The Resilient Mind - How To Change Your Life - Jim Rohn

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Jim Rohn was a renowned motivational speaker who has been widely regarded as one of the best in his field during his time. He had an incredible ability to inspire and motivate people from all walks of life with his speeches and teachings.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to How to Change Your Life with Jim Rohn. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. If you will get better, everything will get better for you. What a clear message that was for me. He said if you'll change your philosophy, you'll change your habits, if you'll refine your thinking, if you'll change and accept some new disciplines,

if you'll turn the corner where you've been in the past, go for a new life for the future. He said all kinds of remarkable things will happen for you, if you will change. Here's what we must learn to do. I didn't go to work to try to change circumstances. I went to work to try to change myself. And I picked up that promise my teacher shared with me

that if I would change, my income would change, if I would change, my bank account would change, If I would change, my future would change. And sure enough, his promise came true for me. You know, the companies were about the same. What they paid was the same. Circumstances around me were the same. You know, my negative relatives were the same.

But I was not the same. That's how my life changed. Things started working for me, changing my life all those years ago. We don't have to change what's going on out there. That's the wind that's blowing. All we have to do is change. what's going on in here. And now there's several ways to do that. The first subject he called personal development. We must learn from personal experience. Pretty simple, learn from what happens to

you. Take a look back over the last few months. Did you make some mistakes? How could you correct those for the future? Take a look back over the last year. Have you done it right or done it wrong? Let's correct it for the next year. Mr. Schof asked me when I first met him. He said, Mr. O'N, How are you doing? You've been out there now six years and I said, I'm not doing very well. He said, I suggest you not do that anymore. What a simple swift analysis to my situation. He said, if you keep doing it, the next six years will be like the last six. You don't want that to happen. Let's make the changes. So learn from your personal experience. Second, other people's experiences. That's me, other people. That's your teacher. That's your friends and colleagues. The people, you're you meet that can pass along to you their experiences? What's happened to them? The mistakes they

made, how they corrected them, how they changed their health and changed their bank account, and change their income and change their future, other people. Now, there's two kinds of people to learn from. One is failures. It's too bad failures don't give seminars, right? That would be valuable. Have them tell you how they lost it all and threw it all away, through their health away, and through their friendships away, and things didn't work out well. That would be valuable. But now then we must also learn from positive people that have done well. They've got the health and so we asked them, how did you become so healthy? They've got the skills, so we asked them, how did you become this skillful?

They've got the income, so we ask them, how did you get here in such a short period of time? So now here's what's important in personal development. In learning from other people, we learn number one by observation. We learn what we see, we watch people that are successful in what they do, in what they do. In sports, we watch their disciplines. In business, we watch their disciplines. Second, we learn by what we hear. Learn by listening. And then listen to the sermon on Sunday morning. Listen to the lectures. Listen to the teacher. Listen to someone who's got something good to say. And then number three is vitally important on personal development, and that is read all the

books, all the books you can possibly read in your lifetime. Mr. Schof got me started on my library. I've got one of the better libraries. And then I started keeping a journal. One of the major things my teacher taught me was to keep a journal. He said, don't trust your memory. If you hear something good, just make a little note and write it down. So I would suggest you do the same. Things that impress you, a poem that impresses you. When you attend a class, some of the ideas that impressed you, jot them down. You read something in a magazine, right? Some ideas. Take those out, put them in your journal, keep a good journal, the rest of your life, this will serve you well. So I want the same thing to happen to you. Value captured, that you can resort to later,

go back over it and review it and let it become valuable to you. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Develop the skills, learn the lessons, take the classes, absorb all that is being taught to you these days. And then later on, of course, you can sort it out what's valuable to you and how to refine it for your business and for your life and for your future. The main thing is to get it and start this process of personal change. Now let's cover the second setting goals. We need to take a look into the future. There are four things to consider in terms of attitude. One is how you feel about the past. Best advice I can give you on that is treat the past as a school. Let it teach you. The mistakes you've made, the things that went wrong, the things that didn't work.

Don't use the past as a burden to carry and don't use the past as a club to beat yourself to death. Past losses, past failures, past mistakes. But let the past be a school. Tough school, maybe. We've all been through some tough stuff. So if you feel good about the past, draw from it for experience and let it teach you. Then next is how you feel about the future. We've got to have the future well designed.

The future is called the promise. The promise of the future can be an awesome force. Designing the future. There's two ways to face the future. One is with apprehension. And the other is with anticipation. I promise you, in my travels around the world, most people face the future with apprehension.

And here's why they don't have it well designed. They've sort of left that up to someone else to fix. But here's the best way to face the future with anticipation. You can face the future with anticipation if the future is clear, if the future is well designed. In setting goals, it's very simple. Number one, decide what you want. You just take a little time. You sit down and say, what do I want?

What kind of skills do I want? What kind of income do I want for the future? Where would I like to go? Places I'd like to visit. Habits I'd like to acquire, skills I'd like to have. economics, friendships, people you'd like to meet, when you've thought about what you want for the future, make a list. If the future gets clear, the price gets easier. Because you've got to remember, for every promise, there's a price to pay. Everybody's got to pay the price. Everybody's got to do the deal. Everybody's got to do the disciplines.

But here's what I've discovered. If the promise is clear and powerful, the price is. easy to pay. The price is some classes, the price is a few books, the price is a few disciplines. The price is finding something that'll make your life better, make you grow, make you change, make you develop. So the first part of the key is to design the promise. Then what is the price to pay? I'm telling you, the price will be easy. If you'll make the promise of the future clear for yourself, all of the values of life that you could possibly want and be serious about it, I promise you it's an easy price to pay, anybody can pay it. And the best advice I can give you is if I can do it, you can do it.

Start setting your goals and see if you can't get a better excitement going for the things you want to accomplish for the future. One of the major reasons for setting goals is for what they make of you in achieving them. My teacher advised me when I first got started at age 25. He said, Jim, why don't you set a goal to become a millionaire? I'm here to help you. And he said, here's why. For what it will make of you to achieve it. Set the kind of goals that will make something of you to achieve them.

So part of the key here is to set the kind of goals that will make something of you. Don't set them too low so that you don't have to grow and you don't have to read and you don't have to try and you don't have to stretch. Don't set them too low. And then don't sell out. don't go for something that's going to cost you your virtue or cost you your values or sell out your principles. There's a good middle road here to follow. Goals that will inspire, goals that will help you grow, change, develop, and become better than you will. So if you want something to pull you through all kinds of challenges, all kinds of difficulties and things that come at you, you've got to have

something on out there beyond today, beyond next week, beyond next month, beyond this year that pulls you into the future and the clearer it is the stronger it pulls the more dynamic it is the more it affects your life your spirit your heart your soul it also creates imagination it gets your mind working on how to achieve that purpose and if your mind will work and if your heart works and if your spirit works and if you have good input like good ideas I'm telling you there isn't anything you can't accomplish Ideas gather dust, you know, they don't produce at all by themselves.

It's like philosophy is not the end. Philosophy is the beginning. Philosophy must be invested. When I talked about philosophy, attitude, and disciplines, they must be invested. And if you invest philosophy and attitude in disciplines, then they produce results. Here's a good phrase, wisdom, uninvested in labor is wasted. attitude, even the highest of attitude, which is faith. Faith uninvested is wasted.

It produces nothing. So the name of the game is not faith. The name of the game is not philosophy. The name of the game is to put faith and philosophy into activity so that it starts making progress, turning nothing into something. Let me give you that formula. while I'm on it here. Turning nothing into something.

How do you do that? How do you turn nothing into something? Here's how you start. There's three steps to it. Number one, imagination. And try to imagine yourself in those new, worthwhile, unique positions. So imagination starts to change everything.

Now, imagination is not tangible, but it is almost real. Almost real. It's not real, but it's almost real. But it's hard to say that imagination is nothing. But it's nothing in terms of tangible. It's not tangible yet. And you always have to say yet.

Imagination is not tangible yet. But it is the beginning of turning nothing into something. It's the beginning of turning nothing into reality. Imagination. Imagination is the ability to see things that don't yet exist. Imagination is real in the sense that it affects. It'll affect your behavior. It'll affect your enthusiasm.

It'll affect your emotions. It's real in that sense, but it's not real in the tangible sense. Next is faith. To believe that what you imagine is possible. How do we start to strengthen our belief in that what we imagine is possible to turn it into reality? And there's two or three ways. One is to believe your own testimony. If you've done it before, why couldn't you do it again? If you've done it once, couldn't you do it the second time? Why not believe in your own testimonial? If I did it before, I can do it again. And that's what's important about personal development. You can lose the money, but not the skill. So who cares about the money? It's like sales. A skill is more valuable than a sales. Sometimes a salesperson says, I need a sales. Said, no, you need a skill. Sales are temporary. skills are permanent. Now we move to faith to believe that what we imagine is possible.

So we study our own testimonial. If we've done it before, we can do it again. Here's what else we study. Other testimonials of somebody who did it. Somebody that built a hotel said, yes, I started with some plans and finally believed it was possible, and here it is. Say, well, if it's possible for one, it's possible for another. In fact, sometimes when we hear the testimonial, here's how they finished.

If I can do it, you can do it. That's a classic testimonial that gives us now what we call faith. And one of the ancient wise writers said, faith is generated by what we hear, the vocabulary of what we hear, the vocabulary of what we read. That generates faith to believe that it's possible. Now, faith is not reality.

You can't say faith is nothing because it affects. It's like radiation to us. it's nothing because it can't be seen. You can't see it, but it has an incredible effect. And that's true of faith. Faith can't be seen, right, with the natural eye. It can't be seen, but it has an incredible effect on your attitude, on your behavior, on your disciplines, on your work for the day, and all the rest.

Here's what one writer described faith. Faith is a substance, a substance of hope. Now, it's not a substance like a brick being a piece of the hotel, but it's almost. It's so close its substance. And the writer also said it's so close, it's evidence. Now, not evidence you can see, but tangible evidence that's just as real as all of our human experiences that can't be touched, can't be seen. It's called the unseen magic. language is the unseen magic.

It can't be seen. The words can't be seen as they're transmitted from the speaker to the one who listens, but it can have a profound effect. That means it's more than nothing. Language is more than nothing, but to create something out of nothing, we start with imagination, then we move to faith, which believes it's possible, which is almost real. But now here's what we do with faith and imagination.

deposit it in disciplines and activity. Because faith without the activity serves no useful purpose. Imagination, without the activity to translate it into reality serves no purpose. But wisdom and faith deposited in activity creates reality. The reality of a career, the reality of a hotel that wasn't there. Now here's all you got to do is to turn that. around. A few simple disciplines practiced every day. A few simple disciplines practiced every day starts to create success. Not at the end of the first day. The first day is the end of a new beginning.

Humans also need words. Words nourish the mind. Words give life. Words create insight. because there's more than one way to see. If we see with our eyes, we call that sight, but there's another way to see called insight. That's why we come, gather for a couple of days, attend the classes, go to the training, read the books, do all the stuff, is to develop more insight, letting our mind be nourished to think, ponder, and wonder,

and conceive ideas, projects, purpose, give structure to something for the future, whether it's better health or better career, better future. Next, the mind needs to be exercised. We talked a bit about that earlier. Exercise by debate. Exercise by reading both sides of the debate, both sides of the question. Major life issues, major political issues. Don't leave yourself out of the great debate.

one, the mind needs to be nourished by ideas. Second, it needs to be refined and stimulated and exercised by debate. We need both sides of the human drama represented. The reason why the Bible is such a classic book in studying all kinds of stories is because the Bible is full of stories on both sides, the evil side and the good side. The Bible said, Old Testament said, This king came to power and he was a good king.

He ruled for 18 years. And then it says the next king came to power and he was a bad king and he put up idols. He became the bad king. So it reads good king, bad king, showing both sides of the human spectrum and drama. Some stories that we read in the Bible of people to admire, others are people to despise. In your library, you need a book on Gandhi and you need a book on Hitler. One book to show you how noble someone's aspirations can be and the other book to show you how despicable and how evil someone's goals can be.

Both sides we study good and evil, one we love and one we hate. We study illness, we study health. Someone says, well, you can't study the negative things. You have to study the negative things. You have to give voice to and mind to and time to both sides of the issue so that you can strengthen your side of the argument. Then our personal philosophy needs to be developed so we can see the opportunities on the other side so we can maximize those. And for the balance of your life, that's going to be the twin challenge in developing ideas and philosophy and strengthening all of it so that you can avoid the dangers, maximize the opportunities.

Because the dangers never go away. The dangers to our ship of state called the country. The danger to the enterprise, the danger to the corporation. dangers always lurk both inside and out. Dangers lurk on the inside of our own mind. The battle of the mind is significant for us every day, what to think, what not to think. My mentor, Mr. Shove, said, stand guard at the door of your mind.

And you decide what enters. You decide what to fill up your mind with because it becomes the material with which you build your future. So engaging the mind to make rational decisions about life. Beware of the thief on the street that's after your purse, but also beware of the thief in your mind that's after your promise. The thief in your mind that says you're too short, you're too tall, you've never done it before, what makes you think you can do it now? It's not going to work for you. Someone else can find the book, you'll never find the book. If you found the

book, you wouldn't read it. If you did read it, you wouldn't understand it. That's stuff that goes on in our mind. So jot down this key phrase. It's one of the best for the day. Whatever you do, don't become a victim of yourself. As you engage in this debate, what to eat, what not to eat, where to go, where not to go, what to say, what not to say, what to do, what to do. Make sure that you strengthen the positive side of this argument with yourself so that day by day you become healthier, day by day you become stronger, day by day you become wiser, day by day you build a better shield and immunity, an inside immunity to ward off disease, but an outside immunity to ward off all the negative and all the trash and all the stuff that would not enhance your personal develop nor your

promise for the future. So this is so important in understanding the mind. Feed it. We call it food for thought So the big share of this whole seminar is all about these three days is providing food to think about, thoughts to think about. And then ideas to debate. And it's not necessarily what's right or what's wrong, but what's better what's best. This is okay, but this would be better. With this, yes, you can manage, but with this you can flourish. With this you can exist.

With this, you can live a fantastic life. So exercising the mind. Now, to develop the mind, you need a good library. Let me give you three parts to your library. Number one is your visual library. Zig and I and others have put things on video so you can see it. We ask you to come here today and see what's going on. So part of it comes by visual.

Come and see. And then if it's on video, you can see it again and again and again. Key phrase, repetition is the mother of learning. Repetition is where if we hear it again, we see something we didn't see when we heard it the first time. We see something different that we didn't see the first time. Next is your listening library. Zig Ziglar's right.

Turn your car into a mobile classroom. You can have a university education in a fairly short period of time just using the traveling time to listen. Key phrase is to listen to voices of value. Discriminate in your listening time. Listening to someone of reputation, someone who has good ideas, someone that's been recommended that has some value.

Don't waste your time listening to things that don't count much. Hey, there are some things that are not worth spending the time. They create more poison than they do benefit. So be careful. If somebody says to me, these eggs are rotten, I'm not going to make an omelet and try it. I'm going to take their word for it. So feed the mind, exercise the mind, and build your library.

Make this note, you cannot live on mental candy, just like you can't feed your children. an ice cream all the time and hope that they will be healthy. So you cannot live on mental candy. Someone says, well, I just read the positive stuff. That's not enough. And the reason is because you need to know both sides of the issue. So start your library like I did age 25. I mentioned in another seminar. I haven't read everything in my library, but I feel smarter just walking in it, right? Smart enough to buy it. Now I've got to be smart enough to read it all. Then I got to be smart enough to sort through and decide what's valuable. So make that the next part now. In part of personal

development for the mind, you've got to sort through what you read, what you see and what you hear, and decide which of all of that is valuable for you to try and do and master. This is where being a student comes in, not a follower, but a student. You read one book on good health and it says, do what this book says, you'll live forever. You read the next book on health and nutrition, it says, if you do what that first book says, you'll die young. So someone says to me, Mr. O'an, which of these books should I follow? Jot this down. Neither one. Don't be a follower. Read both books and make up your own mind. Here's what's important in the final analysis. One of the best phrases for the day, make sure what you finally do is the product of your own

conclusion. Make sure what you finally do is the product of your own conclusion, meaning you don't just follow, but you listen to both sides of the argument. You listen to the controversy. You try to master the points on both sides or three sides or whatever. Then you start charting your own course. It doesn't say you'll make always the right decision on what course to take or what to do. You can refine as you go, but make sure that what you do is the product of your own conclusions, conclusions from the debate, conclusion from what makes the best sense to you to try. Now jot this down. Also give yourself a chance to change. Some things I held on to that I thought this was it, this was it. I'm telling you,

after a while I gave it up, found out it wasn't it. So give yourself a chance to change. Refine your philosophy, refine your direction. If you'll give yourself a chance to do that, here's what will happen down the road away. The new door will open that you haven't discovered before. Give yourself a chance to change, re-evaluate. So let your library be a testimonial of your dedicated interest in accelerated personal development, that you will read whatever you have to read. You will hear whatever you must hear, and you will watch and see whatever you must see in order to make your life refined and worthwhile and achieve all of your purposes. It takes a lot of effort to learn.

It takes a lot of effort to grow. It takes a lot of effort to decide and debate. But jot this down. It's all worth the price. Now, it's also very important intellectually to know whether or not you're headed this way or this way. And once you decide, Ten years from now, I think that the gathering of my intellectual and personal and spiritual and moral and economic treasure may not be that great. The key is to start right now making these changes to walk this new road.

But here's what's exciting to me. Just a few daily disciplines makes a great deal of difference in one year. Three years, five years. Just a few daily disciplines. And that's what I'd like to talk about in this series. Just these few daily disciplines that make the difference. whether you wind up here or here. Good question. Ten years from now you will surely arrive. The question is, where? We don't want to kid ourselves about where. We don't want to kid

ourselves about the road we're walking. I had a day shortly after I met Mr. Shof called, do not kid myself any more day. I don't want to go disillusioned anymore. You know, I was using the cross-finger theory back when I was 25, 24, 23. I finally decided that the cross-finger theory was not going to get me what I wanted. That isn't where the treasure lies, that I'm going to have to make sure which of these ways I'm headed. But a few reading disciplines and a few disciplines of mind and a few disciplines of activity, and you can make all the difference in the world whether you wind up here or whether you wind up here. But just a few changes. Sometimes we get the idea that we're doing about 10 percent and there's about 90 percent more that we

need in order to make the difference for our fortune. And probably the opposite is true, right? We're doing enough things to have arrived here today. We're doing enough things to have bought and shared in the good life so far. And maybe all you needs that extra 5%, 10% of intellectual change, activity change, a refinement of discipline, a refinement of thought. And all we need is the idea is to make those simple changes. And the equity starts gathering in one year, three years, five years, 10 years. I have a good comment for your notes. Now's the time to fix the next 10 years.

Now's the time to fix it. Now sometimes you have to come to grips with reality and with truth. That's what was good for me when I met Mr. Schof. I was 25 years old. He was 44 years old. And he brought me a wealth of experience and he started asking me the tough questions. Big question. He said, are you reading the books that's going to take you where you want to go in the next five years?

Excellent question. See, you want to make sure. I would assume for all of you to get where you want to be in the next five years, you're either reading the right books or you're not. That's kind of a brilliant statement, right? You're either engaged in the disciplines or you're not, but here's what we don't want to engage in. Disillusion, right? Hoping without acting.

You know, wishing without doing. So the key is to take a look and say, where am I? What could I do to make the changes? To make sure that I can take more certain daily steps toward the treasure I want, the mental treasure, the personal treasure, the spiritual treasure, the financial treasure. I don't want to make any errors. Now's the time to adjust my. daily program to take me where I want to go. A good note for you to take. We could all use a little coaching. When you're playing the game, it's sometimes hard to see it all. And if you just take a

breather, take a little time out. It's what we're doing here in this lecture series. Take a little time out. Listen to someone's experiences, which is what I want to share with you, my experiences, my ideas, and see if it might cause for you a little moment of correction so that you can make some changes that'll add up to some extra worth in the next one year, three years, five years. So ideas, I hope you'll find here during this series. All kinds of ideas, health ideas, enterprise ideas, living a better life, ideas. And primarily for this series, skills of leadership, ideas. The next key word is inspiration. Inspiration is a mystery, why some people are inspired and some are not. Who knows what that mystery is? Some people have this incredible

zest for life and an appetite for living well and doing well and others seem to take the ho-hum attitude, let it slide. Hopefully it'll work out anyway. I don't know what the difference of that is. But it is exciting to watch people who are inspired. But I think the key to it all is self-motivation. Self-motivation. The guy says, boy, if somebody just come by and turn me on, hey, what if they don't show up? You've got to have a better plan for your life. Personal inspiration, drawing emotional vitality from life and the challenge going for it. We all admire that. I think my personal advice. to you would be and reach down inside of you and come up with some more of those remarkable human

gifts. They're there waiting to be utilized and then change anything for you you want to change. And I challenge you to do that because you can change. Thank you for tuning into this episode. If you're enjoying the content, you can access exclusive material by becoming a subscriber. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.