What if I told you a better life was just three steps away? What if I told you that the life you want, with some effort, was ready to be had? It is, and there’s just three simple steps to take to get you there.
Why Listen to Me?
You might be asking why you should listen to me. Good! You should. That means you are a critical thinker, and you want to make sure you are hearing good information.
In the last 8 years I’ve put over 1,200 hours into the guitar and learned quite a number of songs. In the past 10 years I’ve read over 350 books. I’ve written over 800 blog posts. I’ve published 2 books and have turned another over to my editor to be released in a few short weeks. I’ve traveled to 48 states, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. I’ve spoken hundreds of times in several states at universities and Fortune 500 campuses.
The bigger questions is, are you doing the things you want to do? Are you accomplishing the goals you want to accomplish? If not, why not try these three simple steps? I won’t lie to you; there will be a ton of work involved. At the same time, there’s an exciting journey to be taken, and along the way you can realize your dreams. Simply follow these three steps.
1. Set Your Roadmap
Have you ever set off for a major destination without knowing how to get there? Perhaps you planned a family vacation or a trip to an amusement park with friends, and you just hopped in the car and drove off hoping you were going in the right direction.
No? Then why should your life be any different? You don’t plan a trip to Disney without knowing how to get there. You don’t accomplish your dreams without planning out your roadmap.
Goals are your roadmap. You need to create a roadmap of where you want to be. You want to know specifically what you want to accomplish. Do you want to be a writer? If so, how many books do you want to write? Do you want to be a musician? If so, how many places do you want to play?
Once you have created your roadmap, you’re ready to build your road. (If you would like a primer on setting goals, try my post You Can Have Anything You Want in Life.)
2. Build Your Roads
It’s not enough to set your goals, you have to do the work. In order to do the work, you have to create the roads to get there. These are not roads as you know them, but the roads within your mind.
Habit’s are the roads in our brains. Much like I discuss in the post Make Your Brain Make You Rich, we can see that habits are like efficiency circuits in our brains. The things we do over and over not only become easy to do, but we can pretty much do them without thinking.
When we start to rewire our brains to focus on our long term goals instead of short term desires, we are taking a huge step toward a better life. And building those habits is a lot easier than we think. Read this post to find book recommendations to learn more.
When we have mapped out our path and built our roads, then we simply need to drive.
3. Drive
Benjamin Franklin said “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Colin Powell said “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” William Eardley IV said “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” It doesn’t matter how much you plan and what work you do unless you stick with it.
You may change your plan. You may alter your goals. But you must continue moving forward. You must persist. You must keep going until you reach the point that, no matter what the outcome, you’d rather keep working toward success than be sitting on the sidelines. Drive – unwavering persistence – will help you achieve a better life. As I say in my post for step three, it can help you move mountains.
Three Simple Steps to a Better Life
So if you want a better life, if you want a life that is focused on the things you want to achieve and become, simply do these three things:
Set your roadmap: Be sure to set goals to know where you want to go.
Build your road: Create powerful habits over time that will help you accomplish those goals.
Drive: Keep going. Keep moving forward. Be persistent.
As Dr. Seuss said:
“Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy [or gal]!
Oh, the places you’ll go!”
