Making Progress in Your Life: Seven Strategies to Move Forward

All right, welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. You know, I was doing some planning last night. It's probably the middle of the night, but I'm in LA, so I feel like I can stay up a little bit later. And I was thinking to myself as I was looking at my accountability and scorecard and progress that I was making that it would make for a good topic and it might be a good reminder for you to ask yourself, are you making the progress that you want to make? And how can you focus your time and get further ahead? So let's discuss how you can sort of identify if you're really making not just progress, but the right progress and you can adjust if you're not. I want to give you some suggestions, maybe some specific items that you can use to really analyze where you're at because accountability, scorekeeping, adjustments, and things are very, very important. So obviously, this conversation wouldn't be complete without starting with clarity of your vision, because this is the most important thing. You don't know if you're making progress unless you have a clear vision. And clarity, so your vision is important, but clarity is critical. You've got to find a way to really clarify what it is you're going after, because if you're just going throughout life and you don't have a clear goal or objective. And it's a fine line because you don't want to be focused too much on the goal. You've got to enjoy the process and fall in love with the process. But you've got to have a destination or else you could end up in a completely different spot than where you want to be. And once you have that clarity, I would advise you to set some reminders and some daily rituals. And like I said, put a screensaver on your phone, put up pictures of where your vision is, that allows you to keep your vision in front of you and not behind you. See, so many of us get caught up in looking at behind, right? That we're not looking forward. And another suggestion for creating clarity is write out your affirmations. One of the reasons I write out I'm so happy and grateful for this and this and this and this is because it reminds me of what my clear vision is and it reminds me to focus on what's most important. So once you have that clear vision, the next thing you need to do is you've got to focus on are you being productive or are you just being busy? And so I want to talk to you about priorities versus tasks because many of us are staying busy. Many of us are checking boxes on our list every day, especially as entrepreneurs, business owners, parents, whatever your role is. And staying busy is not the most important thing. Staying productive is important. And sometimes you've got to do those busy tasks, but you always have to knock the biggest task off your list, the big domino that's going to move you forward. And so priorities are the things that are going to move you forward. These are the things that are important to move the chains down the field, move the ball down the field, so to speak. Tasks are just those things that you got to accomplish because you have responsibilities And for many of us those tasks become things that we do to impress others because we need to you know do it for other people And so be aware and be conscious most importantly, of are you accomplishing priorities or just tasks? The next thing I want to talk to you about is scoreboard. Because so many of us, and I find this as a CEO mentor, I find this in so many organizations, so many of us don't even have a scoreboard. and you've got to remind yourself and remember that what you focus on growth so I want you to ask yourself this right now do you actually have KPIs do you have a key performance indicator that you measure your success with how are you measuring your progress how are you measuring where you're going it's important to have measurements so that you don't become distracted it's not just about you know we talk sometimes about not always focusing on the scoreboard but You have to have a scoreboard or else you're not tracking your progress in life, whether it be personal, financial, physical, mind, body, spirit, business, whatever it is, relationships, communication. You've got to have a scoreboard. So find time to put a scoreboard together. Put that on your daily tasks. Go through what it is that you can do to move those chains down the field. And then find times to evaluate your scoreboard. And I always do that on a weekly basis. you know I've got my KPIs daily but weekly I want to know whether I'm moving the chains down the field using a football reference and so once you have a scoreboard you know you can really track things what I would advise you next to do and the things that's worked for me is to have milestones we all perform better when there's an actual target that we're searching for right whether you're a runner and you've got an upcoming marathon or whether you're you know working out and you've got a goal or whether you're a business and you're trying to hit a sales goal, a profit goal, a revenue goal, or whether you have a target for your social media or for your personal goals, make sure that you have some milestones because milestones will give you something to focus on in front of you. It'll give you focus on something that'll help you to stretch. And that's another thing that I really want to recommend is don't set small goals. You've got to think big. You've got to think stretch goals. You've got to always set stretch goals because, you know, like so many people have heard before, it's much better to miss a stretch goal than to fall short of a small goal. Don't underestimate your ability. Don't underestimate your value, your potential. Many of us, like David Goggins would say, are operating at 40 percent. So don't set goals based on what you think you can do. Set a stretch goal and then make sure that those milestones and those things that you're shooting for are aligned with your vision. Don't set goals in areas that you want to impress other people if it's not aligned with your vision. Because remember, and the other thing sometimes I would recommend, and I've started to change a lot of what I'm doing, don't set monetary goals. Because remember, money is a result. Money is not the cause. You want to sometimes focus on the activity that going to get you there and set milestones there rather than just the destination because the activity is what going to get you to your destination and so remember money is a result it not a cause you got to focus your milestones on causes and then you hit the result so milestones can be very very important now there's a couple more things I really want to hit with you one is accountability I think most people will have the most difficult time in the world accomplishing their goals and getting where they want if they leave it up to themselves. Because by human nature, we don't push ourselves as much as we could or should. So accountability is necessary for all of us. I'm telling you, when I was running a $200 million a year seminar group, I still had a mentor. We were doing financial education all over the world. We were doing real estate, stock investing, asset protection, and I still had a mentor. A mentor or some kind of an accountability partner, even though I've worked out most of my life, I still have a trainer because it keeps you focused. And the best type of accountability is someone who can also give you feedback. And so accountability is key. And sometimes you can put those things in place with your own goal setting apps, or maybe it's a mentor, maybe it's a trainer, maybe it's just a friend, maybe it's somebody in a mastermind group that you're working with, but get some accountability. One of the big benefits of a mastermind is accountability. Let me know what you're working for. I'll hold you accountable. I got plenty of resources to give you some accountability. So find an accountability partner and structure the accountability in your life. Then the next thing, and this is a great, this is something that we all struggle with, and that's focus. If you want to make progress in your life, you have to focus. And I love the acronym for focus, which is follow one course until successful. Follow one course until successful. Most entrepreneurs, business individuals, even the average person has shiny object syndrome. Like they're always chasing the next great deal, the next big thing. Make a decision and a commitment to one thing you want to follow. And this doesn't mean you have to drop everything else. I used to think that I had to get rid of other opportunities. But what is important is to make sure that whatever you're working on aligns with your common goal. If yours is to do marketing or to drive your product or your brand or your community, there may be a lot of different things that'll get you there, but stay focused on the one thing until it gets you where you want to be. And, you know, do what you need to do to live. You know, sometimes some of us think, I want to build my business, so I'm going to focus on that. I'm going to quit my job or I'm going to not do the things I need to do. Look, we have responsibilities and you have the potential to be able to do both. You know, winners think win-win. If you have to work your job, work it hard. Do it, you know, because the other thing you got to keep in mind is how you do anything is how you do everything. If you're working subpar in your job and you think you're going to be successful in your business, you're wrong. You've got to be able to be effective in everything that you're doing. And so fulfill your obligations in every area that you have. But like I said stay focused on what your goal your vision and what it is you trying to accomplish in your life because I think that going to be a key thing for all of us Now I have one recommendation that my mentor gave me a long time ago my mentor being Robert Stubberg who my partner now in the personal development company He said, we tend to, and I know all of us do this, we all tend to overcomplicate our lives. We overcomplicate our lives with all the things to do, and it's one of the things that makes us good at what we are doing and what we are in life is that we can multitask and do all kinds of things. But one of the simplest, easiest strategies that you can implement to help you make more progress in your life is to create a top three list every day, a top three things. You're going to have a lot of stuff on your list. You're going to have a lot of priorities, a lot of goals, a lot of things that you've got to accomplish. But what are the top three things? Now, this is the number one, number two and number three thing you can do to move you forward in all of the areas of your life and I'm not talking about a top three in your personal and top three in your business a top three in your family I'm talking about a top three these are the three things that you're going to absolutely do the next day and I always do this the evening before because then my my mind and my subconscious mind can be kind of working for ways and the other the other reason I do that the night before is that it allows you to be immediately focused on what you need to do the next day so So many of us get up each day and we think, all right, what am I going to accomplish today? What am I going to do? And that's the worst recipe for success. Successful people know what their plan is. They don't create their plan along the way. You know, things will happen and things will come up. But know what the top three things are that you can do the next day to take you closer to your goal. The most important thing you can do is keep a calendar. Follow some of these things that I've given you. Just a lot of different ideas. Don't get overwhelmed. If you were to just pick your top three, that will make huge progress for you. But really get good at scheduling and keeping track of what you're doing in your calendar because I think you're going to find that if you evaluate where you're spending your time, you're going to find plenty of things to be able to eliminate and focus a little bit more on other things. So that's my suggestion for you today. I really think that you can always make more progress. And so the things that we've talked about, like clarifying your vision, priorities versus tasks, having a scoreboard, creating milestones, accountability partners, focus, and the top three. Those are all things that I think will help you. So I think that that is the most important thing I wanted to kind of convey in the podcast today. I hope that's brought you some value. I know we're a little bit over what we normally do on time, but I felt really compelled to give you that. And if you found some value, please refer the podcast. Send it to at least one friend. Get get the message out. Help me to share some of these ideas and things that will help people to make a better life and create the life that they were really meant to live. Look forward to talking with you a little bit more tomorrow. This has been the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III. Have an amazing day.