It has come to my attention that a major roadblock to success is the fact that the road itself can feel incredibly long and boring.
Success (and by that I mean reaching a goal that you have set) almost never happens overnight. It comes from identifying the right activities to do in order to reach a certain goal, and then doing them over and over and over again.
When we look at real estate agents who achieve high levels of production, we are bound to find that they are consistent. They have identified the activities that generate results, and they do them over and over and over again.
Why do some people succeed and others not so much?
The difference is always in the thinking, because everything begins with a thought. Successful people think differently, and then they act differently as a result.
Two years ago I quit smoking (one of several times doing that, cough) and I gained 20 pounds in the span of a few months. So I decided to go on a diet.
I chose Tim Ferriss’s slow carb diet, which contained a short set of simple rules:
Rule #1: Avoid “white” starchy carbohydrates (or those that can be white). This means all bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and grains. If you have to ask, don’t eat it.
Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. You already do this; you’re just picking new default meals.
Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Exception: 1-2 glasses of dry red wine per night is allowed.
Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. (Fructose –> glycerol phosphate –> more bodyfat, more or less.) Avocado and tomatoes are excepted.
Rule #5: Take one day off per week and go nuts. I choose and recommend Saturday.
I’d like to call your attention to rule #2:
Eat the same few meals over and over again.
This sounds SO BORING, doesn’t it?
I mean, especially in this context of a diet. I can hear myself thinking back then:
OMG it’s going to be so brutal eating scrambled eggs six days a week, and then what about lunch? Chicken or bean soup, day after day after day? Just kill me now…
The actions that will ultimately lead to our success are almost never exciting.
These are the boring things like getting up when the alarm goes off, eating the scrambled eggs, going to the gym, making the 5 or 10 sales calls per day.
They’re not exciting, they’re not fun, and yet doing them consistently IS the path to success.
Goal setting is easy
When I started the slow carb diet, I had a goal to weigh 135 pounds. Setting that goal was easy – it was the weight that I knew would allow me to fit back into the majority of the clothing in my closet. My principle motivation was to avoid having to buy new clothes to fit my expanded body.
When we talk about goals in real estate, that’s also typically easy. We say things like:
I want to earn $100,000 in a year.
I want to flip 20 houses.
I want to amass 10 rental properties.
I want to have a team so that I can leave my business for a month and go to Thailand, and come back to scheduled closings.
This is all very easy. We think we know what we want. Or maybe we do know what we want. Yet often we fail to ask the right questions that will ultimately lead us to success.
The purpose of a goal
In the book the One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan tell us that the purpose of a goal is to act appropriately in the moment.
What does this mean?
It means that the purpose of setting the goal to earn $100,000 in a year is to know precisely what activities need to be done every single day. Because the only way we’re going to get there is by taking the appropriate actions. Something needs to be done in order to generate the business that will lead to the income.
What are those actions? And and are we willing to take them?
When I set the goal to weight 135 pounds, the question I had to ask myself was: Am I willing to follow the rules of this diet? Am I willing to eat the same certain things day after day after day?
In that particular case, I was willing.
There certainly have been other cases where I have not been willing to take the actions necessary to hit a certain goal. And that’s okay.
What we need is clarity.
Success is meeting or exceeding a goal that you set for yourself.
Success is boring. It’s a product of time on task, over time.
When you set a goal, the questions to ask are:
- What are the specific actions that will allow me to hit the goal in certain time-frame?
- Am I willing to take those actions, over and over again, even when I’m no longer feeling the excitement that I felt when I initially set the goal?
Clarity is power.
Do you have clarity around your goals?