I notice it especially at the gym, where in early January, the crowds flock. With Christmas weight bearing down on their consciences, and resolutions to regain fitness levels of a past era, the enthusiasm to turn life around and get healthy is all agogo. Then February rolls around and the crowds thin out a little. By March it's the same old regulars again with a couple of newbies who kept up the habit.
I think about how people set themselves such lofty goals, like "go to the gym five times a week" when they never went, "lose forty pounds" without any new knowledge on nutrition, "earn 30% more" with no concept of how it might happen. What invariably happens is that they start making strides forward and then give up after a month or so, seeing little result.
We live in a world of instant gratification and it becomes an easy trap to fall into. If we're not getting what we expect right away, then there's no point in continuing... "Here I fail again!" attitude.
I know that I have at times become despondent about not achieving my lofty goals as quickly as I'd like, but what we need to realize is that we often over-estimate what we can do in a year and under-estimate what we can do in five or ten years.
Think about that... we often over-estimate what we can do in a year and under-estimate what we can do in five or ten years.
How can you possibly work out whether that's true for yourself. Well, take a very large piece of paper and divide it into 120 squares, with ten columns and twelve rows. I did this in an Excel Spreadsheet. At the top of the ten columns write the last ten years, with 1997 in the first column. Down the left put in the months of the year starting with January. now you have a grid where each month of the last ten years has its own square.
Now take the time to write down achievements, awards, events, significant anniversaries, milestones etc that occurred in each of the months. Admittedly it's not something that you can complete in fifteen minutes, but it's an interesting exercise that I continue to undertake, and it shows you in fact how much progress you can make in ten years.
At age 21, a little over ten years ago I was starting in my first job, having just come out of University with my Bachelor of Commerce degree. I was earning a whopping $23,000 and, with my girlfriend, renting an old house from a friend of my parents. We owned no furniture (the old house came with old furniture), and my only "asset" was a 1986 Ford Telstar TX5. It was white with a mere 200,000km on the clock. "A bucket o' bolts" as my Dad would say. Two years later I had more than doubled my income, and had a share portfolio with a value in the range of $15,000, and had taken a two-week trip to Thailand, the first overseas trip I funded on my own.
Five years ago after travelling the world for a couple of years I arrived in Calgary. I couldn't work, due to visa restrictions. My wife and I lived off her income and rented a one bedroom place downtown for $775 a month. 9 months later we bought a house, scraping every penny we had, which included some of my savings I cashed in from Australia. Somehow we pooled $22,000 to put down 10% on a run-down $215,000 house in a rundown inner-city neighbourhood. With still only one income I worked full-time renovating. We had to save up to buy paint or a new light-fitting, and it was a slowly slowly rate of progress. But progress nevertheless.
With some luck, good management and aggressive risk-taking (though nothing stupid!) in four years we have gone from those humble beginnings to having a small mortgage on a $500,000 home and two rental houses, each with a solid equity position.
If we wanted to we could sell our rentals and be mortgage-free with cash in the bank less than four years after we bought, and in that time we've had a child, travelled to the US four times and to Australia twice, and been on two full incomes for just over half that time. It may sound impossible, and as I read what we've done, I even doubted its truth... but I assure you it is 100% true.
I'm not trying to say anything more than- anyone can do a lot in a relatively short period of time (five years) even without tremendous resources, but with a little creativity, good decision-making, some dedication, hard work and a little luck.
Take a look aback at your own past ten years and see how in every facet of your life you've made great changes and see that the possibilities for the future are equally as expansive. When you look back ten years ago, and remember how you felt at that time, where you are now seems like it could never happen. That's the same with the next ten years. A decade is a long time. Two US Presidential terms total only eight years and think how much happens in that time.
So no matter where your life is at now, know that in a few short years it could be transformed beyond your wildest dreams. all it takes is some vision, dedication, hard work and a little luck.
"Man is born to live, not to prepare for life." - Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
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