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Success is
an elusive concept to many people. It has as many different definitions
as there are people on earth. To truly achieve success one has to create
their own vision of exactly what it is they want and desire. Too often
we buy into someone else’s success plan. We look at someone who has the
outward appearance of success but the truth is we never know the real
facts. We see the money, power, big house, fancy car, etc without looking
at the path they travel. We do not look at the other areas of their life
to really determine their true level of success.
The vision of the perceived
monetary success clouds our evaluation process. Their monetary success
may be built on sinking sand rather than bedrock. The sinking sand could
be a great lack in any of these areas of their life; mental, physical,
spiritual, and family. In the Bible in Matthew 7:26 it clearly states:
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into
practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain
came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat up against that
house, and it fell with a great crash. The truth is the wind, rain, and
rising rivers in life will come. You cannot prevent their coming. You
can only be prepared for their coming. A successful person understands
this clearly. They work diligently to create a successful life in all
areas. You will not be able to avoid life’s tragedies. You will lose
a loved one, friend, child, or parent. You will have financial struggles.
You will experience health problems of some kind. It is not how you avoid
them, it is how you prepare for them and deal with the curve balls of
life.
Is success achieved by trading your family for money? Is success
achieved by trading your health for dollars? True and lasting success
is accomplished by creating balance in all areas of life and adding wealth
to all these accounts on a daily basis. You must add wealth to each an
every area of life daily. To not transfer success to some far off goal
in the future when you get to a particular place in your life or acquire
something. The truth is when you get to that particular place or acquire
that item, success will have moved on. Success is living today with all
the zeal, gusto, and zest that you can pack into a 24-hour period of
life we have today. Success is clearly not a destination but a daily
journey we undertake every day. Success is found through focusing on
the value of each day we are blessed with and to soak up all that life
has to offer today.
"If you had a
bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000-that
carried over no balance from day to day-and allowed you to
keep no cash in your account… and every evening cancelled whatever
part of the amount you failed to use during the day-what would
you do? Draw out every cent, of course! Well, you do have such
a bank, its name is ‘time.’ Every morning it credits you with
86,000 seconds…every night it rules off as lost whatever of
this you have failed to invest to good purposes. It carries
over no balance…it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens
a new account for you. If you fail to use the day’s deposit,
the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing
against tomorrow. You must live in the present-on today’s deposit."
Using up your whole
day will lead you to success in life. Wringing every moment
of passion, happiness, sadness, success, failure, and love
out of your every day will create a beautiful tapestry of life.
Do not waste today for anyone or anything. The truth is we
do not really know if we will be here tomorrow. If you had
only six months to live, how would you live today? The truth
is you or I may only have that long to live and we just do
not know it yet.
Let me share with
you the seven steps to success.
Step one: You must
first decide what you want. The truth is we can have anything
we desire in life. Earl Nightingale said that if man only knew
that he could have anything he wanted he would set more goals.
The truth is if we set more goals we would achieve more things
in life. If your vision is clear, you are assured that you
will get there. The problem is we do not have a clear vision
and set enough goals. We do not take the time to create the
vision.
Step two: Your goals
must be written. Success begins when you grab the pen and paper
and think and work to craft your ideal life. Successful people
think on paper before they act. You must take the time to write
your success plan on paper and your goals down on paper. Only
3% of our population does so. Guess what those 3% have, live
in, drive, wear, and eat? It is not by accident what they achieve.
It is by design.
If you cannot write
your vision with clarity on paper you certainly will not be
clear mentally to achieve it. By writing your vision clearly
you will pull your mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional
powers in alignment to achieve your vision and goals. Your
mind, your body, and your subconscious mind will all work like
a tug-o-war team pulling on the rope of life. With those three
powerful forces pulling in concert, it does not matter how
many or how strong the opponent is on the other end of the
rope. They will most assuredly be pulled across the centerline
for your victory.
Step three: Create
a time frame for your goal or vision. Set a target for when
you will accomplish it. You have to get your mind in motion
to achieve it by a certain time. Without a timeline, you have
no goal, you only have a wish. Wishes will only cause frustration.
You cannot control or exert force on a wish to create into
reality. If you do not achieve the goal or vision in the time
frame, just set another one to shoot for. There are no unrealistic
goals, there are only unrealistic time frames.
Step four: Achieving
your vision or goal will take a series of activities. Create
a list of the series of activities you must do for you to achieve
your vision or your goal. As your motivation increases, the
better you can clearly write out this series of activities.
People will often not take the time to create the list. This
can dramatically reduce your speed at which you achieve your
vision or goal. Planning a vision or goal completely through
to create small bite size pieces makes it easier to digest.
If you cooked a 20-pound turkey dinner with potatoes, stuffing,
cranberries, rolls, and gravy; you could not eat it whole or
at one time. You could eat it over time and by breaking it
up into bite size pieces. Now if you invited a "team of
friends" to help you, you could polish off the whole turkey
dinner in one setting by each of you taking bite size pieces.
Successful people evaluate the situation and elicit help and
create a plan to lighten the load on all. They then have everyone
dive in and begin accomplishing things in bite size pieces.
Step five: Re-check
the series of activities to insure they are in the proper order.
Organize this into a comprehensive step-by-step plan to achieve
the vision or the goal. You need to start with the important
and move to the least important. Do not delay, begin the most
important item today. Do not move on to another item till you
complete the most important item first. There is an order to
all activities and tasks. Spend the time planning to create
it.
Step six: Do not allow procrastination to set in. You can always make an excuse
to put it off till later. Do not fall to that temptation. The key is to start
the momentum today. A primary law of physics is a body in motion will tend
to stay in motion. Do not delay getting your body in motion.
Step seven: Keep the
body in motion daily. Do not neglect to do something daily
that moves you closer to your vision or your goal. Constantly
ask yourself is this activity I am doing now moving me closer
to or further away from my goal?
Once you are moving
forward, your vision or goal can stay in motion with a smaller
amount of effort. The greatest exertion of force comes in the
beginning trying to get the vision or goal moving. Do not stop
and start. Keep constant pressure applied to your direction.
If you apply these
seven steps to your real estate business you can accomplish
any amount of sales you choose to do. The truth in life is
you are the one who does the choosing. The market, competition,
and interest rates do not effect your choice or outcome. You
are the one that does the choosing, so choose wisely.
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