Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you've got.

~ Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn (September 17, 1930 - December 5, 2009) was an American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. His rags to riches story played a large part in his work, which influenced others in the personal development industry.

Emanuel James "Jim" Rohn was born in Yakima, Washington to Emanuel and Clara Rohn. The Rohns owned and worked a farm in Caldwell, Idaho where Jim grew up, as an only child.


Jim graduated from high school 3rd out of a class of 140. He went to college for a year and a half before dropping out and joining the work force. At age 25, according to his accounts, he was working as a stock clerk for Sears collecting a weekly $57 paycheck. He wasn't broke but struggling financially, unable to see a way that would lead to his personal ambitions.[citation needed] Around this time, a friend invited him to a lecture given by John Earl Shoaff, an entrepreneur who impressed Rohn with his wealth, business accomplishments, charisma and life philosophy. Shoaff was, at that time, VP of Sales in a nutritional supplement company called AbundaVita. In October, 1955, Rohn joined AbundaVita and began a process of personal development that culminated in his becoming a millionaire by age 31. Shoaff, who had challenged Rohn at age 25 to reach for this goal, died one year before Rohn achieved it at age 31.

Rohn was invited by a friend to come and tell his "rags-to-riches" story to his Rotary club. He accepted and titled his talk "Idaho farm boy makes it to Beverly Hills." The talk went so well that soon others began asking him to speak at various luncheons and other events. In 1963, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he gave his first public seminar. He then began presenting seminars all over the country, telling his story and teaching the personal development philosophy he felt had led to his accomplishments.

Throughout the 70's, Rohn conducted a number of seminars for the management and employees of the Marketing Dept. of Standard Oil (California) which now does business as Chevron Corporation. At the same time, he conducted a personal development business called "Adventures in Achievement" which featured both live seminars as well as personal development workshops. Ultimately, he presented seminars worldwide for more than 40 years.

Tony Robbins who worked for Rohn in the late 70's, was mentored by Rohn during the early years of his career. Others who credit Rohn for his influence on their careers include authors Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup book series), author/lecturer Brian Tracy, T. Harv Eker, author/teacher Vincent's Genesius Evans, from Indonesia.

Rohn was the recipient of the 1985 National Speakers Association CPAE Award for excellence in speaking. He is also the author of 17 different books, audio and video programs.

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

One does not really think about it until it is imminent. Until then you are just being amused by the drama happening around you. Sometimes happy in fond hope of the future's prospects, at other times devastated by dejection.

It is so important ... life is not sustainable with out it. It brings peace. If I had it I would not be proud. I would have no reason to have pride. For all that I had done would not matter. I would not be embarrassed. Everything that I could fail would not matter either. With it I would be in peace. Not happy, nor sad. Peaceful.

But truth is so bright that you cannot look in its eye. One can be blinded. So very few make an attempt leaving a handful few who understand it. Most stay as far as possible from it.

"Don't name it" said my neighbor's grandmother in India. Like if you would name it and it would be standing at your door waiting on you. Now that would be disaster. The world would end. If in the next second someone promised heaven in return for having it, we would still not want it.

It, death, is inescapable.

For the Indie Ink Writing Challenge this week, Amanda challenged me with "I had to look really far down, deep deep under everything" and I challenged Lance with "These are a few of my favorite things".

Following is a video and text of Steve Job's commencement address to Stanford. I heard this speech today after the news of his passing away. This is one of the greatest speeches written by one of the most inspirational entrepreneurs of our generation. He shares three of the most important episodes from his life that have taught him to pursue his dreams, to be receptive to whatever life throws at you, even death. He might be gone, but his words still sing ...



I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I had been rejected, but I was still in love.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Death is very likely the single best invention of Life.

This is a true story of Mother’s Sacrifice during the China Earthquake.

After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.

He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and used his had through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement, "A child! There is a child!"

The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice for saving her son. When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly to exam the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. There was a text message on the screen. It said, "If you can survive, you must remember that I love you." This cell phone was passing around from one hand to another. Every body that read the message wept. "If you can survive, you must remember that I love you." Such is the mother’s love for her child!!

September 30, 2011. Archived on Jan 5, 2023

[This is a real story from this week]
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She hurried into my room. As if there had been an earthquake and I hadn't found out busy looking at my computer screen in the office.

"Papa. Come fast. A hummingbird has come to meet us."

"What do you mean?"

"Hurry hurry ... It might fly away. A bird came inside the house and ... " she went on breathless.

I didn't understand the optimism of the announcement. Last time we had a bird in the house we were glad our handy man was in commission to fix some plumbing and we had given him the extra duty of relieving a bird from Jania's room. It was getting dark outside as the evening was flying into night. And I thought we had a nightmare on our hands: there was a bird in our house flying nowhere.

I held her hand. And she hopped me out of my office which stands outside our house, peaceful in obeisance to my tendencies. And she was exactly the opposite. If you can imagine a human flying, that was her rushing across the courtyard into our house. She was as excited as a dove freed from her cage. Sometimes flying is what peace needs.

As I closed the door behind me, I saw her disappear into the family room where we have a big sliding door. That door must have been open; that is how this bird came in. And when I saw all of them, I was relieved.

There was my wife and son, standing quietly. My son was holding ... yes holding ... a hummingbird in his hands and my wife with her mobile phone trying to take a picture of our son with our surprise guest.

I was amazed at how calm the hummingbird was. And it was a baby hummingbird. It probably was a few weeks old because birds get to full size pretty quickly.

"This is unbelievable Shilpy. How did she get here?"

"I don't know. When I came in, I heard this weird fluttering sound and saw her on the glass window trying to fly through it."

I was wondering how she caught her. But I didn't want to ask any more questions and miss the opportunity to take a couple of pictures myself. By that time, Jania said she wanted to hold the hummingbird. He had spent enough time with her so my son acquiesced.

In the process of transferring her, she took flight and again rammed against the window, high up, and started the fluttering game again. My wife took a few jumps to get it back, but it was clear she would have to use her old technique. This is how I got to know what she did.

She took a small kitchen towel and threw at her against window. And softly brought both the towel and the bird back down. And handed her over to Jania. And the smile on Jania's face was worth remembering. Here is the picture I took with my cellphone:


After a few pictures we decided to safely guide the bird out into the open again.

I don't think this was any ordinary hummingbird that came into our house. This morning I was reading about Wangari Maathai, the nobel prize winning extraordinary woman from Kenya. I didn't know her well and heard she was inspiring; so I googled her in search of a singspiration. The first video that came up on the search was one where she was telling story about a hummingbird.



The hummingbird in that story carries water drop after drop to extinguish a fire burning the forest while the bigger animals are scared to move. Wangari said that she aspires to be the hummingbird from that story of the jungle which is on fire. "I might not be able to save the earth. But I will do the best I can." There was my singspiration flying away into the night.

That night I told an altered version of this story to Jania at bedtime. The hummingbird in my story, inspired all the other animals to get together and help get rid of the fire.

The purpose of the singing hummingbird is to inspire others to sing. Singing takes you somewhere even if the world has stopped in fright. That is why the hummingbird comes into our house. That is why Wangari Maathai came to this world. Singing takes you somewhere; somewhere is better than nowhere.

[The End]
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This week's Indie Ink Challenge came from Billy Flynn, who gave me this prompt: "When you are going nowhere, anywhere is a better place to be". I challenged femmefauxpas with the prompt "Elegance comes from simplicity".

It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.
- Wangari Maathai

“All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.”
Wangari Maathai quote



“It’s really amazing. You plant a seed; it germinates and looking so fragile, and within a very short time it becomes a huge tree. It gives you shade and if it’s a fruit tree it gives you fruit… to build and transforms lives… We want to see many Africans planting trees. There is absolutely no excuse to stop desertification because this is something that is doable and cheap


“It is very important for young people not to be afraid of engaging in areas that are not common to the youth. Get involved in local activities, get involved in local initiatives, be involved in leadership positions because you can’t learn unless you are involved. And if you make mistakes that is alright too because we all make mistakes and we learn from those mistakes. You gain confidence from learning, failing and rising again.”

“The environment and the economy are really both two sides of the same coin. You cannot sustain the economy if you don’t take care of the environment because we know that the resources that we use whether it is oil, energy, land … all of these are the basis in which development happens. And development is what we say generates a good economy and puts money in our pockets. If we cannot sustain the environment, we can’t not sustain ourselves.”

“We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can.”

“It is a bit sad that we have a government in this country that is actually overseeing the destruction of the forest…there comes a time when humanity is called upon to shift to a new level of consciousness… You raise your consciousness to a level where u feel that you must do the right thing. We see governments mistreating its citizens to the fullest.. who is going to question when the law keeper breaks the law?”


African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.
Wangari Maathai

I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.
Wangari Maathai

In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
Wangari Maathai

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.
Wangari Maathai

It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.
Wangari Maathai


Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.
Wangari Maathai

There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.
Wangari Maathai

We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.
Wangari Maathai

We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.
Wangari Maathai

Women are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve.
Wangari Maathai

“We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind.”
Wangari Maathai quote



“It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.”
Wangari Maathai quote


“The privilege of a higher education, especially outside Africa, broadened my original horizon and encouraged me to focus on the environment, women and development in order to improve the quality of life of people in my country in particular and in the African region in general.”
Wangari Maathai quote



“Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.”
Wangari Maathai quote


“All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.”
Wangari Maathai quote

“African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”
Wangari Maathai quote

“Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys from time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.”
Wangari Maathai quote

“When you have the environment degraded, it is always so that we are going to fight over the few resources that are left.”
Wangari Maathai quote


“You must not deal only with the symptoms. You have to get to the root causes by promoting environmental rehabilitation and empowering people to do things for themselves. What is done for the people without involving them cannot be sustained.”
Wangari Maathai quote

“We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.”
Wangari Maathai quote



Jyon Jal Meh Jal Aye Khataana
Tyon Jyoti Sang Jyot Samaana
– Guru Arjan Dev

Like water flows in water,
Light merges into light