Our lives are full of scheduled check-ups. You see the dentist every six months. You get a check up every year past 40. You get your car tuned up every 3000 miles or so. And you should review your day every 24 hours.

Why so frequently? After all, you could do this once a week or month, or even once a quarter. Well, you should review your progress at different time frames, but there are several reasons to review your activity daily:

1. Because you’re looking for a big breakthrough. And if you wait too long between assessments, you can find you’ve let weeks or even months go by when you could have been making consistent, positive movement towards your goals.

2. Because it’s easier to correct a minor slip-up. An inch off-target now becomes a mile or more when extrapolated over time. Make the fix now and you won’t have to deal with the big problems later.

3. Because it’s less intimidating. Sitting down for an hour or two to review a month’s worth of activity can be downright off-putting, but taking five minutes at the end of the day can become a relaxing bedtime ritual.

4. Because your actions are fresh in your mind. You’ll forget lots of details if you wait too long to go over your schedule and activities. It’s hard enough at the end of the day; don’t wait a week or more.

Here’s what you should ask yourself at the end of the day:

• What did I do today that I was proud of?

• What one item on my to-do list made the most difference in the achievement of my goal?

• What one item on my to-do list is left over, but I should have done it?

• What took longer than I anticipated?

• What took less time than I anticipated?

• What did I enjoy doing the most?

You can easily go through these questions in five to ten minutes. You might even consider writing the answers down; it will take a bit longer, but having a longitudinal view of your answers can be invaluable to figuring out where you’re wasting time, what your highest-value activities are, and what you can change.

You might find that just by paying attention to what’s going on in your life, and where you’re spending your time, you will naturally make adjustments that put your schedule more in line with your goals.

Photo – Flickr:The Comsumerist

Even if you’re not quite where you want to be, you still have a history of success. You’ve graduated high school, done well on a test, lost weight, had a great friendship,or otherwise set and achieved some sort of goal. By analyzing your past successes, you can find a lot of clues about how you best work and what you can do to set yourself up for future success.

I recommend mining your own past for success stories because not everyone works in the same manner. You may read a book about adopting a low-carb diet and loses 20 lbs. In two weeks. Wonderful! But right next to it on the bookstore shelf is a high-carb, low-fat diet that promises the same thing. And right next to that is the Zone diet, which is next to the Raw Foods Diet, which is next to… well, you get the picture.

Not everyone’s body is the same. Not everyone’s brain is the same. Nor is your motivation, history, goals, or personality. That’s why looking at your own history will be a huge clue as to how you can replicate your own patterns of success.

Here’s what to ask yourself:

• When did I set this goal? Did I consciously set it, or was it an unconscious goal?

• How analytical was I in charting out my path?

• What kinds of obstacles and challenges arose, and how did I handle them?

• Who helped me along the way? What specifically did they do to assist me? (Concrete skills, advice, sounding board, cheerleading…?)

• Was I accountable to someone along the way? Who and how?

• Did I track my progress? How?

• If I were going to give someone else advice about how I achieved Goal X, what would I say?

• If I were to go after this goal again, the one thing that I would do differently to speed up my progress would be…?

Repeat this series of questions with several different goals – and maybe even some goals you didn’t achieve – to look for patterns. You may discover you work best with an accountability partner, and when you tracked your progress in a visual manner. These are your patterns you can easily adapt and replicate for just about any goal you’re striving for.

We can overlook our own stories when trying to learn how to succeed. That’s a mistake. Often, the best indicators of future success are right under our own noses – and in our own histories.

Leave a comment and tell us about some of the patterns of success. I read them all.

Photo -  Flickr:yourdoku

My book Train Your Brain – Achieve the Green Beret Way is up on Amazon.  I am really excited about the power of publishing on Kindle.  It is changing the face of the publishing industry.  Do you realize, you can write a book and publish it on Kindle for nothing? 

This is exactly the kind of bootstrap business that I talk about people starting in their spare time.  You don’t have to be an expert on anything.  I am willing to bet you do know more about at least one subject than many other people.  This could be the basis for an Amazon book.  It is extremely gratifying to have your own Amazon Author’s Page.

I am going to be publishing some more books on Kindle soon.  Once you know what you are doing it is super simple.  If you are interested in learning more about Kindle publishing, contact me on my contact page. 

You say, “Let’s go to the drugstore. I need a new pair of reading glasses.” Your friendsays, “Are you sure? We could probably get the same thing cheaper at the mall.”

You say, “I hired a new accountant.” He says, “Are you really ready to invest in that?”

You say, “I’m joining 24-Hour Fitness.” He says, “Bally’s is running a special this week.”

And if you were to take his advice and go to the mall, fire your accountant, or head over to Bally’s, he’d have problems with that, too. That’s because his input isn’t a matter of helpful suggestions; it’s only designed to make you question your own choices.

If you had a friend who constantly questioned every move you made like this, you’d probably knock him in the teeth.

If this behavior is so unacceptable in our friendships, why do we do it to ourselves? We choose – and then we immediately revisit that decision over and over again. Here’s the problem: Sometimes there are no “right” decisions. There are only choices we make and live with.

That’s why to take yourself to the next level, you need to let go of doubt. Accept that you’re working with imperfect knowledge and that you’re a smart cookie and that you will indeed make some mistakes along the way. But tell yourself that whatever happens, you can handle it.

If you pay $5 too much for reading glasses, you can live with that.

If you hire an accountant and discover you’re really not ready, you can let him go.

If you join the “wrong” gym, you can always switch.

Often we think that we are at the whim of circumstance and we can’t control the outcome. Not so! If you chose to buy a Toyota instead of a Honda, YOU get to decide whether that was a successful outcome. Does it get you from Point A to Point B? Does it get the required gas mileage? Is it a safe ride? (By the way, these are probably all items you considered before you made your purchase!) If the answer is “Yes,” then congratulations! You made a successful purchase!

The situation with your business may be a little different. The “success” criteria are not as clear-cut, but your influence on the outcome is no less significant. You can hustle, work extra hours if need be, commit to working things out, or even end up selling the business and thanking the benevolent heavens for giving you the opportunity to learn some lessons along the way.

Commit to doing whatever it takes to ensure your choice was a good one. And don’t doubt your own ability to make it so.

What are you committing to in your life? Leave a comment I read them all.

Photo -  Flick:presta

Life is all about choice. Will we wear the blue tie or the red tie, or no tie at all? Will we have oatmeal or eggs for breakfast? Will we take the car or walk?

Yes, these are seemingly simple decisions that you may think don’t belong in a report on how to change your life. But when it comes down to it, the decision to quit your job, start a business, lose 100 lbs., move to Idaho and build a log cabin, are no different physiologically speaking than the decision to go to McDonalds instead of Wendys.

What is different is the amount of strife and angst we place upon ourselves.

And one major source of that angst is when we choose to assume the outcome of our decisions will be bad instead of good, and revisiting our decisions over and over again in the hopes that things will become more clear the second (or third, or fiftieth) time around.

You’ve done this before: You make an informed decision. You look at all sides of the matter. Maybe you even make a “Franklin List” where you list all the pros and cons. You consult a friend or an expert or two. Then you decide.

And you immediately second-guess yourself. You assume you made the wrong decision. You wonder, “What if…?” You may even try to change the original decision, whether it is returning a new car, second-guessing your business decisions, or just wondering if dinner would have been better at Fridays.

Then you put yourself right back to square one – agonizing over that decision again. Not only are you right where you’ve started, you’ve also managed to kick yourself in the self-confidence and waste some time, too. And it’s not like you’ve gotten some great information that would’ve affected your decision; you’re right where you were, with the same information you had before, struggling with the same decision you’ve already made once.

Here’s what to do instead: Go through the same careful process of decision-making, then let it go. Tell yourself you’re stuck with it. Assume you made the right decision instead of the wrong one. Move forward, move upward, move onward.

Sure, you can revisit the past, wondering if your decisions could have been better or the outcome could have been different. It’s up to you. But no going backward. It only wastes time.

Photo -  Flickr:the|G|