For you history buffs, New Years Resolutions pre-date the birth of Christ by about 2000 years. The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays, first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago.

So it’s especially meaningful in 2006 that somewhere around Baghdad, Iraq is where New Year celebrations began. There is no truth to the rumor that Dick Clark hosted the first one.

Their celebration lasted for eleven days. But it is safe to say that modern New Year’s Eve festivities don’t even come close.

Most Americans watch it in their pajama’s on TV. Let’s flip the channel and see what our options are. There’s Time’s Square with Regis. Oh, then there’s Time’s Square with Ryan and Dick. And don’t forget Time’s Square with that other network. Thank God and the beer companies for college football bowl games or New Year’s would really be boring.

It’s that time again. So what is it about New Year’s Resolutions that makes people want to make a significant change in their life?

We secretly or not so secretly hope that 2006 will be better than the year we just went through.

Stop smoking, start training, lose some body fat, start eating healthier,.etc. According to a study conducted by GNC, 50% resolved to exercise more, 38% wanted to lose weight, and 55% promised to eat healthier.

From previous experience, there are very few of us who actually follow through with resolutions.

Only 20% of us actually have the perseverance and patience to stick to our new promises we make to ourselves. Most new years resolutions are the same every year, and, tend to fade away by February, if not sooner.

Here are a couple of lists of the most common resolutions people make, and continually break.

Top 10 Most Common New Year Resolutions

Or how about this one:

1) Spend more time with family and friends

Recent polls conducted by General Nutrition Centers, Quicken, and others shows that more than 50% of Americans vow to appreciate loved ones and spend more time with family and friends this year. What about the other 50%? Don’t they care?

2) Take time for fitness

Regular exercise has been associated with more health benefits than anything else known to man. Studies show that it reduces the risk of some diseases, increases longevity, helps achieve and maintain weight loss, enhances mood, lowers blood pressure, and even improves arthritis.

In short, exercise keeps you healthy and makes you look and feel better.

Sounds logical enough, yet most people will exercise for a few days to half a month, then quit. Logic alone just doesn’t do the trick for sustaining your motivation.

3) Lose the Flab

At least Fifty-five percent of adults in America are overweight and the alarming rate of child obesity is outrageous! Put down the chips and cheeto’s!

So it is not surprising to find that weight loss is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Ever notice the abundance of weight loss commercials in January. It’s their biggest time of the entire year for new sign-ups.

Setting reasonable goals and staying focused are the two most important factors in sticking with a weight loss program. Yet why does all this goal setting fail year after year for most people?

4) Quit Smoking.

Even if you’ve tried to quit before and failed, that’s okay. Over-the-counter nicotine replacement products now provides easier access to proven quit-smoking aids.

On average, smokers try about four times before they quit for good.

Here’s a good reason to quit smoking. Add up what you are spending on your cig’s and you probably can make a car payment with the money you’ll be saving. But again, will power alone does not help you carry out this resolution.

5) Enjoy Life More

Given the hectic, stress lifestyles of millions of Americans, it is no wonder that "enjoying life more" has become a popular goal. But what does that really mean?

Working less does not equate to enjoying life more. A lot of people dream of “retirement” until they retire. Then they’re bored stiff and end up getting a job somewhere just to ease the boredom.

Or they discover that they’re busier than ever after retirement, apparently catching up on all the running around they couldn’t get done when they were working. Nice try, but that resolution just doesn’t cut it either.

6) Quit Drinking

Many heavy drinkers fail to quit cold turkey but do much better when they learn to moderate their drinking. If you have decided that you want to stop drinking, there is help and support available.

7) Get Out of Debt

HELP! American’s are drowning in debt. Paying unending interest on credit cards is literally slavery. But how in the world do we get out of the trap, dig our way out of the huge hole we’ve sunk into with a wallet or purse full of credit cards. Especially since we just maxed out our limit on X Box 360 and other Christmas “must have’s.”

Maybe our real resolution should be to just say NO to more and more “stuff.”

Was money a big source of stress in your life last year? What’s the answer? Where do you begin? Read on.

8) Learn Something New

Have you vowed to make this year the year to learn something new? Excellent choice.

Maybe you’re considering a career change, want to learn a new language, or just how to use your computer or selling on E-bay.

Whether you take a psychology course or read a book, you’ll find education to be one of the easiest, most motivating New Year’s resolutions to keep. Challenge your mind in the coming year.

Take the 30 Day Mental Fast to prepare your mind for this one. Get it free below.

9) Help Others

Many people have experienced a new surge of personal energy and excitement by spending a few days or weeks with the American Red Cross or Habitat For Humanity, for example.

Whether you choose to spend time delivering relief supplies, or building a house, these nonprofit volunteer organizations could really use your help, especially since Hurricane Katrina.

10) Get Organized

Whether you want your home straightened out enough that you can invite someone over, or your office organized enough that you can find the paper clips, begin small so it doesn’t interfere with resolution #5.

Resolutions do not involve luck to be effective.

Traditional New Year foods are thought to bring luck. The Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune. Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts heartily agree.

Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by eating black-eyed peas. These are typically eaten with either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas have been considered good luck in many cultures.

So since New Years resolutions and luck don’t bring permanent success, what does? Your change must come from within. What you believe about who you are will determine your success or failure every time. When you change your mind, you can change your future.

About the author: David Henning is the President of the Freshstart Company, LLC and has over thirty years experience as a radio talk show host, radio and television copywriter, newspaper editor and public speaker. He has authored hundreds of articles about helping people get a fresh start in life. For more information go to http://davidhenning.com For a free CD that includes a copy of the 30 Day Mental Fast, go to http://afreshstartnow.info Copyright © 2005 David Henning and the Freshstart Co. LLC All right reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced without the express permission of the author. Reprints by permission only.

In one sense there are three parts of our lives. Past, present and future. How each of these is viewed has huge consequences.

The past:If one looks back at the past for anything other than experience, the past can paralyze today. Many times our memories of events, and results from those events will seem relevant to a situation we might be facing today when in reality today’s situation is totally different. If we treat the current event like the remembered event, we probably have not addressed it correctly. Each problem, challenge, and situation today requires a fresh new outlook and solution. To be sure, we can use look at past experience for suggestions, but today’s solution will always be different.

The future:The future is not real. One of the biggest blocks to living a full life is to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the future. Many people fear an unknown future which makes it impossible to live today. This is especially true for those in business for themselves. When one is beginning a business, with no revenue, no customers and startup costs depleting financial reserves, fear of the future can be overwhelming. In fact, this fear can easily incapacitate one to the point that nothing at all gets done due to the ‘what if’ scenarios developing from visions of a horrible failure sure to come.

What if - I fail?

What if - no customers show up?

What if - I run out of money?

What if?

The cure for fear of the future is to keep reminding one’s Self to live in the present moment as much as possible. To fully focus on what is happening right now is challenging. When bank accounts are shrinking, customers and clients are slow to arrive, and the gut reaction is to extrapolate the current conditions into the future, fear has an opening and will take full advantage!

In the time it takes to think through the process and create this fabricated future, fear steps into a life and plays havoc. The truly sad part is many will create that fabricated future because they already believe it. They will unconsciously make choices to bring that future to reality.

The present:The present is a daily, minute by minute gift to us from the Universe. The present needs to be appreciated, caressed and cared for.

It is possible to break this vicious cycle of fear based on unreal projections of things that might happen..

1. Understand the process. Be aware when it is happening to you.
2. Create the future you want in your mind. (Visualization)
3. Make a plan to achieve your future. What would you have to do in order to make it reality?
4. Work your plan.
5. Measure your progress and adapt your plan.
6. Have faith in your Self and the Universal laws that will come to your aid.
7. Stay in the present moment.

Being present is a learning process. Simply being is the first step in that process. To Be who you are comfortable being, and to Do what you love to do provides a very good foundation for the strength required to eliminate the fear of the future and to have faith in the present.

Your Coach and online friend,

Miami
Helping others find their path - and stay on it. www.creativemasterminds.com

Quotation of the Week·

Learn from the past, plan for the future, and live in the present.

Duane Alan Hahn

About The Author

Miami Phillips is an ANSIR Certified Personal Coach and the founder of Creative MasterMinds who believes personal growth is an essential ingredient to being happy and contributing to this world. While his main focus is affordable personal and business coaching, he also offers motivational teleclasses, ebooks, reading recommendations and much more. To find out more visit his site at http://www.creativemasterminds.com or send him an email at coach@creativemasterminds.com

“If you keep on doing what you have always done, you will keep on getting what you have always gotten!” So if you don’t like how things are going in any area of your business, career, life, STOP!

Think about what you want, focus in on what’s important and develop strategies and simple steps you can take to do something new and achieving new results.

A lot of what we do as "normal" or "routine" is a habit, and if we don’t like where we are it’s a bad habit. We put off filing our bills, paperwork, information we want to keep because we’ll do it later. But we can’t find anything in the stacks of stuff lying around and we can’t get anything done with all that clutter because our mind is stuck.

Our normal response is to dream of the day we can be organized, cut through the clutter, and come into work or home and see a clean organized desk with everything at our finger tips. But since that day seems too far off or too time consuming to create we continue with our routine and get the same results and worse we add to the frustration, that endless dragging feeling, and the cycle of never getting ahead gets bigger.

Create a new habit and make it a good one. One that moves you into action and gives you the results you want. It will take commitment on your part and it will take doing it repeatedly over time to make it a habit, but after several weeks it will become comfortable to do it the new way and uncomfortable when you go back to the old way.

Think of all the time and most importantly, energy you put into dealing with and reacting to the consequences of your bad habits. Think of the energy drain that occurs by being dissatisfied with what is happening in your life; it’s tremendous, and if you put that same energy into creating your best life it would be truly fabulous indeed.

"If it just takes changing habits and sticking to them how come everyone doesn’t do it and have what they really want?"

Because it takes action and it’s a little scary, we know we don’t like where we are now, but we know it, it’s comfortable.

A good thing to ponder; have you had enough discomfort and pain because of your routine and the bad habits you currently practice to make it worthwhile for you to change? Have you envisioned a great enough life that it’s worth taking action, making the commitment to yourself, and putting energy into creating your best life?

If you haven’t then settle into your routine and accept that you are getting the best results you can based on the vision you’ve formed and the habits you have. This action alone will change your perspective and create change in your life.

If you have experienced enough discomfort and pain then make a conscious choice to take action. Think about what’s important to you, craft an extraordinary vision and create your best life. Be very clear about everything you want in your vision and find someone who can give you support, will genuinely listen to you without judgment; without creating new obstacles for you and who will support you in attracting what you really want in life.

About The Author

©BZ Riger-Hull. Author of The Soul of Success http://www.in-spiros.com For valuable free articles, mailto:A1@smartautoresponder.com Certified as a Success Coach, “Four Agreements” Facilitator, & Tele-Course leader We help you communicate powerfully, reduce stress, Strategically Attract success, & increase your financial well-being. Our coaching programs and Tele-Courses give you the Tools you need to Succeed.

bz@in-spiros.com

Top Ten methods to never achieve your goals:

1. Be really vague about it. Do not get specific about what you want to achieve.

2. Keep it a secret. Never tell a soul about your dreams for the future - not even yourself.

3. Hang around people who also aren’t going for their goals. Success is contagious, so stay away from anyone who has clear goals and a plan to achieve them.

4. Never, EVER write down your goals. The mere act of writing down your goals is a giant step toward achieving them, so this is a big no-no.

5. Listen to all your fears and doubts. If you accidently find yourself moving toward a goal, quickly give in to your fears and doubts - after all, fear is stronger than you, right?

6. Give up the instant you are faced with an obstacle. Any obstacle is a sure sign that you should not proceed with your goals.

7. Take the advice of anyone who thinks your goals are ill-advised / impossible / improper / wrong / crazy / unaffordable / naive. Everybody knows that cynicism is more realistic than imagination.

8. Never, EVER take a risk. Stay in your comfort zone, it’s much safer.

9. Do not start anything until you are 100% sure of the outcome. Wait until all conditions are "perfect" and you know exactly how it will turn out.

10. See unexpected results for what they really are: failure. Not all results will be what you wanted and therefore you are a failure and your life is a failure. You may as well give up now.

Follow these simple rules and you can settle for anything!

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About The Author

Sarah Pond, Life coach believes passionately in success - Yours! She knows that you have a life purpose and that when you tap into it, you will have all the resources you need to create extraordinary success. Sarah loves coaching people to "Build your best life, from the inside out".

Check out her great self-development resources, including free stuff at www.successandsatisfaction.com

Not but a month ago a gentleman named Henry came to visit me in my office at Rice. He was in sales – a tall, fit, attractive man wearing a crisp pinstripe suit with a bright, eye catching tie – clearly successful. His visit was unannounced.

"Excuse me, Dr. Eliot," he said in a professionally polite manner as he knocked on a hinge of my open door. "Might I steal a moment of your time?"

I motioned in, inviting him to have a seat as I fired off a last minute e-mail.

"If you’re busy, perhaps I can come at a better time?"

"Not at all," I told him, swiveling my desk chair in his direction to focus my attention. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, it’s kind of a long story…" he began, to which I propped my elbows on my desk, leaning in with interest. I’m always up for a good tale. Besides, the foundation of my career is listening to people – really listening. Henry relaxed a bit. He announced that he’d just finished reading my most recent book, Overachievement (Penguin Portfolio, 2004) and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

"How so?" I inquired.

"Dr. Eliot, I’m a pharmaceutical rep. for Pfizer – a good one. In fact, last year I was the number one leading producer in the United States. But I’m not happy. I’m miserable. I go to every Pfizer function religiously, I volunteer by mentoring younger sales reps, my boss thinks I walk on water, I’ve been taking night courses here at the Jones School to work toward my MBA, my résumé is the best in the business… but it just doesn’t matter. It’s killing me."

Henry then reached across my desk, thrusting his wrists toward me, palms up as if tied together: "You’ve got to help me get these handcuffs off!"

He was exasperated. Here was a man making, pardon my rough calculation, a couple million in annual commissions, yet desperately seeking help. Odd? Actually, quite common.

As we talked at greater length, I discovered that Henry had fallen into the trap of relying on Goal Setting to navigate his career and define his success – to define him.

I see it in every line of business: bright, talented men and women who’ve had success or are working toward their next achievement but are stuck in the office 15 hours a day, who don’t spend enough time with their kids or take vacation with their spouse, who don’t enjoy hobbies, who don’t exercise or eat right. They get caught up creating and checking off to-do lists for all of their personal and professional responsibilities. They’re socially rewarded for their diligence or conscientiousness, but they long for a sense of freedom… even a mere few minutes would be a reprieve!

Goal Setting, as a tool, has its utility. More often than not, though, in my work with top executives, surgeons, artists, and athletes, I see people held back by Goal Setting, people unsatisfied with their career, out of balance between work and life.

The reason? Goal Setting has five significant downsides when it comes to happiness, exuberance, and a true sense of fulfillment:

ONE: PERFECTIONISM

Goals, by definition, are ideals – where you want to be and how you’re going to arrive there. The disconnect is that the real world gets in the way. Plans and schedules are never absolute. Clients and colleagues change their minds. Weather rolls in unexpectedly. Politics emanating from Washington shift after an election. The economy rises and falls.

If you ascribe to goal setting to set your course, it’s easy to lock yourself into too narrow a definition of success. Write your goals down and review them feverishly every single day and you’ll miss opportunities, I guarantee it. Think of the billion dollar products on the market that were mistakes, that weren’t planned out or systematically engineered, or weren’t intended for greatness: Post-it Notes, Silly Putty, the microwave oven, Newman’s Own foods, Velcro, Teflon… the list is a mile long.

There isn’t one path to excellence. In fact, the most successful people in this world twist along pronouncedly convoluted paths. In doing so, they also learn that success and perfectionism are not synonyms. For most, thinking that there is such a thing as perfect is a sure way to impede growth.

TWO: IMPATIENCE

The famous achievers in history share a number of psychological traits in common. Vision is first on the list. They can stretch their minds to look at existing problems in fresh an interesting ways, breakthrough ways; they can see through details, obstacles, and setbacks – loads of them. The rest of our population is stuck in the minutia.

When you orient your time and thinking around a list of goals, by definition you pay more attention to the details. You constantly assess how much work is left to reach an end point, how close or far you are from your goals – you evaluate far too much.

Frequent comparison between where you are at this moment and where you’d rather be is not vision; it’s impatience. Real vision is confidence, problem solving, understanding the bigger picture, not delaying happiness until you attain a certain measure of prosperity. Excess goal setting, in turn, doesn’t lead to vision, it leads to increased frustration.

Take a baseball player, for example. If he sets a goal of hitting .400 for the season, he introduces pressure to monitor his “progress”. Is he batting .380? How many more hits does he need to raise his average? How many more turns at the plate are left? Years of sport science research has shown that kind of thinking to be deleterious to on field production. Constant evaluation ties performers up in knots.

THREE: THINKING IN THE FUTURE

A funny thing about true visionaries: they don’t actually spend much time thinking about the future. Contrary to popular conception, they aren’t idealists always mentally wandering into fantasyland. Yes, they can see well down the road, but they use that ability to keep their motivation strong. When they arise in the morning, as they brush their teeth, they think of great things to come. When the fall asleep at night, it’s to content musings of the enjoyable day ahead. And, when they run into roadblocks, they remind themselves of their potential.

In between those brief moments, they actually have no idea what the future will bring. If you interrupted them at work, asking for predictions or odds, you’d likely receive a confused stare, or a retort: “Why are you bothering me with such nonsense, can’t you see I’m busy?” Busy thinking in the present, that is.

Top level performance happens when you are engrossed in the moment, absorbed in the thrill of what you are doing.

Mozart once described the art of writing music as child’s play. An interviewer, assuming him to be conceited, questioned the statement: “In other words, you’re just that talented?” No, replied Mozart, concertos become art when you lose yourself in the process, like a child stringing cranberries onto a thread, one at a time, not paying attention to anything else going on around them, least of all their mother calling them for dinner.

If you want big accomplishments, unwavering happiness one of them, you need to spend a significant portion of your work day absorbed, moment to moment, in the present. Goal setting takes you out of the present.

FOUR: OUTCOME ORIENTATION

I often find myself explaining the science of motivation to my clients. Let’s face it, on any given day, there are an enormous number of distractions to derail our momentum. There’s no doubt: sustaining motivation is key to success.

So what is the driving force that keeps us juiced? Intrinsic value not extrinsic reward. A gold star on your report card, cashing your year end bonus check, moving into the corner office, a Porsche in the driveway… they certainly seem incentivizing. But they don’t hold up day in and day out; they don’t generate sustained motivation. If you place a carrot at the end of your health club’s treadmill, it may propel you the first time you go for a jog. Before long, though, you’ll say, “Screw this; I’m going to Starbucks.”

I know, a metaphor silly to be sure. The lesson, however, is that outcomes – byproducts of our effort – can’t hold our attention to nearly the magnitude of internal rewards: the real meaning of what we do, purpose, resonance we feel when executing something the right way or for the right reason.

To that end, it is FAR more effective to focus on the process, not what you might be given if the process goes well.

FIVE: EXCESS PLANNING

The fifth downside of goal setting is reduction in work altogether. Simply put: elaborate goal setting designs, like those espoused in psychology textbooks, take hours to build, and even longer to implement. How often do you hear of sales forces or executive teams flying off for three and four day retreats… to redefine their goals, to complete “productivity” seminars? It tends to be a lot of wasted time.

Instead of pouring yourself into work that you enjoy, work that will translate into results and make a difference, spend your time writing down goals, monitoring them, reorganizing and reprioritizing them, entering them into spreadsheets and Palm Pilots. Where will you end up? No need to answer that question.

Goal setting is at it’s essence planning. The more energy you put into planning, the less energy you put into execution.

As we say in sports, “Champions get after it.”

So ask yourself, are you going to transform your work and personal life with perfectionism, impatience, daydreaming, sweating after a dollar, and planning to re-plan? Or are you going to be like Henry and ditch the handcuffs?

JOHN F. ELIOT, PH.D., is an award winning professor of management, psychology, and human performance. He holds faculty appointments at Rice University and the SMU Cox School of Business Leadership Center. He is a co-founder of the Milestone Group, a consulting firm providing training to business executives, professional athletes, physicians, and corporations. Dr. Eliot’s clients have included: SAP, XEROX, Disney, Adidas, the United States Olympic Committee, the National Champion Rice Owl’s baseball team, and the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Eliot’s cutting edge work has been featured on ABC, MSNBC, CBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, NPR, and highlighted in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Entrepreneur, LA Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Times. Dr. Eliot serves on numerous advisory boards including the National Center for Human Performance and the Center for Performing Arts Medicine. His latest book is Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance. For more information, visit Dr. Eliot’s site at http://www.overachievement.com.

Have you ever had a goal, worked really hard to achieve it, persevered through the ups and downs along the way, and then at some stage it all seems too hard and you doubt whether you will ever achieve the goal and so you give up?

This is "The Quitting Zone".

The funny thing about The Quitting Zone is that it almost always occurs just before you will succeed. The difficulty is that you cannot see that success is close … hence why quitting seems like a great option at that point.

The Quitting Zone is a very common stage people go through when striving to achieve a challenging goal - so how do you pass through the Quitting Zone and get to the other side?

* Re-clarify - Take time out to remind yourself why you want to achieve the goal … what will be the positive impact. How much do you want it?

* Don’t fight it - If we accept that The Quitting Zone is a natural phase then there is no need to struggle with it. Choose to pass through with ease. Know that this is temporary and your journey WILL get easier again.

* Celebrate - Take time to celebrate how far you have come. The Quitting Zone is so tempting because we usually forget how much we have already achieved. Write down what you have already accomplished, what obstacles you have overcome and use these to fuel your confidence as you make the last steps towards success.

* Engage Support – Seek out friends, family, a work colleague, mentor or life coach. When things feel tough, it’s essential to have other people to give you encouragement and to help you keep focused on the ultimate outcome.

* Keep Moving Forward - One step at a time. Before you know it you will have passed right through The Quitting Zone.

Linda Anderson is a Certified Professional Coach working with Small Business Owners and Professionals in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Linda helps her clients succeed in business and in life by creating strategies to overcome their obstacles to success. In 2002 Linda and her partner sold all their belongings, hit “pause” on their respective careers, and spent 365 days traveling the world. Linda brings this passion for challenge, new experiences and adventure to her coaching. Visit Linda at: http://www.a2acoaching.com

What would you like to achieve? Receive a free chapter of best selling e-book "Don’t Just Dream It … Do It!" http://www.a2acoaching.com/page/page/2849956.htm

So you feel beaten up and bruised and you’re ready to quit. You have no support system or the one you have is pathetically inadequate for the goals you’ve set. You’re so tired that the couch is looking more and more inviting everyday. You have bills piling up and you probably ought to get a real job anyway. The failure rate is statistically high and nobody is going to fault you if you quit. Who really cares if you give up and quit now? You do.

Let’s look at each piece one at a time. You’re beaten up and exhausted. Congratulations! That means you’ve been working harder then you’ve probably ever worked in your life. You wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything of real importance if you weren’t willing to bust your rump plowing through everything on your to-do list. You may need some lessons in balance and patience, but not in how to apply good old fashioned elbow grease. If you can schedule a short break to replenish your strength, then do so, but don’t give up and quit all together. If there’s no way you can stop now because you have too many important deadlines then bust through the deadlines. Can you speed it up and finish things early so that you could squeeze in a break? After a full night sleep, do you think that you’d still want to quit or would you be ready to dive back in? The fact that you’re working so hard isn’t the problem, it’s that you aren’t getting adequate rest and relaxation. Find a way to create balance.

You have nobody that will pitch in to help you or else the help you have isn’t all that helpful. Kind of reminds me of when my two year old tries to help with the laundry. He picks the dirty laundry up off of the floor and stuffs it into the dryer along with the stuff that just finished drying. Well meaning, but not as helpful as he thinks he is. I wish I could give you magic solutions as to how to find helpful people when you’re working on your goals and dreams but the truth is, most people are too busy with their own lives to be able to offer much assistance anyway. Unless you can afford to hire people to help you or you promise to help them on something they’re needing help with, you probably aren’t going to find a whole lot of help. Also there’s the learning curve and how much time it takes to teach someone how to do what it is you need help with. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when the perfect person comes along with nothing better to do then to roll up their sleeves and help. It’s a tough reality, but basically, it’s your goal, your dream, and your job to make it happen.

If the project you are working on means anything to you, then you won’t really enjoy the couch potato solution as much as you might think. Funny thing about the really big powerful dreams, they haunt us. Every time you turn around there it is following you around reminding you that you haven’t finished it yet. It will keep showing up in everything you do and especially in the things that you don’t do. If it really matters, if it’s your calling, if it’s your life’s work, then it isn’t going to let you become a couch potato. Laying around not doing your dream will be more exhausting and depressing then when you were working your buns off trying to make it come true. Take a quick break if you need to, but don’t get too comfy sitting there and don’t even think that you aren’t going to get back up again. The longer you sit there, the further behind schedule you’ll be and the more you’ll have to do to catch up with where you were when you quit. You know how it is when you take a week off for vacation. You have to work two or three weeks to catch up with everything that fell behind. You have got to take your mental health breaks, but don’t make it a permanent vacation.

What if you have financial problems or family obligations that are seriously nagging at you? That’s such a difficult position to be in. Only you can determine what’s in your long term best interest. Again, a support system would be nice, but if they aren’t there to help, then you have to create balance. If you give up on your dreams to take care of and support everyone else, you may feel like you’re doing the right thing in the moment, but was your life better off for it? If you disregard everything in order to stay focused on your dream, will it cost you the companionship of your loved ones down the road? Who will be there to celebrate with you when you finally do succeed? Not too easy to find a wealthy philanthropist to support your efforts to live out your dreams without earning a living. You have to make those really tough choices. Somehow you have to create balance between your dreams, your ability to keep a roof over your head, and your ability to keep loved ones near and dear.

It’s easy to quit where so many others have already gone and failed before you. Survival of the fittest dictates that not everyone is ideally designed to accomplish all goals. Not everyone is supposed to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone is meant to be a musician. Not everyone is meant to be president. The truth is, if you’ve picked a goal that is suited to your own natural talents and gifts and if it’s infused with your own passion and fire, then chances are that you are one of the lucky few who is meant to live that dream. Just because everyone else failed doesn’t mean that you are meant to fail too. Statistics don’t mean anything unless you decide to become one.

You are either going to quit or you’re going to find inspiration and keep going. You can quit if you want, but you already know if quitting will feel worse then trudging through a little while longer. Somewhere you know deep down if you’re meant to succeed or not. What if you were meant to succeed and role model tenacity to those around you? What if that’s somehow the divine cosmic plan all along? God loves an underdog! Don’t quit just yet.

Copyright 2004, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow’s Edge

About The Author

Skye Thomas is the CEO of Tomorrow’s Edge, an Internet leader in inspiring leaps of faith. She became a writer in 1999 after twenty years of studying spirituality, metaphysics, astrology, personal growth, motivation, soulmates, and parenting. Her books, articles, and astrological forecasts have inspired people of all ages and faiths to recommit themselves to the pursuit of happiness. To read more of her articles and to sign up to receive her free weekly newsletter, go to www.TomorrowsEdge.net. To download free previews of her books, go to www.SkyeThomas.com.

Skye@TomorrowsEdge.net

There over 4,000,000 articles on goal setting on the internet, that’s 4 million. Yet with all this information available, people are still not getting it in their life. There must be something missing.

YOU CANNOT READ ALL 4 MILLION ARTICLES

Time restrains do not permit that. If you could find 3 or 4 with the best parts used to make one good treatise, you might up your odds. That’s kind of like the down and out street person looking for something in the garbage.

What is the missing link?

NUMBER ONE MISSING LINK

You must be totally honest, first to yourself, then to all others. This is the most skipped over need in almost all goal setting articles. No you cannot use little white lies. You cannot scam your way to success, failure is always waiting for you at some turn in the road. All your efforts will be lost. You will be back at ground zero. You cannot build on shifting sand.

NUMBER TWO

Do not be frivolous. Do not start asking for things that you do not really want. It alright to ask for big things, but it is wise to work your way up to bigger things as you begin to taste the fruits of success. Small successes will reinforce your voyage on your way to bigger successes.

FACT NUMBER THREE

Everyone is using goal setting whether they know it, or whether they understand it or not. Your sanity is preserved by the fact that your subconscious will lower your goals to a point where you will try to feel comfortable. Understand it or not, your very soul has this build in to help you survive, and maintain your sanity. I repeat you are using goal setting now whether you know it or not. You just do not understand goal setting at a conscious level.

FACT NUMBER FOUR

A negative attitude will leave you dead in the water. If you are serious about improving, you must continue a trial and error path, and realize failure is but a stepping stone to success.

If you can grasp this concept, you can begin to see the need for going slow until you feel goal setting working in your life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

You can contact me at dickfoster1@verizon.net, I welcome all requests. I will, as soon as humanly possible respond to any and all request or comments.

Some gurus want to make this out to be a mystery, and put together a lengthy document to justify their price.

The more complicated equals more dollars for you to spend. I’m not saying these programs don’t work, but most don’t work for the average person. All 4,000,000 different sites can’t be right! Some are blatantly misleading and incorrect.

http://www.goalmagicezine.com

Thoses of us that actually manage to set goals often give up at the first setback. They mentally beat themself up by saying "I knew I couldn’t do it, so why did I bother trying" and other such self destructive comments. Constantly telling yourself that you are a failure is only going to be self evident when once again, you fail.

Statistics are every where these days. Covering everything from ‘how much of the world population likes cheese’ to ‘how violence on tv results in more actual violence.’ The statistics concerning successful people and how they do it are not very suprising. They show that only 5% of the world population have written goals. Is it suprising then that only 5% of the same population are considered to be truely successful in life? I think not.

Doesn’t that simply mean that if YOU want to be successful, you have to have written goals? You would obviously have to take action to make thoses goals happen, but without a plan all is lost.

I’ve asked a lot of people about what they want from life. The usual is a big house, loads of money, cars, holidays ect… Or they reply ‘I duno’ and just shrug their shoulders. The people that state roughly what they want have no idea how they are going to ‘get there’, they have no plan and consider their wants to be ‘dreams’, unobtainable and distant. The people that say ‘I duno’, will amble through life going in self defeatist circles. These people are the one’s with the lowest self-esteem, lacking in confidence and feel that life is hopeless.

So, there is only 5% of the population that are successful, that means that a stagering 95% will not live their lives to the fullest. Which presentage am I in? I used to be in the 95%, but now that’s all changed.. I have begun to understand and act in a way that puts me in the top 5%.

It didn’t happen over night, infact it is still very much work in progress. But progress is much better than being static or going backwards. It’s a bit like pushing a broken down car. You take the handbrake off and push with all your might, it’s really hard work, the car starts to slowly roll forward, just a tiny bit, then a bit more, then a little faster. Before you know it you have to jump into the drivers seat and steer the car because it is moving so quickly. So there you are, sitting in the car, moving along without even pushing it. Momentum brought about by inertia.

Establishing your goals and starting to take action is just like trying to move a broken down car, hard work. But momentum kicks in after a while and things move along quicker and with less effort. Before you know it your life has turned around and you’re going full speed ahead. Sounds good dosen’t it, well take it from me, it is better that good, it’s absolutaley amazing.

For those of you that still haven’t quite ‘got a grip’, the message is, think like the top 5% and live your life to the max. Make written goals and plans, if you don’t know where to start, ask someome, search the internet, read a book. Then start to take action and let inertia work for you. Do this and I promise you, you can’t fail. Wouldn’t that make a change!!!

Here’s to your internet success.

Jane Harper, Webmaster

Copyright (c) 2006 successcreatesmoney.com

I am the Webmaster at http://www.successcreatesmoney.com.

I offer products and services to anyone who is serious about making money online. There are always freebies there too. Why not visit now and claim yours.

I also write articles quite often and they can be viewed at http://www.successcreatesmoney.blogspot.com

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Jane Harper, Webmaster. All-In-One Toolbox for Webmasters. 28 Amazing ‘must-have’ tools. FREE!!! "This incredible kit turned my small online business into a huge success. My opt-in-list grew so fast that my sales hit the roof" Editor of Affiliates ‘r’ us eZine. Download YOUR free copy now at http://www.successcreatesmoney.com:
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It’s only a few weeks into the New Year and all those goals and resolutions you wanted for yourself are already slipping away. One of two things is happening: Either you simply never got started, or you’re running out of steam.

Not getting started is common. Even with all the great enthusiasm and excitement we had about the year, the diversion of the holidays and then just trying to get back into our normal routines didn’t allow us to incorporate our new goals into our old schedules. The goals we initially set now seem too difficult to know where to start. Simply put, we are busy and distracted by the overall tasks of our lives. Don’t worry. There is always “tomorrow” or next year.

The other common element to resolution failure is burn out. It is comically predictable, but have you ever noticed the level of activity the first week of January? Go to any gym and you will see it packed. In fact, January 1st and 2nd are two of the busiest days in gym attendance. Weight loss groups, dating sites, financial planners, career advisors, and support groups all report high activity the first week of January.

Everyone wants to get in shape, lose weight, meet someone, get a better job, save money, quit smoking, quit drinking and more. So we start out the year no holds barred and go for it! Unfortunately the results we want don’t come as fast as our initial enthusiasm and when we don’t see quick changes we lose our motivation. As the weeks go by the crowds disappear and soon everything is back to normal activity levels as we all slip back into our routines. Then we stay there until another failed attempt next January. The result is that 2006 will be yet another year you failed to achieve the changes you wanted.

The New Year motivates us to start, but we need to develop a habit of successful behavior. As Jim Ryan put it, “Motivation is what gets us started. Habit is what keeps us going.”

You can develop success habits and remedy lack of or diminished motivation with a life coach technique called “ABC.”

A = Action. Start taking action today. We don’t achieve change through thinking about it, but by doing something.

B = Bite size. Reduce all your new activities to small daily actions. It truly is amazing how doing something small doesn’t overwhelm us and produces amazing results. When we take on too much we either don’t start or can’t keep it up. Work out 10 minutes a day; send out one resume a day, save a little money every day and the results will materialize over time.

C = Consistency. Through the accumulation of small actions, we get big results. Do your bite size action activities daily!

We all want big changes, but literally think about the change in your pocket. We have all taken our daily change and placed it in a container of some sort. Before long, that pile of nickels and dimes had grown to several dollars. If you want to produce real changes, concentrate on the ABC Success Habits. Get into action today with small bite size activities consistently and before you know it, you’ll be going to the bank at the end of 2006 with a sizable deposit of results.

About Tools To Life Developed by Life Coach Devlyn Steele, Tools To Life is a revolution in self- development, a 77-day program in which thousands have implemented successful changes in their lives. Devlyn Steele is a public consultant, a private counselor, a radio host and an author. He has hosted his own radio show called "Tools To Life" and has been a guest on over 150 various shows. For more information, visit: http://www.lifecoachadvice.com/