Time: Your Friend or Your Foe?
How long does it take to get to where you want to be?
The answer for most people is ‘Too long!’ In our culture of instant gratification, the likelihood that it can take years to become a millionaire is enough to keep most from ever trying.
The truth is few businesses make money in the first four years. In fact the average business takes two years to lose money, two more years to pay back the money it lost, and three more years to become profitable. In other words, it typically takes seven years for a business to succeed.
For a lot of people that’s way too long, but for most fields of study, work, or career, it takes about seven years to become a master. Seven years seems like a long time, and in some ways it is, but in seven years how much older will you be regardless?
One of the prime rules for success also happens to be one of the hardest to swallow. I choked on it for a while, maybe because it’s so painfully obvious and avoidable: that time is going to pass anyway. Seven years from now, seven years will have gone by. Three years from now three years will have gone by, so whatever you know you’re supposed to be doing anyway, get on with it!
Put your head down, pull out every stop, and pay any price you can to get into the top 10% in your field. Then you’ll remain one of the highest paid people in your field for the rest of your life.
But here’s another important point to remember: the pay-off is not when you get to your goal. If you think that’s the case, you are setting yourself up for some serious disappointment. You only get to a goal once, yes, then what? Then the next, and the next, and then your head is always looking ahead instead of where you’re at right now.
The pay-off is every step of along the way. Every step you take toward becoming better, you feel yourself improving. It raises your self esteem. It releases endorphins in your brain which make you happy. Every step you take toward the goal makes you happy and gives you energy. It’s people who are not moving in the direction of becoming better who are negative, unhappy, miserable complainers.
We constantly have to work on ourselves. Your life only gets better when you get better, and there’s no limit to how much better you can become. Conversely, it’s your weakest skill that is holding you back. Your weakest key skill in your field sets the height of your income.
Time is on your side, and it’s not. Time, in reality, doesn’t really care what you do or don’t do. It’s going to keep moving (or not “moving,” depending on how Zen you want to get here!) regardless of whether or not you get up and stop wasting it, or stop pushing things off, or stop making excuses. Time can be your friend or ally, but never your enemy. The real enemy is usually within.
What one skill—if you developed a mastery of it—would help you the most to increase your income? What would help you the most in terms of learning a skill within your career or business right now?
This is a good reminder to us that anything worthwhile will take time to achieve whether wealth related or not.
As both Alan Weiss and Felix Dennis have mentioned in their endlessly informative books, time is the only real wealth. Everything else can be baggage or bounty, but time is IT! Use it wisely, they say, but often we don't. Thanks for a great post, sir!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
It takes time but the truth is worth searching for so be possessed by the wisdom of the heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Hiyour website is very intivmafore and as a professional banker and trained bank trader, I think you should focus more on Asian markets. While I recognize that Wall Street and London are still very important financial centers, I think Asia (especially will be the centre of investing and trading from now onwards. Let get more views from Asia. I have published some articles in INVEST and my aim is to educate and inform Singapore invetors. Even in Singapore the level of financial education is low and I am just sharing and contributing to quality education.Regards, Dr. Fooemai:
Learning to sell to and close big clients.
Don't give up – time heals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v… xx
Se7en it is, sir.
We have to be patient and persistent in order to be success. Setting goal, each day, do one extra hour for what you want to be. After 7 – 10 years, it will arrive. Once I understand this, I became so calm because I know I am on the right track….
Leveraging time requires networking with other like minded people. With every enrollment there is a blush of enthusiasm that lasts, for some, hours and others for a week or more. In that time the opportunity to install and acquire new habits and processes for their eventual success is at its highest. Recognizing it is step one. Ignoring it means people will continue to join the witness protection program. I must become one of the very best at performing this AND teaching others how to perform this as well.
Focusing, Organization and a better organization of my time ! You can make everything we want happen. It's a matter of attitude. Thank you for this great post
Every goals I achieve always start with a feeling, a though, then i look every possibility to ''how to achieve it'', then I make a plan, I believe i can achieve it, i put myself into action. When I really follow these steps, i achieve my goals.
Thank you for this great post