Most of us who are in the self-storage business or own our own businesses set yearly goals.
I recently went through the process I use prior to setting my goals with the members of our Inner Circle community, and it seemed to make an impact, so I thought I would share it with you if you’re re interested.
The process I will describe is not the only process, or the best process for creating a powerful space for your goals to happen in.
It is just the one I use, and it works for me and many of the people I work with.
It is to a large degree part of the success I had in creating the portfolio goal I had and mentioned in the book Creating Wealth Through Self Storage.
If you have your own process, and it works for you and produces results, by all means, stay with it.
What I do is a product of all the training I have had over the years, including Landmark Education, Tony Robbins, Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (Steven Covey), spiritual training at Unity Churches, and some Eastern traditions.
Before I lay out the four-step process, let me share a concept as a context for the process itself.
Concept – Is It the Past or Future?
If you ask the average person on the street, “What gives you who you are today?” they will most likely say, “It is my past.”
Although valid, this is only partially right, in my opinion.
What if it is not the past, what gives you who you are right now?
Try on it is the future that really shapes and creates who you are in the present moment?
Wait. That doesn’t make sense. Well…maybe it does.
Think about when you fell in love, and you felt it reciprocated.
Or the day you got engaged or married.
What was your experience of life?
Why was that your experience?
Well, trying on it was because you saw a future with this person, and the emotional experience of that future gave you the experience you were having.
It was the future you were living into, giving you your experience in the NOW.
Think about the day before you take a vacation If you are like me, I am ruining around putting out fires so I can go, but I am excited, happy, and mostly in a good mood.
Think about the day before you take a vacation. If you are like me, I am running around putting out fires so I can go, but I am excited, happy, and mostly in a good mood.
Why?
My future, called a “vacation,” is giving me my current experience.
Then why do all of us usually say it is our past?
I think it is because our past is not in the past.
It is in our future.
When a baby is born, what is in that infant’s future?
Nothing and everything.
They are a blank slate waiting to be created.
Then life happens.
I can remember when I was in 5th grade, I went up to Kathy, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I asked her if I could eat lunch with her. She laughed and ended up telling her group of friends I guess, because they laughed at me for quite a while.
Now, do you think that stays in my past?
Hell no. That became critical information for me, and I put it in my future so that experience would not happen again.
This is not wrong; it just limits what is possible for me in the world of relationships. And anytime I thought of asking someone on a date, the past was right there informing me what might happen.
Dating was hard for me.
It is a miracle I ever got married, and someday, I will tell you how I got engaged. It is not the usual way, and there were definitely no videos, pictures, or public proposals.
So, step one of the process I am going to share deals with putting in the past experiences that happened in the previous year (or years) that could limit what is possible for us in the upcoming year.
Did you know you can actually be completed and put in the past disempowering experiences that have potential limiting effects on our future?
Well, you can.
The human mind is a very powerful thing.
The 4-Step Process.
Here is the process I go through before setting goals for the year.
I have found this very helpful because I believe any undistinguished or unrecognized limiting belief I haven’t honestly looked at and dealt with controls what is possible for my future.
I have a lot of my money and investor money riding on my ability to create goals and targets and hit them.
Step One: Acknowledge and Experience What You Don’t Want To Take Into The Next Year.
I think it is important to realize that most people spend a lot of energy avoiding and not wanting to look for what was unpleasant and what didn’t work for them in the previous year.
Most people, with a wave of the hand, will say, “Everything is OK. I ran into a rough patch or two, but things are good,” or “Everything is fine,” or something similar.
As an entrepreneur, I think a self-reflective life is critical to success.
I am on the hunt for disempowering thoughts, experiences, or anything I catch myself saying or thinking that can disempower or limit me.
I get excited when I find them.
So, I looked through 2023 and looked for where I experienced anything negative that I didn’t want in my future.
And boy, was there a lot.
I remember the 2008 recession; I experienced many issues around financing and refinancing. Then, it was impossible to get a loan for a long time, and refinancing loans was also very difficult.
The experience I had was something like, “I’m not enough. If I really had my act together, I would not be having these issues.”
What I said to myself was, “I’m not enough.”
Now, I did the work back then. I am doing here to complete it. But I noticed I had a familiar experience in 2023 concerning getting financing, and a familiar feeling.
As I looked at it, I remembered the 2008-2009 financing experience, and I had to acknowledge to myself the same experiences and feelings were there.
Now, these are not bad to have. They don’t serve me very well. I certainly don’t want them in 2024 informing me what is possible around getting loans.
If you are spiritual, this is where a prayer to have this fear be removed and put in the past where it belongs can be helpful.
If you are not religious not and prayer is not part of your life, know that your thoughts created this fear and reaction, not the event.
If this fear is just a thought, a thought can be changed and put in the past where it belongs.
Step Two: Look at the impact of that experience on me.
In this case, the impact was the experience of “not being enough” and “something is wrong with me.”
It made me want to play small and not do deals so I didn’t have to deal with this feeling and experience again.
Step Three: Look at the impact on others.
When I am playing small, my partners and stakeholders get a very wimpy version of me. What becomes possible for them and our investments get smaller and smaller.
That is not what I am committed to.
Step Four: Complete and Create.
So, if this is what happened, and I can fully acknowledge and take responsibility for what and how I experienced it, the experience and feelings are no longer undistinguished and in the background.
They are right there for me to own and be responsible for.
Now, these thoughts and feelings do not serve me, and they are certainly not something I want in the upcoming year.
So, I take responsibility for my experience and feelings (not the event, just my experience of it and what I made it mean), and I make the decision to leave it in my past.
I am replacing Not Being Enough with Creativity and Power in 2024.
We have already replaced one of the hard-to-get bank loans with an SBA loan instead of on a development we are doing, and we are using investor money and bridge financing to take the land down while the SBA loan works through underwriting (SBA takes longer than bank loans).
I will be hunting for the feeling “I am not enough” and “I need to play smaller” in the upcoming year, and when I feel them, replace them with Creativity and Power.
I have completed on similar experiences and feelings around investors, partners, and the economy.
Goals
Now after that work, I am freed up to create yearly goals.
I am not dragging around the crap from the previous year.
I set three to five powerful, measurable goals for my self-storage business for the year.
Then, given these goals will happen by 12-31-2024, I take each one and go backward, all the way to Jan. 1, 2024, creating benchmarks so I know if I am on target or not.
I have the experience of creating goals from a clean and powerful space, and it increases my chances of success.
This is just the process I use, and I share it with you if you want to use it or something similar.
Good luck, and create a powerful, successful, and fulfilling 2024.
