Part of one of the exercises I do during my annual ‘Power Week’ is to look at all of the goals that I have. I tend to break this down into three main pieces, all of which follow my three main passions. These are:
Music - really focuses on the creative processes
Markets – financial markets and all of the ways I am trying to help investors
Mindfulness – how I try and look at the world and everything around me more mindfully, and help others do so as well
One of the most important parts of my year-end process is to look at the goal I had for the last year and have a good honest review of how I did.
This year, as I looked at my new goals and begin to prioritize how I am going to accomplish them, two quotes came to mind:
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” - George Elliot
“Wise people learn when they can, fools learn when they must.” - Duke of Wellington
The common theme between these is that you have the opportunity to do whatever you want to do.
Some people get a mental block from trying to do something new and creative. For example, they want to paint but think to themselves that they are not really a painter.
The truth is, if you want to be a painter, just start painting and you’ll become a painter. If you want to be a musician, just start playing and making music, and you’ll become a musician. You don’t have to reach a certain level of proficiency to enjoy it. Simply let it be something meaningful to you.
Often, I’ve found that we tend to make time and prioritize the things that are really important to you. Most of us have jobs, kids, spouses, families, and other responsibilities we carry out on a regular basis. While those are legitimate priorities, it really is more a question of prioritizing things differently.
For me, I was really happy when I looked at my market goals. 2019 was a pretty good year and I feel like I accomplished a lot of what I set out to do, and I have a lot of exciting things happening in 2020 that I am pumped about as well.
With music I was a lot less happy with myself. I discovered that I was just copying over a lot of my goals from last year into this year because I just didn’t get to them. What I realized is that a lot of the goals I had in the areas of music were related to education. I wanted to take a class on the new music software that I wasn’t as familiar with or experimenting with a new musical style. All of these things were intensive areas of self-improvement and learning and it became so easy to just push those things off and just not prioritize them.
So how am I going to make time for them in the next year? Do you ever find yourself stuck in a YouTube binge session, sucked into social media, or hopping down the rabbit-hole of organizing your emails? Guilty. All of these things deter you from working on your priorities, which in the long run keep you from achieving your goals.
It's not to say that I won’t have Saturday evenings when I find myself watching countless episodes of old Saturday Night Live skits (totally allowed on occasion), I just need to do a better job of being aware of the frequency in which those evenings occur. This means on those evenings I instead spend time educating myself on some of the ways that I could be improving myself and reaching those goals.
My challenge for you is to look at your calendar over the next 7 days and schedule a time that you can dedicate yourself to learning something new. Find one thing that you have been waiting to do and putting off and actually put it on your calendar and prioritize it.
RR#6,
Dave
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. Please see the Disclaimer page for full details.
