All of us are born with most aspects of our lives already established for us. Our economic status, cultural identity, personality, core values and our customs are waiting for us when we are born. For many people, this predetermined life is lived without question all through life. This naturally extends to our work, our relationships, and how we view the world.

What can happen?

Because all of this has been decided for us, most of us live our lives on autopilot. When it comes to our work, we often take the same jobs as our parents did. Or perhaps we just take their philosophy about our work. We may have jobs only to support our families, with no thought given to whether the work makes us happy or not. We may get used to making lots of money, and soon we get into so much debt we think there is no way out except through promotion and upward movement to make even more money. We believe we will get out of debt someday, and then finally do something we enjoy more. We may stick to jobs we dislike because of fear that others, especially our loved ones, might leave us or reject us if we seek more joyful work. Worse yet, we feel internal guilt and selfishness for wanting more out of our work life.

Where do you stand?

A famous Japanese proverb says vision without action is a daydream and action without vision is a nightmare. Spiritual leader Gandhi Mohandas believed you must be the change you want to see in the world.

So how about you?

What change do you want to see in the world? Is this reflected in your work and what you do each and every day? Is your work joyful, and full of meaning?
Does your reason for doing this work make sense to you?
Do you leap out of bed in the morning, tripping over yourself to get dressed because you are so excited to start working? If not, read on�.

How do you get started?

While I think the world would be a better place if all did the work we love, this is still a challenge for many people. It all starts with a Purpose. While I think it would be wonderful if every one of us had a special purpose like Mother Theresa did, the special purpose will always be different for each person.

There are lots of things in the world that disturb me deeply.

For example:

It bothers me that in many communities we have lost that sense of place and togetherness.
It saddens me that over 20,000 people a day die of starvation.
It frustrates me that in America so many people do not have access, or can’t afford proper health care.
In fact, I have many personal missions for making this world a better place, and that I would like to spend my life pursuing. But I am also realistic-I know that, to truly make a difference, one must choose and focus on a single cause that motivates them to get up in the morning.
For the second half of my life, I have chosen to focus on helping people over 40 find more joy in their work. It’s a niche I have studied and experienced and I feel I can make a contribution.
So I spend my time trying to improve the quality of life for one person at a time by helping them to do more of what they love with regards to their work.
Can you come up with a core niche you are passionate about?

The challenges you will encounter

As you define and pursue your purpose in your life and your work, you will be lonely at times. You will find yourself surrounded by many people just like you who are simply working at jobs without desire or passion. They are just working for a paycheck. While this is important, it is not sufficient after we turn forty.
After forty, it is critical to find a way, not just to survive, but to thrive, and to feel the excitement about each work day. This is a sensation worth feeling. It will leave you breathless and will influence everyone around you.
The other day, I spoke to a street artist in San Francisco who spends his days spray painting murals that he sells for five dollars each. As I watched him create his masterpiece, it occurred to me that while his work was not MY passion, I was inspired just watching his joy as he worked.

How to defeat the critics

First, define your Purpose. Then tell everyone you meet about it. This will help to reinforce your path. Then plan to spend the majority of your day focused on activities aligned with your purpose.

This is the solution-it’s simple but it requires discipline, courage and what some might perceive as great risk. In mid-life, society encourages those over forty to be secure and safe.

Your time is now!

After forty, it is a great risk to your life and to those around you NOT to do what you love. This is the time to take great risks and gather the courage to break free of your predetermined life. This is the time to create more joy and meaning in your life.
The shortcut to a happy life is to define your Purpose and carry it out with enthusiasm and vigor!
You will never look back and, along the way, you’ll inspire others to do the same.

As always, I’ll be cheering you on as you go.

For some people, the word “success” sounds just too intimidating. In other words, they see themselves as someone who could never really be successful.

Far too many people give up on their dreams because they feel that they are a failure. They just don’t see any success in their life. The problem is that they have built failure into their lives. They have actually developed a failure life. They even fail to realize that they have a choice.

Here’s a simple method to develop success. It will give you success momentum! It’s very easy, anyone can do it, and it works. If you consistently apply it, you can develop and build a successful life.

Pick five things to do tomorrow, and write them down. Here’s the secret: make the list very, very easy, but decide and determine that you will do each thing, no matter what. Make this list a priority for the next day. Decide that those five things are the most important things you need to do tomorrow!

For example, if you’re trying to eat healthier, one of your five things could be to eat a piece of fruit. The mistake so many people make is that they decide to eat healthier and then start out the next day trying to cut out everything that’s unhealthy all at once. (That usually lasts only about a day or two.) Then, they are back to eating like they did before and they feel like they have failed again.

It is very important to make sure that you come up with five things that you know you can do. That is the secret to this method!

The next morning, look at your list and simply do the five things. Check them off the list, and, then tell yourself that you did all five, successfully! You may have eaten some junk food, but you did eat a piece of fruit. You were successful! You accomplished exactly what you set out to do.

Now this may seem to be very small and insignificant, but you are trying to build success, not climb an entire mountain in one day.

Now, the next day, you can do the same five things again if you like. Or, you can make one of the five things just a little bit harder. Perhaps decide to eat a piece of fruit, and a salad. Again, write down all 5, and decide that these 5 things are a priority for tomorrow.

As you continue to do this simple exercise, day by day, you will build and develop a pattern for success in your life. You will also develop confidence in attaining things you may have never tried before.

You may get to a point as your list continues to get more challenging, ending up one day doing only four things on the list instead of all five. That doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Quite the contrary, you have already been successful day after day after day!

That’s why when you first start this method, be sure that you make the five things as easy as possible so that you can have one successful day after another. You will be proving to yourself that you are a successful person.

After you do this for several days, you will find that you are not afraid of failing, and you will have the confidence to add things to your list that you never would have considered before.

You can develop a habit pattern for success. A successful life is developed and accomplished by building one success upon another success. This very simple method can help you to build a successful life.

Consider what it takes to become an undeniable success with these sincere quotations that identify the fundamental factors necessary to triumph…

1. ” Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.”
   – Abraham Lincoln
2. “God gave us two ends. One to sit on and one to think with. Success depends on which one you use; head you win — tails, you lose.”
   – Anonymous
3. “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.”
   – Ayn Rand
4. “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”
   – B. R. Hayden
5. “Success is a journey, not a destination.”
   – Ben Sweetland
6. “The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
   – Benjamin Disraeli
7. “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
   – Bill Cosby
8. “The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm… to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.”
   – Cyril Connolly
9. “All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don’t discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It’s what you do for others.”
   – Danny Thomas
10. “Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”
    – Erma Bombeck
11. “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”
    – Fred Shero
12. “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
    – George Bernard Shaw
13. “A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success.”
    – Joyce Brothers
14. “Failure is success if we learn from it.”
    – Malcolm S. Forbes
15. “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”
    – Mark Caine
16. “True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.”
    – Paul Sweeney
17. “Get up one time more than you’re knocked down.”
    – Peter’s Principle of Success
18. “Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don’t know how to quit.”
    – Robert Schuller
19. “The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.”
    – Smiley Blanton
20. “When your physical environment is in alignment with your aspiration, success becomes the norm.”
    – Susan St Lawrence
21. “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
    – Theodore Roosevelt
22. “The way to succeed is to double your error rate.”
    – Thomas Watson
23. “Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price.”
    – Vince Lombardi
24. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
    – Winston Churchill
25. “Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.”
    – Zig Ziglar