@Aurelija's

A very interesting audio cast from Harvard Business Review - on what successful people do differently, here.

Very useful insights, I find. Something new as well - for example, the notion that the will power can actually be trained as a muscle. That is, if you push yourself to the limit regularly, you actually get used to that at it becomes less "painful".

Another interesting observation - on the power of NOT. When people set goals they sometimes put them in the restrictive form - e.g., don't smoke or don't drink or don't overeat. Say to yourself "don't think about it" as suddenly that something becomes all you think about. Our psychology makes us actually want to go against the restrictions. So the best way to set goals is to do it in an affirmative way - eat more healthy, climb the mountain, etc. That is, sound the goals as pleasant as possible.

Perseverance is another key feature of successful people. According to the author, successful people make incremental changes, but do it continuously, step by step, with a decent amount of "realistic optimism".


So it's all easy... except that it's not :)