I love video games (it’s one of my few addictions) and one of the ways games become exciting is the concept of a power-up. A power-up can be something that you earn (such as completing a task in a short amount of time) or that you find out of pure luck (looking in a container). Power-ups can give you special powers, send you to a bonus level or let you jump ahead so that you’re further along in the game. To add to the challenge of a game, many power-ups disappear after a few seconds or if you move off the screen, so you need to get to them right away – many gamers risk their lives (within the game) to get certain power-ups.

Just as a power-up can help you win in a video game, it can also help you win in real life. I real life, we call power-ups “opportunities” (or in some cases, “chances of a lifetime” if they are really big). And just power-ups in exist all over the digital world of a video game, opportunities can be anywhere – you just need to know how to spot them and where to look. Here are some instances where you might come across a power-up in real life:

• A conversation with a stranger at the train station or in a waiting room or similar situation creates a lead for you that helps you get closer to your goal.
• You are selected to get in front of an important client or have face time with a higher-up at work.
• You come across a deal of a lifetime where you can by your supplies at a fraction of the normal cost.
• You are given the chance to be interviewed on TV or the radio.

Going back to the video game analogy, when you play a new game, you may not be familiar with all the things within the game that you can interact with. You may notice a flower on the screen and think it’s just a part of the background, but then you touch it and it gives you super powers. Reading the game’s manual might clue you in as to which items are power up items, but again to make the game more interesting, the programmer may have added some special power ups that aren’t documented in the manual. This is similar to real life as your biggest opportunities often come from the most unexpected places – often they come from our problems and challenges.

Your definition of an opportunity depends on your situation. I listed some obvious opportunities above, but I’ve also found opportunities in conversations with people on the treadmill next to me at the gym, striking up a conversation with someone at a book store and even while waiting for public transportation.

Take a few minutes to list out at least ten of the places that you typically find opportunities – you can use my examples if they work for you. Then take about five to ten minutes to list out at least ten more opportunities that have come from unusual places, regardless of whether or not you seized them. Doing this exercise will condition you to better notice opportunities when they present themselves.

Related posts:

1. Life Lessons From Video Games
2. Personal Power: Preventing Missed Opportunities
3. Always Be on the Lookout For Success
4. The Power of Habits

Do you ever find yourself so focused on your professional goals that you just feel burned out? This happens to me frequently, despite my best efforts to plan and schedule things effectively. Let’s face it: there really is a lot to do and time is at a premium.

I sometimes find with my writing that I’ll be on a roll for a while and then get stuck. When this happens, I step back and do something else. Ideally, the activity meets the following criteria:

1. It helps me meet another one of my goals.
2. It gives me one or more small successes that give me a sense of accomplishment and help build my momentum, confidence and self-esteem.
3. It doesn’t require a huge time commitment and doesn’t sidetrack me from what I should be doing.

Some of the things I try to do are spend time with family, exercise, organize my office, yard work (I actually find it therapeutic) or catch up with someone I haven’t spoken to in some time. Some of these meet all three, some don’t. It’s okay to not be productive 100% of the time – like our bodies, our minds often need rest. In fact, just knowing I have a break coming up motivates me to get more done so I can mentally put aside my work and focus on enjoying myself.

There’s nothing wrong with an occasional activity that doesn’t meet any of these criteria (such as watching your favorite TV show every week). I love playing my Xbox and my Wii – and one can argue that small successes in video games can have some positive effects on one’s mental state.

But the trap that many of us fall victim to is spending too much time doing these activities. I recently saw a poll where 40% of respondents watched over 20 hours of TV a week – that’s half a work week! I also know people who watch over three hours of TV every weeknight. We all need the occasional mind-numbing activity to unwind, but try not to get sucked in. Setting a time limit for these activities will help and a kitchen timer can help you stick to it.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break, watching your favorite show or simply lying in your bed letting thoughts come and go. Sometimes this added break can reboot your mind and actually reenergize you. As long as your leisure isn’t becoming a tool for procrastination, you deserve a break.

Related posts:

1. Sharpening the Axe
2. Extreme Goal Setting™: Part 1 – Failure is Not an Option
3. The Problem With a Big Climax
4. One More Mailbox

Setting goals can be a fun process. Many programs have you do things like turn on music that inspires you and imagine your life ten years out if you could have everything go your way. It’s a fun exercise and can get you excited and maybe even motivated. But it’s just that – the fun part.

See, anyone can set a goal. It’s easy. Grab a piece of paper, write down result and add a date to it and you have a goal. Sure, some of us put some time and effort into thinking about that goal. We ask ourselves questions like “how much would it cost to move to a tropical location?” or “how many days per week would I have to hit the gym to make my weight loss goal?” That part is important because it begins the commitment process – consider it the emotional down payment on your goal.

But the real key to reaching a goal is action. You can spend days, weeks and even months planning, which is also important, but planning isn’t enough. You will never reach your goal without taking action. All the wishing, dreaming, planning and asking the universe may put a smile on your face, but that’s all it will do for you if you don’t take action.

Taking action is the most critical state because not only does it produce results, but it tests your commitment to your goal. And this is where most people fail – they hit that first bump in the road and then use it as an excuse to turn back. The unfortunate thing is that the person walks away from the situation figuring that he or she is failure and just not up for this goal setting thing. While that might be true for some people, the real issue is that the process that they are following is flawed. To further illustrate this, let’s look at the top four reasons people don’t reach their goals:
　
1. They truly aren’t committed to the goal:

This goes back to the point where people give up when they reach their first set back. To use a simple example, let’s say your goal is walk to your local convenience store to pick up an item. It’s a walk that under normal conditions takes you about ten minutes. If the item is something that’s not terribly important to you, perhaps someone in your household asked you to get a bag of chips for them, you’ll go if it’s a nice day outside. However if it were to be raining, snowing, very hot or very cold, you’d be less inclined to take the walk. Now if the store were giving out bars of gold, it would probably take a tornado to prevent you from getting there, even that might not stop you.

The point here is that goals are just like this. If you’re passionate about it, you’ll find a way around the setback. If you’re not truly committed to it, then you’ll walk away from it as soon as you can find an excuse. In my Setting Achievable Goals class, I spend a lot of time focusing on whether the goals we set as part of the class are goals truly worth achieving (the audio CD for the course also discusses this as it walks you through the process).

2. They lacked clarity with their goal:

Sometimes when we set our goals, we aren’t exactly clear on the desired result. For example, someone looking for work might set their goal as “getting a job.” The problem here is that this they could get a job, but it could be one they don’t like, are overqualified for or underpaid at.

Another example is to “get in shape.” This person will undoubtedly start some kind of exercise program or diet but without a clear result, will have a hard time figuring if he or she is making progress. This will often lead to this person giving up because he or she doesn’t have a target result and doesn’t see any progress because he/she doesn’t have any clarity as to what constitutes progress.

3. They misjudged the amount of effort, resources and/or sacrifice needed.

Goals always look great on paper. Even when you create the action plan down to every last detail – including scheduling each task on the plan – it can look like a sure bet. But one thing you need to bet on is the unexpected. There’s a good chance that unexpected setbacks will happen or that you made an incorrect assumption or missed a minor detail.

When it comes to promoting my business, I have a lot of tasks that involve connecting with people online. There have been times when I’ve set 30 minutes aside to do a 15 minute task, but ended up spending 45 minutes on the task because my computer was acting up, or the web site I needed to access had issues or I got interrupted or distracted.

In other cases, an hour or two a day to work on your goal might seem easy enough to do. But when put in practice, it means that you’ll have less time for leisure, your family or even sleep. And after a few days, you find that the sacrifice is more than you bargained for.
　
4. They got off track and couldn’t catch up:

I get a magazine each month that has something motivational to read each day. It typically takes me about 15 minutes to read the passage and reflect on it, but there are nights I just don’t get to it. So then I try to make it up the next day and read two of them, but then I get too busy and skip it again and now I’m behind by three days. Eventually I just get to the point where I skip the readings I missed and just start with whatever day I get back on track.

The problem with goals is that they are often set in a manner that doesn’t allow a lot of leeway for unplanned breaks. There are two options here, other than giving up: either push the date out for your goal (assuming the dates aren’t firm) or scale back your goal so that you can still accomplish the more critical parts in your timeframe. In my course, I actually have people work potential setbacks into their action plans as well do a few other things to help minimize the impact of setbacks.

People miss their goals for a number of reasons but those reasons typically fall into these four areas. If you find that any (or all) of these affect you on a regular basis, try some of the tips above. Sometimes a simple change in the way you go about setting and achieving goals will yield big results.

Setting and achieving goals can be a fun process, but more often than not the process that most people use is flawed. I spent over a decade using goal setting systems that never yielded the results I wanted. Yes it was fun to dream and imagine myself being successful, but I finally had an epiphany when in the middle of trying to reach a goal, I realize that I no longer cared about it. It prompted me to create my own system which has worked well for me. I mainly do my goal setting sessions for private functions, but if you’d like to check it out, I have an audio program that walks you through the process.

Related posts:

1. Success is Simple – Just Follow the Instructions
2. Avoiding Conflicting Goals
3. Extreme Goal Setting™: Part 1 – Failure is Not an Option
4. Sharpening the Axe

A few summers ago I did some running in my neighborhood. I’d start at my house, run until I hit what I felt was a good halfway point, then turn around and run home. I’d always like to push myself, especially with this big hill I’d run partially up so as I’d start to get to tired, I’d tell myself “just one more mailbox.”

Sometimes that next mailbox was twenty feet away, other times it was fifty. While running an extra mile or two seemed like something out of my reach, certainly I could go another twenty feet. And then when I hit that next mailbox, the next one was only a little farther away so I could repeat that process until my legs started to wobble.

Sometimes in life we’re faced with daunting tasks. It could be something small like cleaning up our houses or doing our taxes or it could be a larger goal like starting a business. You might see it as this big task that seems impossible or undoable. But it’s similar to running a mile (or a marathon if you’re in really good shape). It seems tough but if you break it down into smaller, doable pieces, it’s not so bad. Often, just getting started is the toughest part. With running, all you need to do is walk out your front door and start. With other big tasks, the starting point isn’t so obvious but you can usually figure it out by asking yourself what the logical first step is. And sometimes, that first step is to seek advice.

But once you take that first step, you create momentum. Once you get started running down a street, you start passing mailboxes with ease at first. The same holds true with starting a project. Eventually, you start getting tired and it’s time to stop running. The same thing happens with projects; eventually you get tired or frustrated and need to stop. But just like with running, you have that option to push yourself just a little bit harder and complete one more task or one more step.

Big projects and tasks are easier to accomplish when you break them into smaller steps. The smaller the steps, the easier it is to not put them off. If you find yourself constantly struggling with big projects, then keep breaking the steps and tasks down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Then all you need to do is push yourself to get to that next mailbox.

Related posts:

1. Success is Simple – Just Follow the Instructions
2. The Power of Systems
3. Mental Toughness
4. The Trouble With Thinking Big