A life of success and happiness doesn’t just happen. You have to MAKE it happen. And you make it happen every day through small, ordinary decisions that add up to BIG, remarkable differences in your life. Heraclitus said, “The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” These 5 essential steps are about what you choose, think and do on a daily basis to make your life one full of happiness and success.

Prioritize: Most of us spend our days tending to the urgent, rather than tending to the things that are important to us. Important activities are the ones that lead us towards making a difference in the world - our goals, our contribution, our service, the big dreams we have for our lives. These are also the activities that bring us success and happiness. Urgent activities are those that demand immediate attention, usually hinging on someone else’s demands or having to deal with an uncomfortable problem or situation that has arisen. We often end up concentrating on the urgent activities because they are the ‘squeaky wheels that need the grease’. So what can you do about this? You can prioritize your life so you are AWARE of the important things in your life, and then……. You make time for those.

In “First Things First,” Stephen Covey tells a story that one of his associates heard at a seminar. The seminar presenter pulled out a wide-mouth gallon jar and placed it next to a pile of fist-sized rocks. After filling the jar to the top with rocks, he asked, “Is the far full?” The group replied, yes.” He then got some gravel from under the table and added it to the jar. The speaker jiggled the jar until the gravel filled the spaces between the rocks. Again, he asked, “Is the jar full?”

This time the group replied, probably not.” The speaker then added some sand and asked, “Is the jar full?” “No!” shouted the group. Finally, the speaker filled the jar to the brim with water and asked the group the point of this illustration. Someone replied “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it!”

“No,” countered the speaker. “The point of this illustration is, if you don’t put the big rocks in first… would you ever have gotten any of them in?” Think of the ‘big rocks’ in you life — your children, your loved ones, your education, your dreams, your life’s work, a worthy cause, teaching or mentoring others, doing things you love, time for yourself, your health, your significant other — and make sure they go into your jar first. As you make decisions during the moments, days and months of the year ahead, ask: “What is most important in my life?” Then schedule those activities first. And this goes for your life at the office as well. Even within the workplace we often spend more time taking care of the urgent (answering emails, fixing the printer or recording a new greeting on the voicemail) than dealing with the important (marketing, sales, new clients or product development). To live a life of success and happiness is to pay attention to what matters most and to put those things first.

Just Say Yes: Life is about throwing your arms wide open and saying YES! And it’s about saying YES to the things that matter to you. Get a backbone here. Don not take on anything that won’t take you closer to creating the impact you want, or anything you don’t have a burning desire to do. Just say YES to the things that are really important to you — and let everything else fall by the wayside. And one of the most important things you can say YES to is yourself. Create some spaces in YOUR life for YOU! Life isn’t about saying NO. Life is about saying YES. Say Yes, Yes, Yes! When we choose to create success and happiness, we have to be certain we’re leaving room for both of them in our lives — and we do that by being choosy about what we say YES to.

Take Personal Responsibility: you’ve claimed some things you want in your life: the big rocks, the important (VS the urgent), the dreams, the passions……success & happiness! Now hold yourself accountable for making those things happen. “Life is not a dress rehearsal!” I don’t know who said it, but it’s so true! Each of us has the same number of hours to create our dreams, live our passion and find our joy. And every day we have the choice to be accountable and accept complete responsibility for our lives — or play small and play the victim! Step up right now and make your world what you want it to be! The only way you will ever create a life of success and happiness is to hold yourself personally responsible for making it happen.

Be You: Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.” To live a life of success and happiness is to live an authentic life. The impact YOU can make is genuine and unique to you. The gifts you have to share with the work are gifts that ONLY YOU can give. So show up every day in the fullness of whom you are and that will make an impact in every moment, every smile, every conversation, every day. You get to define what success and happiness looks like for YOU. It’s individual for each person. And if this isn’t clear for you right now, find someone who can help you define it, so you can go out and create it!

Be Grateful: My favorite topic of all time — GRATITUDE! My personal belief is that none of us can have a life of success and happiness if we’re not grateful for EVERYTHING the Universe brings us! The good, the bad and the ugly! Be grateful for your work, be grateful for your family, be grateful for YOUR life, be grateful for the 187 emails after 3 days out of the office (my life), be grateful for the child that came home late (ever so much better than not coming home at all), be grateful for the quiet times, be grateful for the busy times. In the words of Melodie Beattie: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity… It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

If you’re reading this, you’re already taking steps to create a life of success and happiness. And once we make an effort towards something and put the wheels in motion, it is the Universe’s great pleasure to bring it to us. Remember, you can create the success and happiness you desire in your life, on your terms.I believe in you!