4 Important Questions That Will Transform Your Life
4 Important Questions That Will Transform Your Life
According to Socrates, "An unexamined life is not worth living". He realized that to live a complete life we must examine it truthfully. While some might question the worthlessness of an unexamined life, others agree that if we don't make time to examine our motives, it may catch up to us. But on the other end of the spectrum, you don't want to get caught in a rigorous examination of life and become entangled with it.
The thing is most of us are dictated by our unconscious desires instead of making conscious choices. We have a habit of reacting instead of responding to what is taking place in our lives. It is only when a situation does not play out as expected, that we evaluate our choices. This is not a good recipe for living because reacting to outside events is not empowering, since you are dragged by your circumstances instead of taking life into your own hands.
The bestselling book, The 4 Stages of Building Wealth, encourages readers to challenge their beliefs to realize their potential. This process is neither easy nor pleasant, but it is a necessary step to become experience intentional results in your life. Although not all the choices you make will result in positive outcomes, the process itself will get you closer and closer to a more fulfilled life and an empowering mindset.
Over the coming paragraphs are presented four fundamental questions to ponder on. You need to be honest with yourself on the first two questions and realistic with your vision of your future on the other two questions. I recommend you journal your thoughts to the questions below and then revisit them every year to note whether you're having more clarity on things you want out of life. This process will make you become your own mentor and coach, This is a process I use when coaching new clients to help them map out their vision board and put a plan to achieve the life they want.
1. Where Am I Now?
When you're introducing yourself at a social event or corporate training, what do you say? I bet you will recite your past, ethnicity, what you do for a living, or your marital status. While these labels do define us, what happens if you lose your job? What is the label used to define you then?
Maybe you’re just starting your career. Maybe you started your career years ago. You might have a modest amount of income that barely covers your expenses. You might have debt payments and bills that eat up all your income and leave you with nothing to enjoy the simple things in life. Or you might have climbed the corporate ladder with a decent income but with bigger ambitions. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you have a certain type of income right now, most probably from your job. You might feel uncomfortable that you work quite hard but get left with little money and time.Every one of us has ambitions for a better quality of life, a better career, and an abundant life. The thing is we often fall into the trap of imagining a better life, but without examining the current state of our finances and career. It's like you want to reach a destination using Google Maps but without having a starting point.
Before you can start the process of building wealth, you need to have a very clear picture of where you are financially, right now. To determine this, you will need to understand some basic financial calculations and assessments. You need to have a clear picture of how your cash is flowing and of your current net worth. This article is not meant to be a crash course on personal finance, but you can get all the resources and the step-by-step guide on how to do it with your free copy of The 4 Stages of Building Wealth.
The more you start making relations between your cash flow and your net worth, the more questions you start asking yourself about your financial health. This leads you to start pondering on the next question: Why am I there?
2. Why Am I There?
This important question needs to be answered to have a clear understanding of what brought you to your current financial situation. To answer this question, you will need to examine:
This step is a prerequisite for any person seeking financial freedom. It is a preamble for both setting new goals (Where Do I Want to Be?) and creating a strategy to reach them (How Do I Get There?). If you don’t know where you are and why you are where you are, you can’t expect to get where you want to go.
3. Where Do I Want to Be?
Have you ever thought about your "big why" or your major definite purpose? This is the one goal that is most important to you at the moment. It is usually the one goal that will help you to achieve more of your other goals than anything else you can accomplish. From my own experience, your major definite purpose goes beyond financial goals. Your major purpose or goal is usually centered on personal matters, like home and family, health and fitness, personal development and education, social life and relationships, spiritual development, and life contribution. You will realize that your goals related to work, career, and finances will be the enablers to achieve your higher purpose.
At this stage, you might even start asking yourself powerful questions about what your life might look like if you had all the money in the world. What kind of career would you be pursuing? How would you spend your leisure time? What kind of passion would you be pursuing? How would you give back to your family, your friends, your community, your colleagues, your business associates, and your religious affiliates?
Once you have clarity on the above, you can start setting your own personal financial objectives. You cannot set objectives if you do not have visibility on your current situation and an understanding of the reasons you are where you are. As James Burke eloquently puts it: “You can only know where you’re going if you know where you’ve been.”
You could be asking yourself about the time horizon of your objectives, the recommended time horizon is five to ten years. In this very well-researched book - The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class - author Keith Cameron Smith found that poor people plan at best for weeks, the middle-class people plan for months, whereas rich people plan years in advance.
A powerful way to look at your goals is through the famous SMART model. SMART stands for the different criteria of a goal, which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
4. How to Get There?
Once you've identified where do you want to be, you need a plan and a process to get you there.
Why do you need a process?
Put simply, a process is a set of defined tasks needed to complete a given activity, including who is responsible for completing each step, when, and how they do so. Without having a clearly defined process, your wealth-building journey can’t grow to its full potential. Two reasons why a process is so important for success are efficiency and scalability. Having a documented process that you can use as a tool saves time, energy, and resources. Following a proven process will prevent you from losing the time and money expended on trying to reinvent the wheel. Moreover, a system allows you to replicate any task over and over with predictable results.
Related: Step-by-step process on building a rental property portfolio for retirement
Take It One Step At A Time
I recommend you go through the four questions in the order presented in this article. But do not try to do them all at the same time right out of the gate. Ease into them. If you take on too many new actions all at once it will be harder to get them all on track. You’ll probably get frustrated. So start with the first question in this article, get it up and running, smooth it out, learn it well, and then go on to another. Take your time. You’ll get to them all eventually.
Knowing where to start is important. Which step should you pick first? Think about what makes sense for you. Do you understand the numbers in your personal financial statement? Think about where you’re likely to get the fastest results. Where do you think the most low-hanging fruit is for your personal finances? How are you most likely going to reach your financial objectives? Where will you get the greatest ROI? If you’re still not sure after you’ve thought through these questions, we recommend starting with question one first. Once you begin building your personal financial statement and analyzing the numbers, you’ll gain confidence, and soon you’ll be implementing the more advanced strategies, too.
We’ve helped over 30,000 students implement these systems, and along the way have been perfecting every step of the process. Our training program, The 4 Pillars of Generational Wealth, provides step-by-step instruction on the entire system, as well as 1-on-1 support to ensure that our students succeed. You can check out this course on www.employeemillionaire.com/fourpillarscourse.
For more serious students looking for one on one guidance and mentoring on the entire process, we have been working with students around the globe, through our “inner-circle” coaching. After helping so many students implement this system, we’ve found that there are a few keys to successfully implementing and managing the process so that you get the results you’re after — a steady and dependable residual income from assets that grow your wealth! You can sign up for a complimentary strategy session at www.employeemillionaire.com/book-call.
