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       First Lesson

       “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.

       Failure is not a single cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight.

       Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment repeated every day.”

      The first lesson from Jim Rohn: “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day. Failure is not a single cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment repeated every day.”

      It’s interesting to me when you think about that lesson, and it’s certainly a lesson that we can all apply. It’s the understanding of how we get to where we get. People will wake up one day and they’ll say, “I’m 30 pounds overweight.” Well, you didn’t wake up 30 pounds heavier than when you went to bed. People will wake up one day and they’re dead broke, or people will wake up one day and they’re divorced, or people will wake up one day and something happens, right? I think that the interesting thing about what Jim was teaching is that it doesn’t just happen in one cataclysmic event. In fact, he says it’s errors in judgment, just a few errors in judgment repeated every day. The direction to failure and the direction to success is directly impacted by what you do every day. In fact, in both of those teachings about failure and about success, he uses the same two words: every day.

      What we do each and every day takes us to a place of either failure or success. One of the ways that I boil this down myself is in what I call a little equation that produces big results, and it’s simply this: your short-term tasks multiplied by time equals your long-term accomplishments.

      Think about what you do in the short-term. This could be a day or a week. Of course, Jim mentioned every day. Your short-term tasks multiplied by time that daily task, that daily thing, that daily practice, or that daily error in judgment – multiplied by time one week, two weeks, one month, one year, five years – brings you to your long-term results. This is a fantastic lesson for us to understand.

      What I want you to think about from this lesson is this: where am I today and how did I get there? If you’re successful in a particular area, look at what got you to become successful. If you are a failure in a particular area, ask yourself what happened repeatedly over time, maybe even every day that brought you to this point of failure. If you’re willing to take responsibility for being successful or being a failure at where you are, it becomes very powerful because if it’s true that wherever you are today is the sum of the things that you’ve done up until now, then it’s also true that wherever you want to go, whatever success you want to achieve is also going to be determined by what you do every day from here on out.

      It’s such an amazing practical principle of doing things over and over and over again. If you do things like errors in judgment, as Jim called them, over a period of time, you end up a failure. If you practice great things, if you practice successful principles every day, if you practice discipline every day, then over the course of time, you become successful.