The truth is that failure is part of the process of success. Check the history books… Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln are right there in black and white. Every successful person has overcome setbacks and failure on their way to success.

Recently I gave a corporate talk in Greece… the video is not great, yet I think you’ll like the message. Have a great week!

Great talk and four solid observations for consideration.  How is your work – life balance? Watch and enjoy! – Dan

Here is my 5-Step plan for making 2011 your best year ever.

If you’ve listed to my CDs, read my book or watched my TV show “Your True Potential,” you know that I am a believer that positive attitudes create positive opportunities and positive results. I’ve done my research, and unfortunately many people have the belief “when I achieve this, then I will be happy.” Unfortunately, they have it backward. I believe when you are happy, you can create more results and achieve greatness as you tap into your true potential. I was thrilled when the January edition of Success Magazine’s book summary CD was delivered to my office and I listened to Shawn Achor’s book summary called The Happiness Advantage.

I knew it!

Shawn Achor indicates when your brain is feeling heightened levels of happiness and energy, it changes the capacity of every single output your brain is capable of doing. Your intelligence rises; your accuracy rises, and your energy on projects seem to rise. Optimistic sales professionals outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%. That’s what I’m talking about!

Happiness leads to greater success, not success makes us happy. Take a look at video below.

Because top achievers like you are always changing and adjusting your goals, we create what Dan Sullivan calls “The Gap.” The GAP is similar to the horizon….you can keep driving forever, but you never get there. When we get to our “success,” we change what success looks like. As a result, most people don’t experience the true feeling of success; and if we have to be “successful” to be happy, we never get there.

Our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise the brain’s level of positivity or happiness in the present, then success rates rise. There is a new study in what’s called “Positive Psychology,” and it consists of studying why positive people consistently outperform the norm. So what causes people to be more optimistic?

1. Gratitude: Our brain is similar to a single processor for experiencing the world. If we are processing all the negatives (stress, bad relationships, world news), then our brain doesn’t have the resources to create a better future. Focus on the good stuff!

2. Social Support Level: This is the people you choose to have around you. Do the people around you support you with positivity? Research says that only 25% of success is predicted by intelligence and technical skills and 75% is predicted by social support!

3. Seeing Problems or Stress as Opportunities. People who see potentially negative situations as opportunities or a challenge have more optimism than those who see the same situations as negative. Optimism creates positive results.

4. Belief: Having the belief or faith that everything always works out like it’s supposed to provides optimism to everyday circumstances and situations.

Take a minute tonight and talk about optimism and The Happiness Advantage with your family. 2011 is right around the corner!

His accent is a bit thick, yet if you stick with it, the message is fantastic.  Have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Your ability and willingness to discipline yourself to accept personal responsibility for your life are essential to happiness,health, success, achievement, and personal leadership.

Accepting responsibility is one of the hardest of all disciplines, but without it, no success is possible.

The failure to accept responsibility and the attempt to foist responsibility for things in your life that make you unhappy onto other people, institutions, and situations completely distort cause and effect, undermine your character, weaken your resolve, and diminish your humanity. They lead to making endless excuses.

By following the path of least resistance, the easiest and most mindless behavior of all is for a person to lash out and blame someone else anytime anything goes wrong, for any reason.

The fastest and most dependable way to eliminate negative emotions is to immediately say, “I am responsible!” Whenever something happens that triggers anger or a negative reaction of any kind, quickly neutralize the feelings of negativity by saying, “I am responsible.”

There is a direct relationship between the acceptance of responsibility and the amount of personal control you feel you have over your life. This means that the more you accept responsibility, the greater sense of control you experience.

When you accept responsibility, you feel strong, powerful, and purposeful. Your intelligence is like a double-edged sword: It can cut in either direction. You can use your intelligence to rationalize, justify and blame other people for things you are not happy about, or you can use your intelligence to find reasons why you are responsible for what happened and then take action to solve the problem or resolve the situation. You can make excuses or you can make progress. You choose.

Exerpt from Brian Tracy’s book “No Excuses.”