Do you have a plan for the future? Is being wealthy something you want to achieve?
Without a clear goal in mind to guide you, your energy will be directionless, no matter how well you cultivate it. Simon Alexander Ong says it’s important to clarify your goal, how to turn your dreams into an actionable plan, and how to frame your feelings toward wealth.
Discover how to envision your future with the help of a clear plan.
Have a Long-Term Vision of Your Future
Ong argues that having a specific, long-term vision lets you focus your energy, overcome obstacles, and attract opportunities. He cites many examples from the field of sports, where imagining your goal before achieving it is a standard practice for winning athletes. People who regularly use this practice show that mental imagery can enhance your performance and create a sense that achieving seemingly impossible feats can be done. One way to learn how to envision your future is to imagine meeting an old acquaintance at some date several years in the future and describing to them everything you’ve achieved in the intervening time.
(Shortform note: One athlete who fully embodies Ong’s advice about visualizing your future is Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, in Be Useful, Schwarzenegger points out that the goals you envision will change over time. In his own life, he visualized himself as a bodybuilding champion, which he then saw as a springboard to acting in films. But once he’d made his initial dreams real, Schwarzenegger envisioned using his influence to make a positive impact through a political career. Schwarzenegger argues that while you should create a clear vision for your future, you should never view that goal as a stopping point. Instead, you should think of it as a peak from which you’ll be able to see the next mountain you should climb.)
Though important, having a dream for your future won’t get you far without a plan. Ong relates how a survey of college graduates revealed that thinking through your goals and writing down how you’ll achieve them has a huge impact on long-term success. Therefore, to make your dreams achievable, set aside regular time for self-reflection and strategic planning. If the steps toward your goals aren’t clear at first, Ong offers a variation on brainstorming to guide you—but instead of trying to come up with solutions, think up as many questions as you can, such as “What are your talents? What are your obstacles? What strengths can you develop? Who can help you?” Answering these questions will help you chart your course of action.
(Shortform note: Ong’s ideas offer a place to begin, but to create a more detailed plan of action, consider following the steps outlined by Jack Canfield in The Success Principles. Canfield says that when writing your goals down, you should phrase them in a way that’s quantifiable within a realistic time frame so that you can measure whether you’ve achieved them. You should then do the research to make a reasonable plan, including consulting experts, reading books and articles on your field of interest, and taking formal classes if possible. If needed, you can reverse-engineer your process—visualize your desired end result and work backward to determine the sequence of steps you’ll have to take to achieve it.)
A Word on Wealth
It may be that part of your vision for the future involves being rich, or at least well-off financially. Ong says that’s perfectly normal, but you need to understand that money can bring energy to your life, or it can take it away. For sure, a degree of financial security can give you peace of mind, but having money doesn’t necessarily free you from the perils of managing it. Ong illustrates this with studies of lottery winners who, since they have no purpose for their money, spend every penny and end up worse off than before. That’s why you need to have a financial plan—so that money can act as a tool to reach your goals and lets you direct your energy purposefully instead of distracting you from your true ambitions.
(Shortform note: The Master Guides: Cultivate an Empowering Money Mindset offers guidance from a wide range of authors on how to reshape the energy Ong says you bring to dealing with personal finances. In essence, your money mindset is a construct made up of all of your beliefs regarding money, many of which you may be unaware of. Nevertheless, your mindset programs you to think and behave in ways that may be positive or negative toward your financial health. Since negative beliefs undermine your relationship with money, you can only improve your financial situation by replacing old ideas with new ones. This requires realigning your attitude toward money and creating a positive cycle of reward to reinforce more empowering beliefs.)
Ong argues that beyond developing good financial habits, you must have a clear purpose for the money you make. Therefore, as part of your plan for the future, you need to determine why you want to make money. If you do, then earning wealth will bring energy to your process and give a concrete direction to your financial decisions. However, if you harbor negative views about “getting rich” while simultaneously trying to better your finances, this mental misalignment of your energy toward money can lead you to subconsciously sabotage your progress. If financial freedom is necessary for your ambitions, then you need to make peace with the concept of wealth and accept “living the good life” as part of your plan.
(Shortform note: The belief that Ong pushes against is that pursuing wealth is a sign of moral bankruptcy and greed, but people don’t believe that without reason. In their memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street and Liar’s Poker, Jordan Belfort and Michael Lewis both attest that the pursuit of wealth can bring out the worst in people. Lewis describes how the Wall Street firm he worked for indoctrinated its recruits to believe that finance was a cutthroat business where manipulation, abuse, and subterfuge were the tools of the trade. Likewise, Belfort writes that his purpose for money was to indulge every fantasy and whim. Both memoirs show how negative energy combined with greed leads to extravagant riches, followed by dramatic financial losses.)
