I was recently "tagged" by the folks at Breathing Prosperity, who passed on the "Success Tag" message to myself. It's slightly different from usual "blog about yourself" tags as it's aimed at getting people to share their success tips. Here's my take on it…

1. Define Your Success

Everyone has their own idea of what it means to be a success. For some it might be a fancy car and lots of neato toys, for others it might be serving others or putting a smile on the face of someone they care about. Defining your success if vitally important, because if you don't decide what it is, someone will do it for you.

You only need to look at modern advertising to see this in action. You'll be never be happy without Product X, Product Y will make you better and so on.

By deciding on what will make you successful, you immediately create a way of finding out what won't make you a success.

2. Set Your Priorities

Make it a priority to achieve your goals. Success is very rarely achieved overnight, and it takes time and energy.

Some tasks are really boring and unpleasant, and sometimes you will just want to sit down and do nothing, and you really want to do something, but always be looking for the things that will bring you closer to achieving your goal and that will bring the most benefits.

3. Commit to Paper

Once you've decided on your goals and prioritised them down, write them down on paper. I recommend paper over electronic storage simply because its more portable and flexible. You can easily pull out an index card to read on a train or bus, or when you have five minutes of spare time.

4. Review Your Plans

This is a vital part of achieving any goal, but it is very easy to overlook. The more often you review your goals, the more they become embedded in your daily thoughts. You should aim to read your goals at least once a day, and review and rewrite them as often as necessary.

Making constant, small adjustments is much easier than making a few very large changes.

5. Take Action

Take action, any action, that will bring you closer to achieve your goal.

Notice I say "any action", and not "the one single perfect action that will solve everything". It's extremely easy to get into the trap of putting off action because you want to make sure you do everything right. There is seldom one perfect action that will complete a goal, so take it one step at a time.

Whilst it's important not to rush blindly into everything, it's equally important not to procrastinate too much on tasks. If you break your goals into small chunks, you can do a little bit of action every day.