Some of the things I'm going to share with you, I want you to remember for a long, long time, because the ideas I want to translate for you drastically affected my life. So the man who shared with me ideas that changed my life. I want to share with you three of those basic subjects.
When I met him, I was 25 years old. And, when I first got acquainted with him, I used a lot of excuses as to why I wasn't doing well. And, he said, well, tell me a little bit about your story.
And I told him, you know, I was behind on my bills, had pennies in my pocket, nothing in the bank that I was embarrassed about being behind on my big mouth promises to my family. And then he gave me one little simple phrase that really forever changed my life. And here's what he said.
Mr Rohn, if you want the future to change for you, you've got to change. And he said, if you don't change, the next six years of your life is going to be just like the last six. You'll still be behind on your bills.
You'll still be behind on your promises. But then he gave it to me in the form of a promise when I was 25 years old. I've remembered it all these years, and I've shared this promise now, with probably over 3 million people in the last 30 plus years, and it's going to be valid for you.
So listen carefully to this promise. My teacher said to me, young man, if you will change, everything will change for you. 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.
Before I met Mr Shoaff, I used to cross my fingers and say, I sure hope things will change. I was hoping the government would change and the tax structure would change, and that my boss would change and pay me more money. I was hoping that, you know, economics would change and prices would come down.
And I was hoping that circumstances would get better. And then I discovered from my teacher that those things are going to continue the same. In fact, all of those things that happened to us is kind of like the wind that blows.
And the wind blows on us all. But if you just let the wind blow, I'm telling you, it won't take you where you want to go. All of us must use this wind to take us to the dreams we've got to the equities we want to the money we want to the income.
We want, and to all the things we want our lives to have. This is where we want to go. And we've got a good wind.
But we must not leave our future. Just to the wind, just to the economy, just to the structure of the way things are happening today. Here's what we must learn to do.
And that is set a good sail. And if you learn to set a good sail. And that's what my teacher taught me in those early days, he said, Mr Rhone, the wind is going to blow.
However, it's going to blow. Politics are going to be politics, and the economy is going to be the economy. And however it turns out that's the way it's going to be.
What you must learn to do is not to wish for a better wind. That's naive. The key is to wish for the wisdom and the skills and the learning, so that you can set a better sail.
And so that's what I did. At age 25. I went to work, not on the economy.
I went to work, not on the community. I didn't go to work to try to change the government. I didn't go to work to try to change my boss or the company.
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.
The first six years of my economic life, I wound up broke. Those pennies in my pocket. Nothing in the bank behind on my promises.
The second six years of my economic life, I wound up rich. But interestingly enough, the second six years of my economic life, the government was about the same and the economy was about the same. 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. And that's how things started working for me, changing my life all those years ago. So that's what I wanted to share with you to begin with.
This beginning of what Mr Shoaff shared with me, that if I wanted my life to change, this was what I was going to have to do. And so he broke it down into three subjects that really made an impact on my life. The first subject he called personal development.
And the second subject he called setting goals. And the third was how to become financially independent. Now, in illustrating personal development.
Mr Shoaff. My teacher started with money. You know, money's not the only place to start in talking personal development.
But it's where he started. So let me share the thoughts he shared with me back then. Let me share them with you.
Here's the best lesson I can give you on economics. It's very simple. We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace.
That's about as simple as I can put. Economics. We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace.
Now it takes time to bring value to the marketplace. Not true. If that was true, you could just stay home, right, and have him send your money.
So that's not true. We don't get paid for time. We get paid for value brought to the marketplace.
Now, since that's true, here's one of the key questions of my talk to you today. Is it possible to become twice as valuable to the marketplace and make twice as much money in the same time? Is that possible?
The answer is yes. Could you become three times as valuable as you might be right now to the marketplace and make three times as much money in the same time? And the answer is yes, five times.
Ten times, of course, They're not very valuable to the marketplace. Now we must underline to the marketplace this person might be a very valuable brother. Yes.
Member of the family. Valuable? Yes.
Valuable member of the church. Of course. Valuable citizen of the country?
Yes. Valuable in the sight of God. No doubt.
We're all of equal value in the sight of God. But if you're not very valuable to the marketplace, you don't get much money. You say, well, it shouldn't be that way.
But here's what he said to me. In climbing this ladder economically, all you have to do is work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Once I heard that, it made sense to me.
I kept hoping that everything else would change around me. Found out that if I went to work on myself, worked on my skills, worked on my language, if I became better than I was each year, if I grew in skills and language and vocabulary and competence, then I would become attractive to the marketplace. Farm boy from Idaho, raised in obscurity, parents of modest means, broke when I was 25.
How come I would get a telephone call and someone offer me a lot of money to help them in expanding around the world? Simple answer. Evidently something happened to me between age 25 and where I am today, and I can tell you where it all started from my teacher, Mr Shoaff, who said to me, 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 are several ways to do that on personal development. And let me give you those ways. Here's the first one we must learn from personal experience.
Pretty simple. Learn from happens. Do 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. Learn from your personal experience.
Mr Shoaff asked me when I first met him. He said Mr on 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.
Now here's number two why I came to share this video experience with you today, and that I call it E other people's experiences. That's me. Other people.
That's your teacher. Other people that your friends and colleagues, other people, the people 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 changed their income and changed their future. That's it.
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. Bring your notebook.
Have them tell you how they lost it all and threw it all the way 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 ask 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 sports. We watch their disciplines.
In business, we watch their disciplines by observation. What we can see. The reason I created this video is something that you could see someone's experiences translated for you.
Second, we learn by what we hear. I've got some of my lectures on cassette tape, so you know, you can take them with you wherever you go and learn by listening. Turn your car into a mobile classroom and listen.
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 shelf got me started on my library. I've got one of the better libraries, haven't read everything in it, but I feel smarter just walking in it. My library at least I was smart enough to buy it.
Now I got to be smart enough to read it. Then of course, I got to be smart enough to decide what's valuable and then do it. But this one is very important.
Become a good reader. Some books that helped change my life. Mr Shoaff recommended, of course, the Bible and my parents made sure I was a pretty good scholar by the time I was 18.
That's been so beneficial for me. Drwing from those illustrations now, reading about those stories, people who made it and people who didn't make it, and what the difference was, and then other books that helped to really change my life, one called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and then a book that helped me become financially independent by the time I was 31. And that book is called The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clayson.
But I started reading the books, attending the classes, making sure that I got in front of people that had something good to say. 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. Now, at first I took, you know, notes on pieces of paper and torn off corners and backs of old envelopes.
And it didn't serve me well, you know, thrown in a drawer. Then I learned to keep a journal, a bound copy of all my notes. So I would suggest you do the same things that impressed you.
A poem that impresses you when you attend a class. Some of the ideas that impressed you jot them down. If you read something in a magazine, write some ideas.
Take those out, put them in your journal. Keep a good journal the rest of your life. This will serve you well.
My journals make up a significant portion of my own library, and if you saw my library and saw my journals, I tell you what you'd have to say. This is the library, and these are the journals of a very serious student. 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. But the main thing is to get it and start this process of personal change, personal development. And let me say it one more time, if you will change, everything will change for you.
You'll never be the same. You'll keep growing as you look back on a few months. Look back on a few years.
You won't believe the progress you can make economically, your relationship with your family, your friends, and whether you're in sports or economics or whatever. I'm telling you, that whole process of committing yourself for personal change, personal value, can really make your life unique and worthwhile.
