SET GOALS THAT MOVE AND INSPIRE YOU
 

What do you believe about yourself and your chances of reaching your goals? Do you believe that you can reach them? Will it be easy or hard? Can you do it alone or will you need help? Will reaching your goal be good for you or not? Beliefs are a key part of your ability to reach your goals.

Here are a few things you can do to get from goal setting (the easy part) to goal achieving (the hard part):

Program your brain to succeed. Every time you get a break or pause in your workday, think about your goal. Right before falling asleep, say it to yourself several times. Think about it, picture it, talk about it in your mind, make it real in your imagination. This encourages your brain to turn your goal into a fruitful obsession. Make your goals so much a part of you that they're in your subconscious, and you'll start working, however subtly, toward them.

Embrace every success along the path. At every step of the way, attribute any success to yourself. And by the way, accept blame for the failures, too. (Consider the failures the feedback you needed to make adjustments in your strategy.)

Acknowledge your successes. Make a list, on paper or mentally, of everything you accomplished, big or small, in the last day. Then for the last week. You'll come to realize you're a very motivated person who does hundreds of small things every day; you simply take them for granted. Realizing what a motivated person you already are will encourage you to take on bigger and bigger tasks.

Read motivating biographies and autobiographies of leaders and others who have "made it." Read about the successes of Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Golda Meir, "Famous Amos," Debbie Fields, Walt Disney, Sir Edmund Hillary, Steven Spielberg, and hundreds of other inspiring humans.

Expect yourself to succeed. You have a lifetime of experiences from which you can grow and learn. Many others have accomplished great things in this life with minimal talents simply because they had a positive attitude, a willingness to learn from mistakes, and because they worked hard. You can do the same or better especially with your talent. Your own expectations make a big difference, so think big, keep your feet on the ground, and plan to succeed.

WE ARE WHAT we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

A GOOD IDEA will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.

THERE IS NOTHING so wasteful as doing with great efficiency that which doesn't have to be done at all. 

Common sense often isn't common practice. 

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way. 

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. 

IT IS REWARDING to find someone you like, but it is essential to like yourself. It is quickening to recognize that someone is a good and decent human being, but it is indispensable to view yourself as acceptable. It is a delight to discover people who are worthy of respect and admiration and love, but it is vital to believe yourself deserving of these things. For you cannot live in someone else. You cannot find yourself in someone else. You cannot be given a life by someone else. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave or lose. To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution.

What you are . . . thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. 

Some people go through life standing at the complaint counter.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

A small factory had to stop operations when an essential piece of machinery broke down. No one could get the machine operating. An outside expert was finally called in. The expert looked over the situation for a moment, then took a hammer and gently tapped the machine at a certain spot. It began running again immediately and continued to run as if nothing had ever been wrong. When the expert submitted her bill for $1,000, the plant supervisor hit the ceiling and demanded an itemized bill. The bill the woman submitted was as follows:
For tapping the machine $ 1.00 For knowing where to tap $999.00

On [the great conductor] Arturo Toscanini's eightieth birthday, someone asked his son, Walter, what his father ranked as his most important achievement. The son replied, "For him there can be no such thing. Whatever he happens to be doing at the moment is the biggest thing in his life whether it is conducting a symphony or peeling an orange." 

A major problem these days is how to save for your children's education while you're still paying for your own.