Goals

Begin with the end in mind.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What You Can Learn from 500 Millionaires
One of the most influential books I ever read was Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich (wait
until you get to the bottom of this lesson for a free PDF download). This 1937 classic reveals the
principles that led Andrew Carnegie, Charles M. Schwab, Thomas Edison, and many others to
great wealth and success.
As a young man, Napoleon Hill met the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who instilled in him his
most important business teachings. Over the course of twenty years, Hill interviewed about five
hundred of the most successful businessmen and leaders in the U.S. and the world, to understand
more about the common beliefs that helped lead to their great success.
What did these 500 individualsmany of the worlds rich and powerfulhave in common?
Some might simply call it mind over matter, visualization, or the Law of Attraction. I believe
the avalanche of current new age books and films like The Secret greatly oversimplify this
principle, however the most effective way to succinctly describe the Carnegie secret that the
pages of Think and Grow Rich reveal is this:
You Become That Which You Think About Most

There is a lot of new age literature available these days about the Law of Attraction and so on.
You could say that you attract the things you focus your mind on.
But I think its much more accurate to say that you will accomplish the goals that you make the
time to 1) clarify and 2) concentrate on. Certainly, the first step to great success is
to know specifically what you want out of life: financially, personally, socially, and so on.
I find that a majority of people I talk tomany of my own closest friends and family
dont really know what they want to achieve in life. Sadly, results are fairly consistent: people who
dont have lofty goals dont tend to attain any great success or noteworthy achievement in life.
People who concentrate solely on achieving some sort of success may fail ten times before they
become a great success seemingly overnight, but those who dont fill their heads with grand
aspirations rarely see great success, and those who stop working towards their highest goals and
start believing that theycant achieve their aspirations eventually give up.

Whether you think you can or cant you are right.

Henry Ford
A Word On How Your Brain Works
If you take Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill at their word, it would seem that what you
occupy your mind with most prominently will eventually, in one way or another, shape your
reality.

We can actually see how this works both positively and negatively. The mind works hard to align
belief with reality, which is what accounts for the placebo effect and even explains
why hypochondriacs come down with the symptoms of every new disease they try to scare you
with on the news. So be careful not to concentrate your thoughts on what you dont want out of
life, and not to be overwhelmed by negativity. Once you start telling yourself that you cant do
something, youre finished!
Instead, its important to lay out goals for yourself and phrase them positively, believe sincerely
that you can achieve what you want in life, and fill your mind with vivid visualizations of what it
will be like when youve actually attained your goals.
Even if you have no real past experience with something in particularbungee jumping for
example, finding an auto shop in an unfamiliar city, or building a million-dollar businesssince
you were born, your brain has been identifying patterns in the world around you and drawing
conclusions from them. Because of this, your mind is able to do a remarkably accurate job of
simulating potential paths to any outcome you desire.
You stood up and took your first steps long before you had any understanding of biomechanics
and the laws of physics (you probably still dont!). You learned to speak your native tongue
without enrolling in any language classes. If you imagine leaping off of a 40-story building with
no parachute, even though youve obviously never actually done that (I assume, since youre
sitting at your computer reading this right now), through patterns and learned associations, your
brain most likely makes the assessment that doing so would be a VERY BAD idea in a fraction of
a second.
Your brain is a prediction engine; it has an innate ability to take what you learn in one area of
your life and apply the same rules to different situations, to weigh different possibilities, and
predict the potential outcomes of different courses of action. But just like a GPS system in your
car, if you dont program in a destination, the tool cant do its job.
Without any idea of whether you want to drive to your grandmothers house or to Las Vegas,
youre not likely to make any progress anywhere near either destination. If you dont supply a
goal or desired result, your mind wont occupy itself with simulating paths to success and finding
ways to get you there.
In Think and Grow Rich, Hill says that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all
achievement. You may eke by with a decent living without any definite major purpose for your
life, but you will never excel without concrete, specific goals. Decide specifically what you want in
life and what you are willing to give in return for it.
Visualize your success and repeat to yourself often what you intend to achieve. Then back it up
with massive action, and youre certain to reach the heights of success (however you choose to
measure it).
When you know what you want, you will be prepared to recognize and take advantage of the
opportunities that life presents to you. Otherwise youll have to settle for what falls in your lap.
There is NOTHING You Cannot DO, or BE, or HAVE

I dont remember where I saw that first, but its one of my favorite affirmations. You might
consider writing that down somewhere and repeating it to yourself daily. You need to have a clear
definition of success for yourself as well as a defined path towards achieving it. Dont leave
anything off the table, aim for your highest aspirations. Having goals, a dream, a hunger for life,
and a direction in life will help you get the most out of your time on this planet.
But goals and affirmations alone arent enoughyou also need to be capable of achieving your
goals, and you need to strive towards making those goals a reality. To that end, its important to
make a one-year plan, with clearly defined steps and milestones. So think about where you want
to be one year from now.
You wont achieve every single goal. But just having made the plan in the first place makes you
about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action than if you hadnt set a roadmap
for yourself in the first place. I like to review my progress at the end of each year to see how much
I do accomplish!

A goal properly set is halfway reached.

Abraham Lincoln
Another thing about your goals is that they may change over time, or things may happen that
prevent you from achieving them. Or you may simply not put in the effort to complete all of your
goals by the end of the year. But what matters most is that you set them. The act of making
meaningful, clearly-defined goals, and writing them down, will put you ahead of 95% of people
out there, and it will certainly point you much closer in the right direction toward attaining the
lifestyle that you desire in the year ahead.
With all of this in mind, read the questions below and think about them before you answer. Take
your time. Craft your answers carefully in your head first, and then write them down in a
dedicated notebook or a document somewhere on your computer that you can always come back
to.
This exercise will help you set clear goals for your career and lifestyle, and build a roadmap for
the coming year and beyond.
Your 1 Year Roadmap:
1. Write a paragraph (mark it with #1.) describing your business or professional life in one year:
what you will be doing, where you will do your work, what it will be like. Be as detailed as
possible. Make sure this is a practical, achievable reality for you.
2. Write a paragraph (mark it #2.) describing your lifestyle in one year: where you will be living,
what your relationship or dating life will be like, how your social life will be and what kind of
people youll surround yourself with, what you will be doing for recreation. Be as detailed as
possible. Make sure this is a practical, achievable reality.
3. Take a moment to envision your ideal, achievable life in one year. Is there any element of your
future lifestyle that you left out of the paragraphs above? If so, complete the scenario by filling in
the missing information with another paragraph (mark it #3.) in as much detail as possible.
If you have problems envisioning your future, another exercise I recommend taking a look at
is this article at Idea Sandbox. It will help you brainstorm your personal roles and areas of focus

in your life that are most important to you, and realize the importance and power of creating a
roadmap for your life.
4. Now examine the paragraphs youve written and extract three or more clearly defined longterm goals. List them as seen below (A, B, C, D) and leave a blank space underneath each one to
add more writing later:
A. first goal
B. second goal
C. third goal
D. etc.
5. Now, for each long-term goal, create simple, clear steps or milestones for reaching each
goal. Create a Plan Of Action for achieving Goal A, using well-defined steps. Break your Goal A
down into smaller, simpler, achievable steps. Remember, the more specific you get, the more
likely you are to actually achieve your goals! I go through all of my plans of action to see if I can
make each step Specific and Measurable (meaning its easy to know when youve completed it).
List at least three steps that you can start implementing now to start making progress towards
Goal A. Then move on and do the same for Goal B, Goal C, and any others you have.
6. Now create a timeline for each goal. In front of each step (or milestone) in your plan of action
in question 5, write a specific date on which you will complete it. (Naturally, in your timeline,
your final step should be completed sometime within the next year.)
7. Return to your answers to question 5 above. Next to or below each step in your plan of action,
where applicable, list the expenses and/or resources necessary to complete the step. Where
applicable, also write down where the money or resources will come from if you dont currently
have access to them.You might be very surprised just how affordable your goals actually are once
youve clarified them.
Another tool to use here that will help show you just how in reach your goals really might be is
Tim Ferriss Lifestyle Costing and Dreamlining exercise. Its a great way to lay out what you want
to be, do, and haveand figure out the associated costs with getting there. Check out Jared
Goralnicks free digital Dreamlining worksheet, which will allow you to map out your Dreamline
in an Excel spreadsheet (this is an exercise I do every 6 months).
8. Show your 1 Year Roadmap to a supportive, trustworthy person in your life. Ask them to
analyze each step on your timeline. Have them look for errors, omissions, inaccuracies, logical
flaws, unrealistic planning, or anything else that would keep you from achieving each step on the
appointed time. Make any necessary changes to your plans of action afterward.
9. Keep this Roadmap somewhere safe. Every month, take a day to re-examine your plan. See
what goals you met, what goals you missed, and what needs to be changed in the plan due to new
experiences, ideas, and opportunities that have come up since the month before.
10. Congratulate yourself. You have created and are now implementing your best future. Youve
already done more to get ahead and achieve your goals than most people do in a lifetime. Now
just stick to your plan, and dont forget your friends at Digital Nomad Academy when you reach
the top!

How We Can Help Each Other Achieve Our Business and Lifestyle Goals
Here inside DNA, you have a supportive community of like-minded people, all on a similar
journey with you, where we will all help each other reach our lifestyle goals together.
You can participate first by sharing your 1 Year Roadmap and your biggest goals in the Student
Forums. Then also by speaking up regularly in comments and forum discussions (you never
know, you might be able to help somebody else achieve their dreams and they might be able to
enable yours to come true as well!), and if you already have your own blog or website you might
consider writing an article to share your goals with other readers (for an example, check out my
life goals that I shared on my siteits a much longer timespan on this roadmap, but same idea).
If we join together and support each other in our personal development quests, well each have a
much better chance at success. I dont have all the answersnobody doesbut together we have
access to a tremendous wealth of resources, knowledge, abilities, and connections.
Will You Join Me?
I want to know what you are working towards. What does your ideal lifestyle look like? What
goals are important for you to achieve this year? Where are you in the process? What help do you
need to make it happen?
Everyone will have a different answer, and through understanding more about each other well be
able to work together and share information so we can all succeed.