How to Attract Success in Your Life – A Tribute to Jim Rohn, pt. 1

Jim Rohn (1930-2009)

Jim Rohn, one of the world’s foremost business philosophers, died on December 5, 2009 at the age of 79.  He had a tremendous influence on my life – both directly and indirectly.  Directly, through his own writings which I’ve read, and indirectly through the writings of many successful leaders that he’s mentored and I’ve learned from, including Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, Anthony Robbins, and dozens more.

His was a rags to riches story.  By age 25 he was stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of debt and despair.  Then he met John Earl Shoaff, a wealthy and successful business owner who took an interest in Jim and led him in a personal development process that literally changed every aspect of his life.  By age 31, Jim was a millionaire.

Jim’s success didn’t stop at age 31.  He went on to become incredibly successful in business and wealthy beyond his imagination.  Gratefully, he felt led to share his success principles with others. After all, Jim himself didn’t know how to succeed in life until someone took enough interest to show him.

While Jim was regarded as a business philosopher, the success wisdom he shared weren’t secrets or new ideas that he developed himself.  To him, they were fundamental principles that anyone can discover and implement for themselves.

From his own experience, and that of hundreds of other successful people he studied, he concluded that success can’t truly be pursued, only attracted. In his third book, Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle, Jim said:

To have more, we must first become more.

In other words, success isn’t so much a product of what we do, but of who we become.  It is who we are that finally determines the results we want.

If we want a better future, the major focus of our efforts should be on becoming more than we already are.  And if we are not happy with our current results in life, then we need to begin by working on ourselves.

In Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle Jim describes the five major components to success:

1. Philosophy
2. Attitude
3. Action
4. Results
5. Lifestyle

We’ll take a more in-depth look at these five major components to success in part 2 of “How to Attract Success in Your life – A Tribute to Jim Rohn.”