APPENDIX

Now, Build a Great Life!

“The things that matter most must never be at the
mercy of the things that matter least.”

—GOETHE

While building a great business and maximizing profits are important goals, your main goal should be to live a great life. You have to fix your own life before you can fix your business or become a productive business leader.

Regardless of short-term economic fluctuations, we are living in the very best time in all of human history. There are more opportunities and possibilities for more people to achieve more of their goals in the years ahead than have every existed before.

Your goal should be to be one of those people.

The starting point of living a great life is for you to decide exactly what a great life would be like for you if you could create it. As they say, “You’ve got to have a dream if you want to make a dream come true.” We call this practice future orientation.

Future Orientation

Top people think about the future most of the time. To create a great life, you must think and act the way great men and women have thought and acted throughout the ages. You must think and imagine the way they did (and still do), and soon you’ll get the same results.

As Wayne Dyer said, “You will see it when you believe it, not the other way around.”

Practice Idealization

Imagine that you could be, have, or do anything you wanted in the years ahead. What would it be? Imagine that you have a magic wand and that you can wave it and create any kind of future you desire. How would it be different from today?

You begin the process of idealization by imagining that you have no limitations. Imagine that you have all the time and money, all the knowledge and skill, all the education and experience, and all the friends and contacts that you would ever need. If you had no limitations, what kind of a “five-year fantasy” would you create for yourself?

Begin with your business, career, and income. If you were working in the perfect business five years from today, what would it look like? How would it be different from today?

If you were earning your ideal income, doing the kind of work that you most enjoy, with the kind of people that you really like, at the position to which you aspire, what would it look like? How would it be different from today? And what could you do, starting today, to begin creating your ideal future vision of your work and career?

The Ultimate Personal Life

Think about your family and your personal life. If you could wave a magic wand and create a perfect family situation five years from today, how would it be different? What kind of home would you live in, and where would it be located? What kind of lifestyle would you have, day in and day out? What kind of things would you like to do for and with your family? What kind of vacations and trips would you take?

To create your perfect lifestyle, what steps would you have to take to get from where you are today to where you want to be some time in the future? Most of all, what step could you take immediately to begin making your future vision a reality?

Think about your health. If your health was perfect in every way, how would it be different from today? How much would you weigh, how much would you exercise, and what level of fitness would you have? What kind of energy would you have and what kind of activities would you engage in if you were physically fit and healthy in every respect?

What would be the first step that you could take immediately to begin creating a superbly healthy lifestyle?

Your Best Financial Condition

Finally, consider your financial situation. You can’t hit a target that you can’t see. The greater clarity you have regarding where you want to end up in your financial life, the more likely it is that you will achieve that goal.

To achieve financial independence, you begin by determining your “exact number.” This is the amount that you will want to have saved, invested, and working for you when you retire. As Barbara De Angelis once asked, “How much will you need to be satisfied, and what will you do then?”

You calculate your number by determining how much money you would have to have to support your current lifestyle if you had no income at all. Add up your rent, payments, groceries, travel expenses, medical expenses, and so on to determine your monthly “nut.”

How Much Would You Need?

You then ask yourself how long you could survive on your current savings and investments if your income was cut off today. This tells you what your current “burn rate” is and how long you could survive.

Once you have determined your minimum monthly financial requirement, multiply that number by 12 to determine how much you would need if your income was cut off for a year. This may seem simplistic—and it is—but it’s amazing how few people at any level of income or wealth actually take the time to create a budget that sets aside funds for their particular lifestyle. We have seen multimillionaires fail at this as often as those who are just building their nest egg. Once you get clear about how much money you really think you need, you’ll find it reduces stress and makes you more effective.

Finally, multiply the annual amount times 20 to determine your “number,” which is the amount that you will need to have saved, invested, and working for you at the time you retire. To simplify this equation, you can multiply your monthly requirement by 240 to get your target for financial accumulation and financial independence.

Planning for the Rest of Your Life

The average lifespan is about eighty years, and it is increasing each year. Since you are going to be enjoying excellent health, you should plan to live for another twenty years after you retire. Investment advisers suggest that you should be able to draw down your accumulated savings at the rate of 4 percent or 5 percent per year indefinitely and never run out of money. This is your goal.

Once you have determined your long-term financial goal, you come back to the present and determine exactly what you are worth today. Imagine that you are going to sell everything you have and move to a foreign country. How much would you be left with?

You then draw a graph with your current net worth at the lower left hand corner and your desired net worth at the upper right hand corner. You divide this graph vertically into five-year blocks, and then one-year blocks, so that you are clear about how much you will have to earn, save, invest, and accumulate each year to achieve your goal.

One of the most effective ways to build your retirement fund is to save—to actually set aside 10 percent of your income every month. This approach will accumulate assets surprisingly fast. No matter what level of your income, or how great or small your savings, it is important to set aside savings every month. It may feel impossible when things are tight, but the sooner you try to make savings a regular practice, the better off you will be and the sooner you will reach your dreams.

Take That Leap of Faith

Then take action. The first step is always the hardest; it’s a leap of faith into the unknown because there are never any guarantees that anything will work out exactly as you planned. Until you take the first step nothing happens.

The good news is that, when you take that initial action, you immediately get feedback that enables you to self-correct. You start to get input, ideas, and insights that will help you move more intelligently toward your goals. As you begin to make forward progress, you start to feel more energy and enthusiasm. Your brain releases endorphins, nature’s “happy drug,” and you feel happy at the sensation of forward progress.

When you take the first step, you will see far enough to take the next step. If you remain clear about your goal, but flexible about the process of achieving it, you will always see at least one step ahead. You will always know what to do next.

Goal-Setting Formula

A second orientation that you need to live a great life is goal orientation. This means that you have clear specific written goals for what you want to accomplish in the months and years ahead.

Take a clean sheet of paper and make a list of ten goals that you would like to accomplish in the next year or so. Use the three-P formula: present tense, positive, and personal.

1. Present tense. Always write your goals in the present tense, as though a year has passed and you have already accomplished the goal. Instead of saying “I will earn $XXX,” you say, “I earn $XXX dollars over the next twelve months.”

2. Positive tone. Write your goals using a positive tone rather than a negative one. Instead of saying “I will quit smoking,” say, “I am a nonsmoker” (positive and present tense).

3. Personal action. Make it personal. There are two ways to do this. For many people, it’s most effective to begin each goal statement with the word “I” followed by an action verb—“I have a thirty-four-inch waist.” Other people may prefer to address themselves as “You” with each goal statement. Try saying, “You are enjoying your brand-new office” or “You have achieved your goal.”

The shorter and more precise your goal statements—starting with the word “I,” followed by an action verb, in the present tense with a positive tone—the more rapidly they are accepted by your subconscious mind. Once your goals are programmed into your consciousness (which is the reason for writing them down), your subconscious and superconscious minds go to work to bring them into your life twenty-four hours a day.

Once you have made a list of ten present, positive, personal-tense goals, go over your list and imagine that you could accomplish the goals on this list sooner or later—as long as you wanted them badly enough. But imagine also that you could accomplish any one goal on this list within twenty-four hours.

What One Goal Matters Most Now?

Here’s the question: What one goal, if you could accomplish it in twenty-four hours, would have the greatest positive impact on your life? We are not asking this question to push you to actually achieve that goal in a day, but rather to consider what would make the most satisfying difference in your life and work.

Whatever that goal, put a circle around it, and move it to the top of a clean sheet of paper. There is a simple seven-step process for achieving goals like this one that you can use for the rest of your life.

Seven-Step Process for Achieving Goals

Step 1: Make it measurable. Decide exactly what you want. Be specific and make it measureable. Your goal should be so clear that a ten-year-old child could tell you how close you are to achieving it.

Step 2: Write it down. Give it concrete form. People with written goals accomplish ten times as much as people who only have wishes and hopes.

Step 3: Set a deadline. You need a target to aim at if you want to achieve your goal. If your goal is big enough, set subdeadlines as well.

Step 4: Make a list of tasks. List everything that you can think of that you could possibly do to achieve your goal. As you think of new tasks and activities, write them down until your list is complete.

Step 5: Prioritize. Organize the list by both sequence and priority. Arrange your list in the right sequence by determining what you will have to do first, before you move on to do something else. Organize your list by priority by determining what is more important and what is less important.

A list that is organized by sequence and priority is a plan. Voila! Now you have a goal and a plan, in writing. You are now ready to supercharge your future.

Step 6: Take action on your plan immediately. Do something. Do anything. Step out in faith. Think of any cliché that motivates you. Put the ball into play, but don’t swing for the fences the first time at bat. Make it a small step that is fairly easy to achieve. Go get some information or interview someone who does what you are hoping to do. Feel the energy and get some insights from someone you admire. The very act of taking action on your goal begins a mental and an emotional process that can transform your life.

Step 7: Make daily progress. Do something every day that moves you forward. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, do something, anything that moves you a little bit in the right direction. Small moves matter. This sense of forward momentum will energize and empower you and eventually make you unstoppable and irresistible.

Action Creates Attraction

The final key to building a great life is action orientation. The ultimate law of attraction says that when you apply the law of action first, you put into motion everything that demonstrates to other people (and further convinces yourself) that you are excited about your future. Nothing is more infectious than your excitement about doing what matters to you.

All successful people are intensely action oriented. They are in constant motion. They try, try again, and then try something else. They believe in “doing it, fixing it, trying it.”

The Law of Probabilities

Success in life is more a result of the law of probabilities than of the law of attraction or plain luck. The law of probability says that there is a probability that anything can happen, including your achieving your most important goals. This law also says that “the more things that you try, the more likely it is that you will triumph.”

The more actions you take in the direction of your goals, the greater the probability that you will achieve that goal. The more things that you learn and try, the faster you move, the more ground you cover, and the more likely you are to achieve your most important goal on schedule.

Spiral of Energy

The faster you move, the more energy you have. The faster you move, the more ground you cover and the more experience you get. The faster you move, the more likely you are to succeed. The more you succeed, the more motivated you will be to take more actions, try more things, and cover more ground. When you put your life onto an upward spiral of energy, enthusiasm, motivation, and ultimate success, nothing will be able to stop you.

Realize that there are no limits in life except the limits that you impose on yourself with your own thinking. Believe in yourself. Believe in your unlimited possibilities. Believe that the only thing standing between you and what you want to accomplish are your own doubts and fears.

The truth is that you can do, be, and have anything that you put your mind to. Decide what you want, write it down, make a plan, and take action today.

Now, build a great life!