Today, I want to talk about what you can accomplish. In the year to come.
I recently had a conversation with a gentleman who’s been listening to the show, and he scheduled a call with me on my website and he just wanted to check in, see how we might work together and things like that.
And he said something that kind of struck me that, that I’ve been thinking about for a little while and I was kind of what I want to talk about today, which is, he said, if we would have made better decisions in the past, I think we’d be in a better spot today.
And as I reflected on that, I thought that’s certainly true for all of us, really, in a whole bunch of areas of life.
That’s what I want to talk about. Kind of how to go about change. It’s New Year’s. A lot of people are engaging in New Year’s goals and resolutions and things like that. But the reality is it comes down to our decisions and our beliefs, beliefs drive actions, which give us evidence to reinforce the beliefs and around and around and around we go. We’ve talked about that before.
But it’s interesting and really amazing what you could achieve in a year. If you just focused on it over the last year in 2023, I had clients, they’ve accomplished all kinds of goals. I’ve had couples that had, the first child where the wife then stayed home because she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and they were in the financial position where they could, and she wanted to.
I had other clients relocate across the country to their dream state of where they wanted to live. I’ve had clients., buy their ideal home and change where they lived. I’ve had clients take their, their bucket list vacations, to Europe. I had one client that successfully transitioned last year into retirement.
She, she had a plan, she executed and peacefully transitioned into retirement. I had clients start their own businesses, do major house renovations, like tens of thousands of dollars that they paid cash with, that they saved up and paid cash with. I even had a client just last month pay off their mortgage.
So, they finally got to that baby step seven where they are completely debt free. And I’m so proud of them for accomplishing that goal. Really all these clients for their goals.
Here’s my question for you. As we transition, to this new year, what are you going to accomplish in your life and with your money in 2024?
Because in a year you can accomplish a lot.
It’s really amazing what you can accomplish in a year. If you just focus on it now, I’m not talking about new year’s resolutions. I’m talking about making meaningful, deep change in your life and whatever domain you’re looking for.
Could be money that we talked about here. Could be in your marriage. Could be in your family. It could be in your health. It could be in your career, your spiritual walk, your community, and it can be with money. It can be a whole bunch of things. You can make meaningful, deep changes in your life if you want to. And my guess is there’s probably an area, in your life where you want it.
I just want to give you a framework today of how to make some meaningful change in your life because it doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t come without sacrifice, and it certainly will not come without the intentionality and a plan to fulfill it.
So, four steps of how to make meaningful change in your life.
Number one, commit to it. That’s where it starts. It starts by making the decision and committing to it. I recently read a book called 10 X is easier than two X by Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan is the owner and founder and part of strategic coach, which coaches’ entrepreneurs. And he has this framework about building confidence and competency in certain areas.
And it starts with, making a commitment. You must decide what it is that you want. What are the outcomes that you’re trying to achieve? What are the benefits of you achieving this? And essentially, why do you want it? We did an episode way back when of called Start with Why, Simon Sinek’s book. You must understand why you want something.
Because if you don’t have a big enough why, when you get into the what and the how and the who and the when, it’s going to get frustrating and you’re going to have resistance and you’re going to have some discomfort. And if you don’t hold onto that, why, and you don’t have it formulated strong in your mind and you’re in your emotions.
You’re going to quit and you’re not going to bring about the meaningful change that you want. So, number one is you must commit to change.
Number two, you must have the courage to step into the discomfort. The reality in life is that all growth comes through stress. If you’re building muscle, if you’re building your cardiovascular, even something growing like a plant or tree, when the seed to through the ground, it has friction, it has all the pressure of the earth pushing down on it, and that seed must exert tremendous energy to just get to the surface.
A butterfly. being made must, dig its way through the cocoon and come out a butterfly. I’ve heard things of like bees that bees must, kind of come out of the, the thing that they’re in. And if they don’t, work their way through it, then they, then they don’t have a long life.
All change. is going to come through stress, which brings amount of discomfort, and you must be willing to step into it. So, as you make that commitment, also think about what it’s going to cost you. What are the cons of you not doing this? What are the forces that are going to be against you and have the courage to step into it because it’s going to get uncomfortable.
You must be willing to work through that discomfort to grow., the expression is no pain, no gain. And there’s some truth to that. You can’t expect gains without having some elements of pain, discomfort, friction, stress in your life.
One of the things I do every morning is I have this list that I kind of read through of various things to, to mentally set my mind for the day. And one of the, I remind myself that. It’s about life and life is stressful if you’re growing, if you’re going to grow through things, you’re going to have stress in your life.
So, stress shouldn’t be something that’s avoided. It should be something that’s, embraced if you will, because that means you’re growing. If you’re getting friction and you’re having a tough time, that’s where the growth comes. So, number one, you must commit to it. Number two, you must have the courage to step into that area and fight through the discomfort that emotionally is going to come.
Number three, what I recommend to do is find a proven plan. Find out someone who’s already done what you’re trying to do and follow them. That’s why I like frameworks. Find who, not necessarily how, because you find somebody who’s already done it in their lives. They’ve already, they’ve already paved the way.
They’ve already worked their way through the jungle, one slash at a time. Now you can just follow them through. I remember years ago when I was in the Marine Corps, and I was in Japan, we, as a, as a company it was supposed to be a fun day. It wasn’t a lot of fun. I’ll just tell you.
It was a good experience, but it wasn’t a lot of fun. The Marines have a way of kind of taking, all the fun out of stuff by calling it training. We went snowshoeing. We, we went to this place and we’re going up a mountain. We were doing some kind of cold weather training. We went snowshoeing and we were in straight powder is probably, four or five, eight feet deep.
I don’t know exactly how deep it was, but the thing about snowshoes is you put snowshoes and your kind of walking on top of the snow, or at least in theory, that’s how it goes. But the reality is you’re sinking down to about your knee. The people up front, they had the heavy job cause it’s, it’s fresh powder in front of them.
They’re taking one step at a time and really., patting that down, foraging the way ahead. Well, by the time you get to the last person, the 50, 60, 70th person who’s gone through that path is nice and paved and smooth and already worn out because 50 people have walked on it. So, it’s the idea is one person’s kind of.
Pioneering up front and then they kind of step off and then, they go to the back and get a break and we kind of circle through so that everybody takes a, takes the pain of the front. The people in the back have, it’s super easy because they’re following the path that’s already been paid for them.
Same thing here. Find someone. Who’s already done what you’re trying to do and has formulated the plan or the framework and do what they do. That’s what attracted me so much to Dave Ramsey’s basically plan. I’ve read, 50 to 70 personal finance books and blogs and stuff like that. And I came back to Dave’s because it gave me a systematic step by step framework that I could follow to lead towards financial success.
That’s why I call it the path to financial success. That’s why it’s in that financial framework that I teach and use myself and help clients with., so find some buddy who’s already done it.
Number four is what I would say is elicit some support as you’re trying to forge a new path. Even though you have the path laid out for you, you’re going to get weak.
You’re going to have times where you’re not going to want to do it anymore. You’re going to have times where it’s going to be easier to just stop and go back to where you were and quit. And at that point, when resistance comes, you need some help. You’re going to need some encouragement. You’re going to need some admonishment.
You’re going to need some edifying. You’re going to need someone to keep you accountable to basically push you through those tough times. That’s one of the good things about, online communities, things like that, where you can reach out to people who are doing what you’re doing having, masterminds or groups of people who are doing it are even better.
When times get tough, you can lean on them. Hopefully be vulnerable, explain to them kind of how you’re feeling, where you’re at, and hopefully they’ll encourage you and push you over the next little hurdle.
All right. So, here’s a couple of personal examples where I’ve done that path. Starting this YouTube page, for example, it’s something I had thought about doing before, but it was really through my interactions. That I heard a podcast about this guy who basically was a financial advisor, started a YouTube shows.
I watched from him; he had a thing about helping others. I engaged in that. And while this show might not be great it’s hopefully it’s helping you. It’s helping me. It’s a win win.
I Got in touch with a coach for Financial Advisors. So he’s not Financial Advisor, he’s a coach for Advisors that I worked with, that I completely met through he was on a podcast one time doing an interview, and then I checked him out and started watching a show that he did, and now I’ve been in some of his, , online live events that he’s had that have been tremendously helpful for me, with my mindset, with my business approach.
With the value I provide clients, trying to help everybody, basically rise and be better. another one is I’m working on a retaking the certified financial planner test here in March and his testing cycle. I used a proven plan, the Dalton CFP review proven thing in the industry.
Is it costly? Yes. But. it works. All right. I’m willing to invest the money into a thing like this. It’s going to help me achieve the results that I want. And there’s people in there that are paving along with me. So, there’s a lot of encouragement, support and accountability basically built into it.
, even on the health side of things, trying to eat better and do better from a health perspective. I followed this guy on YouTube Kevin Bogleman, he goes by K Boggs, has a very simple and repeatable framework of how to basically do a push, pull, and a squat kind of every day and build up a whole 30 gives you a good framework on eating well, have Erica as my accountability partner, we’ve been kind of doing this thing together. There are frameworks out there that you can utilize. When it comes.
But how do you go about doing it? Number one, you must make the commitment to change. Sometimes that’s the hardest part because it’s easier to just stay where you are, like, it’s kind of like a baby sitting in a dirty diaper.
, I know it’s stinky and I know it’s messy, but it’s comfortable. It’s kind of warm and it’s mine. I think I’d rather just stay here.
It takes discomfort to kind of push through. Once you make that commitment, you’re going to have to have the courage to kind of push through the resistance that inevitably will come.
You must accept the resistance. And stress and discomfort are coming. Rather than putting up a shield, just try to deflect it, try to embrace it and push through it. Find a proven plan. Someone else has already done what you’re trying to do and elicit support to help you along the way.
Now, maybe if you’re looking for it to make some big changes with your money, I might be able to help this year. I’m looking to add five to seven new clients in the first half of the year. This is going to be a large push on my, my end to take care of the clients. I have, we have tax season coming up.
So, I, I do tax returns for all my clients as well, trying to do this show and to try to serve new clients will be a big push on my end, but I’m willing to make the investment for people who are serious about building wealth, looking to intentionally build wealth. Work up the path to financial success, transition into retirement somewhere in the future.
If that’s something that you might be interested in and you think we might be a good fit together, you can go to true wealth dot show forward slash interested, true wealth dot shows forward slash interested. There’s a form there. You can fill out your information and I’ll give you a call and we can go from there.
So, as we wrap up your micro action for the week, find the one domain, the one area that you want to make change in, in 2024 and commit to it, make the commitment of what you want to achieve right now, why you want to achieve, why you want to achieve it, things like that. And then work through having the courage, find the proven plan, find some accountability to help you along the way.
I hope this helps you on your financial journey. Again, happy new year. Looking forward to a great 2024 and until next time. Hope you have a great day.
