Success is a clarion call we all crave to heed. So, here are two ways to help us race ahead of our friends in the riveting game of life!
It’s been said many times, in many places, by many different people in many different places that confession may be bad for our reputation but good for our soul. So, in the interest of personal, shall we say, soul-enhancement, here’s my public confession of a rather private matter:
I am an addict.
Specifically, I am addicted to... books.
I believe many of us possess addictive personalities. If that includes you, then tell me: WHAT are YOU addicted to, and WHY are you addicted to it?
Do you know? Do you truly know?
As you wrestle with my admittedly difficult question, let’s process something simple first. We all know that specific negative addictions to drugs, alcohol and gambling, for instance, regularly destroy both young and old lives without discrimination.
Yet other positive addictions, such as working, running, writing and — as I mentioned — reading, can potentially be harnessed to yield massively beneficial results.
I say ‘potentially’ because those positive addictions usually only yield their most beneficial results when coupled with intelligent, analytical introspection. For instance, my bibliophilic tendencies were sown and cultivated by both my parents who, despite permanently parting ways when I was only a year old, inculcated in me an abiding love for reading reinforced by their sizeable personal libraries which grew separately and steadily over decades through their persistent buying and collecting of books.
Even today I gravitate to bookstores in every country I visit and I usually leave those enticing shops with fresh purchases. Well, about 25 years ago, when I was 30, I took stock of my behaviour and invested deep analysis on WHY I acted the way I did in bookstores and around tall stacks of books.
MAKING LIFE BETTER
I finally figured out the main reason I seemed to be on an endless quest for book-bound entertainment and hard-won knowledge: I was looking for ONE key to make life better.
While my behaviour in physical bookstores and in online stores like Amazon and Book Depository has not changed — I still keep endlessly buying new and used books — I stumbled across that elusive key many years ago:
Regularly writing down and then rewriting my goals!
That’s all! It really is as simple as that.
Indeed, I came across that truth repeatedly from different sources over the last few decades. That repetition was necessary for me because I’m a slow learner with a memory like a sieve. This means reinforcement and repetition are needed for me to truly internalise any key life lesson.
In case you’re the same as I in that regard, then Brian Tracy’s extraordinary 2016 book Get Smart! contains many fascinating gems on effective goal-setting. It is so good that I recommend you go out and buy your own copy of that book for your own library.
But until you do so, please mull over this crucial lesson from Tracy that seems to apply to super achievers in every country of our world: “Only about 3 per cent of people have clear, specific, written goals and plans that they work on each day.”
SETTING GOALS
Before I continue, I want you to be brutally honest with yourself because I know you already have goals – that’s not the issue. But are your goals written down? Yes or no?
If they aren’t written down on a piece of paper or in a notebook in your own handwriting then for this purpose they don’t count. Please make them count! How and Why?
Tracy explains: “By setting goals, you programme your mental GPS, which then functions like a guided missile to move you directly toward the target you have aimed at, taking feedback from your target and making “course corrections” until you achieve your goal.”
My favourite definition of financial planning, my primary area of professional practice, is simple and straightforward: “Financial planning is the process of meeting your life goals through the proper management of your finances.”
It is evident that even apart from the core technicalities of financial planning encompassing wealth protection, wealth accumulation and wealth distribution, the value of goal-setting to both the discipline and the profession of financial planning cannot be overstated.
That’s why I first always ascertain and then write down the key life goals of all my financial planning and retirement funding clients in their dedicated client notebooks so as to keep them (and me) on target as I work over a span of years, usually, to deliver key financial planning solutions.
As Tracy learnt over several decades, teaching people how to set and achieve goals proved to be the turning point in his client’s’ lives.
Therefore, to enter the ranks of Earth’s top 3 per cent I suggest you write down your clearly thought-through goals in a dedicated GOALS notebook. For heightened effectiveness, though, also do this: Rewrite those goals every day or at least every week!
And finally, to enter the ranks of global leaders, inculcate within yourself a boundless passion for reading. Read widely; read deeply; and, dare I suggest, read addictively!
Developing both those habits in tandem — writing goals and reading books — will enhance your thought life, first, and then skyrocket your financial and professional stature, next.
© 2019 Rajen Devadason
Rajen Devadason, CFP, is a Licensed Financial Planner, professional speaker and author. Read his free articles at www.FreeCoolArticles.com; he may be connected with on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/rajendevadason, or via rajen@RajenDevadason.com You may follow him on Twitter @RajenDevadason.
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