But why do most of us fall short on the execution? Well, there are probably as many reasons as there are individuals, but one thing that seems top trip up a lot of folks is this simple truth: All Change Requires Sacrifice.

Our culture has become one that reinforces the idea of getting something quickly, getting something for nothing, a culture of entitlement. Well, guess what, no one is entitled to much in this life and spending any time lamenting about not getting something for nothing is time wasted.

Anything worth having in your life, whether it be good health, business success or strong relationships requires hard work. It requires sacrifice on your part. Lots of it. What are you willing to give up to reach your dreams?

Here are some things that may help you take that next step:

• A big part of success is people – who you know and who you work with. If things don’t seem to be going well, try finding a new partner, a new client, or a new mentor.
• Find passion and enthusiasm in what you do. It’s okay to rely on those tactics that pump you up, even if they’re not directly related to what you’re doing.
• Is there something you’re worried about or afraid of? Get out of your comfort zone by tackling your fears.
• Even though the goal is to improve your business, trying something totally unrelated – even something weird – can help put you in the right mindset moving forward.
• Get some courage elsewhere, then channel that energy to your business. Do something you’re good at, build up the confidence, and then attack your business head on.
• Put more structure and form into your environment or make it more chaotic. In other words, shake things up a bit to see what happens.

It can be overwhelming to think about the unknown or the potential for failure. The comfort zone is comfortable, but it doesn’t bring success. Don’t ignore the fear or the frustration, but overcome it by breaking out.

You need to establish a set time each week to plan out the next seven days. Here are some things to consider while planning:

• Think about what you need to accomplish that week. Think about the progress you’ll want to have made by that same time next week, and divvy out those needs appropriately. Get yourself on a schedule to accomplish what you need to that week.
• Think about what you want to accomplish that week. You’re going to have to prioritize, since you’ll likely not always be able to get everything done. Establishing these wants will help give you direction if you finish a task quicker than expected.
• Establish specific times you’ll spend on your business each day and what you want to accomplish each day. This way, going into each day you’ll already know what you’re going to try to accomplish.
• Consider how these daily goals and weekly goals fit into your long-term goals. If one of the things you need or want doesn’t fit into these broader goals, then do you really need or want to do it?
• Use this weekly session to track your progress. If there are tasks you didn’t accomplish that you wanted to, discover why that was (and adjust accordingly).
• Make the process as simple as possible. That may mean investing in some scheduling/planning software or establishing some other system, but you don’t want your planning to be directionless and unorganized (because that will likely result in a directionless and unorganized week).

Do a little bit each day – and know in advance what you’re going to be doing each day – and you’ll increase your efficiency and save yourself loads of time.

On the flipside, if you choose healthy snacks that give you sustainable energy, you will be more productive over time and be a greater asset to your company. Here are a few healthy snacks you can choose to keep your body and your productivity on track.

1. Fruits. Fresh fruit contains a lot of natural sugars that are excellent sources of energy. For this reason, fruits make great mid-morning snacks or supplements to your breakfast. Because they are sweet, fruits can also squelch your craving for candy in the afternoon and offer a healthy alternative to empty calories.
2. Vegetables. What these snacks lack in sweetness they make up for in nutrition. Carrots, celery, broccoli and cauliflower are packed with vitamins to help you stay healthy. By choosing these snacks, you will prevent both short- and long-term illnesses (and, by extension, unnecessary absences from work). Supplementing vegetables with peanut butter or low-fat salad dressing can make them taste better and add more nutrients, like protein, to your diet.
3. Whole-grain foods. Grains with complex carbohydrates provide you with a lot of energy without the empty calories. Foods like brown rice and whole wheat breads provide you with these types of carbohydrates, and some also contain fiber to help keep your digestive system healthy.
4. Water. Drinking plenty of water is essential to maintaining a healthy diet. Your body needs plenty of fluids to replenish your blood supply, aid in digestion, remove toxins and even keep your body temperature consistent. But aside from those benefits, drinking plenty of water keeps your stomach full and helps you resist the urge to snack.

Many people think that a full schedule is the same thing as productivity, but that’s rarely the case. Too often business owners and employees alike spend several busy hours putting out fires and responding to e-mails before ever getting to the first task on their to-do lists.

Even worse, many people don’t realize they are doing it. They assume that because they are busy they are being productive. They often go home feeling like they haven’t accomplished anything but can’t identify what they’re doing wrong. Here are a few tips for combating busy-ness and staying productive.

Let the e-mails pile up. Busy people answer e-mails immediately; productive people answer them consistently. Keeping up on e-mail is an essential part of the work day, and you should definitely be prompt in your responses, but you don’t have to be a slave to your inbox. Let the e-mails roll in while you’re working on your tasks, then take time for e-mails every day at the same time. This will prevent e-mails from distracting you as you work on long-term tasks.

Eliminate distractions. This is more easily said than done, but distractions can cost you hours of productivity. If you find yourself falling behind on your tasks, take some interruption-free time. Your co-workers will respect your wishes if you close your office door and put off conversation for a few hours to get caught up, and it will feel good to have lingering tasks completed.

Simplify. Busy people complicate tasks until they spend hours on something with little to show for it. Productive workers put the necessary effort into projects but make ideas simpler and concepts easier to implement. While a busy person might spend several hours working on the intricate details of a project, productive people focus on perfecting core concepts. Focusing on the essential and letting other things go will help you stop being busy and start being productive.

“Simplify, simplify.” – Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau lived more than a century ago, but his words of wisdom apply just as much – perhaps more – today as they did when he penned them. In our world of instant messaging, instant microwavable dinners, and instant gratification created to make things easier and help us succeed, we have somehow managed to make life much more complicated.

In the deluge of information that inundates us on every side, many people suffer from information overload that unnecessarily complicates life. Simplify by eliminating unnecessary information while still taking advantage of the technologies that enrich your life. Here are a few tips to help you do so.

Choose favorites. There are a lot of places online to find information on nearly any topic, and there are people writing in every niche. Don’t try to follow every blog, subscribe to every magazine or read every tweet that mentions your industry. Instead, trim your blogroll and RSS feed until you are left with the authors you really care about. This will significantly decrease the amount of information you face and will keep you from getting overloaded.

Skim. If you try to read every article that comes your way, you’ll waste a lot of time on details when you just need the main idea. Filter through e-mails and paperwork to determine what needs a second look. After you’ve skimmed enough to determine what is worthwhile, your reading pile will have decreased significantly.

Delegate. This step can be difficult if you run your own company from home, but do what you can to help lessen your load. If you have an assistant who can help you filter unimportant messages, ask him or her to do so. You might also assign certain employees the task of staying up-to-date in certain areas. Having other people glean information for you can give you more time to run your business and keep you from getting overloaded.

French writer and philosopher François-Marie Arouet (a.k.a. Voltaire) once said “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” which means “The perfect is the enemy of the good” or “The best is the enemy of the good.” In essence, good is sometimes good enough. If pursuing perfection keeps you from considering perfectly good options, keeps you from every being satisfied with your work, or keeps you from effectively building on your mistakes, “the perfect” is actually what’s keeping you from success.

So how do you keep “the perfect” from becoming your enemy?

• Realize that in many cases, perfection is impossible. The crime rate will never reach zero, any car will eventually break down, and all books have room for improvement. However, this shouldn’t keep us from fighting crime, building better cars, and writing novels.
• If you need practice being not perfect, try something new with the mindset going in that you’re going to make mistakes and you don’t care about the results. Accept the fact that there are some things you’re simply not good at.
• Learn how to use constructive criticism. It may be frustrating or depressing having other people remind you what you did wrong (as if you didn’t already know) but their input should be taken as positive encouragement.
• Take some time to evaluate yourself. Try to figure out what influences or ideas are pushing you toward the negative effects of perfectionism.
• Use your perfectionist tendencies to your advantage. Striving toward being the best and continually improvement isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; it’s only bad when it inhibits your progress. Focus on the benefits and shun the negative.

But even for the most successful business owners, those well-intended resolutions often fizzle by the time February rolls around. Especially if you get sick or suffer an injury, your goals might be difficult (or impossible) to pick up again. Here are a few ways to stick with your goals even when you have a strike or two against you.

1. Reevaluate. In all the excitement of setting New Year’s resolutions, you might have set your sights a little too high. Goals need to be realistic and attainable even when things don’t go according to plan. If you set a goal to expand your retail company to four locations by June, an unexpected surgery in March can set you weeks behind and make meeting your deadline impossible. When this happens, try reworking your goal. Decide to focus on opening one location or give yourself more time. This will help you keep your motivation and keep your goals in sight.
2. Put your goals out in the open. Many goals fade away simply because you don’t remember what they are. Write your goals on index cards and put them in prominent places, like your bathroom mirror or on the refrigerator door. As you recover from your injury or sickness, your goals will remain in sight – literally. You might not be able to work toward your goals every day, but keeping them in mind can help you accomplish them after you recover.
3. Enlist help. If you have business partners or employees, share your business goals with them. Ask for their help as you work to make your vision a reality. If you share the load with others, they can help you accomplish your goals even when you are out of commission.

Many of the top entrepreneurs in the world lack a college degree. Rather, they sought opportunities to learn from established leaders in the business world. By working with mentors, they were able to learn the strategies of success. Other business leaders attended institutions of higher learning, but augmented their classroom studies with real world application. In this way, they learn how to utilize their knowledge in the most efficient way. They also see the occasional errors of business theory and rectify them with hands on immediacy. 

Don’t let a misguided definition of education prevent you from learning. You don’t have to be officially enrolled at a school to learn. You don’t have to be reading from a textbook to study. Rather, seek out opportunities to learn from those around you. Study the success of others. Ask for their advice. The most successful entrepreneurs in the world got where they are because they asked the right people the right questions.

“The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.” ~Charles Swindoll

There are certain things that are simply out of our control. We continually have outside forces acting upon us – some propelling us toward success and others discouraging us toward failure. But one thing we will always have control over is our attitude. And by having a positive attitude, we are more likely to achieve the success we’re striving for.

So here are some ways to encourage a positive attitude:

• Accept the fact that negativity exists – not only in others but in yourself. Pretending it doesn’t exists will not contribute to your success. Instead, acknowledge there is negativity in the world and in you, take the time to understand where it’s coming from, and do what you can to overcome it.
• Don’t point fingers. This doesn’t mean you have to take responsibility for everything; not everything is your fault, obviously. But especially in the workplace, building a culture of blame and finger pointing doesn’t do anybody any good. If a mistake is made, address it and fix it. Don’t waste time gathering a lynch mob to find the culprit.
• Look toward other, positive influences. Whether it be a person or a book or a helpful website, having positive influences in your life will help you maintain that positive attitude. Surround yourself with people and ideas that will help you focus on optimism and success. By doing so, you’ll be able to develop a pattern of positivity and, hopefully, be a positive influence on others as well.