Article by Stuart Goldsmith

Despite what those slick-suited seminar-gurus tell you, every decision you take in life has a shadow partner - the life you cannot now lead because you took that decision.

A few simple examples will prove the point.

You take a career decision to become a surgeon; but doing this precludes you from being a lawyer.

As a woman you decide to marry and have a family. The consequence is that your career is on hold for a minimum of five years and more like fifteen or twenty.

You decide to go to the cinema; you cannot also spend the evening in a fine restaurant.




You decide to give up drinking; you cannot now go boozing with your pals.

You decide to start thinking for yourself; you lose most of your ‘friends.’

Every decision you take has consequences.

Every decision, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, sets your life on a slightly different course. This is why, as Jim Rohn says, “Everything matters.”

Even inaction has its consequences.

If you decide just to float down life’s stream, and the current sweeps you randomly into the left tributary, you cannot also enjoy the right tributary. If you sleep all day, you cannot also play your favorite sport on that day.

This tiny handful of examples should prove to you immediately that you cannot have it all. It is so obvious that it is hardly worth saying, and yet there are at least two top seminar gurus on the circuit at the moment who are claiming that you can. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I have seen a book and a tape series entitled “You CAN have it all.”

Wrong! But far more importantly, every decision you take to improve your life, no matter how trivial, will have an associated cost - a price that you will have to pay in order to achieve that success.

The price usually involves the sacrifice of one aspect of your life, in order to achieve more in your main area of endeavor.

Here’s a simple example. You’re a single guy, and you decide to spend every evening for the next three months decorating and improving your house from top to bottom in order that you might sell it for the best price. This will allow you to realize your goal of moving up the housing market. You really want a detached house and have a burning desire to move out of the poverty-stricken terraced-house neighborhood in which you live.

Great goal! But the principle is that you can’t have it all, so what is the price that you will pay for choosing this route?

Answer: It will kill your social life for the next three months. No drinking, no clubbing, no frittering away your time with the mates. Who knows, you might have met your future wife at one of those missed evenings at the club, but instead you were home, working. The pathways of your life divide. You follow one which leads to a brighter, better tomorrow - according to your best judgment, of course. The other diverges sharply, blinks and shimmers uncertainly before fading out to join the countless millions of other ‘might have beens.’ You never meet that woman, you never marry and have children with her.

Another example: Charles sets himself the goal of becoming super successful; really mega-rich. This man wants £100 million, he wants it badly and he’s going to get it. Now that’s a lot of money and far more than I will see in my lifetime, and I’ve seen plenty! Now ask yourself seriously, can this man have it all?

Can he work the demanding 12 hour days, 350 days each year which are required to achieve this level of success and be a perfect father who never misses his son’s football matches or his daughter’s clarinet concert? Can he be a perfect husband who is always home from the office by 5:30 to peck his wife on the cheek; who’s never late for a dinner party with friends? Can he shoot for super success and also be a competent odd-job man who spends weekends and evenings tinkering with the plumbing, or installing new work-surfaces, pipe clenched firmly between teeth?

Let’s go further. Can he try for mega-wealth, and also be a ‘good old mate’ to a bunch of lads down at the local? Can he play for the darts’ team Tuesdays and Thursdays? Can he say “yes” to a ten day skiing holiday with his friends? Is he likely to be an active member of his local choir or amateur dramatics group? The answer is no.

Shooting for this level of wealth requires laser-beam focus. There will be late night and breakfast meetings; urgent problems to sort out requiring him to jump on a plane at a moment’s notice; international midnight telephone calls - you name it.

Let us probe deeper. Will others consider him to be a reliable friend? In other words, are people likely to say of him “Good old Charlie, he’s a real pal. You’ve only got to pick up the phone any hour of the day or night and he’s there for you.”?

I don’t think so, do you?

Charles is on a fast track to super-success; this track is not open to any old mooch or bum, it requires extraordinary discipline and effort. It requires 100% commitment; and total dedication to the task in hand. This level of success commands a high price, not surprisingly, otherwise every half-witted, unfocused fool in the country would be doing it.

Whilst we are on the subject, let us ask: “Will Charles have many, or indeed any, friends?”

Friendship has a high time-overhead, in case you haven’t noticed. You have to call each friend at least once a week and meet them at least once a fortnight, otherwise they fairly rapidly drop out of your circle of mates. With only a dozen chums, you will find that most evenings and weekends, indeed almost every spare moment you have, will be consumed in meeting friends for a drink, chatting on the telephone to catch up with all the gossip, coffee mornings, driving endlessly to and fro from their tiresome houses, dandling their squawking brats on your knee and going “coochy-coo,” letter writing, e-mails and returning mutual favors.

Your life is thus reduced to working, sleeping, and entertainment (socializing). It would not be overstating the case to say that this describes most people’s lives. There is nothing wrong with that, if the major life-goal you have set yourself is ‘to be a good friend to as many people as humanly possible.’ But can you do this and be a super success? Can Charles shoot for his hundred million, and be the person I just described? Can Charles have it all?

The answer is tritely obvious. No he cannot. If he is to achieve his dream, he must pay the price - and the price is a big one.

Copyright Stuart Goldsmith. All Rights Reserved.

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Article excerpted from Stuart Goldsmith’s latest book, “7 Secrets Of The Millionaires”. Stuart is a British multi-millionaire author and lecturer. He created a $16 million fortune starting from a position of heavy debt, and has taught thousands of others how to get wealthy. Discover how his breakthrough power strategies can help YOU achieve your specific goals/dreams….

7 Secrets Of The Millionaires

Here is a good, blunt article that explains why You Cannot Have It All: because choice you make for something is by implication a choice against something else.
I linked to this article because it’s a clear statement of something we need to be ...