17 October 2007 1207 views 4 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

Many of us, including myself, read personal finance articles and learn about investing, building businesses and other means of attaining financial freedom. I am estimating that less than half of the readers actually apply the concepts and principles that are learned due to one thing or another. Many of us are too focused on the past or the future and what ends up happening is that nothing gets done today. Focusing on the past is a time and energy drain since we can buy phones that connect to the internet but we can’t find a TV that can turn back time. Focusing too much on the future can leave you living in a fantasy world where you think everything is OK when its clearly not. The primary focus needs to be on today. Knowledge or skill means nothing if you can’t apply it. If you put a group of talented basketball players on one team, there is no guarantee they will win games. But if they practice together and focus on certain areas every day, chances are they will show signs of improvement as a unit and eventually win games. So stop worrying about past losses or daydream about winning the championship, its time to focus on improving your life today.

Stop worrying about the past 
The past is a dangerous thing. The past has the ability to haunt you for the rest of your life and prevent you from reaching your goals. You heard of people being tramatized by certain events. Some people grow up to become very shy because sometime in the past, their ideas were shot down or ignored by an adult. Some people lost money after the dot com bubble burst and it scared them half to death and now they won’t even invest in index funds. The only way to turn a past failure into a future success is to learn from those mistakes. Failures are a blessing in disguise. If you didn’t fail, you wouldn’t have learned that valuable lesson. I’ve had numerous business failures that didn’t work out for one reason or another. It’s discouraging when your loved ones lose faith in your ability, but thats what being an entrepreneur is all about. I’ve lost money with investments before but thats the name of the game. If everyone wins every time, then it wouldn’t be investing. I’ve had failed relationships, poor purchase decisions, bad eating habits and likely thousands more so-called failures. But I learned from each of those failures, and I’ve moved on. Let go of yesterday, you’ll never see it again. Don’t let the past hold you back from what you know you are capable of.

Stop dreaming about the future
We all know that the past can haunt you, but its not well known that thinking about your future too much can do some harm as well. Of course, you have to look towards the future and make plans. Thinking of the long term is usually a good thing, but don’t focus so much that you’re forgetting about today. I have some trouble with this, so I’ll explain what I mean. Sometimes I get caught up in the big picture of things that I leave out the details. I know that I need to invest and save money. If I let compounding interest do it’s job and I’ll have millions in the bank 30 years from now.  What I sometimes forget to do is to focus on today and stop eating out as much and kill that desire for an Xbox 360. I also know that when I move from San Francisco to Houston TX, I will be able to save tons of money and ultimately that savings will equal millions over the course of my life. However, I forget that before I can do that, I need to close the chapter on many things in my San Francisco book. For one, I need to sell my condo. It took me longer than it should to get it ready and put it on the market. Now I have to promote it and get it sold. I also know that I want to grow my businesses and make a hefty income purely online. I have the skill and I have the motivation, but I must not focus on the end result so much that I forget to put in the time and effort to build my businesses. These are some examples of what I mean. Don’t live in a fairy tale land where you think everything will just fall into place, you need to align those pieces of the puzzle so that they fall into place in the future.

Focus on today! 
When you wake up tomorrow, ask yourself what can you do to advance your progress towards your goals. If you want to lose weight you better plan to eat healthy and try to squeeze in some exercise.  If you want to invest more money this month then tomorrow you better get rid of that desire to eat out and don’t even look towards that Starbucks. “Today” is a rare thing. It doesn’t last long, its a few hours long after you subtract sleep, eating, and other requirements. Make good use of today, everyday. Make sure that you are doing something each and every day that is helping you move towards your goals. No one is going to do it for you. Stop letting the past stop you from doing what you have to do and stop dreaming about the destination and take those daily steps to reach it.