Clarity Of Purpose: Why You Need To Deveolop It!

Many of us go through life from day-to-day and year-to-year as if we are blown by the wind.

We talk about not being where we want to be. But we take little action to actually move in the direction that we want.

The reason for most people is that they don't actually know where they want to be in 5, 10 or 20 years time. Or if they do, the distance between where they are now, to where they really want to be, seems so huge as to be unbridgeable.

Either way, if you don't know what you want to achieve at a future point in your life, what chance have you got of changing where you are now?

In fact, lots of people, much cleverer than me, have created clever little slogans like…

"If you keep doing what you do, you'll keep getting what you've got".

Or

"If you don't know the port you're headed for, your ship could end up anywhere".

These all speak the truth, but they don't help us actually take the action we need to change things.

In discussion with the PIPS property millionaires, it was obvious that all of them were very driven to achieve success.

They had a clear view of what they wanted to achieve and how to achieve it.

Look deeper and it was easy to see why they had achieved success.

• They knew their goals – what I have called clarity of purpose.
• They had worked out a strategy that would take them towards their goals.
• They followed their strategy, day after day. In fact, Mike Stimson, now in his late 60's and a prolific investor for the last 40 years, has the same strategy that he started with back in the 1960’s!

So if you want to achieve success through property investment, it is absolutely critical that you know what you want to achieve.

Here are some good questions to ask yourself:

1. What level of income do I want from my property investments in (say) 5, 10 and 20 years? Write it down.
2. What value of 'equity' – i.e. profit – do I want in my portfolio in 5, 10 and 20 years time? Write it down.
3. Why is this important to me? If I achieved this what would my life be like? What would I do? How would I feel? Write the answers to ALL these questions down.

Finally, what am I willing to do right now to achieve all this?

Inevitably, property investment requires time, requires some money, requires learning and maybe changes in how you think and act.

Are you willing to put in the effort on a regular and continual basis for the next few years to achieve your goals?

The PIPS property millionaires certainly were and I hope you are too.

A huge study was done many years ago at Harvard University. Records were kept of one particular class and whether they had personal life-goals written down. Twenty years later the same class was reviewed to see what had happened. The 10% of students who had clear, written goals had almost all achieved what they set out to do. Most importantly, the wealth of this 10% was greater than the combined wealth of the remaining 90%!

Hmmm. Food for thought.

So now you know what to do:

1. Set life goals
2. Decide on the strategy
3. Work the strategy

Writing this down is easy and straightforward. I know that in 'real life' such things can be far from simple.

That’s one of the reasons that you need to keep learning and keep developing yourself. I’ve spent more than 25 years attending personal development course, reading books and more… and I consider myself a beginner in the art of success. It’s a lifelong journey if you truly want to achieve the maximum that you are capable of.

There are three big questions for you that come up from this first lesson:

1. Have you defined your goals (have Clarity of Purpose)?
2. If not… isn’t it time that you spent time defining them and writing them down. This is a truly exciting part of life because you get to design your own future!
3. Are you willing to do what it takes to achieve them, no matter how challenging? No matter how long? No matter what the obstacles?

If the answer to all three is “yes”, then I salute you because there is no doubt you can create the life and financial security you wish for. And in doing so you WILL create a solid property investment portfolio.

If the answer is a ‘maybe’ or ‘no’, then the hard truth is that you are very unlikely to achieve your goals.

I sincerely hope that you are in the first group!

Live with Abundance,

Rod Thomas FCA

Posted in Successful Investment

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