In this article, you will find three exercises and various tips to define your financial goals more clearly. They should be relevant, specific, distributed by deadlines. It is also important that you attend to your emotional resistance to the subject, and that you promote more your entrepreneurial mentality and less the consumerist mentality.
Define your financial goals
Exercise 1: List of Goals
Write your personal and professional or business financial goals in two separate columns. Define each one with a deadline, approximate quantity, and description. Example: For October 2021, $ 246 in file update expenses.
Some personal goals may be: Education, health, travel, retirement, property, investments.
In professional or business terms, some goals are related to human, material, financial resources for your company: Salaries, financial incentives for employees or collaborators. Product investment. Investment in machinery, computer equipment. File expenses, intellectual property. Fixed-term investments. Company registration, brand, organization. Diffusion, promotion, advertising costs.
Remember something basic: The difference between income and profit. Many times, even if your income per sale is 10,000, your profit and therefore the liquidity margin that will allow you to invest in your goals, is from 1 to 30%. Subtract estimated expenses from your income and keep the profit margin in mind when planning your goals.
Exercise 2: SMART and Time Goals
I. YOUR GOALS SHOULD BE SMART
Singular. Explain clearly what exactly you want to achieve. If necessary, do an online search of how much it costs what you have set as a goal, and add an extra percentage for possible inflation, about the date you consider reaching it.
Measurable. Determine how you will know when you have achieved it.
Achievable. That you are convinced that you can do it.
Relevant. This is your why? If your goal means enough to you, it motivates you emotionally, so that you are willing to invest your energy and time in achieving them.
Temporary. Specify when you consider achieving it.
Review the goals, specify the details as clearly as possible. Decide if everything on your list really matters to you, or if there are things to add or remove.
II. THE GOALS ARE FOUND IN 3 AREAS: SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONG TERM
Now organize your goals about the deadlines in which you consider achieving them.
The short term is «soon», it ranges from a few days to a few years. The average is one year.
The Medium-term is «a reasonable time», it is considered what includes between 1 and 3 or 5 years.
The long term is «in a long time», in general, they are goals with a term greater than 3 or 5 years.
Exercise 3: Motivation and money
If you experience some distress just by making your goal list, it is because you may have an emotional resistance to your success. With this we will deal in detail in future texts in this laboratory, meanwhile, follow these 4 steps:
- Take advantage of knowing in a better way what is stopping you? Take a moment to make another list, answer: What are your limiting beliefs concerning money? What do you think has prevented you from achieving your goals previously? Even if you find them, try not to point out external culprits in family, work, or friends. The important thing is that you take responsibility for your thoughts, emotions and actions. Be humble and embrace your experience, getting to clearly see the obstacles is important to transcend them. Your negative emotions have significant learnings to bring you.
- For now, do not stay only with the list of financial blocks. Also make another list of the things you are grateful for, what has money allowed you to experience positively? What do you appreciate about your experiences related to money – income, donations, purchases, investments? At what moment did a business or profit make you happy? Money is not the end, it is a means, it is energy that makes it easier for you to achieve the experiences that enrich you, as well as caring for and making those you love happy.
- It is also useful that if you have a role model, a successful person among the millionaires of the world, or your area of expertise, that you familiarize yourself with his biography, that you take it as inspiration, what of what he or she did to achieve his success? how that inspires you and what can you replicate? The information is relatively easy to find, as Forbes and other media outlets constantly update news regarding this group of successful people.
- Is it possible for you to find a mentor, a coach, who will push you to achieve your goals? Some organizations provide support for free. You can also invest in personalized and professional advice, at the end of the day, you are investing in your growth.
Exercise 4: Entrepreneurial goals and social responsibility
Make another reassessment of your goals, this time use the filter of the entrepreneurial or consumer mentality. It is important that you are aware of the difference between entrepreneurial and consumer mentality, and promote your entrepreneurial mentality more. Whoever thinks as an entrepreneur considers money as a resource to save and build assets (projects that provide you with passive income). Those who are trapped in a consumer mentality constantly spend their earnings on purchases of useful and useless things, and rarely think about savings or investment.
It is very common for the consumer mentality to generate problems in managing money, for example: 1. Impulsive, excessive spending. 2. Too many loans. 3. High-interest credit cards. 4. Bad credit rating. 5. Lack of savings, insurance or financial prevention to face unexpected expenses. 6. “Barnyard” mentality; find yourself «shrunken», without seeing beyond a small environment. Ignoring, not investigating or recognizing opportunities, and having the prejudice that «it will never be possible to earn more.» Think only about the expenses for oneself and the immediate environment, ignore the investment in the common good, social responsibility, donations.
If for one reason or another you recognize that you have not cultivated an entrepreneurial mentality, calm down, you can do it. We suggest you cultivate the following traits: 1. I work with vision, order and discipline. 2. Invest in your commitment to yourself, in self-esteem and motivation. 3. Stay creative, in contact with your intuition, recognize the opportunities of the moment, if necessary rethink the course. 4. Build assets (passive income). 5. Save, have an emergency fund that allows you to cover at least 3 to 6 months of your expenses in case of losing income. 6. Consider that your economic well-being has a social responsibility, keep an eye on opportunities and your relationships with the environment in which you interact. Practice philanthropy. Even if you donate only 5 or 10% of your earnings, this allows you to increase your sense of belonging to a community and expand your experiences of the virtues of money for common benefit.
If your relationships are mainly in physical, real form, what community, organization, hospital or school in your neighbourhood do you want to benefit? Approach them and ask how you can collaborate. Some orphanages sell products on holidays to generate income, schools or hospitals accept donations of household items or used clothing, in many cases, your cash donation may even be tax-deductible. In case your work is mainly done online, you may wish to donate to organizations that provide greater security on the internet, consulting or mentoring the sector in which you work. In short, once you awaken the philanthropist in you, you will surely find the community with which you want to share your wealth. On many occasions, even when withdrawing money from an ATM, the option to donate to schools or social benefit projects is activated. But I am inclined to suggest that the person take positive appropriation of their donations in the medium and long term, to build a relationship with a social sector linked to their personal interests and/or professional activity.
Thank you. Love, grace and transcendence blessings
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Atma Unum 