If You Don’t Track The Numbers In Your Life Now, You Will Regret It Later

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Show me the numbers and I will know how you fare in life.

Numbers play an important part in our personal development journey. Jim Rohn introduced this concept to me. I got this concept from one of his audio books and I would say this is a pretty simple yet powerful concept.

If you look closely in your life, you can put many things into numbers. Usually the numbers tell you the harsh facts and reality.

• Show me the number in your bank account and the number will show how well you are doing financially.
• Show me the number on your pay check and I will know how well you are doing in your career.
• Show me the number on your weighing scale and I will know whether you desperately need to slog it out on the treadmill.
• Show me the percentage of growth or loss in your investment portfolio and I will know whether you need to pick up more books about investing.

Numbers don’t lie. They show you the reality.

Do You Even Know Where You Stand Right Now?

To improve yourself, you need to know how you are doing currently. If you do not know where you stand, it is impossible for you to make your desired progress. You need a benchmark to start with. Without knowing where you are now, it is impossible to track your progress. This isn’t a very smart thing to do.

You need to have the self-awareness to know where you are right now. The numbers in your life can help greatly in identifying where you are right now.

Some people think they are currently better than where they are right now, which may be false. Some people think they are worse off than where they are right now, which also may be false. How many times did you see yourself in the mirror, saw the fats around your tummy, and think that you are still doing ok? I admit, I tried to lie to myself before I weigh myself on the scale.

Numbers do not lie and they help in this case. The numbers provide you with the cold and harsh fact on where you are right now.

Learn How To Use Your Numbers To Raise Your Standard

Your numbers are here to help you but most people do not bother to use it. Keeping track of your numbers (finance, paycheck, weight, hours spent with love ones, portfolio, investment, number of books read) will allow you to know which area of your life needs improvement.

There are a few ways you can start tracking your numbers now. It is time to create your own excel spreadsheet to help you measure your progress in life.

I use Google Docs for creating my spreadsheets and here are some numbers that I keep track.

• Number of books I read in a year (to ensure that I am growing and learning more about my field of expertise)
• Income (to ensure that I am progressing smoothly towards achieving my desired income)
• Expenses (to keep my expenses in check)
• Portfolio of stocks (make sure that I am investing in sound companies to help me accumulate wealth)

You have to put the numbers in place and start analyzing whether you are progressing in that area of your life. You can start to track your weight, the number of books you read in a year or your personal finance. Whatever area of your life you want to make improvement on, record it down in your own spreadsheet.

Example

If you want to make improvement in your financial area of your life, you may want to set up an income and expenses account in a spreadsheet. It does not have to be complicated. All you need is just a column that includes the month of the year, a column for your monthly income and another for monthly expenses.

At the end of every month, add up all the expenses that you had made for the month. I use an iPhone app, iXpenselt, to keep track of my daily expenditures. On the other hand, you can collect the physical receipts, jot down in notebooks or use gadgets to help record of all your expenditures. Just choose a method that works for you. Once you had totaled up your expenses, record it in your personal finance spreadsheet.

Do the same for your income too. Record everything at the end of the month. Try to make it as fun as possible. You can name the file as “Financial Mastery”, “Financial Genius In Making”, “Journey To Financial Freedom” or whatever sounds nice to you. These titles can entice you more to update on it and they definitely sound much better than “Personal Record Of Income and Expenses”.

If your goal is to increase your wealth, you need to ensure that your income is increasing and your expenses are not more than your income. By recording your monthly income and expenses in a spreadsheet, it helps you to have a bird eye view of the situation you are in now.

Are you spending more than you spend? Are you saving enough? Are you doing anything to increase your income to your desired level?

You can answer all these questions by just looking at your finance spreadsheet that you had created.

Start Tracking Your Numbers And See The Improvement

Making improvements in life is not difficult. Whatever you want to improve upon, just improve the numbers. When you start to track the numbers in your life, it makes it much easier for you to come out with strategies to make improvement. The strategy is simple, improve the numbers and you will see better results.

If you want to excel in your field, instead of reading one book on your field of expertise per year, you can start to read 2 books per month. If you want to achieve financial freedom, you can either make the effort to increase your income or reduce your expenses. Alternatively, if you want to increase your sales income, you can increase the number of prospects you see in a day and increase the ratio of conversion.

So if you want to start making some serious progress in your life, start playing the numbers game, track your numbers and take the necessary steps to make significant improvements in life.

Vincent
Playing The Numbers Game

P.S: My friend Celestine Chua is offering a limited time offer on her new ebook The Personal Excellence Book. If you want to kick start your journey towards excellence in life, you can grab her new ebook now by clicking here. Remember the offer will end at 25th July. So grab it before the offer ends.

Post from: Health Money Success

If You Don’t Track The Numbers In Your Life Now, You Will Regret It Later

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