Direction and practice

Jim Rohn: Write a Working Principle You Can Actually Use

You collect advice but struggle to use it when a decision arrives.

Self Growth Lessons

Choose, practice, reflect

A practical lesson

The Lesson

You collect advice but struggle to use it when a decision arrives. Choose one recurring situation and write a principle that helps you decide what to do. A useful principle should be clear enough to test in real life.

Jim Rohn recommends examining conclusions drawn from experience, learning from successes and failures, and seeking an outside perspective. You can use that approach to develop a principle for a recurring decision. Developing your personal philosophy, official article. Jim Rohn, official biography.

Begin with experience instead of a grand slogan. If you have repeatedly accepted work before clarifying its scope, your principle might be to ask what the finished result should include. It gives you a behavior to try at the next opportunity.

Keep the principle open to revision. A lesson drawn from one experience may not fit every situation. Discuss it with someone whose judgment you trust, and note an exception where the principle would be unhelpful. Personal responsibility also includes recognizing when circumstances require support or shared action.

Reflection

Which decision keeps recurring?
What have my past choices taught me?
When would my proposed principle need an exception?

Practice

This is an original SelfGrowthVideos exercise inspired by the ideas above.

Describe one recent decision and its result without exaggerating either.
Write a short “When this happens, I will…” principle.
Ask a trusted person whether it overlooks an important detail.
Apply it at the next suitable opportunity and record what happens.

A principle could be: “Before agreeing to a new task, I will clarify the result and the deadline.” An emergency may require a faster initial response, followed by clarification as soon as practical. Naming that exception makes the principle more usable, not weaker.

Review

After using it, ask whether the principle improved your decision or merely sounded wise. What needs changing? Keep the revised version next to the example that taught you something. A working philosophy can grow through observation rather than through collecting more slogans.