The road to success is ridden with speed-breakers.
Are you ready to sacrifice the luxuries you're enjoying today to conquer the future?
Let's play a game.
Call three of your best friends and ask them, "Hey buddy, where do you see yourself in the next five years?"
They will tell you about their dreams, their ambitions and the things they want to have in the next five years.
That's fantastic! (If they have no idea what they want, get new friends. Remember, you are the average of the people you stay with, and surely, you don’t want unambitious people as your best friends.)
Then ask another question, "And what are you ready to give up to achieve those dreams?"
Listen carefully to their voice filled with shock, surprise and umms.
It happens.
Most of us have big dreams, which is a very good thing to have.
I, personally, love big dreamers -- those who dare to dream of what most cannot.
Most of us have dreams, but what we don’t want to do is pay the price for it. And boy, nothing comes for free.
You can get anything, as long as you are ready to pay its price.
Want to go to the beach every weekend with your family?
Then, starting today, work your ass off every weekend for the next five years.
There’s no weekend for you for the next five years, and then you may take every weekend off for the rest of your life.
Want a yacht and an island?
Starting today, work for 20 hours a day daily and then you may have the yacht.
Want to build a billion dollar company?
Start taking risks today.
Got a full-time day job? Well then, building your own venture is the work for the nights.
Work for your boss from 9 am to 5 pm, and then for yourself from 8 pm to 2 am. Be a Batman!
But I am already too busy!
No, you are not.
I cannot stand people giving excuses. Well, no one’s busy.
It may be hard for you to accept, but you are not busy.
You simply have screwed-up priorities, which you need to straighten up a bit.
Beware of burnout
Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking -- "Come on man, I don't want to burnout in the first three months itself."
Well then, I want to tell you that power of your desire should be greater than the power of burning out.
Need a simple trick? Don't go to bed satisfied.
Go to bed in the middle of an important and urgent work so that you have your mind unsatisfied by previous day's work and ready to focus on it as soon as you wake up.
The day you sleep satisfied, you won’t have a to-do list ready to help you kickstart the next day.
What about work -- life balance?
What about it? Screw it!
By trying to balance between these two, you'll neither be able to focus on work nor on life.
My suggestion? Give 70 per cent to your work for 30 per cent of your life and then 30 per cent to your work for 70 per cent of your life. But work first.
Big but weak dreams
Yes, big dreams are a great thing. But big and weak dreams aren’t.
Your dreams should be powerful enough to wake you up every day before your alarm goes off.
Your dreams should be so attractive that nothing else attracts you.
No dream is powerful by default.
Here are a few things which you can do to inject power in your dreams.
- Optimism is an unfair advantage. It is not something that you learn in a day/week/month. It is a habit; start developing it from TODAY!
- Books are your best friends. There's no powerful drug than a good book. A good book injects the kind of motivation inside you that nothing else can. Start reading today.
- Identify your competitors. When I said that books are the most powerful drug, I was lying. They are second-most powerful drugs. Most powerful ones are your competitors. Identify them, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Train yourself and then punch them right in their face at the right time.
What do I do right away?
I have always been the preacher of doing things now.
This time, I am actually going to tell you what can do to begin the journey today.
- Pull out a piece of white paper and make a heading -- Dreams. Write your three biggest dreams (or just your biggest one) under it. Write the dreams, which are measurable, like, building a company doing annual revenue of $10 millions in two years.
- Make another heading below it -- Price. Write the price that you’re ready to pay to achieve those dreams. Don’t be philosophical. Write exact things, like, 'Work for 20 hours a day, not be afraid of taking risks, not be afraid to stay out of contact from loved ones while working on my dreams.'
- Make third heading below it -- Deadline. Write the exact date when you want to achieve those dreams. Remember, exact date, like August 20, 2016.
- Tell about this paper to one of your best friends.
- Read this paper every day, twice.
Photograph: Bernavazqueze Dreilinger/Creative Commons
The author is founder, CEO of OWLGRIN, a financial services start-up. His twitter handle is @mohitmamoria.
