229: Begin With the End in Mind – Friday Fundamentals

Begin With the End in Mind

When starting any new venture you think about what your goals are, what the end product or result looks like, and then start building towards those. This goes for any new sport or hobby you pick up, your education, career, and your life. When you take this approach, you are building the foundation for your success. Begin with the end in mind is a phrase many have heard.

Beginning with the end in mind isn’t just some fancy phrase though. It has quite the merit. See, when you start with the end in mind you have to visualize and contemplate what that end thing is. That could be a status, a product, a result, or a number of other things. It provides a framework for you to strive towards, benchmark progress, and serves as a target for you to aim at. But most importantly and most excitingly, this creation can be anything you want. You can set the bar as high as you want, only limited by your imagination. Once you identify what the end goal looks like for you, then you can use that as motivation to get up every day and strive towards achieving that goal. This for me is where the real value is.

Stephen Covey details this “Begin with the end in mind” in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen writes that when you begin with the end in mind, things are created twice. You create something first in your mind or conceptually. The second time is when you create it physically, or in reality. He goes on to use an example of building a home. You would first design the home how you want, designing the floor plan to fit your needs, visualizing the details of the finishings, etc. Then you would begin to create the blueprints, all before ground is ever broken. Only once you have created every detail conceptually, then would you start building and creating your new home.

One of the principles here on The Real Estate Way to Wealth and Freedom podcast is “Engineer the lifestyle you want”. This is a very similar principle to beginning with the end in mind. In order to engineer something, one must understand what the finished product looks like, thus beginning with the end in mind.

If you’re not sure what journey you are on just yet, this might seem like a difficult exercise – to begin with the end in mind. You might not yet know what that end result looks like for you yet, and that’s ok. With some thoughts and self-reflection, you can begin to shape that end and put it into tangible thoughts, words, and eventually actions. Let’s look at how.

Engineer Your Lifestyle

Beginning with the end in mind, you must first have well, an end in mind. So let’s take a look at some ways you can visualize and create your own end.

  1. Imagination. Look at your future as a blank slate, and you can put anything you want on it. This starts to free up your imagination and allows you to be creative in building the life you want.
  2. Rescript your thoughts. Much of the way you view your future is based on something you were taught or learned earlier in your life. You may have to redefine these things if they do not align with your desired outcomes.
  3. Create your own personal mission statement, from which you can base your principles. Your personal mission statement outlines what is important to you, what you stand for, and how you want to live your life.

These three steps will put you on the path to identifying and creating your end. Starting with these, you can begin to envision your future, change your reality with your thoughts, and create a framework that will guide you in your approach.

Journey

Beginning with the end in mind is ultimately identifying something to strive towards. This target will help you visualize the path you want to take in life, and give you something to aim toward. The real journey is in your day-to-day quest to live the life you want. Use your imagination to create whatever result you want, whether that’s in your business, career, family, or anything else. Understand that whatever you can imagine is possible. Pursue your goals each and every day by doing something that moves your forward step by step. When you start with the end in mind, make constant progress towards that end goal, and never quit, you will have pushed yourself to new heights and have achieved whatever it is you set your mind to.

Resources

Visit Audible for a free trial and free audiobook download!