Medium is flooded with posts about passive income and financial freedom. However, most people struggle to execute. And there’s a simple reason why. Let me tell you the only advice you need to become financially free.
To get things straight from the beginning: This post is neither another “how you can make x dollars in y days” nor will it teach you anything about the latest passive income strategies. You won’t read anything about affiliate marketing, dropshipping, or selling online courses.
Actually, all these articles won’t help you — even if we forget about all the b*llsh*t and scam articles and pretend that all of the articles are super-useful.
The usual process people go through and why it doesn’t work
Let’s quickly look at the situation many people are in — maybe you too. Most often, people are simply unsatisfied with their current life: Their job sucks, work-life balance doesn’t fit their idea of life, or they merely feel the urgent need to change something in their life.
Here’s what happens next: They open their laptop and search the web for passive income or financial freedom. And suddenly, they drown in content about the hottest passive income tools and people presenting their latest income streams.
After reading a few articles, they find a tool that fits their capabilities. However, this isn’t surprising: Everyone can publish articles on Medium, and everyone can do dropshipping.
Here’s what happens next:
10% already fail while setting up their passive income stream
85% fail within the next four weeks
5% successfully establish a passive income stream
A passive income stream (most often) doesn’t make you financially free
Let’s talk about the 95% that fail first. Usually, they just continue with their “old life.” But, hey, they tried it but didn’t succeed — so they are not the ones to blame. Maybe they will give it another try in a couple of weeks or months—at the latest when they hear about this new fancy tool to create passive income and become financially free.
But here’s the thing: Even the 5% that established a passive income stream are (most often) far away from becoming financially free. They’ve just established another income stream (which is fantastic, by the way).
Becoming financially free isn’t complex at all — but it’s hard work!
So we talked enough about how you shouldn’t do it. Let’s give you some simple yet powerful advice. Actually, the advice sounds so trivial but still is so hard to follow.
But wait: There’s one more thing you should know first. There is a reason why most people fail to become financially free: They focus on the wrong aspects.
To be honest: It doesn’t matter if you do dropship, affiliate marketing, crypto trading, or anything else. This is absolutely secondary. It simply doesn’t matter in the beginning. And it won’t lead you to your goal.
In other words: The “How” doesn’t matter in the beginning. It comes later. Much later.
But why do so many people start by trying tools? Well, because it is easy, it’s fun. And if it doesn’t work — it just didn’t work out for me, right.
Create a vision for yourself and make it a must
So here’s the advice. This advice worked for me, and if you search the internet or read some biographies, you will find tons of famous people that followed that approach.
As a first step, you have to create your very own vision. WHY do you want to become financially free. How would your life change, and how would it be once you’ve achieved that goal. Try to imagine every detail:
How would your day look?
What would you do, and how would you spend your time?
Where would you live?
What would you do with your money?
How would you feel?
It might sound like psychological bla-bla — but I can tell you it is the first and most crucial step. Again, in other words, you tell your mind with this step why you want to become financially free.
You can even go one step further and think of the pain you would feel if you won’t achieve your vision. Think about how it would turn you down and how your life would look in that case.
Actually, your brain is a super powerful tool. Moreover, it functions pretty simply: It wants to create joyful moments and pretend painful moments. That’s the basic. By creating your vision and thinking about the failure, you literally tell your brain why it is so essential to achieving the goal.
Here comes the harder part!
There’s already a huge portion of people that fail with the above exercise. They don’t have an idea why they want to become financially free. And again, it doesn’t matter which tool they use; they won’t reach the goa — simply because the “WHY” is lacking.
Now, let’s say you’ve created your vision. You’re feeling pumped and ready to kick asses. Here’s the second much harder part. You have to make your vision a must.
I read this concept in one of Tony Robbins’ books. The sentence was like, “The difference between ‘must’ and ‘should’ is the life you want and the life you have. We don’t get what we want. We get what we have to have.”
So what does that mean? In our case, it means that you have to dedicate yourself entirely to your vision. You can say for the next twelve months, there’s nothing more important than becoming financially free. You dedicated as much time as possible to your vision. You wake up earlier and get to bed later. This vision is first — everything else is secondary. The only thought you should have day-in and day-out is to reach this goal.
Create daily habits to follow the path
When I went down this road, I created critical daily habits. For example, I took 15 minutes to focus on my goal every morning. Again and again, I went through the pictures in mind: How would my life look once I’m financially free. Why is it the most important goal to reach? What pain would I feel if I didn’t reach it? On top of that, I reflected every evening on what I’ve accomplished today to get closer to my goal.
But what about affiliate marketing and dropshipping
Finally, here’s the mind-blowing part when you start with the WHY instead of the HOW. As mentioned, your brain is a super-tool. Moreover, your brain consistently delivers answers to your questions and what you focus on. This is how your sub-conscience work.
Accordingly, once you start to focus on your vision, once you make your vision a must, you will automatically find the answer to the “How” question. And it’s literally automatic. You will find ideas and answers everywhere. So, believe me — just give it a try. It cost you nothing.
A quick backstory from my journey: Before following this approach, I was pretty sure that crypto day trading was my tool to becoming financially free. I spent lots of money and, well, failed epically. Today, I’m making money with Medium, Affiliate Marketing, Crypto Investments, YouTube, and many other channels. But as mentioned in the beginning — the tools don’t matter at all!
Go create your vision! You can do that!
This post is not financial advice!! DYOR!!