Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and you will meet with a success unexpected.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
The recent passing of Self-Improvement legend Jim Rohn has caused many to reflect and pay tribute to his life, and his teachings. It is likely that you have recently seen his ideas in blog posts, Facebook notes or status updates and tweets on Twitter. We can’t imagine the impact of this trend since “ideas can be life-changing. Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.”
Some of my favorite ideas from Jim Rohn are on the subject of character. Here are a few that I have pondered:
Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.
Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.
We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.
Each of these insights has power to change the way we think, and the actions we take on a daily basis. And while it is honorable ways to pay our respects by sharing these ideas, I am certain that if Mr. Rohn had one more lesson to teach us, it would be for us to take action. To quote John Ruskin:
“Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”
May we all let his words sink down from our minds to deep into our hearts.
In what way can you take these ideas and put them into action?
What kind of relationship do you have with failure?
Is it something you embrace and choose to grow from, like a young baby learning to walk? OR, have you been conditioned to believe that failure is a bad thing and should be avoided?
“The only people who never fail are those who never try.” ~ Ilka Chase
What dream have you placed on the shelf that you could dust off and chase after? You deserve it.
You can try and fail, and it might hurt, but the payoff is ALWAYS worth it… it takes patience & perseverance, and a burning desire to succeed.
Hold on to your dreams and don’t let anything ever stop you, least of all your ‘failures’, for they are required steps on the path to success. If you aren’t prepared to fail, they you aren’t paying the price required to achieve. As Robert Kennedy said:
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
ROCKY, the legendary movie starring Sylvester Stallone is arguably one of the most inspiring stories of all time.
Even more inspiring, though, is the story of how the movie came to be… Check out this video, where Tony Robbins tells the true ROCKY story. You’ll see some powerful principles taught to help you achieve your dreams.
Do you know your outcome? Are you committed to doing whatever it takes, for as long as it takes to make your dreams a reality?
Everyone has dreams, but only 2-3% of people actually write them down and commit themselves to making them come true…
What action steps will you take today to be a champion in your own life?
