Striving to Success - Level Three of the Five Lifestyles
May7Written by:
5/7/2009 5:32 PM 
This series of Five Different Lifestyles helps you to identify your current level and shows you how to move up to the next level. Each level is very honest and may appear harsh, but the goal is to energize you enough to want to move up to the next level.
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If you remember, we had five different lifestyles that we wanted to talk about in this set of modules. The bottom level was survival, and then we had the stagnation level. Now, this module will cover the Striving Level. The next two levels above that will be Success and finally Significance. So, let's cover the Striving Level. We'll review the striving level. In this Striving level we'll show you how to progress and graduate out of the Striving level into Success.
Alright, let's get started. Typically, the Striving level up until 2009 was considered middle-class America. There was a solid middle-class situation, but with this 2009 change and with this huge shift with the financial crisis, too many of these people are moving from the middle class, or the Striving level, back into the Stagnation level. Our job is to not allow yourself and your family to get back into the Struggling level, back to where they're really just going on the treadmill and making no progress. We would at least keep you in the Striving level and hopefully, quickly move you to the Success Level.
Now the characteristics of the Striving Level are that you probably have some real good personal integrity, you've got a good work ethic, and a good work energy. You've got a good education, probably have a college degree, or maybe some specialized training and skills. You could even be a business owner in this level. I mean in this respect, a real business owner, not somebody just pretending to be in business, but someone who actually knows how to do all the paperwork, structure the business, and do all three pieces of business, which includes Sales-Marketing, Operations, and Collections. So that's typically what you would find.
A good example of housing for this type people is generally a nice house in a really nice neighborhood. You've got some real good transportation. Typical jobs at this level would be corporate management, a professional person, let's say a doctor, lawyer, accountant, something like that; you could be in the medical field; you could be a manager in a corporate environment, and you could be a business owner. Any of these would fit into the the Striving group who are still striving. You're not quite a success, but you're striving to get there. Some other ideas about how we can move ourselves from the Striving level into the Success level is to take the NewSuccessPath approach.
The primary motivating factor here is also anger, but before in the others levels, we had anger out of depression, and anger out of rage, and anger out of the being forced into their economic position in life. Whereas now this type of anger is a little different . In this case you need to be angry at the government spending levels of 2009 and how this in the future will destroy the value of the dollar for your children and grandchildren. So, if there's anger that's the anger that you need to use there; the fact that we're printing paper-worthless money and the fact that the government is just not able to keep within their bounds. They think the solution to every problem of humanity is more government, and that the government can do a better job of this than the private sector; which of course is not one thread of truth. The government never did anything even close to as well as the private sector. So, it's just an unfortunate situation, but it does create anger for families in this level.
Again, the response is similar. Take that anger, you need to reflect on the anger and the cause of the anger, because you can't change the government. You can't change the fact that they're printing dollars that are worth less and less every day. Then you need to release it. You need to let go of the anger part of your emotions, but keep the energy part. Then redirect the energy associated with that anger toward moving yourself more rapidly up into the Success lifestyle.
Now let's also look at the next part of this new success.com and that is back with the cash flow engine. You probably at this point don't really need to anchor your position, because you already anchored your position. You've already figured out where you are going. You've already got some short-term goals and some mid-term goals. So. all you really need to do now is just rebalance and refocus and take a quick check of where you are. The area you're in now is Step Two of NewSuccessPath where you're developing a cash flow engine and you're having to fine tune that cash flow engine, so that you'll have a little bit left over at the end of the month. With this new economy that we have it's more and more difficult, and more and more strained, because you have other responsibilities that are costing more money each day.
Another threat to that is there's a higher likelihood that you may have parents that will be thrown into more of an economic turmoil as a result of this new economy, causing increased responsibilities on yourself. The other issues you may have are other close relatives that are being laid off and are being caught up in all of this financial turmoil that are going to be needing some help and assistance. At that point that will also structure your cash flow engine to drain off some resources of that cash flow engine. You have to realize that your number one priority is your family and your own cash flow. If you don't have a family income with the cash flow to take care of the family unit, then you'l be of no good to the parents or of close relatives that need your help. So you have to maintain a good healthy economic engine of your own family first before you can be useful and beneficial for those other people.
The next piece of the NewSuccessPath that you really needto develop is what we call Systems Management. You need to develop a business system. What do we mean by a business system? Well, if you're a business owner this is perfect for you, because a business really is a business system. The difference between a business system and being an employee or self-employed person in business is, if you took six months off and left, when you came back six months later, would the business be just as good or not better than before you left? If the answer is "Yes, it would just run fine without me. I can take six months off. I can take three-months off. It would run fine without me." If that is true then you truly have a business system in place. However, if you can't be gone for a week or even up to three weeks and all of a sudden everything is crashing down. Problems are all over the place. Chances are you have a business, but you don't have a business system. So this section is to develop a business system. So I don't care whether you're in the plumbing business, or the painting business, or in the computer software business; whatever business you happen to be in, if you have a business system, then you can graduate from the Striving into the Success lifestyle.
Now let's look at this, let's say, if you're not a business owner. Perhaps you're a doctor or lawyer or in corporate management. You need to treat your job as a business system. You need to develope a business system so that it requires less and less involvement of yourself in the actual doing of the work, but that you're more of a systems manager where you have procedures in place, and you have things in place, and people in place, and tasks in place, to where you're monitoring these tasks and monitoring these people to get the job done. You're not actually rolling up your sleeves and doing it yourself. That is the difference from Striving for success. That will get the cash flow into more rapidly, create more promotion for you,create higher profitability for you, either in salary or bonuses. If you are a business owner it will bring more revenue for you, more sales revenue for you and get better paid on your collections. That is what's going to move you into the Success Mode.
So the cash flow engine, again, always make sure that you are spending less than you earn. Once you get these business systems in place start picking up the income producing assets. We have a module for income producing assets and we'll let you work with that module for income producing assets. Because even in this market there are income producing assets that will really allow you to explode your income and your cash flow to the place where you'll be financially independent. We are going to talk about 2009 future income producing assets in another module. So that's pretty much it for moving you out of Striving and into Success.
Copyright ©2009 Ray Noftsinger