#2—Start Tidying Up Your Life
Once you finish exhausting your list, look through the list carefully once more and see whether there is anything you would like to add or cancel.
Next, start tidying up your life!
Begin by having good time management and start ranking the top 5 things that you want to accomplish within the next five years. The reason why we want only the first 5 things now and rank them in order of importance is because we need to learn how to focus on what is important. Our minds are easily distracted and thus, if we do not concentrate on a few goals at one time, we will easily ‘goal hop’. Once things do not turn out the way we expect it to be and frustration sets in, we will tend to leave that goal unaccomplished and go search for other goals.
Do not worry about the other goals as once you have completed the first few, you can look back at your list and start working towards the rest.
Write the date for five years later on top of the list and put beside it ‘deadline’, i.e.
deadline: xx/xx/2015 (since this year is 2010).
This timeline is a crucial factor in shaping your road to success as it creates a sense of urgency within you. Procrastination is and always will be a big obstacle towards becoming a successful person. Once your mind starts to think that time is not an issue, you will start to wander off the path and leave your goals unattended. By then, it will be hard to get back on track and you would have wasted more time. Thus, one way of minimizing our laziness is to set a time limit for us to accomplish our goals. Whenever we look back at Reality List, we are reminded we need to accomplish these goals by a certain date.
This also teaches you the importance of time management.
A successful person always knows how to manage their time. Time does not stop for anyone, one blink of an eye and its one year later only to find that we have been wasting our time away and have completed nothing worthy to be proud of. Keep a dairy or organizer and write down the things that you need to do if you have trouble remembering. Therefore, pace yourself and always be wary of how much time there is left. When you have good time management, you will not find yourself racing against time but instead, enjoying the rewards of your new found reality.
Look at the top 5 items on your Reality List and take another piece of paper and write down the things that you will need to take a step closer towards those goals.
This will be the ‘To‐Do List’.
These can be in terms of the time required, amount of money needed, or even new skills to be learnt. You may not be equipped with any weapons to fight a war, but to be able fight a war in the first place; you would need to know what weapons to bring and then source for them. The same rationale applies to becoming successful.
If I want to own and drive a car in five years time, what can I do to allow myself to have the capital to buy the car in the first place?
Does my salary in my current career permit me to do so or do I have to take a second job, or maybe quit and source for a new job so that I can finally own my owe car?
Or maybe you wanted to start up your own business. So write down the equipment you need to get this business going. It could be more networking contacts, capital, finding a place to lease, so on and so fore. By doing this, you will start to realize how you are going to get about getting the funds needed. For example, for the start up capital, you could start by asking for loans from your family or friends, and if that does not work out, you can try out bank loans.
Deciding on what are the relevant skills needed is vital part in reaching your goal. So think clearly and ponder upon the skills that you lack. You may not necessarily go and learn that particular skill from scratch, but rather go and outsource it to someone with that expertise. Learning how to liaise and network with people is crucial as it saves a lot of time for you to do other more important things. Remember, it is not good to be a jack of all trades, as normally you would be a master in none.
Change your attitude towards your current lifestyle. Do not be afraid of hardships as ‘no pain, no gain’. Your goals are only impossible if you do not wish to sacrifice your time and effort to achieve it. The path towards success is often filled with numerous obstacles and dangerous terrains that will impede the weak‐hearted from moving on. Failure is inevitable and the important thing is to learn from past mistakes and transforming into a better person.
For all this to happen, you have to welcome change, be open‐minded about it. If your current lifestyle is hindering you to proceed on with your dreams, then change your lifestyle. Of course it is easier said than done, thus writing what you wish to change is a good reminder for you to refer to whenever in doubt. Pin that piece of paper on the fridge, or on your bathroom mirror, just somewhere obvious.
By tidying up your life, you start to paint a clearer picture of what it is you really want and what steps you are going to take in turning that picture into a reality.
To be continued….
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