The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son: Perspectives, Ideology, and Wisdom

by G. Ng

People who are privileged but have no power are a waste, while those who are educated but uninfluenced are a pile of worthless rubbish.

The only truth is that as long as you work hard enough, you will succeed. I firmly believe that our destiny is determined by our actions, not by our origins.

But you need to strengthen the belief that even though the starting point will affect the outcome, it does not determine it. Factors such as ability, attitude, character, ambition, method, experience, and luck play an extremely important role in life and the business world. Your life has just begun, but a battle of life is in front of you. I can deeply feel that you want to be the winner of this war, but you must know that everyone has the will to pursue victory, and only those who are determined and ready will win.

Visionary businessmen are always good at finding opportunities in every disaster,

John, for our good luck to continue, we must carefully plan our luck, and planning luck requires a good plan. A good plan must be a good design, and a good design must be able to play a role. You need to know that when designing a good design, you must first consider two basic prerequisites. The first condition is to know your goals, such as what you want to do, or even what kind of person you want to become; the second condition is knowing what resources you have, such as status, money, interpersonal relationships, and even abilities.

The greatest reward for our hard work is not what we get, but what we will become. If you view work as a pleasure, life is heaven; if you view work as a duty, life is hell.

Income is just a by-product of your work. Doing what you should do, accomplishing what you should do well, the ideal salary will come. And more importantly, the highest reward for our hard work is not what we get, but what we will become.

Bad habits can dictate us and determine success or failure. It is easy to develop, but it is difficult to serve. Successfully putting a good idea into practice is more valuable than thinking about a thousand good ideas at home.

To eat an elephant, you need to eat one bite at a time. Same goes to when you are doing something. If you want to accomplish everything at one go, you will only let the opportunity slip away. My motto is: only takes unfair treatment for emergencies.

We pursue perfection, but there is no absolute perfection in life, only near perfection. If you wait until all conditions are perfect, you can only wait forever, and the opportunity will be given to others. Those who must wait until everything has been prepared will never leave home. To become the kind of person who “will do it now”, you must stop daydreaming, and to always think of the present and start doing it now. Sentences such as “tomorrow”, “next week”, and “future” have the same meaning as “can never be done”.

Even if we lose, the only thing we should do is to lose gloriously Crutches cannot replace strong and powerful feet; we have to stand on our own feet.

Whether it is to win wealth or to win in life, what good people think when facing competition is not what I will lose, but what I should do to be a winner. (We are continually faced by greater opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems)

When you take advantage of opportunities, you are depriving others of opportunities in order to guarantee yourself.

(An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity, a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.)

If you stay still, you will regress, but to move forward you must be willing to make decisions and take risks.

Son, opportunity is a scarce thing. People are prosperous and rich because of opportunity. Look at those poor people and you will know that they are not incompetent or stupid neither are they not hard-working. They are deprived from opportunities. You need to know that we live in a jungle where the weak are prey to the strong, where you either eat people or risk being eaten by someone else. Evading risk is almost a guarantee of bankruptcy; but when you take advantage of the opportunity, you are depriving others of the opportunity just to guarantee yourself.

Optimistic people will see opportunity in suffering, and pessimistic people will see suffering in opportunity. Son, remember the formula of success that I believe in: Dream + Failure + Challenge = Success

Too many people overestimate what they lack, but underestimate what they have, and lose the chance to become a winner. This is a tragedy.

Everyone hopes that one day they can reach the highest level and enjoy the fruits of success that follows. However, most of them do not have the required confidence and determination, hence they cannot reach the top. It is also because they believe that they cannot reach it, so they find a route to take where they cannot reach the top, and their actions always stay at the level of ordinary people.

I never believed that failure is the mother of success, I believe that faith is the father of success. Victory is a habit, and failure is also a habit. If you want to succeed, you must achieve sustained victory. I do not like to achieve a certain amount of victory. What I want is sustained victory. Only in this way can I become a strong one. Confidence motivates me to succeed.

It is faith that illuminates my path, constantly gives me courage, and makes me face life positively. At any time, I never forget to increase my confidence. I replace the thought of failure with the belief of success. When I face a difficult situation, I think of “I will win” instead of “I might lose”. When I compete with people, I think of “I am as good as them”, not “I can't compare with them.” When opportunities arise, I think of “I can do it” instead of “I can't do it.”

Successful people are just ordinary people who believe in themselves and affirm what they do. Never, never sell yourself cheaply.

I only show my feelings when the situation is only beneficial to myself; I can let my opponent teach me, but I will never teach my opponent, no matter how much I know about it; think twice about everything, no matter how others may urge, do not act without making a full consideration; I have my own truth, only responsible for myself; be careful of those who ask me to treat them sincerely, they want to reap benefits from me.

But I know that there is a kind of power hidden in human nature, one that grows in places lacking ability and will, that is jealousy. When you surpass them, they will hate you, accuse you using derogatory words, fabricate lies to slander you, and at the same time they will be very arrogant in front of you – in my opinion, that is not arrogance, it is just weakness. What's interesting is that when you are far inferior to them, and your life is unbearable, they will laugh at you again, for being incompetent, stupid, and even belittle you to the point that you have no human dignity. My son, this is human nature!

As those evolutionists told us, nature is not a benevolent and selfless place, but a place where the strong are kings and the fittest live, so is our so-called civilized society. If you are not greedy, you may just be “eaten” by others. After all, there are not many delicious desserts. If you want to create wealth and achievements, and an extraordinary life, then I feel that you can forget about “greed is a good thing”, greed is necessary!

My son, destiny must be created by oneself, and what one really wants must be obtained by every means. The distance between success and failure is not just a single thought as what people may think, that is to see who has the stronger greed, who has this power, who can radiate and display all their power, do their best, and surpass themselves. Every step I move forward can make me feel the power of greed! Greed not only allows a person's abilities to be maximized, but also forces him to dedicate everything, remove all obstacles, and move forward at full speed.

There is a lively, sensitive, and powerful greed in everyone's heart. But you must love her, tell yourself that you want to be greedy, and you want more, then she will come out to play and help you succeed.

It is undeniable that if you want to succeed, you often must sacrifice others. However, if you pursue victory and hope to win, you must resist the idea of ​​sympathizing with others. You cannot just want to be a good person, you can’t retain your strength, you can't evade or delay letting your opponent out. You know, hell is full of good people, and the pain of failure is part of the business war. We are all strangling our opponents. Without the determination to compete and fight to the end, we only have the qualifications to be losers.

The people who can get ahead in this world are those who know how to find their ideal environment. If they cannot do it, they will create it themselves.

If you want to make a person disabled, just give him a pair of crutches, and wait for a few months to achieve your goal. In other words, if you give someone a free lunch for a certain period, he/she will develop the habit of getting something for nothing. Do not forget, everyone has a need to be “taken care of” in the womb. Yes, I always encourage you to help others, but as I always tell you, if you give a person a fish, you can only support him for one day, but if you teach him the skill of fishing, it is equivalent to supporting him for life. This old saying about fishing is very meaningful.

What you get from hardship is having the ability to build your career on a solid ground, not in quicksand. People must have foresight, and only after a long period of hardship can they have a long-term harvest.

I believe that an average-talented person who has an optimistic, positive and cooperative attitude towards the world will earn more money and win more respect as compared to a talented but pessimistic, passive and uncooperative person. Regardless of whether a person is dealing with trivial things, difficult tasks or important plans, as long as he is dedicated and enthusiastic to complete, the results will be far better than smart but lazy people. Because concentration and perseverance account for 95% of a person's ability.

Some people are always moaning and sighing: Why do so many talented individual fail? Here is the reason. If an extremely smart person is always using their amazing intellect to prove why things cannot succeed, instead of guiding their minds to find various ways to succeed, the fate of failure will find them. Negative thoughts have implicated their intelligence, making them unable to use their skills to accomplish anything. If they can change their mindset, I believe they will do many great things. The brain that thinks about big things but does not know how to think is just a bucket of cheap paste.

A person who does not use talent as an excuse, never underestimates his own talents, nor does he overestimate the talents of others; He who focuses on using his assets and discovering his outstanding talents; Knows what really matters is not how much talent he has, but how he uses his existing talents and how to make good use of his talent; He will often remind himself: My mentality is more important than my intelligence; He has a strong desire to establish a “I will win” attitude; He knows to use his intellect to actively create and find ways to succeed, not to prove that he will fail; He also knows that thinking is more valuable than memorizing. He needs to use his mind to create and develop new ideas, find better new ways of doing things, and remind himself at any time: Am I using my mind to create history? Or is it just recording the history created by others?

I never succumb to luck; I believe in the law of cause and effect. Look at the people who seem to be lucky, and you will find that it is not luck, but preparation, planning and positive thinking that bring them beauty. If you look at those people with “bad luck”, you will find that there are clear reasons behind them. Successful people can face setbacks, learn from failures, and create new opportunities. The mediocre people are often discouraged.

your diamond is not between the distant mountains and the sea, if you are determined to dig, the diamond is in your backyard. The important thing is to sincerely believe in yourself.

If a person says, “I don't want money”, it is equivalent to saying: “I don't want to serve my family, friends, and compatriots.” This statement is absurd, but it is also absurd to sever the relationship between the two!

The achievements that Ford created proved one of my life credos: wealth is proportional to goals. If you have big ambitions and big goals, your mountain of wealth will rise to the sky. If you just want to pass by, then you will end up in the rat race, or even nothing, even if the wealth is close to you, you will only get a little bit of it. Before Mr. Ford succeeded, there were many automakers that were much stronger than him, but many of them went bankrupt.

I believe that working hard for myself will make me rich, but I do not believe that working hard for others will make me successful. Before I lived in Billionaires’ Row (57th Street in Manhattan) I discovered that by my side, many poor people are the hardest working people. The reality is so cruel. Regardless of whether employees work hard or not, few people work for their bosses to become rich. The salary earned by working for the boss can only keep the employee alive under reasonable expectations. Although the employee may make a lot of money, it is difficult to become rich. I have always regarded “working hard to get rich” as a lie, and never regarded working for others as a good way to accumulate considerable wealth. On the contrary, I am very convinced that working for myself can make me rich. All the actions I take are aligned to my great dream and the various goals that I continue to achieve in order to reach my goal.

A great life is the process of conquering excellence. We must move forward to this goal, not be afraid of pain, be resolute, and be prepared to fall on the long road.

It is almost certain that safety first cannot make us rich. If we want to get paid, we must always accept the necessary risks that follow. Isn’t life like this? There is no such thing as maintaining the status quo. If you do not advance, you will retreat. It is that simple. In my aspect, being cautious is not the perfect way to succeed. No matter what we do, or even our lives, we must choose between taking risks and being cautious. And sometimes, the chance of winning by taking risks is much greater than by being cautious.

I know that any slight insult can hurt dignity. However, dignity is not given by God, nor is it given by others. It is your own creation. Dignity is a spiritual product that you enjoy yourself. Everyone's dignity belongs to him. If you think you have dignity, you have dignity. So, if someone hurts your feelings and your dignity, you have to stay calm. If you do not cling to your dignity, no one can hurt you. My son, your relationship with yourself is the beginning of all relationships. When you believe in yourself and are in harmony with yourself, you are your most faithful partner. Only in this way, will you stay indifferent.

(Optimism is a belief that life will be, in the long run, more good than bad, that even when bad things happen, the good will eventually outbalance them.)

Success is not measured by a person’s height, weight, education, or family background, but by the size of his thoughts. The size of our thoughts determines the size of our achievements. The most important of all is that we must value ourselves, overcome the greatest weakness of mankind – self-deprecation, and never sell ourselves cheaply. You are greater than you think, so you should expand your thinking to the extent to your fullest potential, and never underestimate yourself.

If a person feels that he is inferior to others, he will show “true” actions that are inferior to others; and this feeling cannot be hidden or concealed. Those who think they are “not very important” will eventually become “not very important” people. On the other hand, those who believe that they have the “capability of taking heavy responsibilities” will really become a “very important” person. Therefore, if you want to be an important person, you must first make yourself believe that “I am really important”, and you have to truly feel that way before others will follow.

No one can escape the principle of reasoning: how you think will determine how you act, and how you act will determine how others think about you. Just like your own success plan, it is actually very simple to gain the respect of others. In order to be respected by others, you must first feel that you are indeed worthy of respect, and the more you respect yourself, the more others will respect you.

Every moment is the key, and every decision affects the course of life, so we must have a determined strategy. Resolution should not be made too hastily when encountering important problems, if you do not think about the last step, never take the first step. Believe that there is always time to think about the problem and act, and you need to have patience to allow maturity of the plan. But once a decision is made, it must be implemented faithfully like a fighter.

Only by being able to endure what people cannot bear, can you do what people cannot do.

John, there are too many people and things that require us to be patient in this world, and they entice us to be emotional. Therefore, you have to cultivate your ability to manage your emotions and control your emotions, and you should be careful not to be influenced by your emotions when making decisions, but to instead make decisions based on your needs and always know what you want.

You also need to know that in the world of opportunity, there are not too many opportunities to fight for. If you really want to succeed, you must grasp and protect your own opportunities, and try to seize others’ opportunities.