How to make the next 12 months your best year ever!
The holidays are upon us and as you reflect on the year past, you may want to ask yourself this one very important question: Did you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish this past year?
Now, I am guessing that for a lot of you, you may have answered No to the above question. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Some of you may set high goals that really make you stretch and perhaps you hit most of them but not all of them. Unfortunately, some of you may not have even set goals. Now, for those of you that answered yes to the above question, did you challenge yourself enough? What did you learn from this past year? I dare to say that those that feel they accomplished all they wanted to accomplish this past year may not have challenged themselves enough.
In this article I want to concentrate on those that readily admit they did not accomplish what they wanted to accomplish last year. Now, I want you to ask yourself why. What prevented you from being super successful? What affected you negatively? Where were there roadblocks in the way that you could not overcome?
These are the answers you want to carefully evaluate. These are the answers that if not evaluated, will cause you to have another year where you are dissatisfied with your results. In your reasons why, did you mention things outside your control that cannot be learned, improved on, or corrected by you? If so, STOP IT! To have a better next year, you have to focus on the things you can improve, not the things you cannot affect. Did you blame the real estate market or perhaps the struggling mortgage industry? Why is this so important? The reason is if you continue to blame forces, industries and people outside of your control, you have no chance of getting better. Like the great Jim Rohn says, "Don't wish for things to be easier, wish for you to be better". When I was in corporate America, I recall hearing employees concentrate on complaining about how bad management was, how bad their compensation was, and how unfair it was that some people in the organization made more money than they did. This is such a common yet totally unproductive mentality that plagues America. Now that I am no longer in corporate America and operate as an independent entrepreneur, I hear different yet similar complaints but more focused at things even less within the complainants' control.
So if you can't blame things out of your control, who can you blame? Well, I do not like the term blame but how about who can you hold accountable? The answer is YOU! You are the only person that controls your emotions, fears and levels of success or lack thereof. If you concentrate on complaining about your competition, you will only attract more competition and more things to complain about. Focus on what you could learn to be better, focus on the real reasons a project failed, and focus on the steps to really take to get what you want. I would recommend using caution if you chose to focus on money as your goal. Focusing on the steps it would take, the relationships you need to make to achieve your financial goals is a much stronger bet. Train yourself to focus on what you can improve, maybe at first you have to bite your lip or stomp on your toes, but, if you train yourself away from complaining about the people and forces you cannot control, and toward the focus on improving yourself, you will most certainly have the best 12 months you have ever had!
Ray Higdon is the founder of the Forever Wealth Club (http://www.foreverwealthclub.com/) is an active real estate investor and entrepreneur that specializes in multiple streams of income. Ray can be reached at rayhigdon@rayhigdon.com
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