NOTHING SUCCEERS LIKE SUCCESS!!!

There was once a newspaper editor who advised journalists to "avoid clichés like the plague", which was perhaps his way of acknowledging that clichés often embody more wisdom that in appears to be the case.

For instance there is a lot of truth in the cliché that nothing succeeds like success because being a winner is very much an attitude of mind and one which can be cultivated. As we'll see, winning is a habit and to win even one of life's minor prizes puts you in the running for more and bigger victories.

Getting the winning habit can put a champagne sparkle into our lives that will last for ever, rather than fading away as it may do after a once in a lifetime victories, but acquiring the winning habit may involve a rethink when it come to identifying our goals. 

In order to do this, you might need to identify your goals. Identifying long term goals is a useful exercise and even a little day dreaming about them can be fun. However, to be obsessed with major goals to the exclusion of everything else can be recipe form unhappiness, because if you don't active your ambition when you feel you should, you are going to be miserable. You'll also worry and, when it comes to winning, worry is counter-productive.

It's much more satisfying-once you've identified your main goal and spent a little time dreaming about how great it would feel to achieve it-to set yourself a number, in fact the largest possible number, of interim targets, the achievement of each one of which counts as a win. Don't forget, if you do it this way you will have enjoyed any number of victories in the course of pursuing your final goal and, while this will make you much more likely to win through than would otherwise be the case, should you by any chance not win your final goal – say, through circumstances beyond your control – you won't feel anything like as miserable.