Reaching Your Goals: A Ridiculous Way to Succeed

If you've ever had any sales training, you've probably been taught the technique called "Reduction to the Ridiculous." This is the technique of breaking a price down to smaller and smaller units until it sounds insignificant compared to the value of your product. Here's an example?

Say you're talking to an insurance agent. Nothing against insurance agents, some of them are my friends, it just makes a good example. You're buying car insurance, and your friendly agent sees your jaw drop when he tells you the annual premium. Now he starts breaking it down- $1200 per year becomes $100 per month, which is about $3 a day, or 13 cents an hour or less than a penny a minute. Or, since he knows you drive 24,000 miles a year, your premium is only 50 cents per mile? A small price to pay to avoid a financial wipeout in case you cause an accident, right? ;-)

We can apply the same technique to Success. Here's the road map:

Vision
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V
Plans
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V
goals
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V
Steps
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V
Specific Actions

Now let's look at each step.

Vision

Your Vision is what your life would look like if you had everything that's important to you. Suppose you had all the free time and money you needed to do anything you wanted. That "anything" is your Vision. In his best-seller The Greatest networker In the World, John Fogg calls it "the movie in your mind." I love this visual? You close your eyes and imagine you are standing in front of a theatre. Picture the neon sign above the marquee. The bright lights chasing themselves around the title of the current feature. Feel the push of the crowd as they move around you to get their tickets. You check the title- "You- the True Story Of His/Her Amazing life." With a title like that, you have to buy a ticket, right?

You buy your ticket, and find a seat, about a third back, right in the center. Feel yourself sinking back into the plush velvet of the rich seat. Slide back and have some fresh popcorn. Settle in?

The show starts. There you are. Now fill in the action on the silver screen. See yourself doing the things you dream of doing. When the show is over, open your eyes. You have a Vision.

Plans

Plans are the elements of your vision. Suppose a scene from your movie showed you presenting a large check to your favorite charity. To do so, you will need access to a large amount of money. In other words, to make that scene come true, you need to be wealthy.

To reach part of your vision, you plan to Get Rich.

goals

Goals are the milestones you use to measure your progress in following your plan. For our plan to Get Rich, we might set the following goals:

1. Net Worth of $10,000,000
2. Annual Income of $1,000,000
3. Enough passive and residual income to cover monthly expenses without working.
4. And so on?

Many advise you to put a strict deadline on your goals. I don't follow that, because it sets you up for failure. I would much prefer to set a target date, simply as a point of reference to evaluate progress. For the goal of $1,000,000 annual income, you might set a target of ten years. Each year, you can evaluate and ask yourself, 'if I continue at my current pace, how likely am I to hit my target.' If the answer is 'very likely,' keep the target. If the answer is 'I'll reach it much sooner,' move up the date. If the answer is 'not gonna happen', you need to make a decision.

Do you change your target date? Or do you change what you are doing in order to accelerate your progress? Do you change the goal altogether? You have to decide which way you want to go.

If you think you are doing as well as you are capable of doing, go ahead and move the target date out. You'll be evaluating again in a year, and can adjust as necessary.

If you think there is room for improvement, note that and go to the next step.

Steps

To reach net worth of $10,0