Goals: The Rudders That Guide Your Life
Posted on May 11, 2007
Have you ever truly thought about what you really want out of life? No, I’m not talking about those “I wish I had this” or “I wish I had that” thoughts that everyone has on occasion. I’m talking about doing some serious soul searching. Have you ever reached down inside your inner being and honestly asked yourself what it is you really want from your life? If you have and you weren’t able come up with any definitive answers, it’s probably because you lack goals in your life.
My first experience with this happened when I was just 20 years old and was laid off (Or as people call it today, downsized.) from my $80 a week factory job. I spent several days moping around, wondering what I was going to do next and talking with co-workers who had also been laid off. As might be expected, all I got from them were tales of disappointment and woe. Like me, they had been unable to find jobs, their severance pay was running out and several of them had nearly exhausted what little savings they had been able to accumulate. None of the suggestions I got from them gave me any hope or encouragement.
It was this experience that taught me that if you don’t have goals, you don’t have direction. When I asked myself what I wanted out of life, I realized that I didn’t have a clue. I had been doing what everyone else around me was doing; I got up each day, went to work, did my job, got a paycheck on Friday and then tried to make it stretch until the next Friday. I wasn’t enthused about my work; it was merely something I did to pay the bills. Although I saw other people living in fine homes, driving nice cars, taking exciting vacations and appearing to have the world on a string, but I couldn’t see myself in that position.
One night during this depressing period, I must have been dreaming because I woke up at two o’clock in the morning, sat up bed and yelled, “Why can’t I be rich?” Then it dawned on me, I hadn’t been doing anything to become rich. Sure, I’d wished I could do better, like we all do at times, but wishes are not goals; goals are what make wishes come true and I didn’t have any I could define. As I sat there, wide awake wondering what I was going to do next, a thought passed through my mind that changed my life forever. Don’t ask me why, because to this day I can’t tell you what made me reach for a notepad that was on my nightstand and write down the goal that directed my life for the next 30 years. The goal that I wrote read, “I will become a millionaire by age 30 and retire by age 50.”
Goals are so powerful. When I wrote down that goal, I was just 20 years old, had no job, bills were pouring in and by any stretch of the imagination, I was not millionaire material. It was not until the next morning that I discovered how goals can change your thinking and your actions. Up until then, I had faced each day since the loss of my job thinking about how I could find another job making $80 a week. When I looked at the goal I had written on the notepad, it prompted me to do a bit of math. I divided $80 into $1,000,000 and was shocked to see that at that rate, it would take over 240 years just to earn $1,000,000. That clearly showed me that I would have to change my thinking and my behavior if I expected to have any chance of reaching the goal.
I tore off the sheet with my written goals, folded it and put it in my wallet where I carried it for 30 years. From that day forward, the goals guided and directed my life. Each time I thought about doing something new or different, I took out the goals sheet and evaluated what I was thinking of doing to determine if it would bring me closer to or take me further away from the goals. Although it’s a long story filled with setbacks and successes, hard times and good times, the courses of action I took in striving to reach those goals eventually led me to accomplish them both. I stopped looking for another factory job and started my own business. I started investing in real estate and once I reached my goals, I found a great deal of pleasure in sharing what I learned along the way through a series of books and articles. Today, what I enjoy most is sharing the little tips and ideas that combined to bring me success.
Here’s another one of those tips! Whether you’re a student, laborer or corporate executive, goals are the rudders that steer you through life. Without something to strive for; something that causes you to stretch and grow, life becomes nothing more than a series of meaningless depressing days where you simply drift along trying to exist. Goals steer you in a predetermined direction and eventually lead you to accomplishment unless you quit.
I use this monetary goal as an example to demonstrate how my goals have guided my life, but I don’t want you get the impression that I think money is everything. Other goals are just as important; family, health, spiritual and other things also play a big part in leading a successful and fulfilling life. I use this example because I’ve learned that having financial success puts food on the table, a roof over your head and makes it easier to focus on and accomplish life’s other goals.
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