In September, I made a decision: for the rest of 2026, I would focus fully on my personal financial goal. It is a big, intimidating goal, one that has frightened me for almost two years. But I decided to give it everything I have.
I could already see the goal taking shape through the people who work and collaborate with me, especially through the real estate portfolio I share with my siblings and through my investment company. Yet that progress represented shared income, not personal income. I realized that reaching my own goal would require focus, alignment, and personal growth. I had to become the person capable of making it real.
At first, I returned to writing my goal every day using the 369 method. Over time, though, the practice began to feel like an obligation, and the energy behind it no longer felt right. So I tried an approach associated with Bob Proctor and Napoleon Hill: writing the goal on a card and carrying it everywhere. That simple change sharpened my focus.
From Wanting to Burning Desire
Many of us began the year with a long list of things we wanted to earn, create, or change. But merely wanting something can reinforce the feeling that it is missing. A goal has to become more than a wish. It has to become a burning desire.
One lesson I took from my online mentor, Denise Duffield-Thomas, and from reading her books, is that you must bring your full effort to your goal and weave it into your life. From other mentors, I’ve learned that you must want it the way you would want your next breath after a full minute without air. Not obsessively or recklessly, but deeply and sincerely.
Turning a Personal Financial Goal into a Burning Desire.
Choosing Which Hard Path to Take
To reach my goal, I need to be fully aligned with it. It should guide what I do next, how I think, and how I strategize. I no longer want distraction or procrastination to carry me into another year with the same unfinished ambitions. Life will always offer a difficult path, so the real question is: which difficulty am I willing to choose?
One kind of difficulty is depending on a job for your income: getting up and going to work whether you feel well or motivated, because you cannot afford to miss it. That dependence can feel like being on a drip. Most people wouldn’t call it hard, even when they dislike the routine or resent being told what to do.
The alternative is also demanding. You go to the office, come home, and then work diligently on your own goal, your own project, your own future. But that work can eventually give you the freedom to build your own economy and live inside an ecosystem you designed, where you can rest when you need to, enjoy a sunny day, work a few hours from a coffee shop, and have the space simply to live.
Giving Your Best to Your Own Dream
That is the decision I made in September: to commit fully to my personal financial goal. Earlier this year, I chose my word of the year, started an investment company, and achieved two goals through that company. Still, several personal goals remained unmet, and I knew they needed my full effort.
If you are not willing to give your all to your own goal, ask yourself where that effort is going instead. When you show up to work while you are unwell because you feel you can’t miss a day, you are giving your best to build someone else’s dream. Meanwhile, your own dreams may be buried so deep that you barely remember where you left them.
Unless you are doing nothing at all, you are already giving your effort to something. The question is: what are you giving your ALL
October is already here. Only October, November, and December are left in the year. Are you ready to give your goal your all? Are you ready to make it part of your life and your thinking, to think through it, from it, and with it in mind? When you connect with a goal at that level, you may feel a new energy in your body, your outlook, and your actions.
Unless you are doing nothing at all, you are already giving your effort to something. The question is: what are you giving your ALL to?
Journal Prompts
- What is the one financial goal I have been circling for too long without fully committing to it?
- Do I want this goal, or do I burn for it? What would it take to move from one to the other?
- Which hard path am I currently on by default, and which hard path would I choose on purpose?
- Where is my best energy going each week, and whose dream is it building?
- If I gave my goal, my all for the next 90 days, what would I do differently starting tomorrow?
With all my love,
Salima
