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Are you willing to pay the price for success?

September 26, 2014 10:36 IST

The road to success is ridden with speed-breakers.

Are you ready to sacrifice the luxuries you're enjoying today to conquer the future?

Entrepreneurship demands a lot of sacrificesLet's play a game.

Call three of your best friends and ask them, "Hey buddy, where do you see yourself in the next five years?"

They will tell you about their dreams, their ambitions and the things they want to have in the next five years.

That's fantastic! (If they have no idea what they want, get new friends. Remember, you are the average of the people you stay with, and surely, you don’t want unambitious people as your best friends.)

Then ask another question, "And what are you ready to give up to achieve those dreams?"

Listen carefully to their voice filled with shock, surprise and umms.

It happens.

Most of us have big dreams, which is a very good thing to have.

I, personally, love big dreamers -- those who dare to dream of what most cannot.

Most of us have dreams, but what we don’t want to do is pay the price for it. And boy, nothing comes for free.

You can get anything, as long as you are ready to pay its price.

Want to go to the beach every weekend with your family?

Then, starting today, work your ass off every weekend for the next five years.

There’s no weekend for you for the next five years, and then you may take every weekend off for the rest of your life.

Want a yacht and an island?

Starting today, work for 20 hours a day daily and then you may have the yacht.

Want to build a billion dollar company?

Start taking risks today.

Got a full-time day job? Well then, building your own venture is the work for the nights.

Work for your boss from 9 am to 5 pm, and then for yourself from 8 pm to 2 am. Be a Batman!

But I am already too busy!

No, you are not.

I cannot stand people giving excuses. Well, no one’s busy.

It may be hard for you to accept, but you are not busy.

You simply have screwed-up priorities, which you need to straighten up a bit.

Beware of burnout

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking -- "Come on man, I don't want to burnout in the first three months itself."

Well then, I want to tell you that power of your desire should be greater than the power of burning out.

Need a simple trick? Don't go to bed satisfied.

Go to bed in the middle of an important and urgent work so that you have your mind unsatisfied by previous day's work and ready to focus on it as soon as you wake up.

The day you sleep satisfied, you won’t have a to-do list ready to help you kickstart the next day.

What about work -- life balance?

What about it? Screw it!

By trying to balance between these two, you'll neither be able to focus on work nor on life.

My suggestion? Give 70 per cent to your work for 30 per cent of your life and then 30 per cent to your work for 70 per cent of your life. But work first.

Big but weak dreams

Yes, big dreams are a great thing. But big and weak dreams aren’t.

Your dreams should be powerful enough to wake you up every day before your alarm goes off.

Your dreams should be so attractive that nothing else attracts you.

No dream is powerful by default.

Here are a few things which you can do to inject power in your dreams.

What do I do right away?

I have always been the preacher of doing things now.

This time, I am actually going to tell you what can do to begin the journey today.

Photograph: Bernavazqueze Dreilinger/Creative Commons

The author is founder, CEO of OWLGRIN, a financial services start-up. His twitter handle is @mohitmamoria.

Mohit Mamoria