I was listening to the legend Les Brown’s interview and he mentioned being a big fan of  Jon Rohn. This made me very curious about Jon Rohn! I jumped on the youtube and listened to his motivational speech around “use your mind, think and make good decisions!”. Shocked! The guy is a legend — very calm, but hitting the point. After this talk, I feel like I started thinking differently and expanding my mind!

In summary, Jon mentioned your action should be the result of your own thinking. Don’t just follow advice or orders. think through it, process it and then it makes sense to take action according to your own conclusion.

Another key thing Jon mentioned which is very fundamental is “Philosophy” – ability to think. Instead of complaining about anything or changing things around us, we should rather acknowledge what things are available to us and then how can we make the best use of them.

Think, process and make decision or choices every day that would change your future.  Few small errors repeated every day would lead to disaster in long run — you might not see it in day 1 so you need to be careful and wise in your choices. “A few simple disciplines practiced every day and you started a whole new successful life”

Here are the detailed notes I captured while listening

Make sure what you do is the product of your own conclusion.

• Take Information but don’t let somebody order your life.
• Not to do what someone else says.
• Take what someone else says, process it, think about it, ponder it, if it makes you wonder, if it makes you think then it is valuable. Then you go and take action — make sure that the action is not somebody told you to do, the action is the product of your OWN CONCLUSION
• If you follow these, your learning curve can go up quickly, swift, powerful and speedy. You can apply it to your business, your family, life, conversations, equities of all kind.

Philosophy

• is the MAJOR determine factor in how your life works out. For Philosophy, you have to think, use your mind, you got to process ideas
• This whole process over a lifetime (starting when we were children), schools, parents, our experiences, all that we process help to develop our Philosophy
• Each person personal Philosophy is the major factor of how your life works out
• It is called a set of the sail
• Jon used to blame high tax (i.e. taxes moved from 91 to 33% but still people says it is too high), traffic, circumstances, too tall, too short, too old, raised in obscurity.
• He used to think his future will tie to the economy, what everybody else was arranging, (used to say things cost too much) until his teacher taught that this is where the problem was
• His Own Personal Philosophy.
• Philosophy is what makes us different than dogs, cats, animals,
• The ability to think, ability to use your mind, ability to process ideas, and not just operate by instinct.
• We do come up with plans, better philosophy, future plans to achieve our goals – all these come from developing our Philosophy
• You have got seed, soil, rain, sunlight, air, water, time, can you convert it into value, Dream, life, food? The answer is yes!
• That is what is Philosophy – you cannot handle all this stuff unless you don’t use your mind, your Philosophy, come up with ideas, and strengthen your Philosophy.
• How do you convert what you got as economy, schools, bank and convert it into equity and value  – that is the major challenge of life
• You don’t need a better economy, better seed or soil, that’s all you got. If you blame this stuff then you are blaming all the stuff you got!!
• If you blame school, economy, company, family, teacher – what else is there?? That’s all there is.
• If you blame the only thing you got to work with – it is called MISTAKE colossal
• You got to start with your Philosophy
• Change your mind, change your thinking, change your Philosophy
• We are messed up on what is causing our problems. Once we get that straighten out and stop blaming all the stuff we have and started going for where the real problem is (Philosophy) our life would explode into a change.
• Little consideration of the refinement of your sail would refine your Philosophy  – your whole life can start to change from today on — you don’t have to wait till tomorrow.
• Some people do so little thinking – they don’t have their sail up. Where they will land up by end of the month, year 😉

Definition of success and failure:

• Failure: A few errors in judgment repeated every day for YEARS
• An apple a day keeps the dr. away – what if that’s true??
• If this is true then it is easy to do. OKAY, then what is the problem?
• Problem is it is easy to not do it
• It is easy not to adopt it as your own personal Philosophy
• Or guy messed up and he should say “Hershey bar a day ….”
• You got to be smarter in Philosophy
• If you eat a bar instead of apple for 6 years and make this kind of judgment, it will accumulate into disaster – the 1st year you might say well I am still healthy – what difference it will make – you have to be smarter than that!!
• Just because disaster does not follow on the day 1 does not mean disaster not coming.
• You got to be so smart that you look down the road and say will the errors in my present judgment of Philosophy what is that going to cost me in 1 year Or 6 years.
• Money cost, health cost, success cost is too gigantic if you look down the road and say are their errors in my current judgment like an apple vs the Hershey bar
• We are criticizing the only thing we have to work with!!!
• The formula for failure: Error in judgment being lacked about developing your own personal philosophy is called an accumulated disaster.
• Does not matter if it is your health or bank account
• Guys who have empty bank normally has high Cholesterol– he probably never paid attention to both
• It does not matter whether it is a dollar or your money or it is your Cholesterol count all you got to do is commit the errors and just because disaster does not fall on the end of the first day that you don’t eat an apple you will say “why do I need an apple today and tonight I am not ill”
• The formula for failure:
  • a few errors in judgment repeated every day for one month starts the weakness, start the disaster process – you can imagine what can happen in 6 years.

• The formula for success:
  • a few simple disciplines practiced every day and you started a whole new life. If you decide to take apple today instead of the Hershey bar, you have begun the process of turning your life around.
  • If you keep up that process with not only your health habit but your money habit, communication habit, sales habit, management habit and every other habit that you have
  • If you start that process – eliminate the errors and replace it with disciplines practiced after today you don’t have to be same again!
  • Only by choice
  • If You don’t (careless) and you won’t (stubborn) make good choices you will have disasters.
  • Could -> should -> wont
  • Could -> should -> don’t is disaster
  • Jim Rohn made millions in 6 years. How
  • Started my philosophy,  amending my errors by doing some better thinking, changing my mind, coming up with ideas that I did not have before
  • Once that whole process started, I changed my whole life.
  • Start with the philosophy -> your philosophy will tell if you go for the disciplines or continue the errors that are called potential disasters.
  • Appreciate all of the stuff you got and not try to change that — with all of ups and downs  — with all of the mystery of why it works and sometimes it does not work  — don’t challenge this!! You don’t have to ask for another country, another city, another job, ask for another book, another idea,
  • Start with simple disciplines and then you can grow to complicated disciplines.

Reference: Jim Rohn – Best Motivational Speech. Use Your Own Mind, Think, & Make Good Decisions!