Do This Now So You Can Enjoy an Easier and More Successful Life Later

So when I was growing up, every once in a while I would complain about something to my dad. Can you remember the days when you were growing up and you would say something to your mom or your dad? You were whining, you were sucking your thumb, you were complaining about something or whatever it was, the way you called it. One day my dad looked at me and he said something that I have never forgotten. He said, robert, there is no easy way to handle a hard situation. Today we're going to be talking about the aspect of what does it really mean to stand on your own two feet? Because I have learned this and it is one of the most important truths I've ever learned in my whole life. If you are easy on yourself, life will be hard on you. But if you're hard on yourself, life will be easy on you. I'm Dr. Robert Rohm and we're going to jump in and talk about ways to make our life better by being a little bit harder on ourselves up front so we can enjoy a little bit more of an easy or successful life later on.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

So one of the most important things that all of us need to recognize, and this is painful, and this I need to tell you up front, put on your big boy pants or your big girl pants, because this information is designed to help you to be more successful. I had the opportunity to work with Zig Ziglar for many, many years. And one of Zig's famous quotes that I've already mentioned is, if you're easy on yourself, life will be hard on you. What does it mean to be easy on yourself? Sleep late, don't try. Think about daydreaming and thinking about somebody's going to come rescue you in this situation. You're going to win the lottery. Everything in life is going to magically work out. That's called being easy on yourself. If that's the way you want to live, you have every right to do that. But I promise you, life will be hard on you. However, if you're hard on yourself, what does that mean? Get a decent education. Learn to have some manners. Learn to have some self discipline. Get up, get dressed, have a job, work hard, learn about money. Learn how financial matters work. Regardless of whether or not you want to have a job or own a business, that that doesn't happen automatically. It requires reading and studying and being mentored by someone who knows how to do that. Our entire population has failed to see the opportunity of an apprenticeship. That model is pretty much dead in most areas, except I still see it in the area of plumbing. Plumbing? Yep. You see, if someone comes to your house and they're a plumber, they'll usually bring an apprentice with them. An apprentice is someone who runs to the truck and. And gets the wrench or goes to the store and gets the new equipment that they need, the new nuts and bolts and washers or whatever it is that a plumber needs. Because the plumber wants to stay focused on getting the nasty, dirty job done that he's probably making four or five hundred dollars an hour doing. But he doesn't want to stop and have to run errands. But the apprentice that's helping him or her gets the insight of learning how to do things. I know you can go to school and you can take classes on plumbing, and I'm just using this as an example, but don't miss the big idea. The big idea is I need to learn how to do this. I need someone to train me. I need to watch a YouTube video. I need to read a book. I need to get someone to mentor me. I need to take a class in school because I'm trying to teach myself something new. That's the part of the quote. If you're hard on yourself, life will be easy on you. See, please understand this. You know I care about you. And if you and I could sit down and have lunch together, I would treat. I'd buy your lunch. I'd buy you a cup of coffee or Coke or. And. And some dessert. And we would laugh and get to be good friends. But I would also tell you this. In any endeavor, hear me well. I hope you'll write this down or remember it. In any endeavor, three things have to occur. The first thing that has to occur is you're going to have to learn some new vocabulary words. You're going to have to learn words like wrench or putty or paint or.

Or. Or paintbrush or.

Equipment. Whatever it is that you're learning requires some new vocabulary words. Whether it's in school. If you're in geometry, you're going to have to learn some new vocabulary words. If you're in medical school, you're going to have to learn some new vocabulary words. Learning new vocabulary words means I'm having to learn some new information. The second thing is you're going to have to learn how systems work. All school is about systems. Some systems are a term paper. Some systems are a test every Friday. Some systems are a test every six weeks. Everybody has a different system. And learning how systems work will help you to be a much, much better person. But you have to recognize I need to learn what this system is about and how it works. And the third thing you need to learn is the personality information. What's the personality of the person you're working with? What's the personality of the person who's teaching you or guiding you? My mentor is a real high d. He's very strong emotionally and mentally, and I've learned a lot from him. I have to admit, a few times he's hurt my feelings, but I've learned a lot along the way because I understand his personality style. He never chased me away. I understood him. And I was able to learn and grow by being mentored by him for many, many years. So today and for the next few times together, I'm going to be talking about the concepts of, you know, there's no easy way to handle a hard situation. If you're easy on yourself, life's going to be hard on you. But if you're hard on yourself, life's going to be easy on you. If you're willing to move, make yourself emotionally strong. I believe your emotional state is an accurate reflection of nearly every other condition in your life. You need to get strong emotionally. So we're talking a little bit philosophy before we get into the nitty gritty of what we're actually learning. The philosophy is, okay, I got to put on my big boy pants. Got to put on my big girl pants. I have to learn to, to be harder on myself. I can't just sit back and think, one day I'm going to have to, I'm going to have big, strong muscles, Big, strong arms. Big, big muscles. Well, you're going to have to go to the gym to do that or I'm going to be able to run fast one day. Well, you're going to have to get on the track. Well, I'm going to have to, I want to learn how to be healthy. Well, you're going to have to learn how to eat right. You see, if you're hard on yourself, you'll get good results. So the first thing I just want to share and I, I, I hope this is coming across in a loving, caring manner. But it also, I'll soon be 74 years old. I have discovered this is the way life works. And if you work with life, life will be a great teacher. But if you don't work with life, life will be a very hard taskmaster because there are things we can do on the front end of life to give us a better life down the road. First thing, I want to talk to you today. Buckle up, here it comes. You need to wake up every morning and realize nobody really cares how difficult my life is. Now, let me explain that two or three times. Let me explain it two or three different ways. I'm not talking about Nobody loves you. I'm sure there are people who love you and care about you. But your life is. Are you ready for this? Your life is your life. Nobody sits around for hours every morning thinking, how. How can I make your life better? How can I make your life easier? How can I make your life more successful? That is your personal responsibility. Nobody really cares that much about the challenges and problems and difficulties you're facing. Why? Because they're not theirs. They're yours. Now, this is a big pill to swallow, but once you swallow it and once you wake up, it's going to have great ramifications. It's going to have awesome results. Let me give you a couple of examples. I wake up in the morning and I think, okay, no one is sitting around thinking about how difficult my life is. Therefore, I need to focus on. On the difficulties I'm facing in my own life. Do I have any money in my pocket? Do I have any money in the bank? I recently was reading, how much does it cost a person to be somewhat financially stable? There's an answer to that. Do you know what it is? Find out how much it cost you to live a month and multiply that times six. So let's just say it cost you $2,000 a month. Just. That's a low amount. But let's just say it costs you $2,000 a month to live, and that's your car note or your rent and your food. I'm just talking about maybe for a single person, that's a low amount. Again, I'm just trying to give you an idea. Well, six times two, the last time I checked was 12. So if you had $12,000 saved in the bank, that is a general rule of thumb that you have about six months that you can get another job or invest some money or take another class or learn how to do things better. So. But you. Nobody's thinking that about you, but you maybe need to be thinking about that for yourself. So ask yourself, okay, I'm waking up in the morning. I need to get involved in my own life. I need to realize I have difficulties, but so does everyone else. That's the good news. We're not in this alone, I promise you. Everybody you know, everybody you meet, everybody in your family, everybody with whom you'll come in contact, they have problems, they have difficulties, they have challenges, and they're not your responsibility, but yours are your responsibility. So I asked myself, okay, what are the areas of my life that I need to pay attention to? Are they in the area of relationships? Are they in the area of health? Are they in the area of finances? Find out what the area, ask yourself, where do I need to grow? And then you can begin the process. If it's finances, there are books that are written, there are seminars, there's training on how to develop my financial well being. If it's health, there's a plethora of information on the Internet about eating right and exercising. If it's about personal relationships, there's an endless amount of places you can turn. But you've got to start the process Now. I am a physically, it's to be 74 coming up in a few few weeks. I'm in pretty good shape. I don't have any medicines that I'm taking. I have no prescription medication at all.

Of course I, I'm not the, I'm not out running 10 miles every day, but I'm in fairly good health. My physician tells me, she said, I've never seen anyone whose heart is as healthy as yours to be your age. Okay. Oh, probably a lot of that has to do with eating pretty healthy. Of course I like hot dogs and hamburgers like anyone else, but I don't let that be my main food that I eat every day. So I try to eat healthy, okay, Financially, I have studied that and know how to help myself to be financially secure. If there's an old saying, if you're out go exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall. That's the general rule of economics. So I stay out of bad debt and handle finances in a way that makes sense. Again, I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. I'm trying to tell you a philosophy and an idea. The philosophy is I need to be responsible for myself. And the idea is no one is sitting around talking about how difficult my situation is, therefore I have to do something about it myself. Now, again, we're going to be talking about these in the days and weeks to come. I wanted to get this just started to give you an idea on how you can help your yourself have a better life. I am a really big believer on working extra hard on the front end of a situation so I don't have to go back and clean everything up on the end of a situation because I didn't pay attention. There have been many, many companies that have succeeded greatly in the MLM that's multi level marketing business because they spend a lot of time on the front end of a product. Let me use an example. John Grisham, as you know, is a great writer. He doesn't write books overnight. It takes weeks and weeks, months, maybe even years to write a book. But he writes it and rewrites it and rewords it and works with it until it's just like he wants it. Then when it's finished, it gets published and sells millions of copies and pretty soon it becomes a movie. Can you imagine the financial revenue that comes from the royalties of the book and the movie? That's what I'm talking about. You see, he spent all of his time on the front end, but he doesn't have to do it over and over and over and over and over and over, over and over and over again. He worked hard on it once and then he has the residual of it for a lifetime. That's what I'm talking about. Learn to focus and put the hard work on the front end of a project so you don't have to let it bite you because you didn't pay attention to details. I find very, very, very few people who are willing to do this. People say, well, let's just get started and we'll see what happens. Well, that may be okay, but as soon as you find out something goes wrong, fix it. Almost every thing you will ever see in a store is a project that someone had to work, rework, fix, tear apart, put it back together and learn the best way to do it. So then they could start duplicating it. Think about a car, for example. Cars go through an assembly line and they put them together so on the other end they come out and hopefully they've made it right. You see the work. True, I know what you're thinking. Well, sometimes they have recalls. That's because we live in an imperfect world. But they do things when put all the hard work in on the front so you can enjoy it once it's assembled. So again, these are a lot of ideas. I'm. I realize that I'm coming at you in a little bit different manner today, but, but I'm telling you, this is what will make your life better. This is what will make your life more successful.

Is in it is a immeasurable blessing in my heart in life to know I'm not looking for someone to come riding up on a horse and rescue me and tell give me the winning lottery ticket and tell me I'm going to live happily ever after. But it is a great truth to know. Okay, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to look around at things that need to get done. I'm going to have a good attitude. I'm going to recognize I might need to learn some new vocabulary words, I might need to learn some new systems. I might need to learn some more personality information so I can interact with other people and be hard on myself.

And in time, life becomes easier and easier and easier. The reason people have a challenge with this is we live in a world that we want easy to be first and we don't want hard to ever appear. My friend, heart to heart, may I say to you, that's just not reality. Reality is deal with the hard part and learn how to work through the challenges, learn how to duplicate it, learn how to make it better. If my father were here today, he would say there is no easy way how to handle a hard situation. That kind of thinking will make you a better person. It will make you wealthier, it will make you healthier, it will make you wiser. It will make and after all, that's what we're doing here in Learning to Become a wise sage. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope these ideas today have been helpful. Just glean one or two tidbits from what we talked about today and you'll continue to be on the journey of becoming a wiser person, heading down the right direction in life. I look forward to talking to you again real soon. Thank you so much.

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