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

by G. Ng

Therefore, when you and your sisters were very young, I deliberately concealed the fact that I was well off. I instilled many values ​​such as frugality and personal struggle in you because I know that the quickest way to harm someone is to give them money. It can make people corrupt, depraved, arrogant, and cause them to lose their source of happiness.

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.

My son, the privileged but powerless people are a waste, while the educated but unaffected people are a pile of worthless garbage.

I do not live by God-given luck, but I do-so by planning luck. When waiting for luck, you must know how to guide luck; to design luck is to design life.

In the eyes of ordinary people, luck is always innate. As long as they find out someone has attained success or have been promoted, they will say casually, with contempt: “This man's luck is so good, it is luck that helped him!” Such a person can never have a peek into the truth that makes one successful: everyone is a designer and architect of his own destiny.

My credo is: I do not live by God-given luck, but I do-so by planning luck. I believe that a good plan will affect luck, and in any case, it can successfully affect luck. My plan to turn competition into cooperation in the oil industry justified this.

Visionary businessmen are always good at finding opportunities in every disaster, and that’s how I did it.

It seems unethical to take an acquisition at times like these, but it really has nothing to do with conscience. An enterprise is like a battlefield, and the purpose of strategic goals is to create the most beneficial state for oneself.

But before the opponent decides, I will have to strike first to gain the upper hand.

Anything can happen in this world, but nothing can happen without doing anything (reap without sowing).

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.

I think that work is a privilege, as it brings more than just sustaining life. Work is the foundation of all businesses, the source of prosperity, and the shaper of genius.

Work is expressed in the humblest forms and lays the foundation for happiness. A job helps to add flavours to life. But people must love work before it can return the biggest favours and achieve the greatest results.

I began to understand that many people who were climbing to the peak were not “paying the price.” They work hard because they really like work. People who climb up in any industry are fully committed to what they are doing and are dedicated. Sincerely love the work you do; you will naturally succeed.

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.

Those who are mentally active do not just work hard to earn money; the real reason behind the passion for their work is far more noble– they are engaged in a fascinating career.

Heaven and hell are created by ourselves. If you give meaning to your work, you will feel happy regardless of its size and you will feel fulfilled no matter what self-set results you have attained.

Even if it is a very ordinary plan, if it is actually implemented and developed, it will be much better than a good plan that is abandoned halfway, because the former will be carried out consistently, but the latter has already been given up.

Action solves everything. Without action, nothing will happen.

Life is an opportunity at any time, but there is almost nothing perfect.

Sentences such as “tomorrow”, “next week”, and “future” have the same meaning as “can never be done”.

The real basis people use to judge your ability is not how much you have in your head, but your actions.

Habits are like ropes. We spin a rope every day, and finally it is too thick to break. The ropes of habit either lead us to the peak or lead us to the trough, which depends on whether our habits are good or bad.

Good habits are difficult to develop, but they are easy to maintain.

Son, life is a great battle. To win, you need to act, act again, and act forever! In this way, your safety can be guaranteed.

My real goal is to get what I want without paying too high of a price

An excellent commander will not attack a bunker that has nothing to do with him but will try his best to destroy the bunker that is strong enough to destroy the city.

When you constantly see your opponent wanting to weaken you, that is the beginning of the competition. At this point in time you need to know what you have, that kindness and tenderness may hurt you, but then you need to use all the resources to win the battle.

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.

After my fear of failure, I still managed to always get up and decide to borrow money again. In fact, in order to improve I have no other ways to go, but to borrow from the bank.

Borrowing money is to create good luck. If I can borrow enough cash to mortgage a piece of land and allow myself to monopolize a larger area, then I will seize this opportunity without hesitation.

Son, life is a constant mortgage, we mortgage our youth for the future, and mortgage our lives for happiness. Because if you dare not approach the bottom line, you lose. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to take the risk to attain success?

Son, honesty is a method and a strategy. Because I paid with my own honesty, I have won the trust of bankers and more people, and because of it I survived numerous difficult times, and embarked on an expressway to success.

God is shown in the details. If you neglect these details, or detach from the details, and authorize this “miscellaneous task” to others to do, it is equivalent to neglecting at least half of your important business responsibility.

To be successful you need to remember two things: one is tactics and the other is strategy.