The poor farm boy from Idaho

A young man age 25 came to the sudden realization that he was unhappy with how his life had turned out. He had grown up poor in an obscure Idaho town of 5,000 by the Snake River. After quitting college after year one, he had gotten his first job, and married at 28. He quickly found himself behind on his promises, pennies in his pocket, and creditors were calling.

And then his whole life changed. . .

Six years later—at the age of 31—he's a millionaire. This is the story of Jim Rohn, and if you haven't heard it, its a good one.

What changed?

In short, Jim Rohn met a mentor (named Earl Schoaff) who compelled him to change his life philosophy. Jim learned the importance of curating a personal life philosophy, the power of personal development, and ultimately achieved massive success.

These changes inevitably caused Jim to have new IDEAS which ultimately manifested themselves in behavior and reality. Ideas, in this way, are the currency of our brains.

This tremendous reversal of fortune is captured in Jim Rohn's landmark book The Art of Exceptional Living. If you're so inclined, you can pick up the audiobook here, or read my notes here.

Ideas: The Currency of Your Brain

Today we will focus on IDEAS, and their importance to your life's trajectory. At DBT Ventures, we place tremendous value on ideas and work to nurture our best ideas to full potential. 

Ideas are so intriguing because they influence our actions, and our actions determine how life works out. Therefore, inspecting how we SOURCE ideas is a worthwhile endeavor.

Let's start with an example. Here is Elon Musk's description of an idea he had and his subsequent thought process and action:

"Historically, all rockets have been expensive, so therefore, in the future, all rockets will be expensive. But actually that’s not true. If you say, what is a rocket made of? It’s made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber. And you can break it down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components? And if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be? And I was like, wow, okay, it’s really small—it’s like 2% of what a rocket costs. So clearly it would be in how the atoms are arranged—so you’ve got to figure out how can we get the atoms in the right shape much more efficiently. And so I had a series of meetings on Saturdays with people, some of whom were still working at the big aerospace companies, just to try to figure out if there’s some catch here that I’m not appreciating. And I couldn’t figure it out. There doesn’t seem to be any catch. So I started SpaceX."

Source: Tim Urban's blog, Wait But Why: The Cook and the Chef (warning: this blog post consumed me for a week)

Okay, let's re-read Elon's last sentence: "So I started SpaceX." Action. And it all started with an idea: thinking about rockets being expensive, and really digging into that assumption. The rest is history in the making.

Quotes

There a few quotes from Jim Rohn that really describe the value of ideas well:

  • "It is because we lack ideas that we forego success."

  • "If you experience a good idea, capture it! Write it down in your journal."

  • "When the idea is hot and the emotion is strong. . . act. Otherwise, the law of diminishing intent will work against you."

  • "Behavior is mostly influenced by ideas. Ideas are mostly influenced by education. Education is mostly influenced by the people with whom we associate."

Ideas are most impacted by two factors: 1) what we study within our own personal development, and 2) who we associate with. The good news: both of these factors are entirely within your control.

Call to action:

  1. What is your personal development habit? What time do you study and read each day?

  2. Take inventory of your friends and apply Chapter 8 from the book which will remove, reduce or expand the time you spend with positive associations.