Achieving Your Goals And Beyond
Once they’ve reached their goals or a certain level of financial independence, most people will always ask, “What’s next?” And reaching that sense of achievement, the bar essentially gets raised as they realize that the horizon extends beyond where they thought it would be. On today’s podcast, Patrick Donohoe takes a look at one of the fundamental variables that he believes is necessary to not only achieving what you are after, but for what’s after that and then what’s after that.
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Achieving Your Goals And Beyond
Thank you for tuning in. I am grateful for this episode. There is, of course, a lot going on in the world now. The things that I believe are happening are for a reason like COVID. In some of the political situations that we’re in, there are reasons there. Disruption oftentimes helps us to understand ourselves, our lives, and what we want at a higher level better. I see so much of that. The reason why I’m starting off this way is because between the last episode and this one, I had the chance to review a lot of the responses that came in from my request for some of you to do a survey. In response, I would send a signed book out. I didn’t realize I’d have to be sending books outside of the United States, but there were several of you that filled out surveys that were in other parts of the world, Australia, New Zealand, Middle East, and the UK.
First off, I thank you for taking the time to fill out that survey, and your insight was invaluable. Additionally, because the sample size wasn’t as high as I would have liked, I wanted a couple of hundred in there, I sent another email and I had an overwhelming response, hundreds of responses come in regarding some of the information I wanted to know in order to take the right direction with a digital course that I was preparing. Your response and your candor was amazing. I couldn’t help but be drawn toward the responses, the obstacles that you’re facing in life, your dreams, and what you want out of your life. It’s inspiring to me. I wanted to start by saying thank you. Also, what I would say humbling in a sense for me is that I have already started to put the course together. I’ve recorded the first module. I did so with the intent of doing some iteration once I got your feedback.
As I read the feedback, as I looked at responses and I tried to put myself in your shoes and understand your world, it made me excited because the first module that I recorded for this digital course, I plan on releasing toward the end of 2020, the first part of 2021. It is right in line with what I believe is going to be hugely valuable to you. I’m going to give you some insight into this first module and make this a little bit shorter of an episode. In doing that, I would like to make some observations in regard to what I see as some universal challenges people are facing, which I believe there are some universal solutions to that. I’m going to first start off by saying, there was a couple of responses that came from a question about what type of content would you like inside of the course?
They said, “We don’t want any personal development or mindset information.” I chuckled because that’s exactly where I started. I realized what they were saying and why they were saying it. There’s a lot of heavy mindsets out there with a few practical applications to back that up, but believe me, there’s going to be a lot of that. I probably wouldn’t do the course if I couldn’t start with mindset first. That’s what I’m going to focus on the topic of the show. There’s something I believe, and I see it not just with my own experiences, but the experiences of thousands of clients I’ve gotten to do business and my firm’s been doing business with. I’ve also networked with a lot of successful people. In the end, there’s something interesting.
Number one, there’s some conflict as far as what we’re motivated by. That conflict is the fact that we want finality to what we’re working on, what we’re doing, and what we’re putting our attention to our resources behind. We want this finality or this certainty of the conclusion. The idea behind that is a degree of fulfillment, achievement to that feeling, and we believe that feeling, once it’s achieved, will last for the rest of our lives. That’s the conflict is that life is an infinite game. There are things that draw us into wanting to always be achieving more and going beyond what we’ve already accomplished. Most people don’t realize that until they’ve gained wealth, they’ve achieved their goals and they’re at that point and they realize, “What do I do now?” It’s unequivocal that happens. There’s no doubt in my mind that it does not happen. People reach that point and it’s, “What’s next?”
When a person gets that sense of achievement, the bar essentially gets raised. Click To TweetThat’s where I look at several of you who have responded having achieved a lot and in most circumstances would be considered wealthy and financially independent. At the same time when a person gets to those levels, that sense of achievement, the bar essentially gets raised, or the horizon extends beyond where they thought it would be. That’s what I’m going to speak to you. As I look at one of the fundamental variables that I believe is necessary to not only achieving what you are after whatever that goal is, it’s essential for achieving what’s after that and then what’s after that. I’m going to start with an example. One is Elon Musk. The other is Jon Huntsman, who I’ve talked about before. He’s a billionaire. He passed away, but his family is in Utah and I’m somewhat familiar with them. I’m going to start with Elon Musk.
For those of you who know Elon’s background and have read his biography and seen interviews with him here and there, realize that he has some pretty significant reasons for what he does. He has these dreams. He has this purpose behind what he’s doing that goes way beyond Elon. With the companies he owns, I’m going to speak specifically to SpaceX, it has this grandiose dream of what it wants to accomplish. The reason behind Elon’s drive is to essentially extend our experience of life out into space in the solar system. There are also many resources associated with what would be valuable on earth, but wouldn’t have to pollute, wouldn’t have to take our natural resources here. I’m not going to get into the complexities of the details of that, but he has these huge grandiose dreams and reasons to benefit humanity.
The interview that I saw alluded to the fact that Elon’s heroes that drove him to want to pursue commercial and private space exploration or travel demonized him. They scrutinize and ridicule him for what he was doing. In one of the interviews, I saw Elon was emotional. His heroes that he looked up to his entire life even up to that point were the ones ridiculing him. How many of us whose heroes would crush our dreams would give up at that moment? Because Elon Musk’s reasons were significant and far beyond appeasing heroes, mentors, people he looked up to, it’s what pushed him through the ridicule, the feedback, and the achievements that SpaceX has made despite numerous failures is significant. Now I’m going to go to Jon Huntsman.
Jon Huntsman, a billionaire. He’s created multiple companies. I’m not going to get into the details of that either. In one of his books, I remember distinctly that the drive that helped him pursue the various ventures and opportunities that he had was his drive to cure cancer because his mother had cancer, died of cancer, and he was driven to cure it and found that through business. It was why he pursued certain business ventures and so forth, because of those grandiose reasons for achieving something that was beyond him, his lifestyle, and his purpose. That’s what I’m going to keep talking about. I look at the levels that we’re at in our life and I believe what got us here are the results of certain reasons. What’s going to get us beyond where we’re at now are going to be different reasons.
As I got into the formation of this digital course that I’ve been working on, that’s what I concluded is getting yourself in the right mindset, having the wealth perspective or mindset as you approach life, business, profession, job and relationships. As you approach it that way, number one, it’s understanding the reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing. The second is to be crystal clear about the results that you want. I believe reasons continue to evolve over the course of time but as you find yourself with obstacles, which the majority of you have, many of you don’t have obstacles. It sounds like life is going amazing, but there was one comment in the feedback that said, “Everything’s going pretty good right now. I’m waiting for that curveball or that black swan of that event that’s going to knock me off-kilter.” That person understands how the cycle of life works.
Achieving Your Goals: What got us here are the results of certain reasons. What’s going to get us beyond where we’re at now are going to be different reasons.
The idea is that I don’t think we have to react and wait for those events to happen, which throws us off-kilter and forces us to change, innovate, and grow. I believe we can do it strategically. That’s where understanding what motivates you and understanding and getting clarity, gaining clarity in yourself, crystal clarity about your reasons for what you’re doing must exist first. Those reasons have to be way beyond what you achieve. That’s where there are these corresponding reasons to achievement ratio that I’ve seen in my own life and in thousands of other people as well. I’m not saying that those that achieve wealth, prestige, and accomplish their goals didn’t start with reasons strategically. However, those reasons exist if you dig into what compelled them to do what they did.
The second is clarity of results and outcomes, what it is you want in the end. What is the definition of your ideal life? What is financial freedom? What does life look like and being crystal clear about that? There are a fear and reluctance people have in defining that from my experience, which is they don’t want to fail. They don’t want to state something and then ultimately not live to those expectations. I get that. That’s a natural fear that we have. That’s why it’s important to number one, understand reasons, have clearly defined outcomes and results. What happens next is a quote that I’ve gleaned and am inspired by, which is by Tony Robbins, “It’s when your shoulds become musts, then your entire life changes.” We know what we should do. We know who we should talk to. We know what we should change in our business or change in our job. At the same time, they’re not musts because our reasons are not strong enough.
I’ll end with this. I’ll claim that I made getting into this wealth mindset aspect of this digital course that I’m working on was that, over the last several years, I claim that you and me have been presented with all of the opportunities to make $1 billion. Whether it’s relationships, information, books, people that cross your path that you may or may not form a relationship with, all of that existed, yet we didn’t have the $1 billion reasons or even the $1 million reasons for some of you. That’s where we start in the course. It’s not the end of the course. It is simply the beginning. What happens as you start to define your reasons and get clarity beyond what you have now, as well as start to define the actual results you want from your efforts, tactics, and strategies? That’s when your shoulds become musts and it opens up the space for some amazing things to happen.
I’m going to end with that. I first want to say thank you to those who took the time, candid, and clear. I hope the exercise helped you understand what you want and what’s holding you back. That’s a big step in being able to overcome a challenge, to get or achieve what you’re after. Hopefully, it benefited you. The course is going to be awesome. I’m excited to give you some additional updates on that, but I’ll conclude for now. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your support. It means the world to me. Go out and produce, go out and touch somebody’s life, and live an amazing life yourself. Take care.
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