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If new discovery starts to unfold for you that you’ve got the brains, you’ve got the talent, all you need is instruction, all you need some coaching, all you need is some help. All you need is some advice, some experience, if you’re headed down the wrong road, hopefully somebody’s already been down that road where the bridge is out. And they come back saying don’t go this way anymore, that bridges out. So we take somebody else’s advice and we say, Wow, I’m glad you came along, I’m heading down this road. So learning from other people’s experiences, picking up all the ideas so that we can feel good about ourselves. Now self esteem primarily becomes from comes from engaging in the disciplines that lead to value. Self esteem comes from engaging in the disciplines that lead to value. We don’t like potential, but to bring value from potential we need the disciplines. Now one of the major things that makes us not feel good about ourselves is not engaging in the discipline. If you keep letting yourself off the hook, or just humming it and letting it all slide, then you don’t feel good about yourself. Best as the end philosophy, right to feel good about yourself, do your best gather all you can during the summer. We call that the end philosophy and don’t settle for half they go for all all you possibly can do the best you can. It’s the greatest lift of self esteem is doing the best you can Okay, so attitude plays such an important part in the five pieces of the life puzzle. Now, what’s next number three, first is philosophy. Second, his attitude, philosophy and attitude determines Activity. Activity is what you do. key phrase successes are doing you actually now have to do it. It seems as though God has designed but the major part of the value of our life is less to is left to our own mental genes. You’ve got to decide what you want to become. Then you simply have to go do it engaging in the disciplines. Now the activity part is so important. How hard should you work when you get ready to labor when you get ready to try to be successful in the marketplace? How many days should you spend how hard should you work? Well let me give you an Old Testament phrase to consider it says six days activity one day rest. Now that’s called a philosophy on activity. Right What should be the ratio of rest activity Old Testament suggests six one now I know that goes back a long ways. Some people said no six six one’s old fashioned five do is better. Well, you got to take a look at five two and see if it’s okay. You don’t just want to buy somebody’s philosophy without seeing if it if it leads to Fortune. And if it leads to unique things wonderful. It’s probably good. But you have to check out a five two is okay would four three be better? I don’t know you got to check everything. I do know this good phrase, don’t rest too long. I got a good point for you. Make rest on necessity not an objective. The objective of life is not to rest. The objective of life is to accomplish to growth, full growth will accomplishment. Test the outer limits of your abilities. That’s what life is all about. See what all you can do. That’s what life’s all about. See what you can do with the seasons in the soil and the seed. See what you can do with your brain. See what you can do with your talents and your gifts and your skills. That’s what life’s all about. See what you can do. Now we need reps but you must make rest on necessity not an objective. If you make it an objective, you start falling into what we call the average syndrome. Right people who live mediocre lives are always looking forward to getting off. Successful people are always looking forward to getting on. Successful people don’t want to off they want on they want to get on with the job they rest only enough together string. So consider that in your argument in your debate on how far should you work. Let me give you another Bible philosophy. I’m my parents made sure I was a pretty good scholar by the time I was 18. And I’m an amateur on the Bible. But here’s another good philosophy. Whatever your hands currently find to do, do it with all your mind. Whatever you’re doing, do it with all your mind. We call that philosophy on activity. How hard should you work as hard as you can in the time allotted to labor in leadership, management lectures we teach when you work work, when you play, play, don’t play at work. And don’t work at play. Right? make best use of your time when you’re working corridor. And when you’re playing have a good time. But don’t play at work. Okay, so activity, very important piece in this whole life puzzle in working. So you’ve got to test how hard you can work. Part of it is physical, your own physical limitation. Some people can take 14 hours, no problem, some people 10 stretches pretty much their physical limitation. So everybody has to sort of decide how hard you can work how much time you can put in. When you come to university, right? You got to sort of find out how much workload you can handle. How many classes can you go through? How much can you unravel? How many study hours do you need? How much effort have you got when you’re going to run out of gas, right, and you need to replenish the supply. So we all have to study our own activity habits. But let me give you what I think is the best philosophy it is simply do the best you can. In activity week, call it doing your best. A man asked me one time he said I’m making about $50,000 a year isn’t that enough? What would you tell somebody? A businessman said to me, he said my kids aren’t starving. And he said I got my bills paid. And he said we’re doing pretty good. And I’m making about $50,000 a year. Isn’t that enough? He asked me. What do you suppose I told him? I said yes, it’s enough. If it’s the best you can do. We don’t call any amount, you know, we call your best, you know. I said if you’re capable of making a half million dollars a year and you make $50,000 a year we call you loser. And we don’t call you loser, because of the difference between 50,000 and a half million, we call you loser because you’re not doing your best. If you do your best and you make 10,000 a year, that’s enough, if you do your best and you make a million dollars a year, that’s enough. Enough is not the difference between 10,000 and a million enough is simply doing the best you can. So that’s the key to the good life when the day is finished. If you say Did I do my best? And if I’m not doing my best, why not do if I got some errors in my philosophy that says, hey, half efforts, okay, just slide by Mohammed cross your fingers and everything will work out hopefully, say no, I don’t want to take those kinds of chances. I don’t want to drift. Okay, so activity, just put a big question mark on activity and say, here’s a major piece of life to keep checking, make sure I’m doing my best. That’s all I require my best. A group of psychiatrists asked me to come and lecture for them in Los Angeles one time, which I thought was interesting, since I only went to one year of college. And then in the middle of my lecture, I had the audacity to say, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you what I think most messes with the mind. They said, What do you think most messes with the mind? I said, I think what most messes with the mind is simply doing less than you can. It sets up all kinds of psychic problems doing less than you can guess when you really feel good about yourself. When you’ve done the best you can. You don’t even have to win the full price. If you do the best you can we call that the ultimate winning doing the best you can. Wow, there’s nothing nothing like the soaring self confidence that comes from putting out what we call full effort. In whatever you do. It’s called Full leverage. Philosophy activity, attitude leads to number four results. And that’s what life is all about. Putting the first three together good philosophy, attitude, high activity to get the ultimate call results. I got a good phrase for you results is the name of the game. Now the challenge of life is a very simple phrase. Let me give it to you. I think you’ll find it interesting to at least ponder. The challenge of life is to make measurable progress in reasonable time. measurable progress in reasonable time. First, we don’t want to be unreasonable with time. If you and I agree to do something five minutes later, I’m asking you how are you doing? You say I haven’t left the building yet. You can’t ask in five minutes. Five minutes is too soon. That’s unreasonable. Now if I don’t ask you for five years, we call that too late. You can’t wait five years and you can’t go five minutes. Right you we all have to learn what is reasonable time to expect somebody to make progress to grow to change Ah to develop. So all of us have to learn, especially if you’re going to become leaders, entrepreneurs, if you’re going to have management responsibilities and work with people, you got to understand what is reasonable time, we don’t want to be unreasonable with time. But here’s what else we expect measurable progress in reasonable time.
How many years should the child spend in fourth grade? Approximately? About one, he say, Well, if they’re nice kids, would you give them three or four? You say, No, you can’t spend four years in fourth grade. It’s unacceptable. We put on the family pressure, we put on peer pressure, right? We put on all kinds of pressure, you can’t spend four years in fourth grade. Now, wouldn’t that be interesting if we applied the same kind of social pressure all of our lives? What would be acceptable to society for wise investments to have been made by age 30? So that you can really properly take care of yourself and your family? Somehow, we missed those standards, right? Shouldn’t it be popular to be wealthy by age 40? And shouldn’t we look at somebody who by age 45 is not at least financially independent, saying, Where have you been Tibet or Bangladesh, you probably have spent? You mean, you’ve been here all this time? Right? Shouldn’t we make it a bit unacceptable not to be well off in what we call reasonable time? But what if a guy spent his potential fortune on non essentials from age 15? Days? 45?
Shouldn’t we call it unacceptable? Shouldn’t teenagers ask their parents? How come? We’re not rich? We live in a rich country. This is America? Aren’t those good questions? How about the wisdom of a good plan versus a poor plan? What if a man was a farmer, and he ate his seed corn? Instead of planning it, he ate it? Wouldn’t we make arrangements to go get his children? And say, the kids aren’t safe? The man’s insane, can eat his seed corn, he doesn’t plan to. Wow, I just offer that as kind of an interesting question. If we make such pressure demands for fourth grade, why shouldn’t we make those same pressure demands for the rest of life? Interesting question. Right? Good, debatable question. Now part of it is we simply society eases back on us as far as ongoing demand of results. But here’s what I’d asked you to do. Make the demands on yourself. I’m asking you not to let yourself off the hook society will let you get by with far less than you want to be. When you get out of university, how many books will the community demand that you read every month? Approximately? About none. So if you’re going to do the extra reading, guess what, you got to develop that philosophy and put that pressure on your cell. But what I’m asking you to do is take a good look at results. Now another reason why we look at results, results at age 25 results at age 30 on a wide variety of things health and wealth and culture and, and sophistication and lifestyle and uniqueness. We keep checking all those results. Here’s why. To see if there’s any errors in activity. Guess how easy it is to make errors and activity. It’s easy. We teach in our leadership series. Don’t mistake movement for achievement. Boy, sometimes it’s easy to be faked out by being busy. Guys busy 10 hours a day, but he’s going in figure eights. The guy’s not making progress. He’s stalled, but he’s busy. And he thinks being busy is going to do it say no, you got to be busy doing the right things. So maybe you need activity fixed. Maybe you need an attitude fixed. Who knows the guy who says since they don’t pay well, I come late and leave early. We say John that’s going to affect you all your life. And you’ve probably got the results to show it. Or maybe we need a correction of philosophy. That’s why we check results. Now here’s the last piece in the life puzzle. It’s called lifestyle. Lifestyle is simply how you choose to live. We call lifestyle the genius of living well. Now here’s what’s exciting about lifestyle. As a subject of one of the major pieces of the life puzzle. All of us can choose this one Actually in this country, all of us can choose how we wish to live. Guess what you can get from your money, joy, or animosity. However you wish to live. A father takes a $10 bill and wads it up and throws it at his son and says, if you need the darn stuff that bad take it. We call it money without style. The father’s got the money, but he doesn’t have the style. He studied economics, but he didn’t study happiness. So let me give you the phrase happiness is an art, not an accident. Some people have figured out things economically, but they haven’t figured out lifestyle to live well. Culture is a study. It’s not an amount somebody says if you have an amount of money, you’ll be cultured. The answer’s no. Culture is a study culture, the culture is a refinement of the mind. To be cultured, you must study culture and practice culture. Money doesn’t solve the culture challenge. Money doesn’t solve the happiness challenge. To be happy, you got to study and practice happiness. And Mr. Shelf taught me all the simple ways to get joy from substance. A sophisticated gentleman knows that a rose on time is more valuable than $1,000 gift too late. It’s not the amount that counts. It’s the genius that counts. It’s the ideas that count. So here’s what I’m challenging you to do, how to be happy with what you’ve got while you pursue what you want. And I’ll give you time to make a note of that phrase. Because I think it’s so important to wrap it up. How to be happy with what you’ve got while you pursue what you want. So I would challenge you in the last piece of the life puzzle, find ways to live uniquely. Now, if you look at your life, on all these five pieces, this is why I’m asking you to just go back through and review these notes. How am I doing on philosophy? Are there some things I don’t know? Am I making some errors in judgment that’s going to bring me to no good end, right three years from now five years from now. keyframe phrase 10 years from now you will arrive the question is where? Good question where. And the follow up is now’s the time to fix the next 10 years. Now’s the time to fix the next 10 years. And hopefully with the discussion of these these five subjects. We’ve given you some viewpoints, at least from my experience. And hopefully I’ve done a little coaching here today. And you can take these subjects and debate them and talk about them and think about them and they’ll help you with life in the future.