You do? Great – end of post. Only joking. Now I’ll be honest here. For years’ when I wasn’t actively working my business, I relied on my husband to make the mortgage and car payments whilst I took the necessary time out for our kids’. It was a conscious decision I made to stop the prospecting process for a period. I was still earning income obviously, but after a while I became a little demotivated. I mean, the fire was still there but once someone else is paying the bills, you kind of take your eyes off. Hopefully this makes sense. It can become easy when we leave the heavy lifting up to others, but we are entrepreneurs and that’s not what we do. And sometimes setting goals just doesn’t do the job. It’s a sense of urgency, however, that does.
How would you feel if you had absolutely no idea how you were going to make your next mortgage or rent payment, or car payment or credit card payment? How would that make you feel? I’m hoping that as entrepreneur something would shift inside you and you would move heaven and earth to find the money. I’m always fascinated when people tell me things like “I love the look of it Fiona, but I just can’t afford the $200 to get started right now.” Oh really? What if you needed $200 to get your car fixed so that you could get to work? What if your child needed emergency medical treatment? What if your fridge suddenly ceased to proceed? My bet is that you would find the money. The fact is that we all have around $5,000 worth of ‘stuff’ lying around the house that we could sell. Seriously! Have a look around – you have probably more than one flat screen TV, clothes, furniture, whitegoods. One of the top income earners in my company was sleeping on the floor and about to be evicted. 8 months’ later, she had her first $USD50,000 month. So what is different between you and her? Urgency.
It may sound like a relatively simple thing but unless you have this, you won’t do what is required. Goals are always in the future so most of us don’t tend to place much importance on them. We know that probably some day we’ll achieve them one way or another. Or we set goals we know we could achieve without too much discomfort. So how do you work with urgency?
Well firstly, is the goal you have set motivating enough to ensure you stay up late to complete tasks and is there a consequence if you don’t achieve the goal? If not, you won’t do what is required. If you know you will be evicted if you don’t find the money to pay the rent, you’ll find the money one way or another. There’s always options. Always. At the moment I don’t have my full marketing budget available for the month so I am supplementing my marketing campaign with a full suite of free methods. Free methods take a considerable amount of time longer than placing paid ads, but that is the consequence. And if I don’t, I won’t be able to pay for the holiday we took last month that I put on credit. Does it make me uncomfortable? You bet! Was it risky doing that? Absolutely! Have I backed myself that I can get the job done? Undoubtedly!
Sometimes we have to up the anti in order to get the job done. You see if you want today to look the same as yesterday, do the same thing as you did yesterday. If you want to see something very different, you have to do something very different. Sometimes in life, you have to take calculated risks in order to reap the massive rewards.
7 years’ ago we bought the property we currently live in. We signed a contract without the sale being dependant on the sale of my then home. It was a considerably risky maneouvre. No question about that. We had 6 months’ to sell my old home and guess what? We did it with about 3 weeks’ to spare. Now I’ll admit I didn’t get what I wanted – I was around $70k short but I got the job done and now we live in our dream property. It was so worth the risk. And that’s usually how I find life to be honest. If you are willing to back yourself and do whatever it takes, the Universe/God/Spirit will reward you accordingly. I’ve experienced this time and time again in my life.
So today set yourself a big audacious goal for February. There’s still a full two weeks’ before March and plenty of time to create something magical. Set yourself such a big goal that it makes you uncomfortable. Set a goal that takes you so far out of your comfort zone that you know you will be a different person once you achieve this goal. Then announce it. There’s something powerful about releasing it out into the ether. And finally start taking the required actions in order to bring that goal into reality. This isn’t a time to be wishy washy. This is a time to get brutally honest with yourself (and I know you’ve heard me say this before), but it’s true! What are you willing to sacrifice in order to get the job done? What are you willing to do? If you find yourself unwilling to take the necessary actions, then go deeper and ask yourself more tough questions. Do you feel you are not worthy of it? If so, why not? Why are you unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices? Who do you need to get agreement from in order to action this? Grab a notebook and start journalling. No doubt you will uncover some incredibly limiting beliefs that you can smash out right here, right now. Where do those limiting beliefs come from? Do you hear a parents’ voice in your head? Write out those limiting beliefs and then jump on them, burn them, tear them up – whatever you have to do and step into your power by doing so. You are a creator and you can make anything happen that you choose to. So go and do it! And share here your goal and let me know once you achieve it and what you had to overcome in order to do so. This is what entrepreneurs do. They take massive action consistently and learn to wrestle with their demons regularly. Your goals are waiting for you at the end of your discomfort. So go get them!