1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

I think this is what gets us through life. Sometimes when all the cards are stacked against you…and you still believe that it’s all going to work out. Some people may think you’re being stupid. Remember, if you think you’re being stupid then you are being stupid!

“unwavering - marked by firm determination or resolution; not shakable;  “

The free dictionary

With 40 days left until I reach my goal of making a million dollars in 365 days, I barely have time to reflect on my journey so far. It’s been one heck of a journey. I’m not there yet, but I’m still confident that the right things are happening. I’m certainly not sitting on my butt waiting for a Million dollars to show up out of nowhere! I’ve spent the past10 months on a journey, a quest.

It has been one of the most challenging times of my life. I’ve managed to increase my income, and I now have multiple streams of income, yet I’m not ready to sit back and relax yet. If anything, this journey has encouraged me to shoot even higher for the stars, to accomplish even more in my life and to realise my grand dream goals along with my beautiful family.

In a little under a month, my wife, children & mother-in-law are all flying to South Africa to attend one of my best friend’s weddings. I am really excited as I get to show my kids where I grew up and the place I used to call home just 10 years ago.

It’s a LONG flight from New Zealand to South Africa, so that in itself is going to present some challenges. We’ve also had some challenges recently when it came to cash flow. With all my different “ventures” on the go at once, there’s a fair amount of investment going on. Obviously there’s bills to pay, food to put on the table etc, just like any other family.

One of my goals is to never have to send my wife back to work (unless she chooses to). She really wants to be with the kids and she’s doing such an amazing job so far, there’s no ways I’d want her doing anything else.  This has added some pressure to our financial situation - especially with some of the financial goals I’ve set (see: 1 Million Dollars in 365 days!)

However, this has not perturbed me and while it can be challenging at times, it’s nothing compared to what some people have to go through. I often have to re-read some of my blogs to keep on track. Sometimes it’s easy enough to give out advice and also easy to forget to take that advice yourself!

So to cut a long story short, today just as I was thinking about how we were going to pay a particular bill - I opened up the mail….the the problem was solved. Just like that! Now it may be cutting it a bit fine, but we hung in there and things worked out. I’ll finish off with a great saying from Kurek Ashely :

 ”You always get what you wish for and it rarely comes in the package you were expecting!”

Today we bought a house… This is our first house and part of me is still struggling to understand that we own this house, that I won’t have to talk to a landlord for a really long time. I have always dreamed of owning our own home, however the picture I had in my mind until about 6 months ago, was a run down, dreary, home, waiting for me to spend massive amounts of hard earned money on it and lots of blood sweat and tears in order to get it up to scratch.

I better tell you how this happened. Almost two months ago, I was driving to a nearby city, listening to an audio program that I purchased a few months prior. This was by Kurek Ashley and is part of his Life Success Club series. This is one of the things I have chosen to invest in for my personal development.

On this particular audio program, Kurek was talking about Grand Dream goals and an exercise he carried out with a group he was working with at the time. He asked them to write down their grand dream goals on a piece of paper, and then circle one of them. Remember, a Grand Dream Goal (GDG) is one of your life ambitions, it’s something massive that when you’ve achieved it, you can look back and be amazed!

To cut a long story short, Kurek divided the group into pairs and told them that they each had only 1 month to achieve that GDG, or their partner would be fines $5,000.00! What an incentive. At the end of the story, he talked about how people grew during that process, whether they achieved their goal or not.

Next he told us (the listener), that he was laying out the same challenge for us. We had to choose one of our GDG’s then and there and commit to doing everything we could to achieve it within 1 month! I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that I was going to focus on achieving those goal with everything I had.

I chose my GDG about owning our own home. The goal on my dream board reads:

“We have just bought our first property on or before 12/06/2009″

It was January 2009….even if I could have pulled this off by the 12th of June 2009, I would have been over the moon! I had no idea how I was going to make this work. That was the last dis-empowering thought I had about my goal.

I immediately decided that I was going to achieve this goal within the next month. I decided that I would get up 15 minutes earlier everyday for the next month, and spend that time figuring out how to achieve this awesome goal. When I got home, I wrote up a new goal and pinned it on to my dream board:

“What am I going to do today, to ensure that we own our own home on or before 15/02/2009?”

That note stood out everyday when I walked past my dream board. The end result - I didn’t achieve it within the month. We had an offer on a house that was accepted on 13/02/2009. We move in to the house next weekend, so we’re living in our house 1 month later.

What an amazing journey. This was a goal that I thought would take many months, if not years, to achieve and here I am - less than two months later, about to move into our new 4 bedroom home! What other things have we been telling ourselves, are difficult to attain? Maybe it’s time to readjust our expectations and make our dreams a reality.

Below is a photo of our new home - it’s absolutely beautiful. The best part is that my wife loves it. Months ago, I planned on finding a cheap 2 bedroom unit that we would have to renovate and do-up over time. Instead, we are moving into this luxurious home - our first home!

Over the next week, I will talk about how I achieved this great success.For now, I am going to practice another one of my favourite past times - celebrating our successes. It makes you crave more of them