Being successful is never easy. A lot of people fall along the way on their path to achieving their goals. Sometimes, it can be the despair at continuous failure. Sometimes, too many obstacles in the way makes it difficult for one to maintain their momentum and determination. I can remember the numerous goals that I have set for myself, only to end up not achieving them. Some goals were good to have but not a must, while others drew out more passion in me. But a lot of the times, I fell.
Each time I fell, I berated myself for not having the determination to stick with the process. I always thought my core mindset was not strong enough, that I lacked the toughness to keep going. But there have been times when I did accomplish what I set out to achieve, and that puzzled me.
Eventually, I realised one thing. That without a strong reason for why we want to achieve our goals and successes, whatever we do will always be an arduous journey. This may sound like an excuse for anyone (including me) who has not been achieving the success that they have endeavoured to. Now, I am not denying that some of us really do lack the drive to strive for what they want in life. But the lack of a strong WHY is the primary reason as to how come most people give up on their goals after a while.
Take a moment to think about it. We may blame everything around us, including lack of time, circumstance, or maybe even ourselves for failing to stick with our original plans, but before we ventured into our action steps, has the WHY been established? I remember my days of being involved in the insurance industry. It definitely didn’t work out for me. My WHY back then was that I wanted to get out of my lousy financial circumstance. Now that I look back, I realised that my WHY just simply wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t have the clarity and full-blown vision of what I wanted. All I had was what I didn’t want, which obviously wasn’t enough.
Some of you may wonder, is the WHY really that important? Now let’s imagine a scenario whereby you decide that you want to gain financial freedom. You don’t like the idea of working for someone, you don’t like having to wake up to an alarm clock, etc. All these are good reasons to get you venturing into different ways to gain financial freedom, but they are just good reasons. But if you had solid reasons, something like “because you want your family to have an abundance of choice that only money can give, because you never want your kids to worry about having to live unhappy professional lives”, your drive would be a lot stronger for sure. Compare those reasons to “not liking the idea of working for someone” and feel the difference there.
That being said, your WHY has to have clarity. It can’t be a murky vision. Because if your vision is murky, once you engage in your action steps, you are only going to see the obstacles that stand in your way. Instead, if you have a strong WHY, everytime you encounter difficulties, you are only going to see the WHY and then keep moving forward.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way out for this. You’ll have to spend days, maybe weeks or even months, trying to figure out your WHY. And then you have to give it clarity and vision. It has to be a picture you can see in your head, something you know and want to become reality. The good thing is, once you figure that out, pretty much nothing is able to stop you from achieving your goals.
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