Formulating a Plan to Get What You Want

It is vital to realize that a one time payoff doesn’t lead to you achieving your goals. It was not good enough for Jacob and it should not be good enough for you. Before you accept compensation in exchange for your value,  there are several points to consider.

Know your worth. Your time is valuable and you should treat it like it is. How you spend your time says all about what you are an expert in. The information you gain from how you spend your time is a valuable asset. Most people do not see the potential that is within them to start a business or a consulting company based on the skills they already possess. Most people behave as if their means to an end is associated with someone paying them to do a job for specific salary. For your information, a salary is a controlled amount of money paid to an employee that is often times not negotiable. Unfortunately, a salary is not an accurate label of your value. As a matter of fact, what job or place of employment can truly represent how valuable you are by the salary they pay you? Who wants to pay you a wage that is equal to your value? The truth is no one can truly afford you. You are priceless. No one can pay the price that you are worth. For Christians, we know this to be true because Jesus paid the price for our sins. This salvation opened the door for us to live life free from sin. Jesus paid a steep price for us. If what I am saying is true, why do we waste our time trying to find someone to compensate us for our value? Despite all of the energy you put out, you will never find equal compensation for your value. If you naïvely continue to search for it, you will continuously find yourself disappointed. It is in your best interest to identify ways to create the value you believe you are worth.

Assign tasks to your time. When your time is allocated to a particular activity, you have to spend it wisely on activities you desire to master. You should use your time to master something. Life experiences are meant to help you grow and develop in ways you have never grown before. But if you spend your time doing something you do not master, your time will be wasted. Time is a precious commodity that each human being has in a finite amount, and we are empowered by God to manage it. The responsibility for allocating this resource lies squarely on our shoulders. Even if you never become a CEO, a leader, or an influential person, you will always have CEO power over your time and what you do with it. In addition, remember, time waits for no one. Before you know it, five to ten years will pass by and you will look back and wonder what you have done with your time. If you know this will happen, and it will, it behooves you to plan out your time and what you will be doing with it. Assign activities to your time, assign resources to your time, and assign relationships to your time. You will end up appreciating the planning process you went through. Your time will thank you for that as well. Learning and mastering this is equivalent to unlocking the secrets to success and wealth.

Master your trade or skill. Use your time to learn something new or achieve mastery over something you already do well. This simply equates to becoming educated. People are quick to equate education with college degrees, but education is much broader than the parchment that a diploma is written on. Education is learning a new activity or behavior that will equip you to accomplish a task. Education occurs more often than people realize. Some people are educated by life, by experience, by a teacher or mentor, or in a classroom. Regardless of how you are educated, it is critical to know that education is the engine for true success. If you are not willing to invest in your education, you are not willing to see yourself grow. You need education just as much as the next person. Your focus should not be to walk down the graduation aisle but to learn from someone that knows more than you about the subject matter you care about. When you know that you are educated about what you are doing, you have power; at least more power than you had before. You have more power to think, to perform at your best, and to be whomever you need to be because you now know how to function with your newfound knowledge.

Learn people. This has to be a skill you master above all others in order to achieve the success you desire. Not knowing people is like not knowing yourself. When you do not know people, you lose valuable opportunities to learn about who you are, what you like, what interests you, what annoys you, what makes you happy. These key data points help you determine who other people are and how you should generally, and I mean generally, deal with them. What you learn about people should not be used as a lump sum measurement of everyone; rather, the principle of learning about people should be a principal practice you embrace in all your interactions. The more you learn about people, the more equipped you are to guard against people that are not helpful to you during your growth period. Our exemplar, the Biblical Jacob, did not know his father-in-law Laban was scamming him. If Jacob knew this information, we can assume he would have made other arrangements with his father-in-law. The lesson that can be learned from this process is that learning about people and their intentions before you develop a deep relationship with them will save you a lot of trouble and heartache in the future.

Communicate clearly. Communication is the chief skill you should seek to master, because unless you communicate clearly, you cannot enroll other people who could help you achieve your aims. I will admit, communicating can be difficult, particularly when it involves discussing topics that are sensitive to you. However, it is important to remember that if you do not share what you are feeling or thinking, no one will know how they can help you. Without communication, how would you know what other people are thinking? How can you be the best you can be for others if no one ever told you how to do that? How can they summon their best efforts on your behalf if you don’t tell them what you need? Communication is a privilege God has given us and we have a responsibility to use it.

Before closing this section, I want to reiterate its message. You have to commit yourself to mastering your craft. Your craft is only valued at the price you set for it. No one can set that value for you and nor should they. When you allow people to set the price for your craft and how you master it, you will never realize the benefits of being a master of your trade. This is why you hear so many wealth and personal improvement gurus and coaches tell their readers and clients to stop expecting their place of employment and the salary they receive to define their value, because you will never be paid what you believe you are worth.

Think about it like this.

In today’s real estate market, people across America are selling their homes. Many sellers are looking to sell their homes for what they think they are worth; however, the realities of the market dictate the value of the house and how much it will sell for. Your feelings cannot and will not ever affect the price of your home nor will it motivate a buyer to pay a price you feel they should pay. This is completely relevant to how you should view your life. People are not going to respond to how you feel and will not pay a price you feel they should pay. No more than they will pay the price that you set emotionally for your house will they pay what you feel you deserve for your time, skills, and expertise. They will pay a price for your services and what you have to offer based on the value they place on you. If you come to terms with someone that is willing to buy your house at a price you set, great, but in most cases you will have to make some concessions dictated by your market. Only if you have a one-of-a-kind house will you be able to command a one-of-a-kind price. Similarly, if you want to be free of market forces for your time and talents, you need to develop one-of-a-kind talents. This is why mastering your craft is important. If you want to be worthy of a high value, prove it. Where are the results? Who have you affected? Who has benefited because of you? Prove your value by mastering your craft.

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