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Imagine for a second being out of debt — no more sleepless nights over mounting credit card balances, no more ball-and-chain of debt feeding your anxieties, and no chance of threats from dreaded collection agencies. You can do it! Here’s the scoop — in one minute flat.

0:60 Resolve to spend less than you make. Make it a habit as fundamental as stopping for red lights. Realize once and for all that if you can’t pay for it today — you can’t afford it.

0:55 Distinguish between Bad Debt and OK Debt. OK Debt has an interest rate well under 10% — preferably with some tax advantages also. In the best case, what you bought with borrowed funds will appreciate in value. Home mortgages and student loans are examples of OK Debt. Automobile loans are on the border: They often satisfy the low-rate piece, but automobiles almost never appreciate in value. Bad Debt is everything else — from your Gold credit card to the 600% loan from Vinny’s Quick Cash.

0:50 Pick a winner. Out of all your cards, pick the one or two major credit cards that feature the lowest annual interest rate. Resolve to use those cards for emergencies only. As for all the other plastic pals in your wallet, remove temptation by taking them out of your wallet. Throw them behind a major appliance, freeze them in a bowl of water, or put them to a shoe box. Do whatever it takes not to use them.

Many people start of journeys in the direction of their goals while never quite considering how they’ll know once they have reached them.

That sounds a little risky doesn’t it? Would you take a drive somewhere without having any idea of how to get there, or even where you’re going. You can’t even go anywhere without a destination. You’d end up with an empty tank of gas, or somewhere close to what you were thinking about, but never EXACTLY the place you were thinking of.

That’s the same as in business, and the same as in life.

If you don’t have a specific place in mind, you really aren’t going anywhere. You’ve got to give yourself something to aim for. You must know why you want the things that you want for specific reasons, specific purposes. Too vague, and you’ll just end up spinning your wheels.

You need to have that future, that destination, created so you can actually get there eventually.

It may sound a little crazy, but it really makes sense. If you don’t have a clear picture in mind, how can you know if the things you are doing are effectively moving you closer to that vision, or are actually moving you much farther away?

You can’t.

You can not possibly expect to create the life you desire if you have no idea what that life is.

I was thinking today, for whatever reason, how disheartening it is when people begin a journey, whatever that journey is, and they never get to the end of it. Now, it isn’t so disheartening because they fell short of a goal, but because they will probably end up worse off than they were when they started.

I’ll admit, that might not make too much sense right now.

Stick in there with me.

When you are at the beginning of anything, the absolute beginning, you have no idea of what you don’t know. What do you not know? You are not knowledgeable of what you have to know to become proficient in that respective field. You can’t see the fine details, and you don’t know, yet, what separates the great from the average.

You have no point of reference yet, so you don’t know how difficult things are.

Once you’ve started your task, journey, or whatever you decide to call it, you start realizing how difficult things are, and you begin to know exactly what it is that you do not know (I know, I know). You attempt to execute the ideas in your head, but you find you are doing more thinking and less doing. You get trapped in thinking about what action you should be taking instead of actually doing anything!

Do you see the problem?