Success Principles

The Power of Designing Your Destiny

December 21, 2007 , 1 Shawn

One classic example is investor Warren Buffet. Does his ability to come about by chance? Absolutely not. From a very early age young Buffett was obsessed with making money and had a very clear dream of becoming the world’s greatest investor. Born during the depression when his father was close to bankruptcy, Warren learned about the value of money and the importance of being financially secure at an early age.

Even before his teens, Warren knew that he wanted to be rich. As early as elementary school and later on in high school, he would tell his classmates that he wanted to become a millionaire before the age of 35 (when he turned 35, his net worth exceeded $6 million). It was because of his goal that he constantly thought of ways to make money, while most other kids his age would be spending their parents’ money. He even memorized a book called ‘ A Thousand Ways to Make $1,000′. At the age of six, he started buying coke bottles at 25-cents per six-pack and selling them at 5-cents a bottle, giving him a 16% gross profit, as he would tell himself.

At the age of 13, he got a job delivering newspapers and through innovative marketing and distribution strategies, he served five hundred customers a day. At the age of 11, he took all his savings and started investing in the stock market. His first investment was three shares in a company called ‘City Service’. While most kids his age were reading comic books, Warren spent his time reading company annual reports. By the age of 14, he started a pinball business and was earning $175 a week, as much as the average 25-year old was earning in 1944. Would he have taken all those actions if he never set a goal to be rich in the first place? Of course not. It was clearly because of his focus of energy and actions that allowed him to become the best in what he does.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to make money, all you need is just to plan and design your specific financial goals. Your mind will automatically come out with ways to make money after you set your financial goals. If you study the life stories of successful people, they all have a very specific goals, they know exactly what they want to achieve in their life. They dare to dream and then let their dreams guide their actions until they achieve success.

Tiger Woods never really set a goal to become a millionaire. However at the age of eight, he gave an interview on TV, after winning an amateur golf tournament. During that interview, he declared that his goal was to become the world’s number one golfer and that he would break all of Jack Nicklaus’ records. It was that obsession that got him to focus a hundred percent of his time, energy and thoughts into his game. Fourteen years later, Woods became the world’s number one at the age of 22. Again not by chance, but by design.

So you can see now, success doesn’t happen by chance, but by designing. If you fail to design your life, you fail to plan for your life, then you are planning to fail. Hence, don’t become a lost sheep and don’t know where to go. Start designing your route from today. It is going to be the end of year 2007, and the year 2008 is just around the corner. I hope that you already have a complete set of goals and plans for this new year. To Your Success.