Be Honest With Yourself: What Do You Really Want Out Of Life?

So many people these days want to better themselves and dream of a bright future. Sadly, for most of them it stays that way - just dreams. So what is the trigger that can fire your ambition from dream to reality? This article takes a look at one aspect of this problem.

I remember years ago going to a sales seminar where, instead of the (in those days) usual boring 'we've got a new product for you to sell' kind of format, there was this young guy who was just on fire!

He stood at the front and looked at us all then asked a question. 'What do you really want out of life?' Now, nobody at the seminar had ever been asked this before in this way and we were all a bit confused. 'Tell you what,' he said, 'write it down and in two minutes we'll discuss the things you wrote.'

Two minutes silence ensued as pens scribbled on paper and heads were scratched. What was he talking about? We all handed our replies in and he read through some, out loud. They went more or less like this:

'I want a big house/nice car/pool/yacht/motor boat/loads of money' - and so on. He turned to all of us. 'Okay,' he said. 'Then what?' Nobody had a clue what he meant. What more could you want than what we had already put down? 'Come on' he said 'what do you want when you've got all this? Nothing else?'

No-one replied. He shook his head, lifting his arm to wave the slips of paper with our answers. 'All this,' he said, 'is useless without one other thing. Know what that is?' The room stayed silent. 'I'll tell you then. TIME.'

Slowly it began to dawn. What he was driving at is that all those material possessions were in many ways useless unless you had time to enjoy them. It made us all think, myself included. I realised that I was slogging away at my job with no real end in sight - unless you counted official retirement - and, worse still, with no plan for my life.

That, I worked out later, was the really important thing. I chatted to the presenter after the seminar and he said a few things that made a whole lot of sense. Maybe they do for you too. I won't name him - but I know for a certain fact that he reached his life goal just ten years later and has had a lovely villa in Spain for the past twenty years where he's retired to - and he's only about 55 years old now!

He said - amongst other things - 'One reason people don't succeed in what they want to do is simply that - they don't know what they want to do.' That idea struck me as strange and I said so. 'Honestly,' he replied, 'if you don't set a goal, how can you succeed? When I asked you about goals tonight, not one person really had one - only the vaguest idea of what they thought success meant.'

So, I asked - could you have a goal and get rich more quickly than any other way? His answer really surprised me. 'Success is not just about money - it's about the freedom and time that money buys. I'm convinced that there is no way to riches except through planning, application and hard work.'

I can't argue with him on that one, that's for sure! So - what's the real point of this article? Simply put - set a goal for life and you MAY attain it. Fail to set a goal and you have absolutely NO chance of attaining it - it just isn't there! Someone once said 'Fail to plan, plan to fail'. To this could be added 'Set no goal, expect no score.' So dream your dream by all means - but you must know what you want before you can turn it into reality!