How was your Day?

As you are sitting here reading this post at whatever time it is for your place in the world, ask yourself the following question, and give yourself a brutally honest answer – not the answer that you WANT to believe:

“Did I spend the last 24-hour period being happy with my life, motivated about the future, and excited and grateful just to have the opportunity to take the next steps in my life?”

If you honestly can answer that question with a resounding “YES“, then kudos to you. Your life is on track for monumental success – don’t change a thing.

Most people, however, cannot honestly answer that question with a Yes. Sure, they may have had a few bright spots, maybe even some moments when “all was well in the world.” However, as a general rule, very few people are able to consistently maintain the proper state of mind to ensure success for even a single 24-hour period, let alone over the long-term.

I was inspired to write this post after yet another bit of wisdom from Seth Godin’s blog¹ where he talks about the failure of some politicians in his town. Turns out that in the very small town that he describes, some of the local politicians had a chance to win some votes and some support by using quality face-to-face time with the locals, but the politicians dropped the ball in a big way.

They missed a big chance whenever you think about it, because in that particular instance, they weren’t even being called upon to make a consistent effort on behalf of their supporters, but rather just to put on a good show for a small amount of time, and they couldn’t even do that.

Now, discussions about politics aside (can’t we all just get along?), the situation described by Seth is the same situation that we all find ourselves in day after day. We have a chance to consistently do things that will take us in the direction of our goals, or a chance to consistently drop the ball and let our lives keep on going in the same manner that has gotten us to wherever we are right now.

We tend to think of positive changes in our lives as something that can only be accomplished by some huge effort on our part, and that anything less than a massive accomplishment isn’t worth our time.

For that reason, whenever we fail to see massive success on a day-to-day basis, we tend to fall back into “default mode” and we then simply attract the energies into our lives that will keep us exactly where we already are.

Life, however, is made up of moments, not massive successes. Your moments can – and will – lead to every success that you could possibly imagine, but only if you consistently stay in the right frame of mind that will allow you to consciously create your life, rather than attracting “stagnation” by default.

People who are really successful continually remind themselves of their goals so that they can consistently say, do, and feel the things that will lead them to the success that they want.

Just knowing about a self improvement concept such as positive thinking, the law of attraction, goal setting, etc., will not do you any good unless you consistently apply that knowledge to as many moments of your life as possible.

Every single day you are presented with 86,400 seconds in order to be happy, to be grateful for what you have – thus attracting more of it – and to say, do, and feel the things that will take your life to where you want it to be.

So, whether you are a politician with a golden opportunity to shake hands and kiss babies, or if you are simply needing to keep a genuine smile on your face in order to keep your own stagnant attitude from reasserting itself, remember that you have 86,400 opportunities each and every day to do exactly that.

Then, looking once again at this question…

“Did I spend the last 24-hour period being happy with my life, motivated about the future, and excited and grateful just to have the opportunity to take the next steps in my life?”

…you can answer it with a resounding “YES,” and then you will truly be on the fast-track to success!

Footnotes:

Seth Godin’s Blog