I know what I should do; some times I just do not have the discipline to do it. That is a lack of character and a lack of self management. That is what separates me, from those that are more successful than me. You have to decide if you know what to do and you are just not doing it or if you need to find out what to do and then just do it.

I've used the example of increasing your production here as an example of a lack of self management but I could just as easily put any number of disciplines here. The days that I do well, get what I want to get done when I want to do them, I know they are the days when I have stayed the course. Staying the course is when I can stay focused, stay disciplined and manage myself.

In case you are not aware of this, to a large extent, perhaps 90 % or more, our future success or lack of such, lays in our hands. The process of taking control of our lives or taking more control of out lives hinges on us taking responsibility for the results we have been getting up to now. It was not until I took responsibility for my results that I began to make some real progress in my own life.

This step becomes very painful for some people. This process takes place with real people in real time in my seminars. As we work through these issues, people continually pass the blame on to other people and events that they say they have no control over. At some point I just tell them that they have to stop being a victim and start taking control of their own lives.

Moving from the perspective of being the victim to the person who will start making the decisions and start taking responsibility for them is a big step. The first steps in this process are properly setting your days up and this is covered in detail in the Power Time System. You want to first have a plan in place, a fundamentally sound plan and then build on that.

You always want to put yourself in a position of strength. of power and the best way to do this is surround yourself with checks and balances that you put in place to make it easier for you to succeed than fail. For example, if you Prioritize your activities, Time Activate them into your Day Planner, you have now dramatically increased your chances of success. You have voluntarily backed yourself into a self imposed corner where success is a much more likely outcome than failure.