Let’s talk about the millionaire’s plan to live out your happiest, healthiest, most productive, and hustle-free year ever!
You’re going to learn the 3 essential components to having a breakthrough year, the 4 things that all successful people know, then you’re going to create the roadmap for reaching the big goals that you’ve been putting off for years, but you’re going to do it in a way that puts your mental, physical and emotional health at the top of the priority list so that reaching those goals doesn’t come at the expense of your overall well-being.
I’ve covered all of this in my latest video on my channel, which you can watch below. But if you prefer to absorb information through reading, keep scrolling – I’ve got you covered with all the key details right here.
There are 3 components to your breakthrough year: MINDSET—the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical practices that keep your mind in the zone it needs to be in to get things done; STRATEGY—the goals that you set for yourself and the action plan you create to reach them, and EXECUTION—the actual follow-through on your action plan.
Millionaire’s Plan Component 1: Mindset
When I talk about successful people in this post, I’m not talking about people who are purely financially successful; I’m talking about people who are successful in most areas of their life, because yes, we want to make a lot of money, but we don’t have to give up health, family, fun, or inner peace to get it.
These are the four things that successful people know:
- Your mind is your most valuable asset. You can’t reach any level of success without it, so you’ve gotta protect it at all costs with proper food, movement, sleep, rest, and relaxation. This means that before you schedule a single to-do into your calendar, you need to PAY YOURSELF FIRST and schedule in your self-care items, like walks or other exercise, time with family, meditation, any spiritual practices you might have, time for rest. This is not an indulgence, it’s necessary for you to operate at your peak.
- Success takes time. We are SO used to instant gratification, hearing about other people’s overnight success stories, being told “everyone can do this, so can you”, and on top of this, we’re told it should be EASY, and if it’s not, there’s something WRONG with us. Most of us have completely unrealistic expectations about how long things SHOULD take. But there’s ALWAYS a lag between when you start putting in the work and when that work actually starts to pay off. This uncertainty can be extremely uncomfortable for a lot of us, but we have to embrace it because it’s simply an unavoidable part of the process. Speaking of unavoidable, that leads to number 3, which is..
- Failure is unavoidable. Robert Kiyosaki, like him or not, said that “people who avoid failure also avoid success.” The truth is that if you’re NOT experiencing regular failures, you’re not experimenting enough. The key is to approach your goals like a scientist and view the results as a set of data points that you can then tweak for the next round of experimentation. This totally removes the emotional component and motivates you to try again until you get it right. I launched an affiliate program last year and it was a massive flop, but I learned so much in that process and I now know exactly what I need to change to make it a success this year.
- You are the author of your own life. The future hasn’t happened yet and only you have the power to create that future. It’s true that you can’t control external circumstances. And it’s true that we are NOT all starting from the same starting line—there are wild gaps when it comes to access to knowledge and resources—but it is purely up to us to do what we can with what we have at any given time.
Millionaire’s Plan Component 2: Strategy
1. Take Stock
Before jumping straight into goal-setting, it’s really important to take stock of the year that’s just gone by so that you can determine what’s working and what’s not.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What were your biggest wins of the year?
- What were your biggest failures?
- What were the biggest lessons you learned?
- If you set goals last year, did you reach them? Why or why not? Try to pinpoint exactly where things went off the rails. Were your goals unrealistic? Did you forget about them several weeks into the new year? Were there any limiting beliefs that held you back?
Be compassionate towards yourself here. This is not a time to beat yourself up over unrealized goals. Celebrate any progress, however small, and decide to look forward from here on out.
2. Envision Your Dream Year
Once you’ve properly taken stock of the year that just went by, it’s time to start daydreaming about what a breakthrough year would look like for you. Think about all of your life domains: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, professional, financial. What do you want more of? What do you want less of? What would true success look like for you across all of these domains? Not someone else’s version of success, YOURS. Ask yourself, what would I do if I couldn’t fail?
3. Create Your Goals
Next up is your action plan; it’s time to start drawing up your goals. Based on what you came up with in the last step, choose the top 3-5 things you’d like to accomplish next year. Don’t choose too many, or it’ll be too difficult to achieve them.
For really effective goal setting, your goals need to be 3 things. The first is SPECIFIC. For example, “learn to paint” is not specific. “Complete the Acrylic Painting For Beginners Course on Skillshare” is specific.
The second thing is MEASURABLE. This is how you establish your criteria for success so that you know if you’ve achieved your goal or not. For example, “make more money” isn’t a measurable goal. “Get a 10% raise” or “increase my revenue by 30%” is.
Lastly, a good goal is TIME BOUND. Deadlines drive action and with no end date to light that fire under your rump there’ll be no reason for urgency. Going back to the painting example, “Complete the Acrylic Painting For Beginners Course by April 31, 2024” is a properly set goal. It’s specific, it’s measurable—we’ll know we’ve achieved the goal when the course is complete—and we also know when it’ll be completed by.
For bonus points, I like to attach a “why” to each of my goals. Goals are much easier to reach if you know why you’re doing them in the first place, and revisiting your why wherever your motivation dips is a great way to get that motivation back. So, for me, when I’m setting my revenue goals, the reason I want to make that money isn’t just for the sake of making more money. One of my “why”s is that I love travel and I want to be able to take my kids to see the world and create amazing memories with them.
Millionaire’s Plan Component 3: Execute
We’ve got our plans, but the process isn’t complete until we pull out our calendars and schedule the action steps we’ll need to take to make those dreams come true.
Have a look at each goal and figure out what the very first action step you need to take in order to get the ball rolling is, and then schedule it into your calendar for sometime this week. Back to the painting example, the first step could be to buy the course and then complete the first lesson by next Sunday. If it’s to start a new online business and get your first paying client, your first step might be to create your business plan.
You’re also going to schedule 15 minutes into your calendar at the start of every week to determine the next set of action steps and get those scheduled, and you’re going to keep doing that on a weekly basis.
Doing this every week ensures that A—you’re reviewing your goals on a weekly basis, so they don’t get forgotten, and B—you’ll actually be making progress on each of your goals every week.
The big thing to keep in mind here is to not worry about making big massive progress on a weekly basis. I’m sure that you’ve heard that you need to be taking “massive action” all the time, but I want you to forget this and focus on incremental progress instead. It’s too easy to feel frustrated with a perceived lack of progress, and that’s when we’ll often feel like giving up altogether. But we know that success takes time. Just like money in the bank, incremental progress compounds with time. If you just focus on making progress every week, no matter how small, you WILL reach your goal.
I really hope this was helpful and I wish you so much success this year. Keep these wise words from Dolly Parton in your mind as you take your first steps forward: “You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.”
Talk soon,
Rachel
PS: If you’re just starting out on your online business journey go ahead and download my 4-Step Online Business Start-Up Blueprint here.
