Awareness is what allows you to take control back over your own use of your time, in order to have an improved chance of achieving your dreams and tapping into your full potential. It’s critical to get clear on how your time is saved or lost… used or wasted. As the first step to accomplishing something big, you need to sharpen your awareness of your time, your time leaks, and your opportunities to control it better.

Any achievement follows a deliberate decision. There are very rare exceptions of accidental achievement, like buying a lottery ticket and being the odd winner. But this isn’t the norm. True achievement is incubated from a decision to make something better. As a result of your desire to make a difference, you can decide now how things are going to change.

Being brave supports all the other virtues that we see in successful people. Focus, strength, determination – all flow from courage. And if you don’t have courage in times of stress, your focus, your strength, your determination and other virtues can quickly fly out the window. It takes courage to pursue an opportunity that most people think is crazy.

Grit is what keeps you going. Once you’ve made the decision to achieve a goal, you need to start working on it. Depending on the situation, starting can be easy. Someone who decides to nurture her body in better ways may find it exciting to stop buying C.R.A.P. foods and fill her fridge with fresh foods this week. But it’s the follow-through which becomes hard. That’s where grit and being “tough-minded” helps you overcome obstacles and distractions.