To achieve amazing success, you have to be focused on your priorities and not be distracted by things that don’t help you achieve your goals. Clarity is a major component of this mindset.

There are four buckets of activities that are important to focus on in order to live out a balanced and amazing life. These buckets are professional, personal, growth, and miscellaneous. One of the goals in each is to set priorities and not get distracted on the way to amazing success. The better that you produce the results in each bucket the more grounded you will be. Be on the look out for upcoming blogs covering each of the buckets as well as how to have the right mindset in order to prioritize. In this blog, let’s focus on the “Professional” bucket.

We all have professional activities that we need to consistently execute. The better you do your job, the more likely you are to excel professionally. Every profession has its own set of activities that need to be...

Every year around the holidays, I look back on the past year and look ahead to what I want to accomplish in the coming year. It has been challenging because we wanted to grow our presence online and expand the business. The challenges included finding the right team members and creating the right processes and routines. This exercise had many ups and downs. A huge part of success is the interpretation of the past. Although one should not ignore the challenges, one should not dwell on everything that went wrong. I understand that if I want my big dream to come true, I have to accept that challenges are just a part of life. The bigger my goals are, the more complicated the challenges will be. I also have a deeper understanding about gratitude and changed my view on the subject. Before, I used to think of gratitude as a feel good concept. Although that’s valid, it’s also a success principle. Before accomplishing anything, one must recognize the resources at their disposal,...

Goal setting is important when it comes to making our big dreams come true. However, what happens after we set our goals is important. Goal setting is about giving our desires, our hopes, our dreams a voice. After you set goals, the real work comes in. Oftentimes, people set goals and work on them for a couple of weeks. Then, after a while, when they get bored or something comes up, they abandon the goal. After people set goals, they immediately go into action mode. If they want to lose weight, they buy tennis shoes or sign up for the gym. If they want to save money, they decide to eat out less. And, often, only a few weeks later, they have something happen to them that makes them abandon the goal.

These are some tools to help you stay on track:

1. Have a purpose around your goals. What would achieving your goals mean to you? What can you do if you accomplish your goals? What would it mean to the people who you love? What would you be able to do if you accomplish your goals that...

Every year, I go back to my alma mater, USC, to lecture freshmen business students. One of the most transformational moments of my life was when I decided to attend USC. Now, I can happily call them a client.

The class that I’m invited to is part of the Global Leadership Program. Every week, a guest lecturer, who is both an USC alum and runs a company, is invited to talk about life and business.

My brand is about motivation, inspiration, and goal achievement. Even though I discuss business principles, I don’t abandon my mission and try to impress the students with my business acumen, or impress them with words like “acumen”.

The head of the program is my beloved professor and friend who is now the dean. When I was there, Jim Ellis and I forged a friendship. My feeling is that Jim invited me to talk about dealing with challenges and inspire them with my story.

One of the challenges that I face, and one that many others face, is not embracing raw talent and...

One factor that gets in the way of an amazing life is not focusing on your goals, but, rather, focusing on your challenges. Whenever I focus on my challenges and my limitations, I don’t get very far, but when I focus on my dreams and my amazing life, my challenges become secondary.

Before I decided that I could go to USC, I was obsessed with how my disability prevented from living an amazing life. When I decided to make my dreams and my goals the focal point of my life, then and only then was I able to go and live out my dreams.

So often people make their challenges the focal point of their life instead of their dreams becoming the focal point. When I decided to speak and write, I did not obsess over the fact that it’s probably a good idea for a speaker to, you know, speak, or for a writer to, you know, actually write.

When I asked Chris to be on my team, the last factor that I considered was whether or not he could understand me. I knew through experience that we would...

When people go after their goals, they may only think about everything directly relating to their goals. If someone wants to lose weight, they may consider their diet and their exercise routine. If someone wants to save money, they may look at where they can cut back or where they are spending frivolously. These are all valid and need attention. However, everything in our lives is interconnected and has an indirect impact on our goals.

For example, when you are losing weight, you need the proper amount of sleep or your body thinks it’s under attack and will start storing fat. If you are trying to save money and you are stressed out, you are more likely to buy on impulse because buying on impulse can lead to a rush that will temporarily ease your stress.

Your life will never change unless your habits and your routines change. Every single habit you have can impact all of your goals, not just the habits directly related to your goals.

As a writer, I have to always be inspired...

One issue with achieving our goals is that life gets in the way. A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way to get into bed and I heard a pop in my back. This was the day before I was going to go to Vegas to watch my stage partner, Chris, present at an event. During the trip, my back bothered me, but I ignored it. I had a few adult beverages and that did the trick. When I got back home, I realized that it was more serious, especially because I had a hard time sitting. As a guy in a wheel chair, being able to sit is crucial.

Oftentimes, life gets in the way of our goals. I wanted the first part of the year to be really productive and it was until that point. For me, a back issue or injury is compounded by my disability. My random movements make healing take more time. Like with any limitation, the goal is not to ignore it, but rather work around the challenge. My primary focus is to get better. I have learned that health is the main component to success.

While I recover, I adjusted my...

A while back, I was watching a Facebook Live with happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin. Rubin was talking about the process of decision making. One of her points that struck me was when she is in the process of decision making, she considers what decision is going to afford her to play big in her life.

This resonated with me because I am driven and motivated by having as many experiences that I can despite my disability. This includes experiences with my family, experiences with the people I love, experiences with my parents, experiences with my friends, professional experiences, and experiences that will fulfill my spirit. I take a lot of risks and put myself out there. I want to play life at a high level.

So often, we let our circumstances dictate the way we play and the way we live. Although limitations and challenges are a big part of life, they should not dictate how we go through life. Instead of letting our circumstances dictate our lives, we should let our desires and...

One way to prepare for the future and plan out next steps is by looking to the past to see what worked, what went wrong, and what can be learned in order to achieve amazing success. When we look at the past, we, oftentimes, romanticize it. Somehow, we forget all the bumps in the road and don’t remember all the challenges that we faced.

The Los Angeles Lakers are embarking on the Lebron James era, which is exciting. However, it will take some time to build a contending team. Many people who are Lakers fans, like myself, romanticize the Kobe Bryant era. They want Lebron to swoop in and fix everything right away. Some Lakers fans romanticize the five championships, the game winning shots, and other great moments. But, there is another side. There were many unglamorous moments that some Lakers fans have conveniently forgotten.

Achieving amazing success is challenging. What worked for you in the past may not work for you moving forward. Just like how Lebron and the Lakers have to...

When people set goals and plan out the steps, the plans are almost perfect and don’t allow for “life” to happen. They always have the best scenario in mind. For example, if they want to write a screenplay, they plan on writing without writer’s block or when they finish it, they imagine bumping into a producer at a coffee shop.

Best case scenarios rarely happen. When you plan for best case scenarios, your plan has no time to breathe. Even if you get modest results, you will be disappointed because it’s not what the plan promised. You want to include life’s little mishaps.

Sport’s teams have a plan for the unexpected. A football coach knows what to do when it’s fourth down and there are two minutes to go. A basketball coach has a plan for when they are down by three with ten seconds to go and they have the ball.

A parent who has to be out of the house in 30 minutes can’t assume that their kids will get ready right when the parent...