Many people keep pictures of their kids on their desks. Are those pictures supposed to be reminders of what the kids look like? Are they showing off their kids for whomever comes into the office? Perhaps, but there’s an even more important reason why those pictures are there, or why they should be there. They’re to remind us of what’s at stake when we make the decisions that affect our integrity, and we make many of those decisions every day.
As a person of integrity yourself, you’ll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth, to mean what they say and to say what they mean.
Integrity is adhering to the moral principles of life. Integrity is doing things with honor. Integrity is honesty. And integrity is the glue that holds relationships together.
Integrity says, “I wish to pay fair price for all value. Getting something for nothing makes nothing of me. Getting it cheap makes me cheap.”
In your enlightened self-interest, this is one of the better affirmations you could make: “I wish to pay fair price for every value. I wish to give for everything I receive.” This is self-interest, and it’s also integrity. Why would you want to pay for every value and give for everything you receive? If you have to pay, it will make something of you. By giving, you have the integrity not to take advantage of others.
A strong relationship is a reciprocal relationship. That’s why you need to develop the ability to share. When you pass something along to someone else, whether it’s an idea, a feeling, or a resource, everybody wins. If you pick up a good idea today, pass it along. Say, “Hey, I found a book that really helped me.” Maybe the book got you thinking. Maybe it changed your health. Maybe it inspired you. Whatever benefit you received can be passed along. And in the process of passing it along, you will benefit again and again. If you share what you’ve learned with ten different people, they get to hear it once, and you get to hear it ten times. It’s probably going to do more for you than it is for them until they start the sharing process.
For me (Jim Rohn), giving seminars, writing books, and recording programs are all joys in life. They are the best investment I can make of my words, spirit, heart, soul, time, and energy. Giving seminars, writing books, and recording programs are all hard book, and from a financial standpoint, I don’t need to work so hard. But I gladly do it because I want the returns. I enjoy nothing more than to hear somebody say, “You got me started. You turned my lights on, turned my mind around, got me thinking, got me pondering… and I’ve been on track ever since.” You will hear that kind of praise (and more!) when you share. Share with your children. Share with your colleagues. Share with everybody that comes within your grasp.
Relationships are integral in creating your own success and getting where you want to go. But if you’re engaging in any relationships that are holding you back, it’s time to make a decision. In those instances, you have some important options regarding your course of action.
The first option you have is disassociating. You may, after examining your associations, come to the conclusion that there are some people from whom you most need to break away. I (Jim Rohn) am not saying that’s an easy step to take, and it’s not to be taken lightly. However, I am saying it may be an essential task. You may just have to make the hard choice not to let certain negative influences affect you any more. It could be a choice that preserves the quality of your life.
If you were to evaluate the major influences in your life that have shaped the kind of person you are, this has to be high on the list: the people and thoughts you choose to allow into your life. Mr. Shoaff gave me (Jim Rohn) a very important warning in those early days that I would like to share with you. He said, “Never underestimate the power of influence.” Indeed, the influence of those around us is so powerful! Many times we don’t even realize we’re being strongly affected because that influence generally develops over an extended period of time.
Peer pressure is an especially powerful force because it is so subtle. If you’re around people who spend all they make, chances are excellent that you’ll spend all you make. If you are around people who go to more ball games than concerts, chances are excellent that you’ll do the same thing. If you’re around people who don’t read, chances are excellent that you won’t read. People can keep nudging us off course a little at a time until, finally, we find ourselves asking, “How did I get here?” Those subtle influences need to be studied carefully if we really want our lives to turn out the way we’ve planned.
How do you identify with another person? When that person is a child, identification can be especially touch. What if you need to connect with a twelve-year-old child? You have a long gap to cross, so you’ll need to build a long bridge. Here are some ways to do that.
First, remember when you were twelve. Use your mental skills to go back in time. This is what an actor does. For each performance, he reaches back for the early hurts and emotions, the trauma and the drama, the sum total of his life. In dealing with a twelve-year-old, you’ve got to go back through all that and let it affect you one more time. Rekindle those emotions one more time.
Achieving genuine success is not a solo effort. Take bosses, for instance. How many bosses do you know who would be totally lost without their secretaries? They’re a team. One takes the spotlight, while the other is invaluable behind the scenes. One is a great idea person, the other a great detail person. They work together, or it wouldn’t work at all.
That’s the case in any endeavor. You simply can’t be successful by yourself. With that in mind, I (Jim Rohn) would like to offer some tips that have been effective for me in building relationships. Most of these tips relate to building good working relationships with colleagues, vendors, prospects, future clients, present clients, and past clients. But remember, regardless of our professions, we are all people, and many of these tips work well for building other relationships, too.
It’s easy, when you finally find yourself in a good job, to stop pursuing mental development. Have you heard about the accelerated learning curve? From birth up until the time we are about eighteen, our learning curve is dramatic, and our capacity to learn during this period is just staggering. We learn a tremendous amount very fast. We learn language, culture, history, science, mathematics… everything!
For some people, the accelerated learning process will continue on. But for most, it levels off when they get their first job. If there are no more exams to take, if there’s no demand to get out paper and pencil, why read any more books? Of course, you will learn some things by experience. Just getting out there–sometimes doing it wrong and sometimes doing it right–you will learn. But can you imagine what would happen if you kept up an accelerated learning curve all the rest of your life? Can you imagine what you could learn to do, the skills you could develop, the capacities you could have? So here’s what I (Jim Rohn) am asking you to do: be that unusual person who keeps up his learning curve.
