Get the Most From Life

We can choose to survive or to thrive. 

We can choose a life of emptiness or a life of fulfillment. Where you are today doesn’t have to be where you are tomorrow. Your Financial Makeover must begin by igniting your drive to achieve your dreams.

Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten how to have fun thinking about what we want. We’ve forgotten how to think big—to see the larger picture. When we’re children, everything is a possibility and nothing limits us. We want to be movie stars and astronauts, racecar drivers and ballerinas.

Then life happens and suddenly we realize that we must work hard to achieve our goals.

We quickly realize that taking risk involves failure and disappointment. By the time we are 12 years old we’ve heard “no” 100s of times more than “yes.” We temper our desires and conform to what we think we should want. It’s time to understand exactly what motivates you and precisely the kind of future you desire—we will uncover what it is you really want and will show you how to get it.

So what’s the first step?

Should we create a list of stuff we want? Our gut reaction is to say we want a big house, nice cars, and to travel the world. While these are worthwhile goals for a Financial Makeover, they don’t provide a direction. If you immediately jump into setting goals, you may find that you work hard to accomplish your goals but are left unfulfilled once you achieve them. A popular and true saying is, “When climbing the ladder of success, make sure it is leaning against the right building.” In other words, don’t focus all of your time and energy accomplishing goals that don’t fulfill you.

So if setting goals is not the first step, where do we start?

The five Power Exercises to designing and achieving a fulfilling and rewarding life are:

1. Create a perfect Vision for your future.
2. Define your Want List.
3. Create and prioritize IMPACT-Goals.
4. Calculate how Money can help.
5. Use Pictures for motivation.

I know how easy it is to read a blog post or a strategy and think, “That it won’t work for me,” or “I’ll implement it later.” I personally struggled with this issue. For many years, my objective in reading a book was to finish it. My focus was on completing the book, and not on learning and expanding my knowledge. I approached these opportunities as tasks—literally to-do items on a list. When it came time to complete the exercises or quizzes, I rationalized that I would get around to them later. “The exercises are all the same,” I used to think, “I’ll just read ahead and figure out the gist of the chapter.”

After years of reading, I was no better off. I’d read hundreds of theories and was exposed to some of the best minds in the world, but I was still the same person I had always been. I learned a lot, but I never converted the theories, knowledge, or advice into anything useful. I spent thousands of dollars and dedicated hundreds of hours but I didn’t take the extra 10 minutes to work through an exercise or to implement any of the knowledge. Don’t make the same mistake. Your Financial Makeover requires action! Finish these exercises. The energy you invest in this course will propel you in the direction of your dreams.

Stay tuned for the first exercise in an upcoming blog post, later this week!

The proceeding blog post is an excerpt from The Six-Day Financial Makeover: Transform Your Financial Life in Less Than a Week!, available now on Amazon.