The American Education Institute

This is quite simple and easy to do, really, and yet the overwhelming vast majority of people do not do it. But when you actually take the few minutes that it takes to write your goals down on paper, you’ll descover that you are more apt to feel “accountable” or more “responsible” for what you’ve written than if you merely vocalize your goals (to your spouse, for example, or to a friend) or fail to voice them at all, and merely “think” them. If you actually go to the trouble of setting down your goals on paper, sign it, and put a date to it, your commitment to what you’ve stated just naturally increases. To add even more to this level of commitment, you can share your written statements with someone you trust and deeply care about. Perhaps make a copy and give it to that person. Perhaps have him or her sign and date it as well, as a witness. You might even go so far as to have it notarized, althought this is clearly not necessary.

The point is, when you take the trouble to do these things, you are actually publishing your intentions (even if in so small a way) which will make them public (in your own mind at least and that makes you accountable. When politicians make promises, their constituents generally remember. When politicians break–or forget–their promises, they are generally not reelected. Think about that when you make goal-type promises to yourself. Will you deserve the vote of your spouse or friend four years after you’ve written down your “promises”?

If you’d like to make your written goals even more “published,” you can always send them to the author and publisher of 100% Financing When Buying Real Estate. Your writings will be kept on file and communicated to anyone you wish, provided you put such request in (yes) writing. After a year–or two or four or however more you say–the written goals you had sent in can be retrieved and discussed at your leisure. Perhaps at that time, with a little consultation, you may be better able to ascertain how realistic your goals truly are, and/or how they need to be changed or modified–if they do at all.

After you’ve written down all your goals, both short – and – long term, reread them every single morning and night—even after you have them memorized! Perhaps this seems silly to you, or a bit too juvenile. But you would be amazed how just so simple an action as this can greatly affect your thinking and motivation on a daily basis. Just the tiny little act of opening a drawer, pulling out a sheet of paper, and reading it (aloud even) twice a day, every day, will work wonders in absolutely convincing you that what you’ve written is attainable, and you will be constantly reviewing in your mind all the methods you can use to attain them. If you didn’t keep rereading that paper, you wouldn’t consciously keep doing such reviews, and your interest in achieving your very own goals may start to decrease. And if you lose sight of your goals, you’ll never achieve them.

Another thing is to try and make sure your goals don’t conflict with one another. For instance, if your stort-term goal is to work extra hard to accumulate some extra investment cash over the next few months and your long-term goal is to leave your job, you have a conflict. You’ll tend to put in overtime, evenings and weekends, etc., and that will reduce or perhaps eliminate altogether any time for searching out properties in which to invest.

Also figure that your goals should be flexible. And this works in both directions. For example and as stated earlier, if you discover that you are not going to make your financial goal–yet–within your first five years, you can alway revise it downward, so that the income or net worth you’re shooting for can be somewhat less than you planned for originally. On the other hand, if in the happy circumstance you find yourself able to exceed your original goal, you can (and should) then revise it upward. Now you can shoot for a million dollars within the first five years, say, instead of only $750,000.

Lastly, make sure you write down goals that are to be measured. It really does no good to state long-range things like: “in five years, I want to be happy” or “I want the value of my property to become more valuable in the next half decade.” These goals are not specifically measurable. They are much too subjective and would probably be meaningless to anyone wlse you might ask to read them. Keep your goals quantifiable and measurable to anyone outside yourself. If you write that you want to own fifty properties by the end of five years, anyone can tell if you’re met your goal or not. If you want so many millions of dollars in your savings account by the end of several years, call your banker. He or she an tell you in a second how well you now measue up to the goal standards you’ve set. (By the way, stashing all your cash into a savings account is definitely not the way to acieve real wealth.) The way to accumulate lots of cash is not with a Return on Investment (ROI) of 2.5 to 3.0 percent per annum. No, it happens when you ROI grows to ten and fifty times that percent. Or more! And it’s all possible through investing in income producing real estate.)

January 14,2009
Dr. Eric T. Martin