In another announcement, the box art is finalized for God of War III.

I know some of you may prefer to have a certain “other” cover for the game. If you are one of these people, you may want to grab your copy of God of War 1 and 2 and open the case and take out the cover. Now flip the cover around and you’ll notice that on the back is an alternate cover for the game. When you get God of War III, you may want to do the same thing.

I also noticed that Amazon has a great deal on God of War III pre-orders. You can get the game for $57 and they’ll throw in a $10 gift card.

Lastly, there are some great games coming out this first quarter and beyond and some really great game trailers to go with them. Here are a few of the standout trailers.

Mass Effect 2 Launch Trailer
Damn that’s a good soundtrack and I’m a sucker for good soundtracks.

Red Dead Redemption Trailer
This is the perfect trailer for a Western themed game. It’s surprising that so many western genre games miss on evoking what a western is about. It is about selling the setting and not the main character and always has been.

These game trailers got me thinking about all the great video game trailers of the past. Here are a few of my favorites off the top of my head.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare 2K7 Trailer
I like explosions.

Silent Hill 2 E3 Trailer
This is one messed up trailer, especially looking back on it now that I’ve played the game.

Gears of War (Mad World)
This trailer is made by the inspired choice in music.

GranTurismo 5 Ferrari Tribute
Damn this is a sexy trailer and a great accompanying song.

World of Warcraft Cinematic Trailer
Blizzard has been known for creating amazing cinematics and this is their crowning achievement.

Mirror’s Edge Trailer
Amazing soundtrack and innovative gameplay. The game wasn’t as good as I had hoped, but this trailer made the game an instant day one purchase for me.

Halo 3: ODST Live Action Trailer
Damned if Microsoft doesn’t know how to market a game. Truly successful trailers sell a feeling and a sense that the game is bigger than it is.

Street Fighter IV Announcement Trailer
Without any news on the actual game and this trailer the only thing to go by, I thought if they could make the game a 1/10th of how awesome this trailer was, I would be satisfied with Street Fight IV.

Battlefield Bad Company – Snake Eyes
I genuinely laughed when I saw this. Humor works.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (There’s Always a Girl)
Rockstar knows pop culture. When you can cut a great trailer with The Look from Roxette you’ve earned my respect and god damn it, there’s always a girl.

Halo 2 Announce Trailer
I remember sitting there in disbelief when I saw this trailer. It left a lasting impact especially for somebody who loved the first Halo as much as I did. What separates a great trailer is that it evokes a feeling of something bigger than the game itself. Halo 2’s advertising campaign did that and that’s why it is my favorite trailer.

Hope you enjoyed the video game trailer blast.

If you are a reader of this blog, you may have noticed that there has been a long lull in the posting recently. Now you know the reason why. I will be continuing to update the blog as time permits. Thanks for your continued support.

Here are some of my favorite videos of his.

No Woman No Cry – Sungha Jung

All Along the Watchtower – Sungha Jung

Blackbird – Sungha Jung

Tango – Sungha Jung

Moon River – Sungha Jung

When the Children Cry – Sungha Jung

For further information on Jung Sungha check these sites out.
http://www.myspace.com/jungsungha
http://www.youtube.com/jwcfree

If you want to see a great movie about a child chess prodigy I would highly recommend the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer.

See my other related articles:
My Student Films 2: EverQuest Documentary and Guilty Gear Isuka Trailer
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet

Hugh Glass
Speaking of badasses, this man was mauled by a grizzly, awoke to find himself abandoned, without weapons or equipment, suffering from a broken leg, cuts on his back that exposed his bare ribs, all his wounds festering and left to die. He then found a rotten log and placed his back against it so the maggots can clean his wounds. After that he proceeded to crawl 200 miles living off roots and berries back to civilization and tracked down the two men who left him to die.
Read more about Hugh Glass.

Wesley Autrey
When a stranger collapses from a convulsing seizure and falls to the subway track Wesley Autrey “made a split decision” and jumped down to the tracks. As a subway train came racing at the pair he dove on top of the convulsing man and pinned him in the roughly one foot of clearance between the ground and the train racing overhead. After the subway passed he yelled up to the gathering crowd: “We’re O.K. down here, but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s O.K.”

Stanislav Petrov
Lastly, is Stanislav Petrov. He single-handedly averted thermonuclear destruction and saved us all from a fate similar to Fallout 3. The incident happened at the height of the Cold War when tensions were at the tipping point. Only three weeks earlier, the Soviet’s had shot down a South Korean passenger jet, and killing 269 people on board, including a US congressman, Stanislav Petrov saved us all by ignoring USSR protocol and doing nothing when the Soviet’s early warning system reported that an American ICBM was heading towards the Soviet Union. Petrov sums it all up for us, “”All that happened didn’t matter to me — it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that’s all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. ‘So what did you do?’ she asked me. I did nothing.” Read more about Stanislav Petrov.

See my other related articles:
What’s Bad About Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer Mode?
Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet
What Video Games Taught Me About Life
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character
Why and How I Broke My Addiction to Caffeine
The iPhone 3G & AT&T Service Review
Environmental Heresies – Wired Magazines Contrarian take
Bet on the US, I am

Playing video games has taught me…

1: …to set goals and overcome challenges.
On the surface, the goals in most video games are clearly defined and easy to understand. When I first started playing video games, as I met the challenges of overcoming a level or a boss in a game my self-confidence grew. By setting goals to achieve and persevering to meet my goals I was learning the foundation of what it is to be successful in life. Just like in life, as your video game playing matures, the goals in games become more self-appointed, like climbing a competitive ladder or beating a game at its highest difficulty mode. With video games, I was given a safe place in which learn and grow and take on self-appointed challenges. I began to learn about self-reliance and being able to see the growth in my abilities and learning to trust in myself to accomplish my goals. The self-reliance and confidence in my abilities does not leave me when I turn off the game. It carries through as I set and meet goals in life as well.

2. …to fail your way to success.
Video games are unique in that they provide a safe environment in which to learn by making mistakes and failing. Thomas Watson once said, “The way to succeed is to double your error rate.” It is natural for people to learn by failing. In fact, people learn more from failing than being successful. In life you cannot be afraid of failing or making mistakes, otherwise you will never have the will to achieve anything.

Video games taught me that each time I failed, if I analyzed what the cause was and attacked the problem from a new angle, eventually I would succeed. Nearly every video game reinforces this valuable life lesson. Ninja Gaiden is a good example of this effect. Ninja Gaiden has relentlessly hard bosses and each time I failed and reloaded I tried something new and before long I started recognizing the weaknesses of the boss. What was happening was that I was learning by attempting over and over and formulating a strategy and executing it. I asked myself the question of “is my strategy or execution flawed?” If it is the strategy then I will have to change it, if it is the execution I will have to practice it until I can perform it sufficiently. In life when you fail it is possible that there are severe consequences, but in a game you can fail and the only thing that you have lost is a bit of time. The lesson is that if I have a goal, in this case defeating a boss and continue to learn from my mistakes and adjust my strategy accordingly I will eventually succeed. Life is no different, there will be setbacks and obstacles in any goal worth attaining, but if you learn from your mistakes and renew your efforts you will be able to accomplish your goal.

3: …to make quick and accurate decisions.
By playing a lot of games I am able to assess situations and make faster and more accurate decisions. This includes strategic and long-term decisions whose purpose becomes apparent multiple steps in the future. Video games challenge players to take into account the weaknesses and strengths of the tools that they have on hand and apply the correct tools to the varying problems. In the competitive team game of World of Warcraft arena, when multiple opponents simultaneously attack me (focus fire), I have to assess my surroundings and break their line of sight to prevent further damage, while staying close enough to my team’s healer to regain lost health. This positioning and awareness of my surroundings has to be coupled with choosing which defensive moves (cool downs) to use that will allow me to survive without going too far and putting my team in such a hole that we cannot later turn the tempo back against the opponent. The consequences for not making the correct decisions in a timely manner are dying and more than likely losing the match for my team. With the consequence of failing your teammates when not making the correct decisions, I quickly learned to improve my situational awareness and to make better decisions for each situation. In the workplace and in life, the fast data processing and quick and accurate decision-making abilities gained from video games are invaluable.

4: …that in life there are winners and losers.
Competitive games have taught me that not everybody wins and not everybody is entitled to winning, as most of the other coddled Gen Yers would have you believe. Winning in competitive games require hard work and practice. How badly you want to win and what hardships you are willing to put yourself through to win is a huge part of whether you win or lose. You have to persevere and put in the time and effort to continually self-improve to win any competition. As I previously mentioned, often you learn a great deal more by losing than winning.

Do not be a good loser. Be a bad loser. By this I do not mean be a poor sport when you lose, but when you lose it should hurt because it is the failure to achieve a goal. When this happens, do not just accept it. Take action by looking at what went wrong and analyze what could have been done differently to change the outcome and then figure out ways to get better from a strategy or execution standpoint, which leads me to my next point.

5: …that talent is overrated.
Talent can be overcome by hard work and deliberate practice.

Geoff Colvin details something he calls deliberate practice. This is different from regular practice in that it emphasizes relentlessly practicing what you are bad at instead what you are good at. I had unknowingly stumbled on this concept many years before reading Colvin’s article “Why Talent is Overrated” in the game Street Fighter II – The World Warrior. In my youth, I played Street Fighter II endlessly with a group of friends. Some of my friends picked up on the intricacies of the game much faster than I did. I was tired of being beaten at the hands of my friends and set about getting better at it. I practiced the game on my own time and refined my skills. I targeted the areas of my game that were the weakest. In Street Fighter II players would either start on the left side of the screen if they were the first player or the right side if they were the second player. The player on the left entered commands into the controller in the opposite direction as the player on the right. As I generally played the game as the first player, I could execute the moves very reliably when my character was on the left side of the screen. The problem was that on occasion the players would switch sides if your opponent jumped over you or threw you to the opposite side. When this happened I was a much less effective player as I could not reliably execute the reversed commands. I began only playing as the second player to practice the reversed commands over and over. By the next gaming session I was equally competent on either side of the screen and started to take advantage of my friends’ weakness in this area by purposely throwing or jumping over them to place them on the side they were less comfortable with. Through hard work and correctly applied practice I learned that I was able to overcome my group of friends’ greater natural talent at the game and that talent is indeed overrated.

6: …teamwork, communication and friendship.
For myself, gaming has always been a social activity to be enjoyed with friends. Cooperative and team objective based games cater to this almost exclusively. Competitive team based games, like first-person shooters and massively multiplayer online role-playing games place an emphasis on working with team members to accomplish team-oriented objectives. These games reward player teamwork, communication and cohesion and punish teams without these qualities. As a result, teams constantly work to refine not only their individual skills, but also team based strategies and communication. The lessons I have learned from playing team based games have translated directly into my team-oriented professional workplace. The ability to work in teams and producing at a high level in groups is something that holds true whether in a game or in life.

Even for single-player games, stories are shared between friends on how a specific scenario was tackled and defeated or recounting moments in a particular game that had left a lasting impression. Gaming as an experience begs to be shared. This is why every moderately successful game has a community of gamers who participate in message boards related to the game. In fact, the quality of the community surrounding a game greatly affects the players’ enjoyment of the game. One of the main reasons behind the success of World of Warcraft is the size and how enthusiastic the community for the game is.

I have had many strong friendships developed through gaming. All those hours of playing video games with my friends have solidified our friendships and we still retell stories about some of our greatest shared video game moments and continue to create new ones together.

Conclusion
I am not here to tell you that there are no differences in life and video games. I will be the first to admit that when taken too far, games can be a serious distraction from real world responsibilities. While I may be biased because I turned my favorite hobby into a career and I owe so much to games, I am relating my personal experience that there are some valuable life lessons that can be taken away from playing video games. The most important thing is to set the right goals. How do you know your goal is a worthwhile goal? Ask yourself the question of “why you want to achieve this goal.” If your answer is strong enough, then you know that you have a worthy goal.

Life is much more abstract than a game. There is no experience bar guiding and charting your success. Life is much less predictable and a definitive approach to success is not defined like in the game rules that are set down by a game designer. Setbacks in life and the consequences are much harsher, but games teach you to pick yourself up again and to strive for and to ultimately reach your goals by trying new strategies and having better execution. It provides you with a safe environment to experiment in which to fail and make mistakes. It allows you the ability to continually self-improve and to work together to accomplish what you could not do alone. These are lessons from games that translate into real life.

See my other related articles:
8 Ways to Make Your Goal a Certainty
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP
Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet
What’s Bad About Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer Mode?
Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Gears of War 2 Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Top 5 Greatest Moments in Competitive Gaming (eSports)
8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Video Games of All Time
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character

Video Games
Xbox 360 Pro Console
Xbox 360 Live 13 month Gold subscription
Bioshock X360 l PS3 l PC
Gears of War 2 l Read my review
Dead Space X360 l PS3 l PC l Read my review
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare X360 l PS3 l PC
Call of Duty: World at War X360 l PS3 l PC l Read my review
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core PS2 l Wii
Bioshock X360 l PS3
The Orange Box X360 l PS3 l PC
SoulCalibur 4 X360 l PS3
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
Oblivion X360 l PS3 l PC
Psychonauts Xbox l PS2
God of War
God of War 2
Resident Evil 4 PS2 l Wii
Civilization 4
Chrono Trigger DS
Diablo 2
Starcraft

Fiction Books
Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover
Dune by Frank Herbert
Legend by David Gemmell
Stardust by Neil Gaiman l Read my review

Graphic Novels
Blankets by Craig Thompson l Read my review
Sin City by Frank Miller
Thieves and Kings by Mark Oakley
Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore

Books on Life
Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee l Read my review
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Investing & Business Books
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy by Paul Zane Pilzer
Art of War by Sun Tzu
The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Built to Last by Jim Collins

Tony Huynh Amazon Search

For me the addiction to caffeine started in high school. I was one of those students that took class work lightly and would waste time goofing off until the last possible minute. I would then pull all-nighters to finish homework and study for exams the night before. To help me get through my all-nighters I would boil a full pot of coffee and down cup after cup through the night and into the morning.

I found the benefits of caffeine to be short-lived. My body became dependant on caffeine. I began to need several doses a day; otherwise I would generally feel irritable and get headaches. Caffeine also disrupted my sleeping habits. I did not sleep as restfully and would wake up several times through the course of an evening. Worse still, I found was that I was beginning to get insomnia. This was something I had never experienced before. My insomnia became so bad that at times I would not be able to sleep for several nights in a row. When I did manage to get sleep I had trouble getting out of bed and felt miserable in the morning. As my body grew accustomed to caffeine, I needed steadily higher dosages to achieve the same levels of alertness and to fight off headaches. I combated all of these negative effects with yet more caffeine. I continued these habits all through college. By the end of college I was drinking six or more cups of coffee, four cups of tea and four cans of coke everyday.

When I took account of what I was doing, I realized that I had a physical and mental dependence on a drug. Any substance that could affect me like this was making me weak. I resolved to quit caffeine immediately. The next week for me was hell. I had agonizing body and headaches and was in a general bad mood. Slowly, day after day the effects lessened and after a week they disappeared.

I have not had any caffeine in nearly eight years now and I can tell you that I do not miss it at all. The benefits have been drastic and far-reaching in my life.

1. My headaches are gone.
I rarely, if ever get headaches any more. This is in contrast to when headaches used to be a nearly daily occurrence for me.

2. I sleep more soundly.
I wake up with more energy and while I still get insomnia on occasion, it occurs much less frequently, and the duration is shorter.

3. I have higher and more even energy levels.
I no longer have the caffeine driven ups and downs. Since I work in the video game industry, I am expected to work in “crunch” mode just prior to a product shipping. During crunch, developers are hard at work for 70 to 100 hours a week, six to seven days a week for periods of up to and beyond 6 months. I do not know how I could have met the challenges of intense and sustained “crunches” without the even and generally higher energy level I now enjoy.

If you have never been caffeine free, I would highly recommend that you give it a try and stick to it for at least a month and compare how you feel.

Here are some methods and tips on how you can break your own addiction to caffeine.
1. Quit cold-turkey
If you consuming large amounts of caffeine, you will get withdrawal symptoms. Block out a good week where you can have the least amount of impact on work, family or friends to deal with the effects.

The first few days are the worst. After that the withdrawal effects lessen day after day.

2. Gradually lessen your caffeine dosage
If you can’t quit immediately, try dialing back the amount of coffee you have each day. Try switching to caffeine free tea for your middle of the day beverage and slowly lower the amount of caffeine you are drinking.

3. Reward yourself
Breaking an addiction is not easy; do not forget to reward yourself when you reach a milestone. This can give you the motivation to continue.

If you are still having problems reaching the goal of breaking the caffeine addiction see my other article.

8 Ways to Make Your Goal a Certainty

Good luck!

See these articles also:
San Diego Versus Chicago
Money: What Steps I Have Taken to Save It
The iPhone 3G & AT&T Service Review
Environmental Heresies – Wired Magazines Contrarian take
Bet on the US, I am

Let me begin by saying that I have never had a smartphone before my iPhone. My previous phone had no special features other than it was supernaturally durable and reliable enough to take 6 years of abuse at my hands and would have easily have taken another 6 years had I not replaced it with the iPhone. My previous phone would get signal anywhere even in elevators and underground in both San Diego as well as Chicago. Over the course of six years, I can count the number of dropped calls on one hand.

When the original iPhone came out and I got a chance to play around with it in the Apple store it was amazing, but I would be buying the phone as primarily a mobile internet device and without 3G, I could resist its siren call. When the 3G iPhone came out I had no more excuses and my girlfriend and I braved the long lines on opening weekend and got our phones after a 6-hour wait.

The Service
AT&T inadvertently signed us up for two separate family plans instead of one. After I got the bill and saw the discrepancy I called up AT&T. After a 10 minute wait I finally got on the phone with a real person and after some explaining they assured me that everything was cleared up and I paid the single family plan bill. Two weeks later I found out things were not cleared up when, without warning, my phone service and data for the internet on the phone were both deactivated. I called AT&T up again and they wanted to charge me for both family plans as well as a reactivation fee. I again explained the situation to an incredibly rude phone operator and got objection after objection. I then had to use actual math on her and detailed out the bill for her before my logic actually took hold. She half apologized (being clearly wrong) for her mistake and reduced the amount to the correct amount I had stepped her through. It was an incredibly frustrating process and needless to say I am not happy with AT&T’s customer service.

The service for the iPhone itself is not great, but passable. I get service in most places, but not underground or in elevators anymore. Drop calls are infrequent, but happen enough to be annoying. The 3G coverage for Chicago has been good, but you will occasionally enter into areas only covered by the much slower Edge network and in these areas you might as give up on the internet.

Enough about the service let’s dive into the device.

The Device
The iPhone has become such a large part of my life now that I do not know how I got by without it before. The phone is one of those things that you didn’t know you needed until after you have it. Since getting the iPhone, I have been significantly more productive. Every single blog post I have written at LimitlessUnits.com has been written largely, if not entirely through the iPhone. My 20-minute commutes on the bus in the morning and evening have turned into the most productive time of the day for me. I check the weather and e-mail in the morning while getting ready for work on the iPhone. It has really been a dramatic change in my routine.

The screen is bright and beautiful. The touch interface is where the iPhone really shines. It is so far ahead of anything else I have seen on the market. It is very intuitive, double tapping to zoom along with the pinching works great. After experiencing the iPhone, I cannot imagine using nav keys or a stylus. The keyboard takes some getting used to, but once I did, I have grown to like it. After writing so much with the keyboard my speed has become surprisingly fast with it.

The 3G internet connection is just fast enough that surfing the internet is not annoying. The browsing of full (non-mobilized) websites is simply amazing. The ability to watch Youtube videos is incredible. The Safari browser was much less reliable early on and would consistently crash, however several updates have made it a much more stable and dependable browser. The iPhone also provides full e-mails, PDF, word document and excel file browsing.

The GPS along with Google maps is great especially for somebody with bad direction sense like myself. I do wish that the phone had a built in application or somebody would make an app for the App Store that gave you voice directions for the occasions when you cannot look down at the device without endangering yourself, like while you are in a car.

Battery life is not awful, especially if you set your e-mail updating to manual, turn off auto-brightness and lower the default brightness down a touch. I use mine almost the entire day for music, browsing the internet and blog writing, yet the battery does not have trouble keeping up.

To top all this off, the crowning achievement of the iPhone is undoubtedly the Apple App Store.

At the time of this writing there are over 10,000 Apps currently available for download on the store. Many of the apps take full advantage of the GPS and tilt functionality of the iPhone. I will list out a few of my favorite Apps.

Pandora Radio
Pandora Radio functions exactly like the desktop version, but for the iPhone. You simply type in an artist or song you like and it plays it for you. It creates a song list of similar artists for you to listen to, hopefully introducing you to some new music. Buying a song is as simple as a few clicks and you are ready to download.

Labyrinth
This is a pretty fun little game that has you moving a metal ball barring through a maze with holes that the ball can fall into. The movement of the metal ball is controlled by the way you tilt the phone and controls very realistically.

Urbanspoon
Urbanspoon uses the GPS to find a restaurant near you that matches 3 different criteria. The criteria are location, type of food and price. You can lock in any of these three criteria or none of them and then shake your iPhone and it will give you a suggestion. It’s been great for finding new eateries in a big city like Chicago.

AIM
AIM, just on your iPhone

Bloomberg
This is decent for keeping up on your stocks.

The iPhone has a few negatives also.

No copy paste functionality.
Not having a copy paste feature is really annoying.

No Undo function
This is particularly irritating when combined with the backspace lock bug.

Backspace lock
Occasionally, while hitting the backspace the button the phone will become locked and will continue deleting everything you have written at an incredibly rate. You have to react quickly to stop the locked backspace by pressing another button. For this reason I back up what I am writing by e-mail it to myself every so often to prevent this from happening.

No video recording or video conferencing
You have a 2-megapixel camera and an 8 or 16 gigabyte HD built into each iPhone, yet it does not have video recording. That does not make sense. Come to think of it, why doesn’t this thing have video conferencing?

Monetary Cost
The monthly cost of an iPhone service plan is nearly twice as expensive as my old phone. However, this cost has been more than justified by how much more productive I have been with iPhone.

AT&T customer service
As I previously stated after my experience with the ineptitude that is AT&T customer service I am looking forward to the day when I can leave them. For now they are a monopoly and I have little choice after signing a mandatory 2-year service contract with them.

Conclusion
All in all, the iPhone is an amazing phone tied down by a monopolistic terrible company in AT&T. Despite this, I would still highly recommend the phone for the amazing UI, 3G speed of the internet and Apple App store.

See my other related articles:
TapDefense Reviewed Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

“When you are tough on yourself, life is easier on you.” – Zig Ziglar

1. Achievement starts with a goal

Start with a goal. Desire and enthusiasm without direction is wasted. A goal will give you a direction to channel all of your enthusiasm and desire. How do you know your goal is a worthwhile goal? Ask the question of “why you want to achieve this goal.” If your answer is strong enough, then you know that you have a worthy goal.

2. Imagine the pleasure of achieving your goal

Close your eyes and see yourself in the future having achieved your goal. Think about all the benefits, pleasure and possibilities that will open up to you if you attain your goal. Doing this will help you visualize in your mind and emotionally commit yourself to achieving your goal. Remember that feeling of pleasure at reaching your goal. Latch onto this image and it will help you manifest your mental creation into the physical.

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” –Gloria Steinem

3. Imagine the pain of failing to reach the goal

Now close your eyes and imagine what the consequences are of not reaching your goal. What type of painful existence would you live or continue to live if you did not continue to move forwards and achieve you goal? Embrace that feeling of pain and let it drive you. Pain can be the greatest of all motivators.

4. Remind yourself of your goal

Reinforce your goal everyday. Keep you goal fresh in your mind. By doing this you will prod your mind to work out the problems in your way of achieving that goal. A goal that is constantly bubbled up in your mind will allow your genius to work on figuring different methods on how to achieve it. Never underestimate your genius.

Some of the methods to remind you of your goal is to write your goal on the ceiling of your bed so that you wake up and see it every morning and every evening when you go to bed. The headline of my IPhone task list is always the goal I am currently working on. I check this list several times a day to keep on task and remind myself of my goal. Whichever way you remind yourself of your goal do it at least once daily.

By keeping yourself focused on your goal you will remove distractions. I do not know who originally said this, “When you eliminate all other possibilities other than success, you are left only with success as a possibility.”

If you look up at the sun, you seldom see the shadows. – Helen Keller

5. Public Accountability

Tell others what your goal is. Arnold Schwarzenegger related a story about how he used public accountability to get the burning desire in his belly to achieve. While still in Austria and with little ability to speak English he would tell people that he was going to America to be a great actor. Because he let people know his goal, he used public accountability to strengthen his desire to achieve a goal that seemed impossible. Even when he arrived in America he was told his accent was too thick and his body too weird to ever make it. Despite it all he willed his way through all of his detractors and made it by never giving up on his dream.

Blog about your goal and give frequent updates. Here is a video of a guy that used public accountability to get to his goal. He posted a picture of himself on his blog everyday as he used public accountability to achieve his goal of weight loss.

Make a deal with somebody you care about. For instance, you could make a deal with your wife that you will quit smoking if she does the same.

Tell your co-workers about your goal. “I am going to quit smoking for the next 2 weeks” and give them frequent updates. Doing this will even encourage people to ask you for an update about your goal when you neglect to update them.

6. Do something each day that will get you closer to accomplishing your goal

Before going to bed each evening, take out a note taking device and create a stack ranked list of what you need to tackle tomorrow to get you closer to your goal. Start on the list from highest priority and focus on it until it is complete.

By doing something everyday to get you closer to your goal you will be surprised at the progress. This will also make your progress steady instead of having peaks and valleys of activity.

7. Fail your way to success

People are so afraid of failing and making mistakes that it often stops them from even trying. This mentality is completely wrong. If you want to succeed faster increase the rate at which you fail. We learn more from failure than we learn from success. Embrace and learn from failure and get back up and keep swinging. When obstacles arise you change your direction not your decision to get there.

After Thomas Edison failed 9000 times trying to create a practical electric light he was asked by a reporter whether he felt like a failure. Edison replied, “”Young man, why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” Edison invented the practical incandescent, electric light after he failed 10,000 times.

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa

Each misstep is an education. There are two reactions that a person can have when hit by an obstacle. One, give up. Two, redouble your efforts. When you get knocked down, how you react to it shows your character. Bottom line is: do not be afraid to start something because you could fail and if you do fail learn from it, get back up and attack. An example is investing in the stock market. Invest slowly with money that you are not afraid to lose. If you do lose money do not let it stop you from investing, instead learn from your mistakes and consider it as an educational tuition fee. You will never learn, let alone succeed if you never try.

8. Create a mantra

Mine is: “I will do what it takes.”

We need more people that don’t know what can’t be done. – Henry Ford

May all your dreams but one come true. – David Gemmel

This has been my most personal blog to date and I was very hesitant to publish it. Nonetheless, I hope this post is helpful to you.

If you enjoyed this post you might be interested in my other articles:
Why and How I Broke My Addiction to Caffeine
Bet on the US, I am
Money: What Steps I Have Taken to Save It