Happy New Year!
May 2015 be everything you dreamt of and more.
I’m writing to you from my "new adopted work space" in Trinidad & Tobago.
I have been here since December 30th, 2014 and am just overflowing with gratitude.
Over the years, I’ve had to admit that Trinidad is really where my spirit lives.
Maybe it’s because I get to do cool stuff like spend the evening sleeping on the beach, facilitating a conversation on gender violence with some of the fiercest activists, artists and social entrepreneurs in the Caribbean.
My month long vacation is my gift to myself for achieving a major financial goal - becoming debt free and paying off US$60,000 (R600, 000) debt in 4 years! Yay!!
What’s the secret behind achieving goals and turning dreams into reality?
A 1979 study asked Harvard MBA graduates the following question:
“Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”
The study found that:
~ Only 3% of the students had written goals and plan
~ 13% had goals but they weren’t in writing
~ 84% had no goals at all
Ten years later the same group of students were interviewed and the results were fascinating:
~ 13% of the class who had goals, but didn’t write them down were earning twice the amount of money that the 84% who'd had no goals were earning
~ The 3% who’d written down their goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% of the class combined!
The importance of writing down your goals
Writing my goals down was a game changer for me.
I didn’t know it at the time but like they say – hindsight is 20/20.
At the end of 2010, I read a book by Tom Ferry titled “Life! By Design” and it was all about the power of visualization and writing down your vision.
I thought what the heck, let me do what this guy actually recommends and write down a 5 year vision for my life.
At the time everything I wrote down seemed impossible but I figured l'd make up my own exercises and deal with my insecurities as I went along.
Next Step: Take constant action
Seeing my vision written down, made me feel great but I soon realized that if I wanted things to happen, I needed to take constant action.
I wrote down action steps and committed to dealing with my self esteem issues on a daily basis.
So far I've achieved 55% of the goals I wrote down in 2010, after all, I wrote down 4 pages of goals.
Most of the goals I’ve achieved in the last 4 years are things I thought were impossible.
My journey has definitely been one of self awareness and self confidence.
Focus your energy on a maximum of 5 goals at a time
So with that in mind, I’ve written 4 personal finance/ career goals for 2015:
1. Meditate 2 hours a day (this is a game changer but I get lazy and end up doing 45 minutes at weird hours)
2. Enrol 1,000 students to the Wealthy Money Personal Finance eCourse
3. Get paid to speak and facilitate 8 workshops and/or events internationally
4. Focus on creating content on savings and investment to help as many people as possible start investment portfolios in 2015 (wealth creation)
Have you ever written your goals down? Did this help you achieve them?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments section below.
