What do you want? What do you want? I mean I have a number of things that I know I want and you're likely reading this article and in some way got here in Lane Latest to see this because you probably have something that you want too that you dream about, that you wish for. I mean you and I are very much alike and in this article , I'm gonna give you five ways that you can move toward actually achieving those goals and seeing those dreams through. Maybe you want to quit your job or start a side business, make more money, maybe you want to lose some weight, be less stressed, and just live a healthier happier life. Okay well, let's say you get that, how is that gonna change things? What are you going to unlock as a result of making that money or starting that business or losing that weight or whatever it is? So you got to go a few levels deeper to really understand at the root why you want to do those things. So I wanna a little thought experiment with you right now to help you think about what these things might be because you know a lot of times I ask and it's not easy to come up with but this exercise will help you. It's called the airport test, something I included in my book Will It Fly and I'm just gonna share this with you right now. What you wanna do is take a piece of paper and fold it in half the long way and then open it up, fold it in half the other way so that when you open it up you have four quadrants. And then what you're gonna do is label each quadrant one of the four most important areas of your life. So the upper left corner might be something like finances and the other one might be health and maybe there's family and relationships and the other one, maybe you're into music you can include music, whatever your four quadrants might be that's what you write down. So now that you labeled these sections, this is where the thought experiment begins and I want you to imagine your life five years from now. It's five years in the future and you are at the airport and while at the airport your flight is delayed a little bit which is kind of not cool but then all of a sudden you feel a tap on your shoulder and it's an old friend from high school or way back when, you haven't seen this person in a while but it was a good friend who you had you know a lot of good times with. And you guys get really excited and you go and have a meal together or have a drink or coffee or something and then this friend asks you wow it's been so long, I haven't seen you for a while, how's life? How's everything going? And then you respond, life is amazing, it couldn't get any better right now. So I want you to think about that. Five years from now you say that life is amazing. What would make you say that? What would be a part of your life or how would things be in order for you to say to your friend that it couldn't get any better? On that sheet of paper underneath each label that you included, I want you to relate it to that label, start bullet point listing all the things that you would imagine are happening in your life at that time related to those things. And this sheet of paper becomes your guide moving forward. Something that you can determine whether or not, when you have a decision to make, is this something that aligns with what I wrote down on this sheet? So it becomes an incredible tool for you as you make decisions because one of the hardest things as you go through life is to say no to things or say yes to the right things and this sheet of paper can help you do that. Now that you defined what those things are that you are striving toward, let's talk about the five things you could do to give yourself the best chance to actually achieve those goals.
1. FEAR OF FAILURE
Number one and that's dealing with this thing that happens when you try something new or do something different and that's the fear of failure. Stephen Pressfield, the author of The War of Art calls this the resistance. Something that always just seems to push back when you're trying something new and it's very common, everybody goes through this no matter what. I felt it when I built my business, I felt it when I started podcasting and getting on video, and I definitely felt it when I started speaking on stage. But what Pressfield talks about is the fact that this fear is okay to have and actually it's a sign that what it is that you are fearing is actually really important. It wouldn't matter to you if you didn't experience that fear. And actually likely, there is something amazing always on the other end of it and I found that to be true. And likely if you think of some of the most sort of incredible things that have happened in your life, likely it was right after some moment of fear or resistance that took place in your life.
2. RELATIONSHIPS MATTER
It's the fact that relationships matter so much. And I'm not just talking about relationships like with a partner or a spouse or your close friends although those are really, really important actually, I wouldn't be where I'm at today without the support of my wife who was my fiancee back when I had gotten laid off from architecture. Without her and her support and her believing in me, I mean I wouldn't be here today and running a multi-million dollar business. So those kinds of relationships are crucial. People who can support you in your life, absolutely. But relationships are also important in this way. Every single amazing opportunity that I've ever had has happened as a result of the people that I've connected with. From my first time speaking on stage as a result of meeting Philip Taylor over at FinCon when I spoke in 2011 in Illinois. To an opportunity to work in Hollywood and do social media for an independent movie which was always a dream of mine to just be a part of Hollywood in that way just for fun. It came as a result of a person I met who had found me because of my podcast and even when I think back to my architecture days where you know I was working before I got laid off, my first job, my dream job coming out of college at UC Berkeley was an architecture job in the Bay Area which came as a result of a person that I met through the marching band at Cal, not because of a resume but because of a person who I knew who happened to know somebody else. And honestly if I could take the DeLorean back into time and tell my younger self, my younger shy self who would always not want to start new conversations, who was always too shy to talk to new people, I would just tell myself hey, you're not giving yourself all the opportunities in the world because you are just too worried about what other people are gonna think of you, you're too worried about what other people are gonna say, you need to meet and talk to as many people as possible 'cause you are just one person away of a major life change. So go out there and meet as many people as you can and see how you might be able to serve them.
3. APPLYING FOCUS
This is a very common problem especially for entrepreneurs but I think this is something all of us humans go through and that is a lack of focus especially in today's world where our attention is being pulled in every which way as a result of social media and ads and everything just making noise, right? It's hard to focus and yes, even though you might have defined exactly what you want, there are other external forces that are pulling you away from that and sometimes those are self-imposed forces that you just get too excited about all these new things and new opportunities and one of the hardest things to do is to say no to a new opportunity so you can say yes to what you originally decided to do. In order to grow, in order to get closer to these aspirations and goals, you need to commit to doing them, to honor the time that you allow yourself to work toward getting those things, and to learn how to say no to things that might stop you from going to where you want to go.
4. TAKING ACTION
This is also along the same lines of you know as being distracted about a bunch of things. You know I know a lot of you have and this is me too, we all have great intentions to learn as much as we can. we wanna grow, we want to explore new things, we want to learn by reading books and listening to podcasts and watching videos and things like that but a lot of us learn too much and we don't allow ourselves time to implement. We become obsessed with learning, almost addicted to learning, almost sometimes as an excuse to stop actually or not even ever start taking action. So I learned this tip from a guy named Jeremy Frandsen who really helped me out when it came to how to manage my learning processes and that is something he called just-in-time learning and this can be life-changing. That is to only allow yourself to learn about things that are related to the next task at hand. So number one, you need to know what it is you're working on next, what that next priority is but then only allow yourself to consume content that is only going to help you achieve that next milestone related to your next task or goal. This is huge because now there's only a limited number of things that you need before you can then take action to complete that goal and then unlock the next phase where then you can start the learning process again to work on that next task.
5. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
Some people call this a law of attraction or the secret, I just call it common sense. And that is you have to believe that you can achieve these things It was Henry Ford who said, "Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right." Which is absolutely true because if you don't believe you can do it, if you don't think you can do it, you aren't going to take the actions required to actually follow through and make things happen. I think a lot of us believe that we can't do something because we don't know how to do it and those things are separate, not true. Although you might not know how to do something, you can and should believe that you can do it. You're just, you don't know how to do it yet so what do you do? You get connected with the right people, you learn the right things, you bust through that failure and you make it happen. So although you might not believe that you can do things, you have to. You don't have to know how to do it right now but believe in yourself to actually figure it out. And that my friends is how you get what you want. You may not be able to get it right away but as long as you believe and you work toward those things and you're patient you know you gotta hustle, right? You gotta hustle and as GaryVee says, "You gotta micro hustle on those next tasks "but you got to be macro patient for those results." In due time with all these things in place, you can get it. You can get it. So hey, I hope you enjoyed this video. I don't often do these sort of more emotional mindset things but they're so important, related to whatever it is that you want and I don't want you to start working on things with all the content that I have and like doing the tasks and hustling on the goals without knowing why you're doing them in the first place and what you're working toward. So I'd love to hear from you before you go. If you know how to answer this question, if you've done the exercise or you already know this, what's your answer to this? What do you want? What do you want? In exchange for your answer to that question, I wanted to answer that question for you too. My life goals and aspirations, the rest of my biography is gonna be about how I became an agent in changing education by having entrepreneurship become a part of the regular curriculum in schools because I believe entrepreneurship gives you the life skills that you need to succeed, no matter what it is that you do. Whether you become an entrepreneur or not, you become successful in life when you learn the skills that entrepreneurship teaches you. I've seen it 'cause I have two kids who go to a school and they teach in a very entrepreneurial way and man it makes a world of difference to learn these skills early on and I want to be known for that and that's what I feel like this platform here becomes a launching pad to do. So yeah that's what I want to do and I wanna become known for that. I'm building the right relationships right now, I'm making the right moves. I fear because this is a big task at hand but I'm dedicated to it and I believe it can happen so that's me looking forward to hearing from you.
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