The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle
Jim Rohn influenced a generation of self-help gurus and this book lays out his "five major keys for the life puzzle." We'll take a quick look at your life philosophy, what you're doing with the 86,400 ticks each day, how to finish before you start as you design your ideal life and other such goodness.
Big Ideas
- What is your Life philosophy?What is it?
- 86,400 ticks of the clockYou hear that clock ticking?
- Finish before you startCan you see it?
- Design the futureAnd live into it.
- Pain weights: discipline (= ounces) vs. regret (= tons)Ounces and tons.
- Ticking Clocks and hearing problemsAnd hearing problems.
“There are always just a few important principles that account for most of the progress we make in our lives. It is these “basics” that have the greatest effect on our health, our happiness, and our bank accounts. This is not to suggest that there are only a few life-changing ideas that will affect us, for surely there are many. What I am suggesting, however, is that you begin your search by focusing on the five fundamentals we will examine in this book. It is these few among the many that will account for the biggest share of the results you will achieve.
You will never be able to master every aspect of your life. To try to become the master of every detail of your life will only lead to frustration. Instead, why not go after the few among the many, the few that will make the most difference, the fundamental subjects that will have the greatest impact in determining the quality of your existence?”
~ Jim Rohn from The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle
Focusing on the few among the many.
That’s always a wise place to start!
Jim Rohn was an inspiration to many of today’s leading self-development teachers—from Tony Robbins and Les Brown to Mark Victor Hanson and countless others.
In this book, he shares his “Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle.” They are, in brief, creating a life PHILOSOPHY, getting your ATTITUDE right, taking disciplined, diligent ACTION, producing solid RESULTS and optimizing your LIFESTYLE.
It’s a quick-reading book packed with a bunch of quotable goodness. As always, let’s take a quick look at a handful of my favorite Big Ideas!
Download MP3
Download PDFFor things to change, we must change—that is one of life’s fundamentals.
Get the Book
Listen to the PodcastWhat is your Life philosophy?
“Everything is within our reach if we will read the books, use the journals, practice the disciplines, and wage a new and vigorous battle against neglect. These are some of the fundamental activities that lead not only to the development of a new philosophy but to a new life filled with joy and accomplishment. Each new and positive activity weakens the grip of failure and steers us ever closer to the destination of our choice. Each new, disciplined step taken toward success strengthens our philosophical posture and increases our chances of achieving a well-balanced life. But the first step in realizing this worthy achievement lies in becoming the master of our ship and the captain of our soul by developing a sound personal philosophy.”
What’s yourlife philosophy? What are your guiding principles by which you navigate your life?
That’s the first key: “Becoming the master of our ship and the captain of our soul by developing a sound personal philosophy.”
Reminds me of Pete Carroll, Coach of the Seattle Seahawks. His big breakthrough came after being fired by the Patriots when he was reading John Wooden’s book and realized it took Wooden 16 (!) years of coaching at UCLA before he won his first championship. But, once he figured it out, Wooden was nearly unbeatable—winning 10 national championships in the next 12 years.
So, what was the “it” that Wooden figured out?
His winning philosophy.
Realizing this, Carroll IMMEDIATELY threw himself into articulating HIS winning philosophy—cataloging all the lessons he’d learned and seeing the keys to his prior success that became his “Win Forever” philosophy. With that philosophy clearly articulated, he proceeded to *crush* it at USC and then at Seattle—taking a team that had won a total of 9 games in the 2 seasons before he arrived and leading them to the Super Bowl a few seasons later. (= awesome)
So, back to YOU.
What’s YOUR winning philosophy?
What do you believe?
What do you do when you’re most on? What are you committed to in your life?
Craft your winning philosophy. And live it!
Taken one step at a time, all the things that success and happiness require are actually quite easy to do.
86,400 ticks of the clock
“Today brings to each of us 1,440 minutes; 86,400 ticks of the clock. Both the poor and the wealthy have the same 24 hours of opportunity. Time favors no one. Today merely says, “Here I am. What are you going to do with me?” How well we use each day is largely a function of attitude. With the right attitude we can seize the day and make it a point of new beginning. Today does not care about yesterday’s failures or tomorrow’s regrets. It merely offers the same precious gift—another 24 hours—and hopes that we will use it wisely.”
24 hours.
1,440 minutes.
86,400 ticks of the clock.
= One precious day.
How are youusing each moment of each day?
As Aristotle tells us: “We live in deeds, not years; In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs.”
And Benjamin Franklin reminds us: “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.”
So…
Do YOU love life?
If so, then don’t squander your time—that’s the very stuff life’s made of!!
Let’s do a quick inventory: Where are you wasting time? Is it online? Watching TV? Checking your iPhone 100 times a day? (Just learned that’s literally the average for most people. WOW.)
Those moments and minutes and hours add up. Fast.
One of the keys to optimizing our lives (and solving life’s puzzle!) is to STOP wasting those moments and apply them to constructive behaviors like reading (Rohn asks a bunch of times: How many books have you read over the last 90 days?!), journaling, exercising, meditating and all that other goodness.
Here’s a fun game I like to play. It’s based on Stephen Covey’s four quadrants of time management. Here’s a super quick overview (see this video + Notes on 7 Habits for more).
First, let’s start with a look at Covey’s handy-dandy four quadrant model for time management:
Urgent | Not Urgent | |
Important | Quadrant I Time spent in: fire drills, crises, deadlines Results: stress, burnout | Quadrant II Time spent in: growth, exercise, relationships Results: happiness :) |
Not Important | Quadrant III Time spent in: pressing stuff, interruptions Results: short-term focus | Quadrant IV: Time spent in: time wasters Results: you’re fired! |
As you can see, Covey organizes things by whether they are urgent or not urgent and important or not important. Quadrants I, II, III and IV.
Here’s the game I like to play.
Start by documenting the things you do in Quadrants II and IV.
First, Quadrant II stuff: What are your deeply restorative (Not Urgent but super (!) Important) things you do to keep you plugged in? This is stuff like exercise, meditation, journaling, reading, quiet time with the family, etc. These are YOUR KEYS to optimal living. The fundamentals of your life philosophy.
Now, Quadrant IV. These things are not urgent nor are they important. When you engage in these activities you are WASTING TIME. Period. For me, that’s stuff like checking ESPN or Google news x times a days, constantly looking at my email or social feeds, etc. Not urgent. Not important. WASTED time. What are your Quadrant IV activities? Know them.
OK. Got your two lists? Quadrant II goodness and Quadrant IV lameness?
Sweet. Now, here’s the key to the game: See if you can SWAP your soul-killing time-wasting activities for soul-nourishing awesomeness. It’s simple. But HUGE.
Every time you feel tempted to waste time on say, checking.your.social.feed.yet.again, can you step away from your computer and take 10 deep breaths? Every time you find yourself going to look at the news again can you decide to go for a walk (or workout or whatever) instead?
This may sound simple (and it is) but it’s RIDICULOUSLY powerful.
Swap your time wasting activities for soul-nourishing ones and your life will explode in awesomeness. Try it. :)
P.S. This might be a solid Idea in your life philosophy. It is in mine.
With the right attitude human beings can move mountains. With the wrong attitude they can be crushed by the smallest grain of sand.
Each of us will be somewhere in the next twelve months; the question we must ask ourselves is where?
The punishment for excessive rest is mediocrity.
Finish before you start
“Everything in the world around us was finished in the mind of its creator before it was started. The houses we live in, the cars we drive, our clothing, our furnishings—all of these things began with an idea. Each idea was then studied, refined, and perfected, either mentally or on paper, before the first nail was driven or the first piece of cloth was cut. Long before the idea was converted into a physical reality, the mind had clearly envisioned the finished product.”
Amen. As Rohn says, “All things must be finished before they can be started.”
Stephen Covey agrees. He made it his second habit: “Begin with the End in Mind.”
Robin Sharma also agrees. He calls it “Blueprinting” and says: “All I’m saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process ‘blueprinting’ because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.”
You have to SEE where you’re headed.
We don’t need *absolute* clarity on every single detail and the perfect, precise plan to get there (that’s just a perfectionist’s excuse for never doing anything). But we do need to work out our imagination muscles and get fired up about where we’re headed!
That’s a key part of the second puzzle piece: ATTITUDE.
How’s yours? What’s your vision for your life? You excited/hopeful/optimistic/etc.?!
In the end, our lives will be judged not by the things we began, but by the things that our effort and resolve brought to a successful conclusion.
Design the future
“There is a very special emotional magic that takes place when we design the future and set new goals with a specific purpose in mind. As we see the future clearly in our mind’s eye we experience a level of excitement in anticipation of the day when all that we dream will become a reality. The more clearly we see the vision of the future, the more we are able to borrow from its inspiration. This borrowed inspiration finds its way into our conversations, our energy level, our relationships, and our attitude. The more excited we become by our future dreams, the easier it is to develop the necessary disciplines and make the refinements to our philosophy. In other words, our dreams inspire us to think and act and feel and become exactly the kind of person we must be to realize our dreams.”
What’s your ideal future look like?
In 1 year?
In 3 years?
In 5 years?
In 10 years?
In xx years as you look back over your life with your last breath?
We need to dream. We need to believe we can bring those dreams to life. And we need to get EXCITED about all that’s in store for us as we optimize and actualize.
So, what fires youup?!
Get clear on that. And ROCK IT.
P.S. If you draw a blank when you look into the future and try to see all the goodness that’s in store, fear not! Your imagineering muscles are just a little out of shape. Don’t go numb yourself with another glass of wine or TV show or whatever. Just hit the vision gym. Work out your imagination muscles. You WILL get stronger.
Fun story: The veryfirst person I coached (in 2001 shortly after selling my first business) was my childhood friend Dan Keller. (To put it in perspective, Dan’s 2-year old brother, Kev-dog spent the night at my house the night Dan was born.)
Dan was an All-American baseball player at UCLA. (Go Bruins!) He worked for me at my first biz, eteamz. After selling eteamz to The Active Network, he moved to San Diego with me and helped me transition the company. After awhile, he was ready to transition to his next thing. I can vividly remember our first “coaching” session at a Taco Bell. (HAH!) I gave him some journal exercises to crystallize his vision for the future. (A eulogy exercise and other goodness.)
Long story a little shorter, Dan showed up at our next session saying that the journal exercises I gave him were among the hardest things he’d ever done. (HAH!) He’d simply never tried to imagine his future like that. But he kept at it, strengthening his vision muscles and going on to take the steps in creating the next version of his optimal life.
(Thanks for all your inspiration and incredible support over the decades, Dan. I appreciate you!)
The finished product we foresee guides us in our present efforts, making the attainment of the better future an inevitable conclusion. We become pulled by the future and guided by the past because we have chosen to take intelligent action in the present.
Pain weights: discipline (= ounces) vs. regret (= tons)
“We all say that we want to succeed, but sooner or later our level of activity must equal our level of intent. Talking about achievement is one thing; making it happen is something altogether different.
Some people seem to take more joy in talking about success than they do in achieving it. It is as though their ritualistic chant about someday lulls them into a false sense of security, and all the things that they should be doing and could be doing on any given day never seem to get done.
The consequences of this self-delusion have their own inevitable price. Sooner or later the day will arrive when they will look back with regret at all those things they could have done, and meant to do, but left undone. That is why we must push ourselves in the present to experience the milder pain of discipline. We will all experience one pain or the other—the pain of discipline or the pain of regret—but the difference is that the pain of discipline weighs only ounces while the pain of regret weighs tons.”
This is one of Jim Rohn’s most classic gems.
“We will all experience one pain or the other—the pain of discipline or the pain of regret—but the difference is that the pain of discipline weighs only ounces while the pain of regret weighs tons.”
It’s not always *fun* to do the right thing moment.to.moment. In fact, there’s often a bit of what one may call “pain” in disciplining ourselves to DO THE RIGHT THING RIGHT NOW.
But guess what?
You’re going to need to pay the price at some point. We can either choose to pay it ouncesat a time—with the discipline to do the right thing moment to moment to moment. OR, we can pay the price in TONS as we look back at our life with a deep regret (and despair!) that WE COULD HAVE been awesome if we’d only had a little more discipline in those micro moments.
Now, this isn’t depressing. It’s EXCITING news.
Our destiny is shaped one micro decision at a time. No one decision to live in integrity with our highest ideals is *that* big of a deal. We just need to get better and better doing the right thing moment to moment. So, let’s!!!!
What we know and how we feel merely determine our potential for achievement. Whether we actually achieve our goals is ultimately determined by our activity.
Ticking Clocks and hearing problems
“The most dangerous aspect of the comfort zone is that it seems to affect our hearing. The more comfortable we are, the more oblivious we become to the sound of the ticking clock. Because there will always seem to be so much time ahead of us, we unwittingly squander the present moment. We use it for entertaining ourselves rather than for preparing ourselves…
Each of us must pause frequently to remind ourselves that the clock is ticking. The same clock that began to tick from the moment we drew our first breath will also someday cease.”
86,400 ticks of the clock.
Every.single.day.
Shhhhhh…. Can you hear them?
Pay attention. Because the number of ticks we’re each blessed to have is finite.
As Rohn advises, living in our comfort zone seems to create some hearing loss. We forget that we (NEWSFLASH!) will not live forever. Each moment is PRECIOUS.
Rohn tells some great stories about the two-minute warning in football and how a team that’s behind will suddenly CRUSH IT—bringing a *ton* of energy and vitality and urgency to their offense and often do amazing things.
We need to bring that level of hustle and mojo to our lives. NOW. Like TODAY. Every day.
The Tools guys (see Notes) tell us the same thing. Their fifth tool is called “Jeopardy” and its intention is to help us exercise our Willpower to DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE NOW.
Think of the music that plays during the final Jeopardy question—letting the contestants know that their time is limited. (Listen to it here now.)
That music is ALWAYS playing. We want to hear it, reminding us that THIS MOMENT is the time to live fully.
Can you hear the music? The clock ticking? Those are the precious moments of your life.
Here’s to living them fully!!
Personal development is not always an easy matter, but the worst days experienced by those who give attention to the affairs of self-development are better than the best days of those who do not.
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