There are reasons why your life is what it is, or that you have struggles that are repeating themselves, your desires are what they are, and that your challenges are what they are. If you pay close enough attention to the patterns, to when you get distracted away from what you attend, to when your emotional response is overblown, or when you pass on clear opportunities for no rational reason - this represents a golden thread you can follow.

Most people start and stop with wanting something, when it comes to goal achievement. You can can still win this way, which is cool, but it misses out on actually the major gains, which are developing skills that will support you for life, be given an opportunity to learn more about the world and yourself, an opportunity to let go of things that no longer serve you and see things with greater truth and clarity.

Rest, inspiration, and developing a love of life is mandatory, not optional. I don't believe that running yourself into the ground every day is admirable, nor even necessarily helpful for long term success. You will inevitably feel tired, sapped, run into the ground anyways, because, well that's life - but it's more important to recognize when this has happened and go recover for another round rather than try to push through. Energy is the currency of your life, and paying off debt is never fun. Create a life and have things outside of your main pursuit that make you feel alive and happy to be here. If your whole life is this weird grind to get somewhere that's not here, you can end up easily training yourself to believe that life is some sort of sufferfest grind that is only alleviated by death. If you are spiritual, realize that's just another weird prison you might be putting yourself in the path to true liberation. Learn how to enjoy the whole ride, and a byproduct is a subtle mastery of yourself, your energy, and is yet another avenue for self discovery and interesting content.

All of us fear real feedback. Our minds have built our blindspots for a reason - there is something that is blocking the view, and often times it is rooted in an avoidance of some kind of pain. But ultimately, living in a fantasy is not helping you. That's probably why you are even reading this. If you've made a real decision to move forward, that means building off of a foundation of reality. The easiest way to do this is with hard numbers. Did you do it, or did you not? Why? Be honest with yourself. This is invaluable data. Creating a standard, and being willing to compare what you wanted to do with what actually happened by measuring it in some way.

It's not always easy to discern where the lesson is, but there's always something there. Spend time looking at things that didn't work out how you expected or wanted, and you can learn something, about yourself, your perception, about humans, or the world. Take that lesson and apply it, and see what happens. More winning, more learning.

The clients that have the easiest time making positive changes or introducing new habits,that will inevitably be required by, and contribute to their success, are usually engaging in some sort of therapy practice in the care of a teacher, in addition to all the other stuff talked about here. Some clients find this to be annoying, an inconvenience, or just straight bs because of how they've seen it poorly used, or never met practitioners that were actually powerful in some way. This is an extremely limited view, and often someone's psychological ego trying to assert control over a person's entire system itself in a weird, maniacal way. The real quadrifecta is an awakening practice (like meditation), combined with therapy, coaching, and taking action. Many people who I talk to find this annoying, for some reason, but I've seen it work (and conversely, the otherside not work, or work temporarily, but lead to crazy explosions later), that I think it would be extremely irresponsible to not explain this. Sorry, not sorry.