i-TFTD #69: Becoming All You Can Be

Becoming All You Can Be
By Jim Rohn
(Highlights mine)

How do you know when you're successful? Do you have to be a millionaire? No, all we ask of you is that you earn all you possibly can. If you earn ten thousand dollars a year and that's the best you can do, that's enough. God and everything else will see to it that you're okay. The key is to just do the best you can. If it's ten thousand dollars a year, wonderful! If it's a hundred thousand dollars a year, wonderful! If it's a million dollars a year, wonderful!

It doesn't matter whether you earn ten thousand dollars a year or a million dollars a year as long as you've done the best you can. The essence of life is growth. It is doing the best you possibly can.

Here's what is interesting: humans are the only life form that will do less than they possibly can. Humans are the only life form that will settle for less. All other life forms except human beings strive to their maximum capacity. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. You've never heard of a tree growing half as high as it could. No. Trees don't grow half. Trees send their roots down as deep as possible. They stretch their limbs up as high as possible, and produce every leaf and every fruit possible.

As matter of fact, you've never heard of a human growing halfway-physically, that is. We keep growing until we're done. It's genetically coded. That's a part of life that we can't control. It's the growing of our minds that we can control, but we tend to neglect this. It tends to get away from us. All life forms inherently strive toward their maximum potential except human beings.

Why wouldn't we strive to become all we can be, to fulfill our potentials? Because we have been given the dignity of choice. It makes us different than alligators and trees and birds. The dignity of choice makes us different than all other life forms.

And here's the choice: to become part of what we could be, enough to get by; or to become all that we can be. My best advice for you is to choose the "all." Earn all you can. Make all the friends you can. Read as many books as you can. Develop as many skills as you can. See and do as much as possible. Make as much fortune as possible. Give as much of it away as possible. Strive for the maximum. There's no life like it. Pick up the challenge. Go for it. When you're focusing on growth, it's easy to do all you can. It's easy to succeed. It's easy to have financial freedom. The more you do, the more you get.

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Sometimes when we achieve something that we feel proud about, we wonder why we did not try it earlier so the trick is to keep trying many things quickly. Unstated assumptions, inhibitions, past conditioning and general avoidance of mistakes (fear of failure) are some of the constraining forces. Remember it is a choice we make.