PERSONAL FINANCE: Time to throw out the baby with the bathwater

Be brutal with yourself and let go of all those ‘good’ things you are holding tightly onto, that are keeping you from getting to where you can actually be. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • It is time to understand and look at what we want to achieve this year. For many of us setting goals and New Year resolutions has become the norm. We set them and set them again, year after year, but still achieve nothing.

  • This is a very frustrating way to live life. How many times have you declared that this is finally going to be the year of change, but gone back to the same routine, same conversations, same excuses and of course nothing changes?

  • This is the time to throw your cow off the cliff. Stop right now and find some cows in your life that need to be thrown out. You think that they are very important, but yhey are baggage that is holding you back from your true potential.

I received a very interesting message on WhatsApp a few days ago. It was about a very poor family in an unknown country. Their only source of livelihood was their sole cow. The cow provided them with the milk they needed and a little extra to make

cheese which they traded in at the market to get whatever they needed for survival. One day, someone deliberately pushed the poor family’s cow off the cliff and it died.

This seems like a cruel act; after all, that cow was their only means of survival. However, several years later, the family had thrived. Their house was no longer a shack, but a beautiful place and they were healthy and happy. It turns out that once they

stopped being reliant on the cow, they found other skills and resources that were lying dormant. When the cow died, it forced them out of their comfort zones and made them actually stretch and reach their potential.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Now on this second day of 2016, I want you to think about some of the things you have been holding onto, thinking they are a matter of life and death. That is your cow. Most of us go back to work and ‘normal’ life next week.

It is time to understand and look at what we want to achieve this year. For many of us setting goals and New Year resolutions has become the norm. We set them and set them again, year after year, but still achieve nothing.

This is a very frustrating way to live life. How many times have you declared that this is finally going to be the year of change, but gone back to the same routine, same conversations, same excuses and of course nothing changes?

This is the time to throw your cow off the cliff. Stop right now and find some cows in your life that need to be thrown out. You think that they are very important, but yhey are baggage that is holding you back from your true potential.

You need to be very brutal about what you are tossing. Throw last year’s results down the cliff. Do not make last year’s performance a benchmark for the future. Do not set this year’s targets based on where you were last year, set targets based on where

you want to go and the kind of impact you want to have. Many of us limit ourselves based on what we did last year. It is good to assess and understand where you are coming from, but do not allow it to dictate where you can go.

Learn from the mistakes of last year and move on. Don’t get suck in the past; you’ll have to use and do different things to get to your place of fortune this year.

Still on setting targets, start with the end in mind and then work backwards to figure out the how. The fact that you don’t know how to get to where you want is a good thing because it will make you stretch.

It means you need to do something differently or learn something new to get you to your destination. Something that you can already do comfortably should not be your goal. Many times people let the question ‘but how will I do that?’ limit them and keep

them from reaching out for big goals. If you begin by trying to figure out how you will achieve your goal, you will not make any progress. Here’s what I mean when I say that you should begin with the end in mind instead of focusing on the how.

Say you are earning Sh100, 000. Your expenses take up Sh80, 000. You can then save Sh20, 000. When setting goals for investment, you are most likely to work with the Sh20, 000 that you can comfortably save.

That Sh20, 000 is a cow that needs to be thrown off a cliff. The question is: what do you want to achieve and not, what can you comfortably achieve now? You know you can comfortably save Sh240, 000 this year, but this should not stop you from

planning and making investments of a million shillings this year. You may not know how to make that million-shilling investment within the next 12 months, but that is your target and you’ll need to work backwards and see how to make it happen step by

step.

DIFFERENT WAY TO SET GOALS

You may realise that you need to slash your expenses by Sh50, 000 each month. This is what one couple who attended our classes did. Beginning with the end in mind changed how they set goals. They had bought a beautiful apartment, furnished it very well

and moved in. This was a dream come true for them. However, after thinking about what they truly wanted to achieve financially, they rented out this fully-furnished apartment and moved to a cheaper place.

Even after subtracting the cost of their current house, they earn an extra Sh100, 000 in rent from their beautiful furnished apartment. Their dream home became the cow they had to throw off the cliff so that they could do better.

They are now investing aggressively using this extra income. These are the kind of ideas that start to come to you when you first think about how you want your destination to look. You will see you have skills, gifts, resources, and ways of thinking that you

never used and that can get you exactly where you want to be, no matter how lofty the goal seems.

The other cow you need to throw off the cliff this year is “normal”. There’s no joy in being like everybody else when you were born with unique fingerprints. Don’t hide behind the “that’s how it is for everyone” excuse.

Note down the comfort zones you need to toss off the cliff. These are the things that keep you in the same place. The first cow in this sense is your thoughts. Toss that and determine to see things differently. Next could be how you use money.

It could also be that you have limited the amount of money you think you can earn. It could mean you need to toss your job and start a business. It may mean you need to toss how you behave and relate to people at work.

You may need to toss that savings account and actually invest that money. You may need to toss that chama and enter one that is more serious. You may need to toss your habits e.g. how you spend time. Toss those cows. Remember you do not need to

know how to achieve your grand goals, you just need to totally commit to using everything at your disposal to get there, and take the step that is directly in front of you.

Happy New Year!