The third step step of the Success Club Intl Success Formula is Review.  During this review it is important to check your goals and actions and see how they are working for you.  Are the goals still goals that you want to achieve?  Are the goals too easy or too hard?  Are the actions you taking moving you towards your goals?  Are the actions too little or too much?

In addition to reviewing your current goals and actions, think back in your life to your past experiences.  Review your past successes and times when you were less than satisfied with the results you received.  Let's first start by thinking about your past successes.

Try and think of 3 times in your life where you remember the feeling of being successful or happy.  Maybe it was a time when you were younger in school, maybe you got some recognition by a teacher, maybe you did well in an athletic event or maybe some social function or event you were chosen as a key contributor.   Think again when you were older, maybe job or career related.  Have you had a time when you got a great job, or promotion or something great just happened?  Maybe you had a great relationship, or maybe you went on a fun vacation.  Then try and think of a third time when you felt successful, maybe more recently, like in the last few years.

Pick three times where you achieved what you consider success, look at each of these times and see if you can discover some pattern to your success.  What did you have to do before you got the feeling of success?  Did it take some preparation before you were successful?  Maybe for several months before hand you did some work to achieve your goal.  How long did it take?  3 months, 6 months, 1 year?  For my pattern, I notice that it takes me about 6 months consistently working to get this success feeling, and when I'm truly honest, there are at least 2 years of preparation work that also contributed to the success.

Did anyone help you achieve your goal?  If you did well on a test in school, didn't you take a class on a regular basis to achieve that result?  If you did well in some athletic event, did you train with others?  For me, I notice that all times I have been successful, it has been with the help of others, and I almost always find some way to take a class or training that is in relation to my goal.

How often did you work on your goal to be successful?  If you got a great job, how often did you work towards finding that job?  Did you look at least 3 times per week, or maybe 7 days a week if you were desperate for the job?  Is there anyone out there that can tell me that they got the feeling of success by just taking one action and then waiting 6 months with no more access and they succeeded?  I know that I must do something at least 3 times per week towards my goals to eventually be successful.

Use today to discover your success pattern.  Maybe you use music, singing, pictures, drawing, motion, or exercise in your success pattern.  For the skeleton of success, we are all similar and how our body fills out the skeleton, that is what makes us all unique.

Please share what is your pattern of success.

Taking action is a critical part of being successful.  If you take absolutely no action, you are dead.  The beating of your heart and each breath you take are actions necessary to keep you alive.

If you decide that you want to thrive instead of just survive, than you must take some voluntary actions in addition to these automatic actions.  You must think about some new actions that you can take to get you closer towards your goal.  This is another instance of where asking questions will help you out.

What is there that you can do towards achieving your goal?  Is there anything you can think of that has some probability of getting you closer to your goal?  Try taking the smallest possible step towards your goal.  Just get some momentum.

Who else has achieved something similar to your goal?  It is most likely that someone else has tried to do something similar to what you are trying to achieve.  What did they do?  There is no reason for you to come up with all of the ideas, copy what other people have done.

Who could you ask for help?  Even people that have no knowledge about how to achieve your goal can be helpful.  It doesn't hurt to ask, especially if you can't think of something on your own.  What do you have to lose?

The key is to find some way to take action, on a regular basis.  Think again about if you want to improve your physical condition.  How often might you have to exercise to improve your body?  Once a year?  Once a month?  How about 3-5 times per week, and keep doing that for at least 6 months or longer.  That seems like a formula for success.   Do the same with your mind.

Take action 3-5 times per week and keep up this habit for at least 6 months and you should be amazed at what you can accomplish.

There is a good article on Forbes by Lewis Howes called "Why Thinking Small Is The Secret To Big Success".  The main point of the article is that if you are having problems achieving your goals, then maybe the goals are too big.  I encourage you to check out the article.

I couldn't agree more with his point.  Think of this from an athletic perspective.  If someone wanted to learn how to pole vault, wouldn't it be ridiculous to give this beginner a long pole, set the bar at the current world record level and then tell them to run very fast and get over the bar?  How much success would they experience?  How long until they gave up and said it was impossible?

Wouldn't it maybe make more sense to give this person something that they can achieve, no matter how small?  Maybe give them a 3 foot long pole and ask them to flip over that pole onto a nice soft mat, so they can learn how to flip over the bar.  There must be some beginner activities that can be used to allow a person to gradually work up to being able to break the world record.

BTW, even world record breakers generally use the same approach.  I have never heard of world class athlete structuring their workouts where they start by giving themselves the largest possible challenge and then just keep trying to achieve that result.  Instead, they almost always start with something that, for their current abilities is almost certain to lead to success.  This is sometimes called a warm-up.  After the warm-up, they will then gradually increase difficulty until they are ready to attempt the world record levels.

So when it comes to other areas of your life, use the same idea.  Set some warm up goals.  What are some goals, that at your present level of ability, you are almost certain you can achieve them.  As Lewis says, think small.  Maybe your first goal is just to get out of bed.  That's fine.  They key is that once you achieve your first goal, celebrate, and immediately set another goal.

Keep raising the bar like this and congratulating yourself.  If you hit the bar and knock it off, that's great.  This is what is going to happen and every world class athlete knocks the bar off every so often.  Just reset the bar, set a new goal, maybe a smaller goal if you want, and go again.  Develop momentum and soon you will be amazed at how high the bar is.

Conditioning our mind is similar to conditioning our body.

I'm repeating this to keep me on track.  For me it is a powerful motivational tool.  It is easy for me to want more progress than I seem to be making.  I may think that I have been working hard and taking massive action and the results just aren't showing up.

Now, part of being successful, if the results aren't showing up is to be willing to change our actions, and I also believe patience is just as important.  Let's say, I decided I wanted to run a marathon.  I trained for 6 months for the run and then on race day, I have to stop before reaching the end, is there anything that should stop me from trying again?  As long as I am still healthy, I can train again and try again.

Now with this marathon, does it matter if there are teenagers that are able to run marathons and I'm middle aged?  Should I give up on the goal?  Does it matter that the world record is 1/4 of any time I can ever expect to achieve?  It may take me longer to get trained and find the right formula that works for me, including the right coaches, though if I keep trying it will eventually work.

So, when it come to training my mind, including things like being positive and passionate.  It is easy to see people who have traits that I am interested in developing.  It's perfectly fine that they have these traits, maybe even from a young age, and I am still working to develop them.

It is like when I watch The Dog Whisperer or Supernanny.  I believe both of these people have developed expertise in a particular area and in some sense it can be depressing to see how easily they can change behaviors that maybe you have been struggling with for years.

So actually, my goal is to keep seeking and find people like these two experts, and try and learn as much from them, so that I can have the same expertise.  Once you are clear on what you want, find experts who have what you want and do your best to learn from them.

I got a little distracted from the original idea of conditioning and changed to modeling.  Well, anyway, I still think conditioning is a great idea, to keep taking regular efforts, even small efforts and not be too concerned about the speed of development.

Do you have any negative emotions associated with going to school, doing homework and taking tests?  I mean, who wants to be told they must study certain subjects.  Where is the fun in that?

Instead of focusing on studying, I propose you focus on learning.  It may sound like a small difference, though for me it is a huge difference.  I know many people that say they want to be able to speak a foreign language.  Most of them talk about how they are going to start studying the language.  For me, the more powerful approach is to focus on learning the language.

What is the difference between learning and studying?  The difference is that studying has no goal except for the action of studying.  If I take language classes for 4 years, I can say that I have been studying for 4 years.  If I now go to a country that speaks that language and I can't use any of what I was studying, than the amount of learning is much less.

Most people who are naturally successful, don't study about success, they just learn.  Learning means that we are trying to achieve some goal and therefore are trying to acquire a new skill to achieve the goal.  If my goal is to be able to converse in a foreign language, or understand foreign films in their native language, than my amount of learning will be clearly measured by how close I am to achieving these goals.

I try to never use the work study.  Instead of telling people "I am studying success", I prefer to say, "I am learning about success."  Learning implies some progress and results.  Studying can just mean book smarts and still unable to tie your own shoes.

To be clear, part of learning can be going to classes, taking tests and doing homework.  They key thing is that these are not the goal.  If you do well or poorly on a test, it is not as important as how you are making progress towards your goals.  There are great teachers out there who are willing to help you.  Use their help to achieve your goals.

I encourage you to have fun and be a lifelong learner.

Action is the time when you achieve your success.  Goals help guide you as to what you want and what actions you should be taking and it is the actual actions that will allow you to achieve your goals.  Actions can be many things, including both doing and learning things that will help you achieve your goals.

Sometimes it seems difficult to find what action you should take or the necessary action seems overwhelming.  This is common and that's where the idea of chunking can help you out.  This idea is that if you break something down into small enough pieces you can accomplish almost anything.  There is the joke about how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.

Now with this said, I think it is also important to keep a sharp eye on your goal and use any small action to help you to generate momentum.  It is possible that you will start taking small actions and then be satisfied with the small actions and give up on your goal.  In reality, it is not going to be all small steps that will allow you to achieve some of your goals.  At some point, you will be required to take some big steps and actions, and it is OK if you aren't ready or able to take them right now, though they must be taken sometime.

I like to use weight loss analogies, so here's another one.  Let's say you want to lose weight and you realize eating more vegetable and exercising are some of the key actions to being healthy, it is just too hard for you.  A small action you decide that you are able to take is to switch from regular cola to diet cola.  This is a great first step and if you stop there, I hope you don't expect to get much of a result.  Take this small step and then take another small step by maybe putting one piece of fruit in your bag each morning and eating it as an afternoon snack.  Then maybe add a salad to your lunch or dinner each day.

The key above is to take the first small step and celebrate this success and then to take another step that is maybe just a little bit larger.  Use the momentum of that first step to take another step and another.  If at some point you fall down, that's great.  Pick yourself up and take another small step, whatever it is.  It is by taking many small steps that anyone who has climbed Mount Everest has gotten there.

What action are you going to take today to achieve one of your goals?

Maybe it's just me, but there might be times in your life when there is something that you are pretty sure that you could be doing to get what you want, but you just don't feel like doing it.  It could be that you know that if you were too pick up a book and start reading and learning, you would be closer to having that knew skill you want.  Maybe it is to exercise or eat right, though you just don't feel like doing it.  Maybe it is contacting someone that you keep putting off.

I'm a huge fan of doing what you want to do, so the first thing I would recommend is to try and see if there is some way you can find to enjoy, or at least be able to tolerate what you think is important to do.  Is there someone who can help you?  Can you try another way or method?  Can you change the time or place that you perform the activity?  Can you shorten the length of the activity?  Just keep asking yourself, "How can I want or enjoy doing this activity?"  Keep reading and learning and maybe a new idea will allow you to find the way.

One good way to try changing how you feel is to change your body.  It is well established that the way that you hold your body and especially your face will change the way you feel.  Put a big fake smile on your face, get up and move around, jump up and down if you want to.  Listen to your favorite music as you are doing this.  Get your blood pumping.

Now, if you truly can't find a way to want do this activity, than you can choose to not do it.  You can accept that you won't do it right now, and will maybe do it some other time.  Now when you make this choice, be honest with yourself that you accept responsibility for giving up on your goal.  That's fine, just be honest about it.  Be honest and say "I accept that I am poor, because I am not willing to do what it takes to grow."  or "I accept that I am fat because I decide not to change."  or "I accept that I am alone because I am too afraid to take the risk of connecting with another human."

The above might seem like crazy advice for a success blog, though it is just honest.  We are all at different stages of our life and can maybe only handle focusing on one or two areas at a time.  It is perfectly acceptable to say that we will ignore a certain area for now because it is too difficult for us.  That's fine, just pick another area that you can handle.  Do whatever is within your reach.  Would you expect a toddler to go out and run a marathon or would you praise them for making one small step?

If there is something you suspect you should be doing and you can't find a way to want to do it, or can't pump yourself up enough to do it, and you still want to achieve your goal, so you aren't willing to give up, then the only advice I have is to just do it.  Just knuckle down and do something, no matter how small.  Try to pick the smallest thing that you can do and do it.  Get some momentum built up and see where it goes.

A great teacher once told me "Stop telling me it doesn't feel right, just do it 100 times and then come back to me and tell me how it feel."

How you taken 100 actions to achieve your goal?

There is an often repeated saying "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  It appears the best evidence is that this was first said by Rita Mae Brown.

You might want to check yourselves to make sure that you are open to doing new things in order to get different results. 

This is similar to the often quotes saying that Thomas Edison failed 1,000, or 5,000, or 10,000 times before finding a combination for the light bulb that worked.  He is reported to have said something like "I have not failed 1,000 times, instead I have found 1,000 ways that will not make a light bulb."

So persistence does not have to mean that you keep hitting your head against the wall.  You might want to evaluate how what you are doing is helping you achieve your goals.  Do you have the belief, feeling or evidence to show that what you are doing is getting you closer to your goal?  If you do than, keep going and be persistent.  If not, then make some adjustment, small or big.

When you are trying to form a new habit and develop your mind it takes time.  Unlike trying a new design for a light bulb, developing your mind requires patience   Would you go to the gym one time, then jump on the scale and if you didn't see results, stop going to the gym, or radically change your workout?  You have to allow time for your actions to influence your mind.  At a minimum, I would expect 1 month to be enough time to see results if you are taking regular actions 3-5 days per week.

My advice then is to choose your goal, take some action, and then keep taking action at least 3-5 days per week and do that for 4 weeks.  After 4 weeks if you do not have any evidence, feeling or belief that your actions are producing results, then change your actions and try again.

I am unable to find a reliable source of who originated the saying "If you fail to plan you are planning to fail".  I have seen it attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Winston Churchill.  Either way, I can understand the logic of the saying.  In essence, if we don't have a clear method to get from where we are to where we want to go, then we are less likely to get there.

As I reflect on my past experiences, I'm not so sure that I can 100% agree with the saying.  When I think about areas in my past where I consider myself to have been successful, for none of them did I have a plan.  If I was lacking a plan, then how was I able to succeed?  What is luck, like winning the lottery, or is planning an optional part of being successful?

For the areas that I was successful, I did have a sense of my goal and I took regular action towards the goal.  Sometimes massive action and other times small action, though it was regular action.  I also spent much time reading information about my goal and talking to others about my goal to get ideas about how it can be achieved.  I was also open to try all sorts of different things to achieve the goal.

Maybe planning is just another type of action, that has various levels of usefulness, depending on the person and what they are trying to achieve.  This also reminds me the saying by Carl von Clausewitz "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy."  When making plans, it is not so important if we actually end up following this exact plan.  The process of planning will help our brain to think about different options and what we might do when things don't go the way we want.

So, I am removing planning as a critical step for success.  Instead, I am going to add "Review".  Meaning that after you have set a goal and taken some action you should take the time to review your goals and action and see how is it working out for you.  If you think there should be adjustments then make them.

In order for you to have a different level of success in the future than you are experiencing today, it is important for you to be able to consistently think about that future level of success.  In other words, having a long term vision.

Think about your past accomplishments.  Didn't you have some sort of long term vision in order to accomplish them?  Maybe you finished some educational program like college, university or a professional development program.  Didn't you have in your mind that you would finish that program?  Maybe your vision was just the length of the course, whether it was 4 weeks or 4 years is not important, 4 weeks is still a long term vision.

Long term is anything longer than the current moment in which you are living.  Ordinary people have a vision and planning timeline of 1 day or 1 week.  Their thoughts are consumed with things like "What will I wear today?" "Where should I go to dinner this evening?" "What should I do this weekend?"

I propose that to improve your level of success, it is necessary to extend your vision out to at least 5 years.  For some things I have a 40 year vision because I want to still be alive and healthy for the next 40 years of my sons life.  I thought I had heard some rumor that the Japanese had a 500-year vision for their country, though can't find any reliable references online so maybe it was just my imagination.

Assuming you accept that having a long-term, around 5 year, vision is critical to increase your level of success, how can you develop this habit?  Just like everything else we talk about, practice, practice, practice.  I am convinced in the value of spaced repetition.  If you like to research this, I suggest reading the many interesting articles at the SuperMemo site.  So little amounts of practice, like 5 minutes per day, on a regular basis can be as effective, if not more effective than spending 1 hour per week.

What can you do for 5 minutes to develop a long-term outlook?  Write out your goals.  That's it.  The key thing though is, do not refer to your previously written goals.  Write your goals out from memory.   At first don't worry about how you do it, just write a list of goals from memory each day.  You can write it by hand or type them into a computer, either way is fine.  After 30 days you will start to form a pattern to your goals.

I recommend combining the ideas of both Brian Tracy and Noah St. John when doing this exercise.

According to Brian, these statements should follow the 3 Ps, Positive, Personal, and Present tense.  So, an example might be "I make US$100,000 during the year 2013."

According to Noah, these should be questions in a positive manner designed to get your brain thinking of ways to achieve your goals.  Something like "How can I make US$100,000 during the year 2013."

Try them both, or make up your own method.  The key is to regularly practice thinking long term so that it becomes one of your new habits.

How long term is your vision?