Why them and not me?  Why them and not you?  The only dif­fer­ence between you and the per­son liv­ing the life that you want is that she is doing it.  They did­n’t wait for the right moment.  They took action;  they said yes and fig­ured it out along the way.  You can read a thou­sand books and all the posts in my blog, but it won’t change shit until you put them to use.

I am gen­er­al­ly a pos­i­tive per­son, but I don’t live in Dis­ney­land.  I live in the real world where life hap­pens.  I feel like shit more often than I’d like to admit, but it does­n’t keep me from push­ing for­ward.  I can’t wait to do the things I need to do until I’m in the mood.  Are you kid­ding me?  Once a day, at least, I feel like quit­ting.  This is every sin­gle day.  We all have things that are going on, yes, even those peo­ple on T.V. that you admire.  They have shit­ty days and hor­rif­ic pasts, too.  You’re not that spe­cial; get over your­self.  It does­n’t mat­ter what hap­pened 10 years ago.  Stop being a vic­tim.  It’s not cute.  Stop it.  If you’re over the age of two, you’re too damn old for that.  It’s time to grow the fuck up.  And those of you who egg on vic­tims, stop it.  You’re not help­ing them.

Goal experts and moti­va­tion­al speak­ers always talk about the “why”.  The “why” has nev­er clicked for me.  I think about the alter­na­tive: stay­ing in a job I hate until I retire is too fuck­ing long.  Being fat, unhealthy and tired all the time, unable to wear a strap­less dress because I hate my not-so-sexy back hurts more than the work­out itself. Or stay­ing in a dead-end rela­tion­ship when I know I could do bet­ter is a hard pill to swal­low.  There are cur­rent­ly close to 8 bil­lion peo­ple in the world.  Go find you a bet­ter mate, mate.

Here’s the thing: you can’t go after your goals pas­sive­ly.  If you saw the hours I worked you’d think I’m crazy.  The thing is, I’m nev­er sat­is­fied, and thank God for that.  If you’ve ever accom­plished any­thing you’d know what I’m talk­ing about.  You get that degree and then you’re like, you know what, I’m going to grad school and not only that, I’m going to grad­u­ate with hon­ors (true sto­ry).  If I was into hav­ing a for­mal edu­ca­tion, I’d have 5 degrees today, but I think it’s a waste of God damn time and mon­ey (raise your hand if you’re actu­al­ly using your degree; keep your hand up if you’re mak­ing more than what you owe in stu­dent loans, with said degree), but that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er time.  The point is when you reach a goal you set new ones.  You don’t just reach a goal and car­ry on with your life.  It’s just not pos­si­ble, not if you’re a goal-dig­ger.

Want­i­ng to be great isn’t enough.  You’ll have to pay the price.  There’s no such thing as a Mon­day through Fri­day obses­sion.  There’s no sense of bal­ance.  This is not a part-time endeav­or.

I know I’m 100 per­cent respon­si­ble for every­thing that hap­pens in my life.  I don’t blame the Repub­li­cans (or is it the Democ­rats?).  It’s my fault every sin­gle time.  Oh, you got fired from your job?  What did you do, or bet­ter yet, what did­n’t you do would be my ques­tion; con­sis­tent pro­duc­ers don’t get fired, not ever. You lost a client?  Your fault, again.  But you can do some­thing about it.  Study your notes.  Write down every no and you’ll begin to see pat­terns.  Use this new­found infor­ma­tion on your next poten­tial client.  The real­i­ty is, most peo­ple find some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for why they lost a client.  99% of the time, it is your fault.  Peo­ple are buy­ing, just not from you.  It is always, always your respon­si­bil­i­ty.  Every sin­gle time.

A tip on lead­er­ship: lead­ers cred­it their team when things go great and take the blame when they don’t.

Yo got­ta get obsessed about your life, in every area, not just your career.  What­ev­er you do, always be inten­tion­al.  If you’re at the gym, might as well have a killer work­out.  If you showed up to work, might as well get to work.  If you’re mar­ried and plan to stay in your mar­riage, you might as well become the best wife or hus­band in the entire world; let your part­ner’s biggest fear be los­ing you because there ain’t no one out there bet­ter than you.  The point is, don’t let life hap­pen to you.  Intend it.

You have to get obsessed about your goals.  Oh, you’re going to work out twice today?  Tell an aver­age per­son this.  No real­ly, tell an aver­age per­son that you’re plan­ning a sec­ond work­out for the day and they’ll say you’re crazy.  “That girl is a weirdo, she’s doing the raw diet for a month, she’s obsessed.”  Let the aver­age naysay­ers admire or hate you, either way, they will know you.  I don’t think you’re crazy or maybe you are, but I like it.  It’s crazy to work out twice in one day but it’s not crazy to be 50 pounds over­weight?  Come on.