If you don’t feel like your situation is changing fast enough, it’s actually time to slow down.

What do you want?

Who do you want to be in the world?

Define who that person is (consider writing an opinion piece from another point of view, with you as a subject).

Now, what is your current situation? Does it need changing? If so, what is your timeline to change it?

Now go step by step.

Deep change happens one day at a time:

Having done my Malcolm-Gladwell-esque "10,000 hours of experience" (in his book Outliers, Gladwell suggests that it takes 10,000 hours for someone to become an experienced professional, in any field), I feel like there are some fixed principles that apply to all of our clients, who run the gamut from nonprofit to small business to public agency.

We've found that the individuals or organizations that are successful follow these five principles.

1. Figure out what you want.
If you don't know what you want, it's pretty difficult to get someone else on board with your vision. Attempt to discern, in as much detail as possible, your vision for your endeavor.

Let's celebrate!

Nell Merlino, founder of the Make Mine a $Million project, always encourages women to celebrate our successes, and she encourages us to truly celebrate, to truly mark a passage of time, and to do so before other things come in like paying the bills, taking care of business, minding the children, and letting a special moment pass.

We deserve to celebrate: we deserve to be thankful and to be thoughtful and to honor our lives.

So let's celebrate today.

Plan a celebration to toast your achievements and those of others, to express gratitude and appreciation for your relationships at home and at work, and to be joyful in life.

Things to celebrate include:

"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."

- Melodie Beattie

The best way that we achieve success is by expressing true gratitude for our circumstances, our situations, and our abilities.

Want to start your own business? Get inspiration from this 7-year-old!

This young man started painting at an early age and selling his paintings online [disclosure -- he's my son]. http://www.islandboyart.com

Now in second grade, he's sold over twenty paintings to family, friends, and supporters. He's also raised funds for his elementary school through periodic auctions of his unique art. He's now retiring from painting and branching out into providing toys for a local retail store.

Do you have an idea? Do you have a vision? Do you have passion for what you do?