In a lifetime, you make literally millions of choices that affect your future success. Most choices, after you make them a few times, become ingrained in you. You know from past experience what works for you, so you repeat the process. You only get into trouble when you don't get good results but keep doing the same things over and over again. It may seem hard to believe, but many people operate that way - most in fact.
You literally can opt to be happy or miserable by the choices you make. If you choose to be happy, you need to explore what makes you happy. Identify whether happiness is a sense of accomplishment when you make an A in school, achieve a specific weight-loss goal, make a difficult sale, complete a mini-marathon, win over the sourpuss at the checkout counter, or whatever. Accomplishments make you feel good, and you're happy as a result. After you determine what makes you happy, choose to do those things.
People who are unhappy are generally unhappy because they think that other people should be doing things for them. From time to time, people write in to their motivational teachers: "I want to thank you for making me successful." But realistically, those people can't accept credit for making anyone successful, nor should they accept responsibility for causing anyone to fail.
People who choose to follow the success procedures that many current teachers offer get good results, but it takes action. And to be honest, instructors give those principles to several hundred thousand people each year, and by no stretch of the imagination do I believe that all of them follow those principles and become successful. I do believe that people of good character who follow these procedures are far more successful than they otherwise would be. However, following or not following motivational suggestion is their choice, so if they follow the procedures and are successful, they are the ones who did it - not the instructors!
On the other hand, if they say, "I attended your seminar, read your books, and listened to your tapes, but none of it worked for me," I have to question whether they actually followed the principles carefully, whether they followed those principles believing that they would work, or whether they followed them with the idea that "I'll do it, but I know it's not going to work." Success is a choice in all areas of life; that's why the good teachers will deal with the physical, the mental, the spiritual, the financial, the personal, the family-related, and the career-related.
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