Searching for Success? Write Down Your Hopes, Dreams, and Goals
A while back, I started dreaming of finding remote work to have the option to travel and eventually move to Latin America while still having an income.
I started looking for remote work about one month before Covid became the word we’ll never forget.
Unfortunately, the whole world then started looking for online work. I went from applying for entry-level jobs with 30 other people to trying to elbow my way in through thousands of people, some of whom had advanced degrees.
It became pretty clear that hoping to land a ‘regular’ job in customer service, data entry, or something of that ilk was not going to happen as half the world’s population was frantically looking for work-from-home employment.
So what’s a guy to do?
Thank goodness, I have a day job that I can go to every day, keep getting a paycheque, and keep paying my rent. Some people were not that lucky, and I am grateful for what I have.
However, I was stalled on pursuing my dream of making a living off remote work, which will allow me to move down to Latin America and live on the beach. I felt like my dream was much farther out of reach now.
There was no guarantee that I would have snagged some random online work anyways, but the pandemic and the mass flocking to remote work made the path that much harder. I could’ve resigned myself to a different dream and a different life, but instead, I decided that my dream was worth it. That forced me to get creative and get working.
For the next few months, I completed online courses, started a blog, made a website, and did a bunch of work to bolster my resume.
Finally, I got a little closer to my dream. I had a few interviews and a few nibbles. Then one day I responded to a seemingly innocuous ad that asked me to write a product description of a cigar. Low and behold, I got a part-time freelancing gig writing product descriptions! Amazing! My hard work paid off!
While this is great news, life moves fast, and if I get too comfortable, I won’t be sitting on that beach anytime soon. I needed to keep building and growing and advancing toward my goal of remote living and working. I needed to take the next step.
After talking about this (and getting some great advice) with my mentor/sponsor, I decided the next step was to form my own corporation:
It’s called GT Creative Inc.
This is the company that I will use to build a freelance writing business and achieve my financial and personal goals.
I’ve never done anything like this before. I was a little scared and uncertain about this decision; however, I am now very excited about the possibilities for my new company and me.
Honestly, this was not something I had ever envisioned on my path to fulfilling my dream of becoming location independent and moving to a new country. But you know what? Now that I’ve done it, it actually seems like the absolute best idea for me going forward. It makes the most sense.
There are myriad benefits to having my own freelance company.
- I can pay myself whenever I need to (which is not much right now because I still have my job at Canada Post).
- My taxes will eventually be lower.
- It will be cheaper for employers to pay me as a freelancer than an employee.
- Most importantly, I can work from wherever I want in the world and pay myself through my company – providing I have enough money in there.
GT Creative Inc is now my motivation for my new dream. I want GT Creative Inc to be my future. I want my company to grow large enough to support my family and my dreams of travel and relocation. I want it to grow large enough so that I don’t have to worry about money anymore.
I am dreaming big now. And why not?!?
I never had dreams like this before. I never dreamt of owning my own business and becoming independently wealthy. I was more interested in the final picture being me sitting by the pool and enjoying my remote life rather than figuring out how I was actually going to get there.
It’s actually kind of sad, but I always set my goals pretty low in the past. As I said, my goal has been to get a remote job so I could work and travel. That is about it.
Setting low goals is called having a ‘limiting mindset,’ and I am working on being rid of it.
And this revelation comes at a perfect time for me because my vision board needed re-vision.
Last year, I wrote on my whiteboard “What Does March 1, 2021, Look Like:” and this is what I wrote:
- No debt plus $5K saved
- I am in shape
- I am saving as much as I can
- I have a remote job
- Living as frugal as I can
- Working towards early retirement
See what I meant previously about setting mediocre goals?!?! Jeez!
I succeeded in not disappointing myself, but that’s because my goals were fairly easy to reach. That being said, I am proud of reaching all those goals. For a long time, I was reaching zero goals. I was also setting zero goals. So perhaps my being cautious with goal-setting stems from a fear of failure and needing to take baby steps with this. This is sounding like a blog for another time. I digress.
Now it’s time to up my game. It‘s time to set some goals that I want to accomplish and that are important to me and set some goals that are closer to hopes and dreams.
What is the point of setting goals if they are easy to achieve?
It used to be that I didn’t dream big enough. Now that I have the right dreams, I am forced to put in a lot more thought and effort into exactly HOW I will achieve them.
Goals should be achievable, but they should still be somewhat out of reach for right now.
Hopes and dreams should be huge, though! They should be things that are outlandish and farfetched but also within reason. For instance, a dream of making a million dollars may be a bit outlandish for someone in my position, but it is certainly achievable.
My previous goals were the opposite. They were too within reach. They were too easy to achieve, which was fine for my first real attempt at getting my life going.
Now my hopes and dreams are more in line with my goals of growing my company and my life to epic proportions and reaping the rewards of all the hard work I have been and am putting in.
I urge all of you to think about what you want and then reach a little higher. Make a plan for how you might be able to get to where you want to go. Think about your ideal, perfect situation and then plan how to get there, no matter how difficult the path may seem.
At present, owning my own company is my reality. Now I need to dream bigger within my new venture. I need to focus on making this new dream of growing my own business into something that I can use to take me to the next level of achieving new financial and travelling hopes, dreams, and goals.
This is the fun part of finding a little success and reaching some of your goals: doing it all over again and seeing how high you can go!
So now, what are my goals for the future?
They involve growing my new business into something that I can do full time, for starters. I want to quit my day job at Canada Post and work for myself. I still really want the remote life and eventually move to the beach.
Thanks to the idea and goal of starting my own company, I have a better vehicle to do that.
I also have hopes, dreams, and goals of saving for a down-payment for a house, funding my retirement, fitness goals, relationship goals, and goals for starting my travelling journey again. These are all going to be possible because I sat down and did the work to figure out the HOW and the WHY I will be able to get to my goal of working from a beach.
So if you are reading this and maybe have a similar goal to get the hell out of wherever you are and hitting the road (after this Covid thing, of course), sit down and figure out your how and why.
What is your goal?
Mine was to be remote and make money at the same time. My “how” is my company. My “why” is because travelling is the one thing I know is a passion in my life, and I have to incorporate it into my life somehow.
It doesn’t really matter what your hopes, dreams, and goals actually are, just that you have them. By that, I mean, have something to work towards. I had no hopes, dreams, or goals for a long time, and my life reflected it. It was not a fun time for me, and there were little to no successes.
I am a big believer in manifestation. As I wrote in a previous article, my manifestation was a boiled-down version of my hopes, dreams, and goals: Get a full-time remote job so I could have the option to travel and move to a new country.
There’s no time like the present to get started on your future.
Here are the steps to achieving your hopes, dreams, and goals:
- Define them in your head. Meditate and pray on it and get them straight in your head.
- Write down your hopes, dreams, and goals on paper.
- Make a plan to get there.
- Have someone hold you accountable. Tell your family or your friends.
- Get a whiteboard and hang it up where you can see it every day.
- Find a manifestation you can keep at the front of your mind.
- Update your hopes, dreams, and goals as you grow.
Success is like a puzzle you’re trying to put together. If you dump out all the pieces on the table and try to put them together without a picture of what you are trying to achieve, then it is going to take forever.
When you have a picture of the finished product to guide you, it makes everything so much easier and faster. You can start to see where some pieces fit together, where you are doing well, and what you need to work on.
Inspiration can come from anywhere, so always be open-minded. Write ideas down, and don’t dismiss them as crazy. Nothing is out of reach if you put in a little effort each day.
Time will pass by whether you take action on your life or not, so why not take some action today and give yourself a chance to have everything you dream of?
Good luck!
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