The Power of Purpose in Reaching Audacious Goals

People who have reached the highest levels of success and built truly significant wealth tend to share a number of key traits that are responsible for their amazing results.

There is typically a clear connection between having a strong sense of purpose and achieving excellence.

With that in mind, take a minute to ask:

What makes you excited about getting up in the morning?
What do you want to do every day you possibly can?
If you want to become wealthy, are you concentrating on things that create wealth?

Your long-term goals

Long-term goals must be ambitious. We find that the Super Rich’s long-term goals are not easily attainable even with a significant amount of effort.

A strong sense of purpose must be accompanied by specific long-term goals that you are profoundly committed to achieving.

Your long-term goals should provide you with clarity and resolve. Together, they make up the lens that will filter and direct all your relevant decisions and activities. In deciding on competing courses of action consider how each choice gets you closer to your long-term goals.

Warning: Simply having long-term goals is not enough to actually reach them. You must move forward to achieve them. You need to have intermediate steps along the way. Think of those intermediate goals as rungs on a ladder. As you reach each intermediate goal, you will experience satisfaction and be further energized, making it easier to keep moving higher.

PERSEVERANCE AND FOCUS

A strong sense of purpose is instrumental in helping you persevere and focus.

Let’s face it: You will stumble and fall somewhere along your route toward your goals. No matter how talented you are or how much energy you put into something, the odds of everything working in your favor all the time are near zero. Knowing and being strong in your sense of purpose, allows you to move forward when confronted with inevitable obstacles and failures.

Your purpose will keep you focused on what is important. Too often, “shiny objects”—such as unrelated business ventures or interesting ideas that are not connected to goals—distract us. With understanding and fortitude for your purpose, you concentrate your time, efforts and resources on reaching your intermediate goals that lay the path to your long-term goals.

Important: While focus and perseverance of purpose are crucial, don’t overlook the need for flexibility along the way. As circumstances change, your intermediate-term goals will need to be refined.

The dark side

Be aware that a strong sense of purpose can have a dark, disturbing side. When it becomes an obsession, the results can be bad—even destructive. This happens if you become fixated on your purpose to the exclusion of everything else. In such instances, otherwise decent people do whatever it takes—no matter how dishonest or even horrendous—to achieve their long-term goals, and then justify their actions.

Excelling at the highest levels requires making sacrifices. Most of us make compromises between wants and self-set obligations all the time. How much are you willing to give up and how much are you willing to push to achieve your goals?

Nothing “just happens.” You make choices. The good news is that morally questionable and/or illegal actions are not required to successfully pursue your purpose.

Conclusion

Can you achieve great success in life without a strong sense of purpose? Yes—it’s possible. But, we find that success usually occurs with purpose, clarity and devotion. So get crystal clear on what you really want, build out the goals to support that vision and take informed, deliberate actions at each and every step.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This article was published by the VFO Inner Circle, a global financial concierge group working with affluent individuals and families and is distributed with its permission. Copyright 2020 by AES Nation, LLC.

This report is intended to be used for educational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation to purchase any security or advisory services. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. An investment in any security involves significant risks and any investment may lose value. Refer to all risk disclosures related to each security product carefully before investing. Securities and advisory services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network®, Member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Adviser. Fixed insurance products and services offered through CES Insurance Agency. Kevin Best and Best Times Financial Planning are not affiliated with AES Nation, LLC.

Kevin Best CFP®, MS, AEP®

Personal CFO

Best Times Financial Planning

345 Woodcliff Drive, Suite 2A, Fairport, NY 14450

Office: (585) 504-3600