Be VERY CLEAR about what it is you want out of life (or a particular short-term or long-term situation) and the limits you will go in order to get whatever that is. The key here is to be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR about what it is. You can’t just have a vague idea or a general feeling about what you want, you need to know EXACTLY what you want. And you can’t just have a general idea of how far you’re willing to go to it, you need to know the HARD LINE you will not go past in order to get it. And if there are no lines you won’t cross to get what you want, you need to acknowledge that as well.

And the second step is to be brutally honest about WHY you want it. And it is crucially important that you why comes from your own heart or your own mind. It can’t be because your wife wants you to be like X, or your parents have X goal for you, or because you’re doing it because you’re worried about what other people think of you. Your why needs to be YOUR why. And it doesn’t matter at all WHAT the why is, as long as it is YOUR why.