The video emphasizes the importance of proactive discipline and the power of ambition in achieving one's dreams. It contrasts the struggle of starting a day when feeling unproductive with the ease and energy derived from a purposeful, goal-driven mindset. It suggests that doing the best you can, whatever your goal may be, is essential for personal growth and success. The video also highlights the significance of personal philosophy and attitude as they set the course for life’s journey.

Discussing how human beings, unlike any other life form, have the option to choose their path, it suggests that choosing the path towards maximizing one's potential is the key to a fulfilling life. The video advises against settling for less and instead recommends cultivating a habit of learning and reflecting through written records and keeping an active journal. The philosophy shared suggests that success comes from continually learning, debating ideas, and refining values, rather than simply following others.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. philosophy [fɪˈlɑsəfi] - (noun) - A theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior. - Synonyms: (belief, doctrine, ideology)

philosophy, in very simple terms, is simply what you know, and what you know greatly affects how your life works out.

2. cumulative [ˈkjuːmjʊlətɪv] - (adjective) - Increasing or increased in quantity, degree, or force by successive additions. - Synonyms: (accumulative, aggregate, collective)

Life is cumulative. Errors accumulate into what we don't get and wise decisions accumulate into what we do get.

3. sophisticated [səˈfɪstɪˌkeɪtɪd] - (adjective) - Having refined or cultured tastes and habits; knowledgeable about the complexities of something. - Synonyms: (cultured, refined, advanced)

sophisticated people learn to weigh everything.

4. apathy [ˈæpəθi] - (noun) - Lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. - Synonyms: (indifference, lethargy, unconcern)

There are many ways to feel you can feel good or bad. Consider this attitude if this is all they pay, I'm not coming early and I'm not staying late. Such an attitude, if maintained, would greatly affect your life.

5. aspiring [əˈspaɪrɪŋ] - (adjective) - Having ambitions to achieve something, typically an important goal. - Synonyms: (aiming, striving, ambitious)

In our leadership series, we teach aspiring entrepreneurs to weigh everything before they do it, before they buy it, before they try it.

6. charisma [kəˈrɪzmə] - (noun) - Compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others. - Synonyms: (charm, allure, appeal)

Self esteem and understanding your own value. If new discoveries start to unfold for you, you realize you've got the brains and the talent.

7. reflection [rɪˈflɛkʃən] - (noun) - Serious thought or consideration. - Synonyms: (thought, contemplation, meditation)

To get the most from a day, to learn the most from a day, you need to be able to reflect on the day.

8. discipline [ˈdɪsəplɪn] - (noun) - The practice of training oneself to follow rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience. - Synonyms: (training, regulation, restraint)

Pretty soon, the disciplines that were so difficult in the beginning the disciplines that got you going are now part of your philosophy

9. meticulous [məˈtɪkjələs] - (adjective) - Showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise. - Synonyms: (careful, diligent, precise)

Successful people are not extraordinary, they are meticulous in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

10. increment [ˈɪnkrəmənt] - (noun) - An increase or addition, especially one of a series on a fixed scale. - Synonyms: (increase, addition, rise)

Well, if it isn't apparent or easy to see right away if what you're doing is happening in such small increments that you're not sure if you're on track, then you need to be writing it down.

DO THE BEST YOU CAN - Jim Rohn Motivational Speech

How easy is it to get up in the morning when you know you're not doing all that it takes? It's not very easy at all. You can just lie there awake thinking, oh, what's a few more minutes in bed? It won't matter much anyway. Wrong. It does matter. It will matter. Now. How easy is it to get up in the morning when you're pouring it on doing the best you can, anxious to get going and making progress toward your dreams. It's a whole different story when you're resting to renew your reserves. It's much different than resting to avoid your day. When you're psyched up and excited for your life when you're excited for what you've planned to accomplish for the day it's amazing.

You'll wake up before the alarm clock even tries to startle you awake. Your successes fuel your ambition. Your successes give you extra energy. Your successes pave the way for more successes. It's the snowball effect. With one success, you're excited to meet another and another and another. Pretty soon, the disciplines that were so difficult in the beginning the disciplines that got you going are now part of your philosophy.

How do you know when you're successful? Do you have to be a millionaire? No. All we ask of you is that you earn all you possibly can. If you earn $10,000 a year and that's the best you can do, that's enough. God, and everything else will see to it that you're okay. The key is to just do the best you can. If it's $10,000 a year, wonderful. If it's $100,000 a year, wonderful. If it's 1000 thousand dollars a year, wonderful. It doesn't matter. $10,000 a year or 1000 thousand dollars a year, it doesn't matter. As long as you've done the best you possibly can.

Earn the most you possibly can. Be the most you possibly can. Here's why. The essence of life is growth. The essence of life is growth. To do the best you can. And here's what's interesting. Humans are the only life form that will do less than they possibly can. Humans are the only life form that will settle for less. Every other life form except human beings strives to its maximum capacity. How tall will a tree grow? Approximately as tall as it possibly can.

You've never heard of a tree growing half as high as it could? No, trees don't grow half trees. They send their roots down as deep as possible, stretch their limbs up as high as possible and produce every leaf and every fruit possible. As a matter of fact, you've never heard of a human physically growing half. We keep growing until we're done. Now, that's a part of life we can't control. It's genetically coded. And that's probably why we keep growing until we're done, because we can't control that part. It's the rest of our growth, the growth of our minds and the expansion of our minds that we can control.

And that's what tends to get away from us. All life forms inherently strive to their maximum, except human beings. Now, why wouldn't human beings strive to their maximum possibility? Here's why. Because we've been given the dignity of choice. It makes us different from alligators, trees and birds. The dignity of choice makes us different from all other life forms. And here's the to become part of what we could be, enough to get by or to become all that we can.

My best advice for you is to choose the latter. Earn all you can. Make all the friends you can. Read as many books as you can, develop as many skills as you can, see as much as possible, do as much as possible. Make as much fortune as possible. Give as much of it away as possible. The maximum. There's no life like it. I'm telling you, once I got on track, I've never looked back. Pick up the challenge. Go for it.

Take the best of the two easiest. Take the route where it's easy to get ahead, easy to do all you can, easy to succeed, and easy to achieve financial freedom. The more you do, the more you get. So the two primary benefits of positive reinforcement are, number one, to build good habits and number two, to create more energy to fuel your ambitions, desires, and achievements. How can you isolate what's working for you and what isn't?

How can you make sure that you are reinforcing your positive disciplines? Well, if it isn't apparent or easy to see right away if what you're doing is happening in such small increments that you're not sure if you're on track, then you need to be writing it down. You need to keep a journal anyway. But if you really aren't sure that what you're doing is making measurable progress, you need to keep a written record.

Write down everything that may be relevant in your day, what you did, who you saw, what you felt, and how it may or may not affect you now and in the future. The best way to track your activities of the day is to write them down. The best way to track your activities of the week is to write them down. The best way to analyze your progress through the year is to have written it down. Why? So you can look back on it.

By keeping a written record of your life, you will be more accountable. By putting into writing the action steps that you have planned, you will easily see what works and what doesn't. Most people just try to get through the day, never writing anything down, never keeping track of their progress along the way, never really knowing if they are doing all they can to reach their goals and drive their ambition. But gifted people learn to get the most from the day.

They don't let a day end without picking up some valuable experience, some emotional content or some idea that may positively affect their future. To get the most from a day, to learn the most from a day, you need to be able to reflect on the day. And how can you reflect on a day unless you record it in history? So that's what I'd like to do. In the next few minutes, in the time we've got, I want to share some major things that can help in putting your life together.

Things to at least consider. I don't have all the answers on how to do well, but I've got some that I'm using and practicing and they are working well for me. Let me just share my experience with you and then you can decide if it's valid for you. Give it a try. If it doesn't make sense, just throw it out. You don't have to buy everything any one person says. Here's the be a student, not a follower. If somebody says, I read this book, should I follow it? The answer is no.

Read at least two books and make up your own mind. Don't be a follower. Be a student. Be independent. Take advice, but not orders. Only give yourself orders. Make sure what you finally do is the product of your own conclusions. That's what university is for, to debate all the ideas, not just to buy them all. Debate them all, and then decide what's best for you and where to go from there. University is a great place to hear an exchange of ideas on a wide variety of major life topics.

That's what it's all about, taking the time to go through it. Now, what I'd like to give you are the five major pieces to the life puzzle. If we can study each of the pieces and then put them all together, the chances of everything running well are just a lot better. Mister Shof gave me a simple formula when I first met him and let me share it with you. He said there are usually about a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference. I thought that was a good formula. I've applied it to a lot of things.

There are usually about a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference, about a half dozen wealth things and a half dozen health things that can give you the 80% solution to the problem. Then Mister Schaff said, be a student of those half dozen basic things. Pretty good advice. Success is not about doing extraordinary things. Success is about doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. So if you just learn to do key things well, learn to speak well, poor people can talk and rich people can talk.

It looks like rich people talk better. It's just learning a skill with a high degree of precision. Learning to speak is called survival. Learning to speak well is called success. We can speak well enough to survive, or we can speak extra well enough to succeed. 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. It's a pretty well known word on a university campus.

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 that what you don't know greatly affects how your life works out. The idea you miss could be the missing number in trying to put the numbers in the lock. So what you don't know will hurt you. To correct an old cliche, 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. In our leadership series, we teach aspiring entrepreneurs to weigh everything before they do it, before they buy it, before they try it. Make sure you weigh it. Everything you get ready to do, you've got to decide whether it's major or minor. You don't want to give minor things major time. You don't want to give something insignificant, significant amounts of your energy. So we simply use the phrase weigh before you pay.

sophisticated people learn to weigh everything. 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? Insignificant things to you were significant. Wouldn't that be a major handicap for the rest of your life? When you weighed important things as unimportant, we would call that a great handicap. So it's very important to weigh everything properly. That's the reason for sermons, songs, lyrics, lectures, seminars, conversations, professors and teachers.

It's one of the reasons why we converse with each other. Debate, think, ponderous, perceive and weigh to try to find out where the values are. 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. These are just some key words. Conclusions about values. A big question informing your life is where are the values?

What is important? What should weigh heavily on my mind? What should I give significant time, significant energy and significant money to? This is all part of our thinking process. Mister Shoaff told me that poor thinking habits keep most people poor, not poor working habits. Most people work hard, but they don't think hard. They don't use their minds to perceive where the values are, so they waste time.

It's easy to spend big chunks of your life on insignificant things unless you weigh them better. Our mind and thinking are major pieces of the life puzzle. What you think about the knowledge you acquire, how you weigh it, the conclusions you come to, and the values you perceive. If you really want to help someone change their life, you have to start by changing their mind, changing their philosophy and how they think.

Some might say motivation is enough, but it isn't. If someone is unskilled and you motivate them, you just get a motivated, unskilled person. That's not what it takes. It's very easy to make errors in judgment. Even after people are out of school, they should read at least one or two books a week. When you get a job, it's easy to let that slide and not keep up the learning process.

But if you don't keep learning, your values become fuzzy. You start spending major effort on minor things. For example, if someone spends their book money on donuts, in ten years they might have bought two tons of donuts and only two books, mostly with pictures. They wonder why their life isn't working well. The reason is that after they got out of school, they didn't keep up the flow of ideas that refine their business decisions and conclusions.

You must keep up the learning curve even after school to avoid errors in judgment. Most people wind up average at age 40 instead of rich due to errors in judgment about money. What would you suggest a 15 year old do with their money? To be rich by 40, they need a good plan. Early errors with money can lead to a mediocre life instead of a rich one. Small amounts matter the most.

If you don't manage $10 well, you'll make errors with larger amounts too. It's essential to have a good plan. When the amounts are small, errors are easy to make. Easy not to notice and easy to miscalculate. Life is cumulative. Errors accumulate into what we don't get and wise decisions accumulate into what we do get.

Correcting errors early is crucial. Mister Schaff caught me at age 25 and started asking me tough questions. He asked how long id been working. I said six years, starting when I was 19. He then asked how much money id saved and invested in those six years. I said none. He asked who sold me on that plan. Six years is enough time to check if you have a good financial philosophy.

The time to catch errors is early. Mister Schaff started asking me tough questions about my money, resources and investments. Some people think they have plenty of time to worry about that later, but they probably don't. Now is the time to fix things. When you hear good information, start applying it immediately. We are teaching kids a good wealth philosophy starting at age 15, which can make them wealthy by age 40 or 45 at the latest.

Start doing wise things with your resources as soon as you get better information. You can't act on what you don't know, but the key is to keep learning so that good ideas keep coming to you, allowing you to make wiser decisions. philosophy is where it all begins. To know wise things, you have to study, keep reading, have conversations, listen to lectures, and continuously gather information. Adjust your philosophy by maintaining a continual flow of ideas.

The first piece of the life puzzle is philosophy. The second is attitude, which is simply how you feel. philosophy sets the sail of your life and attitude takes you there. There are many ways to feel you can feel good or bad. Consider this attitude if this is all they pay, I'm not coming early and I'm not staying late. Such an attitude, if maintained, would greatly affect your life.

Contrast it with another attitude. No matter what they pay. I always come early and stay late to invest in my own future. Attitude is a matter of choice and to make wise choices, we need educated attitudes. Emotions must go to school to learn where the values are. Attitude is determined by how you feel about various aspects of life, the past and the future. Your attitude toward the past influences you.

Some people carry the burdens of the past like a weight. Instead of using the past as a learning tool, facing the future is crucial. You can approach it with anticipation or apprehension. Many people are apprehensive because they've adopted someone else's negative view of the future. Without a well designed personal future, it's easy to be swayed by others pessimism.

To have a confident and successful life, you need to have a positive attitude toward the past and a well designed view of the future. If you don't feel good about the future, you'll take uncertain steps. Having goals and a clear vision of your future helps you take confident steps every day. 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 twelve 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. Start writing it down, putting it in a journal somewhere, and let it all change. As time unfolds.

Something that seems very important right now might seem foolish two years from now. You'll grow beyond that. But right now it's important to get as clear a picture as you can of the future. Set your dreams and goals because how the day goes is greatly determined by your confidence in the future.

Now here's another attitude. It's how you feel about society, the community and the country. It's very important. It's not difficult to be a cynic, and cynicism greatly influences how your life works out. But it's also important to understand that if you want to do well, it takes all of us to help each of us.

A good phrase is it takes all of us to help each of us do well. You can't succeed by yourself. It's hard to find a rich hermit. You need a market, a society. We need each other's ideas and collective participation in the marketplace and in society. So how we feel about each other is very important.

Now here's the big one. It's how you feel about yourself. Self esteem and understanding your own value. If new discoveries start to unfold for you, you realize you've got the brains and the talent. All you need is instruction, coaching, help, advice and experience.

If you are headed down the wrong road, hopefully someone who has been down that road and knows the bridge is out will come back and tell you not to go that way anymore. So we take someone else's advice and say, wow, I'm glad you came along. I was heading down this road. Learning from other people's experiences and picking up ideas helps us feel good about ourselves.

You've got the talent and skill. That's what university and school are for, to help guide all this available potential. There isn't anyone here who doesn't have the potential to become wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, influential and to live uniquely. That's within all of your reach. Some people live unfortunate lives of tragedy and despair, but that's not the case here.

You've become part of the few percentage points that have the unusual gift of association, awareness and exposure to the best the country has to offer. Here you are at a well known university with all the chances and opportunities within your reach. With your brain's potential, power, drive and incentives, there's no telling what miracles you can achieve and what unique things you can accomplish. You'll look back on these days and say, those were good days that exposed me to ideas, philosophies and people and gave me chances and opportunities to become someone unique.

But everyone here has the potential you have. You need to feel that and think well about yourself. Self esteem primarily comes from engaging in the disciplines that lead to value. We don't lack potential, but to bring value from potential, we need the disciplines. One of the major reasons we don't feel good about ourselves is neglecting to engage in the necessary disciplines.

If you keep letting yourself off the hook, you'll never feel good about yourself. To counter this, adopt the ant philosophy. Do your best and gather all you can, just like ants who don't settle for half doing their best. Boosting self esteem is crucial. Attitude is a key component in the five pieces of the life puzzle.

First is philosophy, then attitude. philosophy and attitude determine activity. Activity is what you do. Success requires action. You have to do it. God has designed that the major value of our life is left to our own mental genius. You must decide what you want to become and then go do it by engaging in the disciplines.

How hard should you work to be successful? The Old Testament suggests six days of activity and one day of rest, a six one ratio. Some may argue for a different balance, but you must decide what's right for you. Don't rest too long because we live in a push and shove world full of conflict between good and evil, health and sickness.

Make rest a necessity, not an objective. The goal of life is to accomplish and grow, to test the limits of your abilities. When you work, work hard. When you play, play well. Do your best in all activities. If you do your best, whatever the result is, it's acceptable. Don't settle for less than your best.

Doing less than you can sets up all kinds of problems and diminishes self esteem. The ultimate victory is doing the best you can. philosophy, attitude, and activity lead to results. The challenge of life is to make measurable progress in reasonable time. Don't be unreasonable with time, but also don't take too long.

Make demands on yourself for results. Society may not require you to read books or make wise investments, but you should check your results to see if there are errors in your activities, attitudes or philosophies. The last piece of the life puzzle is lifestyle how you choose to live all of us can choose how we wish to live, especially in this country. Money doesn't bring joy or happiness, style does.

Happiness is an art, not an accident. Study and practice happiness and culture. The genius of living well comes from understanding that it's not the amount of money but the ideas and timing that count. Be happy with what you've got while pursuing what you want.

Reflect on the five pieces of the life philosophy, attitude, activity, results and lifestyle. Ask yourself how you're doing in each area. Now is the time to fix things for the next ten years. Hopefully these insights have provided some valuable perspectives and coaching for your future. Thank you for your attention.

Inspiration, Leadership, Motivation, Personal Growth, Self-Improvement, Life Success, Daily Wisdom