If you want to achieve any sort of meaningful success in your life, you have no choice but to take ownership of everything your life contains.

If you don’t accept responsibility for every action, emotion, thought, and belief in your life, you will be susceptible to exactly the sort of change you are seeing right now – random events. There are excuses preventing you right now from being the best you, you can be.

Your thoughts need to be constructive, not destructive.

You are where you are in life because of the decisions your made in your life. Period.
Nobody has it easy.

Because when you take complete ownership of your past, you finally get to take ownership for your future.

We all want to control our own destiny, but so many of us believe fate has more control then we do. That’s just a lie… it’s the excuse we use to avoid the pains of personal responsibility for our current place in life.
It’s easier to feel better about yourself on a superficial level when we deny the realities of our own in-action or laziness. Do you feel good about intending to do something one day? How do you feel after you complete a meaningful task?

4 are birds on a sand bar in the ocean, 1 decides to fly away – how many remain?
Four. The bird only thought about flying. My question is this: What happened next? Was there a better way?

Every moment of every day, with every thought guiding each and every action, we’re slowly shuffling our future choices into bits of immutable history. The difference between drowning on a sinking raft and being waited-on in the perfect place just how you like, is simply a matter of choice – and the personal responsibility to take action on the choice.

The Past is the past, remember the lessons learned from it, but don’t let it drag down your future. Use it – Raise high by providing strength through knowledge and experience. Let The past go. While it may take time to see the effects, Change happens in a moment. Make that change now to choose a better future. Make now better.

Choose.

Persistence is the fuel that drives your will power to accomplishment through industrious hard work even when you feel like quitting..
What is meant is persistence of action.
If you continually think about something, without action, it’s wasted energy.

Your willingness to overcome obstacles preventing non-actions of laziness,  procrastination, and the temptations of less meaningful immediate gratification will be the test of your persistence.  Your ability to persevere and circumvent self-doubt along with the several incarnations of fear, is a good measure of this.

Perseverance is the endurance that wins the battle.
As when running a marathon, persistence in action will also start providing it’s own motivation.  When you accomplish the smaller tasks of making it to the next check point, you will have more reason to continue to the end knowing you have made it that far already.

When strive to complete any meaningful goal, such as running a marathon, you motivation will come and go like spectators along the path.  Sometimes you can get encouragement from those around you and sometimes you are left to your own devices to make it through.  But it’s not your motivation that gets you to the finish line, that only got you to start the race.  It’s your persistence of action that carries you to the end.

But persistence is not stubbornness.  If you fall and break your leg, it would be silly to continue running to the end.  You do need to update and revise you goals as required.

When I younger I had a goal of making money with real estate and at the age of 22 bought my first house before I ever owned a car.  I just couldn’t understand the point of throwing away my money on rent.  Since then I have acquired additional properties and rented them out.  But that was some time ago and my interest in Real Estate is no longer an inspiration.  Sure, I still own the houses as they are a good investment that provide a small steady income, but I’ve become much more interested in providing assistance to help people help themselves. So I’ve all but abandoned previous goals in that field and the closest thing I do with houses now work with real estate agents to improve their business models and marketing efforts.

Years ago a friend of mine was on a road trip from Toronto Ontario to somewhere near Calgary Alberta, about a 20 hour straight drive.  Along the way they purchased a couple new tapes from a bulk bin to get them though the dead radio areas along the drive.   From this experience I had the following line of inspiration shared with me:

“To create, you must destroy”

You only have so much room in your life to make meaningful things happen.
If you encounter any sort of personal growth you will not be the same person you were last year, or last month even. To make room for your new aspirations, you have to learn how to abandon projects that only serve to slow down your progress.

This was particularly difficult for me.  I’ve always been an idea driven guy who has several projects on the go.  Adding to this, my mom is a pack rat, my Grandfather is pack rat, and I developed habits that caused my basement to be filled with 15 old printers I could re-purpose the internal motors and controls for, 12 microwaves because the power transformers inside them are expensive to buy but easy to find on the curve (that was for a home arc welder I never finished), and several other items.

The time came when I needed to make better progress. That progress didn’t happen until I threw away all the idea’s of projects I liked, but was never driven to complete.  This allowed me far better concentration to do things like write these articles for you with a much clearer head, and the time to do them effectively.

The value true of persistence is not found by clinging on to the past, but by maintaining a clear vision of your goals continually refining your path as you improve your ability to accomplish the values that drive you.

As you develop personally, your ability to clearly understand your mission will improve. This in turn allows for more effective actions to be pursued, forcing you to abandon ideas that you realize are not as well aligned as you first thought.

Industry, or being industrious, is the action of doing hard work. It’s the time

you spend for the process of making things happen — Being diligent.

Chores at home like making your meals, cleaning the dishes, then putting the dishes away is not hard work, but it’s the work required to get required goals accomplished.  You just have to do them over and over again each day as part of your personal healthy maintenance.  Other “home work” would be cleaning, laundry, staying organized, paying taxes and other bills, along with many other duties.  Then there are the several tasks you need to preform at work, with the children and spouse or lover. These tasks need to be preformed just sustain yourself.

You need to put in the time where it is needed. If you don’t make the time to ensure these tasks are done you can really make a mess of things – a messy house, a hungry stomach, troubled relationships, just to name a few. Larger examples would be the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage disaster that stared in the United States and spread across the world.   Big or small, it’s about putting in the time where it need to be put, doing the correct tasks that need to be done.
Not thinking about them, not hoping someone else will do them, or ignoring them hoping they will go away – that will almost always make it worse.

Sometimes you know what needs to be done, sometimes you don’t.  The first step will be to figure out what the first tasks are.  If you know, then do it. If you don’t, educate yourself to figure that out.  This may be as easy as making a phone call or searching for something on the web.  Sometimes you need to get a professional involved.  But not doing these tasks will certainly prevent the successful accomplishments you seek.

Sometimes little tasks that may not be difficult lingers around too long.

When I bought my first house there was a very tiny half-bath in the basement, with a rough-in for a shower.  I wanted a shower there and quickly realized the reason it was only a rough-in was because of a true lack of forethought with the original design — where the plumbing was there wasn’t enough space for even the smallest shower.  I knocked out a section of wall and re-framed it so there would be room.  Then it sat for 10 YEARS because I didn’t want to deal with it any more.  Every time I was downstairs I would be reminded about this shortcoming.  I figured the toilet and sink worked, and there was a shower upstairs, so did it really need to be done?  Well, it certainly looked worse then the (mostly) finished smaller bathroom that came with the house.

It wasn’t going to cost anything other then time to complete this project, all the tools and materials were purchased years ago …the can of rubber cement for the shower walls was so old it was very rusty on the outside.  Finally, it took all of 2 days to finish it.  The hardest part of getting it done was starting again.  After all, it’s not very difficult to measure, cut, and glue things – children do that in kindergarten for fun!
(As an aside, it was writing the article on hard work that finally motivated me to get this it done!)

Time is constant, but different  people will use their time with different effectiveness.  It’s amazing how many people will spend their money to buy a faster more effective computer (and all the time they worked to earn that money), but pay little attention to being personally more effective.

What slows people down the most is their ability to manage themselves. Fancy technology will only serve to mask bad habits of the ineffective.  Truly effective people can use old methods and still achieve their desired result, but the technology will serve to leverage their abilities to far surpass what they would otherwise accomplish..

This has been a long and difficult journey for me, and it’s still not finished (nor do I think it ever should be).   I’m really stubborn  – - just over 15 years ago I knew what my destination was but didn’t know how to get there.   I was surrounded by people who provided well intentioned advice but didn’t know my goals or aspirations.  Only I could truly know those.  It was through searching for the answers in several different places and then finally taking massive action to achieve them, that has allowed me to taste what my dreams are made of.
Part of why it took me so long to get here was because I would let too many defeats bring me down.  It was learning to accept these as “the learning curve”, and when I could finally embrace imperfection as the road to perfection, I gained the strength to push on through adversity.

You too will face challenges that test everything you are made of.  And it’s how you accept and conquer these challenges that will build your character to what you desire.

Time is invaluable because there is no way to purchase more. But by developing your personal industrious nature you will need less time to do the things that have to be done, allowing you more time for the things you want to get done.  Reversing this order will have backward results, and something will have to give.

Personal productivity can eliminate the time conflicts between work, family, friends, and fun — time you can spend time to deepen relationships, improve your health, or make additional contributions to society.

Planning and being focused on the big picture are the keys here.  Hard work and working smart and not the same thing, and both need to be managed well be to effective.  Though industry will provide the method to achieve your goals, you must first ensure that the steps you take are the correct ones.
When I doubt, ask.
When there is no one to ask, just do what you think is best an accept learning from mistakes.
Lack of action leads to lack of results.
Strong work ethics and determination to take action, over time, will always get strong results.

Hard work is misunderstood these days. It’s like two 4-letter words strung together.
But the worst 4-letter work really is “can’t”.
Without hard work  you can’t reach the goals you need to feel great.
Nothing but great effort can produce great feelings of great accomplishment.

What outlines the work you find hard are the things that challenge you.

How many have you disrespected things that where just handed to you, no matter how valuable you knew they were? How many times has someone told you “I wish I could do that” and you felt nothing about it?  It’s part of the human condition, we simply don’t respect things that don’t take hard work to accomplish.

Most often through great challenges come great results. When you develop the discipline of hard work you gain the ability to go farther then people who continually reach only for what’s easiest.

Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world, but without daily hard work to maintain his abilities, he would only be fast – not the fastest. Imagine what Usain’s ability would be if he watched T.V. For 4 hours a day eating Big Mac’s?

We only know Nelson Mandela as the visionary he is because of the hard work to employs to make his voice unify so many people’s ideals. Enduring 27 years in prison for his cause and not giving up is very hard work and demonstrates his self discipline to act.

Two completely different goals, both accomplished with the self discipline for hard work. It’s universal, and will create results no matter what industry or skill it’s focused in. Long term results follow strong efforts.

One problem with achieving the successes you desire is learning to accept the challenges that feel painful or uncomfortable to endure. The turning point comes when you are able to embrace and even enjoy the challenges of hard work.

Hard work builds a successful character.

If you want strong muscles, you work them hard, and even learn to enjoy the pain of “one more rep”.  When you want your life to be as strong and dominating as a body builder, you have to apply the strong principles of hard work to your life.

Do you want to feel more confidant?
Feel more successful?
Feel a greater sense of accomplishment?
Accept what’s holding you back and work hard to remove that barrier.
That’s it. Just do it.

Think about all the projects around you that have been left undone, probably because the work has been harder then you wanted to push yourself.
Select one of those projects right now and go do it – now.
Seriously … After you complete it you’ll feel proud of yourself. Giving in you more confidence to do more. It’s called building  momentum.

Go..! Do it now.

Willpower… the substance generally lacking within all people depressed or otherwise unhappy.

It’s not something that can be replace by some gimmick fast acting miracle sold on some infomercial at 2am or in the discount bin at your local Walmart. Thought simple minds hoping there is a solution without effort continue to line the coffers of 2-bit solicitors, it’s just not there. Feeding on a lack of will power to make a quick buck and knowing this audience is too lazy to complain that just got scammed, these sales continue to thrive. (play the lottery lately?)

What is Will Power?

Willpower is defined as the ability to exert one’s desires over one’s actions and manifests itself as determination, resolution and persistence. It’s the inner strength to make the decision, that takes the action, and embraces the inevitability of obstacles regardless of the of difficulties bound to appear.

Did I mention it’s fleeting?

When your poised to start a race and your there at the starting blocks, your pumped up and ready to give it – that’ your will power getting you start. It’s what will give you the power to go from a dead stop to full speed in the shortest span of time.

When you first have what you believe is a great idea, it feels easy to take actions that progress this thought into reality. But soon your original desire to produce the results will be fade. This is normal and needs to be anticipated for successful results.

Driving down the highway in first gear will surely blow your engine fast, but without first gear it’s difficult to start moving.

That initial effort will be the toughest, it will consume the most amount of energy, and will therefore will be unsustainable.  If you continue to consume that much energy you will burn out, fizzle up, and fall away. You need to strategically plan so that once you get moving, you can use the power of your will as momentum to continue that pace with less energy.

Plans are the nutrients of willpower.

It doesn’t take much to be effective, it can take a long to to create, and not very hard to get them together.
BUT
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

If that angers you, just ask yourself what do you wish did better. Then ask yourself how well you planned before you took action.

When you truly want to achieve something you need to look beyond the tasks at hand and see the overall bigger picture, and value the end result more then you dislike the obstacles between your current position and the target goal. Then, with that full image in your mind you need to find what will have the greatest impact with the smallest amount of effort.

Some Examples to get you started.

If you want to lose weigh, remove the junk food from the house and replace it healthier snacks you can still enjoy. If you say there are no snacks you can enjoy, research some online. Print out healthier recipes and place them in the kitchen.

If you want to exercise more, move your couch and put a StairMaster or even just a floor mat in your favorite viewing location, and break your remote control. Or better yet, give away the TV and go for a walk. Watch the neighbors and listen to nature.

If you want to spend more time with the family, plan activities around time that you usually waste (like watching T.V.)

If you want to earn more money, buy some educational material and place some in the bathroom, some in the bedroom. Learn to enjoy reading – plan on it. Get some mp3 and load up your iPod, you can listen to them while going for that walk to lose weight.

Whatever you want to accomplish, use your will power to alter the environment that is creating the problem. Then live within the new environment with the expectation to accomplish the goal you set forth.