Traffic is slow, business is weak, the economy stinks and banks aren't buying. Repeat this mantra one hundred times and see how you feel. I promise you that if you replay this message enough you will believe it as absolute truth and become depressed and desperate. No matter what circumstances are present the choice is simple; you choose to win or choose to lose.

The one single ingredient that is always present in any success story is self determination. You are always responsible. You are responsible for the good and you are responsible for the bad, it's just that simple. If you will allow any excuse for failure no matter how overwhelming the evidence, you have sown the seeds for more excuses to follow.

To succeed in good or bad economies takes the exact same ingredients but in tougher times it takes more resolve to keep producing the successful ingredients. Your success or failure is based upon your beliefs and philosophy. If you do not have a belief system to support success and a personal philosophy of self determination, you are subject to all forces that cause failure.

You must create an impenetrable mind; a mind that can sustain all attacks of negativity and philosophies of randomness. The dirty truth is that most people do not believe in self determination. Most people are excuse makers and have philosophies of luck and a welfare belief system.

In the United States which is the richest country in the world with resources and opportunities that can only be imagined by people in some parts of the world, people make excuses everyday as to how they cannot control their own destiny. It is much easier make excuses than to take control of your own destiny. After all, how can it ever be your fault? The economy is so bad and certainly you don't control the economy.

The economy is made up of single micro economies that create a larger macro economy. You do control your economy and it starts between your ears. When you listen to the news and hear that things are not good, do you allow that to be your destiny? After all, if you hear it on the news, it must be true, right.

Let me ask you a few questions.

Did you allow your expenses and debt to get too high? Did you allow weak processes and accept less than favorable results? Did you create an ongoing relationship based marketing program to your existing customers or did you ignore your most valuable asset which is are your customers? Did you neglect to install and enforce daily education? Have you massively self-educated yourself on a daily basis to stay abreast of all developments in marketing, technology, social media and marketplace changes. Have you created a marketing plan based upon measurable direct response media that you continually tweak? Do you allow excuses and surround yourself with excuse makers?

Success is based upon certain fundamental truths. Install and adhere religiously to those truths without fail and you will succeed. Although everyone has setbacks, setbacks are not failures and are only temporary signs to adjust and plain accordingly. Always ask yourself, "What's next?" Keep moving and adjusting. Success and failure are ultimately a choice. The choice is yours.

Author's Bio - Mark Teward

Mark Tewart is a professional speaker, consultant, entrepreneur and author of "How To Be A Sales Superstar" available on Amazon.com. For free bonuses go to http://www.superstarbookvideo.com and for more info go to http://www.marktewart.com

How exciting is your life? How much fun? Does your life have any meaning? Do you think of your life as just one mundane task after another, about as exciting as a shopping list?

Have you ever just stepped back and looked at your life as if you were watching a movie? Well, here’s the thing about movies: they don’t show every moment of the story. They don’t show the long dull stretches when nothing important seems to be happening. And even the most exciting lives are filled with long stretches of nothing.

But here’s one way to increase your quality of life right now: see your life as a movie, every moment contributing to the development of the plot. Start to have some fun with it. Of course you don’t necessarily know where the plot is going, but you can interpret whatever shows up any way you want, and that’s part of the fun of it.

Is your life like a fast-paced action story, or a cerebral epic that covers an entire lifetime in a couple of hours? You can make pretty much any life into an interesting story if you compress it into a couple of hours.

One day you really are going to see your entire life all at once, like the most real movie you’ve ever seen. That day will be the first day after you leave your body, when your earth life is over and you experience your life review. You’ll get to see it all as a whole, and it will all come into focus and make sense.

So why wait? Start right away – right now, this minute as you’re reading this, step back and watch and listen as if you were watching a movie. You might want to add some narration. Just make it up. Add some significance and excitement that’s not visible to the casual observer. Some movies are exciting because of what’s going on in the mind of the people, and not necessarily because of the so-called physical action.

You’ll start to notice that your life begins to take on more meaning as you see it as a movie. Things can start to fall into place and make sense in a way they never did before. Even the little things. And meaning doesn’t have to be deep and serious. It can be light and fun also.

One of the keys to making the movie technique work is remembering that you can change the kind of movie you’re watching any time you want. You can make your life a romantic comedy if you want. Then you can change it to a mystery, a drama, an action adventure, or a warm, intimate look at the significance hidden in a seemingly ordinary existence, slowly exploring the strengths, depths and breadths of human existence.

You’re the director. You get to interpret what happens. The old cliché is that life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% what you do with it. The same story can be interpreted in many different ways by different filmmakers. You get to choose whatever kind of filmmaker you want to be. And you get to change your mind as often as you want.

Try it sometime. It can be tremendous fun, it can begin to impart a sense of significance to your life that you never thought it could have, and it can help you to always move toward a better feeling thought immediately, which is always one of the best things you can do to improve the quality of your life.

Lights. Camera. Action!

Author's Bio - Dr. Webb

Dr. Webb is a Holistic Life Coach. He is board certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners as a Holistic Health Practitioner. He is a Certified Reiki Master, an ordained Christian and Metaphysical minister, and a Certified Chaplain. Dr. Webb is a Life Coach, not a therapist or psychologist, and he approaches Life Coaching from a spiritual, but not a religious perspective.

For more information, please visit http://thestressreliefcoach.com