Name: The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle
Author: Jim Rohn

The golden nuggets

Your philosophy is the set of the sail.

The same winds of circumstance blow on everyone. Where you end up is decided not by the wind, but by how you think and respond - and when the wind changes, you reset the sail.

Failure is a few errors in judgment repeated every day. Success is a few simple disciplines practiced every day.

Consequences are delayed, never cancelled. An apple a day versus a candy bar a day looks like nothing - repeated for six years, it is the difference between disaster and a new life.

You cannot erase bad information. You can only crowd it out with better information.

Wrong conclusions come from wrong input gathered over years. Fix the input: review your own experience honestly, study other people's failures as warnings and their successes as models, and keep a journal.

Attitude is how you feel about the past, the future, other people, and yourself.

Use the past as a school, not a weapon. And no one controls your attitude unless you surrender it - other people only put it to the test.

Design the future in your mind first, then borrow its excitement to power today.

Everything is finished before it is started. See the finished future clearly and its inspiration pulls you forward - and when the promise is clear, the price gets easy.

Guard your associations on purpose: disassociate, limit, or expand.

Influence rarely shoves; it nudges a little each day until you are years off course. Cut off the worst influences, ration your time with the negative, and spend most of your time with the few people who produce most of the good in your life.

Put your talents to work, or lose them.

In the parable Rohn builds the chapter on, the servant who buried his one talent had it taken away and given to the man who traded his into ten. Life pays in proportion to what we deserve, not what we need.

Your level of activity must equal your level of intent.

Affirmations without discipline, Rohn warns, are the beginning of delusion. Everyone pays one of two pains: the pain of discipline, which weighs ounces, or the pain of regret, which weighs tons.

Results do not respond to need. They respond to effort.

The law of sowing and reaping: to reap in the fall, plant in the spring. And check results often - the goal is measurable progress in a reasonable amount of time, not a checkup once a decade.

You attract what you have by the person you have become.

Success is attracted, not pursued. To have more, first become more - work harder on yourself, because having more only magnifies what you already are.

Lifestyle is not an amount. It is an art.

Learn to be happy with what you have while you strive for what you want. Happiness is a study and a practice - as much a cause of success as a result of it - and wherever you are, be there.

Develop a sense of urgency: today is yesterday's tomorrow.

The book's closing warning. Comfort makes us deaf to the ticking clock, and an unused day at a time, everything that could have been slips away. Life's two-minute warning is already running.

You’re halfway there

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The book, in short

Jim Rohn's short book - his third - reduces a well-built life to five fundamentals, arranged as a chain of cause and effect. Your personal philosophy establishes your attitude. Your attitude determines the quantity and quality of your activity. Your activity produces proportionate results, and your results provide the lifestyle you live. Most people curse the effect - the results and the lifestyle - while continuing to nourish the cause.

Philosophy, the first piece, is how you think: the set of the sail that decides where the same winds of circumstance take you. It is also where Rohn states his famous formulas - failure is a few errors in judgment repeated every day; success is a few simple disciplines practiced every day. Because bad conclusions come from bad information gathered over a lifetime, the fix is new and better input: honest review of your own experience, study of other people's failures and successes, wise counsel, and a journal.