Don’t believe me?
The problem with most people is not that they shoot too high and fail but that they shoot too low and succeed.
The acceptance of average will never get you what you want. It will never fulfill you.
Dream Big
Dream big. That’s the only way to go. Overshoot what you believe you are capable of and then work like crazy to make it. Don’t be timid. Being timid will get you nowhere in this life. The people who get ahead in this life are the ones who take action, who are decisive.
When you set your goals, you’ve often been told to set small goals. While this may be okay at first this has to change soon. Small goals will ultimately not get you where you want to go. You must be ambitious. Don’t seek to keep up with others but to completely leave them in the dust.
The average person is not who you should be comparing yourself to. As a matter of fact you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to anyone. Anyone other than yourself.
It is not enough to show up you must dominate. Let’s use building a business as an example. Let’s say you have the dream of opening a bakery. You rent out a spot in the downtown section of your city and set up shop. Now let’s say you had to choose between one of two options.
Option A – To become the best local bakery and be associated with quality baked goods in your home town.
Nothing wrong with this. A pretty reasonable goal. One you could perhaps even make a steady living off of. Depending on what you definition of steady is. You write out actions everyday to achieve this goal. You get spots in the local paper, baked goods for a local charity event, and even had a short segment on the news for up and coming local businesses. Congrats…right?
Let’s look at the other option.
Option B – To become the best bakery in America and have your name be the name associated with quality baked goods.
You start out the same, after all no one starts out at the top. However your sights are set on something a little different. Your daily actions and goals are different. You start a website, starting writing for any bakery related sites that you can, you write a book. Sure at first you still do the local spot on the news and cater local charity events but you know that this isn’t the end. This is just the very first step.
So business grows. You eventually are able to sustain your family on your income from the bakery. In option A most people after achieving this would feel like they made it. They would begin to sit back and coast. And this is dangerous territory. However the owner who chose option B would still be hard at work. He not only wants to be able to support his immediately family but as many people as he wants.
He is still ambitious and driven. So he continues on writing more books, opening up more stores, gunning for a spot on a national cooking show, etc. Soon people around the nation begin to become familiar with his bakeries name. He makes more than he even thought of. But it is not about the money for him, he already made that. It’s about the dream. It’s about leaving a legacy.
Now when the economy collapses, tragedy strikes, a terminal illness is discovered who will be better able to weather it? The owner who chose option A and has enough money to get by but not much more. Or the owner who has his store in twelve cities across the nation?
It’s been said the only constant is change. This applies to financial situations as well. To hedge against change you must go far beyond “getting by”. Otherwise you may feel like you made it, begin to coast, and then one day have everything ripped from you and end up with nothing.
Most people plan as if there is never market crashes, as if there are never famines, as if there are never negative circumstances that will change their lives. They believe that things will always be as they are and therefore adjust their goals and lives to match that. However ultimately this shortsightedness can cost you everything.
You must build the foundation in all aspects of your life. And then once that is accomplished build up a surplus. Until you operate from a place of strength. And even then that is no time to coast.
You never know what lies around the corner. This isn’t to say be pessimistic or paranoid just that what you think will be enough might not be. Because of this it is smarter to go further than you need to.
For example if you can get by on one hundred thousands a year making a million isn’t going to hurt you. You might as well shoot higher.
Another thing happens when you shoot higher. Your mind adapts to it. Your creativity and productivity shoot up as your demand of them shoots up. Your mind is infinitely adaptable. Ask it to preform farther than it currently is and it will rise up to the task. Let it stagnate and that is exactly what it will do. Then when things get tough you’ll find yourself up the creek without a paddle. As well as a mind that is struggling to start preforming again.
No matter how successful you get always stretch your mind and yourself. There is no level of success that negates the need for growth.
A good book that covers these topics more in depth is Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it. You can follow me on Twitter here.
-Charles Sledge
