Where does your identity, your sense of self, come from? If you’re like most, your identity isn’t something you work on; it’s something you accept based on what you’ve been through, what you do, the opinion of others, or that little voice inside you that’s always tearing you down. Think about that for just a moment if you would. How you feel about the most important person in your life is being formed and evolving without your active involvement. I’m divorced. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a service advisor. I’m a salesperson. I’m inadequate. I’m a failure. And the list goes on. Accepting your identity has to stop if you’re going to live the life you’ve always wanted.

You’ve got to stop letting what’s happened to you become your identity. You have rough spots that you have to navigate through in your life as we all do. These are events in your life, and that’s all. Events that are...

Feelings are amazing things; the high of love, the wonder of awe, and even the devastation of loss. What you feel is what makes you who you are and how you see the world around you. Your feelings are also the number one killer of your dreams, success, and fortune.

Instead of your feelings being one of many inputs you use to interpret the world around you so that you can properly respond to your environment, you’ve made them master of your life. Your feelings are your master because they determine how you react to the current situation and the actions that you take. An example of this is putting some action that you need to take off because you don’t feel like it. The bottom line is if you allow how you feel to run your life, you’ll never have the life you truly want from a relationship perspective, a significance perspective, or a success perspective.

If you want more from your life, then you need to put your feelings in their place. They’re a tool to be used...

There are going to be times in your life when things suck. They can suck for different reasons, but know that they will suck. It’s what you do when things suck that determine how far you get in life. The secret is to embrace the suck and keep moving.

Let’s talk about the two areas where the suck comes from. The first area is circumstances and other people. You lose a customer. Your spouse leaves you. Your child gets sick. You lose a parent. Each of these things sucks, and you have a choice to either sit there and stare at the suck, or you keep moving. If you lose a customer or your spouse leaves you, the first thing to do is not blame the circumstance. Instead, take the time to see what you could have done to prevent the occurrence from happening and fix it. Customers and spouses don’t just decide to leave one day. There’s been a number of disappointments that culminated in them leaving. If you learn the lessons buried within the suck, you’ll be a...

It’s funny how I hear business owners and parents wishing their employees and/or children had more ambition. It’s a different story when I ask these same people that are complaining what their ambition is. They want more drive from others but are missing it in their own lives as well. Ambition is a wonderful word and an amazing attribute to have.

First, let’s get clear on what ambition means. According to dictionary.com, ambition means to seek after earnestly; aspire to. In other words, ambition is the focused act of achieving something of importance. Ambition can’t stand on its own though because it’s made up of three elements.

1. Destination. Before you can achieve anything, you’ve got to know what you want to achieve. Without a destination, you’ll find yourself drifting through life on the current of circumstance. It’s like being on a ship without a rudder; you’ll go through some bad and some good, ending up somewhere...

When you think of the word success, do images of fast cars, big houses, and financial freedom comes to mind? These pictures of success are hammered into your brain every day. If that’s the case then, why haven’t you achieved success? It’s not due to a lack of availability of resources and education. There’s never been a time in the history of man where the raw materials and knowledge you need have been so accessible. I believe the problem is the definition of success. The question that needs to be answered is what the definition of success is?

If the definition of success is the fancy automobiles, mansions, and bank accounts, why do you feel like you’re floundering and lost? It’s because you’ve let others determine what the definition of success means to you; thinking the word success can only mean one thing. You feel frustrated, beat down, and lost when it comes to achieving success is because you haven’t defined it. That’s...

I believe in the concept of mind over matter. I'm not talking about telekinesis or ESP; I'll leave those topics to those more qualified than I to discuss. What I am talking about is what you believe in your mind, you create in your life. Before you label me a nut job and move on, please read on and see if you agree with me by the end of this post.

Why is it there can be two hotels in the same market where one is thriving and the other is struggling? Why is it there's one automotive repair shop that says they can't charge for diagnosing vehicles while another shop down the street that has customers regularly authorizing the shop up to three hundred dollars? Why is it a seventy-four-year-old woman can't swim but her kids' can?

All of these scenarios can be traced to what the person believes.

I was watching Hotel Impossible with my wife Brenda. Hotel Impossible is a show where the host, Anthony Melchiorri, goes and rescues failing hotels around the country. He does this by identifying...

The most valuable thing you have isn’t your money, your house, your car, or any other possession you own; it’s time. You can make more money, you can buy another house, and you can replace your car. But you can’t buy or replace time. It is the great equalizer. Someone else may have a bigger house, a nicer car, or a larger bank account but they have the same amount of time as you do each and every day.

The differentiator between the successful and significant few compared to the masses is what they do with their time. Like them, you have a choice every moment of the day to either invest your time or to spend your time. The difference is simple. When you invest time, you get a return on that time. When you spend time, it’s gone forever.

How do you invest your time? When you use your time to pursue a goal, improve yourself and your abilities, or help another, you’re investing your time. You’re sowing seeds that will reap a harvest of success and...

With the upcoming Summer Olympics right around the corner, I was doing some reading on the games and came across a study that surprised me. Psychologists determined by observing numerous contests found that the levels of happiness didn’t match the medal. Of course, the gold medal winner was overjoyed with their hard work resulting in their win. These psychologists found that the bronze medal winner was happier than the silver medalist. That’s right, the person placing third was happier than the person placing second!

How is that possible? After any significant event, you experience what’s called counterfactual thinking. You do this to make sense of the results you achieved as it relates to the world around you. Simply put, you run different “what if” scenarios in your mind that help you imagine how things could have ended differently.

For the gold medal winner, the only what if he can see is not getting the gold, and that’s why he’s happy....