I LOVE getting messages from readers who’ve benefited from the things I write, people who have shared passions, and those who seek further advice for how they can get the most out of their lives. (Note: I actually file a LOT of these emails into a special folder for when I need motivation and positive reinforcement!) Today is my birthday, and especially this week, I’ve been blown away by all the incredible feedback I’ve received about my writing, birthday wishes from around the globe, and incredible questions from all the awesome friends I’ve been fortunate to make through this site! So I’ve been brainstorming all week to come up with some way I can say “Thank You” for being part of what I’m building here at Thrilling Heroics. If you’re not already subscribed to my newsletter, take a moment to jump on my exclusive email list. You’ll immediately get a couple cool freebies, and over the next few days I’m going to be working on offering something really special STRICTLY for subscribers to the newsletter.

How to Go from High School Student to Master of the Universe

Today I want to start off by answering one particularly good question I received, here on the blog, because I think it’s definitely something that could benefit a lot of people. This is especially relevant for 18-year-olds recently out of high school, but I hope my thoughts will be useful to people in all stages of life. This comes from reader Binbin here in Bangkok:

Dear Cody,

First off, kudos to you for breaking free!!
I am truly inspired by your lifestyle. My question is…what would you tell your 18 self about earning money and opportunities with your current knowledge?
I want to explore the world but need to start earning money top fund it. How should I begin??

Best regards,
Binbin.

If I could jump into a time machine and go talk to my 8-years-younger self, there are all kinds of things I’d tell me:

A Winning Mindset:

The first step in dominating the world is to cultivate a strong mindset. This is one of the many things you won’t learn in school. The first valuable belief to instill in yourself is that you truly can achieve anything. What most of our parents told us as kids—that we can be anything we want to be when we grow up—is still true; there is no goal that is out of reach, no person you can’t speak to, no place you can’t go, no possession you can’t have, nothing you can’t be. If you really invest your time in understanding your desired end results, break that goal down, and do what’s necessary.

You can bend the rules of reality. We’re mostly limited by fear and traditional “rules” that we think apply to us. (Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get a 1-hour recording about how to overcome fears and live a remarkable life, by the way!) Start challenging assumptions. You don’t have to go to college, graduate within four years, take a desk job, stay close to home, get an MBA, climb the corporate ladder, or anything just because it’s what society tells you it’s what you’re supposed to do. Your life is your masterpiece, and you are the painter.

Find people who’ve done what you want to achieve successfully, and “model” them. Everything in life is pretty much a game—relationships, business, money, politics—figure out the rules and adopt the most empowering beliefs that will get you where you want to go. Follow people who are really passionate about something, and have broken the rules of “reality” to achieve great success. A few people that have done their own thing and become wildly successful at it: Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Continuing Education:

Parents may not like my advice here, but if I could go back and do college over again with the knowledge I have eight years later, I would have made some very different decisions. First, you need to ask yourself if a university degree is even worthwhile for you at all. A lot of universities provide a tremendous amount of value, and college life will give you experiences that will help you grow in many ways—but there are also plenty of skills you won’t learn in school (see Mindset above, for one). Some of the most successful business leaders today were dropouts: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Rose, and so on. And I know some wildly successful people personally—some of the most brilliant young entrepreneurs I know, and people who’ve been successful in the corporate world—who didn’t get degrees. That’s not to say that dropping out guarantees success—but there are other things you can invest your time in that might be more valuable than putting those years, and all that money, into traditional education.

I’d say that college is a good decision if you know what you want from your career. If you know what line of work you want to get into, and it tends to require a degree in order to be successful, or open doors, then go for it. If you’re just window shopping though, and you’re not sure what you want your life to look like, take a year and travel the world instead. Or take an interesting internship; experiment with entrepreneurship and fail; or even just read books! As much as I enjoyed and got a lot out of my college experience, I’d say I had no idea what I wanted, I had little direction, and could have made a lot more progress if I’d just gathered more life experience and gone into a degree knowing what I wanted out of it. If you’re going to go to university, pick up some hard skills—mathematics, science, economics, a business degree. Like Marc Andreessen says, “Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife.”

Whether you go to a university or not, that’s not to say education is overrated. Either way, you’ll need to take initiative to learn a lot on your own if you want to be successful. You can almost get the same education from one of the top schools—without the diploma—on your own. Look at open courseware and things like the Personal MBA program. It’s important to keep your skills sharp, stay competitive, and continue learning throughout your entire life. Most people don’t read a single book after college. Don’t be like them.

If you want to see the books that have been most influential in my life, check out the Required Reading section at the top of my resources page for my top-10 most important books.

Purpose and Goals:

As stated above, you can do almost anything in this life, despite what the haters will tell you. But the fine print is that you have to be willing to give something in exchange. Our mission here on earth is to provide value of some sort or another to other people. Napoleon Hill said that you need to get clear and realistic about what what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for the success you seek out of life. You need to figure out what your purpose is—what drives you and what you want to build; to share with the people around you.

Once you figure out who you are and what you want, you need to create a roadmap for yourself to arrive at your destination. Most people don’t clarify any well-thought-out goals for themselves. But if you spend time figuring out what few goals are most important for you—whether you set new resolutions once a year, or come up with your own system—even if you don’t achieve everything, simply making the plan in the first place will make you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action. Check out how to set SMART goals or New Year’s resolutions—but this is useful any time of year. USE IT.

Now that you know what you want, you should surround yourself with like-minded people. Take a good look at your friends, seek out people on social media, blogs, meetup groups, and at networking events for others who want to do similar things as you. Build a support group for yourself—you’ll find simply by hanging out with people that are doing what you want to do, have the things you want to have, and are the way you want to be, you’ll begin to change. One of the best decisions I ever made was to build a mastermind group with a small group of friends in college where we met weekly to hold each other accountable to our goals.

Entrepreneurship & Location-Independent Work:

If you truly want to be in charge of your time, your location, and the projects you get to work on, then self-employment is for you. Even if you work for someone else, if you want to become “location independent”, then take all of the lessons I’ve given above, and focus all your energy on limiting distractions and making enough time to invest and concentrate on your own projects. Creating value for others and finding ways to give back are the most important things you can do, but it is far too easy to allow yourself to be overwhelmed with other people’s agendas and never make any progress towards your own goals.

I’ve been asked a few times if lifestyle design can work for people in the “developing” world, and my answer is a resounding YES! Just like anyone else, you need to take stock of your skills, your abilities, and what you’re passionate about—and identify the things that others find valuable (i.e., worth paying money for). Anyone who is like Binbin, living here in Asia, I actually think you’re especially well-positioned to take advantage of geoarbitrage and the global economy. If you can identify ways you can provide value, especially if you can work online, look for unconventional ways to take advantage of those skills. Can you start doing freelance work for firms in the US or Europe, rather than just doing business locally? Can you sell your services online, to a global market, at a higher price that will allow you to work fewer hours and leverage your time to do more of what you love? Even just start part-time, as a side job. But get started.

Blogging:

Like my friend Sean Ogle, probably the most life-changing thing I ever did was start this blog. Go start a blog and start talking about the things that interest you! Blogging gave me a good excuse to keep reading, keep learning, to talk about the current events, ideas and technologies that interested me. Blogging also gave me a means to reach out to interesting folks from all walks of life, ask questions, and make friends with people around the globe. I’ve expanded my network of friends to include people I would never have imagined; I’ve made friends on the other side of the globe, landed clients on five continents, had incredible mentors, become involved in great collaborative projects, gotten into conferences, been interviewed in papers and massive media sites, had free business books sent to me, gotten access to countless great information products, and been involved in organizing incredible events—all because of this blog.

Additionally, on the social web, the barriers are very low. There really is almost nobody that’s out of reach—entrepreneurs you look up to, your favorite author, who knows! If you find yourself especially inspired by someone—start a conversation with them! If you need an excuse, simply take Karol Gajda’s advice and thank them for their writing. This really is the best way to pay a blogger without having to spend any money.

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On that note, I hope you will leave a message for me, and as I said, I always enjoy getting great questions from readers. Your feedback keeps me going most days, and it’s what keeps me creating useful content here! The best way to get in touch with me is to ask your questions in the comments or leave your comments on my Facebook fan page.

Feature photo by andresrueda.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: A Student’s Guide to Mastering the Universe

My favorite positive affirmation is that there is NOTHING you cannot DO, or BE, or HAVE! I like to repeat that to myself daily. But one must do some dedicated goal-setting, and a lot of goal-getting to get there!

This was supposed to be a New Year’s post, but unanticipated changes due to my travel schedule forced me to postpone writing it. That’s okay though, travel will teach you a few valuable lessons about embracing change and rolling with the punches. The nice thing about resolutions is that New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time you can make them!

In fact, you can set positive new resolutions for your life anytime you choose! New Years just gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements in the past year and set some meaningful new goals for the year ahead. But you can do this anytime you choose—you can make yearly goals on your birthday, or on tax day, or you can set resolutions every six months, every quarter, or you can even set monthly goals! You get the picture…

It’s already three weeks into the New Year, why should I set resolutions now?

The advent of a new year simply serves as a good reminder to reflect on all the progress you’ve made over the last 12 months and take what you’ve learned, and build a roadmap for the coming year and beyond.

It’s actually better that there has been time for the hype of the New Year to pass by. A lot of people intentionally avoid setting new goals on January 1st because they see New Years “resolutions” as oh-so-cliche. Or perhaps you set a traditional resolution and already fell off the wagon. Revisiting what “resolutions” mean now might give you an opportunity to set more meaningful goals this year. So, stay with me here and embrace the change. Don’t think of this as a New Years post. Instead, we are going to focus on goal-setting for this year.

We’ve already seen how powerful it can be when you set goals for yourself. You won’t succeed at every goal, but review your personal development progress at the end of each year to see how much you do accomplish! Simply setting the goals for yourself will greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll get much closer to your dream lifestyle in all these areas of your life.

But I can never keep my resolutions anyways. Why should I care?

So, as you can already see from my experience getting this post out much later than I intended, embracing change means that you don’t always get to do things exactly when you planned. But that’s okay, just because the timing changes doesn’t mean you should throw away the whole plan! Just having made the plan in the first place makes you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action than if you hadn’t made plans and set a time in your head in the first place. So the timing has changed. So what? You can still follow through. That’s what goal-setting is! It’s setting a plan—not a commandment set in stone. Don’t give up on your goals if you miss your timeline.

Another thing about your goals is that they may change over time, or things may happen that prevent you from achieving them. Or you may simply not put in the effort to complete all of your goals by the end of the year. But what matters most is that you set them. The act of making meaningful, clearly-defined goals, and writing them down, will put you ahead of 95% of people out there, and it will certainly point you much closer in the right direction toward attaining the lifestyle that you desire in the year ahead. I guarantee that if you set ten goals for yourself in 2008, simply the act of setting goals for yourself will put you MUCH closer to achieving your dreams! As Abraham Lincoln said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” Get clear on what you want to accomplish in the next year, and focus your energy towards those ends, and you’ll likely achieve many of your goals.

Okay, okay. So how do you actually do this?

Now it seems to be a popular thing to try to create 100 life goals or 100 goals for the new year. (Just do a Google search for “100 goals” and you’ll see how many communities there are out there talking about the number 100!) Maybe it’s just that the number ‘one-hundred’ has so much appeal… There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go about it that way I suppose, but I think that’s going about it backwards. You’ve already started out by adding another goal to the top of your pile of things to do: To create 100 goals! But does having any particular number of goals really objectively have any value to you? No. In fact, the number is fairly meaningless, so don’t start out with any particular number to reach.

Instead, try starting with the bigger picture in mind. As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” To do this, we will examine what roles we play, and what we want those areas of our life to look like in a year from now.

Brainstorm your personal Roles & Areas of Focus

The necessary first step is to brainstorm your life roles, and other important personal areas of focus. Some goal-setting systems will tell you what categories to set goals for, but I believe you will come up with much more meaningful “categories” if you reflect personally about what roles you play and what areas of focus are most important to you. This is the system that Tony Robbins uses in his Personal Power seminars, and many other professional coaches (like my friend Tim Walther) use successfully in goal-setting workshops with thousands of people every year.

Think about your work, your family, your hobbies… What roles do you play? For example, when I brainstormed, my roles included freelance web designer, business owner, professional networker, peer mentor, writer, traveler, and artist. But perhaps you are a mother, a CEO, an accountant, rock climber, church member, or amateur filmmaker. The roles that we play are different and unique for each individual. But what “hats” do you wear? What roles are important to you that you want to improve upon in the next year?

Roles tend to sound like titles or jobs, even if you don’t get paid for them! They are how you relate to other people. But besides your roles, what other areas of focus are important to you personally? For most people this will include things like personal finances, health and recreation, social life, and so on. But maybe your areas of focus include nutrition, or spirituality, or professional development and training…

Take some time to brainstorm and reflect on what roles and areas of focus are most important in your life, and once you have them all written down on a piece of paper, imagine one-by-one what each of those areas of your life could “look like” in a year. This is called visualization, and it’s an important tool in attaining your desires. Visualize how much progress you could make towards positive relationships with your family. Or how much you could improve upon your strengths at work. Imagine yourself in a new profession, being paid to do something you love. Or even picture yourself on vacation to some beautiful exotic location! But don’t imagine these things passively—visualize yourself participating in making those changes…in experiencing those improvements and accomplishments. Write down a sentence or short paragraph next to each role and each area of focus about what that “picture” looks like.

Now set some goals!

Now that you have your big picture and you’ve thought about where you’re going with each of your personal roles, you finally have some direction. Visualizing what each of those areas of your life could look like one year from now should give you vivid images of what you want to DO, BE, and HAVE. So the final piece of the puzzle in making meaningful resolutions this year is to break those visualizations down into smaller steps you need to take to get there. What are the next actions that will get you closer to your desired outcomes? If you want to buy a new laptop, how much money should you set aside each month? If you want rock-hard abs, how many crunches are you going to do each day?

The best way to set goals that are longer-term than your weekly To Do list items is to start practicing SMART goals. SMART, in this case, is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can review these questions in your head as you set goals, or you may want to write them out for each major goal you set.

Specific — Is it something concrete, that you’ll know when you’ve completed it? This is one big reason why “resolutions” fail. People often set ambiguous goals that are too broad to be actionable or too unclear to know when you’ve fulfilled the requirements. For instance, a popular New Years’ resolution is “to get in shape.” But how are you going to achieve that? That is only a very murky version of the visualization that we’ve already practiced above. Now make it specific!

Measurable — How will you measure your progress at the end of the year, or how will you know when you’ve achieved your objective? Think about what specific criteria you’ll have to fulfill to reach the specific outcome you want. And a good way of measuring may be to keep a notebook of your progress toward the goal, or involving your friends in keeping you on track.

Attainable — Is it realistic and possible for you to achieve this in the year ahead, or are you reaching too far? Do you have too much on your plate already? Set goals that will make you stretch, and learn, and grow. But don’t set unrealistic, far-fetched goals that will only discourage you when you don’t meet them.

Relevant — This is actually my favorite of these questions to ask when you’re doing these mental exercises, and it is the first one that I ask because it is the best filter because I think it is the most important. Put simply, is the goal important? Is it really going to get you closer to your dreams, and is it really worth investing your energy in? Or should you focus on other, more important goals?

Time-Bound — When will you complete this goal? Specifically? By October? In Q1? On your birthday? Remember what I said about being flexible with changes in timing toward the beginning of this post, but attaching a time to your goals makes them immediate and important. Remind yourself regularly that you have a goal to meet. When do you plan to start, and what is your target date for completion?

You may come up with a hundred goals for 2008, or you may come up with just two or three really important goals for the year. I go through my list and eliminate all the non-SMART goals, and I try to focus on the ‘attainability’ aspect of my goals and think about how much I can realistically accomplish in just one year, so I have about 3-4 top concrete goals for each of my 10 roles/areas of focus.

Examples of My Personal and Professional Development Goals for the New Year

In my own brainstorming, I found that my most important Roles included Web Designer/Consultant, Entrepreneur, Blogger, Peer Mentor, Traveler, and Artist. And other Areas of Focus for me included things like Social & Relationship-oriented goals, Health & Recreation, and Financial goals. After I settled on these nine top areas of importance for my life, I visualized how I’d ideally like to see each of those realms in a year from now… What sort of progress would I like to make? What things would I like to learn? How successful can I be in a year? And I not only asked these questions, but I tried to actually put myself in that future reality—what will it feel like? How will I get there? Is it truly important?

So, once I had the broader picture of where I’d like to be in a year (yet still very specific mental images), I worked backwards to think what smaller steps I’ll need to accomplish to get to that point. I tried to frame each of my goals into the three areas of things I want to BE, DO, or HAVE, and I tried to frame them in the affirmative, to reinforce to my own brain that I will accomplish these things this year! I also tried to phrase my goals positively, focusing on what I should do to get there, not what I want to do less of. Here are the 24 major goals I’ve set for myself this year, broken down by my Roles and Areas of Focus:

I. My goals as a Web Designer & Consultant

• I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work.
• I WILL HAVE a new Apple desktop computer.
• I WILL EARN $60K as a freelancer this year.

II. My goals as an Entrepreneur

• I WILL BE the owner of my own web consulting business.
• I WILL HAVE multiple streams of residual income (through products, training materials, and partnerships).

III. My goals as a Blogger

• I WILL WRITE at least one high-value article each week for Thrilling Heroics (52+).
• I WILL REDESIGN ThrillingHeroics.com.
• I WILL DO one interview each month for Thrilling Heroics.
• I WILL COMMENT on other relevant blogs for one hour each week.

IV. Career Development and goals as a Peer Mentor

• I WILL CREATE a dedicated Mastermind group website with forums to enable remote discussion of personal & professional development.
• I WILL COMMUNICATE with Mastermind members monthly to follow up on their goal-setting and career planning.
• I WILL READ one personal development book each month.

V. My goals as a Traveler

• I WILL COMMUNICATE with international friends once each quarter.
• I WILL PARTICIPATE in online traveler communities like The Thorn Tree Forums and The Couch Surfing Project.
• I WILL LIVE in Thailand for 3+ months.

VI. My goals as an Artist

• I WILL SELL my photography professionally via an online gallery or stock photography community.

VII. My Social and Relationship-related goals

• I WILL CONTACT old friends on their birthdays.
• I WILL ATTEND Burning Man.

VIII. My Health and Recreational goals

• I WILL DO 30+ pushups each day.
• I WILL DO 3 half-hour cardio workouts per week.
• I WILL HAVE a great road bike.

IX. My Financial goals

• I WILL ELIMINATE any credit card balances.
• I WILL HAVE a $2000 emergency fund.
• I WILL HAVE my own self-employed medical/dental/vision insurance.

Remember, the more specific you get, the more likely you are to actually achieve your goals! I went through all of my goals to see if they were each Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, and if they weren’t, I’d throw them out. I won’t include each step for ALL of my 24 goals here because I don’t want to bore you! But, I’ll demonstrate with my first goal how I answered these questions in my head:

GOAL: I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work

1. Specific: I will create an online portfolio with client testimonials, service & product offerings, and business contact information.
2. Measurable: I’ll know this goal is completed when I have a freelance site on its own unique URL that directs potential clients properly to my pipeline.
3. Attainable: I have built numerous websites in the past, so I will easily be able to build myself a business site (it doesn’t have to start out perfect!)
4. Relevant: This is important in order to establish an online home for my business and build instant credibility with potential clients.
5. Timely: I will complete this project before the end of February, 2008.

Now that you’ve seen my own detailed example of brainstorming Roles & Areas of Focus, visualizing outcomes, and SMART goal-setting for 2008, what are your personal resolutions for the new year? What goals are important for you to achieve this year? If you haven’t already spent time thinking about meaningful resolutions for the year, brainstorm on this and let me know what you think of my process in the comments.

When setting your career and academic goals for your business advancement, consider one of these online degrees that will help you manage your time better.

Please hit that comment section below and share your thoughts… Good luck goal-setting!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Set Meaningful Personal & Professional Development Goals and Make Progress Towards Your Ideal Life