We have spent the past few issues teaching you how to prepare
yourself for financial abundance. You know how to treat your business
finances as an entity separate from your personal finances, you know how
to organize and keep track of your expenses, and you know from where
you are starting on this financial journey. Great! Now what?

Not a
thing in your financial lives will change if you do not do the
footwork. You need consistently to devote the time necessary to improve
your financial situation. So many of us are great starters. We begin
to gather knowledge and make great plans, thinking of the ultimate
outcome, but then we often do not fulfill our plan by taking the
step-by-step actions required to bring us to that outcome.

Have
you ever uttered, “I’m too busy”? Maybe “I can’t afford it” sounds
familiar. These are excuses and you need to look closely at where they
have gotten you so far. Are you even one step closer to the financial
prosperity you wish to have in your life? As artists, we tend to fear
anything that might take us away from our artistic pursuits. After all,
we have to devote ourselves to our “day jobs”, the ones we know will
bring in money to pay the bills. What other time we have we must spend
on our artistic endeavors. Right?

Wrong! The financial distress
we are in is so distracting it brings an almost unbearable amount of
stress into our lives and our minds. How creatively focused can we be
under that much stress? If we make a little time every week to take
care of our financial situation – such as reading, attending a seminar,
setting up a side business – we would actually free up time later on.
Imagine pursuing your artistic dream with no financial pressure!

So what exactly does “priority” mean. A priority is a
“must”, something we “must” do, and a “must” is very different from a
“should”. We all have lists of things in our lives that we “must” do
and we all have lists of things we “should” do. There is a critical
difference between the two. For instance, I must pay my bills every
month on time. This is something I would never allow myself not to do.
However, I really feel I should exercise every day. Somehow, as much
as I know I should exercise, I often allow other things to get in the
way. For others, exercising every day is a must, and they are prepared
to sacrifice to get that exercise time in.

I suggest to my students that, for the period they are working with
me in private coaching or in our Artists’ Prosperity Bootcamp, they make
implementing the steps of The Artists’ Prosperity SystemTM
a “must”. Generally, once we see our financial pictures start to
shift, we will not go back to doing things the way we did before.

So,
analyze your time. How do you use it? Where do you waste it? Be
completely and brutally honest with yourself. Then, set aside a few
hours every week to devote solely to the endeavor of creating financial
prosperity. This practice will help you develop the sound knowledge
that will allow you to start building the financial wealth you deserve
and desire.