Posts
Your Future and How to
Get There!
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, August 10, 2026
“Hope is NOT an effective strategy!”
Dr. John Maxwell
“To succeed at whatever
you wish to do or become,
think with the end in
mind!”
Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown
“Your thoughts makes all things animate and inanimate work to bring you want you want; but your personal activity must be such that you can rightly receive what you want when it reaches you.”
Wallace C. Wattles
By “thought”, Wattles is referring to learn to “think in a certain way.” Wallace is the author of several really great books written in the early 1900s which are more valuable in 2026 than ever before!
The graphic above proves the point that a picture is worth 1000 words! The best time to think about your future begins around the age of 10 if not before. What will your life look like by the time it is finished? A better question would be, what do YOU SEE your life looking like by the time it is finished? Far too often, people’s lives are directed by what “others” see them doing rather than what THEY see them doing.
"Find a job you
enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life"
Mark Twain
The road to success is therefore quite simple. Begin at an early age to identify the type of work you want to see yourself doing. It was over 20 years ago that I learned that there were students beginning their college education with a goal of performing a job that may not even exist by the time they graduate. You can interpret that in two different ways. Either the job has not yet been created, or technology will have made the job obsolete. In 2026 there are thousands if not millions of college graduates who are unemployed in their specific field of study that they majored in and for which they have acquired massive debt to complete. That is NOT a good place to be – ever!
My advice to the youth of today is to seek multiple avenues to pursue. For example, learning a trade skill is never a bad idea even if you desire is to be employed in a position that requires your mind over the completion of a skill. I refer to this as having a “Plan B.” In other words, it is not a good idea to “put all of your eggs into one basket.” As an example, you may be the best quarterback that ever-played football and your goal is to play in the National Football League. Given your skill set, that might be the most beneficial path for you to follow. That would be Plan A. However, as we all know, football is a sport that can be and oftentimes is harmful to your health. A sudden injury could bring an end to your desire to play in the National Football League, your Plan A. If you had put all your efforts (eggs) into that one goal (NFL Career), you would find yourself unemployed with no Plan B. The more topics you become well versed in, the more valuable you become to others and to yourself.
As an overall objective, I would suggest that you begin with the end in mind. What do you see your life looking like by the time it is finished? Where do you see yourself living? What are you doing for fun? What are you doing to keep yourself busy? What are you doing to ensure you have an adequate income well into your retirement years? What WILL your life look like when it is finished? Do you have a plan?
If you can paint a mental picture of that life you can envision, you can reverse engineer that image and ascertain what one thing should you be doing at this very moment that if done will serve as a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into to your life’s overall picture that you have envisioned. Once that one piece is put into place, what is the next “one thing” you should be doing at this moment in time to add to the picture you have begun to complete?
Gary Keller, co-founder of Keller Williams Realty International, has written a book “The One Thing.” It details how you identify what the “one thing” is that you MUST do right now that will lead you to the next “one thing” that must be done next! It then becomes a simple matter of “rinse and repeat.” Imagine your life’s picture when it is completed as being that of a completed puzzle. Each puzzle piece would represent one step in your life’s journey that when they are all put together becomes the completed life you have desired and worked to achieve throughout your life.
If you notice in the graphic at the beginning of this Nugget, the boy has not only identified the important aspects of his life, but he also planted seeds in each of the various categories (rows). His first decision is what does he do next? Does he sit back and “hope” that they get enough sunlight, that they get enough water, that they get enough fertilizer or does he take action necessary to ensure the seeds get enough of these things that would all but ensure their growth? “The Secret” is a book certainly worthy of reading and many have. Even I could pick out one glaring omission in the book. It instructs the reader to set goals, to think about what they want and suggests that the universe will more than likely bring them what they seek. But no where in the book does it say you have to take some form of action to turn your “wants” into “receipts!” To accomplish anything takes some form of action. That is why Dr. Maxwell’s quote above is so critical to understand, “Hope is NOT an effective strategy!” It takes a vision, a goal, an objective and then that is followed up with some form of action; a movement towards achieving what you want to achieve.
I have used myself as a training aid as to the value of (1) identifying a need/want. (2) Identifying what the end looks like. (3) Identifying the steps that must be taken between steps (1) and the completion at step (3) and beyond. To this end, I refer to you my Coast Guard career. By the time I completed Boot Camp, I KNEW EXACTLY what I had to do to be eligible for a promotion to the next pay grade. I also knew exactly what I had to do to acquire a specialty that would enable me to be promoted beyond just the next pay grade. In other words, I knew I was under contract for the next four years of my life so why not make those four years the best that I could? I immediately ordered and began working on the required correspondence course that needed to be completed prior to being promoted. I had a choice of applying for a Class A school or learning on the job. This was a path that some of the service ratings could do while others required you to attend a school. I could type rather fast without errors so one specific specialty seemed to fall into place, that of the Yeoman specialty. Being a Yeoman in the military might better be understood if you were to refer to it as the “company clerk.” A record keeper. A personnel administrator. To acquire that rating while serving in the field required that I “strike” for the position under the direct supervision of experienced Yeomen in the field, which I did. I completed the correspondence course for YN3, was recommended by my Commanding Officer, passed the service-wide examination and was promoted to YN3.
This started a routine for me. Before I took the examination for YN3 I had already ordered the course for Second Class Petty Officer, YN2. That was also true for First Class Petty Officer, YN1 and eventually Chief, Petty Officer YNC. At the time that I was a YN1 taking the YNC course, I applied for and was recommended to be promoted to Chief Warrant Officer. I was promoted to Chief Yeoman and two months later promoted again to Chief Warrant Officer. The point of this is that (1) I knew exactly what I had to do and when I could do it. Then (2) I did them as quickly as the time would permit me to complete them. As a result, I was promoted through YN1 as fast as anyone could have been promoted. The competition for YNC was much tougher and therefore took a bit longer to be promoted but the process was the same.
It is the PROCESS that I want to convey to the reader. I KNEW what I had to do. I set a personal goal of doing it as quickly as time would permit. I kept my nose clean, as they say. I did my work as professionally as I could and that resulted in getting good recommendations for advancement from my various Commanding Officers. One “life lesson” learned along the way was that the more you make yourself irreplaceable on the job, the more valuable you become to the people you work for and the people who work for you. This all occurred long before Gary Keller wrote the book The One Thing but looking backward, that is exactly what I did throughout my Coast Guard career. I identified the ONE THING that if done would lead to identifying the next “one thing” that needed to be done and then the next, etc. The list of completed “one things” resulted in a very successful Coast Guard career. I advanced from Seaman Recruit in Boot Camp through Seaman to Yeoman Third Class to Chief Yeoman, to Chief, Warrant Officer (Personnel Administration) and was ultimately selected for a rare promotion to Limited Duty Officer – Lieutenant the grade at which I retired after twenty years.
I know with certainty that this process works because I did the same thing as I progressed into the real estate business. There was ALWAYS the ONE THING that if done, would lead to the next ONE THING that cumulatively would lead to the completion of a goal/objective I pursued. IT WORKS!
Therefore, your goal, should you decide to pursue it, is to (1) find the ONE THING you must be doing right now. (2) create a mental image of what your life will look like when it is finished. Breakdown the period from where you want to be in the future back to the current moment in time. Once you have accomplished that, you can identify the many steps you MUST take to make things happen in your life that must happen for you to get to where you want to go. BUT FIRST – YOU MUST KNOW WHERE IT IS YOU WANT TO GO! The following is a great poem. I wish I knew who wrote it. The message is clear as a bell!
WHERE’RE YA GOING?
High
in the Sierra Mountains lives an old man
Who,
from their hermitage, looks down in pity
Upon
other people of higher mental aspiration.
One
day he rescued a little group of Swiss mountaineers
Lost
deep in the mountains’ fastnesses.
When
told where they were, they exclaimed in disbelief,
“But
how did we get here?”
To
which the old hermit replied,
“If
that question ain’t got no answer attached to it,
I
ain’t got none that fits.
If
you is goin’ anywhere in particular
Up
here, yu’d better figger fust how to get thar.
Cuz
by jest goin’ afore ya know where yere agoin’
Ya
can get to a powerful lotta places ya might not wanta be.”
-Author
unknown
Gary Keller also said many times that YOU MUST be LEARNING BASED because if you are not Learning Based, you are IGNORNANT BASED and that is the mindset of a loser. You MUST be constantly learning. You must want to become better at what you do, and you achieve that by reading, studying your craft, attending seminars, and listening to appropriate podcases. The more you learn the more you know and the better you will perform. Since my early 40s, I established a personal goal of reading 2 books a month. I read on average 3 books every month. Reading explains how when you are facing a problem, suddenly from out of nowhere the solution appears in my mind. At first, I had no idea where these solutions came from but then I realized that you rarely truly forget anything. The information is there, lying dormant within your subconscious mind. You put it there through your reading, courses taken and podcasts listened to. Then if as if by magic, the information appears when you need it most.
“YOU
can READ…for a change; or YOU can read…for a CHANGE! The choice is yours! Choose wisely!”
Jim “Gymbeaux Brown
There you have it! You can CHOOSE a purpose filled and successful life, or you can LIVE an unplanned life of happenstance and struggle. The choice you make that will grow the quickest will be the one you voluntarily choose to feed the most as the graphic above suggests! The choice should be obvious and a “word to the wise should be sufficient!” You are wise, are you not?
I would be remis it if I did not recommend you read the book Where Are You Going? (available on Amazon) co-authored by Lou Vickery and Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown (yes that is me). The book goes into much more depth on living the life you desire through self-analysis and goal setting.
“Success
leaves clues!” Anthony
Robbins. It truly does. The information is out there! All YOU have to DO is open your
mind and LET IT IN!
