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.

Dr Phil likes to ask people "How's that working out for you?", when they are talking to him about their problems.  When you are reviewing your goals and actions, this is a great question to ask.

Based upon what you have chosen as a goal and the actions you have taken, how is it working out?  Is your goal clear, such that a 5 year old could understand what you are trying to achieve?  Have you taken definite action towards achieving you goal?  Do you still believe that this action is at least 50% likely to help you achieve the goal?

If your answer to any of these questions is less than positive, than figure out some way to make an adjustment.  If your goal is unclear, then work on making a more clear goal.  If you have not taken any action, then find a way to take some action.  Choose some different action that you are able and willing to do.

If you are not seeing any results from your actions, it is very likely that you should give your actions some time to show results.  A good rule of thumb is to take action at least 3 times per week and do that for at least 3 months.  If you follow this formula, performing the same action 3 times per week for 3 months and you have seen no results, then you definitely should look at changing actions or goals.

If 3 months is too long for you, then try 5 times per week for 1 month.  You should be able to wait at least 1 month to let your actions show results.  If you change actions too many times you may not be giving them time to show results.  You should expect that if you go the the gym for 1 week or change your eating habit for 1 week, that you may not see much results.  I suspect if you go to the gym 5 days per week for 1 month, you should definitely see results.  The same goes for your mind.

Do this for at least 1 month and let me know "How's that working for you?"

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?

As with most things in life, you can have too few goals and also too many goals.

Too few goals would be zero.  If you have no goal at all, then I don't see the point in even thinking about the idea of being successful.  It is possible that you can be happy with no goal as you let your circumstances define your existence.  It is when we choose some goal, any small thing that we want to accomplish that we can then start to determine if we are successful or not.

So, assuming that you have at least one goal, how many goals is too many?  Is it possible that you can have too many goals?  What if, after doing some goal setting exercises, you end up with 20, 50 or 100 goals?  Is it reasonable for you to be able to focus on this many goals at one time and accomplish them?  How can you reduce these down to a manageable number?

When trying to reduce things down into small numbers, I like to keep things under 7.  It is thought that the human short-term memory capacity is about 7 items, so that seems like a nice number to limit ourselves to.

I use two techniques to filter my list of goals.  First, I choose one or two identity goals.  These goals don't have to be time limited or even very specific, they more define how I want to see myself.  An example my be to be an adventurous person, a powerful leader, a positive role model, or healthy.  These are more general guidelines that you can refer to on a regular basis to see if your actions are a match for this identity.

The second technique I use is to break down my goals into different categories.  I use four categories, physical, mental, interpersonal and financial.  You can use whatever works for you.  This then allow me to focus on what is the most important goal for each of these areas of my life.

How about you?  How do you handle having too many 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 general there are two reasons why we do something: Pain and Pleasure.

We can be motivated to escape pain or to achieve more pleasure.  In general, the self development and positive thinking teachings focus on getting more pleasure.  They talk about how we will achieve that which we focus upon.  So if we focus on achieving pleasure we will receive more pleasure.  How about if we focus on escaping pain? Does it mean we will achieve more escape from pain or will we just get more pain?

I propose that pain is the most powerful motivator in the world.  Think about it.  How quickly do you respond to the pain of your hand being place on a hot stove versus the pleasure of petting your favorite animal?  I suspect most of us respond with great urgency to pain, and the more painful, the more rapidly we respond.

How do we solve this paradox?  Pain is a powerful motivator, though if we mostly focus on pain than we may mostly achieve pain.  As with many things we should strive to achieve a balance between these two motivators.  To ignore pain as a motivator is to throw away the most powerful motivator in our toolbox.

I was thinking about the saying "No pain, no gain" and now when I think about it, I interpret it more as, if we want to experience pleasure, we will have to endure some pain as opposed to trying to escape pain in order to achieve pleasure.  It is more that pain usually stands in the way of the pleasure we want.  So, in this context, pain isn't a motivator, pleasure is the motivator and pain is just another obstacle.

I'm still trying to figure out how utilize both pain and pleasure as motivational tools.  I'll try it by adding one question to my regular goals review session.  I'll ask myself, "What am I most afraid of?"  I'll let you know how it goes.

What do you think?  Is it worthwhile to think about our pain points and use them to motivate us, or is it sufficient to think about what pleasure we want to achieve?  If it is useful to use pain?  If so, how can we do it?  Do we reinforce every day our deepest pain/fear and use that to drive us to action?

It is great to be enthusiastic and positive when setting our goals.  When setting goals, let's be careful to set goals that are likely to energize and encourage us when we have done our best to achieve them, rather than cause us too much pain if we fall short of our goal.

With this in mind, I am cautious about making goals that require achieving a particular level of success relative to others.  I would recommend setting goals independent of how other people do.

Think about athletes.  When we watch a sports competition, we celebrate the victors and it is sometimes said that second place is the first loser.  Of course, I want to achieve my highest possible level of success, though it is most likely that of the billions of other people in world there might be one other person who can achieve more than me.  So if I am focused on being number one, even if I achieve more than everyone else in the world besides that one person who achieve more than me, I might feel like a failure because I didn't make number one.

A friend of mine told me about how she was on one of the Olympic teams.  For her sport they had three groups A, B and C.  A was the best, B were the backups, and C were those who pretty much had no chance of going to the Olympics.  She was on the C team.  She said that it was difficult not feeling bad since in her peer group she was in the bottom third.  The crazy thing is that if she went to any community around the world, they would be blown away with her athletic abilities and the local athletes would praise her and say how much they wished they had her abilities.

As a counter example, a good friend of mine was told at a young age that she had no talent for dance and should give it up.  Despite this advice, she loved dance and decided to dedicate her life to dance.  She found a way to make a living as a dance instructor and dancer.  She always realized that she would never be a world class dancer, though she was just thrilled to be doing what she loved to do.

Let's try and find a way to do this in our life.  It is great to make huge vision goals.  I know a website blog who's goal is to help 10 million people.  This is a huge goal and notice how it is independent from how other blogs do.

Be careful about being too concerned about beating out all other competitors.  Find out what it is that we really want and work towards getting as much of it as we can.

I am a fan of being spontaneous and doing what ever the mood calls for, and I'm also a fan of having routines.  Both of these are of value, and are part of our natural behavior.

In my young son, I can see that at the age of 3 he already displays both of these.  Just the other day, I laid down in bed to take a nap and I happened to lay down on my wife's pillow.  Kai quickly pointed out that I was using the wrong pillow and I should use daddy's pillow, and I was on the wrong side of the bed.

Many highly successful people have well developed routines for the area of their life in which they are successful.  For example, top athletes, usually have a routine as to when and how they workout and when and what they eat.

Think about franchises.  A key power of franchises is the routines that they are selling.  Somebody has figured out a system that worked for them and by following their pattern they propose that another person can also succeed.

Now within these pattern for top athletes and franchises there is also room for flexibility and creativity.  Though, I propose that if one of them started to see themselves achieving less success than they wanted, it would be a good idea to see how they are straying from the routine, rather than adding more flexibility and creativity.

Most of us don't have a coach or franchise company to tell us what routines we should follow.  It is up to us to develop our own routines.  I don't suggest that you must plan every minute of everyday, but I do suggest that the more regular you plan success achieving activities and that these activities become a natural part of your personality the easier it will be to succeed.

What success routines can you developed?