The Earning Years…

The earning years, as we define them, begin when individuals commit to career decisions and settle into consistent courses of action that determine the kind of future they will experience. Most of us attempt a number of jobs in our youth before we settle into a career. Some people tried 5, 10, or more jobs before settling into a career. Some enter the earning years early, some late, and, unfortunately, some never make it.

Career selections are not as important as the choices people make throughout their lives. Developing this thought process through which the average working person can build wealth and ultimately become a millionaire is more important. It entails accepting personal responsibility, developing a pattern of investing, tracking where your money goes, developing a plan for success, keeping on track, repelling negative influences, and continuing to learn.

Bear in mind that the journey to financial independence is often a slow and often difficult one but one that everyone can enjoy with the right mindset. And, goal setting is so crucial in this journey. One of the great tragedies observed throughout the years is the number of people who remain in their learning years for most if not all of their lives because they have no goals. They start down one career path, hit an obstacle, change careers, hit another obstacle, and change careers again and again. They never stick to anything long enough to realize success. And, have you also noticed that there are people who have become very wealthy in virtually any business they are in? Have you also noticed that whatever the venture, there are usually many more people just surviving than becoming wealthy? Why? Could it be that the successful ones had goals and the unsuccessful ones just had wishes and dreams?

Bear in mind that, when goals are set, do not lose focus. When encountering obstacles, find ways to go through them, over them, or around them. When faced with problems, look for solutions rather than excuses. One of the more important things is to continue learning and to continuously measure your performance. And, do not measure it against what others were doing, but against your own performance as compared to your personal goals.

For example, if you compare your first-year performance in the advertising business with other people in your area, you most probably will be disappointed. And your second-year performance, although much improved as compared to the first year, if you compare with others in your area, you still will look like a failure. So, you need to compare your second year against your first-year performance, that’s the guide. Without the goal as a guide, most probably you would have quit before the end of the first year. Having specific goals forced you to measure where you were against where you wanted to be, so you could determine if you are on track or needed to make adjustments.

Examining your performance against your goals can also help to determine where you spend your time and efforts, eg. in your first year, most of the time and effort has been invested in improving yourself so that you could perform better in subsequent years. Also, the examination of your second year’s performance compared with the first, revealed just how much that investment had paid off. The improvement showed you are on track but the distance from your goal showed you still had much to do.

Financial success is achieved one step at a time, it doesn’t come overnight. One of the big fallacies people have is that wealthy people are just lucky. Sure, some are lucky enough to be born into wealth but a vast majority are not. Wealth doesn’t just happen. Ask anyone who has created wealth on his or her own, first-generation earners, and they will tell you it didn’t happen overnight. They laid one small success on top of another until it became a big success. So, it’s actually developing the right frame of mind to “build” rather than to “attain” success. You can’t “arrive” without taking the journey.

Building wealth and becoming a millionaire is something every working person can accomplish with patience, persistence, and a plan of action. Yes, setbacks can happen, but whether they remain setbacks or turn into ruins depends entirely on how you respond.

That’s all for now, friends. See you all in my next article.