Every day you accomplish tasks, meet goals, check things off your to-do list, and become more successful in life. You continuously work towards having the life that you want, and everything you do is one step towards that life. But if you are anything like me you don’t feel successful every single day of your life – even though you’ve accomplished a lot in your days.

Feeling like a failure is habit-forming. We constantly focus on the things that we don’t do, or don’t succeed at in life, and we call ourselves failures because of these things. The truth is we have many more successes in life than failures but we choose to put our attention on the things we didn’t get done.

I’m not just talking about huge things that we are striving to be successful at in our lives. I’m also talking about the little things that we do every day that affect how we feel about ourselves.

Let’s say you are a business man who is trying to further his career and lose weight as well. Here’s an example of a typical day:

Drive to work with no accidents.

Accomplish all the tasks set out to do.

Exercise 1 hour.

Make an important phone call.

Send an important email.

Learn something new.

Eat really crappy food the entire day.

The list above contains a lot of successes throughout the day, and one failure in the eyes of someone trying to lose weight or eat healthier. What do you think he most likely focuses on at the end of the day? His focus will probably turn to the fact that he ate really crappy food all day and take over the spotlight from the rest of his successes during the day.

This is what many people do, and it’s hard to feel successful when you focus on your failures. But there is a way to feel more successful in your life! Put the majority of your focus on your successes!

You can do this by reminding yourself every night of the successes you had during the day instead of the failure, and build on those successful endeavours for future success.

One way to do this is by keep a success journal. Every night before you go to bed write down at least 5 things that you succeeded at during the day. This will be personal to you but it can range from brushing your teeth to landing the big account! Anything that furthered you in your life, made you feel better, made you do better, and pushed you forward is a success.

Write down your success, why you felt is was a success, how you can add-on to that success, and your next action to take towards that success.

For example:

Success – Made an important phone call

Reason – Built a new relationship with an important person.

Further progress – Keep in contact with that person.

Next action – Arrange a lunch meeting for next Thursday with this new contact.

Making a habit of doing a success journal nightly will allow you to see that there are many things that you do during the day that you are successful at and it will stop you from focusing on your failures. It will also make you more successful during your day because you will be actively looking for things to do that you feel are a success and can write down later in your journal. And lastly the ‘next action’ step will keep you moving forward by scheduling in action orientated moves that build on your successes.

But remember that even failures are successes because you learn something from them. You can take what you learned and apply it to your next day. You probably realize that you don’t feel good eating crappy food and remember that lesson for the next day, so even the realization of your failure becomes a success!

Stop kicking yourself about things you didn’t do before your head hits the pillow and start focusing on your successes. Your health, happiness, and life will thank you.