Summary of “7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness”: Welcome opportunities are invariably presented to those who know how to develop their talents, who have ambition and who, through discipline and perseverance, show initiative; discover the seven strategies for wealth and happiness: unleashing the power of goals, seeking knowledge, learning how to change, controlling your finances, mastering time, surrounding yourself with winners, learning the art of living well.
By Jim Rohn, 1986, 204 pages.
Note: This review is written by guest, Charles Hutin. I’ll let him introduce himself:
Passionate about personal development, I decided to create my blog, Vie Explosive, where I talk about personal development, finances, health, entrepreneurship. So thank you Olivier for the advice from Blogueur Pro (Advice I apply!) and for letting me participate in Life-Changing Books.
In my search for new knowledge, I recently read the excellent book, 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness by Jim Rohn, who is well known in the world of personal development. Here is its review.
Chronicle and summary of the book “7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness”
The author left college after one year of attending, thinking that he knew enough: he was eager to work. He acknowledges that it was one of the major mistakes of his youth.
At 25, Jim Rohn was destitute; his life was like most people’s. He had been working for six years already and decided to take stock: he had debts, was married, his salary was only $57 a week and it wasn’t increasing. The promises he made to his wife were a mere memory. He was ambitious and worked hard. He thought it would make him successful: second mistake.
And he thought of going into business but didn’t take action because he had no capital. It was then that he met someone who would change the course of his life: Mr. Earl Shoaff.
Mr. Shoaff taught him all his strategies for success in life, and he implemented them. He became a distinguished speaker, known around the world.
In his book, he teaches us 7 strategies that allowed him to succeed.
The advice is based on 5 key words: Fundamentals, Happiness, Wealth, Success and Discipline.
1st strategy: Unleash the power of goals.
Goals are clearly defined dreams that motivate you to take action. If you know what you want, and really want it, you will inevitably find a way to get it.
Ask yourself, “What really motivates me?”.
Jim Rohn distinguishes 4 motivational factors:
- Recognition
- Feeling of success
- Family
- Benevolence
Setting goals: there are 2 types of goals according to him.
- Long-term goals: What do I want to do in the next 10 years? As soon as a goal is achieved, you should set a new one.
- Short-term goals.
Make sure your failures are painful. We can understand that if it hurts, we don’t want to suffer it again. However, if it’s painless, then failure will be a formality.
You must aim high, high enough to demand an effort from yourself, to get you to take action, but goals shouldn’t be out of reach, otherwise you’ll become discouraged.
Ask! Ask what you want but do it intelligently. Have faith in yourself and in your goals.
Priorities: When you set goals, you need priority and secondary ones. Whenever you set yourself a goal, ask yourself: “Is this a major or minor goal?” in order to clearly identify the goal’s priority.
Concentration: Give maximum concentration to everything you do. If you want to daydream (and that’s important), do it in periods you’ve set aside especially for that. The rest of the time, concentrate yourself. You can’t imagine what effect it will have on your life.
2nd strategy: Seek knowledge.
It’s important to learn how to grasp anything that has real value around you
Study! Just because you’ve stopped going to school doesn’t mean you have to stop learning! Create a diary. At the end of each week, spend some time thinking about what happened in the last 7 days. Analyze your failures.
How to gain wisdom? Two possibilities in this case:
- Reflection: Look at the events that have unfolded in your life and learn from them. Doing so will teach you a lot. An experience can become a marketable commodity, a source of wealth, but it will only be so if you take the time to reflect on the experience and make a note of it in your mind. Once you do that, you will turn your experiences into something worthwhile.
- Learn from the experience of others: Learn from others’ failures, and do not repeat their mistakes. There are many ways to learn from others:
- Books and cassettes: all successful people read, read and re-read. It’s their curiosity that drives them to read. They want to know, and they are constantly looking for new ways to thrive. Leaders are readers (Olivier’s note: and if you don’t have time to read, check out my video How to read without reading).
- Listen to the wisdom of some and the follies of others: choose a successful person and invite them to dinner. Ask them questions and listen.
- Observe the winners and the losers: you want to get a promotion? Observe your superiors and how successful people behave.
If you don’t have a lot of time, try to spend 30 minutes a day learning.
“Repetition is the mother of learning”.
Each month set aside a portion of your income to invest in your quest for knowledge. Use this money to develop the giant sleeping in you.
3rd strategy: Learn to change.
If someone gives you a million dollars, you would do your best to become a millionaire. A very prosperous man said: “If you took all the money in the world and divided equally among everyone, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before”.
Go beyond yourself to get more than you already have. To gain more, you have to prove your worth and acquire it. Want to be above average? So, have an above average smile, worry about your neighbor and develop an intense desire to succeed.
You don’t wish for something better, you become it. The problem is in you, so stop blaming others!
Here are 3 limitations that are self-imposed:
- Procrastination: it’s dangerous, it causes stagnation. Putting everything off is dangerous because at the end of the day, days accumulate, and the result is catastrophic at the end of the year.
- Blame: we point the finger when the problem lies within because we defend our ego. We don’t have to face our weaknesses or failings.
- Excuses: people go to great lengths to avoid reality. You should ask yourself, “What are you going to do, starting today, to improve yourself and improve your life?”.
If you don’t get rid of certain limitations that you have imposed on yourself, the next 5 years will be similar to the last 5 years.
To progress, you have to be disciplined! We cannot change someone; they decide to change.
How to change? We can’t change overnight. It’s an evolutionary process of small, almost imperceptible changes.
Learn to discipline yourself: Only discipline will allow you to make consistent efforts that can form the habits that will lead you to success. Start by taking on small challenges, follow through with them, then gradually increase the difficulty. For example, if you want to lose weight, then eat your bread without butter: “Great oaks from little acorns grow”.
4th strategy: Control your finances.
If money becomes the object of your love, and you pursue riches at the expense of other values, you will have lost, not won. Our actions speak volumes about ourselves.
Jim Rohn says that one should be happy to pay taxes: without it, the government would have no balance: no defense, no research, no public services. On the other hand, he specifies that one should not pay too much!
The 70/30 rule:
Spend 70% of your income on taxes (he’s actually talking about everything needed to live, such as rent, food, and state taxes). For the remaining 30%, do the following:
- 10% in charity,
- 10% in capital investment: start a business, even if part-time,
- And 10% in savings: this allows you to face the winters of life.
Know how to make a mid-course correction.
It may be that you deviate from your path like a rocket that is sent to the moon. In this case, you have to make a mid-course correction and get back on the right path. It’s human to deviate, you have to know how to get back on track.
Keep score.
Make a financial statement: list your assets on one side of a sheet, and your liabilities on the other side, and subtract the amount of your liabilities from that of your assets.
You should have a certain attitude: that of wealth and happiness. For that, you have to learn to love rather than to hate, even if it’s giving money.
5th strategy: Master time.
You need to intelligently manage your time schedule:
Your time is the most precious of your possessions. It’s limited, and it’s impossible to acquire more of it.
He lists 4 attitudes towards the management of time:
- The drifter: we can’t drift towards a better life,
- The 9 to 5 time manager: falls between the drifter and the workaholic
- The workaholic: causes the alienation of family,
- The enlightened time manager: gives time to all aspects of their life, working with a focus on productivity and not the number of hours (as we tend to do as employees).
The mastery of your time:
You have to learn to say NO. It’s important to separate work and play. You have to work when you’re at work but stop thinking about it during days off.
Get to know yourself: you need to know when you are most productive. Jim Rohn suggests writing ideas on paper. You should put everything down on paper and plan your days. He recommends 4 important tools:
- A journal: useful information, good ideas and good advice,
- A project book: allocate a section for each project,
- A calendar: register appointments, note your fees, the content of meetings and things to do,
- A game plan: Don’t start a day without planning it, then for a week: “What do I want to accomplish this week?”, and ultimately do the same for a month.
6th strategy: Surround yourself with winners.
We are like the people around us: if they spend all their income then we will do the same.
We act like the people around us, so always ask yourself:
- What effect does this person have on me?
- Am I OK with being in the company of these people?
If you are not sure, then ask yourself these additional questions:
- What have they got you doing?
- What have they got you listening to?
- How have they got you talking?
- What have they got you reading?
- Where have they got you going?
- What have they got you thinking?
- How have they got you feeling?
- What have they got you saying?
Ask yourself if your knowledge is moving you closer to or away from the goals you have set for yourself.
If someone tries to tear you away from your dreams, then you have to get rid of their influence. If you can’t do that (colleagues, etc.), then you must limit it as much as possible!
On the other hand, spend more time with the right people! Find successful people who will help you build a plan for success.
7th strategy: Learn the art of living well.
To enrich your life, you should already favor quality over quantity. Money should not be given more power than it has. Know that money is an amplifier. For example, someone who drinks, if he has more money, he will drown himself in alcohol. For someone who’s happy, more money will allow him to amplify his happiness.
Love and friendship: it’s very important to love and to be loved, it allows to live life to the fullest. We are made to have relationships. Friends are also very important!
The most powerful forces that are in us are emotions, here are the 5 main ones:
- Disgust: It can change a life, if it’s properly channeled. As soon as we reach a point of no return, we can want to change everything and find the motivation for it.
- Decision: A decision that can change the course of our lives can be comparable to an internal civil war. Whatever you do, never stop at the fork in the road. Decide: it’s better to make a bad choice than no choice at all.
- Desire: It comes from the inside, not the outside, but it can be activated by outside elements. Anything can trigger desire, so don’t erect walls to protect yourself. Let yourself be wrapped up by your life.
- Resolve: you must be able to say, “I want”, “Nothing can resist a human will that will stake even its existence on the extent of its purpose” – B. Disraeli.
Resolve is promising yourself that you’ll never give up.
“For how long will I try to make my dreams come true?” You should answer this question with, “As long as it takes”.
5. Action: It’s the ingredient that ensures the result. Only action can bring a positive reaction.
“Faith without action serves no useful purpose.”
Affirmations are useful if used as a tool to create action.
To finish, Jim Rohn suggests always asking these 4 questions:
- Why try?
- And why not try?
- Why not you?
- And why not now?
Book critique of “7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness”
The book 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness really provides all the basics in terms of personal development. Although the title makes one think of money, these are, in fact, 7 strategies to put in place to succeed in all areas.
Being a fan of personal development for a few years, I easily recognized the essential precepts that I have learned so far and I also learned a lot of new things.
I had already put in practice the creation of goals (these aren’t too detailed on my blog), the management of my finances through the investment on life insurance, I also try to continually learn but I currently practice strategy No. 6: surround yourself with winners and this is rather difficult. With his methods, we quickly realize that some people around us take all our energy. Hanging out with them less often truly helps to think more positively and to move forward.
Strategy 5: Master your time is also very important, and I strive through methods of organization to better manage my time in order to free up more of it.
If I had to advise on the strategies to apply immediately, for my part, it would be first setting goals, as J.Rohn recommends, always learn, and control your finances! My life has taken a turn ever since I have been putting them into practice.
For example, setting goals allowed me to lose weight (11 kg in total in 12 weeks), develop my business (I grew my traffic over 100 daily visits, and I’m starting to make money through my blog), and to become extremely sociable (I can now talk much more easily with perfect strangers)! Your goals should be precise and dated and broken down into smaller goals if they seem too big. Write them for 1 year, 5 years and 10 years, but commit to keeping them and not let them drag on. A tip: put them up in a place where you can read them every day. Another thing, don’t try to have too many, take on the ones you find to be the most important. If you have too many, you won’t do anything. I learned that from my “experience” in this area.
This is an excellent book that really contains all the basics to succeed, especially when you’re starting out in personal development. 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness is a good gift to help change a life.
Strong points of 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness:
- Concrete advice that is easy enough to implement.
- Everything is based on Jim Rohn’s experiences, and his relationship with Mr. Shoaff, who instilled him with all these values, which taught him a great amount.
- The book is very easy to read.
Weak points of 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness:
- Despite excellent advice, it feels like some of it is no longer relevant but quite adaptable.
- It should have included more information about goals.
My rating : 
Have you read “7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness”? How do you rate it?
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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