Last November 2nd, early voting for both local and national elections came early. I was out there with a lot of local people I didn’t know, and I’ll admit that I was somewhat shocked because 4 years ago there were far less people who showed up to vote; then again, 4 years ago I voted a little bit after 9 in the morning, whereas this time I got there around 11:30; pure idiocy on my part.

Here’s what I looked like in the car

Since election day ended 8 months ago, and I was drastically upset by the major outcome (most of the people I voted for won, but not the major one; sigh…), I’m not going to dig into it right now… and worked to ignore that it actually happened until 3 1/2 more years comes and goes; sometimes, that’s the best one can do.

The thing about elections is that at least a couple of people has a goal, decides to run, gives a lot of speeches and hopes they’ll be elected by their peers. That’s a simple explanation of it, but it’s never easy unless the person runs unopposed… even then, they usually find out just how many people would rather not vote for them or anyone else at all; ouch! lol

Aiming for goals takes planning; trying to reach those goals takes courage. Courage is one of those things where you can try keeping them to yourself, or you need to bring others into the process in some way in order to get there. For instance, you might need a financial counselor to help you put away enough money for a rainy day (look that up if it’s a new phrase for you lol), or enough so that when you officially retire, you start off with a nice nest egg that allows you time to figure out what to do next (that’s my current goal; I’m feeling old…).

Going for comfort isn’t really a goal; it’s an exception. I’ve always wanted to reach for comfort, but it doesn’t push one forward, and it might not be sustainable. I had a period of my life where I made a lot of money; if I had it now, I’d know what to have done with it to live comfortably for the rest of my life since I’m older and know more about how to handle money than I used to. At the time though, I had no idea of what to do with the money, that I needed to pay more in taxes than what one of those tax programs you buy in a store told me I owed, and that I should have incorporated my business three years earlier than I did; oh well…

I’ve also come to realize that it’s not just about setting goals; well, normal ones anyway. You have to work towards those goals, and you have to have focus and break out of the mental fog but even that might not be enough. What we need to do is reach beyond those goals, while trying to be bigger and better than the goal you want.

Why? Let me use myself as an example.

About a decade ago, I wrote an article where I listed my goal to double my income in the next year. I’d had a very good 18 months, going back and forth to Memphis, Tennessee, so in theory that sounded pretty good. A few years earlier, after I’d made a ton of money that the IRS slammed me because, as I mentioned already, they wanted a heck of a lot more; pro tip, it’s better going to an accountant rather than doing your taxes yourself.

Anyway, I’d had another great 2 years of income; it was out of this world! I bought myself a new car (I had to, as my car’s engine blew up on the Tappen Zee Bridge while driving on my way home) and my wife a car, and didn’t think about it much; I was living large, and “knew” I was going to keep getting gigs like the one that ended 5 months later.

Life doesn’t always work like that unfortunately. First, you still have to pay bills. Second, I had a lot of debt that I’d accrued before my consulting business started taking off, and I had to address that. Third, we had some things that had to be done for the house, the types of things I never knew happened since I wasn’t used to living in an actual house).

The thing is, though I still worked on some projects here and there, I didn’t land anything close to what I’d been earning after the tax hit. It helped here and there, but I was struggling and feeling pretty much defeated. My ex did what she could, and luckily we got by. Luckily, even when things weren’t going well, we still had the courage to set goals to break out of our problems long term.

Stephen Train via Compfight

I tell anyone who asks that my ultimate goal is to have $10 million in the bank by the time I hit 65; that didn’t happen either, but these days I’m still generating a bit of income from a part time job, collecting Social Security, and have a few things coming my way here and there, which has allowed me to pay for things that needed repairing or replacing and eating when I’m in the mood. Anyway, a big part of me says that $100 million’s not going to happen (maybe if I hit the lottery, but I haven’t played in 5 of 6 months), but that’s not the point of a big, audacious hairy goal. The big point is to have a BAHG, and then work towards reaching it.

If I don’t reach it and don’t achieve anything close to my goal, will I think I’m a loser? Y’all heard of Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup books fame? He tells a story of wanting to make $100,000 off the sale of his first book in one year while he was only making $20,000 a year at his job. Because of a set of circumstances that helped bring publicity to his book, it made $92,000. He was far from sad; he was elated because he’d gone way beyond his first goal, which was to make back publishing costs, and eventually the success of the first book led to other successes which made him a very rich man.

So, dream big. But it takes more than just dreaming big. It takes more than setting goals. You already know what it takes because it’s in the title…

It takes courage. Once again, I’m going to explain what I mean by using myself; stay tuned.

I worked independently for 18 years, until I had to start taking care of my mother. I had some amazing adventures, and I worked some very interesting gigs.

What I hadn’t done is land many of these gigs on my own. I could say that I set them up via networking, hooking up with people who had a lead on a project I could work. and that would be true. But I hadn’t gotten many gigs on my own.

What that means is that someone else also got paid for work I did, though a bit less. I knew that sometimes the person who actually contracted the work got 50% on top of what I was getting. Sometimes it was less but so what? If I’d landed those contracts on my own I’d have gotten it all, and I’d have deserved it; I did the actual work after all.

Tom Simpson via Compfight

But it takes courage to get out there, go through the metaphorical slamming doors in faces (which in actuality is leaving messages no one’s ever going to return or being rebuffed by an office staff person whose been told to turn everyone away). I’ve had courage here and there but never enough; that’s disconcerting.

If you look at the stories of all the millionaires and billionaires out there, the one thing you always come back to is how courageous they had to be. For entertainers it takes courage to audition, and courage to be told you’re not “this or that” and be ready to try again.

When you hear stories like how each of the stars of the Harry Potter movies were one of thousands of kids who showed up and knew that all those other kids had to have the courage to try again if they wanted to be in the business, you start to realize that it takes more than competency, more than talent; it takes courage to try, and then courageousness to get off the floor and try again.

I’ll admit I’ve never been good at rejection. Of the 4 of the women in my life that I dated, which includes the one I married, asked me out first. Regarding my business, I had days when I’d do maybe a couple of hours of marketing, then left it alone for weeks at a time. I was the plant seeds and wait to see what happens” guy; that’s not courage, that’s nature.

I don’t do any of that these days. True, I had to recover mentally when my mother passed away. I had a come to grips with a divorce that I never saw coming. I created a health care finance training site after talking to some people on LinkedIn who said they’d like to see something like that to help them learn more about what they do, only to not follow through on the free tests I set up for some of them so I could see what improvements I should make; talk about depressing!

What did I do? First, I dealt with months of depression. Then, realizing that the money I had wasn’t going to help me survive for the rest of my life, I started searching for positions in my field of expertise; some days I didn’t come across anything in my field, whereas other days I’d apply for as many as 7 jobs. I applied for just over 300 jobs that I knew I was qualified for; turns out that they knew I was not only older, but I had qualifications that, I hate to think is true but I know it was, was way higher than anything the people who saw my resume ever did in their careers.

I didn’t quit; I persevered, but it wasn’t easy. I was also lucky; I kept running into people I knew that I hadn’t seen in years, talked to them about some of my issues, and they offered knowledge on things that I could persevere and see if anything good would come out of it. And pretty quickly, it worked in more ways than I couldn’t have ever imagined on my own, except for the one thing I’ve talked about in this article; courage! Baby steps, then young kid steps, then adult steps, and possibly reaching out to people you know to see what they might be able to tell you that will help push you forward.

These days, I don’t put this stuff out there to boost myself up. I put it out here because I’m not alone; well, not in this context. I’m working, resting, still setting goals to reach, looking for some happiness in my life and talking to people I’ve known for years a bit more than I did for many years. I know some of you, along with others, are thinking about what dreams and goals you might have, depending on your present situation, but are hesitant to take the next step. These days, I’m more of an “encourager” than someone looking for encouragement; that’s wild!

Tony Fischer via Compfight

How many of you are looking at what you’re doing now, wishing you had the courage to try? Let’s be courageous in our efforts and try to get to what we want out of life, where we want to be. At my current age, sometimes I think it’s stupid to try… then I end up doing it anyway. I’m in year 18 of this blog, 20 years of one of my other blogs (ouch!). I don’t write as much as I used to write, but at least I’m still moving forward. That’s what I’m wishing for all of us.

What are you waiting for? Let’s “get ‘er done”! 😀
 

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