Note: this is a guest post by Kevin from Change Your Tree. Image by TIO…

Are you as successful as you want to be? Do you want to be more successful?

Most people, even those who have achieved great things, still want more out of life. It doesn’t matter how far along you are, you can always have more. That’s the beauty of life. But how do we begin achieving our goals or achieve at a higher level than we currently do?

In order to answer this question we need to analyze one specific aspect of our success; our net work. Notice that I didn’t say, “network”, I said, “net work”.

Why? Because your net worth is directly proportionate to your net work. No work, no worth.

What is my net work?

Your net work is your output - it’s the energy that you put into yourself, your life, your career, and your future. It’s the drive to be successful. It’s not a calculation of what you want to achieve, it’s a calculation of what you are willing to achieve.

Your net work could be the time you put into your career or the energy you spend on personal growth and education.

Take responsibility for your current situation

Before we continue talking about how to increase your net work, we need to address why you are where you are now.

It is important to be personally accountable for your current situation. In a free country, nobody is responsible for your success except you. This goes both ways; if you are poor, you need to take responsibility. If you are rich, you can take responsibility for that also.

If you place blame on anything but yourself, you give those people or things power over your life. You live as a victim and you will stay a victim. If you are poor you will stay poor. If you are unhealthy, you will stay unhealthy.

Take responsibility for your life now so you can take responsibility for your success later.

Increasing your net work to increase your net worth

Increasing your net work for the short term is easy. Increasing it for the long term is a bit trickier. However, the same process should be followed no matter how far you want to take yourself.

Step One:

Analyze your situation and think about what it will take to get moving. If you are poor, you may have a large variety of opportunities. If you are rich, you may feel like you are doing everything you can and it may be harder to find a way to improve.

In the end, you won’t know where you’re going until you know where you’re at. Figure out your starting point before moving on. Look at your base salary, your income potential, your current net worth, your level of education, your health, etc.

Step Two:

Promise yourself to make slow and steady gains. Get rich quick schemes will move you backward. The easy roads all have dead end signs. The short cuts will get you lost in the woods.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Step Three:

Write out definitive, but achievable goals.

Step Four:

Develop a game plan.

Step Five:

Execute.

Ten ways to increase your net work

Remember, it’s called “net” work, not “gross” work. Minimizing loss is just as important as maximizing gain. Your net work is calculated by the gains you make, minus the set backs. Don’t just look for ways to move forward, look for things that are dragging you down as well.

1. Get more education
2. Read non-fiction books on a regular basis
3. Change careers
4. Open your own business
5. Become more efficient with what you are already doing
6. Work harder or longer
7. Amputate baggage (debt, bad relationships, etc)
8. Kill your addictions (and mini addictions) (what is a mini addiction?)
9. Live healthier (increases potential output and decreases down time)
10. Ask for a raise or new opportunities

Once you have owned your life, analyzed your situation, set achievable goals, and developed a plan of action, all you have left to do is execute.

When you execute, do so full force. A “maybe I can, maybe I can’t” approach isn’t going to cut it. You have to get fired up and drive forward. If your plan isn’t working, don’t make excuses, just change your plan. Don’t take no for an answer. Continue going back to the drawing board until you achieve what you set out to do.

And continue repeating the same phrase to yourself: “My net worth is directly proportionate to my net work.”

Kevin is the author of Change Your Tree (visit / subscribe to feed), a blog dedicated to helping people change their life through deep self improvement and change their family tree by passing on those improvements to their children and grandchildren.

Tags: Money, Personal Growth, Success & Habits //