A lot of guys always look at the surface things they want. They think that if they can just meet a hot girl that everything is going to be great, but that is not the end-all-be-all answer to things.

Remember that even if you get that hot girl, she may have a vision of you (and for the two of you together). She may want more kids than you do. She may want different things than you do.

So you need to have a vision that is crystal clear. The only way to get such a clear vision is to get yourself in front of an empty page and to start writing every single day.

Call it a life journal. It actually doesn’t even have to be written — it could be audio or video as well. It can be yours to watch, yours to watch or yours to which to listen. It doesn’t matter. It just needs to be yours.

Doing this allows you to see your progress and how you have evolved over time. You can go back and read (or listen or watch) where you were two years earlier, and see how immature you were at the time.

Another great thing to do is to find someone older than you after which you want to model yourself. Pick someone who has gone through life already.

I’m not saying to find someone who will tell you what to do (because no one should do this). I’m talking about someone who can tell you that whatever you’re going through is okay.

When you are putting together your life’s vision, be very clear about what you really want. Here is a perfect example of why this is so important.

I just heard about someone who had a vasectomy and married a woman who wanted kids. At first she was okay with that and with them not having kids. Seven years later, however, she was begging him to reverse the vasectomy and it has changed the whole dynamic of the relationship.

So it is critical that you be very clear in knowing what you want. It doesn’t mean that what you want won’t change over time, but you need to be able to write down everything you want as time goes by so you can see your process.

Realize that your thoughts are wonderful thoughts. Your vision is a wonderful vision.

A friend of mine is a workout nut, and his wife was never very into working out. Initially he felt okay with that. As time went on, though, she started gaining more and more weight.

He kept saying that he was okay with that. He would tell me that every time I was with him.

Clearly he really wasn’t okay with it, because he started cheating on her. He started cheating on her because having a wife who was also a workout nut and looked a certain way was extremely important to him, but he wasn’t clear with himself about what he wanted.

I know some women will read this and just think that my friend is a superficial guy. It’s not really about that though. It’s about being clear about what you want and in your vision for your life.

The only way to be clear in your vision is to write and write and write. That’s your first journal entry.

I go through step-by-step the process of how to really discover your clearest vision for what you want in your life, and then how to create a plan to make that vision your reality. CLICK HERE if you are a man or CLICK HERE if you are a woman to see this.

When it comes to asking a woman out on a date, you ask once or maybe twice and that’s it. There are other areas of life, however, where it behooves you to become a pain in the ass.

Let me give you an example. I live in a building that has tandem parking and parking spots that are very close together.

My neighbors are inconsiderate and rude. Whenever they get out of their cars with grocery bags, they do the pinball maneuver in between our cars and scratch the side of my car. This really angers me because I am very respectful of other people’s things.

I would never open my car door and let it hit and mark up a car next to me. I also would never set my keys or my shopping bag on someone else’s car and scratch their paint so they have to spend a couple hundred dollars to color sand their car. That’s just not me.

So I’ve been trying to get the management company to move me into the big garage (which is reserved for people who live in the bigger apartments). There are four big apartments, and the people who live in them get the four good spots in the big garage.

So I’ve been asking for a new parking spot nonstop for a year. I call the management office, ask the woman on the phone about her day and then say, “Where’s my new parking spot?” Finally, as a result of my consistent badgering (or what like to call “persuasive talking”), I am going to get a new spot so my car will no longer be scratched. Now someone else will have my spot and get their car scratched for a while.

In life, you need to be really persistent in everything you do. Don’t ask for something once, and don’t expect someone to get back to you. Don’t ever expect anything.

You need to take a stand for anything you want in life. So the next time you don’t get want you want — whether it’s in business or in your personal life — take a stand for it.

If you’re dating online and you emailed a woman a month or two ago who didn’t respond to you, find her again online and send her another email. Now don’t send an email every day, because even persistence needs to be spaced out properly.

In my example with the car, I wasn’t calling every single day. That crosses the line from persistence into pestering. Pestering just drives people crazy.

A friendly reminder or call about something once a week or every couple weeks, however, is what makes people successful. Persistence is what you need to succeed in life.

I read my emails every day and I listen to what people are saying, but when I read between the lines what I really see is bullshit. Every day someone emails me and tells me that they can’t do something, or they won’t do something or that change is too hard.

The truth is that they don’t want to do the work because the work is too hard. A lot of people are lazy. A lot of people don’t want to do the work.

A friend of mine has been complaining for the last fifteen years about how fat he is. Every year when I go see him in Manhattan he complains about this and tells me that he needs to lose weight.

Then he’ll go on some miracle 48 hour diet expecting it to fix the problem. I tell him all the time that if he’d just go to the gym and do cardio four days a week, that he will lose weight. I tell him that if he’d just eat healthy that he would look good.

I’ve had this same conversation with him probably at least one thousand times, but he’s always looking for the miracle cure to the problem. We’re all looking for the miracle cure, which is why I see bullshit.

There is no miracle cure to losing weight. The only way to lose weight and get great muscle tone is to work out.

There is no miracle cure for anything. There is no miracle way to meet men or women unless you practice and do the things necessary to develop the muscles in your brain (your personality and inner confidence).

There are no shortcuts. So when I find a person who is looking for a shortcut or who falls for shortcuts, I usually say to them “I see bullshit.” I see bullshit every single day.

You want to be a great lover? What you need to do is practice. How do you practice? You learn, you read and you practice with people. You open yourself up and you tell the truth.

I recently had a client at a Bootcamp who is a fantastic guy, but didn’t have much sexual experience at all. I told him he needed to practice. I told him to find some great women that are attracted to him and learn how to be a great lover.

You’re never going to become great at anything unless you practice. Ask any athlete about this and they will tell you the same thing.

Do you think Lance Armstrong wanted to ride his bike 35 miles every day? No, he didn’t. Do you think Peyton Manning wants to throw the same route over and over again to Reggie Wayne in practice when he’s already done it 10,000 times already? Probably not.

I remember reading on the Internet one time that Peyton Manning had thrown something like 123 touchdown passes to Marvin Harrison. Really, though, he’s thrown over 10,000 touchdown passes to him if you count all the times he’s thrown those same passes to him in practice (so that those passes would be successful in the games).

Do you want things in your life to work for you? Then you’ve got to work at it.

Whether you want to lose weight, meet women or be a better lover doesn’t matter. Whatever you want to achieve in life, you need to go out and practice. You need to work hard.

You need to be willing to do things you’ve never done before. Otherwise, all you’re going to hear me say is, “I see bullshit.”