The dictionary defines success as "the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted."

So you must decide for yourself what success is, depending on what you seek in your life, your relationships and your career. If you're an athlete, success can mean obtaining that gold medal. If you identify yourself as a parent, success can mean raising children with good moral values. For a doctor, success can mean relieving pain or saving a life. To many of us success means a job promotion or acquiring wealth. It depends on your perspective and how you perceive yourself and your life.

You are the only one who can judge your success. If you try to achieve success according to someone else's standards or society's standards, you will never be satisfied that you have achieved it.

Yet even when we know that we define our own success, we often seem to fail. We feel dissatisfied, empty, tense. Our minds are not at rest, not peaceful, not harmonious. Our thoughts are full of "if onlys." You know what they're like: "If only I had more money, I would be happy." "If only I could lose 20 pounds, my life would be perfect."

What's the difficulty? Are we setting unrealistic goals? Maybe, but that's not really the problem. Are we not trying hard enough? Usually that's not a factor either. What is it? Us! We are our own worst enemy. "We have met the enemy and he is us," as Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, famously wrote.

How do we sabotage our success, undermine our goals, subvert our desires? Through the largely unconscious programming of our minds. That's the whole answer in a nutshell. It's our thoughts, the thoughts we allow to parade through our heads and invade our subconscious. When we can learn to change our thoughts, then our success is assured.

Your mind didn't come with an instruction manual. You were given a lot of instruction by your parents, your teachers, your friends, by books, movies, TV. But did any of it tell you how to control your thoughts? Did it tell you how to program your mind?

You do have the power to change your life if you want to. You do have the power to achieve the goals you set for yourself. But you won't succeed if you don't learn to control your mind first.

The seat of power in your life is your unconscious mind, the mind that works 24/7 on whatever program you have set for it. You set these programs by empowering your thoughts with vision, expectation, belief and desire. Before anything that you wish for can happen, you must envision it clearly, desire it, believe deeply that it will happen, and expect confidently that it will happen.

The unconscious mind will act based on your ability to program it. You constantly send your unconscious information and messages, whether you think so or not, but many of the messages tend to be negative ("if only"). When you think "if only" you tell your unconscious that you are not a success, that you are in a state of lack and limitation.

So be very careful of your thoughts, beliefs and actions. If you worry about not having enough money, you are programming your mind for lack. If you worry that you can't accomplish your goals, you are programming your mind for failure. If you believe you haven't the opportunities you need to get ahead, you are programming yourself not to recognize them when they appear.

Why? The unconscious mind is constantly working on the information that you have sent, and negative information yields negative reality. As the computer geeks say, "Garbage in, garbage out."

You can have success; you can change your life. But you must change your mind first.