they don’t seem to understand everyday economics, the economics of becoming financially independent on a steady, ongoing, everpredictable basis. As a result of their ignorance, they do not teach this basic economics to their children. And so, generation after generation remains ignorant of the miracle that is the free-enterprise system. Indulge me, then, as I take time to review how money is to be allocated for the creation of wealth. Taxes I realize that the topic of taxes may seem like a strange place to begin the discussion of creating wealth. And yet throughout our lives, whether young or old, we must learn the necessity of paying taxes. And as soon as they have any money at all, our children, too, must learn that when they spend money they immediately become consumers. And all consumers of goods and services, no matter how young, must pay taxes. If a child is only six years old when he first goes to the store to buy something that costs a dollar, the proprietor will ask him for an additional six cents. The child may look at the price tag and ask the proprietor what the six cents is for. This is the time to offer a full explanation. If he’s going to take six cents from the child, shouldn’t the merchant tell him where it goes? After all, it’s his six cents. The child might ask the proprietor who keeps it. The merchant would then explain that it’s for taxes, that he doesn’t get to keep it but merely collects it. The next two obvious questions the child might ask are who gets it and what’s it used for. And with these questions come very important answers. The child should be told that because we have all agreed to live together, we call ourselves a society. And for society to function properly, there are some things we cannot do for ourselves alone. For example, we cannot each build a piece of the street. The machinery would be too expensive, and it would take too long to learn how to use it. So we have a government. And a government is made up of people who do things for us that we cannot or do not want to do ourselves. Because the streets, the sidewalks, the police, and the fire department must all be paid for, we’ve agreed to add some money each time we buy something and give it to the government. Understanding this is important. Our children have to learn this. We have to learn this. We then move on to federal taxes. Here is a good way to explain federal taxes. I call it The Care and Feeding of the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs. It’s so important to feed the goose — not to abuse the goose or tear off its wings — but to feed and care for it. What’s that you say? The goose eats too much? That’s probably true. But then, don’t we all eat too much? If so, let not one appetite accuse another. If you step on the scales and you’re ten pounds too heavy, you’ve got to say, “Yes, the government and I are each about ten pounds too heavy. Looks like we both eat too much.” No question about it. Every appetite must be disciplined — yours, mine, and the government’s. Hey, we could all go on a diet! Mr. Shoaff urged me to become a happy taxpayer. Now, I must admit it took a while, but I finally did become a happy taxpayer. Part of this transformation occurred when I began to understand the function of taxes and that it is right for everyone to pay his or her fair share. I finally decided I didn’t mind picking up my share of the tab for defense. It’s so necessary for our safety as a country to keep the international bullies away. Some people say, “Why bother with all that expensive equipment? They won’t come over here.” Obviously, those people haven’t been reading their history books. Others say, “We’re not about to pick up the tab for defense.” Well then, I suggest they go to a place which doesn’t offer defense as part of the package. If one is going to enjoy the benefits, one should pay a share. Jesus, the master teacher, gave some clear advice when he said, “Pay Caesar first.” That’s pretty clear—pay Caesar first. For some reason, he didn’t qualify this statement or take the time to criticize the government. All he said was, “Pay Caesar first.” I don’t think we need a prophet to interpret that one for us. Now, before you go out and promptly fire your tax advisor, let me add this: Don’t pay more than you should. By all means take advantage of the incentives. They were given to you as a reward for channeling your money into areas the government thinks help the economy. All I’m saying is that when everything has been computed, all legitimate deductions have been taken, and you reach that last line on your income tax form, whatever the amount, pay it. And pay with happiness, knowing that you’re feeding the goose that lays the golden eggs — the golden eggs of freedom, safety, justice, and free enterprise. Some goose! Some eggs! Furthermore, I believe everyone should pay — even the poorest person. I don’t care if it’s just one dollar a year. That would be enough. The point is that everyone should enjoy the dignity of paying his or her fair share. There is the story about Jesus and some of his disciples who were watching the people come to offer their contributions to the temple. Some came with large amounts. Others gave smaller amounts. Finally a little old woman came and carefully put two pennies in the treasury. Jesus pointed to the woman and said, “Look at this wonderful woman who gave her two pennies.” The disciples were puzzled. “Two pennies!” they exclaimed. “Of all the magnificent donations given here today, why are you pointing to this poor woman as an example?” Jesus said, “You don’t understand, but she gave more than anyone else.” They said, “Two pennies — more than anyone else? Explain that to us, Rabbi.” He said, “Yes, for her the two pennies represented all she had.” How remarkable! But let’s examine this story further. Sometimes what is not told has a more profound lesson than what is told. Consider what Jesus did not do. He did not take the two pennies out of the treasury and return them to the old lady, saying, “Here, old woman, we have observed that you are so poor and so pitiful that we are going to give you back your two pennies.” What an insult that would have been! She would surely have said, “What’s the matter, aren’t my two pennies good enough? They represent a considerable portion of what I own. Would you take away my dignity?” Of course, this scene did not occur. And therein lies the most profound lesson. The 70/30 Rule After you pay your fair share of taxes, you must learn to live on seventy percent of your after-tax income. This is important because of the way you’ll allocate your remaining thirty percent. The seventy percent you will spend on necessities and luxuries. The thirty percent? Let’s allocate it in the following ways: Charity
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