For every successful novelist, blogger, business owner, Olympian, inventor, and innovator you can name, there are countless individuals who never made it to the top of their game.
While luck and talent play an important part in these success stories, these individuals have ultimately succeeded because they have gotten out of their own way. They have conquered these five bad habits that can keep even the most talented individual from achieving greatness:
How do you answer “what do you do?” when you meet someone for the first time? Do you give a sheepish answer? Do you shrug off the question because you don’t truly love the work you do?
I’ve been in that position!
Ever wish you could start your career over?
Would you love to create your own business that you love?
Do you want to be your own boss?
Chris Guillebeau has travelled to over 175 nations. He’s looking to visit every country on Earth. Oh, and he’s only in his early thirties (in contrast, I’ve been to about 5 countries besides the U.S. and except for Canada, all the others are Caribbean tourist destinations).
That in itself is a pretty cool and interesting feat!
But how does he pay for all that travelling?
Well, Chris has a certain knack for taking his ideas and turning them into profit.
In his latest book The $100 Startup, Guillebeau culls together information from 50 case studies of individuals who have built businesses that earn $50,000 and more, many of which started out with $100 or less.
The book is a simple guide to help you find your own personal expertise that you can build a business into. Read valuable lessons from other successful entrepreneurs and see how you can do the same.
Sounds like a pretty cool book, right?
It’s on my reading list and it’s not even out yet.
Schools don’t do a very good job when it comes to teaching basic money management skills.
If we want to learn how to handle money we pretty much have to rely on the example set by our parents, as well as our own experiences of trial and error.
If we’re lucky we figure things out early and get a head start on the path to financial freedom. But all too often we fall into the same money traps that keep so many other people from achieving their dreams.
This is the time of year where you come up with a list of resolutions for the New Year.
Some want to exercise more. Others simply want to lose weight. Some want to save more money, while others want to get out of debt.
What do you think of New Year’s resolutions?
I’m not sure what to think, to be honest.
On the one hand, I think it’s important to have goals. A great goal that you follow through on give you guidance and something to aim your energies towards.
But I think setting a resolution or a goal just because the calendar changed is a bit odd.
Why not set goals throughout the year?
It was a little over two years ago that I completed all 26.2 miles of the ING NYC Marathon. This past weekend over 40,000 people ran the race. Let me tell you running a marathon is an awesome experience! There’s a lot of work and pain but it’s all worth it once it’s over.
Know what else is a lot of work and pain but well worth it?
Taking care of your personal finances!
In fact there are a lot of similarities between running a marathon and personal finance.
Have you drawn up a detailed budget and are struggling to keep to it? According to an article in the NYT*, it would be best to just give it up. Well, not exactly. But it does say that keeping to a strict budget might not be the best way to go about spending less or saving your money. The money and pyschology experts they interview say that a budget can be like a diet — it doesn’t often last long and may just end up with you standing at the freezer late at night devouring a quart of ice cream right out of the container.
It’s human nature, they say. We generally have trouble following through with our “best-laid plans.” And after a long period of focusing on restrictions — we binge. Compounding the problem is the abstract nature of credit cards and such. Watching cold, hard cash dwindle is far more painful and thus more effective in reigning in our spending.
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We’re reaching the end of our SMART goals. We’ve gone through making the goal specific, being able to measure it, making sure it’s attainable, and looking at how relevant it is. Now we’ll ask if your goal is Time-Bound?
A good goal will be time-bound or timely. It will have a starting point, an end point, and measurable time or milestones in-between. Time adds dimension to specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant.
By making your goal time-bound you give yourself a framework to focus with. Without deadlines for your goals, it’s easy to let your goals drift away and be put off for other things that may seem more pressing. You need to know when your goal will end. A finish point can be a big part of whether your goal was a success or not.
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Having a goal is a great motivator but it still needs structure if you don’t want to be another statistic in the failed goals category. Making your goals SMART is one way to organize your goal to help ensure success.
We’ve looked at making a goal specific, making sure the goal is measurable, and looking to see if the goal is attainable. Now we will look at how relevant your goal is.
When looking at the relevancy of a goal, we’re asking ourselves how important the goal is in the grand scheme of things?
Is the energy we’re going to put towards this goal the best use of our time and resources or is there something else that may be better?
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In this series on SMART goals, we’ve talked about being Specific about your financial goal and then making the financial goal Measurable. Now we’ll talk about your goal being Attainable.
Let me preface by saying that I think a person, any person, is capable of doing many incredible things. You may be truly amazed at what you can achieve if you earnestly put your mind and resources into reaching your goal.
But there are limits.
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When we last talked about goals I told you that you should make your goals S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) to help you in achieving them. We discussed making a goal Specific so that you have one concrete goal to shoot for and you know exactly what you want to accomplish rather than a big general category that’s hard to finish.
Today let’s talk about the next step – making your SMART financial goal Measurable.
You need to make a goal measurable, you need to know exactly how much you are going to achieve. Without a way to measure your goal, how can you track your financial progress? How will you know if you are making headway towards the financial goal?
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