Hard Truths You Should Know Before Becoming Successful: A Seven Part Series - Part 3

If you have been following my feed these past weeks, I have been on a quest to share a multi-part series, based on an article I love from Benjamin Hardy, Bestselling author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. This is my third week sharing content on the topic, and I urge you to have a read through. If you missed the others here is Part 1 & and Part 2.

Part 3 looks at five new hard truths about the journey to success:

1. You Earn As Much Money As You Want To

Most people “say” they want to be successful. But if they really wanted to, they’d be successful.

I used to tell people, “I wish I played the piano.” Then someone said, “No you don’t. If you did, you’d make the time to practice.” I’ve since stopped saying that because he was right.

Life is a matter of priority and decision. And when it comes to money — in a free-market economy — you can make as much money as you choose. The question is, how much money do you really want to make?

Instead of vegging on social media day-after-day, year-after-year, you could spend an hour or two each day building something of value — like yourself.

In the book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill invites readers to write down on a piece of paper the amount of money they want to make and to put a timeline on it. This single act will challenge you to think and act in new ways to create the future of your wanting.

For example, despite growing up so poor that for a time his family lived in their Volkswagen van on a relative’s lawn, Jim Carrey believed in his future. Every night in the late 1980’s, Carrey would drive atop a large hill that looked down over Los Angeles and visualize directors valuing his work. At the time, he was a broke and struggling young comic.

One night in 1990, while looking down on Los Angeles and dreaming of his future, Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million and put in the notation line “for acting services rendered.” He dated the check for Thanksgiving 1995 and stuck it in his wallet. He gave himself five years. And just before Thanksgiving of 1995, he got paid $10 million for Dumb and Dumber.

2. Your Vision Of Who You Want To Be Is Your Greatest Asset

“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” — Oprah Winfrey

No matter where you are right now, you can have any future you want. But one thing is for certain, what you plant you must harvest. So, please plant with intention. Mental creation always precedes physical creation. The blueprint you design in your head becomes the life you build.

Don’t let society tell you how your house should look. You are an artist and creator. Your life can be exactly how you want it, whether or not it’s considered a “mansion” by others. Home is where your heart is.

3. Who You Are Determines What You Can Have

There’s a parable of a wealthy parent who hesitated to give their unwise child an inheritance, knowing it would undoubtedly be squandered. The parent said to the child:

“All that I have I desire to give you — not only my wealth, but also my position and standing among men. That which I have I can easily give you, but that which I amyou must obtain for yourself. You will qualify for your inheritance by learning what I have learned and by living as I have lived. I will give you the laws and principles by which I have acquired my wisdom and stature. Follow my example, mastering as I have mastered, and you will become as I am, and all that I have will be yours.”

Going through the motions is not enough. There isn’t a check-list of things you must do to be successful. You have to fundamentally change who you are to live at a higher level. You must go from doing to being — so that what you do is a reflection of who you are, and who you’re becoming. Once you’ve experienced this change, success will be natural.

“After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.” — Jim Rohn

4. Earning Money Is Moral

“For better or worse, humans are holistic. Even the human body does best when its spiritual and physical sides are synchronized… People’s bodies perform best when their brains are on board with the program… Helping your mind to believe what you do is good, noble, and worthwhile in itself helps to fuel your energies and propel your efforts.” — Rabbi Daniel Lapin

I know so many people who genuinely believe making money is immoral, and that people with money are evil. They believe those who seek profits force those weaker than them to buy their products.

Money is not evil, but neutral. It is a symbol of perceived value.

If I’m selling a pair of shoes for $20 and someone decides to buy them, they perceive the shoes to be worth more than the $20, or they wouldn’t buy them.I’m not forcing them to buy my shoes. It’s their choice. Thus, value exchange is win-win and based purely on perception. Value is subjective! If you offered that same person $20 for the shoes they just bought, they probably wouldn’t sell them. They see them as worth more than $20. But what if you offered $30? They still might not sell them.

There is no “correct” price for goods and services. The correct price is the perceived worth from the customer. If the price is too high, the customer won’t exchange their money for it.

We are extremely lucky to live in a society with a system of money. It allows us to borrow, lend, and leverage. Our ability to scale our work would be enormously limited in a bartering and trading system.

Earning money is a completely moral pursuit when it is done with honesty and integrity. In fact, if you don’t feel moral about the work you’re doing, you should probably change your job.

When you believe in the value you provide so much that you are doing people a disservice by not offering them your services, you’re on track to creating colossal value. Our work should be a reflection of us. It’s always their choice whether they perceive the value in what we’re offering or not.

And last for this week, a very important point to consider as your attention gets pulled in multiple directions each day:

5. Almost Everything In Life Is A Distraction

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” — Greg McKeown

Almost everything is a distraction from what really matters. You really can’t put a price-tag on certain things. They are beyond a particular value to you. You’d give up everything, even your life, for those things.

Your relationships and personal values don’t have a price-tag. And you should never exchange something priceless for a price.

Keeping things in proper perspective allows you to remove everything non-essential from your life. It allows you to live simply and laser-focused, and to avoid dead-end roads leading nowhere.

My fourth article is planned for next week, so have a look out for it. I love hearing from all of you in my comments section, so please continue with your thoughts. Otherwise, send me a note at skrawitz@savills.ca. Enjoy your week, and all the best.

-Regards,

Stan Krawitz