1.30.21 – Entrepreneur – Diego Ortiz
This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When you are clear about where you want to go, you know which way to go. When you are clear about your goal, you are able to choose activities that help make it come true, you know what to give up and who to surround yourself with. It’s because your life, like any successful company, should have a business model.
What is your main goal in life? Have you ever sat down to think what your purpose is? What is that goal that inspires you to get up every day? I think few people stop to think about this consciously.
If we make a parallel between our personal lives and successful businesses, we can identify certain patterns that large companies have in common with those people who have excelled above the average.
For example, large companies – those that have succeeded and are world leaders – are very clear about their target audience, what value they add, and how they differ from their competition.
In other words, large companies are clear about their strategy and have a business model that allows them to achieve their objectives.
The same thing happens in our lives: people who have a plan for their dreams are the ones who achieve them. Those who turn their dreams into measurable, achievable goals and within a period of time, are the ones who end up achieving them.
What is this about? When you are clear about where you want to go, you know which way to go. When you are clear about your goal, you are able to choose activities that help make it come true, you know what to give up and who to surround yourself with.
It’s because your life, like any successful company, should have a business model.
Why don’t your dreams come true
We all have dreams, because the reality is that dreaming is very easy.
However, when we ask people what percentage of their dreams came true, we are faced with statistics that are difficult to deny: Few dreams have managed to reach their goal, to be fulfilled.
And more, in a society where the word success is fashionable; where we all aspire to achieve great results, build profitable businesses and lead an enviable lifestyle.
The point is that success, habits, keys, formulas, steps and recipes to be successful abound in our environment. And if we take the trouble to analyze what they consist of, we will see that they all have a common denominator. That is, the information to achieve it is available.https://5ecb0b0bea04c8f7badfb36c68543558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
So why don’t our dreams come true without the information to achieve it?
Very simple: the reason why we do not reach the goals is not due to ignorance, but to inaction. As well? Very simple, we already know what we have to do, the information and its application are in our hands, but our habits and behaviors say otherwise.
It’s our lack of decision that keeps us from being successful, not because we don’t know what to do.
How to revive your dreams: start with one thing
Now that we are clear about why we are not making our dreams come true, it is time to analyze what we can do today to reverse this situation.
Over time we have been sold on the idea that we should have big enough dreams. So much so, that we hear phrases like “if our dreams do not scare us, it is because they are not big enough”
I must make it clear that the objective of this article is not to debate this ideology, indeed, I believe that you have to have a mentality of greatness and abundance to achieve great things in life.
However, what I am looking for is to suggest a more practical method of having a strategic plan for your dreams, a plan that is so ridiculously easy, that it is impossible not to carry it out.
What does it consist of? In doing only one thing. In applying one of the most successful business strategies, and taking it into our personal life. It is about the Kaizen method carried into our daily lives, and you will surely have heard of its results in companies like Toyota after implementing it.
Basically, this methodology invites you to make the changes, goals and objectives that you have, be traced from the simplest and simplest possible way.https://5ecb0b0bea04c8f7badfb36c68543558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Take a single step in the direction of your goals. Once you take this first step, it begins to improve just 1% each day. And the best thing is that mathematics does not lie, if you commit to this philosophy, within a year you will have improved a 3,600% (the magic of compound interest).
To explain what it consists of, let’s look at some examples of people’s most common dreams and purposes.
- Do you dream of a healthy life? Don’t pay for a gym annuity, focus on doing a single push-up or sit-up today.
- Do you want to improve your personal finances ? Don’t stop going out every weekend, rather learn how to save money from the simplest possible way.
- Do you want to develop the habit of reading in your life? Don’t commit to reading a book in a week, start by reading just one page a day.
- Do you want to run a marathon this year? Don’t go for a 10-kilometer run the first day, just go for a 10-minute run.
The idea of this plan is that you put yourself in a winning position against your goals and purposes. When you have a plan that requires too many big and complex changes at the same time, chances are you will end up dropping out and feeling bad about not achieving your goals.
If you look back, you will surely have unfulfilled goals that are too big because they required you to change your habits drastically .
One important thing only, not urgent
When you adopt this philosophy of life you will have to face a series of difficulties that you must know how to solve if you want to progress in your life. It is not a secret that all of us, at some point, have so many things to solve that we don’t have time to develop what is important.
And the point is that every day something urgent arises to attend to, something that consumes our attention. Or, put another way, we enjoy that sanction of putting out fires as they start.https://5ecb0b0bea04c8f7badfb36c68543558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
The problem with this, as we talked at the beginning, is that it prevents us from having a strategic vision of our life, which involves learning to say no to the urgent, even if you enjoy it, and start playing in the long term. Just as great companies and characters in history do.
Kaizen methodology requires you to focus on improving only one thing, so ideally, you should choose the activity or goal that contributes the most to your goals.
When you develop a business model for your life, you understand that the most important resource you have is your time. And a wise director, manager or administrator must be responsible and fearless when investing their most valuable asset.
Ask yourself, how do you spend your time? How do you handle these 86,400 seconds that your life deposited today in that bank account called day?
When you are aware of this you begin to manage your life in a different way; You start delegating, you learn to say no, and you focus on those things that bring you the most profitability in your life.
And with this I am not only referring to income, this profitability is also expressed in quality time with the family, fun, leisure, sports, hobbies and everything that makes you a better human being.
So the invitation is pretty simple. Ask yourself what is the most important and simplest activity that you can do today, this week and this month, which will guarantee you fulfill your strategic plan of your dreams and purposes.
When you are clear about what it is, put it on your calendar and dedicate an important time of all your days to carry it out. When you do this, you will see that your dreams stopped being dreams to become goals irremediably turned into reality. Your reality.