Saturday, December 12, 2020

How to make your life work as planned every year

These are the five factors responsible for making your life work and what you can do to make your life work better this year and subsequent years.

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One of the biggest financial dilemmas for the majority of people living today is that there is a wide gap between what they plan to do every year and the results they actually achieve each year.

Now depending on how you have structured your life, this gap can be big or small. So, what are the reasons for the disparity between what we plan to do at the beginning of the year and our end results?

The reasons are simple…

  • The first reason is your Strategy. How are you doing what you planned to do?
  • The second reason is your Resources. What do you have? Is it adequate? And how can you increase it to match your goals?
  • The third reason is your Focus. Are you focusing on the right goals that leads to success per time?
  • The Fourth reason is What you get done. Only what gets done produces financial results.
  • The fifth reason is Who you model. Your role model determines your end results.

To give you a clearer understanding of how these factors affect your life, let me explain each of them in detail.

Your strategy

The first factor that can make your life work is your strategy. Imagine that I just found out about an oil well in my backyard and wanted to pay N1,000,000 to anyone who can dig and explore the well. Assuming that two people applied for the job and decided to approach it in two different ways.

The first person decides to use a shovel and begin to manually digging alone. It takes him almost a year to find the oil and I pay him N1,000,000 as agreed for successfully digging and locating the oil. If the second person on the other hand decided to rent a machine for N200,000, dig the well and discovers the oil within one month, I will also pay him the N1,000,000 for the worth of his service as agreed.

The same job and but different strategies. One strategy is smart, saves energy, and frees up time to earn more income. The other strategy is hard, wastes time, and limits income potential. Most people are earning in one year what they could be earning in one month.

When your strategy is not smart, you overwork yourself and still end up broke. Your strategy will to a great extent determine how your life Works.

Your resources

The second factor that can make your life work is your resources. A goal is a goal because you do not yet have the resources to pursue it.

Goals come to you not based on the resources you currently have but based on your capacity to produce these resources. To produce additional resources you need to reach within yourself, develop the capacity you need, and produce the income that will help you achieve your goals.

One of the fastest ways to increase your income is to upgrade the kind of problems you solve. Money is made through solving problems. When you solve problems, you earn great rewards. To solve high-income problems, you need high-income skills. You also need the capacity to expand your current abilities.

Identifying problems that can make you rich and solving these problems is the fastest way to elevate your life. If you want to increase your income and make your life work, there are three kinds of problems to solve.

  • The first kind of problem is the Revenue problem. The Survival of every human being rests on the consistent availability of revenue. Individuals and organizations need revenue to stay alive. Revenue is thus what runs the world. The closer your job role is to the generation of revenue. The more money you will make. The key to success with solving revenue problems is to choose revenue problems that has the capacity to make you rich.
  • The second problem to solve is Savings problem. Everyone wants to save and organizations want to reduce their cost of operations. If your current job role helps your organization saves money in ways that are measurable and accountable, you increase your chances of earning extra income. The key to solving the savings problem is to ensure that the savings are measurable.
  • The third problem to solve is the Time problem. Everyone is running out of time and time is the scarcest commodity in the world. Thus, most people are looking for ways to save time. There are two ways to help people or organizations save time. The first is to increase the speed of doing certain things. The less time it takes to complete a task the more money is made. The second is to make a certain activity more convenient. Convenience helps people save time and people pay for convenience to save time and energy.

These are the three problems to solve if you want to increase your resources and achieve financial success. Among the three types of problems, none other has the capacity to make you rich like the Revenue problem. When you solve revenue, you accelerate your own success.

Your focus

The third factor that can make your life work is the Focus factor. One of the greatest obstacles to financial success is distractions and the greatest kind of distraction that can abort your success or postpone it is financial distractions. Financial distractions emanate from three different sources – you, your family, other people.

These three sources combined can abort any vision and you suffer financial distractions to the degree of how you manage these distractions.

So how are these three factors creating financial distractions? They create financial distractions in two ways.

The first is through the problems they create and the second is through the problems they solve. Every one of us comes out of a day with two problem reports. The first is the problem we create and the second is the problem we solve. The problems we create are divided into two types. The first is Growth problems and the second is Ignorance problems.

Growth problems are created when you take action and attempt certain goals. Usually, you make mistakes and create certain problems. However, growth problems are good problems as they ultimately lead to progress, learning, and growth.

Ignorance problems in contrast are problems that lead to liabilities. They are problems created through ignorance, poor decisions, or indecisive actions and these problems are the kinds of problems to avoid. The key to making your life work each year is to create more growth problems, gain more knowledge, and reduce the number of ignorance problems you create.

The problem we solve also creates financial distractions and they create these distractions in two ways. The first is the problems we solve that adds value to the world and increases our wealth. The second is the problems we solve that sacrifices our own financial security.

It is also possible to be solving a good problem at the wrong time. To make your life work each year as planned, you must solve problems that increases your wealth and solve the right problems at the right time.

The second thing that determines how much financial distractions you suffer is the problems other people create that you take responsibility for. While certain problems are your problem, certain other problems are other people’s problems.

Drawing a clear line between your problem and other people’s problem and deliberately choosing the problems you accept is critical for financial success. If you shoulder everybody’s problem, accept problems that people throw at you, then you will at best win the best man contest for as long as your resources last.

When your resources dry up, you will lose the contest. Worse of all is that you will never be able to achieve financial success. The key to managing other people’s problems is to accept only problems that do not sacrifice your own financial security. You must deliberately create a distraction-free environment for yourself if you want to achieve financial success.

What you get done

The fourth factor that can make your life work is what you get done and the speed with which you take action. One of the biggest differences between successful people and average people is the speed of action. Successful people close the gap between learning, doing, and what gets done. Average people learn. Keep learning, keep planning, keep thinking, and never get anything done.

Thinking, Planning, doing, or wanting to do will not lead to financial success. It is only what gets done that swells the size of your bank account.

So, take a look at your life this moment from the beginning of the year until now. How have you fared? Have you done all the things you said you wanted to do? How many of them are still pending? And how many new things have you learned that you have not taken action on?

To achieve financial success and make your life work, you must close the gap between learning, planning, doing, and what gets done. This is the ultimate formula for success.

 Who you model

The fifth factor that determines how your life works is the Role Model you follow. Who is your role model? And are your daily actions aligned with the daily actions of this person?.

The person you model determines your end results. You cannot model a failure and achieve success. Although, the majority of us grew up in average neighbourhoods and around average people. We must strive to find successful models to model.

There is a big gap between the attitudes and actions of successful people and that of average people. Average actions and attitudes can never produce success. So, if you want your life to work, you must find successful people and model them. The key is to find the people you admire and respect and follow in their footsteps.

These are the five factors responsible for making your life work and what you can do to make your life work better this year and subsequent years.

If you need help and direction to make your life work especially as regards your finances and goals, we can help you. Send an email to info@createsolidwealth.com.


About author

Grace Agada is the Senior Financial Happiness Director @ Create Solid Wealth. She is an Author and Column Contributor in Six National Newspaper. She is a contributor at BellaNaija, Nairametrics, and Proshare and she is on a mission to help working-class professionals and CEOs become more financially successful. To learn more about Grace and how she can help you, send an email to info@createsolidwealth.com

 

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