How do you know if you are successful

So, we have written what we want down? Maybe that is proving to be harder than we thought. What sort of record should we keep? Get a notebook. Not large, say A5 size, and certainly not expensive.

It's a nice feeling to put pen to paper for a plan. So you may find your plan grows outside of school to become the way you look at life and its future. Oh, yeah. Now you're getting to the exciting part. Dream your future and then plan how to get there and then do it.

You know you are successful if you reach clearly defined goals. So you can be successful often. As many times as you reach a goal, however small, that is a success. Fill your life full of successes.

What sort of things would you define as being where you are at now? This can be somewhat overwhelming to answer. You do not have to put everything down. The more detail you have, the easier the task of future planning becomes. Notes can be added at any stage as you decide to include information. You might start with the grades you received over the last few exam and test sessions, grades for assignments, even how much you have in the bank. It all forms part of the picture of your growth.

Since we are about Better School Marks how about figuring out things like: how much actual study you do each day; how much homework you do each day (yes they are different and each important in its own way); a description of the place where you do learning work, including writing materials; how you learn best; when (time of day and day) you study; when you do other stuff like sport, chores, part time work; your satisfaction with each of these current situations. You can see this part is really important but also can be done in sections.

Once this picture starts to emerge, then you have something to compare with. Now you need to start picturing what it means to you to be successful. Be nice to yourself. Think about each of the above and add to them as you come up with new ideas. Draw up a table with five columns headed: "What" (Pick some of the things you want to target); "Current" (Your current position); "Next" (Put where you want to take this in the next stage of your growth. This allows for future changes, so some of these statements can be that you are OK with where you are now); "Timing" (How long you expect it to take. This can be things like: "by the end of this month I will be ..."; or "in the next examination period ..."; or "When I finish school ..."); "Feeling/thoughts" (what you think it will be like to be at this point or how you will feel about achieving this).

Again you can do things bit at a time. Early targets should be easily doable, creating lots of early successes. Make the commitment to yourself. A few moments now will hugely increase your chance of Better School Marks and hence a higher probability of a more secure future.