The three most important pieces of advice I've ever given or received:

Learn about what it takes to reach your goals like your life depends on it.

End your fear of failure. You will fail multiple times. It is what it is.

Take massive daily action towards your goals.

I’m assuming you have a list of goals written down because if you don’t, stop reading right now and write down a list of 10-15 life goals that you have. 10-15 things/people/emotions you want to have before your life is over. Make sure you write down this list or something similar at least every morning. Grant Cardone, in his bestseller “Sell or Be Sold” recommends twice a day, morning and night. Whatever it takes to get you to start taking action, reaching your goals, and living your dream life is fine with me.

Napoleon Hill, in his bestseller “Think and Grow Rich”, discusses the negative power of “what if?” “What if?” has no place in the minds and lives of the most successful people among us. “What if?” has no business being in your vocabulary either. Over the next few days, be more aware of times you say “what if…” and make a concerted effort to take action towards that goal the next time. Make it a point and go out of your way to do something that gets you just a little bit closer instead of saying “what if I did that.”

The most successful people in the world simply follow the three guidelines I listed above. They are always learning so that they are never caught off guard. Knowledge truly is power. I often use the comparison of weight training to make this analogy crystal clear. The stronger you are, the less likely it is that you will get injured by lifting a light weight. The more knowledgeable you are, the less likely it is that you will make mistakes, or at least you give yourself a lot more room for error. The point is, never stop learning.

Successful people do not fear failure or rejection, understanding that rejection is only something in your mind. And they take massive daily action towards every single goal they have. This is why it is so important to write down your goals every morning. It keeps your goals fresh in your head so that everything you do is inching you closer to those goals. With most goals that we set, it’s just a matter of time until we reach them. But it takes patience, courage, and an indomitable will to get there. We often stop when we are inches away from the proverbial finish line. If you are anything like I used to be, you’d be inches away from the "finish line" and as you were about to cross it you’d turn around and run backwards only to start all over again.

Patience

Most of the goals I write down every day are 5-15 years away. You need to learn how to think long term in order to be successful short term. What does this mean? Most of your “dream life” goals are probably about a decade away. The thing is, most of them require about a decade’s worth of work to be achieved. And that’s great! Think about how much time you have. But it takes that consistent daily action to get there. Even those goals that might be 20 years away take a step by step approach that starts with you, right now. Go over your goals again. What can you do today and tomorrow to get a little bit closer to those goals? You need a plan for each and every one of those goals, and I bet most of those plans would start with learning more about your goal and how to achieve it. One of my life goals was to get this book published. While I was writing it, I was also researching various publishers, how to get a book published, sending emails to publishers. Patience was key – when you’re working on a book, the only consistent daily action you can take is to write, revise, send emails, and continue to learn.

Courage

Understanding that things may not always go your way and having the courage to fight through these moments is not an easy task. I’ve found that the most difficult undertaking can sometimes be to simply stay the course, or trust the process. It’s easy to do the right things and work really hard when you are reaping the benefits. But what if I were to tell you that you had to work 60 hours a week for 4 years and would not see the results you wanted until after the fourth year? Some of you might think this would be hard. This would actually be easier than anything that life will throw at you. Why? Because you know exactly when the results will come in, so it’s much easier to trust that process. But what if you had to work like that indefinitely until the results came? How long would you last? How many “no’s” would you accept until you got a “yes”? How much courage do you really have? How fearless are you? Courage also means having the ability to walk away from something you have been working towards for a long time. Not quitting, but understanding that your time and effort could be better spent elsewhere. But this all has to be deeply rooted in your why, which I'll discuss next week.

Indomitable Will

An indomitable will separates the best from the rest. The ability to stay strong and patient through any situation, good or bad, will determine how far you really get in life. Past the skills, luck, and effort are those magic last few inches, the “how bad do you really want it” sector as I like to call it. Your will, which is deeply rooted in your why, is what will get you through any situation and past the finish line to each and every one of your goals. So why is your why so important?

I'll explore everything about your why in next week's blog post. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at [email protected]. Make today great!

(excerpt from Chapter 1 of "It Is What It Is" book by Tom Kokosinski)