A Journal
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.com RECORD OBSERVATIONS AND REACTIONS
A journal should also capture your observations and reactions, for somewhere
between what we see and what we do will be revealed what we are. Capture
on paper the events, the circumstances and happenings of your life. Describe
the near miss you had while driving to work on the freeway, outline your
observations of people’s behavior at the office party, paint the picture of your
day at the beach—the pounding surf, the soaring gulls, the distant sails.
And then when you have written about what your eyes have perceived and
your ears have heard, go one step further and describe your feelings, your
emotional responses to life. Describe your feelings when you learned that John
got the promotion that you felt was rightfully yours, or when you learned that
Sally is getting married next month to your ex-husband.
Describe it all. Don’t miss any of the events of your life. Capture the joy of your
victories as well as the agony of your defeats. And remember, it doesn’t have to
be a monumental occurrence to be worth capturing. Truly, most human lives
consist of and revolve around minor happenings, so even a minor event and
your response to it can have a major impact on how your life turns out.
You see, part of the human experience, perhaps the most important part, lies
in learning to translate these events which occur outside of us into words and
emotions within our inner worlds. The better we become at describing what
goes on around us, the better we will be able to understand some of the conflicts
and turmoils which take place within us. Cause and effect always go hand in
hand. Trying to understand or deal with the effects without a clear picture of the
cause is a rather hopeless situation to be in. Remember that all human emotions
are effects which can be traced back to particular events or causes. A better
understanding of events will always give us a clearer picture of the effects we
may be experiencing.
SAY IT ALL
You will find as you begin to open up and really tell it like it is that your journal
becomes an excellent empathetic friend, one who will listen to all you have to
say about your joys, your pain, your fears or your concerns. And I would strongly
urge you to get these emotions out of your head and onto the page, for powerful
negative emotions are diminished by writing, and powerful positive emotions
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.combecome explosive. You see, writing about your fear reduces its strength, and
capturing your excitement magnifies its power.
And feel free to say it all. These are your private collections, your personal
recollections. They are not going to be read aloud at the next staff meeting, used
in court against you, or published in The New York Times. Write freely, and don’t
let anything inhibit the flow of your thoughts. Write in half sentences, and break
all the rules of grammar and punctuation if you choose. Draw pictures, make
diagrams. Anything goes. Neatness doesn’t count and neither does spelling.
This is one place where you should feel free to say it all and say it as you wish.
ADD OTHER STUFF
By the way, if you feel uncomfortable abandoning the rules of your 8th grade
English teacher, then this too should tell you something about yourself. Hey,
you are even free to do the worst thing of all: use somebody else’s words. Glue in
newspaper articles, cartoons, quotes, whatever you wish. No one is going to give
you an F for plagiarism in your journal.
Describe it all. Don’t miss any of the events of
your life. Capture the joy of your victories as well
as the agony of your defeats. And remember, it
doesn’t have to be a monumental occurrence to
be worth capturing.
There is only one suggestion I would offer concerning the format of your
journal, and that is to record the date, time and location of each entry. Not only
will this provide you with a means of measuring your progress, your growth
trends, the different phases of your life and your changing attitudes, but where
and when you write can in themselves provide interesting revelations.
Your journal becomes like a photograph album, capturing moments in your
life. The only difference is that a photograph album kept for many years reveals
physical changes in yourself and your environment, while journals over a period
of time reflect mental changes within yourself and about your environment.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comTALK TO YOURSELF
Perhaps the most important function your journal performs lies in the area
of communications. First and foremost, your journal gives you a chance to talk
to yourself and to hear what you are saying about your life, your future, your
relationships and your goals.
As you begin to develop the habit of writing down your problems, recording
your observations, emotions and reactions to life’s events, you will undoubtedly
find yourself both posing and responding to a whole new set of questions about
your past, present and future: Why did I say that? Why does he always make me
feel that way? If I follow this course, where will I be five years from now?
Your journal becomes like a photograph album,
capturing moments in your life.
As you begin to both ask and answer yourself on paper, you will be amazed
at the incredible leaps in personal understanding and self-awareness you will
experience. And remember, any positive change which occurs within you will
ultimately manifest itself in a positive result outside of you, in your social or
professional world, your attitude, your bank account, your habits, and even
your appearance.
DEVELOP COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS
Writing in your journal is one of the best ways I know of to develop more
effective communication skills. As you become better at describing life to
yourself, you will find that you become better at describing yourself to life. Put
into more practical terms, as you become better at saying what you really want
and how you really feel to yourself, you will be able to better express yourself
and your feelings to others, and in return, better able to understand what others
are really feeling and really saying to you.
Communicating with people our own age or who have similar educational
backgrounds, incomes, professions or beliefs is a relatively easy process.
But what about the two people who are to all outward appearances radically
different: a teenager and a 40-year-old father, a high-school dropout and a
college professor, a successful lawyer and an unemployed auto worker. Now the
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comreal challenges of communication begin to manifest themselves, but they are
challenges that using a journal can help us overcome.
Regardless of the differences in our outer worlds, inside human beings
are all basically alike. We’ve all known sorrow—maybe not from the same
event, but we’ve all experienced the emotion. We’ve all known the joy of
achievement, perhaps in different circumstances but certainly the same
feeling. Regardless of our outward differences, those basic human needs and
emotions will always provide a common ground or build a bridge for effective
human communications.
A TEXTBOOK FOR LIFE
You see, by the time we have reached adulthood, most of us have experienced
almost every aspect of the human drama in one form or another. The problem
is that most of the experiences have gone right on by us. We have never taken
the time to capture them, to ponder them, to analyze how we felt at that time,
how we responded to others while we were in those circumstances, or what our
priorities and needs were during that period in our lives.
Suppose, however, that you took the time to capture the events and
happenings of your life on purpose with paper and pen, so that you always
had a wealth of experiences from which to draw. Imagine now what an
incredible impact this awareness could have on your life, how it could help to
bridge the gap between you and your children, your clients, your associates,
your neighbors.
If you will but take the time to capture how it is for you at any given point in
your life, then you will always be in a position to relate to how it might be for
someone else at this moment in their lives. The situations might be different but
the basic needs and emotions never are. We don’t have to dress alike or go to the
same schools or be the same age or sex to feel the same way.
Use your journal as a textbook for life. Use it to capture the full range of
human emotions that you continuously gather from your experiences. I promise
you that if you will take just a little time to capture your experiences, the end
result will more than repay you for the time you invest.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comHOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU WRITE?
Now here’s another question frequently posed about using a journal. The
question is: how often should I be writing? The answer to that is simple: as
often as you wish, and as often as you need.
There are two extremes to avoid: never writing in your journal, and constantly
writing in your journal. In the first instance you will be participating in life
without capturing it, and in the latter case you will be capturing life without
participating in it. Life should be a delicate blend of both observation
and action.
And let me stress again that the first discipline to be mastered in using a
journal is to develop the habit of always having it with you. If you do not open
it for weeks at a time, that’s okay, just get into the habit of carrying it. Without
much effort on your part, plenty of opportunities for putting it to use will
present themselves. Also, the simple act of carrying your journal speaks to the
world. It says, “I am a conscious observer and participant in life’s events.”
When you present yourself to life as a serious student, life will respond by
providing you with an endless opportunity to learn and grow and develop, and
enhance any and all aspects of your life.
THE BEST BEGINNING FOR YOUR JOURNAL
In the final analysis, whether you decide to start a journal, and still more
important whether you exercise the discipline to use it, the decision and the
action must come from inside you. No wise counsel from any source will ever
replace the intensity that comes from a personal commitment to excellence.
It is often said that reality is the best beginning, and perhaps it might also
be the best beginning for your journal. One of the first entries you will want to
consider making is a complete account of how it is for you right at this moment
in your life: What’s got you turned on, what’s got you turned off ? How is it
going at home, at work? Are you happy, frustrated, excited, perplexed, worried,
doubtful, or any or all of the above? You may want to write a brief description of
how it’s going in each area of your life, and honestly tell it like it is.
Perhaps in your writings you will uncover a particular void in your life that
needs to be filled, or a major obstacle that must be tackled if things are to work out
for you as you want them to. Use your journal to then chart out a course of action
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comto eliminate whatever is standing between you and your better future. Examine
your progress, outline the steps you’ve taken or could still take. By the time you’ve
dealt with these issues your journal will have already become invaluable.
If you find that you are still having difficulty getting anything on paper, one of
the first entries you might consider making is an explanation of why you bought
the journal in the first place. If you will but pause to consider what you hope to
achieve by using a journal, then what to put into its pages will be obvious. If, for
example, you bought a journal to record your feelings, then write about your
feelings. If you bought it to keep track of business developments then write
about your meetings, your clients and the ideas you have about improving the
products or services of your company.
Use your journal to then chart out a course of
action to eliminate whatever is standing between
you and your better future.
YOUR JOURNAL AND YOUR LIFE
A journal should be used in response to a specific need, a need to express, to
analyze, to ponder, to explain, to record, to consider or to examine some or all of the
elements and aspects of your life.
And remember, there is no correct set of procedures for keeping your journal.
Journals are as unlimited in possibilities as are the individuals who use them.
Journals and life share one unique characteristic: both provide you with a space
to fill as you wish. And for those who are not yet sure how they wish to fill life’s
spaces, a journal offers you a chance to paint mental pictures of the limitless paths
you could travel.
In a novel, an author places imaginary characters in imaginary circumstances and
then predicts their behavior and responses to these events. So be the author of your
own life. Create a set of circumstances on paper, and then place yourself in the middle
of them: How would you feel about doing that? What would it be like to live in that
city? How would you feel having those responsibilities or those freedoms? Pick a
direction, and travel with your imagination to new environments, to new positions, to
new opportunities. Create on paper an ideal job, describe an ideal relationship, state
an ideal income, outline an ideal code of personal behavior, design an ideal lifestyle.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comPAINT MENTAL PICTURES
Take your dreams and transfer them into written goals with priorities and
deadlines. List the specific steps you must take in order to achieve them, and
then write out a detailed plan of action. Take your dreams from your mind to the
page, and then take them from the pages of your journal and make them happen
in your life.
Learn to paint these mental pictures, and then like an artist create something
of substance on the canvas of your life, using all of your available resources. Add
new color, new depths, new dimensions, new meanings to where and who you
currently are by exploring where and who you still can be.
Set yourself free and explore the possibilities of life with paper and pen.
There’s no risk involved; you cannot fail. Stretch yourself mentally, expand your
inner horizons, and you will find that life will respond in kind by presenting you
with new opportunities and associations, new experiences from which to grow
and learn, and new circumstances in which you will become more than you had
previously dreamed possible.
Remember the advice of Napoleon Hill who wrote, “Whatever the human
mind can conceive and believe it can also achieve.” Ponder also the biblical
suggestion that “As a man thinketh, so he becomes.” And know without the
shadow of all doubt that whatever you create on the pages of your journal, you
can with enough belief, commitment, discipline and desire create in your life.
THE LEGACY YOU LEAVE BEHIND
In closing, I would like to share with you the following thoughts from Will and
Ariel Durant’s 100-page masterpiece, The Lessons of History.
“Civilization,” they wrote, “is not inherited. It has to be learned and earned by
each generation anew. Consider education not as the painful accumulation of
facts and dates, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn
his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and
aesthetic heritage, as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement
of man’s understanding, control, embellishment and enjoyment of life. If a man is
fortunate, he will before he dies gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage
and transmit it to his children, and to his final breath he will be grateful for this
inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.”
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comSo, gather up all you can: the hopes, the sorrows, the lessons, the friendships,
the achievements and the disappointments. Gather it all, that it may teach you,
and in turn that the lessons you have learned may become perhaps part of the
legacy that you leave behind for your children, and indeed the world at large.
Let your journals capture your personal history, and in doing so they add
to the history of all mankind and to our collective heritage. Truly, the most
valuable treasure anyone can leave behind is the knowledge they have acquired
in their one lifetime.
It has been suggested that what we are, a unique creation of unlimited
possibilities and potential, is God’s gift to us, and that what we do with all that
we are, the works we do, the lives we enrich and the contributions we make, are
our gifts to God.
May your life be devoted to becoming all that you can become, and may your
journals capture every moment of the adventure.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comMORE INSPIRATION
FROM JIM ROHN
Books
For more personal development resources
from Jim Rohn, visit
https://store.success.com/
Leading an
Inspired Life
The Treasury
of Quotes
The Five Major
Pieces to the Life Puzzle
The Seasons of Life
Twelve Pillars
(with Chris Widener)
The Jim Rohn
Leadership Journal
The Complete Jim Rohn Guides Series
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.com“The major key to
your better future
is YOU!”
—Jim Rohn
www.SUCCESS.com
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comRECORD OBSERVATIONS AND REACTIONS
A journal should also capture your observations and reactions, for somewhere
between what we see and what we do will be revealed what we are. Capture
on paper the events, the circumstances and happenings of your life. Describe
the near miss you had while driving to work on the freeway, outline your
observations of people’s behavior at the office party, paint the picture of your
day at the beach—the pounding surf, the soaring gulls, the distant sails.
And then when you have written about what your eyes have perceived and
your ears have heard, go one step further and describe your feelings, your
emotional responses to life. Describe your feelings when you learned that John
got the promotion that you felt was rightfully yours, or when you learned that
Sally is getting married next month to your ex-husband.
Describe it all. Don’t miss any of the events of your life. Capture the joy of your
victories as well as the agony of your defeats. And remember, it doesn’t have to
be a monumental occurrence to be worth capturing. Truly, most human lives
consist of and revolve around minor happenings, so even a minor event and
your response to it can have a major impact on how your life turns out.
You see, part of the human experience, perhaps the most important part, lies
in learning to translate these events which occur outside of us into words and
emotions within our inner worlds. The better we become at describing what
goes on around us, the better we will be able to understand some of the conflicts
and turmoils which take place within us. Cause and effect always go hand in
hand. Trying to understand or deal with the effects without a clear picture of the
cause is a rather hopeless situation to be in. Remember that all human emotions
are effects which can be traced back to particular events or causes. A better
understanding of events will always give us a clearer picture of the effects we
may be experiencing.
SAY IT ALL
You will find as you begin to open up and really tell it like it is that your journal
becomes an excellent empathetic friend, one who will listen to all you have to
say about your joys, your pain, your fears or your concerns. And I would strongly
urge you to get these emotions out of your head and onto the page, for powerful
negative emotions are diminished by writing, and powerful positive emotions
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.combecome explosive. You see, writing about your fear reduces its strength, and
capturing your excitement magnifies its power.
And feel free to say it all. These are your private collections, your personal
recollections. They are not going to be read aloud at the next staff meeting, used
in court against you, or published in The New York Times. Write freely, and don’t
let anything inhibit the flow of your thoughts. Write in half sentences, and break
all the rules of grammar and punctuation if you choose. Draw pictures, make
diagrams. Anything goes. Neatness doesn’t count and neither does spelling.
This is one place where you should feel free to say it all and say it as you wish.
ADD OTHER STUFF
By the way, if you feel uncomfortable abandoning the rules of your 8th grade
English teacher, then this too should tell you something about yourself. Hey,
you are even free to do the worst thing of all: use somebody else’s words. Glue in
newspaper articles, cartoons, quotes, whatever you wish. No one is going to give
you an F for plagiarism in your journal.
Describe it all. Don’t miss any of the events of
your life. Capture the joy of your victories as well
as the agony of your defeats. And remember, it
doesn’t have to be a monumental occurrence to
be worth capturing.
There is only one suggestion I would offer concerning the format of your
journal, and that is to record the date, time and location of each entry. Not only
will this provide you with a means of measuring your progress, your growth
trends, the different phases of your life and your changing attitudes, but where
and when you write can in themselves provide interesting revelations.
Your journal becomes like a photograph album, capturing moments in your
life. The only difference is that a photograph album kept for many years reveals
physical changes in yourself and your environment, while journals over a period
of time reflect mental changes within yourself and about your environment.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comTALK TO YOURSELF
Perhaps the most important function your journal performs lies in the area
of communications. First and foremost, your journal gives you a chance to talk
to yourself and to hear what you are saying about your life, your future, your
relationships and your goals.
As you begin to develop the habit of writing down your problems, recording
your observations, emotions and reactions to life’s events, you will undoubtedly
find yourself both posing and responding to a whole new set of questions about
your past, present and future: Why did I say that? Why does he always make me
feel that way? If I follow this course, where will I be five years from now?
Your journal becomes like a photograph album,
capturing moments in your life.
As you begin to both ask and answer yourself on paper, you will be amazed
at the incredible leaps in personal understanding and self-awareness you will
experience. And remember, any positive change which occurs within you will
ultimately manifest itself in a positive result outside of you, in your social or
professional world, your attitude, your bank account, your habits, and even
your appearance.
DEVELOP COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS
Writing in your journal is one of the best ways I know of to develop more
effective communication skills. As you become better at describing life to
yourself, you will find that you become better at describing yourself to life. Put
into more practical terms, as you become better at saying what you really want
and how you really feel to yourself, you will be able to better express yourself
and your feelings to others, and in return, better able to understand what others
are really feeling and really saying to you.
Communicating with people our own age or who have similar educational
backgrounds, incomes, professions or beliefs is a relatively easy process.
But what about the two people who are to all outward appearances radically
different: a teenager and a 40-year-old father, a high-school dropout and a
college professor, a successful lawyer and an unemployed auto worker. Now the
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comreal challenges of communication begin to manifest themselves, but they are
challenges that using a journal can help us overcome.
Regardless of the differences in our outer worlds, inside human beings
are all basically alike. We’ve all known sorrow—maybe not from the same
event, but we’ve all experienced the emotion. We’ve all known the joy of
achievement, perhaps in different circumstances but certainly the same
feeling. Regardless of our outward differences, those basic human needs and
emotions will always provide a common ground or build a bridge for effective
human communications.
A TEXTBOOK FOR LIFE
You see, by the time we have reached adulthood, most of us have experienced
almost every aspect of the human drama in one form or another. The problem
is that most of the experiences have gone right on by us. We have never taken
the time to capture them, to ponder them, to analyze how we felt at that time,
how we responded to others while we were in those circumstances, or what our
priorities and needs were during that period in our lives.
Suppose, however, that you took the time to capture the events and
happenings of your life on purpose with paper and pen, so that you always
had a wealth of experiences from which to draw. Imagine now what an
incredible impact this awareness could have on your life, how it could help to
bridge the gap between you and your children, your clients, your associates,
your neighbors.
If you will but take the time to capture how it is for you at any given point in
your life, then you will always be in a position to relate to how it might be for
someone else at this moment in their lives. The situations might be different but
the basic needs and emotions never are. We don’t have to dress alike or go to the
same schools or be the same age or sex to feel the same way.
Use your journal as a textbook for life. Use it to capture the full range of
human emotions that you continuously gather from your experiences. I promise
you that if you will take just a little time to capture your experiences, the end
result will more than repay you for the time you invest.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comHOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU WRITE?
Now here’s another question frequently posed about using a journal. The
question is: how often should I be writing? The answer to that is simple: as
often as you wish, and as often as you need.
There are two extremes to avoid: never writing in your journal, and constantly
writing in your journal. In the first instance you will be participating in life
without capturing it, and in the latter case you will be capturing life without
participating in it. Life should be a delicate blend of both observation
and action.
And let me stress again that the first discipline to be mastered in using a
journal is to develop the habit of always having it with you. If you do not open
it for weeks at a time, that’s okay, just get into the habit of carrying it. Without
much effort on your part, plenty of opportunities for putting it to use will
present themselves. Also, the simple act of carrying your journal speaks to the
world. It says, “I am a conscious observer and participant in life’s events.”
When you present yourself to life as a serious student, life will respond by
providing you with an endless opportunity to learn and grow and develop, and
enhance any and all aspects of your life.
THE BEST BEGINNING FOR YOUR JOURNAL
In the final analysis, whether you decide to start a journal, and still more
important whether you exercise the discipline to use it, the decision and the
action must come from inside you. No wise counsel from any source will ever
replace the intensity that comes from a personal commitment to excellence.
It is often said that reality is the best beginning, and perhaps it might also
be the best beginning for your journal. One of the first entries you will want to
consider making is a complete account of how it is for you right at this moment
in your life: What’s got you turned on, what’s got you turned off ? How is it
going at home, at work? Are you happy, frustrated, excited, perplexed, worried,
doubtful, or any or all of the above? You may want to write a brief description of
how it’s going in each area of your life, and honestly tell it like it is.
Perhaps in your writings you will uncover a particular void in your life that
needs to be filled, or a major obstacle that must be tackled if things are to work out
for you as you want them to. Use your journal to then chart out a course of action
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comto eliminate whatever is standing between you and your better future. Examine
your progress, outline the steps you’ve taken or could still take. By the time you’ve
dealt with these issues your journal will have already become invaluable.
If you find that you are still having difficulty getting anything on paper, one of
the first entries you might consider making is an explanation of why you bought
the journal in the first place. If you will but pause to consider what you hope to
achieve by using a journal, then what to put into its pages will be obvious. If, for
example, you bought a journal to record your feelings, then write about your
feelings. If you bought it to keep track of business developments then write
about your meetings, your clients and the ideas you have about improving the
products or services of your company.
Use your journal to then chart out a course of
action to eliminate whatever is standing between
you and your better future.
YOUR JOURNAL AND YOUR LIFE
A journal should be used in response to a specific need, a need to express, to
analyze, to ponder, to explain, to record, to consider or to examine some or all of the
elements and aspects of your life.
And remember, there is no correct set of procedures for keeping your journal.
Journals are as unlimited in possibilities as are the individuals who use them.
Journals and life share one unique characteristic: both provide you with a space
to fill as you wish. And for those who are not yet sure how they wish to fill life’s
spaces, a journal offers you a chance to paint mental pictures of the limitless paths
you could travel.
In a novel, an author places imaginary characters in imaginary circumstances and
then predicts their behavior and responses to these events. So be the author of your
own life. Create a set of circumstances on paper, and then place yourself in the middle
of them: How would you feel about doing that? What would it be like to live in that
city? How would you feel having those responsibilities or those freedoms? Pick a
direction, and travel with your imagination to new environments, to new positions, to
new opportunities. Create on paper an ideal job, describe an ideal relationship, state
an ideal income, outline an ideal code of personal behavior, design an ideal lifestyle.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comPAINT MENTAL PICTURES
Take your dreams and transfer them into written goals with priorities and
deadlines. List the specific steps you must take in order to achieve them, and
then write out a detailed plan of action. Take your dreams from your mind to the
page, and then take them from the pages of your journal and make them happen
in your life.
Learn to paint these mental pictures, and then like an artist create something
of substance on the canvas of your life, using all of your available resources. Add
new color, new depths, new dimensions, new meanings to where and who you
currently are by exploring where and who you still can be.
Set yourself free and explore the possibilities of life with paper and pen.
There’s no risk involved; you cannot fail. Stretch yourself mentally, expand your
inner horizons, and you will find that life will respond in kind by presenting you
with new opportunities and associations, new experiences from which to grow
and learn, and new circumstances in which you will become more than you had
previously dreamed possible.
Remember the advice of Napoleon Hill who wrote, “Whatever the human
mind can conceive and believe it can also achieve.” Ponder also the biblical
suggestion that “As a man thinketh, so he becomes.” And know without the
shadow of all doubt that whatever you create on the pages of your journal, you
can with enough belief, commitment, discipline and desire create in your life.
THE LEGACY YOU LEAVE BEHIND
In closing, I would like to share with you the following thoughts from Will and
Ariel Durant’s 100-page masterpiece, The Lessons of History.
“Civilization,” they wrote, “is not inherited. It has to be learned and earned by
each generation anew. Consider education not as the painful accumulation of
facts and dates, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn
his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and
aesthetic heritage, as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement
of man’s understanding, control, embellishment and enjoyment of life. If a man is
fortunate, he will before he dies gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage
and transmit it to his children, and to his final breath he will be grateful for this
inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.”
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.comSo, gather up all you can: the hopes, the sorrows, the lessons, the friendships,
the achievements and the disappointments. Gather it all, that it may teach you,
and in turn that the lessons you have learned may become perhaps part of the
legacy that you leave behind for your children, and indeed the world at large.
Let your journals capture your personal history, and in doing so they add
to the history of all mankind and to our collective heritage. Truly, the most
valuable treasure anyone can leave behind is the knowledge they have acquired
in their one lifetime.
It has been suggested that what we are, a unique creation of unlimited
possibilities and potential, is God’s gift to us, and that what we do with all that
we are, the works we do, the lives we enrich and the contributions we make, are
our gifts to God.
May your life be devoted to becoming all that you can become, and may your
journals capture every moment of the adventure.
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.com MORE INSPIRATION
FROM JIM ROHN
Books
For more personal development resources
from Jim Rohn, visit
https://store.success.com/
Leading an
Inspired Life
The Treasury
of Quotes
The Five Major
Pieces to the Life Puzzle
The Seasons of Life
Twelve Pillars
(with Chris Widener)
The Jim Rohn
Leadership Journal
The Complete Jim Rohn Guides Series
© 2015 SUCCESS. All rights reserved. www.SUCCESS.com“The major key to
your better future
is YOU!”
—Jim Rohn
Dave Meholovitch
Rooting For You!
whowantstobetheboss.com
