As the New Year looms ahead, you might tend to look back and wonder what you did wrong (or hopefully joy in what you did right!) At the beginning of a year, many people set complete goals and accomplish everything on their lists, many don’t. It all has to do with your personal level of discipline – something called your success discipline.

We are all fairly good at disciplining our kids and disciplining our pets. If we dont make them behave themselves and live and play by the rules, they will get hurt, self destruct or, at the very least, make life miserable for themselves, us and the world at large. No problem….we all know that.

However, when it comes to the problem of inflicting some self-discipline, most of us come up a little short.

Nobody is going to MAKE you be successful or happy. So it is totally up to you. When you accept complete responsibility for your life and take charge of your own destiny, you begin to realize that success discipline (or self-discipline as some might call it) is the vehicle that will take you from where you are tododay to wherever you want to go.

Remember the old Confucian saying, “If you dont change the road you’re traveling on, you’ll probably end up where you’re going.”

There are things you can do that will make it a bit easier to maintain success discipline and gain the self-control necessary to succeed at whatever endeavor you choose.

Step #1: Set a goal. Write your goal down in a clear sentence or a short paragraph. Now you know where you are going.

Step #2: Make a plan. There is another old saying….”those who fail to plan, plan to fail”…You must have a plan for reaching your goal.

You need to make a step-by-step plan to get from where you are to where you want to be and to make that trip in the shortest possible amount of time. Your plan should show you every step you need to make and in the right order.

Step #3: Take the time to learn the things you need to know to reach your goal. Knowledge really is power. Sometimes knowledge comes from books and articles. Sometimes it comes from just simply being observant of the world around you and really looking and listening.

Step #4: You must maintain your burning passion for the self-control required to reach your goal. Its easy to lose that passion when things dont go just as planned but you need to find inspiration whereever you can find it to fuel your passion.