Have you ever thought about setting a goal? No matter how old you are, it’s never too old to reinvent yourself. Let’s take a moment to learn about Colonel Sanders. He lost his father by the age of 5. When he turned 16, he quit school and by the time he was 17, he had already lost 4 jobs! He got married at 18 and started working as a railroad conductor. Marriage sounds good until he became a father, his wife left him, he got rejected from law school, he failed as an insurance salesman, became a cook and retired at 65. It may sound good to become a cook, but his first retirement check was $105. He wanted to commit suicide, but instead he turned his cooking skills into magic, and now we all enjoy the Finger-licking good chicken from KFC.
What a story. And to believe that he was 65 when he did this. By the time he was 88, he became a billionaire… It’s never too old to set your goals and reinvent yourself. But what does it take to do this? Where do I start? Where do I go? What do I do?! There are many things you can do, but all you need to know is CAR. Yes, C.A.R.: Create, Absorb, Riffle.
- Create. First you need to create a pathway you want to follow. Set some goals, draw a blueprint, come up with alternative ways to achieve that goal, and picture yourself in it. The last one is the most important one. Make sure you can see yourself in it and that you really want it. Every day, you want to wake up and picture yourself doing this thing without complaining, hesitation, or irritation. Maybe every once in a while, you might feel this, but it’s ok, we’re human, we should feel like this once in a while. But make sure you see yourself doing it and that you will fight through it. Sometimes being good at what you’re trying to achieve comes naturally, but most of the time it doesn’t. It’s OK; either way, you need to work hard for it.
- Absorb. After you have created that pathway, you need to absorb as much information as possible. Read articles, research, ask questions, read books, watch YouTube videos, write about it yourself, make a poster about what you learn, write it in a calendar; learn everything you can about it. Whatever your goal is, you need to be familiar with it. Know what you can do to get there, who to talk to, and what to do if you plan fails the first several times.
- Riffle. Like a deck of cards, riffle yourself through this situation. Shuffle all your ideas and make sure you know how to go from start to finish regardless of how much you have shuffled your ideas. There are 52 cards in a deck, but there may be 102 ideas in your head. Take everything step by step, but remember that your path may decide to riffle one day and you’re going to have to order it back to how it was. Idea #62 may go wrong, so you may have to rearrange it and make it Idea #92 instead to make your riffle smooth.
Riffling may be the most confusing, but it’s the most important. It won’t be hard to create a pathway and picture it every single day when you wake up. You’ll be absorbing information about it every day, so that’s no biggie. But the way to get there is what is most crucial. You need to know that there is a start and finish. There may be millions of ways to get there, and as your ideas may be riffling day by day, you will find better ones along the way. But always have that blueprint you want to go by in the back of your head, and that is, to keep moving forward. Keep moving forward, and make it as if the end is one side of a magnet, and the start is the other side of the magnet. Kind of, let yourself be pulled through the path because you will get stuck on idea #32 one day, but don’t let it discourage you from getting to #102. Reinvent yourself every day. Make a change. Use C.A.R. It’s never too late.
