How can one become part of the 1%?

im Rohn mastered many different techniques from many different areas of personal development and business: how to chisel your character, how to manage your time, how to set and accomplish your goals, how to stay motivated, how to persevere, how to face failures and draw the conclusions from them among many, many others. You decide what you read, what you watch, what you listen to, and with whom (and on what) you spend your time. Time is $$$. $$$ is power. it’s a System; ‘a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.’ Like every system, it has a set of rules; follow them religiously; and apply them as second-nature.

Answer by Michał Stawicki:

Focus on your personal philosophy.

Jim Rohn mastered many different techniques from many different areas of personal development and business: how to chisel your character, how to manage your time, how to set and accomplish your goals, how to stay motivated, how to persevere, how to face failures and draw the conclusions from them among many, many others.

But he didn’t attribute his life transition to any of those various elements. He considered the change in his personal philosophy as the first and basic reason for his success.

It is the single most important factor to your wellbeing and happiness

It’s the key to your life and your purpose on this planet. It can transform anything you touch into gold. Mind you, money is not the only indicator of success. Currency represents the multitude of exchanges that take place at any given moment in our society. If you can present your achievements in monetary value, everybody immediately recognize its worth.

For example, my personal philosophy allowed me to shed some fat and become the fittest I have been in my life.

I didn’t monetize this experience very much. I published a book sharing my experiences, but I priced it at only $1 and after several months, I was able to give the book away for free. I created a free coaching plan and wrote a few articles about weight loss.

I didn’t make a lot of money from those activities, but being fit and healthy indirectly provided me with thousands of dollars. Because I changed my diet and exercise regime, I had a lot more energy than before. I was able to marry my day job with simultaneously writing and publishing books. For over two years now, I’ve been working 13+ hours almost every day.

Begin immediately

If you aren’t satisfied with your life, I urge you: start working on your personal philosophy immediately. Yes, you can do it. You can learn to govern the way your mindset develops in the same way you learned to govern your hand movements. You decide whether or not to reach for a hamburger or a salad. You can also decide what you read, what you watch, what you listen to, and with whom you spend your time.

Your brain is bombarded with millions of impulses all the time. It is busy interpreting them all the time. You can take control of the natural processes of absorbing and interpreting the outside data.

What is a personal philosophy?

This simplistic definition is enough: “A system a person forms for conduct of life.”

Now let’s consider what this definition implies. It applies to a person, a human being. If you are one, you qualify.

Everyone has a personal philosophy. We are constructed that way. No matter if you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a housewife and mother of six. It’s an integral part of human construction. It’s not even like a kidney or leg, which you can live without. And just as having a leg or kidney is not an indication of success, the same is true with personal philosophy.

Rockefeller had his own and a couch potato also has his own, which states: “I value beer, TV, and my couch more than anything else in my life.” This sentence is at his core and dictates his thoughts and actions. It shapes who he is.

“Conduct of life” is not some gimmick, a smart technique, or a trick you can pull out of your sleeve and use to improve a specific situation. The right personal philosophy will help you in all of life’s situations. The wrong one will hinder you.

And it’s a system, “a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.” It’s not karma or magic. It’s not fate or destiny beyond your influence. Like every system, it has a set of rules.

I consider that personal philosophy’s system to consist of your past experiences and their interpretation in your mind, plus your input sources and an internal interpretation of them.

These are the only things in the universe you need to work on to change your future. The only things you really have the power over. Change your input sources, change the interpretation you give to the incoming data, and it will change you.

The definition says that a person “forms” her philosophy. You do it all the time and have been doing it almost since you were born. You have your senses and they are constantly absorbing information. You process the data and give it meaning all the time. Your existence itself utilizes those components. It is as natural as breathing.

Instill your own filters

The human brain is a gigantic filtering mechanism. You register 100 million impulses from your senses every second. Your brain remembers every single image, sound, smell, and body sensation you experience throughout your life. Your memory capacity is practically infinite.

But in order to keep our feeble conscious mind sane, the part of the brain called the reticular formation filters out more than 99 percent of those memories. This way your ego is not overloaded with the raw data and can focus on higher-level activities like abstract thinking.

What penetrates your conscious mind is the carefully chosen set of data that your brain thinks is relevant to you or crucial for your survival. For example, sudden noise has a wide motorway reserved for your filtering mechanism. It almost always goes through filters and causes an automatic fear reaction.

Control your input data sources, control your self-talk and who you spend time with and you will instill new filters in your brain.

Conclussion

Your essence, your thoughts, and actions are also dictated by your philosophy, the way you conduct your life.

Ditch other worries. If you are not in the place you’d like to be in your life, focus on fixing your personal philosophy. Do it and you will see results in all other areas as well.

Action ideas for daily habits:

Data sources:

Listen to one podcast episode.

Listen to audio book for at least ten minutes.

Watch one video on a specialized YouTube channel.

Watch one TED talk.

Read one chapter of the Bible (or The Holy Scripture of your religion; or read it for five minutes).

Read ten (or just two) pages of a good book (or read for ten minutes).

Read a single specialized blog post.

Read a single random blog post (just type an interesting topic into Google).

Read one article from a professional magazine.

Interpretation:

Join and start using Coach.me to track your habits (interactions bonus: follow other people’s entries and comment on them).

Answer one insightful question a day (the best way: on paper).

Keep a gratitude journal.

Start a blog and work on it every day (not necessarily post daily, just make working on your blog a part of your routine).

Keep a journal.

Pray or meditate for five minutes.

Interactions:

Spend ten minutes in an online community.

Text a friend (or a few of them).

Write a blog comment.

Join Twitter and do one of the following: retweet a single message, follow one new person, send a message to one person.

Make a phone call (or two, or three).