Winning Every day.

Set goals.

As with any other aspect of your life, the best way to ensure success is by setting goals. You should set goals for each area of your life: career, health, relationships, finances. A good goal will be SMAR: Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Realistic.

A SPECIFIC goal will help you focus on a particular aspect (e.g., “I want to increase my sales by 20% in the next six months.”) as opposed to one that is too general (e.g., “I want to become a better salesman.”)

A MEASURABLE goal will help you track your progress (e.g., I want to run 3 miles in 20 minutes.) instead of something vague like “I want to get fit.”

To make sure your goal is ACHIEVABLE and REALISTIC, ask yourself whether it’s something you can actually achieve (e.g., I want to get a promotion at work) rather than something that will always be out of reach (e.g., I want my boss’s job.)

Make a plan.

As a result, you must make the time to plan. It is not easy, but it is the only way to begin winning every day. You will not succeed if you do not plan. No one has ever succeeded without planning. And the most successful people have all planned their success. How? They planned for it!

To make a plan, start by writing down your daily goals in your planner or on a note pad (electronic or otherwise). If you are the type of person who likes structure and thoroughness, then write down how many times you want to accomplish each task each day—and don’t stray from your idealized schedule! But do not let this zeal become obsessive habit—have some flexibility in your plans so that when life happens and things shift around on you, it won’t cause too much disruption.

Move forward with passion and confidence.

• Be bold. Know that whatever path you choose, there are going to be challenges and roadblocks.
• Don’t be afraid of failure. As we often say, success is the unfinished business of failure! You can learn more from your failures than you do your successes.
• Don’t be afraid of the unknown. There are things that scare us all in life, but it’s important to face those fears and move forward with confidence. I promise that if you jump in with both feet, you’ll succeed!
• Don’t be afraid of people around you or your job security or anything else like this. This fear will hold you back from being who God created you to be—and that’s not good for anyone!

Expect to fail at first.

At first, you will fail. This is inevitable. If you did not fail, it would mean that you had reached your utmost potential and there was nothing else to learn. You would already know everything there possibly was to know in the world. It wouldn’t matter whether or not you dreamed big and took risks; the limits of human knowledge mean we can never achieve this state of full understanding and perfection (although I suppose if you don’t believe in free will or choice, then it is possible that every single event that has ever happened was predestined). However, if one believes in free will or even just chaos theory, then one must accept that failure is inevitable; how else are we supposed to learn?

You will face adversity, get hurt and be knocked down.

You will not win every day. You may face adversity and you may be knocked down. You may get hurt, physically or emotionally, and feel like you can’t take it anymore.

The good news is that the human spirit has a wonderful ability to heal and grow stronger from these experiences. When you learn to expect the unexpected, it’s easier to cope with difficult situations and bounce back even stronger than before. As Jocko Willink says, “Discipline leads to freedom.”

You can win if you can get up again.

The hardest part is getting back up.

But you can get back up again and again until that day arrives when you’re in a position to win.

To keep winning every day, focus on the next step, not the end goal. Forget about how far-away your goals are, and don’t compare yourself to others. The only way to win is to keep getting back up.