If your goal is to run a full marathon, don’t see yourself as someone who is working toward achieving this goal, but see yourself as someone who is health conscious, full of energy, and for whom exercise is a part of life. Remember, your thoughts are powerful. The more time you spend thinking about something, the more you will attract it into your life. How do you want to feel about yourself? Would it encourage you to know that the only thing standing in the way of you and the person you want to become is consistent action? A clever way to think about the process of hard work required for progress toward your goals is to feel grateful for having the opportunity to improve your life. So many people are caught up in the stresses of life that they have no time to sit down to even think about the better life they want to live, let alone start taking the required steps to achieve that dream life. Just before you start working on a project, or you are about to start that workout session, take a few minutes to think about how grateful and excited you are to have this amazing opportunity to change your life. You can also implement a gold star reward—there is a reason why they did this in school. Do you remember how excited you got after handing in an assignment and getting it back with a gold star and a “Well done” at the end of the project? Not only were you proud of yourself, but it also encouraged you to put your best efforts forward so you would get another gold star you could run home and tell mommy about. Sticking gold stars on a calendar for each day that you went to the gym might sound like something you would do only in elementary school, but seeing those gold stars will fill you with a sense of achievement and empower you to keep moving toward your end goal. If you are going to implement this strategy, hang the calendar up at a location where you will see it every day, so that every time you look at it and you are reminded of your achievements so far, you are encouraged to keep going, even if you still have a long way to go. As well as learning to enjoy the process, you will also need to train yourself to view your negative emotions in a positive light. Negative emotions are a fact of life, and there is a good chance you will experience them, even more so while you are working to achieve your goals. However, once you change your perception of negative emotions, they will begin to work for you and not against you. I will discuss this process in the next chapter.