Develop these five abilities as part of your personal development Quest. I called him the five abilities. Here's the first one. Develop the ability to absorb the ability to soak it up like you're doing today. Be like a sponge, don't miss anything and not just the words. It's true. Don't miss the words but don't miss the atmosphere. Don't miss the color. Don't miss the scenario. Don't miss what's going on. Most people are just trying to get through the day.
Here's what I want you to be committed to do. Learn to get from the day. Don't just get through it and get firm it. Learn from it. Let the day, teach you join the University of Life, what a difference that will make in your future. If it yourself to learning commit yourself to absorbing be like a sponge, get it. Don't miss it. I've got a personal friend of mine. Who's, so, gifted in this area? I think he has soaked up and remembers everything that's ever happened to.
You can tell you, it's a teenager where he was and what he did and what he said and what she said, and how they felt in the color of the sky and what was going on that day and the reason is because he gets it, he gets it, he gets it. I'm telling you, it's more exciting to have him. Go to Acapulco, come back and tell you about it than it is to go yourself. He's unbelievable. Stop. This extraordinary gift and why is it when he's there, he doesn't miss anything.
Here's a good phrase for you to jot down, to wherever you are. Be there. Be there to absorb it up. Be there to soak it up. Take a picture if you can but take pictures of your mind, let your soul and heart, take pictures, Get It capture it absorbent. Such an important ability to develop the ability to get it. Don't Don't be casual and getting key phrase. Casualness leads to cash. Second learn to respond. The ability to respond means. Let Life Touch you don't let it
kill you but let it touch you. Let's add things. Make you sad, that happy things make you happy, I'm telling you, give into the emotion that the emotion strike. You not just the words, not just the image that the feeling strike you that the emotion strike to, here's what's important. Our emotions need to be as educated as our intellect, our emotions need to be educated as Well, as our into, it's important to know how to feel. It's important to know how to respond.
It's important to let life in let it touch you. I'm the greatest guy in the world to take you to the movies. I get into a good move. I want a good movie. Make me laugh. Make me cry. Scare me to death. Teach me something. Take me high. Take me low. Just don't leave me as I was when I came in, touch me do something too. Beginning. Only last so long. If you begin that first week and then you don't continue. Yes, you'll be inspired by deciding and planning and beginning.
But all of that now will start to fade away. If you don't do number four, one of the great sources of inspiration is progressing once you've gotten started. Now, you proceed, you progress. Now you go to class the second week, you go to class the third week but it's not only progressing intermediate. Of time. It's progressing in terms of what you're learning progressing in terms of getting the information that you hadn't discovered before. Now, you're excited about that
progress. One of the greatest sources of inspiration is progress when you start jogging around the block and you know, at first it's a little difficult and then it's two blocks and then you go around four or five times. But then you notice notice your breathing easier. You notice when you go up a flight of stairs, you're not out of breath and it suddenly occurs to you in a fairly short period of time, you're making progress with these incredible.
Life Products when people first start taking the products and they've got some health challenges and they discipline themselves, they do it the first day, and the second day in the first week, and the second week, but it isn't long. If they've need some to lose some weight, you know, A pounder 245 pounds, that is so incredibly exciting. You don't have to wait for 50 pounds. You don't have to wait for a hundred pounds.
You know, that first one, that first two or three making progress having more Oxygen in your lungs. You can tell within a short period of time. I'm making progress on my my oxygen supply. I'm making progress on losing weight. Then when you start making progress in your business, your ability to make contacts, your ability to talk to people. 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. Head pennies in my pocket and nothing in the bank, but 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. Here's what he said.
Mr. Rohn, if you want the future to change for you. 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 things 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 three million people in the last 30
plus years. And it's going to be valid for you. So, listen carefully to This, Promise my You're dead to me, young man, if you will change, Everything Will Change. 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. Show, if I used to cross my fingers and say, I sure hope things will change. I was hoping the government would change in 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 happen to us, is kind of like the wind that blows And the wind blows on us all in fact in America especially the last six and a half thousand years of recorded history.
We've got probably the most favorable wind that's ever Bloom economics and circumstances living in a free country democracy and freedom. An excellent economy. Sure we struggled at times, but compared to the rest of the world in the last six and a half thousand years. We've got the best wind ever, 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 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 That a good say.
And if you learn to set a good sale, and that's what my teacher taught me. In those early days, he said Mr. Own 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 say, Sale.
There's no other thing that will make you as completely Crystal crystalline focused on anything other than War. There's bad guys that you are trying to kill and they are trying to kill you. You can't get any more focused than that, right there. When I had this conversation, And I've also said, you know, that the best times of my life hands down. The best time of my life up to this point was being the task unit commander in the battle
ramadi without question. The worst times of my life, also were being the task unit commander in the battle ramadi, by the way. Thank you. It was an honor. It was an honor to serve the the thing that I came away And where I ended up in this conversation with this interview that I was was doing, was I asked him? I said, have you ever known anyone that's had cancer and bad cancer and they survived it? And of course, he said, yes. And I said, what do those people say about cancer?
Often times? They say, I'm glad I had it, I'm get taught me. Wouldn't go through it again and I wouldn't wish it on. People Bond goes through it again. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I'm glad I went through it. I think there definitely are things that one can iterate on, but the the core thing is to have a great product, and then you can always improve and, and iterate on that all sorts of ways.
And I think, you know, I think even in the tech industry, what's striking is, how we on a quantitative basis. So many of the successful companies were, it was just, they had a great product and then years later, they were able to optimize it and all sorts of all sorts. Ways whereas if you're just trying to optimize and you don't have a great product, I think that that rarely works, I think it's always worth asking, you know, where you're going to go
with this business. And so I think we're always focused on very short time Horizons because you have to figure out a way to get through the next month, the next quarter. Have you get some customers, how do you, how do you track? But it's always worth thinking it had, you know, five to ten years. You know, why will this be a really valuable isness? In 5 to 10 years. And how's the competitive landscape? Going to develop house technology, going to develop. How's the world going to
develop? These are hard questions to answer? But I think I think I think the, the great entrepreneurs that I know always have some perspective on it and it might be wrong but it's just this is what's going to happen and then it sort of well-reasoned. And and so you have a, you have a plan and, you know, it's when I was playing chess, you know, and Junior High School. One of the early lessons, I learned was a bad plan is still Always better than no plan at all.
Right. And so, you know, have a plan. You can always change it, but don't don't just pretend that that you have no clue about what's going to happen and that everything about the Futures random. If you sort of say that everything is random and out of your control that's that's that's the way you set yourself up for failure. It's not enough to have a great idea and the focus and the conscientiousness to see it to
fruition. You must have the strength and the resolve and the courage to pursue that idea, even when the rest of the world thinks you're insane.
Time and time again, if you look at the stories of extraordinarily important entrepreneurs, There is almost always a moment when they are the only ones who believe in the value of what they're doing and I tell in my book, The Story of my book David and Goliath. The story of ingvar kamprad, the guy who founds Ikea and The crucial moment in the in story of Ikea is when he faces a boycott from the other Furniture manufacturers in Sweden. He's about to go out of business
and in desperation, he moves his operations across the Baltic Sea from Sweden to Poland and sets up shop in Poland. And that's what Ikea is. Ikea is essentially, Furniture ship flat made in Poland. That's the original elevator pitch for a Kia. What's interesting about that is he does it in 1961 at the height of the Cold War at a time when East and West communist world and free world are closer to outright War than at any other time.
In history. A guy living in the west Sweden crosses the pond to Poland, the Iron Curtain and sets up shop. You cannot imagine what a controversial move. That was that's like that would be like, Walmart opening operations in North Korea. Currently it's on that level of kind of eyebrow-raising. You've got to be kidding me. Who is this guy kind of thing? But he doesn't. And he persists any turns his back on all those critics, why?
Because he is A deeply disagreeable person didn't need people to agree with them, right? And that's how he's able to build Ikea into this extraordinary. Runaway success story that's very hard to do as human beings. We are hardwired to want the approval of our peers. And Define what you consider
wealthy. While this happiness completely is, how much you laugh and how much the people you love laughs and that's really what love is. How much time you spent like sending money back to somebody like a child. It's not considered love because kids don't care about money. I remember when I was a child all I wanted for Christmas was for my parents for my mom to get back with my dad and I didn't, I wasn't able to give that to my any one of my children. So I still have work to do, you know?
I haven't hit that wealthiness because I haven't been able to take that most important pain to a child and take that away from my children. I never broke that cycle. That would be wealth. If my children don't have to pick a side if they don't have to watch us fight, if they don't have to tune out because they don't want to hear us argue. You know I'm saying? What's going to be the secret to her? What are you finding in getting the for finding the right woman for the right reasons.
So it's great because I was really, really able to recognize it in my K. I was like, now this time I'm staying, we're doing everything together. She's I enjoy this too much, so it's always looking at it from my kids perspective, my woman's perspective, it's I think I've learned to take my eyeballs out of my head and put it in there as for a second, to see what they see. And what would make them comfortable over me as a boss? Your job is to think about your business and your staff before
you think about yourself. Self. It's the same thing of dad does or the head of a family. So I guess me being conscious of these things at 47 being evolved enough to take the time to appreciate that, that's to me as well. You know uncompromised great quality of living like I prefer not to have to live in a house that's not big and all the luxuries that I've worked so hard to get but I think every circumstance Kelly and I been in, we've been equally happy whether it's a big house or
Studio apart. So Grace is available to everybody. it's like sunlight sunlight is available to everybody but only those who open, their eyes will see That's the way it is. But is it not? There it is. There only for me and not for you. There's no such thing. It's available for everybody. It's just that are you
receptive? When we talk about receptivity, See the entire process of yoga the word, yoga itself means this, the word yoga means Union. Union means what right now, when most people's experience, it is me versus universe. This is how people are experiencing life otherwise why continues anxiety fear they think they are fighting for their life all the time. Why they're fighting the whole universe individual and the universal being in competition with the universe is a stupid thing to do.