A vision is a picture or idea you have in your mind of yourself, your business, or anything this is going to happen. A clear vision helps you pursue dreams and achieve goals; an idea of the future, a strong wish. A vision that is clear will open your mind to the endless possibilities of the future.

A vision will help you to overcome obstacles in the way and helps you hold on when times are tough. A vision that is well defined helps you to focus and create a purpose that becomes your measurement for your success. If you do not have a vision of who you want to be, how you want to succeed or what you want out of life, you begin to lack drive and your life becomes just an order of events.

8. No One Will Help Me
This excuse really saddens me because there’s no truth in it whatsoever. The fact is that the world is filled with people who would jump at the chance to help you with whatever you’d like to create. But if you hold on to a false notion that no one will be there to help you, your experiences will match that belief.

If you’ve spent way too much of your life overweight, seriously addicted, lost in poverty, or what have you, then you need to realize that the ball is in your court – no more excuses! Once that belief begins changing, you’ll see help arriving, but the initial movement is completely in your thoughts.

In my role as a counselor, teacher, and parent, I’ve heard many reasons that people use to explain an unhappy existence . . . and almost all of them inevitably fall into one huge category, which I call “excuses.”

The rest of the chapter will introduce you to 18 of the most commonly used ones, along with a brief commentary about each of them. This will give you a primer before you go on to learn the Excuses Begone! method that’s detailed in the rest of the book.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Life is supposed to be a wonderful collection of always new experiences but we too often focus on the negative experiences of our past and so live our life in their presence and create our future in their shadow. Each of your experiences have taken place only once but you may have re-lived them a thousand times in your mind, thereby giving them a thousand times more power than they are due; a thousand more places in your life than they are due; and a thousand more strings to pull you with than they are due.

Ultimately, negative experiences can be transformed into positive lessons and so can become the ticket to your success rather than the excess baggage that prevents it.