Note: Some of you will immediately point out that the title of this article is the title of Grant Cardone's recent book. I highly suggest you read the book as I will be covering some of its major points as well as adding some of my own.
Society treats obsession as an illness. In school you may have learned that synonyms of obsession are stalking or addiction. Obsession is just frowned down upon. Society values balance in one's lifestyle instead of complete dedication in reaching a goal. Balance in your lifestyle is fine if you just want to be average. If you want to be average, just click out of this article right now, there is nothing here for you.
So you decided to stay? You've made the first step in becoming successful: identifying that you want to be more than average. You've set a goal, congratulations! You may have heard a lot about goals recently. Public education in the United States is pushing goal-setting a part of the curriculum. However, they are putting limits on the goals you should set. You may have heard "Don't set your goals to high or you will never reach them."
Think about it. Which is worse: feeling unsatisfied because you reached a goal that was too easy or feeling unsatisfied because you didn't reach a goal that was too difficult. Let me give you another scenario: Would you rather set a goal to make $10,000 this month and achieve it, or set a goal to make $100,000 this month but fall short by only making $80,000?
The problem here is that by limiting your goal, you are also limiting the amount of effort you will put in. You may be familiar with Grant Cardone's 10X rule, if not, I've listed its two parts basic parts below.
- Set your goals 10x higher than you think you are capable of.
- Realize that whatever your goal is, it will take 10x the amount of work you thought it would originally take.
If you are imaginative, dreaming big shouldn't be a problem. It is the 2nd part and following through that are the hardest. If you want to be successful, you need to be putting in 10x the work everyone else is. I hate to break it to you, but there are no participation awards in the real world. If you want to obtain success, you are going to have to be obsessed, it is not a choice.
The fact of the matter is that the easiest person to lie to is yourself. How often do you tell yourself "I've earned this break" or "I'm going to do it later when I'm more motivated" or even "It's impossible." You need to recognize when you are tricking yourself or you will certainly fall back to the slump of being average.
You need to be obsessed with whatever it is that will let you reach your goals. Don't ask yourself what others are doing well, ask yourself what others aren't doing so you can dominate it. Say you own a grocery store and your competitor doesn't sell candy. Don't try to sell their best selling items so you can compete with them, instead emphasize the candy you sell so customers come to you instead. Don't beat competitors by competing with their products, compete with them by doing what they don't do. This may seem like it only applies to business, but it can apply to any aspect of life your goal is centered around.
Don't waste time, it is of the essence. Now my definition of waste may confuse you, so let me give you two scenarios to clarify.
- Spending lots of human resources on a new social media platform that ultimately turns out to never gain a large user base
- Spending lots of human resources calculating the profitability of using a new social media platform while your competitors are already gathering a large fan base on that platform.
By conventional definitions, both may be wastes. But by conventional definitions, your goal should be realistic and easily attainable. In my opinion, option 1 is a success and option 2 is a failure. This is because in option 1, you are putting yourself out there and working hard. If you were to repeat the strategy of option 1 and option 2 several times, option 1 would ultimately be more successful when they get a platform that gains traction. While I'm not saying that you should do things without thinking through the outcomes, you certainly shouldn't spend all your time calculating the possibilities while the rest of the world moves forward.
Make your goals hard, but work even harder. Don't think that an accomplishment is an opportunity to kick back and relax, it is an incentive to work even harder. Follow these step and you can reach your dreams, whatever they may be. #grantcardone