I hope this message finds you feeling festive! Before I sign off for the year I wanted to wish you and yours a very Happy Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope you take some time for recharging and reflecting and having a bit of laughter and fun. I also hope you show up to 2024 with bells on and ready for action!

In the spirit of reflection, let’s talk about what YOU want. What do you really want?

Here are my thoughts on this important subject…

First and foremost, it’s not MONEY that you really want. It’s not the material things. It’s not the fast cars or the expensive stuff. I’m happy but I’m not happy because I’m rich. I was also happy when I was proverbially poor and working for free in my early business owner years. Look at the media and you’ll find a bazillion examples of people who are rich and depressed and still chasing more money thinking a bigger number will be the solution. It won’t.

Money is GOOD and the reason you really want it is not for the money itself, but for how it will make you feel. The best thing about having more than enough money to live YOUR life the way YOU want to live it, is that it gives you more and better CHOICES. Having the ability to choose makes you feel more in control and more autonomous.

People have a lot of messed up thoughts – ‘head-trash’ – about money and it’s important to sort that out for yourself. Money is not evil. Wanting more is not greedy. It doesn’t make you a bad person. There are plenty of hypocrites and politicians who will try to make you out to be dishonourable and morally wrong for getting up off your backside and applying yourself and putting in vastly more hours and more effort and more investment all in attempt to make a success of yourself. Meanwhile the same hypocrites play the lottery every week and whine about how the world owes them more money and more everything. They want more but they villainize you because you are investing in yourself to make it happen.

Here’s a better and more accurate way to think about money…

• The more you have means the more people you have helped along the way to getting it.
• The more you have means the more lives you have impacted in positive ways.
• The more you have means the more you have contributed to society.
• And what if you earn millions only to ultimately give it all away? You help thousands of people while you earn the money and then you help thousands more while you give it away to worthy causes.

Money is not evil. It simply reflects your character. The reason some people are rich but miserable is because of their character, not their finances. They are not living in alignment with who they really are and who they really want to be. That’s a BIG clue.

It’s really about your character. THAT’S what we all want. I believe life is about figuring out who you are and then developing the courage and conviction to be that person, fully.

Fulfilment and happiness comes from being true to yourself. Developing yourself and your character. Knowing who you want to be and BEING that person. It sounds simple but it’s hard to do. It means developing your self-belief. It means overcoming your fear of criticism and what other people will think of you. It means being vulnerable and taking risks because you believe in what you are doing.

Here’s why I think you need to set big goals for 2024 and every year…

It’s not about whether or not you hit the goal. That’s almost irrelevant. Your revenue or profit goal is just a number in the bank. The critical part is WHO YOU WILL BECOME by the things you will have to do in striving to achieve the goal.

The fact you have the goal is what makes you grow and develop your character. That’s fulfilment. That’s an example to leave for your kids and anyone around you for what living a good life is about – simply giving it your best shot and growing in the process.

Final Thoughts…

If you REALLY want to get what you want in 2024, you’re going to have to do two things:

1. Develop and invest in your SKILLS. (…you can’t drive a fast car without the skills to do so. You could jump in Lewis Hamilton’s Formula One car and you wouldn’t have a hope of coming anywhere close to his time, if you even made it around the track in one piece. Same car. Vastly different skills.)
2. Become unreasonable (…without doing this you’ll accept everything, become OK with average and spend your whole life never making the progress or getting the success you want, and you’ll never know the day you gave up on the life you COULD have lived.

Heres’ how to be unreasonable…

• Don’t become angry or unhappy, just be INTENTIONALLY unreasonable and put an end to tolerating incompetence, feeble excuses, opinions of others that don’t matter…
• Ignore the judgement of other people who are using you as an excuse to forget about their own failings and weaknesses…
• Never care about the opinion of someone who cares more about what you did wrong than what you were trying to do right…
• Avoid any temptation to follow the crowd, ignore most things in the news, remember most people’s views are irrelevant and be selective about who you hang out with… (Simple rule: if they don’t make you feel good or make you laugh while you’re with them – don’t hang out with them!)
• And last but not least, don’t go back to your practice and do the same things in 2024 that you know now in 2023 that you want to change!

Wishing you every success in life and business in 2024! And thanks for being here in and being part of the Optical Success Academy community. It means a lot – thank you!

Your #1 Fan,

Conor