Hello there, hope you're having a great day today. In this essay I will talk about how you can become a financial success by measuring your goals and knowing what to do if you're facing a crisis. Enjoy!
Even though these essays can be read in whatever order you like, if you’ve read more than a couple of them, you pretty much know me by now. I can't hide my personality because that benefits nobody and I wouldn't be good at it anyway. Remember, the self is always coming through. In any event, you have also likely noticed my fondness for planning, getting structure in place and executing daily. This simple philosophy has taken me to where I am today and where I'll be tomorrow.
However, the fact remains that there are many things that are beyond mine or anybody else's control. If we wanted to sit to think about how many things are beyond our control, we would be dead before we could keep inventory of all of them. That’s obviously overwhelming. The good news is, we don’t have to do that. Instead, we have learned that the one person we can control is ourselves. What you probably haven’t realized is how big of a reach this simple fact has. I'm completely serious when I say that I think most people severely underestimate how big of a reach they have or could have just by adopting a few of the mindsets I'm sharing in my essays.
Coupled with this potentially enormous reach we are seldom aware of, we have to understand how linearity works. Or rather, how it works until it doesn't.
By linearity I mean nothing more than the line in those adorable charts of our progress that we make mentally. If you don't tend to think in charts, that's completely fine, it's not a requirement. Just think for a second of how your progress would look like if we assign it a number from 1 to 100 every day over the course of a week. It would probably look quite flat, right? Yeah, well, the chart for most people is actually almost always rounding 0 or even in the negatives, so you're probably already winning.
The fact is that the linearity (flatness) of these charts would be discouraging for most people. But as I already know, you are not most people. A nicely-kept secret that a lot of financially successful people know about is that progress is almost never immediate and even less often significant. The fact that you don’t do a 30-minute workout and then wake up fit and ripped is a heartbreak for most people, so they drop their potentially life-changing new habits just because the change is not instantly apparent. That is, at the beginning of their discipline. But there comes a point where something happens to the line tracking our progress, it goes up and down. It starts to become rocky and errant, which can be puzzling at first.
This ebb and flow will be the end of linearity and signal the mark of our daily actions. This is what makes other people look at us as overnight successes, even though we've worked at it for years. At this point, you might as well acknowledge and embrace the chaos, you will see it if you're making any real progress at all. The fact of life is that your progress will remain linear until it isn't, or rather, until it doesn't need to be.
But for the kind of uptick in progress that I talk about to happen, for linearity to be shattered, it first needs to be built. A foundation needs to be created, a gentle line, before you go into the wonders of exponential growth. If you think you can go straight to the exponential growth, you are sorely mistaken. I know it might sound odd at first, but you have to aspire to build the flat line before wanting to manipulate it. This initial building of these can take weeks, months or years, but it will serve as the foundation for your progress.
I can't stress this enough: it's important that you build the foundation first. The only times I've seen myself struggle at something is because I didn't build a proper foundation underneath it first to get me going. Building this kind of foundation -which is almost always mental- is what will separate you from the majority of other people who set out to accomplish their goals. Well, that and the fact that you'll actually accomplish them.
Beyond these foundational exercises, linearity still plays an important role within the lives of aspiring well-to-dos. Indeed, linearity is unimpressive by itself, it can even become kind of boring, but you must endure it in order to break through to the other side.
As we've established, wealth is going to be the result of adopting these mindsets and embodying them, but we must not forget about keeping track. What gets measured gets accomplished says the 50 Billion Dollar Man, Dan Pena, and I think he's absolutely spot on. In fact, I think that just the act of keeping track is going to provide you with motivation, specially at the beginning.
This is exactly where and when linearity will show its head.
Sometimes the (seemingly real) lack of progress over a few days and weeks can become discouraging. Don't let it. You're building out now what you'll want to break in the future. There will be a moment once you are deep into your journey that you will notice how your progress starts getting ridiculously good. How you spike, if you will. It doesn't matter what area of your own life you're keeping track of, this moment will come and you will enjoy it.
And even when that moment comes to pass, you will be left will greater sustainable motivation and large base line. This is key to realize, because once your base line is bigger, if your progress (for whatever reason) goes down, you will do whatever is necessary to get back on track and get to the point where your base line is.
Yet another thing about linearity that I like is that it makes for excellent preparation for chaos. Because when things go wrong -and believe me, they will at some point- you will be in better shape to confront the chaos head on and regulate it accordingly. Sure, we all have moments of weakness, even when it comes to building our foundations for long-term goals, but that doesn't mean that we must be scared because something hit us.
Finally, I think you should seriously consider taking measure of whatever it is you want to improve in your life for the purposes of building a foundation and establishing linearity. If you're anything like me, you will learn the ins and outs of whatever aspect you're trying to improve upon at that time and try different experiments in order to polish your approach and results.
TL;DR:
- What gets measured gets accomplished.
- Establish and expand your line of performance on any given field.
- Take the time to think about what you really wanna do, there's no shame in abandoning a goal that doesn't serve you.
Thank you SO MUCH for reading this all the way through. I'd be thrilled if you could help me out by following me and/or if you could spare 2 seconds to resteem.
Previous Essays:
- The Essence of Abundance: https://steemit.com/life/@bnt/bnt-report-1-the-essence-of-abundance
- Frugality Is Overrated: https://steemit.com/life/@bnt/bnt-on-money-2-frugality-is-overrated
- Experimenting Your Way To Riches: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-3-experimenting-your-way-to-riches
- Greed Is Moronic: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-4-greed-is-moronic
- Poverty Is A Mental Disease: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-5-poverty-is-a-mental-disease
- Become An Adept Adapter: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-6-become-an-adept-adapter
- Who Are You Gonna Work For?: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-7-who-are-you-gonna-work-for
- A Father Provides: https://steemit.com/fathersday/@bnt/bnt-on-money-8-a-father-provides-father-s-day-special
- Opportunity Comes A-Knockin' (Pt. I): https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-9-opportunity-comes-a-knockin-pt-i
- Opportunity Comes A-Knockin' (Pt. II): https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-9-opportunity-comes-a-knockin-pt-ii-first-post-after-hf19
- Getting Your Time Back:
https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/getting-your-time-back-or-or-bnt-on-money-11 - Let Me Teach You How To Be Lucky: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/let-me-teach-you-how-to-be-lucky-or-or-bnt-on-money-12
- Hack Your Habits: https://steemit.com/life/@bnt/how-to-hack-your-habits-right-now-and-get-shit-done