The essential guide to goal setting part six: reality check

Have you ever had a reality check on any aspect of your life? It’s a bit like being dumped in a freezing water on a cold day. After our previous five workbook articles (links below) on how to achieve your goals, we now want to give you a goal reality check for your life journey just to ensure that your chosen goal is what you really want to do.

When you live life based upon a life map, you will encounter many motivators and de-motivators. Unfortunately, when you go to a talk about mind set or wealth most of the talks and sessions tend to focus on the end goal and the inspirational part of the journey.

Before you read this article, please make sure you are up to date with the previous essential guide to goal setting workbooks.

In this article, I want to share with you the aspects of your journey that many successful people don’t talk about. Hopefully, with this insight, you will be forewarned and will develop the fortitude and strength to persevere in spite of the potential setbacks.

Several of the more challenging aspects of a life based on your passions and goals,  have caused many to give up in the early parts of their journey. These aspects or de-motivators are encountered by many and may even affect you too. For this reason, it makes achieving a goal sweeter because you made it through when many others failed.

The first potential setback that may happen is betrayal.

You WILL be betrayed

Betrayal comes in all forms and it is part of your journey to being financially free and following your passion of doing the things that truly make you happy. Expect some kind of betrayal either from a colleague, a close friend, or a family member. This betrayal will hurt. You may suffer a large or small financial loss. One of the worst situations I know of was when the founder of a business was held to ransom by his entire team of employees. The situation was similar to a union going on strike, except that his employees wanted the business.

In the gift of betrayal, we shared stories from our own lives, of the different kinds of betrayals we encountered from jealous colleagues and ego-driven relatives. Betrayal is part of business life (and even your personal life) and is there to help you grow massively beyond your comfort zone….if you can survive it. The worst that can happen from a betrayal is un-forgiveness and bitterness. This un-forgiveness and bitterness will prevent you from growing and place a ceiling on the success of you as a person and the achievement of your goals. So get over it as fast and as best as you can.

Busy doing nothing

Busyness is a great de-motivator to many with long term goals. There is good busyness and bad busyness. Bad busyness is when the work you’re doing has nothing to do with achieving your goals. Many so-called “busy people” are still nowhere closer to their goal, even after several years of toil. Eventually, people give up on their goals because the amount of sacrifice involved for little gain is hugely disproportionate. The problem is that their busyness may appear to be focused but really they are going in the opposite direction.

To overcome busyness, ensure that every day you do at least one action that moves you closer to your goal. That action will be dictated by the micro-goals you created in part two of our essential guide to goal setting.

In addition, create a don’t do list. In the don’t do list, put all the things on your todo list that either someone else can do, or bring very little results to you and/or your business.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice!!!!????? Nobody told me that to achieve anything I need to make a sacrifice! Unfortunately, the truth is that if you truly want to be financially free, if you truly want to be a concert pianist, if you truly want to be a top athlete, computer analyst, < insert your dream career here > then you will have to make sacrifices.

These sacrifices include;

• Zero or substantially less television,
• Less fast-food eating,
• Less consumer spending,
• At least sixty hours per week working towards your goal,
• Less time with un-supportive or distracting family and friends,
• Ego

Those were the easy sacrifices. I wish it was easier, unfortunately, the hard truth is that nobody who has ever achieved anything substantial has been able to do it without sacrifice.

Loneliness

I wish I could hold your hand and be with you at every step of your journey. Especially the failures which bruise your ego, and the betrayals which bruise your soul. There are so few people at the top for a reason. That is because the success journey can be a lonely one. Not everyone wants to go as far as you. Not everyone wants to go at your speed. Not everyone even wants you to get there.

The question I always ask people is “how much do you want it?”

Is your success worth a bit of loneliness for now? Is it worth a bit of betrayal? Is it worth people abusing your good fortune when you finally arrive at your destination? Some of the most often phrases and actions I hear from people around successful people is:

• “You can afford to buy me a drink\dinner…..”,
• “You can afford to pay me unreasonably high rates for me sub-standard work”,
• “You’re rich so….”

They have no clue about your story or your journey nor would they understand were you to explain it to them. Many have no clue about how much you have, they simply see your success. Many would not even help you at the start of your journey when you were learning your craft.

“We enter the world alone, and we leave it alone. And everything that happens in between, we owe it to ourselves to find a little company. We need help. We need support. Otherwise, we’re in it by ourselves. Strangers, cut off from each other, and we forget… just how connected we all are. So instead, we choose love, we choose life, and for a moment, we feel just a little bit less alone.” — Meredith Grey

Coaches can help you. Meet-up groups in your field(s). However, the journey is still yours and your alone. All the glories and all the sadness. All the ups and all the downs. It’s all yours.

Genemies

Genemies are friends who are enemies of your goals – goal enemies! Here are several statements from genemies I’ve had over the years.

“All work and no play makes Ben a dull boy”.

“That’s dumb”.

“You’ll never be good enough at it”.

“Do what you’re good at”.

Genemies, aren’t bad or particularly negative. Genemies, honestly think they are trying to help you.

If you need the support of your friends to survive, then your choices are:

• Give up on your goals
• Get new friends
• Minimise contact with your genemies

Other goal enemies

Many motivational talks, do not talk about these subjects. At best betrayal, loneliness, sacrifice, success-addiction, are briefly mentioned. Other de-motivators to your success journey include alienation, fear, mockery, shame, lack of self-worth. The greatest of all of these being fear which we have explored a little in our Feel the Fear video logs.

The reason this part of your journey is not discussed in depth is because, in truth, it is like getting married. If they knew in advance the work involved if keeping a healthy marriage or partnership, they may never have got married….but then they would never have enjoyed the benefits of having an awesome supportive partner and friend in their life.

Your success journey is the same. There is a lot that you will have to face. Like any great story the more successful you become the greater the challenges you will face. However, you will also grow immensely in endurance, fortitude, life understanding. You will have an incredible amount of freedom, from people’s opinions and the silly pointless arguments and behaviour that you perhaps used to be involved in.

One of the most honest books on the subject of success and wealth is How to get Rich written by the late Billionaire Felix Dennis. Felix Dennis wrote this How to get Rich himself. The book itself challenges people to be honest with themselves and find out just how much they want success.

Action Points

• Write down a list of things that you would be willing to give up to achieve your success.
• Write down a list of things that scare you most (fear) about your success journey.
• Write down how you can reduce the fear
• Read How to get Rich by Felix Dennis. Google the book and read excerpts or see if there is a reading on Youtube.

Reaching your top goals is an amazing feeling, however, it is not for the faint-hearted. Prepare yourself in advance to meet some of the challenges thrown your way and you will reach the top.

In my seventh article in this series, I share some of the top goal motivators that have helped people to work through the obstacles thrown their way.

Until then live long and prosper, oh and don’t be lazy make it a goal to comment on things that interest you and leave a comment in the section below. We love to hear the tips and insights from our readers.

Other articles you will find helpful in achieving your goals are shown below.

• Five techniques to stay focused
• How SMALL means big success
• Priming to achieve
• WTF should I do with my life?

If you want a daily dose of motivational quotes, success tools, and a place to ask any and every question about how to become financially free, join our free Financial Freedom Coaching group on Facebook.

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