By: D. A. Slinkard
If you want success in 2024, you cannot keep putting off decisions you know you need to have already made. A big factor that prevents many people from rising to success is their inability to overcome their fear. Will my new business adventure be a success? Will it be a failure? Will I be able to provide for myself? We come up with all of these “What if” scenarios and many times these scenarios cause us to get the cart in front of the horse. We spend too much time planning and not enough time doing whatever it is we need to do.
Instead of playing the “What if” scenario, it is time to begin with the end in mind. We need to take a few minutes and realize what the end result we are hoping to accomplish is. Once we have this answer, then it simply comes down to just working our way backwards. It seems human nature causes us to plan, plan, plan until we have it right, but too many people never get out of the planning phase.
It is 2024, what are you waiting for when it comes to your life? People are reading this article who had hopes and dreams in 2020 that are still just hopes and dreams four years later. When are we going to say, “Enough is enough,” and it is time to get serious about achieving our goals? Is this you? Are you lacking a little motivation in your life to help get you over the hump?
Think about what you want to accomplish, and then get busy working from the final result to the beginning result. This process is going to take time, and this is not something you are going to be able to sit down in thirty minutes and have it all worked out. I firmly believe many businesses and people fail in life because they fail to plan for the ebb and flow of life. Too many times we plan only for the “best case” scenario and that rarely happens. When the unexpected hits us, it ends up hitting us harder than we were expecting. Why? We did not think what happened to us would happen and we were not prepared.
Sometimes with the proper vision in mind, we can head off potential problems before they even have a chance to hinder us. This approach is called “proactive leadership” versus how many of us are when we practice “reactive leadership.” When we are reactive to the events occurring in our lives, we are going to get beat more times than we can succeed. Why? Too many times it feels like all we are fighting is an uphill battle and because life is not easy peasy for everyone, many times people get tired of always being behind the eight ball, and they simply choose to give up.
They choose to give up on their dreams. They choose to give up on their goals. They choose to give up on their hopes. They choose to give up and just throw it all away. I wonder how many people gave up on their dreams, goals, and hopes when in reality they were almost at the breakthrough point of achieving everything they ever wanted. We cannot always see the big picture, and it comes down to not beginning with the end in mind.
What success do you want or is even lacking in your life? You need to be as specific as possible because failure to do so ultimately ends up heading you for yet another failure. When you know what you want to do, where you want to go with your life, and how you are going to get there, this makes the planning and preparation phase so much easier. Instead of guessing what needs to be done, you already know what needs to be done. Sure, there will be some things you are going to have to figure out along the way, but that is going to be life in general. When you keep reevaluating where you are versus where you want to go, this is going to help you have the “proactive leadership” or vision that too many people fail to have.
Your achieving success in life is going to come down to how badly you want it. If you want it as bad as your next breath of air, I believe you will do what others are not willing to do. Begin with the end in mind.
By: D. A. Slinkard
D.A. Slinkard would love your feedback. You can contact him at da.slinkard@gmail.com
April 19, 2024
