How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals | Stephen Duneier | TEDxTucson

So you have some goals huh? Are you one of the 3% of people who's actually written them down?

Here's a blueprint for how to achieve even your most ambitious goals!

What Are You Willing To Do To Have Impact?

Do you have a really powerful and vivid dream of the difference you'd like to make in the world, the impact you want to have? Or is your vision evolving?

Either way, whether or not that dream comes to life depends very much on the answer to these questions:

What are you willing to do to have impact? What are you willing to commit to?

When I was an undergrad in college, and really, from the time I was 10 years old, I wanted to be a doctor. When I applied to medical school and wasn't accepted, I was devastated, my dream shattered.

Looking back on it later, I realized that I hadn't been willing to do what it took to be accepted into medical school. I was able, but not willing. I was busy exploring the refreshing freedom of making my own decisions. Not by partying, since that's not my style, but by deciding how I wanted to spend my time in many small ways. At the time, my choices and my vision did not mesh.

Your impact is like that too. Your impact will remain an idea, a dream, until you take action with choices that align with your vision. You have to be willing to make the effort, to do the work of impact.

That can sound like a slog, a pushing from behind. And sometimes, it may feel that way.

But what really pulls you forward is motivation, a commitment to your vision, and a willingness to take action in a way that is consistent with your vision.

That commitment to aligned action takes shape in two ways:

1. Define who you need to be in order to have the impact you want to have, then become that person.

You have hidden capacities that have not yet been fully brought to light. Your impact vision may now call these capacities forward.

For example, as an entrepreneur, you're already a leader. How is your impact vision going to require you to lead? For ideas, look around you. What leader models behavior that you'd like to adopt yourself? What skills do you want to learn that will help you lead?

By learning and practicing through modeling, you'll be able to grow into that person.

Impact isn't a spectator sport. You've got to step into the arena and start practicing.

It can seem like a daunting thing to just show up as someone else. Fortunately, it's not often accomplished by big leaps. Rather, it's something you choose, every day.

Which brings us to #2:

2. Decide how you want to show up, every day.

How you choose to behave in relation to yourself and others is a big indicator of your commitment to your impact vision. You may be wondering what that looks like for you. Here are a couple of examples to consider:

Are you compassionate? Do you care about people and show it by paying attention in your interactions?

Or are you dismissive? Do you show people that they are not worthy of your time in the way you rush around, barely pausing to glance at them?

This is the micro-level of impact. Your daily choices about how you show up do accumulate. They add up to become who you are.

How you show up affects your choice of actions.

And the actions you choose affect how you show up.

In this happy interrelationship, how you show up affects your attitude and changes how you act. When you act in a way that is aligned with how you want to show up, with the impact you want to have, you are being that person you need to be to have the impact you want to have and that inspires you further.

To have impact, when is the best time to put these changes into action? Right now!

Your impact vision without action is just a dream. It can never come to life.

You're a dreamer, a visionary. You've started a business, right?

That's not the whole equation, though, when it comes to impact. People who remain only dreamers stay stalled with an idea. That is not you. You want to have impact. You're also an action-taker.

Developing yourself to become the person who can have that impact is part of your action. You can take action every day, by showing up as the person who can have that impact.

Are you willing to do what it takes to have impact?

Ursula Jorch, MSc, MEd, mentors entrepreneurs starting their businesses and seasoned entrepreneurs in transition to create the business of their dreams. Her coaching programs provide knowledge, support, clarity, inspiration, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to empower you to reach your goals. Start with a free guide and other valuable info at http://www.WorkAlchemy.com.

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How waking up every day at 4.30am can change your life | Filipe Castro M...

I always used to tell myself that I was NOT a morning person, and then my mentor told me to read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. That book changed my life; sure, I was sceptical - but I tried it anyway.

As soon as I started hauling my arse out of bed early in the morning, everything started to change for me. Discipline equals freedom and if you want freedom in your life then you need to be disciplined enough to do the things you need to do to get it!

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Which Business Ventures Earn the Biggest Profits?

What was your business venture's net profit margin in the previous fiscal year? Was the projected revenue reached? Is cash-flow adequate and are you able to manage your accounts payable? Were you able to buy decent medical and dental insurance? Were you able to deposit $5K or more into your retirement account? Could you afford to take a vacation this year? If the answer to two or more of those questions is no, I respectfully suggest that you evaluate the future of your business or consulting venture.

If paying bills is often a stretch, if you can barely afford even the least costly health insurance, you infrequently (or never) pay into your retirement fund, if sales revenue has been lackluster for most of the past eight quarters, then it's time to make a change. Your best option may be to not just tweak your business model and engineer a pivot but to explore another type of venture altogether, one with greater profit-making potential.

Sageworks, a financial data service located in Raleigh, NC, analyzed the net profit margins of 16, 000 small businesses that earned less than $10 million between September 2014 and August 2015. The average net profit across all industries in that time period was 7.2%

Surprisingly, the list of top performers consists almost entirely of Solopreneur friendly service industries. Despite the challenges of selling services, especially intangible services to B2B or B2C clients, Sageworks' list demonstrates that it is possible to make money as a self-employed service provider.

While educational degrees and professional credentials pose a formidable barrier to entry for several of these high-yield businesses, others require only a much more attainable certification and license to do business, plus the right relationships to help you build a solid client list.

To enter and build your current business, you drew upon certain of your competencies, professional experiences and relationships and you may have developed additional skills over time. For example, all self-employed professionals must become proficient at sales. That is a skill you can transfer to another venture, such as real estate sales.

It is almost certain that you have competencies that have lain dormant as you pursued the opportunities available to you at the time. Look over old resumes and remind yourself of previous job responsibilities and positions you held while serving on a not-for-profit board or committee.

Did you chair a finance committee or serve as a board treasurer? Were you responsible for preparing monthly financial statements at one or more places of employment? Those experiences could help you repackage yourself as an independent bookkeeper who works with small business clients. If billing and other administrative functions formed the core of one or more of your previous jobs, you may be able to bundle those services and present them as a high-profit business that you can operate from a desk in your bedroom.

Whichever of your skill sets that research shows has the potential to propel you into a new business venture, update and deepen that knowledge with a couple of courses at a community college, or with free online courses at Coursera or Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). If you'd like to receive a certificate from the school that sponsors your course, it will cost less than $100. Check the list of high-profit businesses below and see how your skills and professional experiences might successfully be applied.

Business                                                                                   Net Profit Margin

Accounting / Bookkeeping                                                      18.4%

Real estate sales                                                                       15.2%

Lawyer's office                                                                        14.5%

Dentist's office                                                                         14.4%

Landlords                                                                                 14%

Health practitioners (chiropractors, etc)                                  13.3%

Physician's office                                                                     13%

Business or technical consulting                                              12%

Graphic and industrial design                                                  11.4%

Administrative services (billing, etc.)                                     11.3%

Architectural / structural engineering services                        11%

Real estate property services                                                   10.1%

(landscaping, cleaning, etc.).

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Kim L. Clark is an external strategy and marketing consultant who brings agile skills to the for-profit and not-for-profit organization leaders with whom she works. Please visit http://www.polishedprofessionalsboston.com to learn how your organization can achieve mission-critical goals when you call on Kim.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kim_L._Clark/647250

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The Most Important Question to Always Ask: Does It Help Me Achieve My Goals?

Why do so many people not get what they want out of life?

Why do so many people find themselves falling into jobs they don't really want? Or living places that don't make them happy? Or with lifestyles that they find stressful?

How does someone go from dreaming of being a rock star, to being locked in an office to enter data onto a spreadsheet?

Well, there are many factors. But it usually starts by not clearly defining your goals or what you want. Because until you know exactly what it is you actually want, how can you possibly expect to get it?

That means it isn't good enough to decide you want to be 'rich', you need to know what you want to do to become rich. What kind of work you enjoy, how many hours you're willing to work etc.

Likewise, if you hope to become a rock star, then you might want to think about how you actually intend to make that happen. What does being a 'rock star' entail for you and how are you going to make it happen? What would you settle for?

And when you make all these decisions, you need to ensure that this is truly what you're passionate about - that your intended goal is something that you enjoy thinking about, enjoy working on and can't wait to make a reality.

The Simple Way to Make Decisions

The reason this is all so important, is that it will then allow you to make all your future decisions that much more easily. This is going to act like your barometer and your road map, to help you to get to the end destination that you want.

Now, whenever you find yourself making a decision, the question to ask is: does it help you achieve your goals?

So for instance, if you're umming and ahing over buying an expensive piece of equipment, then the simplest way to decide if it is a good idea or not is to ask if it will help you to accomplish your goals. Likewise, if you're unsure about where to live, or whether you should take a particular job opportunity, ask whether the decision is going to take you nearer or further from your goals.

The problem with many people who aren't quite sure what they want, is that their objectives end up on a kind of back burner and that other things seem to start getting in the way.

But if you really want to achieve something amazing - if you have a dream business idea that you really want to make happen - then you need to make this your priority and you need to change the way you think about everything else.

And it shouldn't feel like a sacrifice either. Because if you really love what you're working toward then it will mean fully embracing the thing you really want to be doing anyway. You just need to find what that passion is...

Visit http://www.thecooltimes.us to start taking control of your life.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Abraham_Adeniyi/2200805

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