Mr. Rohn calls our Personal Philosophy the “set of the sail.” He has an amazing 4-hour video here – I’ve watched it dozens of times – this sentence is at 28:24 and the section ends at 36:31 – only 8-minutes in this particular section titled Personal Philosophy.

This video, and this 8-minute section changed my life.  Here’s a summary of these 8 minutes:

Our philosophy is the major determining factor in how our lives work out – our personal philosophy is how we think and process ideas.

In the winter the goose can only fly south – what if south doesn’t look too good?  Tough. Humans can go anywhere we want – how? By how we think, how we exercise our mind, how we process ideas. It all starts from our Philosophy.

How do we work on our personal philosophy? At 31:00 he says: “We’ve got the Seed, the Soil, the Rain, the Sunshine, the Seasons, and the Miracle of Life.” How do we turn all this stuff into promise, lifestyle, dreams, future, possibilities? It starts with Philosophy! Is it possible to take some of each of the stuff that’s available and turn it into food, value, nourishment, something unique that no other lifeform can do? Yes!

The Seed, The Soil, The Rain, The Sunshine, the Seasons are equal to the Economy, Banks, Money, Schools, your Job, etc. Your personal philosophy will determine what you do with the seed, soil, rain, seasons…

The paragraph that changed my personal outlook / philosophy:

You don’t need a better economy or a better market – in fact, when it comes to this stuff: the seed, soil, rain, seasons…this is all you’ve got! (34:00). Now, what if you blame this stuff?  Then you’re blaming all you’ve got! If you blame the economy, and the schools, and the teachers, and the preachers, and the marketplace, and the company, and company policy – what else is there? When some people get through their blame list there’s nothing left….that’s all there is! And, if you blame the only thing you’ve got to work with…it’s called mistake colossal. Why? Because you don’t understand this is all you’ve got to work with – you don’t change the sunshine, the seasons, the rain….A guy says “I’ll take 4 summers, 9 Springs, no winters” Noooooooooo, you can’t fool with this stuff. Then what do you change and work on? Your philosophy. As soon as we realize it starts with US and our philosphy – real life change begins to happen (35:57)

“We control the set of the sail – a little refinement of the set of our sale can start the process of life change. Some people do so little thinking they don’t even have their sail up….you can imagine where they’ll end up at the end of this month, this year, this season…”