Some people can use the jobs they work at to gain experience to start their own business if they want to be in the same field. This is how starting with an intention helps you find success. It is about knowing what you want and keeping to the same goals no matter what activities you have to do before reaching that goal. You might look for a job to raise capital to follow your dream career, but then job circumstances influence you, and you start relaxing. You forget about your initial goal, and you change your goals because of circumstances. You are puzzled when you fail, but you cause failure by being easily tempted, or by changing your plans too often without fulfilling them. Intention also gives you the ability to start small. You might have that big goal you want to go for and happily do the small things with the intention in your mind. The intention will help you to stay on track and not lose or forget your goal.
Know your intention and keep to it. Do whatever you do daily with the intention in mind, and act with purpose. This will help you stay on track and not vary from your dream. That’s why it is important to write down your dreams, so that you don’t forget them, and so that you keep the dreams alive by constantly reading them on your list and checking your progress. Keep checking if you are still on track, and that you haven’t strayed from the path you wanted to follow, which is the path to your dreams.
Understand that you need motive to work or do anything. You don’t just work or take actions. There is motive for everything, that’s how you succeed. For example, what’s your motive for reading this book? There are several. Is it for entertainment, or maybe you have to read it for work purposes, or to kill time, or to learn and get advice or thoughts because of your fascination with the topic, or to judge the writer, or to gain knowledge and maybe advice applicable to your life?
It is your motive. Only you can know, but you must know that your motive determines the results you get. If your aim is to judge or rate the writer, you will only have the rating and the judgement after reading, while with someone reading it with the hope or motive to gain knowledge and apply it to their life, the outcome will be the knowledge he can use. See how important your motive is? It is the same book, but the results are different because of motive.
The same applies to your work. You work to survive the bills. You will survive the bills, but as you know, victims survive and it is not nice to be a victim in the first place. Do you want to be a victim who just survives the bills every month? Surely you will want to pay your bills, not merely survive them, meaning nearly failing to pay them.
It is not nice to be in this position, especially when you will be battling to survive every month. Take another person at the same job getting the same pay-check. His motive is to get rich and be financially successful. He will probably use the pay-check to advance. Now you see where this is going. Motive is everything. Make sure you have an intention, and to make sure you achieve what you want, keep to the same goal until it is achieved. Don’t change it with a change in the movement of the wind, and you will see the results come so quickly, you will think your life is a dream.
Have purpose
You must have a purpose to your life. It is your soul. It is everything about you and your life; it is you, it is the reason you are here. Circumstantial change will occur in your life but you do not need to be buffeted by it. When you have a purpose in life, no matter what you choose to do with your life, your purpose will define what you all about. Every action you take will be part of your values.
It also serves as your remainder. It becomes the awareness that always reminds you what you should be doing with your life. Whenever you get lost in something, your purpose has the power to get you back on track. You can’t change your soul, as it is who you are; it is what makes you unique to everybody and everything in the world. There will be changes to your outside world, but there will always be changes, even when you’ve contributed nothing to the cause of changes. It is important to be open to change and to be flexible as to the possibilities that change opens up for you. However, it is also important to remain true to yourself and the dreams that you hold in life.
This purpose and your dreams are your anchor. Whatever life throws your way, these are the barometers by which you can measure your progress in the world, and how far you are from experiencing your soul, which is all to do with your purpose and your dreams. Also watch how you are reacting to change. Does your reaction help you get close to your soul and to your dreams or not? If not, then make changes to your reaction so that it favours your dreams.
We are here to experience ourselves; our love, our laughter, our happiness, and so on, and also to recognise our bad sides, like hatred, selfishness, sadness and so forth. We are experiencing ourselves in the physical world, which is why I am saying that the most important command you must listen to is your soul.
Be prepared to question your methods of getting to where you wish to go but be less prepared to change your destination and your dreams about life, which is experiencing yourself, your soul, at all levels, broke and wealthy. These are all levels of existence; they are all part of your soul, and your soul is broke and wealthy too. It is within you; it has everything in it. It wants you to experience as much as you can. To feel genuine love and experience all the best of yourself, live life at all levels. Never change your destination. You can try and live a lie but that will only leave you unhappy, unsatisfied and unfulfilled because discovering your soul is your life purpose.
Following your dreams about life is the ultimate truth, and the truth is what remains when everything else passes on. The truth will stand, the true you. When everything else goes, that is what will remain, your soul. When you encounter obstacles, when there are challenges in your life and believe me, there will always be challenges, change your approach, not the destination. Treat obstacles as direction signs to your goals, to your destination. Face them and learn from them.
Follow the directions. Learn from the obstacle; use setbacks as feedback, take challenges as opportunities. Keep going; with every challenge you succeed, with every step you take, you get closer to your dreams, you discover the true you, you become successful.
Setting realistic goals
Firstly, to achieve anything you need to think of it first. You need to act with purpose; you must have a goal in mind before doing anything. It is so sad seeing people who just live. ‘As long as I am alive, I will just wait and see what tomorrow has in store for us’, is their thinking. These people wait for the rest of their lives.
Success happens to people who set goals and go on a journey to achieve them, to people who challenge themselves on what they need out of life. That is success. Beggars are not choosers and choosers are not beggars. I am talking about people who choose their destiny and don’t just wait to see what happens.
Everybody dies but not everyone really lives. All things are possible if you really live. You must have aspirations as a normal living person. Also when setting goals you must by all means try to be as realistic as possible. You can’t be on level one and expect yourself to jump to level 50 in no time. You can’t be homeless and think of having a mansion by the next day, or have no food to eat at night but think about owning a car. There are steps to follow and you must not jump the steps. That’s when you fail.
It is the journey towards our dreams that makes us joyful. It is never about the destination; it is about the journey. We learn from the journey not the destiny. Writing this book is a journey on its own for me. I am learning so much more than I will ever learn at any educational institution. That’s why we make new goals after achieving the previous goal, and we don’t stop there. When we reach the peak of the mountain we realise that there are new mountains to climb.
On setting goals
Whether money goals, material goals or career goals, you need to set goals. You must know what you want. Write it down, and know exactly where you want to see yourself in the future. Define your goals; be specific because you can only set realistic goals when you are specific about what you
want.
There are three different goals that you can set and define for yourself when it comes to success in your life, especially financial success. Health is one of the goals you can set for yourself and it is also very important to your success through your daily performance and productivity, and also to being alive to see your dreams come true. In this book we will look at the ones closely related to financial success. These are money goals, material goals and career goals.
You must name your goal in each of the categories. The most used timeline for goals is a year. Have a goal for the year on money, and how much money you want to make within that year. For your material goal, name the material thing you want to acquire at end of the year – it could be a car for example, or to invest some money for a house or pay off your debts, or save for a holiday and so on. The same goes for your career goal. For example, what growth do you want to see in your career, and how big do you want to see your business grow within that year.
The first goal, the money goal, is the most important of the three because the material and career growth goals depend on it. They depend on how much money you were able to make, to spend on growing your business and getting that car. Now, be realistic in all three. All three depend on the money you make each day. This is how you can tell how much growth to expect in the future and be able to set realistic goals. If you make 100 rands a day, you can split it between your goals and also include living expenses.
For example, let’s say you spend 50 percent on yourself, 50 percent goes to your money goal where 25 percent is for your career or business growth, for new investment or career advance opportunities, and another 25 percent goes on your material goal, which is what you can buy or save for, to purchase at the end of the year.
When you have goals like this it becomes very hard to fail. You will be driven every day because you know exactly what you are working for. You don’t wonder why you have to work. You know exactly what you are working for, as the reward and the timeline motivates you to wake up every day. Since growth is what really makes us happy, if you have an amount you put aside every day or every month towards your growth you will be happy. You will know at the end of each day or month that you’ve grown, and that you have achieved something.
Realistic expectations
You are wrong if you think you have failed. We sometimes set unrealistic goals, but as much as it is good to have high expectations, sometimes we overdo it to the point that we don’t appreciate our success because it is nothing compared to what we expected. Let’s say you start a business that makes a certain amount of money a day, but you expect it to make four times the amount it makes, which is just impossible. Then you feel miserable and see the business as a failure regardless of what it was able to achieve.
You must be aware of your expectations and be realistic about them as you must be about your goals. There are possible targets and impossible targets. Try to set targets that are possible and within your reach, then you will be satisfied with your progress and you will not quit doing something just because you are not satisfied with the results. You will be unsatisfied because of your unrealistic expectations.
We can only achieve a certain amount in a day or year, so take time to appreciate your progress and have gratitude for your achievements. You will learn to appreciate who you are, what you do and believe more in yourself. It starts with taking note of your expectations and avoiding unreasonable disappointment caused by unrealistic expectations.
You must be realistic about your expectations, and you must recognise even the smallest achievement. This is focusing on positivity. When you brag about that small success, you mind will expand on it, and it will become something big in the future because you are focused on positivity. Be careful not to make yourself feel bad about your progress because the expectations you set for yourself were too high. You expected to build Rome in one day which is impossible. Set realistic goals, appreciate even the smallest success and seek help where it is necessary. Don’t be too proud to ask for help; that is stupidity. You will need other people’s help to find your success.
By independence I don’t mean for you to think that you don’t need anybody to lend you a hand in your business. I mean that you must work independently. Do not rely that much on other people but on yourself. Your own capabilities and strengths must dominate your activities. With that said, you must also get help from other people, and work with others where it is necessary. It is also very important to mention that you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself; this will result in a negative state of mind which will affect your productivity in a negative way. Recognise your small successes, as they will add up to make your life successful.
Don’t change your goals, change your strategy
Be prepared to question your methods of getting to where you wish to go but be less prepared to change your destination and your dreams about your life. Don’t settle for less; even if it means giving up your whole life to live the life of your dreams, go for it. Do whatever it takes. Do your best.
Powerful motives that drive us to actions
Love, desire, growth, putting all your heart into everything you do; that is what brings success. We are mostly driven by our feelings, our desire for something better, and our love, the love we want to share with our families, our friends and the world.
We want to be a blessing to everyone who gets to know us. This inspires us to be able to make a difference and touch other people’s lives. It is our natural life circle; we want to experience life at all levels, be the kid, youth, parent, and granny. All these responsibilities are what we want as we grow up. They move us to action, to prepare for the different stages of life. To aspire to live our lives at all these levels motivates us to seek success, to act towards fulfilment of our dreams. It is the essence of life.
What keeps you going?
Desire will keep you going. If you have a dream about your life and you know what you want out of life, you are not confused about your dreams. You know that you can achieve them, and you will be encouraged to keep going. Nothing will stop you from pursuing your dreams. You must know what keeps you going. Know your inspiration, and turn to it when the going gets tough, as it will keep you going.
Habits
We must also be aware of habits that stop us from succeeding in what we want to achieve. These are lazy habits. If you get used to working when you are instructed, you can’t work on your own. You will fail at creating your own value because there is normally no one ordering you around and telling you what to do and when. Every activity regarding creating your own value is led by you, on your own terms and time. We must build working habits, get used to working on our own and being able to act independently. Our habits play a very important role in our success, so we must take note of the habits that limit our chances and increase those that increase our chances of success.
There are habits related to success that you need to build, as they will make it easy for you to find success in your life. Here I want to discuss some of the common habits that you need to develop and use in your life to find the success that you want and so deserve.
As discussed earlier, you need to develop a habit of working independently. You must get used to working without anyone instructing you or making sure that you maintain discipline in your workplace. This matters most when you become self-employed. When you have made it a habit to work on your own it won’t be a problem to create value and sell it at will. You will be able to work without anybody’s supervision, and you will easily take responsibility for your life and lead yourself to success on your own.
Make it a habit to be decisive. It is a very important habit to develop, as procrastination is mostly caused by our inability to decide for once and for all. Some people don’t even know what they want to do with their lives while they are well into their late 20s, which is pathetic. The rule is simple; there are many things you can be, however, you cannot be everything. You need to decide and commit to your decision. Make it work, an
d don’t become indecisive and always find yourself running in circles. As discussed earlier, your prompt way of making decisions helps you to avoid failure. You influence life circumstances instead of having life circumstances influence you, and your decisions.
Make it a habit to take actions. Everything can be developed into a habit, and this includes taking actions. Don’t talk a lot; act more than you talk. There are those people who make it a habit to talk and talk without fulfilling reality, and without taking any actions. We all know that they achieve nothing. For success to prevail in your life you need to take actions. You need to stand up and make things happen. Nothing will come your way when you do nothing, which is the rule of action and reaction. You have to start the move for wealth to come your way. You must develop a habit of taking actions.
Develop a habit of focus and having self-discipline. You must teach yourself to be focused on what you need to do, and to be disciplined in your actions. This is one of the causes of failure in most instances. People lack self-discipline. They can’t focus on one thing and see it through; they take on more work than they can cope with, which results in failure. It is important that you choose one thing. Focus on what you want to see happen in your life and make sure you see it through.
Don’t leave anything unfinished – this is a lack of focus. You must focus on what needs to be done, and put all your attention and energy into it. This will make it happen successfully and within time, because sometimes impatience is sparked by the fact that we work on the same thing for years without finishing it because we have too many things going on, which is a lack of focus. It is very important that we develop a habit of focus and discipline. Focus on one task at the time and make sure that you complete it within a reasonable time frame, to be able to find success in your life.
Money- Wealth Creation Guide Page 25