We got a great comment by Andrew R. Timms about this. He says, “… just because we decide on our terms doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to agree or accept them.”___

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Andrew raises a very good point. It’s something we need to keep in mind as we seek bigg success …

What do you do if life on your own terms creates conflict with the people around you?

Andrew goes on to say that, in some cases, a person may think that your terms are keeping them from living their life on their terms. He suggests that we assume that they’re right! Then we’re at least common ground. Now with that in mind, we can explore solutions that work for both of us.

That’s an excellent suggestion. It’s Stephen Covey’s “Seek first to understand.” We have a personal example of this.

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Before we were married, we both talked about our career goals. I was in radio and life on my own terms meant growing as a broadcaster and sharing my talent with more and more people. That meant moving to a larger market.

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I was in business for myself and teaching part-time at our local University. I loved what I did, but my businesses were here as was my part-time gig. Life on my own terms meant growing without moving.

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These weren’t the only factors at play, but they were definitely part of the equation.

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So we had conflicting terms and we started looking for solutions.

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That’s when the idea for Bigg Success came up. It allowed me to broadcast to the largest audience I could imagine – the whole world!

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It allowed me to expand my business without moving. The conflict forced us to work together to find a solution. Because of that, we both found a better opportunity than we would have had otherwise. That’s synergy!

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What if you can’t find common ground?

We were able to find a solution that allowed both of us to live our lives on our own terms. But what if we weren’t able to do that?

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Let’s say I was determined to stick with radio.

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Earlier, we alluded to the fact that there were other factors at play in how we got to Bigg Success. And Mary-Lynn, I think what you saw in the future of radio is one of those factors.

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Yeah, the industry was, and is, going through some significant changes. I felt like there was a lot less opportunity for me to really grow like I wanted to, if I stayed in the business. But let’s pretend that wasn’t the case. I would have had to move for my next bigg opportunity and, George, that would have meant a long-distance relationship for us.

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Life on your own terms isn’t idyllic

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Now that’s not how either of us defines life on our own terms. But there’s an important point to understand here – life on your own terms isn’t idyllic. It involves setting priorities. A long-distance relationship may not be consistent with life on my own terms. But I’d rather do that than not have a relationship with you at all, Mary-Lynn.

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We’d both be living life on our own terms, career-wise, but obviously not the way we would prefer in our personal lives. Sometimes you can’t have it all and you just have to accept that.

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It’s a timing problem

But here’s the key – we may have to accept it for now. In the meantime, we keep looking for solutions and opportunities that get us to our ideal life, to life on our own terms. In most cases, it’s a timing problem, not something we have to accept for our whole lives.

We’re talking about the closest of relationships here, the relationships on which you place the highest priority. In other relationships, the dynamic may change as a result of living your life on your own terms. You’re willing to accept that because you know you’re headed for bigg success!

What do you do when your terms conflict with others?

You can share that with us by leaving a comment below, calling us at 888.455.BIGG or sending us an e-mail at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com. Thanks Andrew for your thoughtful comment. And thank you for reading our post today.

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Join us next time as we help a member of our community who’s looking to get back into the workforce after an extended time off.

Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00368-040809.mp3

Related posts

Own Your Life

The Power of Defining Your Terms

The 5 Elements of Bigg Success

(Image in today's post by woodsy)

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This process can be used for so many things. You could use it to decide if you should start a business. It would help figure out if you should expand your existing business. You could even use it to determine if it’s worth going back and getting more education.

To get started, you’ll need to make some projections, using assumptions, about the expected income and expenses of your project. The process itself is a science but the assumptions are definitely an art. It requires that you use your own judgment and the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it.

So let’s look at the two most common ways to determine if a project is worth doing.

Payback period

As its name implies, this method simply looks at how quickly you get your investment back. So if you invest $100 now and earn $25 the first year and $75 the second year, you have a two-year payback.

Payback is commonly used because it’s so simple. But think about it … it ignores all the money you could make after the payback period. And that can really skew your investing decisions. You choose projects that return your investment quickly and neglect projects that may offer greater potential but more patience. 

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Discounted cash flow (DCF)

Fortunately, there is a better way to calculate the worth of a project. With this method, you explicitly recognize that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. However, a dollar tomorrow is still worth something which isn’t recognized by the payback method.

It’s called discounted cash flow because we look at all of our expected cash flows and determine how much they’re worth right now by discounting them back to today. That is called the “net present value” (NPV).

Calculating the NPV is a four step process:

• Determine how much you will invest by year.
  Usually most of your investment in a new project is made upfront (and probably in the first year). But if your project requires that you make an investment over a few years, you’ll want to account for that.

• Estimate how much income this project will generate by year.
  Obviously, you don’t want to take on a project if it doesn’t increase your income. So look at how much you think you will make with this project and compare that to how much you think you plan to make without it. That’s your increased income from the project.

• Decide upon your opportunity cost.
  Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Consider where you could invest your money if you didn’t invest it in this project. Weigh in how certain you are about your projections.
  For example, if you determined your project was no more risky than investing in Certificates of Deposit at a FDIC-insured bank, you could use the interest paid on those accounts as your opportunity cost.

Most projects aren’t that certain so your rate will usually be higher than that. Just remember – the less certain you are about your incremental income, the higher your opportunity cost.

• Run the numbers in Microsoft Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet program) using the formula:

Example – Should I get certified?

We’ll offer an example so you can see this concept in action. Let’s say you want to go back to school to get certified. It costs $2,000 for the certification program. You expect to make an additional $2,000 a year if you do it. You plan to retire in three years so the increased income won’t benefit you for too long. You’ve looked at other opportunities and determined that you need to earn at least 6% on your money.

We see that your payback period is one year. That’s how long it will take to pay you back the money you invested.

Using DCF, your NPV is $3,157 as shown in this screenshot from Microsoft Excel:

To get that, use Excel’s “Insert Function” command:

With DCF, the rule is: If NPV > $0, then invest in the project. After all, your expected return exceeds your expected cost. So in this case, your NPV is over $3,000. Therefore, you should go for it! 

If you want to know what your annual return is, just change the opportunity cost field in your spreadsheet until your NPV equals $0. In this case, your annual return is 83% over the life of the project.

In general, pick the projects with the highest NPV until you run out of money to invest. However, there is one important variable we failed to account for in this calculation – your time. We’ll discuss that tomorrow.

Thanks so much for stopping in to read our post today. Until next time, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00321-020209.mp3

Related posts

Is Your Project Worth Your Time?

A Better Way to Pay Off Your Mortgage Early

(Image in today's post by monetary 3D 2)