7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness

The book ‘7 strategies for Wealth and happiness’ tells the story of Jim Rohn. In his book, he explains his philosophy of life and how anyone can unlock his or her inner potential to live a life of wealth. The book shows many personal experiences and views on certain aspects that triggered Jim Rohn to achieve his goal of attaining a wealthy life.

Introduction

Fundamentals are the basic principles on which all accomplishments are built on. It’s contradicting to say new fundamentals.

It’s like saying new antiques. It doesn’t make sense.

The fundamentals have always been the same and will be until the end of time.

‘Success is no more than the natural consequences of consistently applying the fundamentals of success to life’

The difference between success and failure lies in the degree of our commitment to apply the half dozen things.

It’s the half-dozen fundamentals that count.

The 5 keywords

The book stems from a group of keywords.The majority of these keywords are controversial because we all perceive the word differently.

For instance, wealth to one person might be having enough money to do whatever he wants, whereas to the other is freedom from debt.

Some might say even freedom of constant claim of obligation.Therefore, to receive maximum value from the book, the meaning of each word needs to be clear.

Fundamentals

Fundamentals are the basic principles on which all accomplishments are built on.

It’s contradicting to say new fundamentals. It’s like saying new antiques. It doesn’t make sense. Fundamentals have always been the same and will be until the end of time.

‘Success is no more than the natural consequences of consistently applying the fundamentals of success to life’

To achieve anything, you have to do the half dozen things that make the most to the outcomes. It doesn’t matter what you want to achieve, but if you know and apply the half dozen things that will help you reach your goal, then you are already a step closer to your goal. The difference between success and failure lies in the degree of our commitment to apply the half dozen things. It’s the half-dozen fundamentals that count.

Wealth

Wealth can be a controversial topic, as all of us view wealth as something else. In this book, wealth is symbolized by the word; millionaire. A millionaire can be seen as a successful person, who has freedom, power, influence, and more. Therefore, wealth in this book focuses on financial freedom.

‘Wealth that comes from the conversion of effort and enterprise into currency and equity’

Happiness

Happiness is often elusive and can only be experienced in the now. It’s both the joy of discovery and knowledge. It is usually accompanied by positive activity, and it’s the freedom from negativity such as fear, worry, low self-esteem, envy, greed, and more. Happiness is often perceived as a general feeling, but it is also a method of thinking. It’s a way of interpreting the world and its events.

Discipline

Discipline is the critical component for both wealth and happiness. It holds the key to your dreams and aspirations, but most of us reject discipline because we view discipline as suffering, restricting your freedom, and boring. Yet, discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment. It’s the foundation on which success is built. Still, many do not associate lack of discipline with failure. An earth-shattering event is the consequence of accumulated little failures. Lack of discipline is the cause of these events. Repeating today’s failure leads to a life of major disasters.

However, the opposite is also true. If you work daily on your goal, your success is guaranteed. The accumulation of discipline work, learning, and seeking knowledge has a similar effect on the outcome. The only difference is that you will be way better off. But be aware, that to actually achieve your goal, you have to start acting.

‘To make progress, you must actually get started’

A pitfall that people tend to have is the fact that they affirm their daily actions but act in direct contradiction. A person who wishes for happiness and yet thinks and commits acts that lead her towards certain despair is a victim of false hope. So, start today by acting.

Success

Like all the other concepts, success has multiple layers of meaning. It’s the journey as well as the destination. The progress and the achievement. The wisdom and the accomplishment that comes to those who are disciplined. But most of all, success is making your life what you want it to be. It’s the collection of our values clearly defined and ultimately achieved.

The seven strategies of wealth and happiness

Strategy 1: Unleash the power of goals

Goals are the lifelong occupation that develops your bright future and what you have dreamed of. A well-defined goal pulls you in the right direction. However, you have to have enough reasons to inspire you to accomplish your goal. Then you have to ask yourself

‘What motivates me?’

Each one of us has different things to motivate ourselves. Besides the obvious desire for financial gain, there are four big motivators called; Recognition, feelings, family, and benevolence. There are also nitty-gritty reasons that motivate one or another. For example, if someone says you can’t do that. It’s impossible for you. Ohh boy, isn’t it wonderful to prove them wrong? There is an old saying, ‘Massive success is the sweetest revenge

For now, we first have to set the goals up. Identifying your main goals is the main priority to acknowledge what you are aiming for. It’s an exercise from the book to document your true goals.

It’s essential to have many varied goals, as it gives you the purpose of going on. People who have dedicated themselves to one specific goal tend to become depressed once the goal is achieved. The main reason why this phenomenon occurs is that you will feel empty inside and don’t know what to do next. The main outline of the exercise goes as follows:

Long-term goals

Ask yourself and write down what you want within the next one to 10 years, and write as many things you want in your life.
Write down per goal the number of years it will take to achieve it. (1-year, 3-year, 5-year, or 10-year)
Check if the goals are evenly divided from 1 to 10 years.
Choose the four most important goals per category (4 important goals for 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year)

Short-term goals

Once you have your goals set up. Write down the short-range projects to achieve these goals
Organize your own designed project and arrange them when you want to work on the project
Act!!

‘Make losing painful!’

The true purpose of setting goals is to compel you to become the person who achieves them. There is a saying that goes like this; ‘Give a broke person a million dollars, and he will soon be broke again, take the wealth of a self-made millionaire, and he will soon be wealthy again’’. That’s because the greatest value lies in the skills, knowledge, and other qualities that you have obtained from disciplined work.

Remember, ‘Income rarely exceeds personal development’

Strategy 2: Seek Knowledge

Once you set your goals, it’s essential to know what and how you acquire the knowledge to achieve your goal. To become good at anything, you have to study first and practice second. Capture the knowledge through your library. This includes books, audiotapes, videos, cassette tapes, and many more that shape our lives in a good way. Also, capture ideas that pop up once in a while time. And write the ideas in your journal.

Wisdom can be gained through two methods, personal reflection and other people’s experiences.

Personal reflection: Our own life consists of many experiences that made us who we are today. However, to become better, we have to learn the art of self-reflection. Self-reflection prevents us from making the same mistakes over and over again.

Other people: Each one of us has experiences that others can learn from, vice versa. The first way to gain knowledge from others is through books, audio, and videotapes. Most authors have dedicated years to writing books to share their knowledge with us. How wonderful is it to have access to these books that are compact with the wisdom of others?

The second way to gain knowledge is by listening to others who have honed their skills. Listening lets us understand how others operate in their field. We learn new strategies and attitudes from other people. However, be aware of follies because these people only give you bad advice.

The third way to gain wisdom is through observing winners and losers. Successful people tend to create patterns of successful behavior, whereas losers create patterns of failure behavior. Identifying both winners and losers creates a clear view of what works and what doesn’t work.

Overall, to seek knowledge, you have to invest your time, money and effort.

Strategy 3: Learn how to change

Personal development is a challenging skill to acquire because it lasts a lifetime, but it is also the most effective way to succeed. A key lesson here is to work harder on yourself than you do on your job because Income rarely exceeds self-development.

‘Unless you change how you are, you’ll always have what you got’

However, the opposite is also true.

‘To have more than you’ve got, become more than you are’

The reason why self-development is so important is that our value becomes greater when we start working on ourselves. Value is what we contribute to a company. We think that we get paid per hour, but it’s actually the value that we get paid for. The time is just an indication of the value that you contribute to the company. And lucky for us, we can increase our value when we work on becoming better.

‘Better is not something you wish; it’s something you become.’

Sometimes we have a good time working on ourselves, and sometimes not. It’s just like the seasons. Life and commerce are like seasons. However, you cannot change the seasons, but you can change yourself.

So here are the key thoughts about the seasons of life;

Winter: Grow stronger
Spring: Take advantage
Summer: Take care
Fall: Take responsibilities

Want to know more about the seasons? Check out our blog about the seasons of life.

There are three pitfalls/limitations that many people impose on themselves when they are working on their personal development. Procrastination, blame, and excuses. These three limitations are dangerous when it comes to Self-development. Therefore, you should ask yourself; what are you going to do today to improve yourself?

There are three areas of personal development that you can improve on; spiritual, physical, and mental. It depends on what you want to improve. There is however an important aspect when you work on yourself, which is that you have to be consistent. Consistency only comes from being disciplined. To be consistent, you should start small, step by step, inch by inch. Every small step is still a step forward. Gradually the small steps accumulate and form a habit which eventually leads to becoming consistent in your work. However, this is something that you have to do by yourself. A stranger or anyone else cannot change you. The only person that can change and motivate you is yourself.

Strategy 4: Control Your Finances

Money plays a big role in our daily lives. A person who spends more than their earnings is destined to fall hard financially. Whereas, a person who spends the money wisely is closer to financial freedom. It is, therefore, important to control your finances.

So, how do we manage our money? First, we have to look at taxes. The majority of the people hate paying taxes, but it’s essential to keep the economy rolling. There are certain things that we cannot do for ourselves, for example; infrastructure, safety, healthcare, education, and more. Therefore, we pay taxes to let the government handle these things.

‘Be a happy taxpayer!’

After taxes, you should apply the 70/30 rule. Live on 70 percent of your after-tax income. The other 30 percent should be divided into charity, capital investment, and savings.

Strategy 5: Master Time

Time is the most precious possession you have. It’s the only thing that nobody can take or steal from you. Everyone has the same hours to spend their day. Therefore, you should spend it wisely. This doesn’t mean that you should become a workaholic! Workaholics are admired by outsiders but often alienate their family, health, and more. Becoming an ideal time manager means that you have to work smarter, instead of working long hours.

‘Either you run the day or the day will run you’

To start regaining control over your time, you should learn to say ‘no’ sometimes. People tend to say yes all the time at work or in their spare time. This often happens as people want to be a nice person. Unfortunately, the desk of tasks will stack up if you keep answering yes to every task, leaving you no room to manage your time effectively.

Another way to gain control over your time is to separate time to work with time to have fun. Don’t mix those two because it never works. Be present at the moment. If you work you, work; and when you play, play. We all have our moments when we are at work and the only thing we think about is vacation. The opposite is also true! So, when you work, put all your effort into working and if you play, have fun and don’t think about work.

To master your time, you should know yourself. When are you most productive/energized, what is your biological clock, and are you productive in the morning or afternoon? These questions, you should ask yourself, and then plan the most demanding task/activity at that particular time of the day. Next, you should analyze your habits. We all have our flaws, but the question is: How do we handle our flaws? We should accept our flaws and let someone help us with them.

‘Your weakness doesn’t have to harm you if you learn to delegate responsibilities’

Telephones are a remarkable tool, but it is a double edge sword. It can be a great convenient tool for maximizing your effectiveness, but it can also be the most distracting and time-wasting tool. Therefore, it’s important to gain control over who can reach you and when.

‘Telephones allow others to control your time, even at home. Unless you are careful, others can intrude on your time with family or leisure.’

A way to gain control over your time is by using an answering machine to return calls at your convenience. Or having an assistant screen your calls effectively. Outgoing calls can also be optimized. We have all been in a call conversation and forgot to talk about a topic or aspect of a task. So, a great way to avoid these small mistakes is to write down key points before the calls and write down essential points during the call.

Other electric tools can also help manage your time, but you should analyze them carefully before implementing the tools.

Managing people is fun but a troubling matter. One of the most time-saving ways to manage people is by asking the right questions. Usually, a problem doesn’t occur magically from nothing. There is always a root problem underneath the surface. Especially when you are dealing with people. Asking the correct questions helps us expose the root problem of inefficient work.

The ability to think on paper is one of the most effective ways to succeed in time management. Once you visualize your day, week, month, or year, you know exactly where you are and what you should do to achieve your goal. Visualizing, planning, and executing is the way to achieve your goal. Here are the four ways to think on paper that you should use to plan your life:

Your journal
A project book
Calendar
Game plan

‘Operate from document, not from thought’

Strategy 6: Surround Yourself with Winners

One of the major influences that shape you and the person you want to be, is the people around you. It’s a quite common but least understood factor. It’s a subtle influence that affects us all. For example, when your friends like wrestling instead of concerts, then you would likely go to wrestling games with them.

To avoid wasting your time with the wrong crowd, you should ask these three questions;

With whom do I spend time?
What are they doing to me?
Is this association okay with me?

When it’s unclear whether they have a positive or negative effect on you, then you should think about these things;

What have they got you doing?
What have they got you listening to?
What have they got you reading?
What have they got you going?
What have they got you thinking?
How have they got you talking?
How have they got you feeling?
What have they got you saying?

And at last, ask yourself this question;
Are my present associations helping me grow in the direction I have chosen through goal-setting?

If you are uncertain, then it is wise to evaluate the relationships of key people in your life. It’s essential to surround yourself with winners. Some might think that it doesn’t matter who you associate with, but that’s WRONG! Positive associations help you achieve your goal. However, negative associations help you to self-destruction.

Remember, everything matters!

So, don’t be blinded by the people around you. Some might help you and others might harm you.

There are a couple of ways to deal with negative associations. Firstly, you can separate yourself from those people. It is hard to do, but for your own sake, you should get rid of his/her negative influence. If you cannot separate yourself from the person, then it’s best to limit your time with the person.

‘It’s your life, you can spend your time with who you want and however you want. Nobody can decide that for you. Your time is precious, so spend it wisely.’

Now that we know how to deal with negative associations, it’s on to the next topic. Expanding positive associations, as was written in the book.

‘Spend more time with the right people’

If you truly want to succeed, you got to get around the right people. So, find the right person to help you succeed in your goal. If you plan to become healthy, find expertise or someone who encourages you to have an exercise or health plan. From our associations, we can either gain or lose knowledge, skills, and perceptions.

‘Keep the weeds of negative influence from your life. Instead, ‘farm’ the seeds of constructive influence’

Strategy 7: Learn the Art of Living Well

We have all been there in our life, where we only pursue future gains. So motivated and focused on succeeding that we forgot how to live. Being rich doesn’t necessarily mean being happy because happiness can’t be bought by money. It has shown that many of the richest businesspeople tend to be unhappy, even though they have countless fortunes. That’s why designing your lifestyle is essential to learning how to live.

‘Be happy with what you have while pursuing what you want’

The art of designing your lifestyle starts with small amounts. As Jim Rohn says in the book, ‘Learn to develop a two-quarter mentality in a one-quarter-thinking world’. The two-quarter mentality can be described as being generous. A small gesture has a great influence on your day. Guilt and insecurity come from being selfish, but generosity enlightens your day with positive feelings and confidence.

The art of living isn’t all too hard. It starts with saving up some of your money to buy something special. Something which will give you rich memories for a lifetime. A good lifestyle savors and enjoys all experiences of life. It’s an attitude, act, idea, discovery, and a search. And remember, living life in style means living a life of balance.