Make an honest assessment of your life.

Do you consider yourself a success or a failure?

If you consider yourself a success, great.

If you consider yourself a failure, keep on reading. You’ll find out why you’re a failure and how to eliminate those reasons from your life.

Before we continue, take a moment to answer the following questions.

• What are your top 5 life goals?
• What are your top 5 goals for the next 10 years?
• What are your top 5 goals for the next 5 years?
• What are your top 5 goals for this year?
• What are your top 5 goals for this quarter?
• What are your top 5 goals for this month?
• What are your top 5 goals for this week?
• What are your top 5 action items today?

Maybe, you don’t have 5 goals for each term, but do you have goals for specific terms?

• Are your goals specific and measurable?
• Do your goals have deadlines?
• Are your goals, their satisfaction criteria, and their deadlines written down somewhere?
• How often do you read or remind yourself of your goals?

How Do You Spend Your Time?

Write down how you spend your time for a week. Set your timer to go off at the end of each hour while you’re awake. When it goes off write down what you have done in the previous hour. Do this for a week.

At the end of the week, look at how you spent your time. Now, imagine those sheets are from someone else. Examine those time sheets and answer the following questions.

• Does this person have any goals?
• If yes, what are their goals?
• Prioritize their goals according to the time spent on each of them.

Now, compare your answers to your goals. Do they match? To which extent do they match? What’s the percentage of the time you spend on your goals?

Sure, we have to spend time sleeping, eating, and recuperating, but what about the rest of the time? Especially, your spare time? Do you do anything about your goals in your free time? Or is it entirely spent on entertainment and distraction?

How Do You Spend Your Mental Energy?

Now, we’ll go to a deeper level. Do the same exercise above, but now with your thoughts instead of your time.

At the end of each waking hour, write down how you spent your attention in the previous hour. Which thoughts did you think? To which thoughts did you pay attention and invest mental energy?

At the end of the week, ask the same questions for your thoughts.

• Does this person have any goals?
• If yes, what are their goals?
• Prioritize their goals according to the mental energy spent on each of them.

Do your answers above match the goals you’ve written above?

Now, You Know Why

If you’ve done these exercises or have a rough idea of what your answers would be, you know why you’re a failure. It’s one or more of the following.

• You haven’t written down specific, measurable goals with deadlines.
• The way you spend your time doesn’t match your goals.
• The way you spend your mental energy doesn’t match your goals.

Become a Success

Once you determine the reasons you’re a failure, it’s time to work on becoming a success.

• Write down your top 5 specific, measurable goals for different terms with their deadlines.
• Make sure that the way you spend your time reflects your goals and their priorities.
• Make sure that the way you spend your mental energy reflects your goals and their priorities.

If you don’t do these steps, don’t expect any success in your life.