How's your year so far?

Occasionally, I go off script and instead of giving success advice, I just open up and shoot from the hip. This is one of those times.

It's almost April, so I ask, how's the new year go for you so far; how about those resolutions?

According to the University of Scanton's Journal of Clinical Psychology, only 8% of people are successful in achieving their resolutions.

That just absolutely floored me and got me to thinking about how I was stacking up as it came to my new year's goals.

As March 2016 is wrapping up, I recently spent a lot of time just reflecting on where I came from in just 4 short years. We can't successfully get to where we want to be if we don't understand where we have been.

Here is just a few highlights of my personal journey...

I very clearly remember being part of the 92% of people who failed to meet their resolutions, not just that year, but for many years.

For years I knew that I couldn't create a better life for my daughter by working a dead end job that kept me bound by someone else's schedule, so I tried everything to get out of the rat race; I built an engraving business, got into e-commerce, even tried my hand at authorship, but nothing worked and I kept finding myself in a position where I was having to go back to a 9 to 5 or be a stay at home dad where we barely lived paycheck to payccheck. Nothing seemed to click.

 

• I was a slave to the job, a slave to the clock, a slave to my creditors.

• I had no time to do the things I enjoyed.

• I had no energy to enjoy time with my family.

• No extra money, so no savings, no vacation, no splurging, no emergency fund.

To make matter worse, I couldn't get on facebook without seeing, what seemed to be everyone around me, being more successful than I was. It sucked. Friends taking off in the middle of the week to travel across country, new cars, new house, blah blah blah...

It seemed like everyone around me was successful while I had to listen to my daughter (4 years old at the time) crying because I couldn't afford a happy meal for her.

I kept asking myself,

"Why is this so hard?"

I definitely had a bruised ego, but I still had this dream that I could make a little extra money while spending more time with my family and not chained to a desk or getting stuck in traffic.

I started thinking that the only way to make money online was to sell stuff on eBay or turning into some sort of sleazy MLM type marketer (not that all MLM ventures are pyramid schemes). It was heart breaking because I did not want to do that.

Being able to help people and actually get paid for it was unfathomable to me and, though I saw it done, I felt that you had to be an expert with over 20 years expertise and the title of guru to be able to be successful online.

I was wrong!

Way wrong. Looking back on it, I was always just a few steps away from my dream, I just didn't see it or understand what it was that I was missing.

My goal for the past decade or so, was to figure out how to get out of the rat race. Breaking the golden handcuffs once and for all.

I finally found the secret to having a successful life; After years of trial and error, Zig Ziglar has been giving the answer for years; "You'll get everything in life that you want if you help enough people get what they want."

This is the reason for this blog series. My goal, now that I am out of the rat race, is to show as many people as I can how to do the same.

Now it's your turn

What is your resolution? How can I help you climb out of the maze? Not everyone has the same definition of success, nor do we all have the same hurdles to jump over, so what do you need help with?

Drop me a note and let me know.