Action Steps

1. Consciously Create Your Day

Take five minutes in the morning, possibly during a walk, or while stretching outside in the sun, to richly visualize what you want to have happen that day. Consciously creating your day every morning will help you clarify your goals (both yoru short and long term goals...) and get you motivated to go out and acheive them. And again, Visualization is like practice for your brain (see The Power of Visualization for more) and visualizing a presentation, test, or game going well can actually improve your performance come game time.

2. Find a Few Things to be Grateful for Every Morning

Expressing joy and gratitude for the good things in your life puts you in a positive mind state. And a positive mind state is the first step to getting positive results in all of your endeavors. If possible, focus on being grateful for and happy about the good things that you have been able to achieve. Expressing gratitude for small successes is a good place to start, i.e "I am happy and grateful I was able to get myself to the gym three times this week, and that I feel better as a result". This will reinforce your sense of your ability to achieve, and become a catalyst for future success. Of course, this is desperately cheesy, so don't do it out loud. At least not where anyone will hear you. But, hey, it works......

3. Write a letter to yourself from the near future about how happy you are at having achieved your goals.

This is a great way to aid your visualizations. When you write this letter, picture the experience of achieving your goals in your mind. Feel the emotions associated with your success. The more vivid you make the picture in your mind, the more you motivate and prepare yourself to make it real. You can even write a letter in another person’s voice, like a letter from a publisher about how delighted they are to be publishing your book, or from the college of your dreams about how happy they are to admit you. All of these actions steps may sound a bit silly, but if you try them, we bet you'll find them effective.