I recall reading an article about a couple leaving everything behind and literally sailing away. They had planned this escape for 20 years. I thought about how this could happen, and two words came to mind: Intention and Plan. This couple had a clearly defined intention, backed by a concrete plan and an irrevocable decision not to let anything get in their way. They figured out what they really wanted in life and focused on what they wanted to achieve.
How many of us are still stuck in figuring out what we really want?
We make intentional goals, hopefully write them down and then—but don’t wrap a plan around them. We sketch a plan in our head – go through the thought process, but that’s it. We get distracted, life happens and there we are back to wishful thinking. We get stuck in not knowing how it will happen. We often ask ourselves, “Where is the guarantee that my effort will get what I want?”
You need an undying commitment to make something happen. You process from hoping it will happen, to believing it will happen to knowing it will happen. Every cell in your body is aligned with that fact. That’s what this “sail away couple” did. She gave her resignation notice at work 12 years ago. She explained to her employer that sometime around a future date that she and her husband were going sailing, and they wouldn’t be back. She quotes, “I don’t think they believed me.”
Bob Proctor, a mentor of mine, asked a young couple what they really wanted in life. They said they wanted to buy a house. Bob said, “Well, go buy one.” They said, “We can’t. We don’t have the money.” He said, “You don’t need any money. You haven’t made the decision to buy the house.”
That conversation really made me think. Bob explained that what we do is put the cart before the horse.
They needed to decide to buy the house first. From there the way would be shown.
He suggested they put a debt reduction plan in place, visit homes to find the kind of home they wanted, talk with a realtor about the market, and create a folder where they can store photos of homes and furnishings they loved. Staying stuck in their current reality of ‘not being able to buy a house because they didn’t have the money’ is a fixed-mindset way of thinking.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale says, “You must have a goal, not a vague fuzzy goal, but a sharply focused objective. You must know what you want to do, where you want to go and what you want to be. The next step is to pray about this goal; to be sure it’s the right objective for you. If it isn’t right, it’s wrong, and nothing wrong ever turned out right. Then hold the goal tenaciously in the conscious mind until it sinks into the subconscious and that’s when you have it, and it has you…all of you… your hopes, your thoughts, your efforts.”
Even though I have never met this couple, I’m sure the wind in their sails is filled with determination, focus, and unwavering courage.