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Financial Journey
(featured column)
Focus on Your Passion and You Will Succeed
by
Karen Kuebler
We all have
dreams and desires in our lives that we would really love to experience in our
lifetime. Often, we feel that other people are especially fortunate or lucky
enough to actually see these dreams come to fruition, but that it just isn’t
in the stars during our lifetime to see our dream become a reality. The goal of
my article is to convince you that it absolutely
is possible for you to make your dreams come true. The keys to reaching your
heart’s desire include passion, commitment, focus and concentration on the end
goal. More...
I can’t overemphasize this key point
enough—it’s important that you really want to achieve a goal and want it with all your heart.
It won’t feel like work when you feel passionate about the outcome. Have you
noticed how quickly times flies when you are doing something you love? When you
are concentrating, you are living in the present moment, and you aren’t
watching a clock. Yet, when you are working on something that you don’t enjoy,
you are very aware of time and it seems to be passing very slowly.
I know
that you can accomplish what might seem to be impossible to you. The reason I
say this with such certainty is that I have done it. I have accomplished feats
that those around me thought were not possible for the average person with a
middle of the road income. I wanted to be financially independent by the time I
was in my mid 40’s.
The path was not always smooth. Life would
get in the way at times, and it required dedication and commitment. But I wanted
it strongly enough that I would not be deterred from my goal. I kept focused,
directing my energy and my actions toward my desired outcome. I believed that I
would achieve my goal without any
doubts. There are other goals in which I have applied these principles and
methodology and they have worked every time.
The following are some of the core
techniques that have worked for me:
 | Make a plan and work your plan. You start
with a dream or desire that you want to achieve, but to actually make the
dream a reality you must develop a concrete plan.
Let’s say your dream is to buy a home. You must create a concrete
set of steps to get you there. What, when, where, and how are good questions
to ask yourself as you begin to create your strategy. You might not have all
of the answers in the beginning and that’s alright. A plan can be
developed over time, but it is the most important starting point. The saying “if you don’t know where you want to go,
then any old road will get you there” is a valid one. Your plan is going to be your roadmap and your guide to
reaching your final destination. It’s imperative to know what you want, in
order to jump off “Go” and start your journey. Another important question to ask in the development of
your plan is the question “Why?”
Whatever your dreams, goals, and desires are – if you don’t know why you
want to achieve them then you aren’t going to have the burning desire or
passion to work toward them, let alone accomplish them.
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| An
overall plan will most likely feel overwhelming and impossible to undertake.
Break it into smaller goals and milestones which include short-term,
intermediate, and long-term. If the final destination is going to be ten
years away, it’s extremely easy to become discouraged along the way. If
you have a target for the next month, the next year, and so on – it
becomes more feasible and doable.
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| Consider
your activities carefully on a regular basis. Are your daily
activities supporting your long-term plan? It is important to keep an
eagle eye on where your money is going and whether you are focusing and
supporting your desired outcomes. If you are tracking carefully, you will
know where your money is going. If you are straying from your roadmap, then
your actions are at cross-purposes with your desired goals. You aren’t
living your life in harmony with what you actually want to achieve. Careful
scrutiny is key to keeping you focused on what you really want.
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| Visualize
your final outcome in your mind, to the point that you start to feel what
you will be experiencing when you arrive at your destination. I’ll
provide an example of how I did this successfully and it really worked! We had
purchased our property for retirement seven years before we achieved our
financial goals. We had a blueprint drawn of our new home and I would
visualize sitting in our screened-in porch in our whicker rocking chairs,
smelling the pine trees and listening to the birds sing. Whenever I became
frustrated with life, I would take a mental vacation to our new home in the
forest. Now we are in this home, experiencing exactly what I had visualized
over and over again in my mind.
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| Put
your plan in writing. Once you have done this, your commitment level to
accomplishing it will automatically increase. You may need to revisit
your strategy and modify it over time and that’s okay. Written goals
become more than just a wish or dream. When I first put our goal to achieve
financial independence into writing, both my husband and I were employed. We
anticipated achieving our goal by a certain date not knowing that we were to
become caregivers to a parent for a few years, or that my husband would
experience a job loss five years before we planned to retire.
Our plans were modified, but we did achieve our desired outcome –
it just took a couple more years than we initially expected.
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| Create
visuals to help you focus and concentrate on your desired results, such as a
visualization board. Let your imagination run free. There are no limits
to what you can put on your visualization board other than self-imposed
barriers that might get in the way. When we had purchased our property, I
carried a picture of our pine covered lot in my daily planner and looked at
it every time I opened it. Now that I am retired, I continue to create a
visualization board of other goals I plan to achieve during my lifetime.
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| Prioritize
each day and focus on your top three to five goals for the day.
Concentrating on your most important priorities will increase your
productivity. If there is something you need to do to help you achieve
your written goals, placing it as a priority will help you remain focused on
your target. Avoid interruptions and distractions that cause you to waste
time. We can easily lose an hour a day due to unnecessary interruptions, or
not staying focused. An hour a day of lost time leads to over 15 days lost
over the course of a year. Chances are we lose a lot more than an hour a day
due to disruptions. When we put time into perspective it changes the way we
want to spend it. Do you really want to spend 15 days of your year on
unnecessary interruptions and distractions? And, in reality we are probably
spending more than that on a daily basis because we aren’t focusing. Time
is a precious and limited resource. Once gone, it’s gone forever. Make
sure you are putting your time to good use and remain focused on what is
most important.
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| Place
your written plan in a visible place where you will view it often. Ever
notice how out of sight becomes out of mind? I kept a notebook with our
plan and the strategy to achieve it in a spot where I would always see it. I
reviewed it often to determine how “on-target” we were. I loved the
notebook because it allowed me plenty of room to add ideas that would help
us meet our desired results. I made graphs to help with additional visuals.
I brainstormed new ideas over the years which triggered my imagination in
ways that opened doors to more resourceful and creative ideas to keep on
target.
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| Let
go of goals that you have outgrown or no longer have a burning desire to
achieve. We sometimes hang onto a particular goal because we think that we
“should” accomplish it. A friend of mine was going to school to
become a nurse, but she found herself completely frustrated. When we
discussed her plans, she realized that she really wanted to be an interior
decorator and work with her husband who designed and built homes. She felt
frustration because she had put so much time into her education and thought
that she might be judged as a “quitter” by others. When she realized
that it was okay to change her course, she pursued interior decorating and
is now very successful and happy because she is doing something she really
loves.
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| Don’t
become overly obsessive about your goals, to the exclusion of living a
balanced life and enjoying each day. Sometimes I found myself so focused
on my desired outcome that I was forgetting to enjoy the journey and the
“precious present.” I needed to frequently remind myself that
“today” is all I really have and that it is important to live in the
present and enjoy each moment, while looking forward to achieving our
financial goals. Rewarding the accomplishment of milestones along your
journey is a good way to help you enjoy each day. Make sure you celebrate
smaller successes along the path to your long-term goals. |
Once you know exactly what you want, staying
focused on your desired outcome is key to finally realizing your goal.
The concept of total focus is extremely powerful. Look what happens when
you focus the energy of the sun through a magnifying glass – you can start a
burning fire.
You can create that same kind of force in
your personal life when you concentrate your energy toward your final
destination. Focusing on what you really, really want will start a fire burning
inside of you! It’s not a matter of being lucky. The idea of people having
good or bad luck is a myth. Luck is merely the point where opportunity and
preparation meet.
If you want something with all of your heart
and you focus your attention, energy, and actions toward achieving it, there is
nothing that can stop you from accomplishing your desired results. You may hit
bumps in the road and if that occurs then you’ll need to redirect your energy
and possibly modify your target. Begin focusing today and believe that you will
achieve your goals. You
are the one in control of making your dreams come true!
* * *
Copyright
© 2007 by Karen Kuebler. All rights reserved. Want more
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