As I end the year, I am studying the behavior of people. My new book Big Dreams Take Small Sacrifices is 98% done and I am excited. What I am seeing with people is that people want to be successful but they don’t want to earn it. I have a very comfortable life and I don’t have to work if I don’t want to but what drives me is I want more. Does that make me greedy? Maybe. But frankly, I want more. One day soon, I would like to pack my buddies into a car and take them for a $2000 night out on the town. The problem is that people don’t want to sacrifice for their dream. I believe a sacrifice is a payment in advance for a dream.

Because of my disability, there are some sacrifices that I have to make that no other people have to make. And for years, it irritated me down to my core. But one thing I always knew but recently realized was the fact that who cares what sacrifices other people make. The only question in my mind should be am I willing to pay for my dreams, or not?

Another problem that I see is that people stop learning after they finish school. People claim that the minimum wage is too low and they can’t get out of poverty because the cost of living is too high for minimum wage workers. That might be true and that is a big problem in this country but part of sacrifice is being willing to always be a student. My mentor Larry Winget read 4,000 books. In the last three months, I read an autobiography by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the new book by Larry Winget, Joe Calloway, a book about sponsorship by Roberto Candelaria who I am going to do some consulting work with.  An internet publishing book by –  . I even took an online class to learn how to use Final Cut Pro. I went to two conferences.

Me learned a lot this year!

This year was the biggest of my life. I had a baby boy, I had every excuse not to work. Nobody ever expects Sourena to work hard except Sourena and that’s the key.

If you want to make more money or have access to cool people, one of the steps is learning. If you want to make $50 an hour, then you better be skilled. If you go to Lynda.com, for $25 a month, you can have access to any course you want and if you master just one skill on there, then  perhaps you can make $50 an hour.

People spend so much time trying to see what they can get but not enough time actually sitting down and figuring out what skills they need to in order to move forward.

The reason why I am so emotional in this post is because I just realized that this is the key to success and as I was writing the book I realized that I was not doing enough.

Are you ready for your big dreams to come true?

What skills do you need to develop?

Are you willing to pay for your dreams right now so one day they will come true? (i.e., sacrifices, time, energy, money, heartache.)