“That’s just the way it is.” 

It’s the biggest lie we tell ourselves – that the way things are right now is the way they will always be. But just because your life looks a certain way today, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same tomorrow. 

The good news is, you don’t have to be a helpless victim of change, always scrambling to deal with each new challenge as it arises. You can take charge of your life and steer it in the direction you want, even when the world is in flux around you.

Today I’d like to teach you how to change your life by setting goals that will bring your vision to life – and letting nothing stop you from creating the life of your dreams. 

10 Steps to Change Your Life

Follow these steps to discover how to change your life and make your biggest dreams come true:  

Are you a manager… or are you a leader? An organization needs both types of people to be successful. 

Leaders are visionary, big picture thinkers with the passion and charisma to inspire others to help them bring their vision to life.

Managers have analytic minds and organizational skills required to keep everything running smoothly and ensure that their team has what they need to succeed.  

When it comes to leaders vs. managers, oftentimes, people are both. 

The best managers tend to have great leadership skills and are able to empower and inspire their team to aim higher, dream bigger, and strive to get better results.

And many great leaders, having climbed the rungs of management to get where they are now, still have an innate sense of how to manage resources, and implement processes to ensure everything runs smoothly and that people have what they need to do their best work. 

You don’t have to be a great leader to be an effective manager – but it certainly helps, especially if you dream of making a bigger impact on the world and on the lives of other people. 

I want to help you develop your leadership skills and grow your understanding of how leadership and management compare and differ from each other. That’s why I’ve written this article! 

If you are bored with life, if you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals. –Lou Holtz

I’ve studied the science of success for over four decades now – and if there’s one thing I know for sure to be true, it’s this:

The only way to attain a high level of success in life is to set personal goals for yourself and refuse to let anything stop you from achieving them. 

… Sounds simple, right? 

Yet so few people seem to be able to pull it off.  

Most people in life don’t bother to set personal goals for themselves. They’re too busy reacting to daily chaos and won’t open their eyes toward the horizon to plan for a future. 

Even if they do look ahead and set future goals for themselves, they lack the focus and motivation required to achieve their aspirations in life and give up when the first challenging obstacle appears on their path. 

Or they set personal goals that don’t take them in the direction of the life they want to live. Their personal goals list reflects what they think they should want to achieve in life, rather than what they actually want to experience. 

I don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why today I’m going to teach you how to set personal goals that are guaranteed to lead you in the direction of your dreams.

You’ll also learn how to identify future goals for different areas of your life so that you’re able to experience more balance, harmony, and greater fulfillment in everything you do! 

Ask any highly successful person how they maintain their motivation and focus to achieve their ambitious goals, and chances are their answer will be, “daily affirmations!”

I have met countless successful business people, Olympic and professional athletes, NY Times bestselling authors, and visionary changemakers who all use daily positive affirmations to stay energized and focused on their goals, no matter what’s happening in the world around them. They have all told me that their daily affirmations practice has had a game-changing impact on their lives.

Today I’d like to teach you how daily affirmations for success actually work and show you how to write affirmations that will make it so much easier for you to achieve your life goals.

I’ll also answer common questions such as:

“What is a daily affirmation?”
“Are morning affirmations better than evening affirmations?”
“How to write affirmations that work?”

… and so much more!

If you want to be successful, reading books to help you grow in life is a very important discipline. I’ve been reading for a minimum of one hour a day over the past 53 years.

As a result, I’ve read more than 3,000 books in the fields of personal development, psychology, motivation, creativity, financial literacy, economics, relationships, communication skills, parenting, spiritual growth, health and fitness, leadership, marketing, social media, sales skills, social change, and environmental sustainability.

Today I want to talk to you about the importance of reading every day as part of your daily disciplines for success. I’ll share with you 11 books I highly recommend that have also helped me.

The Way I Choose Books to Help You Grow

As you probably know, I divide my life into seven specific areas:

• Job and career
• Financial
• Relationships
• Health and fitness
• Fun and recreation
• Personal
• Contribution

The personal area of my life includes education, spiritual development, and any possessions I want to own or experiences I want to face. Contribution means making a difference, such as through philanthropy and leaving a legacy.

As you’ll see from the 11 books I share with you today, they cover most of these areas.

When I was in college, I began to find my purpose in life. I was actually a Chinese history major, but in my senior year, I took an elective course for an “easy A” called Social Relations 10.

In that class, we talked about our feelings and got to know each other on a deeper level than anyone I had ever talked to in college. I realized I loved human behavior — how people interact with each other, how they set goals, what human psychology is all about. I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.

Over the next several years, one opportunity led to another, and I discovered that my true purpose in life was inspiring and empowering people to live their highest vision in the context of love and joy.

Since then, my whole life has been developed around that purpose. Once I was clear with that, I could align every single behavior and goal with my purpose.

So today I want to talk to you about one of the most important, yet challenging things you must do: how to find your purpose in life.

Determine What’s Keeping You From Finding Your Passion

One of the biggest challenges we face is figuring out exactly what we want to do with our lives.

When you encounter a setback in life, how do you react?

Do you complain about it or succumb to frustration and anger and allow it to derail your progress?

Do you see it as a sign from the universe to quit or use it as an excuse to give up on your goals?

Or do you treat it like the valuable learning opportunity it is?

Today I’d like to teach you how to “fail forward” in life and transform every failure you experience into a powerful launchpad that catapults you even closer to your dreams.

The Truth About Failure

See, this is the thing about failures.

All our lives, we’ve been told that they’re bad and something to avoid or be ashamed of.

The idea of failure has been built up to be so catastrophically terrible that most people choose not to take any risks at all, rather than risk even a small chance of failure.

And that is a huge problem — because if you don’t take risks, you can’t grow as a person.

You see, growth only happens when you leave your comfort zone. It requires you to venture into unknown territory and try something different. That’s how we learn the new skills and knowledge we need to become the kind of person who is capable of taking our lives to the next level.

Growth requires risk. And if you’re so scared of failure that you refuse to take risks, then you’ll always remain right where you are.

How would you like to learn a success strategy that will double your chances of achieving your goals? 

I’m talking about the power of accountability, and today I’d like to give you some tips on how to put it to work in your life so that you do a better job of achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself this year. 

We’ll also talk about accountability vs. responsibility and the differences between the two so you can better understand how each strategy will empower you to accomplish more, faster, in the months ahead. 

Accountability vs. Responsibility: What’s the Difference?

Stephen R. Covey says that “accountability breeds response-ability.” 

He’s the author of the bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in case you don’t know him. 

I like this saying because it suggests that accountability and responsibility are different from each other — and it highlights the fact that being held accountable increases your ability to respond, which means taking action. 

When you are responsible for something, it is your duty to respond and take action. 

When you are accountable, you are responsible for reporting the actions you have taken and providing an account of the results. 

Responsibility is task-oriented. You are responsible for accomplishing the tasks required to achieve your goals. 

Accountability, on the other hand, is results-oriented. When you are being held accountable for something, it is your duty to take stock of what you’ve done and report on the outcomes of your actions. 

Both of these duties are key to your success. 

What are you thankful for? Have you used gratitude affirmations lately?

In a year like the one we’ve just had, these might be hard questions to answer. 

But here’s the thing: When you’re going through challenging or uncertain times, that’s when practicing gratitude matters more than ever! 

Gratitude allows you to completely transform your mindset and experience in an instant — no matter what is happening in your life or in the world around you. 

So today I’d like to share some gratitude affirmations that will help you change your perspective and stay focused on the positive, so you can attract more of what you want into your life and less of what you don’t. 

Because I travel so much for all the seminars, workshops, trainings, and speeches I give — as well as all the time I spend writing books or recording new online courses and video blogs when I am home — my wife was becoming upset about the lack of time we were spending together.

She suggested we take a month-long vacation together to reconnect and deepen our relationship with each other. So we rented a house on the ocean in Maui, Hawaii, for a whole month. 

At first, I was nervous about being away from my work for a whole month, but with the success of our online programs that don’t require my live presence every week, and the ability to prerecord video blogs and social media messages, it turned out fine. 

I made an agreement with my wife that I could write and handle critical emails for a maximum of two hours a day, and the rest of the time I would spend with her.

As I reflect on the month, here are five valuable insights and lessons that I learned about the value of disconnecting through taking a vacation. Hopefully, they’ll help you discover why you need a vacation too.

Are you making the kind of money you want to be making in your current job? Chances are, your answer is no. But when you know how to get a raise, everything can change.

If you feel like you should be making more — but don’t want to have to apply for new positions at different companies and start all over somewhere else — getting a raise can be the answer.

Today I’d like to share my top tips on how to make more money where you are right now and propel your career in the direction you want to go. 

Add More Value

My first tip is to create and add more value to the company. 

What can you do to help the company make or save more money? How can your efforts help to boost the organization’s results or reputation, or fulfill the company’s mission or objectives? What can you do to make your manager’s or coworkers’ lives easier? 

Look for needs that aren’t being met — either within the organization or your clients’ or customers’ needs — and meet those needs to add more value wherever possible. That’s the first, and biggest step you can take to make yourself more deserving of a higher paycheck. 

In today’s fast-paced work environment, achieving a work and life balance can seem impossible. Technology makes most workers accessible 24 hours a day. 

The stress of never taking a minute off can compound to hurt your health, your relationships with loved ones and friends, and your overall happiness. 

The stress you deal with day to day can easily bleed into your home life if you let it, so don’t let it. The trick is to follow set principles that allow you to keep that stress in the office where it belongs.

Today, I want to talk to you about how to find your perfect work and life balance so that you spend less time working and more time doing the things you love.

Everybody wants to enjoy a certain level of wealth and success in life. But so few of us actually manage to create the life of ease and abundance that we long for.

So why is that? Well, one big reason is that we don’t cultivate a healthy relationship with money. We develop beliefs, attitudes and habits about money in our youth that hold us back from being able to generate wealth and enjoy the financial freedom we desire.

But the good news is, once you’re able to identify these “money roadblocks” in your own habits and behaviors, you’ll be able to overcome them once and for all — and finally be able to make more than enough money to create the life of your dreams.

So today I’d like to talk about five big obstacles that are keeping you from experiencing the wealth and success you deserve and the solutions to overcoming them.

It took her only two months to finish her book after that. Her mantra became, “Write or die!” The power of being committed made decision-making easier for Susie and she accomplished her goal in record time.

So, today I want to tell you why the secret to success is making a 100% commitment to everything you do.

Being Committed 100% Is Easier Than a 99% Commitment

In every aspect of life, if something is worth doing, it’s worth giving 100% of your effort to it. Because a 99% commitment isn’t going to cut it.

Having any leeway at all in your convictions is inevitably going to lead to frustration, failure, and disappointment.

Why is it that 100% commitment is the key to success, while even a 99% commitment is a recipe for failure? Is there really that drastic a difference between a person who is 100% committed and someone who is 99% committed?

The answer is yes. There’s a huge difference.

“No” doesn’t have to be the end of the story. You can learn how to reject rejection, and look at it as an opportunity to progress forward and even excel at the very thing you were rejected for.

Today I want to talk to you about how to reject rejection—and how to use it to launch yourself even closer to your goals.

Rejection Does Not Mean Failure

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that you don’t like being rejected. Of course not, it’s not a good feeling. Who among us looks forward to being told our idea wasn’t good enough, that we didn’t quite measure up to the task, or we ourselves are somehow flawed?

Each year, enlightenment seekers embark on pilgrimages to Buddist temples or remote villages in China, Japan, Korea and other zen-centric locales. They’re searching for a way to find themselves, create balance in their lives and understand how the forces of the universe can bring them peace, enhanced intuition and prosperity. 

But what if I told you that you can achieve the same benefits of zen without leaving your front door? Today, I want to share with you how to create a zen space in your home. 

This is a special space in your home or office that is strictly dedicated to meditation, deep contemplation or prayer. It’s where you’ll be able to pause from the pressures and stressors of your daily life and where you can unplug, meditate and reflect in peace and quiet.

The physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of yoga and tai chi are limitless. Each discipline requires some time, but each is incredibly rewarding.

Capable of helping you feel more relaxed, centered, and in touch with your life’s most natural state, stretching is much more than a de-stressing technique.

That’s why today, I want to give you a few tips to help you learn about some of the benefits of yoga and tai chi.

Personal Goals

One of the goals I have for this year is to be more flexible. There is a picture on my vision board of a man in a yoga posture.

Yoga

I started doing yoga in my late twenties, and it has been something I attempt to do on a daily basis.

As I have gotten older, I have sustained several injuries – a ruptured disc in my lower back, and a major shoulder injury to my right shoulder – which caused a lot of tightness in my lower back, neck, and shoulders.

The power of persistence

Over the years, I’ve spent some time learning how to practice persistence. Some of this has come with hard life lessons, and other valuable insights I’ve learned by watching the inspirational journeys of others.

The power of persistence is so important for achieving success in all aspects of our lives, so I want to make sure I share it with you.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Calvin Coolidge, who once said:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

This quote is so powerful because it’s true. It doesn’t matter how much money you were born into, or how smart or talented you are. It doesn’t even matter how ambitious you are.

If you don’t have the necessary willpower and drive to keep moving forward to your goals no matter what roadblocks appear on your path, you will never unlock your true capacity for success.

So today I’d like to talk to you about the importance of persistence, and how your ability to persevere in the face of any obstacle is the key to your success in life.

Chasing perfection reminds me of a dog chasing his tale — you get dizzyingly exhausted trying to make it happen, but it’s always just out of reach. And if you do end up catching it, was it really worth it after all?

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing perfection, or the idea of a “perfect” life. It comes with the perfect income, the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect body, and whatever “perfect” seems to be. But in reality, those who spend all their time and energy trying to make sure their lives are perfect are usually the unhappiest people I know.

So today I want to talk to you about the difference between chasing perfection and achieving happiness — how to create a life that truly brings you joy and fulfillment.  

Dare to Ask for What You Want

My first mentor, W. Clement Stone, the author of “The Success System That Never Fails,” taught me many things, but one of the most important being able to ask for what you want.

He would repeatedly remind me, “If there is something to gain by asking and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask.” This one principle has reaped great rewards in my life, and it can do the same for you.

That’s why today, I want to discuss the importance of asking for what you want in order to reach your full potential.

How to Ask For What You Want

Unfortunately, many of us are not great at asking for what we want. For any number of reasons stemming from childhood conditioning to traumatic rejections later in life, we have become afraid of the word “no.”

To be successful, you have to be willing to ask and keep asking for what you want until you get a “yes.”

Rejection is just part of the journey to finally getting to a “yes.” And it only takes one “yes” to radically change your life forever.