Thinking Long Term - Building Assets

Well, a lot have happened for me lately.. After I had a great few months in work, I had the worst 2 months of my career. I knew from the start, that being self employed, had two sides. I can sometimes make a lot of profits and I can sometimes make none or even lose money. There is absolutely no guarantee… I wake up in the morning and I know that I’m the only one that is in charge of my performance, no one else, no boss, nothing.. When I am doing great it’s great, but when things are going wrong, I am the only one to blame.. Fortunately, every weak period, forces me to think what went wrong and how I can become better in the future. This period yielded some conclusions for me..

1. Being focused- I love the the famous saying “don’t count your chickens before they are hatched”. I think that being down to earth and to keep working diligently, no matter what, is the best antidote for weak periods in life/business. Weak periods will come in the future, that’s for sure, but being focused keeps them as short as possible.

2. Being Humble - it is easy to brag, yet it’s a lot more challenging to consider your words and see if they are really useful. Even though I consider myself pretty humble most of the time, there were a few times when I bragged about my work and I regret those. I believe the saying “the tree that has the most fruit is the tree that bends to the ground”. I intend to implement it more in the future..

3. Thinking long term and building assets. I think that having assets, that produce income whether you work or not, is a very important aspect in business. I know that in the last two months, even though they were not successful at all for me as far as my business went, I still had a little stream of income going in from a few assets I have (a couple of websites and services online). Building more assets is one of the ways to become more successful and I plan to keep doing so. I know it requires a lot of work, since every new project needs time and attention. However, I intend to keep planting seeds for the future.. In general, I believe in building assets, not just in business- I think that when you think long term you can benefit from it. I have goals written in my calendar for twenty years from now and I hope to achieve them. Some of them are financial, some of them concern my loved ones, some are related to my hobbies or to other causes that I see as worthy (for me it’s instructing Karate, to keep volunteering etc..). I just think that it’s good to think for the long term from time to time . I love this quote “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant” Robert Louis Stevenson.