At one time, you had hopes, dreams and plans for a great future. But circumstances, events and the trials of life, have caused you to put your plans on hold. But, a little while has become a long time. So you figured, why bother. It’s too late for anything to come of it anyway.

But still, now and then, you wonder how it might have been. Instead of living in regret, why not re-open your dream. A lady recently graduated from college, at 86 years old. It is not too late. Many people realize their dreams at all stages of life.

If you’re like most people, your plan was to someday run your own business, be your own boss, make it on your own. To make your fortune, so that you could live well and retire before you got too burned out to enjoy life. That sounds like a pretty good plan, to me.

Don’t let your dream die. Young, old or middle aged. Your age doesn’t matter. Neither does your financial status. Not even your educational level. Determination and motivation have more to do with success than education, anyway.

Whether it is in business or in everyday life, determination and motivation are key factors in obtaining goals of any kind. Determination is overcoming challenges. Whenever an obstacle gets in your way, you will find a way around it. Motivation is the reason behind your determination. What is the reason for starting your business? Is the reason respect, independence or self-esteem? These are all very good motivators.

But, it’s been a while. Where do you turn? Things are a little different now. You have sort of lost sight of what to do.

Maybe you should consult with counselors. In this aspect, counseling is simply mentoring or coaching. These are people who will help you with thoughts and ideas for starting your business. They will help you with such things as motivation, self-esteem, leadership, goals, putting together a business plan, and so much more.

Their coaching staff will help you to think through some ideas for starting a new business, as well as to refer you to people who can offer assistance if you need start-up capital, business insurance, or have any other business financial requirements.

Go online, and in the search box, type in either counselors, coaching or mentoring. Any of these will give you some very good options. Search through some of the various Web sites that appear, until you have found someone that you feel comfortable working with. By all means, check them over thoroughly before you indulge very deep with them. Make sure that you can trust them.

Now, perhaps you might be more ambitious than most people, and I hope you are, and you are not content with just being self-employed. Instead, you are thinking more of an all out career. If this is your case, I highly recommend tutoring. Just type tutoring in the search box, instead.

Tutoring is a little different than coaching or mentoring. With coaching and mentoring, you will be given help with ideas for business, self-esteem, motivation, and steps for achieving goals. We could all use a little push in every one of these areas. With tutoring you will receive all of this and so much more.

With tutoring, you will also receive technical training in the field that you have chosen. But along with training, they will teach you how to market your business. Every business needs customers to survive. Tutoring will teach you how to both market offline and to market online, in order to attract customers, which in turn will attract business.

Don’t give up on your dreams. If you give up on your dreams, then you given up on yourself. Don’t do this. You can do it. It takes effort to dream. If it is worth the effort to dream it, then, it is worth the effort to live it. Go, realize your dream.

Dreams are great, but reality is better. Far better. Go to http://www.MoneyMaverickDaily.com And live your dreams. Richard Vennes enjoys seeing people move ahead in life.

So many women wish they could be more successful in their lives, yet, when I take them aside and ask them what would constitute specific success in their lives; they would stare at me blankly. Sure they might cover the obvious success strategies they would imagine they would need in order to be successful – but all too often they are not sure themselves of exactly what they are trying to achieve. Most women could tell me that they wanted to achieve abundance in wealth, health and happiness – yet in order to execute effective strategies to achieve these objectives, they would possibly land up walking away with mediocre results because their frame was too vague.

You see, if you don’t have very clear and specific goals in mind, then no matter what strategies you initiate in your life – you will be running around in circles. As a professional coach, it is my job to make sure that my clients’ goals and objectives are crystal clear before we even attempt to develop suitable success strategies in order to achieve what they are seeking. Often we are in a rush to reach our success, we bypass as many possible points so that we can get into action and start seeing immediate results. But if we don’t formulate a foundation for clarity and develop a plan to implement the right actions aligned with our definitive goals – we will sink before we can even swim!

The very first tip towards developing powerful and pertinent action steps therefore lies in becoming clear on what you want. It is not specific enough to say I want to become wealthy. Wealth to you may mean something very different to what wealthy means to someone else. How wealthy do you want to be, what do you want to earn, when do you want to become wealthy by…? These are all questions that need to be thought through before you get out there and play the game. Being vague will give you vague results. Get specific, measurable and clear so that you know exactly what to set out to achieve and then we can move onto creating success strategies that are right for you!

Once you are clear on what you want, the second tip I would implicate is to formulate goals that are tangible and do-able. So many women set such high expectations of themselves that they devise unrealistic action plans that they need to implement and they land up getting stuck in over-whelm. We often debilitate ourselves before we even begin. It is true that we all want to be superwomen; however, we also need to look at setting ourselves up to succeed and not to get imprisoned by the anxiety of our own expectations.

The rule of thumb as a coach is to encourage clients to set themselves up to carry out success strategies that are 20% out of your comfort zone. So if you feel that leaving your job and opening up your own business is 100% out of your comfort zone, then you need to look at other alternatives that you could do that would push you to get there, but not keep you trapped in helplessness. Perhaps you could start the company whilst you are still employed and work on it in the evenings and over the weekends, until such time as you feel that the move over would be more aligned with 20% out of your comfort zone.

Thirdly, the biggest tip I can give you as a coach to enhance effective success strategies is the following: see failure as feedback. If you are scared to do something out of fear of failure – then chances are you’ll never do it and you will never be able to face the failure, receive the feedback and move onto becoming a success. Failure is a success strategy in itself. The only way past failure is to go through it and learn so that you can then come out tops! If you can change your perspective on failure, I bet you would be ready and willing to try a lot more things in your life! Successful people welcome failure and use it as a stepping stone towards reaching their ultimate dreams.

So are you ready to define your goals clearly, get 20% out of your comfort zone, and welcome failure? If so, you have three success strategies that will help you overcome any obstacles, and shift you into creating and getting into action towards achieving your dream life!

Samantha McMurtrie is a dynamic woman who has the passion and commitment to seeing that everyone she encounters comes out with direction, purpose and an incredible drive for life! She is a learning facilitator and a qualified Professional Coach, a member of the ICF (International Coach Federation) & Comensa (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa). Samantha is one of the founders and members of Pretty Powerful, a vibrant company that optimises the power of the internet to provide women around the world with affordable, accessible and quality online coaching programs offering tools, success strategies, guidance and support to help women create the lives they want. Samantha is the author and coach of the successful Pretty Powerful 90-Day Life Makeover program that aims to help women become the best that they can be – mentally, emotionally, spiritually and skilfully. Pretty Powerful reflects Samantha’s vision to enthuse women around the world to learn, live and love POWERFULLY! Visit Success Strategies to become 100% clear, confident and excited about your life! Secrets of success.

Our minds have a default setting when it comes to pain and discomfort. When push comes to shove, it doesn’t take much to turn us into babies. Very often, at the first signs of difficulty, our brains begin sending “Turn back” signals.

For example, when trying a new work-out or some activity that we’re unfamiliar with, quite often, we give up before we’re really at our physical “Go no further” point. Think of something simple like bench-pressing for example. It’s not uncommon for a first-time lifter to feel pumped out on very low weight, only to find a very rapid progression through heavier weights in successive work-outs.

What’s the logic behind this progression?

It takes a while to get to real gains through muscle-building. The difference is determination, and learning exactly what the signs of discomfort really mean. If you’re not used to jogging, you might feel a bit tired after the first 10 minutes of a run. That’s a long way off your real “tired” level though.

The process behind this is actually more psychological than physical. As human beings, we have a low cut-off switch when it comes to discomfort. This goes for emotional stress as well as physical. And the best way to learn to push through pain (in the context of a work-out or otherwise) is to uncouple the links we draw between “I feel uncomfortable” and “I can’t go on”.

It’s normal to feel a bit winded after the first 10 minutes of a run. It’s also normal to begin feeling a little pumped out when lifting weights, kicking the bag or doing pad-work. The key is to disrupt the idea that discomfort = your can’t go on point.

If you just continue through the discomfort, you’ll find you can train your brain to listen more accurately to the body, and to “give up” only when you’re really tired.

For example, if you’re used to only being able to run 20 minutes, force yourself to do 30 minutes. It doesn’t matter how slow you run. Just do it. If you can do 30 push-ups, make yourself do 35. The essence is simply to push the barriers of what your brain “thinks” is possible. You’ll find that often, once the initial barrier is broken, successive personal best performances get easier.

Eventually, you’ll find your body – not your mind – is holding you back. And that’s exactly what you want!

You can read all the relationship advice you like, but it’s a waste of time unless you work on the core of the problem.

The core of the problem is you.

Not the you that you think you are, but the you that you have been ‘miseducated’ into being; the you that society wants you to be; the you that you never thought you would be. That is who you have to work on. That is the you that thinks reading a book or flicking through a magazine will give you the instant answer, the instant solution – unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way; and nor do you. Most of these books are too one dimensional to make much of a difference; most of the articles are too shallow to get to the core of the problem, they only address the superficial details.

Re-programming oneself is not an easy task, it requires a radical re-organization of old habits; both emotional habits and physical habits, but if you refuse to do this, then you have little hope of changing the path your life is on, the path that was chosen for you, or the path that you fell into by virtue of the people you were surrounded by; probably a path that you didn’t think about much; possibly a path you regret; a path you can change if you want to.

Although the task may not be easy, it is not complicated, it is based on simplicity, on refuting the ‘miseducation’ of the past and on seeing how the world really works, how humans truly behave, how situations usually play out. Essentially it requires honesty, with yourself and with those around you. Once you decide to strip your opinions down to the core, to the bare bones of right and wrong, then you can begin to work on building a solid foundation based on the truth you see not on the fairy tale you were sold.

Building a foundation on your own dreams and ideals is essential if you are ever going to be successful physically and emotionally – do not build a dream on the ideals that you were given or the stories you were told; it is only when you make opinions based on your own experiences and on what you actually see that you can begin to know who you are and how you truly feel. It is all very well to believe what you are told, but it doesn’t do you much good when you are told lies, exaggerations and falsehoods that don’t work out in real life; and after all, real life is where you live, not in a movie, a book or a pop song. There is no happily ever after in real life.

Allow me to generalize a little…

Most of us have been taught to always look for a solution to our problems outside of ourselves; we are guided towards thinking that an animal, a partner, friends or a child will make it all better, that God has a greater plan for us than the one we see, or that the Universe will lead us to a better place; we are rendered helpless by our belief that there is a greater force at work, an organizing energy that will work things out for us in the end just so long as we behave as we see correct, just so long as we do as we are told. This is a falsehood, a lie, a fairy tale that conveniently places the blame elsewhere, and inconveniently takes away our sense-of-self so that we are always cursing ourselves or thanking something else depending on how the situation goes. Living this way negates our core and shrouds our truth in misconceptions and impossibilities.

Whenever someone mentions God or the Universe as the omnipotent force in their lives I will always question them; I will point out the self-centered nature of their belief, (their importance becomes inordinately magnificent because God or the Universe cares about them so much as to interfere with their path on a moment by moment basis); I will argue that the second you place the responsibility of your life on an outside force then you immediately negate free will, for the moment something else has the final say, the moment there are ‘no coincidences’, is the moment that we are being controlled by that force down to the last millisecond otherwise nothing would work out as ‘it’ intended, therefore, these people deny free will as a possibility (even if they think they have it)… And usually, after a little bit of defensiveness, these people will argue themselves into saying something like, “No, I mean that God is inside me, he is energy…” – did you just say “he”??!! Did you just change your argument to suit your position right now??!! Did you just make no sense whatsoever??!! I hope you see my point – let go of the external beliefs and convenient scape goats and start looking at what is really in front of you.

Until we confront who we are and what we actually experience, until we actually take responsibility for ourselves, our lives and our situation, then we are never going to progress as well as we should, we are never going to find balance or peace; we have to let go of the crutches we have been bred to believe in and we have to get to the core, to the essence of who we are. It is only then that we can reject the ‘miseducation’ and see what really happens around us rather than sugar coating life and letting our wishes complicate the truth.

Now the truth is not always pretty, but it’s here, and in order to create the best possible version of ourself we need to be open minded, we need to be able to re-shuffle what we were taught and re-think what we were told, we have to objective rather than subjective about our actions and reactions. What we were sold is not what really happens – what we see is what really happens; in order to see the truth we have to keep our eyes open, our ears alert and our minds active, we have to take into account our own actions and thoughts and we have to analyze the bigger picture as well as the smaller details; if we can do these things then we can begin to create a solid foundation and the basis for a strong core; if we can strip away the fluff and fantasy then we can find the core to ourselves and we can see the core of what is in front of us.

Avoidance is our biggest problem.

Because the truth is sometimes ugly, we have been programmed to hide from that truth, to deny that truth and to invent another truth that makes us all feel a little bit better about the cruel, mean, vicious world we actually inhabit. If we continue on this path of avoidance then we will never get to the core of the problem and we will continue to exist in lives that make no sense, lives that are riddled with disappointment and lives that follow the failed path of those that went before us.

The core of the problem is clear to see if we are prepared to be honest about life, about human nature, about the world. If we exist in reality, if we observe the workings of the world, if we are clear in our own minds about the way we truly are, then we can begin to learn from what we see, and hopefully when we read and when we teach we will do so with truth and honesty, we will make decisions based on sound principles and we will eradicate the core problem that creates so many repetitive problems.

(Do not blame your weight problem on outside forces – do something about it in a practical and sensible way. Do not blame others for your relationship issues – look at who you are and choose people that suit you better; learn to be alone and begin to grow. Do not expect the failed systems of the past to work in your favor – think for yourself and do what works for you. Remember, nobody cares about you as much as you do, so do something about you.)

If we can get to the core of the problem, if we accept the truth about human nature and the (often disastrous) role of nurture, if we have the strength of character to stand up to the ‘miseducation’, then we can create lives and loves that will last, situations built on integrity and not fantasy, relationships with real possibilities and children with a mind of their own.

Get to the core of the problem. You.

Guy Blews

Guy Blews is the author of ‘Marriage & How To Avoid It’ and is the instigator of Realistic Relationships. He has a blog at http://www.realisticrelationships.com/ and recently released his second book, ‘Realistic Relationships’ which gets to the core of the problem on every issue related to life, love and relationships.