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CreativityTranscript
00:00Some of the things I'm going to share with you, I want you to remember for a long, long time
00:04because the ideas I want to translate for you drastically affected my life.
00:08So the man who shared with me ideas that changed my life, I want to share with you three of
00:13those
00:13basic subjects. When I met him, I was 25 years old. And when I first got acquainted with him,
00:21I used a lot of excuses as to why I wasn't doing well. And he said, well, tell me a
00:27little bit
00:27about your story. And I told him, you know, I was behind on my bills, had pennies in my pocket
00:32and nothing in the bank, that I was embarrassed about being behind on my big mouth promises to my
00:37family. And then he gave me one little simple phrase that really forever changed my life.
00:44And here's what he said, Mr. Rohn, if you want the future to change for you, you've got to change.
00:50And he said, if you don't change, the next six years of your life is going to be just like
00:55the last six.
00:55You'll still be behind on your bills. You'll still be behind on your promises.
01:01But then he gave it to me in the form of a promise. When I was 25 years old, I've
01:05remembered it all
01:06these years. And I've shared this promise now with probably over three million people in the last 30
01:12plus years. And it's going to be valid for you. So listen carefully to this promise. My teacher said
01:18to me, young man, if you will change, everything will change for you. If you will get better,
01:26everything will get better for you. What a clear message that was for me. He said, if you'll change
01:32your philosophy, if you'll change your habits, if you'll refine your thinking, if you'll change and
01:38accept some new disciplines, if you'll turn the corner where you've been in the past, go for a new
01:43life for the future. He said, all kinds of remarkable things will happen for you if you will change.
01:50Before I met Mr. Shoaff, I used to cross my fingers and say, I sure hope things will change.
01:55I was hoping the government would change and the tax structure would change and that my boss would
02:00change and pay me more money. I was hoping that, you know, economics would change and prices would
02:07come down. And I was hoping that circumstances would get better. And then I discovered from my
02:14teacher that those things are going to continue the same. In fact, all of those things that happen
02:19to us is kind of like the wind that blows and the wind blows on us all. But if you
02:26just let the wind
02:27blow, I'm telling you, it won't take you where you want to go. All of us must use this wind
02:33to take us
02:34to the dreams we've got, to the equities we want, to the money we want, to the income we want,
02:40and to all the things we want our life to have. This is where we want to go. And we've
02:46got a good
02:46wind, but we must not leave our future just to the wind, just to the economy, just to the structure
02:53of the way things are happening today. Here's what we must learn to do. And that is set a good
02:58sail.
03:00And if you'll learn to set a good sail, and that's what my teacher taught me in those early days.
03:05He
03:05said, Mr. Rohn, the wind is going to blow however it's going to blow. Politics are going to be politics,
03:10and the economy is going to be the economy. And however it turns out, that's the way it's going
03:15to be. What you must learn to do is not to wish for a better wind. That's naive. The key
03:22is to wish for
03:23the wisdom and the skills and the learning so that you can set a better sail. And so that's what
03:29I did
03:30at age 25. I went to work not on the economy. I went to work not on the community. I
03:37didn't go to
03:37work to try to change the government. I didn't go to work to try to change my boss or the
03:41company.
03:42I didn't go to work to try to change circumstances. I went to work to try to change myself. And
03:48I picked
03:48up that promise. My teacher shared with me that if I would change, my income would change. If I would
03:54change, my bank account would change. If I would change, my future would change. And sure enough,
04:00his promise came true for me. The first six years of my economic life, I wound up broke. Those pennies
04:07in my pocket, nothing in the bank, behind on my promises. The second six years of my economic life,
04:12I wound up rich. But interestingly enough, the second six years of my economic life,
04:18the government was about the same and the economy was about the same. You know, the companies were
04:22about the same. What they paid was the same. Circumstances around me were the same. You know,
04:28my negative relatives were the same. But I was not the same. That's how my life changed. And that's how
04:35things started working for me, changing my life all those years ago. So that's what I wanted to share
04:42with you to begin with this beginning of what Mr. Shoaff shared with me that if I wanted my life
04:46to change,
04:48this was what I was going to have to do. And so he broke it down into three subjects
04:53that really made an impact on my life. And I want to share those with you. The first subject he
04:59called
05:00personal development.
05:03And the second subject he called setting goals. And the third was how to become financially
05:12independent. And I'd like to give you just a few clues from those three major subjects that so
05:19dramatically affected my life. And let's get started. The first one is personal development.
05:27Now in illustrating personal development, Mr. Shoaff, my teacher started with money. You know,
05:35money is not the only place to start in talking personal development, but it's where he started.
05:40So let me share the thoughts he shared with me back then. Let me share them with you.
05:45Here's the best lesson I can give you on economics. It's very simple. We get paid for bringing value
05:53value to the marketplace. That's about as simple as I can put economics. We get paid for bringing value to
06:01the marketplace. Now, it takes time to bring value to the marketplace. However, we do not get paid for
06:11time. So we cross that out. Mistakenly, the man says, I'm making about $20 for an hour. Not true. If
06:20that was
06:20true, you could just stay home, right? And have them send your money. So that's not true. We don't
06:25get paid for time. We get paid for value brought to the marketplace. Now, since that's true, here's one
06:31of the key questions of my talk to you today. Is it possible to become twice as valuable to the
06:39marketplace and make twice as much money in the same time? Is that possible? The answer is yes. Could you
06:46become three times as valuable as you might be right now to the marketplace and make three times as much
06:52money in the same time? And the answer is yes. Five times? 10 times? Of course. Now, there's some key
06:57questions to ask here. Why would the marketplace pay someone only $5 an hour? Very simple answer.
07:04They're not very valuable to the marketplace. Now, we must underline to the marketplace.
07:10Yes. This person might be a very valuable brother. Yes. Member of the family, valuable. Yes.
07:16Valuable member of the church, of course. Valuable citizen of the country, yes. Valuable in the sight of
07:24God, no doubt. We're all of equal value in the sight of God. But if you're not very valuable to
07:30the
07:30marketplace, you don't get much money. You say, well, it shouldn't be that way. Well, then you got to
07:36start your own country. You know, this one's been in process for 200 years and this is the best we've
07:41been able to come up with so far. But here's the key. You don't have to stay here. But here's
07:48what
07:48he said to me. In climbing this ladder economically, all you have to do is work harder on yourself than
07:55you do on your job. Once I heard that, it made sense to me. I kept hoping that everything else
08:03would
08:04change around me, found out that if I went to work on myself, worked on my skills, worked on my
08:10language,
08:11if I became better than I was each year, if I grew in skills and language and vocabulary and competence,
08:19then I would become attractive to the marketplace. Not very long ago, a company called me and said,
08:26Mr. Rohn, we're expanding internationally. We'd like to have a bit of your expertise to help us.
08:31Would you give us a bit of your time? We'll add some millions to your fortune. And I said, okay.
08:37And I thought later, isn't that interesting? They would call me. Then my second thought was,
08:42of course, they'd call me. Who else would they call? I can get the job done. Now, what a contrast
08:47for me, farm boy from Idaho, raised in obscurity, parents of modest means, broke when I was 25.
08:54How come I would get a telephone call and someone offer me a lot of money to help them in
08:59expanding around the world? Simple answer. Evidently, something happened to me between age 25
09:06and where I am today. And I can tell you where it all started from my teacher, Mr. Shoaff, who
09:11said to me,
09:12we don't have to change what's going on out there. That's the wind that's blowing. All we have to do
09:18is
09:18change what's going on in here. And now there's several ways to do that on personal development.
09:25And let me give you those ways. Here's the first one. We must learn from personal experience.
09:34Pretty simple. Learn from what happens to you. Take a look back over the last few months. Did you make
09:40some mistakes? How could you correct those for the future? Take a look back over the last year. Have
09:45you done it right or done it wrong? Let's correct it for the next year. Learn from your personal experience.
09:52Mr. Shoaff asked me when I first met him. He said, Mr. Owen, how are you doing? You've been out
09:55there
09:56now six years. And I said, I'm not doing very well. He said, I suggest you not do that anymore.
10:03What a simple swift analysis to my situation. He said, if you keep doing it, the next six years will
10:08be like the last six. You don't want that to happen. Let's make the changes. So learn from your personal
10:13experience. Now here's number two, why I came to share this video experience with you today.
10:19And that I call it OPE, other people's experiences. That's me, other people. That's your teacher,
10:30other people. That's your friends and colleagues, other people. The people you meet that can pass along
10:36to you, their experiences, what's happened to them, the mistakes they made, how they corrected them,
10:42how they changed their health and changed their bank account and changed their income and changed
10:45their future. That's it. Other people. Now, there's two kinds of people to learn from. One is failures.
10:53It's too bad failures don't give seminars, right? That would be valuable. Bring your notebook,
10:59have them tell you how they lost it all and threw it all away, threw their health away and threw
11:04their
11:04friendships away and things didn't work out well. That would be valuable. But now then we must also
11:10learn from positive people that have done well. They've got the health. And so we asked them, how
11:15did you become so healthy? They've got the skills. So we asked them, how did you become this skillful?
11:20They've got the income. So we asked them, how did you get here in such a short period of time?
11:25So now here's what's important in personal development. In learning from other people, we learn number one,
11:31by observation. We learn what we see. We watch people that are successful in what they do.
11:39In sports, we watch their disciplines. In business, we watch their disciplines.
11:45By observation, what we can see. The reason I created this video is something that you could see
11:50someone's experiences translated for you. Second, we learn by what we hear.
11:57I've got some of my lectures on cassette tape. So, you know, you can take them with you wherever you
12:03go
12:04and learn by listening. Turn your car into a mobile classroom and listen. And then listen to the sermon
12:13on Sunday morning. Listen to the lectures. Listen to the teacher. Listen to someone who's got something
12:18good to say. And then number three is vitally important on personal development. And that is
12:23read all the books, all the books you can possibly read in your lifetime. Mr. Shoaff got me started on
12:30my library. I've got one of the better libraries. Haven't read everything in it, but I feel smarter
12:35just walking in it by library. At least I was smart enough to buy it. Now I got to be
12:40smart enough to
12:41read it. Then, of course, I got to be smart enough to decide what's valuable and then do it. But
12:46this one
12:46is very important. Become a good reader. Some books that helped change my life. Mr. Shoaff recommended,
12:52of course, the Bible. And my parents made sure I was a pretty good scholar by the time I was
12:5718.
12:58That's been so beneficial for me, drawing from those illustrations, reading about those stories,
13:04people who made it and people who didn't make it and what the difference was. And then other books
13:09that helped to really change my life, one called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And then a book
13:16that helped me become financially independent by the time I was 31. And that book is called The Richest
13:22Man in Babylon by George Clayson. But I started reading the books, attending the classes, making sure
13:30that I got in front of people that had something good to say. And then I started keeping a journal.
13:36One of the
13:37major things my teacher taught me was to keep a journal. He said, don't trust your memory. If you
13:43hear something good, just make a little note and write it down. Now, at first I took, you know, notes
13:48on pieces of paper and torn off corners and backs of old envelopes. And it didn't serve me well, you
13:53know, thrown in a drawer. Then I learned to keep a journal, a bound copy of all my notes. So
14:01I would
14:01suggest you do the same. Things that impress you, a poem that impresses you. When you attend a class,
14:08some of the ideas that impressed you, jot them down. If you read something in a magazine, right,
14:13some ideas, take those out, put them in your journal, keep a good journal the rest of your life. This
14:18will serve you well. My journals make up a significant portion of my own library. And if you saw my
14:24library
14:25and saw my journals, I tell you what you'd have to say. This is the library and these are the
14:30journals
14:31of a very serious student. No wonder Mr. Rohn is invited to lecture and speak on his experiences around
14:36the world. So I want the same thing to happen to you. Value captured that you can resort to later,
14:42go back over it and review it and let it become valuable to you. Work harder on yourself than you
14:49do
14:49on your job. Develop the skills, learn the lessons, take the classes, absorb all that is being taught
14:57to you these days. And then later on, of course, you can sort it out what's valuable to you and
15:03how to
15:03refine it for your business and for your life and for your future. But the main thing is to get
15:07it and
15:08start this process of personal change, personal development. And let me say it one more time. If you
15:14will change, everything will change for you. You'll never be the same. You'll keep growing. As you look
15:21back on a few months, look back on a few years, you won't believe the progress you can make economically,
15:26your relationship with your family, your friends, and whether you're in sports or economics or whatever,
15:31I'm telling you that whole process of committing yourself for personal change,
15:36personal value can really make your life unique and worthwhile.