The Path to Success

This week we have been enthralled by the success of our respective countries Olympians. It makes you think about the path to success that these athletes will have endured.

As you know I like to use sport as a reference for our wealth creation experience because of the many similarities.

These Olympic athletes have spent many hours and years preparing for their moment to perform…

We have the pleasure of enjoying watching them strive for the glory of a personal best, a final, a medal or a world record…

What we don’t get to see is all the work that has gone in to getting to the starting line…

And this is where I want to draw the comparison to your wealth creation path to success.

The Wealth Creation Journey

I have discussed previously that the wealth creation journey is one of patience and time…

And during this time, there are going to be all manner of issues to manage.

Just like an athlete who has to manage injury, fatigue, good and bad performances… you also will have to manage the ebbs and flows of the path to success in wealth creation.

There is a perception that successful people have done it easy and that their journey to success has been a relatively controlled experience.

If you were to draw a graph of this perception it might look something like this…

The reality however is a completely different story…

The Path to Success

In all the research of successful people that I have done, not once was there an instance where the person I was studying had experienced a smooth ride.

There are always going to be periods of time when things don’t come easy, where you will be tested and decisions need to be made as to your next direction or response to what has occurred in the markets that you are investing.

The journey to success is much more likely to look something more like this…

And this is why your mindset is so important.

As the graph depicts, the path to success is a bumpy ride…

How you deal with the peaks and troughs of the journey will determine whether YOU achieve your goals or NOT.

And that is the hard reality…

The best wealth creation strategies can only contribute so much of the process.

If you are not prepared for the challenges that will be presented, your path to success will be significantly harder.

So what can you do to prepare yourself for these challenges?

How You Can Prepare

Just like an athlete takes preventative measures, such as stretching, massage and rest, as a wealth creator you can also prepare yourself for the challenges.

We have already mentioned one of the key concepts that will assist you, being patience.

Patience is the most important skill you can have when trying to build your wealth. The strategies that you implement, whether it be in stock or property investing, or your own business, will take time to demonstrate returns.

And during the time that you are working your strategies, there will be moments where you incur losses, or troughs in your results.

It will be at these times that you will not only need to be patient, but you will also need to be resilient.

An athlete striving for Olympic glory can’t afford to throw in the towel when they have a less than optimal performance or suffer an injury.

Their response in these times is to stick to their processes and work through the setback.

As a wealth creator, you will need to do the same…

One of the ways to manage these moments and apply the skill of resilience is to identify in advance what your process will be…

Knowing how you want to manage yourself and your reactions, in advance, gives you a distinct advantage.

Understanding how you are likely to react and more importantly why, you can take the necessary steps to manage the possibilities.

For example, if you are a stock investor and you experience a string of losses, will you have the mental fortitude to make the next trade?

In times of losses there is a tendency to chase profits to make back what you have lost…

But having a stock investing plan that you consistently apply, with absolute commitment, reduces the risk that you stray away from what you know works, your system.

It then becomes a simple application of process and nothing more…

Just like how you implement your strategies in the respective markets, having a process to manage yourself when the times are tough, makes the outcomes that much more predictable.

You are training or programming your mindset for success, to understand what you will do in certain circumstances so that when they occur you are prepared.

As I have been suggesting in past blogs, understanding your mindset and how it impacts your results, gives you an advantage over the majority of investors who have not considered these concepts.

How you manage the path to success depicted in the graph above will determine whether you have the opportunity to achieve your goals.

Will you be a gold medallist in your wealth creation journey? Do you have what it takes?

Leave me a comment below, let me know your thoughts.