Review Your Flight Options
Our grand business is not to see
what lies dimly in the distance,
but to do what lies clearly at hand.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Once you have become clear about who you are, what you want, and what your true goals are in each area of your life, you can begin to evaluate all the different routes by which you can reach your destination. Now you can determine the strategies and tactics that you can use to achieve your goals and arrive at your destination on schedule.
Develop Options Continually
One of the most important rules that I have ever learned is this: You are only as free as your well-developed options.
For example, if you have only one way to accomplish a task and that method does not work, you will be stopped in your tracks. If you have only one option or alternative to achieve a goal or to reach a destination and that one way fails for any reason, you can find yourself stranded.
Successful people are continually developing options, just in case something doesn't work out the way they had intended. They develop alternate courses of action to insure against unexpected setbacks or reversals. As a result, when things go wrong, as they always do, successful people remain calm and relaxed. They have already thought through the worst possible situations that could occur and have a plan ready-made to deal with them.
Increase Your Options
If your goal is to achieve a superb level of physical fitness, make a list of seven actions that you could take today to start becoming fit, trim, and healthy. What should you start doing or stop doing? How should you plan each day, from the time you wake up in the morning, if you want to achieve superb levels of health and fitness?
If your goal is to have a happy family or to find a wonderful relationship, make a list of everything that you could do to make your wishes come true. Ask the important people in your life what you could do more of or less of to improve your relationships with them. What would they like you to start doing or stop doing to make them happier?
Good Choices and Better Decisions
All of life is a series of choices and decisions. The quality of your life today has been largely determined by the quality of the choices and decisions that you made in the past. The quality of your life in the future will be determined by the choices and decisions that you make today, especially in those areas that are critical for achieving your goals and reaching your destination.
Your choice of a particular job or particular company to work for or business to start can change the entire direction of your life and destiny. You must therefore take enough time to think through and be completely comfortable with your choice before you make a final decision.
One of the concepts that we teach in our advanced coaching programs is the idea of “hourly rate.” We have all of our clients divide their annual income by 2,000, the approximate number of hours that an executive or entrepreneur works in a year. This amount is their hourly rate.
For example, if you earn $50,000 a year and you divide that amount by 2,000, you come up with a rate of $25 per hour. If you earn $100,000 per year, your hourly rate is $50.
Before you can plan your time and your life, you must be absolutely clear about both the hourly rate that you are earning today and the hourly rate that you want to earn in the future. Every hour that you spend on a low-value or no-value activity is costing you $25, $50, or more. Everything that you choose to do in the course of your working day is either earning or costing you money at your desired hourly rate.
Determine the Highest and Best Use of Your Time
Whatever job you choose to take, company you choose to work with, investment you choose to make with your money, or time you choose to spend on a particular activity, think it through carefully in advance and be certain that you are making the highest and best use of your time and resources.
If you are not happy with your current “seat selection,” be proactive rather than passive. If you are not happy with your current job, get busy and find something better. If you're not happy with your current relationship, improve it if you can, and be prepared to walk away if you can't.
Refuse to Settle
Abraham Maslow once wrote, “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.”
Many people, because of fear and timidity, settle for far less than they are truly capable of achieving. They stay in jobs they don't like. They stay in relationships that don't make them happy. They engage in health habits that are harmful to them. They invest their money in things they don't understand and leave the money there long after they realize they've make a mistake.
If you are not satisfied with any part of your life, with your current seat selection, remember that you can always pay a price to be free. And you will always know what that price is.
Ask for What You Want
In business and in your personal life, remember that every term or condition that you are ever offered has been decided by someone and can be changed by someone else. Whether this involves the pay and conditions of a job, the terms of a contract, the costs of products or services, rental or lease rates of offices or equipment, or bank terms for loans or lines of credit, if you are not happy for any reason, don't be reluctant to ask for something different.
Remember that before you ask, the answer is always no. If after you ask, the answer is still no, then all you have lost is a few seconds of your life. But if the answer is yes, it can change your entire future.
You know the old saying, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” And the Bible says, “You have not because you ask not.” Never be afraid to ask.
Cast a Wide Net
The rule with ideas is this: Quality is a function of quantity. This means that the more ways to achieve your goal that you consider before you embark on your journey, the better will be the quality of the choice you make.
Cast a wide net. Don't fall in love with the first idea that occurs to you. You must continually remind yourself that emotions distort evaluations. This means that the more emotional you become about a course of action at the beginning, the less able you will be to make the best decisions and determine the best way for you to reach your destination.
Become Your Own Consultant
Imagine that you are a consultant who has been brought in to advise yourself on the very best course of action for you to take to achieve a goal or reach a destination. As your own consultant, force yourself to remain calm, cool, and objective about the advice that you give to yourself.
There is a definite time for emotion, passion, enthusiasm, and commitment in a decision. But it is only after you have decided on the very best way for you. Up to that time, you should remain as detached and as objective as possible to ensure that you make the right decision.
Don't fall in love with your ideas, especially your initial ideas. Always be open to the possibility that there is a better way to achieve the same goal.
The Foundation of Riches
If your goal is financial success, there is only one way to attain it permanently and that is to “add value.” All long-term, predictable, and enduring wealth comes from adding value in some way. It comes from serving other people by providing them with products and services that they want and need and are willing to pay for, in competition with others who also want to sell these people similar or different products and services. This is a basic economic principle, and it is inviolable in the long term.
Perhaps the greatest law of the Bible is the Law of Sowing and Reaping. “Whatsoever you sow, that also shall you reap.” Whatever you sow in your career, family, health, and financial life is what you will reap in your experience. Whatever you are reaping today is the direct result of what you have sown in the past. If you are not happy with your current “crop,” begin today to sow something different. Begin today to add value to others in a superior fashion.
Notice also that this is not the “Law of Reaping and Sowing.” Always, the sowing comes first and often goes on for a long time before you reap the harvest.
According to Thomas Stanley and William Danko in their book, The Millionaire Next Door, the average self-made millionaire in America has invested twenty-two years of hard work, sacrifice, reversals, difficulties, and temporary failures to reach that amount of wealth. People who think that they are going to beat the averages and jump to the front of the financial line are usually unprepared to put in the hard work necessary, and as a result, they end up at the back of the line all their lives. Don't let this happen to you.
Start with a List
If your goal is financial, make a list of as many different ways as possible to achieve the same financial results. The more choices you have, the better decision you will make.
Here are eight examples:
You could achieve your goal by starting a new business.
You could buy an existing business and make it more profitable.
You could become excellent at what you do, become very well paid for doing it, and carefully invest and save your money over the course of your career.
You could invest in real estate of some kind, either to renovate and resell or to rent out and manage.
You could contribute your special talents and skills to a start-up business in exchange for stock options if the company is successful.
You could buy a franchise and make it successful.
You could turn your hobby or area of interest into a moneymaking opportunity.
You could dedicate yourself to working for a successful company, become absolutely excellent in your work, and become one of the highest paid people in your field. With these high earnings, properly invested, you could become wealthy.
Each one of these methods has been tried and proven by millions of people who started with nothing and became millionaires. And every one of them requires that you become very good at serving others in some way.
Hope Is Not a Strategy
Remember, hope is not a strategy. Investigate before you invest your time, money, or emotion in a job, business, or relationship. Examine every detail of the proposed route to your destination.
Get advice from others who have traveled the same route. Learn from the experts. Ask people who have reached the same destination how they did it and what they learned. Ask them what they would do differently if they had to take this trip over again.
In reviewing your options, always be open to the possibility that you could be completely wrong. Be willing to admit it, and take a different route if necessary.
It has been said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This may or may not be true when it comes to moving from where you are to your goals. Sometimes, a roundabout method is actually a faster way to get there.
Many people today are realizing that the achievement of their financial goals requires that they upgrade their education and skills. They are enrolling in community colleges, seeking online degrees, attending courses and seminars, and reading voraciously in their fields. They are cultivating and fertilizing the soil so that they can ultimately reap a greater crop.
Your Ability to Think
The most valuable asset you have in achieving your goals and reaching your destination in life is your mind. The value is contained in your ability to think clearly about who you are and what you want. Fully 80 percent or more of all your success will come as the result of your having taken the time to think clearly and accurately, in advance, about exactly what you want to accomplish in life and what success will look like.
Your ability to set clear, specific, measurable goals that you intensely desire and that are in harmony with your very best talents and abilities is the first real step to reaching your destination and to lifelong success.