Chapter 1

Planning, Preparing and Expecting to Win

How to Stay Motivated; Developing the Qualities of Success, is literally for everyone. Whether you’re a mechanic or a physician, a college professor or a kindergarten student, this information is something you will benefit from. This book is about hope. Alfred Adler said that hope is the foundational quality of all change. It’s my conviction that encouragement is the fuel of that hope, and so this entire book is designed to encourage and inform.

With this in mind, I encourage you to let the entire family and, for that matter, the people you work with, read this, regardless of their age and regardless of what they do. Countless adults have shared with me that these concepts have had a dramatic influence in their lives. In this book I will give you an idea which you will agree is absolutely significant. I will give you four concepts that, if you apply them, will make a difference in your life.

Let's start with this. Do you honestly and sincerely believe there's something you can do in the next two weeks that would make your personal life, your family life, and your business life worse? Do you believe there is something you can do that will make all of them better? Do you believe that the choice is yours? Do you believe that every choice has an end result? Do you believe making the right choices is your responsibility?

Whether you realize it or not, you have just said, “Regardless of how good or bad my past has been, regardless of how good or bad my present is, there is something I can specifically do now that will make my future either better or worse—and the choice is mine.”

Everything is a choice. For