The Law of Sowing and Reaping
by Jim Rohn
Here’s the first of the basic laws of leadership: Whatever you sow, you reap. Now here’s another way to put it on the positive side: In order to reap, you must sow. Reaping is reserved for those who sow, who plant. To deserve the harvest, you must plant the seed. Take care of it in the summer. Carefully harvest it and then do wise things with the harvest.
Now, here’s the rest of the law of sowing and reaping. If you sow good, you reap good. If you sow bad, you reap bad. You can’t sow bad and hope for good. You can’t plant weeds and hope for flowers. Here’s something else about the law of sowing and reaping. You don’t reap only what you sow. That’s important to understand. You reap much more than what you sow. If you just reaped what you sow, what’s the exercise for?
An important thing to understand about that is it works both positive and negative. The old prophet said, “If you sow the wind, you don’t reap wind, you reap a whirlwind.” You’ve got to be careful sowing the wind. It comes back as a whirlwind. That’s on the negative side. But now it also works on the positive side. If you plant a cup of corn, how much do you get back—a cup? No, a bushel for the cup. You get back much more than what you plant. That’s the reason for planting—for the increase.
Now here’s the next key to the law of sowing and reaping. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Everybody has to understand. The farmer plants the crop in the spring and takes care of it all summer. He’s an honorable man. Loves his family and is a decent citizen. But the day before he sends the combines into the field, a hailstorm comes along and beats his crop into the ground. And it’s gone. It’s lost.
So this time it didn’t work. Now what must the farmer do? He’s got to decide whether to do it again or not. “Shall we take another chance the next spring?” We would advise him to do so even though he lost everything in the last harvest because more often than not, you’ll have a harvest if you plant in the spring. There’s no guarantee, but it’s pretty good odds. It’s better than Las Vegas. Incredible! The law of sowing and reaping.
