Here’s why I read books

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Finally my new book arrived last week! “The Seasons of Life” by Jim Rohn. I just started reading it. Today I just want to share with you a few thoughts that I collected from reading the first chapter of the book.

The Effect on Environment on Circumstances

“All of us are the sum total of all those people and events taht have touched us since first entereing the world.”

“What we are and what we have, we have slowly brought upon ourselves. It is the human tendency to blame someone or something else for our lack of progress.”

“What happened even as recently as yesterday is no longer of any consequence, unless we choose to allow it to be.”

“What we have been is an established and unchangeable fact. What we can yet become is an unlimited, boundless opportunity.”

“The greatest value of the past is how wisely we invest it in the future.”

“One of the great challenges of life is to have both the wisdom to recognize those sources of negativity, and the courage to cast them aside, if necessary.”

“There is little difference between one who has given up his life and one who has given up his hope.”

“One of the disappointments of life is that friends will abandon those who begin to change their life for the better, and yet those who remain behind will say “he has forgotten us now that he lives well”. It is those who accept their mediocrity who choose to “remain behind”.

“We tend to accumulate and cling to ideas that limit our progress.”

“In countless ways, we wander through life allowing people and their attitudes and ideas to mold our character – people whose attitudes and ideas have brought themselves little in the way of progress, productivity, or happiness.”

“Friendships are indeed valuable, but so it is the human life and it is foolish to fall short of our potential because we feared alienating a good friend.”

“IEven if the conversation does reveal solutions, we make no effort to communicate them to those who can possible implement them, accepting things for the way they are.”

“If our attitudes, results, or happiness is to ever improve, we must exercise the painful discipline required for “weeding-out” the garden of our life”

“The improvement of our personal circumstances means that we must learn to do what the failures are simply not willing to do.”

“Better than many of the wrong friends are a few of the right friends. Better than a few of the wrong friends are no friends at all!”

“Life is a delicate maneuver of selection, rejection, review and change. Each person entering our world brings either a contribution or destruction.”

“The words, opinions and comments of others are constantly taking their toll on each of us.”

“A sour face does not come as an accident. It is the result of sour thoughts.”

“As we become adults, we then seem to tend to choose to associate with those most like us. the weak attract the weak; the poor are most comfortable with the poor; the successful are drawn toward those who are successful; those of optimistic viewsand attitudes select those of their own kind. What we have become largely determines the kind of people, events, books and lifestyle that we select.”

“If humans were ever going to change their personal and financial circumstances from one level up to another, we must accept the fact that such progress must consist of “doing” as well as “un-doing”. Many of the events and people who currently influence us must be sacrificed.”

“The value of surrounding yourself with the right friends is immeasurably awesome. The danger of surrounding yourself with the wrong friends can be devastating.  – “Friendship in proportion to the right personal growth from that friendship.”

Here you go, just a few phrases that I found interesting from the first chapter of the book. Where else can you get your hands on such knowledge!?Give some thought to them and maybe we can discuss them later! I would love to!