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For more than 40 years, Jim Rohn honed his craft like a skilled artist, helping people all over the world sculpt life strategies that expanded their imagination of what is possible.

Sept. 17, on what would have been his 90th birthday, we celebrate with some of Jim Rohn’s most iconic advice. Let his words motivate you to challenge yourself, make positive changes and attract success.

1. “I used to say, ‘I sure hope things will change.’ Then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change.”


2. “One of the best places to start to turn your life around is by doing whatever appears on your mental ‘I should’ list.”


3. “Every life form seems to strive to its maximum except human beings. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it possibly can. Human beings, on the other hand, have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all, or you can choose to be less. Why not stretch up to the full measure of the challenge and see what all you can do?”


4. “Human beings have the remarkable ability to turn nothing into something. They can turn weeds into gardens and pennies into fortunes.”


5. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”


6. “Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experiences and invest them in the future.”


7. “Learn how to turn frustration into fascination. You will learn more being fascinated by life than you will be being frustrated by it.”


8. “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.”


9. “We all have two choices: We can make a living or we can design a life.”


10. “We must learn to apply all that we know so that we can attract all that we want.”


11. “Don’t borrow someone else’s plan. Develop your own philosophy and it will lead you to unique places.”


12. “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of. You don’t have charge of the constellations, but you do have charge of whether you read, develop new skills, and take new classes.”


13. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they may have planned for you? Not much.”


14. “Success is not so much what we have as it is what we are.”


15. “Resolve says, ‘I will.’ The man says, ‘I will climb this mountain. They told me it is too high, too far, too steep, too rocky and too difficult. But it’s my mountain. I will climb it. You will soon see me waving from the top or dead on the side from trying.’”

Related: Remembering Jim Rohn: 17 Remarkable Quotes to Inspire You

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated.

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