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Part 1
Now what I’d like to give you is what I think are the five major pieces to the life puzzle. Five major pieces to the life puzzle. If we can study each of the pieces, and then put it all together, the chances of it running well are just a lot better. That’s the show gave me a simple formula. When I first met him, let me give it to you. He said, there’s usually about a half dozen things makes 80% of the difference. There’s about a half dozen well things about a half dozen health things that can give you the 80% solution to the problem. Then Mr. Shelf said be a student of those half dozen basic things. Pretty good advice. Success is not doing extraordinary things. Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. So if you just learned to do it, well, key things well learn to speak well, poor people can talk and rich people can talk looks like rich people talk better. Learning to speak is called survival learning to speak. Well, it’s called success. So let me give you what I think are fundamental pieces to life. And we’ll take it from there. Here’s the first one. Philosophy philosophy in very simple terms is simply what you know. And what you know greatly affects how your life works out. We might also add what you don’t know greatly affects how your life works, the ID you miss could be the missing number and trying to put the numbers in the lock. So what you don’t know will hurt you to correct an old cliche. And to correct another one, ignorance is not bliss, it’s important to know it’s important to get the information. Now we do something very important with what we know we weigh it. That’s another good word we weigh weigh everything before you do it. Before You Buy It. Before you try it, make sure you weigh it. Everything you get ready to do you get to decide whether it’s a major or a minor and you don’t want to give minor things make your time. You don’t want to give something insignificant significance amounts of your energy. So we simply use the phrase way before you pay sophisticated people learn to weigh everything. And what we all need is a good set of mental scales to weigh everything. What if you got information and your mental scales were off and insignificant things to you are significant? Wouldn’t that be a major handicap the rest of your life? When you weighed something important things weighed unimportant. We would call that a great handicap. So it’s very important to weigh everything properly. And that’s the reason for sermons and songs and lyrics and lectures and seminars, and conversations and professors and teachers. It’s one of the reasons why we confer we converse with each other. And we debate and we think about and we ponder and we perceive and we weigh in, and we try to find out where the values are, because you don’t want to proceed and give big chunks of your life to something that’s insignificant. Okay, so we get information, we weigh it, then we come to conclusions about values. Big question in forming your life, where are the values? What is important? What should weigh heavy on my mind, and I should give it significant time and significant energy and significant money. Show said to me poor thinking habits keeps most people poor. Not poor working habits. Most people work hard, but they don’t think hard. They don’t use their mind to really try to perceive where the values are. So they don’t waste any time. It’s easy to spend big chunks of your life on insignificant things to one of the major pieces of the life puzzle what you think about knowledge, how you weigh at the conclusions, you come to the values you perceive. Thinking, if you really want to help somebody change their life, you have to start changing their mind change their philosophy, change how they think. Somebody says well, just motivation that’ll do it. And the answer is no motivation won’t do it. If a guy’s an idiot and you motivate him you got a motivated idiot. Say no, that’s not what it takes. Now, it’s very easy to make errors in judgment. errors in judgment. I’m now teaching people even even even after they’re out of school, university college, they should read at least one or two books a week. It’s easy when you get out of school right and get a job to just sort of let that all slide not keep up the learning process. But if you don’t keep up the learning process, a lot of values become fuzzy if you don’t keep trying to perceive what’s important, what’s not important, and then start spending major effort on minor things. So we You have to keep learning. What if a guy spent his book money on donuts? Right? We would call him greatly deprived mentally. In 10 years, the guy’s bought two tons of donuts, and only two books, right mostly with pictures. And he wonders why he’s liked isn’t working well reason, after he got out of school, he didn’t keep up the flow of ideas that can help to refine your business and help to refine your decisions, and help you come to better conclusions. You’ve got to keep up the learning clerk or even if you’re out of school, to make sure that you’re not making errors in judgment. The reason why most people wind up average at age 40, instead of rich is simply an error in judgment about what to do with your money. What would you suggest a 15 year old start as a plan to do with their money so that by 40, they’re rich instead of average? You got to have a good plan, right? If you start making errors early with your money, those errors can can make your life mediocre. Instead of rich, you wind up with pennies instead of fortune. And you want you wind up with crumbs instead of a feast simply because early, you made errors on what to do with your mind. The guy says, well, it’s only $10. So what does it matter what I do with it? And the answer is it. That’s when it really matters is when you don’t have much. The guy says, Oh, if I had a fortune, I’d really take good care of it. But I’ve only got a paycheck. So I don’t know where it goes. We call those great errors in judgment. It’s so important to make sure you’ve got a good plan when the amounts are small. But it’s easy to make errors. It’s easy not to know, it’s easy to miss calculate. And if you miss calculate some things keep adding and adding and adding I got a good phrase for you life has accumulated a good phrase to know life is accumulative. Our errors either accumulate into what we don’t get. Or our wise decisions accumulate into what we do get. Now the key is to correct the errors as early as possible. Fortunately, Mr. Short caught me at age 25 started asking me major questions. At age 25, he said, Mr. Owen, how long have you been working? And I said, I’ve been working six years I started working when I was 19. He said, Well, six years, how much money? Have you saved and invested in the last six years? I said, not any. He said who sold you on that plan? Wow, six years is enough time now to check and see if you’ve got a good financial philosophy.
And the time to catch the errors is early, early. So Mr. Show started asking me those tough questions at age 25. How about your money? How about your resources? How about your investments? And you say, Well, I’ve got plenty of time to worry about that and be concerned about that later? And the answer is probably not now’s the time to fix it. Wherever you hear the good information. That’s the time to start fixing. So we’re teaching kids now a good wealth philosophy starting at age 5015 will make you wealthy by age 4045 at the latest if you’re little slow. Start doing wise things with your resources. When When would you suggest people should do wise things with their resources? answer as soon as they get the better information, then you can’t do what you don’t know. But the key is to keep learning so that good ideas keep occurring to you. Now you can do more wise things, okay? But philosophy is where it all begins what you know. Now to know wise things you simply have to study as you’re doing. Keep up the reading, keep up the conversations, keep up the listening to lectures, keep going through the information, keep stashing it away taking the notes, right, there’s no better way to adjust your philosophy than to have a continual flow of ideas. But that’s the first piece of the life puzzle philosophy. Now here’s number two philosophy determines attitude. Attitude is simply how you feel. First what you know sets the sale of your life now how you feel starts taking you there. Attitude. Now, there’s all kinds of ways to feel right. You can feel good or you can feel bad here’s one attitude. If this is all they pay, I’m not coming early, and I’m not staying late on the job. That’s an attitude right? If this is all they pay, I don’t come early, and I don’t stay late. Now do you suppose that that attitude if you carried it through the rest of your life, do you suppose that attitude would greatly affect your life as the years unfold? The answer is overwhelmingly of Horse. Here’s another attitude. No matter what they pay, I always come early. And I always stay late to invest in my own future. Isn’t that fascinating? Attitude is by choice, you can either choose to come early, or you can choose to come late. You can either choose to leave early, or you can choose to stay late. Attitudes matter of choice. Now, to make wise choice, we need educated attitudes, emotions must go to school to learn where the values are. Okay, good phrase emotions, let’s go to school. When kids are young, right, a three year old, you know, falls on the floor and kicks his feet and screams we say well, that’s okay when you’re three, but it isn’t okay, when you’re 30.
As a little kid, right, you can retaliate and punch somebody out. But when you’re 23, we say, no, no, you got to learn how to take that emotion and send it to school and find out where the values are. It’s okay to feel strong. But you’ve got to learn to restrain yourself in a society if you want life to go well for you. So attitudes now become a matter of educated choice, educated choice, but how we feel is going to greatly determine how our life works out. Now, it’s how you feel about a variety of things. Let me give you that list. Number one, it’s how you feel about the past. Now, when you’re young, you haven’t got that much past feel about but I’m sure you’ve had some ups and downs, you’ve had some wins and losses. So part of our attitude is based on how we feel about the past, some people are still carrying the burdens of the past, they’re affected by some difficulties, some losses, whatever they’re carrying it around like a burden. Instead of using the past as a school, they’re using it as a threat to their life. So part of it is solving the attitude about the past how you feel about it. Number two, it’s how you feel about the future. Facing the future, very important, key part of our life. Now there’s two ways to face the future. Here they are one anticipation. That’s one way to face to future anticipation. Here’s the other way apprehension. Now, most people face the future with apprehension, primarily because they bought somebody else’s view. They don’t have their own future well designed. So in the absence of having your own future well designed, you have a tendency to be persuaded to buy somebody else’s future, here’s what’s gonna happen, here’s what’s going to happen. Boy, it’s easy to let your days be clouded by all of that. So some days, somewhere along the line, you’ve got to start settling for sure how you feel about the future, and how you feel about it greatly determines what you do. If you don’t feel good about the future, by having goals set, you take what we call uncertain steps. It’s difficult to be confident about the day if you don’t have your future well designed. So here’s one of the keys to do about your future set goals, write them down, design the future. Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do you want to be? What do you want to see? What do you want to have? What do you want to share? Even if it all changes 12 months from now the key is to start making a list now, the cities you want to visit the people you’d like to meet your health goals, your investment goals, all that stuff, start writing it, putting it in a journal somewhere, and let it all change as time unfolds. Something that you think is very important right now, two years from now, you’ll say that was kind of foolish. How come I thought that was so important, right? Because you grow beyond that. But right now, it’s important to get his clear picture if you can, as you can have the future. Set your dreams, set your goals, because it’s important how the day goes, is greatly determined by your confidence about the future. Now, here’s another attitude. It’s how you feel about each other. It’s how you feel about society and the community in the country. It’s very important. It’s not that difficult to be a cynic. And cynicism greatly influences how your life works. But it’s also important to understand that if you want to do well it takes all of us to help each of us. Good phrase, it takes all of us to help each of us do what you can’t succeed by yourself. It’s hard to find a rich hermit you can’t succeed by yourself, you need a market, you need a society. We need each other’s ideas. We need each other’s collective ideas, collective participation in the marketplace society. Okay. So how we feel about each other very important. Now here’s the big one. It’s how Do you feel about yourself how you feel about yourself Self Esteem understanding your own value.