Jim Rohn was always considered a business philosopher. When he talked about the road to business success and the circumstances needed for a person to succeed, he made it sound genuinely easy. As he himself put it, success was very easy for him, while for others, quite simply, letting things slide was easier.
His explanation went roughly like this:
It seemed extremely easy to me to set goals to change my life. Others found it easier not to. It seemed easy to me to read books that would help me with my goals. Other people found it easier not to waste their time reading them. It seemed easy to me to go to seminars and surround myself with people who had something positive to offer me, successful people. Others found it easier to spend their time with other kinds of people.
If I had to sum up the secret of my success, I would simply say that it was very easy for me to achieve it, because I was willing to do it, and it was easy to do. It was easy for everyone else too, but they found it much easier not to bother doing it. Six years later it had made me rich (easily), while many of the people who studied with me now blame the economy and the government. I suppose they find it easier to point at someone to blame than to walk the simple path I walked. We simply have to set aside complacency and acquire steady discipline. Both are easy, but only one of them leads you to success.
Jim Rohn got started in business at 25. By 31 he was already an influential and wealthy man. Over his lifetime he wrote 34 books, besides giving countless talks all over the world. He made his fortune through various products focused on nutrition and wellness. He was one of the pioneers in promoting the multi-level marketing system around the world, since in 1956 the system practically did not exist. For him, it was easy to create it.
He died in 2009 of pulmonary fibrosis. Fighting the disease was not easy for him, although he battled it fiercely for almost two years. Here are some of the sayings he left us (translated freely here):
- Success is not something we find; it is something we attract as a result of the person we become.
- If you don’t like what is happening to you, change it: you are not a tree.
- See each day as an opportunity to invest in life, an opportunity to share your experience with someone else. Every day is an opportunity to work miracles in other people’s lives.
- Success consists of doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way.
- Success is neither magical nor mysterious. It is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.
- For things to change, you have to change… For things to get better, you have to get better.
- Leadership is the challenge of becoming something more than average. Learn to help others with more than just their work; help them to live.
There is little more to say about what this man was trying to get across.
Further reading
- The fable of the fisherman and the businessman (a question of mindset)
- The secret of millionaires, told by millionaires
Featured image: Lone Tree in field by Brian Deegan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
