If you're looking to buy a home in Austin, consider these tips. Search for real estate in Austin that you could see yourself living in for several years. Consider an Austin home with rooms that can change to fit your needs over time. Austin real estate varies in style - high-rise condominiums, ranch homes, town homes, etc. Be selective and choose a home that fits your personal style. The location of real estate in Austin does matter. When you buy a home, you're buying into a neighborhood - make sure it works for you.
NOTE: As a thank you for reading this blog post, we are providing you with a free excerpt from Dan Castro's book CRITICAL CHOICES THAT CHANGE LIVES.
You may be on the cutting edge of a new trend or a new discovery that will change conventional wisdom for years to come. You may not go down in history, but you may change the course of your life and the lives of those around you for the better. Only time will tell.
It’s never too late to decide what you want to be when you grow up. We should be on a never-ending quest to achieve our best and highest purpose, no matter what stage of life we find ourselves in. Remember, the decisions you make today affect your future more than the decisions you made yesterday.
Life is a little bit like fly fishing. When I first learned to fly fish, it was awkward because there was no weight on the end of the line to aid in casting. The casting is all done with a rhythmic motion of the arm and shoulder and a flick of the wrist. It requires a great deal of finesse. On the day of my first lesson, it was very windy. I thought attempting to cast an almost weightless fly line into the wind was a pointless exercise. But my instructor did it with great ease. He told me that in fly fishing you have to pick a spot on the water where you want your fly to land and cast toward it. If you don't pick a particular spot and keep directing your energies toward it, your fly line will be tossed about by the wind. The same is true in life. You need to pick a specific goal and keep casting toward it. Eventually, you will get there.
In order to get to your goal, you need to make two decisions. First, decide where to cast your hook. Second, make a decision every day to do something that is specifically designed to pull you closer to the goal. Ask yourself, "What specific action can I take today to get me a little closer to my goal?" If you don't know where to start, begin by reading articles and books on the subject. Talk to people who are already successfully doing what you want to do. But don't just sit there. Act!
Setting specific goals is very powerful. Writing down your “big picture” desires of where you want to be in ten years is critical. Today, you should stop and create a “dream sheet” of where you want to be and what you want to be doing in ten years. For now, ignore whether these dreams sound realistic or not. The key is to let your imagination run wild. Start dreaming now. Leave out no option. Deprive yourself of nothing. Make your list today!
Why is this exercise so important? Goal-setting creates the framework around which all other decisions can be made. Your goals become the standard upon which all options are evaluated. If a certain choice does not bring you closer to your goal, it should not be seriously considered. This simplifies what might have been a difficult decision. In short, we should reject all options that take us off the course that leads us to our goals. If you don't make a specific choice about where you want to be, then you can’t make the daily decisions designed to get you there.
When you chart a new course on paper by writing down your goals, you give your mind a new pattern to follow. This is part of restructuring the "programs" in your mind. You can't pursue a new direction until you allow yourself to do so in your mind. You’ve got to free yourself mentally to follow a new course. When you write down specific dreams and tangible goals, you give your mind guideposts to follow. You give your mind little handholds to reach for and hold onto one by one as you climb the mountain. When your mind starts following a new pattern, your actions follow. When your actions change, the results you get out of life also change.
“Sow a thought, and you reap an action;
sow an action, and you reap a habit;
sow a habit, and you reap a character;
sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”
Charles Reade
Writing down your thoughts is important because it transforms what is vague and general in your mind into specific bite-sized and attainable tasks. But you’ve got to be specific about what you write. Writing down on paper what is floating around in your mind is like trapping exotic butterflies and examining them up close in order to identify them. While they are flitting about, we only get passing glimpses of their beautiful colors and wing patterns. We sense that they are there, but we don’t know exactly what they are, where they came from or where they are going. They are more like a fantasy than a reality. When we capture these specific thoughts with pen and paper, we can examine them more clearly. You give your mind something concrete and “tangible” to focus on. Remember, what you focus on determines what you believe. If you are not focusing on something narrow and specific, then your beliefs will be vague and nebulous.
When you create a very specific picture in your head of who you want to be and what you want to accomplish, and focus on it every day, the mind does an amazing thing. It turns this image into a blueprint of what you will become. A perfect example comes from the life of well-known comedian George Lopez.
When he was only a child, George Lopez was abandoned first by his father and later by his mother. He was raised by an abusive grandmother and an alcoholic grandfather. On top of that, he was raised in poverty. To escape his misery, he chose to focus on comedy. He favorite comedian was Freddie Prinze, Everyday after school, he watched episodes of Chico and the Man. He hung a picture of Freddie Prinze on his bedroom wall and stared at it every night.
What he focused on began to shape what he believed. This was the First Law of Critical Focus at work. He began to say to himself, “I can be a comic. I can do what Freddie is doing. I want to make people laugh.” When he was still a teenager, he wrote these words on a scratch piece of paper: “I know at times I can’t make it but eventually I will. And I will hit the American people like a hammer. I will be the best.” These were powerful words because he spoke as if what he was saying was fact. He didn’t say “I hope to” or “I would like to.” If you look carefully at what he wrote above, you will see that he said used phrases such as, “I know . . .” He said, “I will . . .” “I will . . . ” “I will . . . ”
Remember if you are buying or selling Austin real estate, please contact Rose Castro at Austin Options Realty.
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