April 4, 2007

Financial Freedom Series 3 -- Goals

Goals: The Next Step

Hopefully you have experienced for yourself what incredible influence you have over your destiny through the simple tools of purposeful action and value-driven living. Next, by developing meaningful goals, you will harness that power and direct it toward accomplishments you may not have previously believed yourself to be capable of!

Goals Are Like Building A House

To understand goals, look at the process of building a new home. Before any building takes place, a blueprint is created. Why? Because a team of builders can't properly build anything if they don't know what the outcome is supposed to be. Sadly, we are much more cavalier with the construction of our own lives -- few of us have a blueprint for our own future.

There is a definite order to the way homes are built. Doors can't be installed until walls are built. Walls can't be built until the foundation is poured. And the foundation can't be poured until the ground is leveled. Goal building is similar. In most cases, you cannot get from where you are to where you want to be in one simple step.

Build Your Goals, Beginning With The Future

If your goal is to donate one million dollars to charity, and you've never owned more than one thousand dollars' worth of anything, then you will need to work through some intermediate steps along the way. To discover those steps, you need to backtrack from the ultimate attainment of your ideal life, using the principle of cause and effect. What would you have to do to raise that much money? Would you earn it through business or fundraising? If through fundraising, how would you meet eligible donors? Keep backtracking until you reach where you are now. You then have a series of small steps to take to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Accomplishing Big Things With Small Steps

While it may be daunting to think about going straight from where you are now to where you want to be, it looks much more believable when many small steps are put together. For instance, the first step might be to simply save $1 every week. The next step might be to save $2 every week. Then, to earn $2 more every week (saving $4 per week). While saving a million dollars can seem downright impossible, saving two dollars can seem ridiculously easy. By completing all of the small steps toward your goal, you eventually will have followed all of the steps toward your goal! Marathon runners don't leap from the start line to the finish line, they take one step at a time.

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money

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