Winston Churchill said “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” You want to win; you want to become successful. You have it in your mind, in your heart; you have this burning desire which takes over when you are feeling good. You feel you can be, do, and achieve anything; nothing can stop you. Your brain is breaking all the rules and visualizing a path weak hearts dare not cross.

Then suddenly, something happens-something you thought doesn’t work out, someone you relied on doesn’t perform the way you expected, you have a plan and it’s not working; things are getting really messed up. Your mind and you are now doubting your beliefs, your vision, and your dreams. Finally, you settle down with an inferior-mediocre dream while you see someone else, some now celebrity become a champion achieving what even you had set out to. You tell yourself “He’s lucky” Then, you continue on with your mediocre life with doses of highs and lows, thinking, dreaming, visualizing, planning, implementing, and failing, but never getting there because someone or something is always in your way. If it continues like this, one day when you look back at your life, you will sadly see a life of regret, and what you could have been only if? Don’t let that happen to you.

Challenges, obstacles, pain, suffering, failures, and emotional disasters are part of the core process which will lead you to success. Without these, chances of you achieving anything extraordinary are not only slim, but non-existent. Hardships and sacrifices, thus, are your best friends. Forget what they taught you in school or at home about pain being a bad thing and you having to avoid it. Adapt the right mindset; embrace pain, laugh at it, enjoy it. Isn’t it amazing that when you are working so hard, life wants to play with you? It messes things up for you just to see how badly you want it? Hahahaha….It’s beautiful!

You, perhaps, hate it when life demands from you to do more than what you can, when you can, and challenges you to think of new ways of how you can. But that’s what makes winning so sweet when you finally reach the finish line. If it wasn’t for pain, you won’t value success. If it were easy, it won’t be worth it. Comfort robs our society off of precious pearls of passion, invention, commitment, hard work, patience, persistence, team work, and care. Pain, hardships, sufferings, obstacles, and failures are those friends of yours who want you to win. You just got to understand their intentions, and follow through on your plans until you win. On your way to success remember what the great motivational speaker of all times Les Brown famously says “It’s not over until you win.”

To help you win your day everyday, I have identified five tools to equip you to fight, conquer, and succeed at all that you want to. Without these, I believe, the whole process would be rather difficult. It’s my heartfelt conviction that implementation of the following rituals will make the process smoother, and a lot more fun for you. Here I present to you the 5 gems to help you achieve unparalleled success:

#1. Read Self-Help Books

Read, read, and read everyday. It’s mind-blowing what ten pages of a great book everyday can do to you. Feel it for yourself. Pick up a copy of Richard Branson’s ‘Losing My Virginity’ or Zig Ziglar’s ‘Over the Top’, or Howard Schultz-the CEO of Starbucks’ ‘Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time’, or any other great book and read. You will, then, exactly feel what I mean.

#2. Workout

Hit the gym, do yoga, run, perform push-ups and dips at home, go for a trek or mount climbing, or play a sport. The point is use your body for something good. Numerous scientific studies around the world proof that sweating your body through physical regime releases endorphins and serotonin among other chemicals which are responsible for our ‘feel good’ factor. Now you know why you feel happy and fresh after a workout.

#3. Eat Right

I am not going to just suggest you a diet here which I know among thousand other things you got to do and take care of in the day makes it impossible for you to follow, and gets you demotivated. Here is my simple formula for you to get started: eat 2 fruits a day, drink lots of water, and have 1 good meal. That’s it. Even if you can’t do anything else, do this, and e-mail me in a month’s time on coach@motivationaldiaries.com and tell me how do you feel.

#4. Meditate

I love to meditate after my shower everyday in the morning. It calms me and re-focuses my attention to what is important. I can’t really describe in words the peace of mind I feel from ten minutes of a meditation session, but can guarantee that you can’t go wrong on this timeless gem which is needed the most in our new era of distraction.

#5. Laugh a Lot

Laugh at yourself and the world: Enjoy your life. You are going to live only once. Only once will you be 25, 35, 50, or say 80 years old. Any age; any day; any moment will happen only once. Only once will you have the EXACT same pattern of the people you meet, the traffic you get stuck in, and the conversations you have. Laugh at the ‘stuff’ of life; enjoy it. Have a great sense of humor (if you think you don’t have one, trust me we all have it; just don’t think too hard, and see the light side of things. It is not meant for others, but for yourself. And if you crack a joke which isn’t funny, laugh at how hard you tried, and messed it up; it can be funny how hard work doesn’t pay you off!)

So, in a nutshell, to win your day everyday, here is the success formula for you to follow daily: One hour of reading a great book, 45 minutes in the gym, 10 minutes of meditation combined with one good meal and lots of laugh. You can do this. I know you can. Don’t wait, go win your day everyday! When you do, e-mail me to share how your day was. I will be waiting.