In this companion piece to Building Goals , we'll discuss how to work with the time we're given to make things happen, instead of waiting for things to happen to us. Ready?

• Pick an age, any age older than you are now. If you can't settle on anything, pick your current age plus 1-3 (or 5-10 years).
• Then pick some pictures of your best moments in life, if you caught them with the camera. For those moments not captured on film, write down the details, nothing wordy, 2-3 sentences ought to do.
• Add some more images of people you respect and admire. List down the reasons why.

This activity is a way to take snapshots of the future. If you want to be technical and metaphysical about it, photographs and movies are just images of captured light. The snapshots you're preparing now are the light-source for the future you want to have, the one that you can work towards.

Spot-check, guys! How are things going?  Hit any milestones lately? How about those resolutions, yeah, still going strong, or did they fall by the wayside?

Any way you slice it, some of the big goals you set for yourself this past New Year would just about expire right now. And there's actually solid research backing up why that happens.

• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work
• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work (an entirely different article)

Resolutions are common at the end of a year, because the promise of a brand new year, one all to yourself, one with which to start anew, makes it conducive to grandiose, inflated expectations and promises. "This year I swear I'll lose weight, quite smoking, save more, break up with that jerk, quite my job, etc...And then I'll be happy."

See what we did there, that little thing at the end? "And then I'll be happy." That's where people trip up most, thinking that doing, having or being X (whatever X may stand for) is the only key to being happy, the fail-based formula being X = goal, and achieving X = happy.

When we speak of someone being a driven person, it usually comes out in admiring tones. You can just imagine that look on a recruiting poster somewhere, someone with jaws clenched, his eyes burning with fervor and determination, and a look of steely resolve urging you to man up and get things done, yeah!

Or perhaps not. Another definition for driven is 'obsessed'. A close relation is 'hag-ridden'. Ahem:

• tormented, harassed or worried
• overburdened by fear or dread

So, who -- or what -- is your driver?

See, when I think of someone being a driven person, what comes to mind is someone (or something) else is holding the reins. Maybe that person has an axe to grind, or something to prove, or feels that he has something to make up for, but whatever the reason, it's big, and it's the one sitting in the driver's seat.

If you feel that you're a driven person, would you want that, to just be in the passenger seat of your life?

When I think of the word "agenda" the image that comes to mind is of two groups of people looking at each other over a long table in the board room. Think Wallstreet, with Gordon Gekko, or that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman and his colleagues try to one-up each other with, of all things, the fonts on their business cards.

When we think of agenda what pops up is the idea of a meeting or a discussion -- sometimes a heated negotiation or a nefarious plan ("I don't trust that guy, he's got an agenda...."). While the latter covers some of the more emotional connotations of the word agenda, what it boils down to is: an agenda is a list of things to talk about. So, you discuss the items on the agenda in a meeting. I hope that's clear.

An agenda is not a To-Do list. Those are personal and task oriented. An agenda can be seen as a program of sorts, listing topics and issues presented for of discussion.

(Quick insert: An agenda is also not a credenza, even though they sound somewhat the same. I once made the mistake of confusing the two, in writing. It wasn't pretty. And a credenza is not a place of discussion, although you can have a quick chat beside one. Remember, you can put the notes for your agenda on the credenza, but not the other way around.)

Coming in  from part 1:

You can use the blockage (pun intended) to learn more about yourself. In the long view, everything can be used - we can re-frame the mistakes as lessons -- ones on learning about the world, about yourself,  about how to handle life as it comes... Hopefully then, you can release the illusion of control over everything in your life ("I'm the King of The World!"), and strive towards making the best of what you've got and been given.

You can also use the stumbling blocks as course corrections, reconsidering which way you want to go. Remember Pong (the game)? You play it by positioning the slider so that the ball can bounce off it. In this case, you use the block to bounce off of, making it a starting block.

Writing an article is like assembling a jig-saw puzzle with words. You have a central idea, and then all the little ideas get pieced together in an orderly pattern -- words to a sentence, then sentences to a paragraph -- making the connections until the pieces (which make little sense on their own) form into an image of the whole and show you the big picture.

In doing the research for this article, somehow the jigsaw pieces became blocks. This is mainly because life rarely gives us the top of the puzzle box to guide us even as we try to connect the pieces we're given. If we stick with the puzzle analogy, some pieces don't make any sense, some come in from out of the blue, and some disappear just when we need them the most. We don't always get the big picture, and in the process the puzzle image failed, so, being more appropriate for what comes next, the blocks took over.

Picture it, a child's set of blocks. Depending on who's using them, and where they are, these blocks can do a lot of things. The kids can build things with them when they're playing. Blocks can hurt when thrown across a room, or trip you up when they're left on the floor. They can also prop up your laptop when you're too cheap to buy a proper laptop stand (Hey, it if works, why not?).

If you mean to succeed by using your instincts, hone them first. The shiny lures of instant success and internet fame will set you up for disappointment when you actually follow through in the hard light of day, but when you're truly determined to succeed, ignore the dazzle and the hype. Know what you want, know your capabilities, and learn to read the signs in the environment you're moving in.

How do you hone your instincts?

1) Get experience. Lots of experience. Get out there.
Don't get bogged in the research stage. Many good ideas die here, strangled by data or drowned in the just-one-more-byte disorder, when you confuse the amount of information you have with the probability of success. Hint: the two things have no direct correlation. All the data in the world won't make up for inaction.

A Chinese proverb explains this aptly: "Walk on two feet." Learn while you apply what you're learning, study while you work. This way, you 1) actually commence past the planning to the action stage, even if it is in small steps, and 2) you apply what you learn immediately, you see what works, what didn't, and get to try something else.

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Spot check! So....how have you been?

Check your calendar. Whether it's the 3rd week of the first month of the not-so-new-anymore-year, or the last semester before graduation, or two weeks before your unemployment benefits run out, or that dark hour before the deadline, you are always included in a cycle of sorts. As some things begin, some things end, and in between you do your things.

Checking in with yourself using our first question (in bold, see? Look up.) is basic. Asking yourself this is a self-check, a way to step back and assess your progress. Check your calendar again. At this point, have you made any concrete steps towards your goals?

Are you checking your progress? You should, because how will you know how far you've come if you don't keep track, or get to see how far you've yet to go?

The previous article, Bridging the Gap (Parts 1, 2) was all about making a real and sustainable connection between your dreams and your reality. This article is all about dealing with the stress of doing so.

Now, this may come as  a shock to you, but mental stress can be much harder on the body than physical stress, especially  if it's sustained. It's true, and for a large part of the time we do it to ourselves, unconsciously.

There's already a lot of evidence out there proving the mind-body link is real and very important, it's just that in our hurry to Get Somewhere, to Make Things Happen and Get Things Done, we tend to forget that link.  What happens then is we split our selves in two, Mind and Body, paying much more attention to the Mind (and what happens inside it) and treating the Body as just another object to take care of and control.

Don't just take my word for it, look at the statistics and news.  Check around at your workplace and your own health and see for yourself how stress manifests itself, physically as well as mentally. Insomnia, weakened immune systems, back pain, the list goes on and on.

In part 1 we identified the Gap. Today we're taking a deeper look behind the assumptions that people use to fill the gap, and then we'll recommend a few things you can do to deal with these assumptions.

At the very heart of it, the most common root that leaves you despairing in the gap is: Your standards are set to unrealistic levels.

Your reluctance to adjust these levels just draws out the discomfort. The real-life results can leave you still dissatisfied.

Now, dissatisfaction is actually good. Dissatisfaction can spur us on to greater effort to change things.  Dissatisfaction helps change the status quo, starts revolutions, makes improvements, pushes progress.

 The dark side happens when you marinate in it, seething because the world will not fit itself to your ideals of how things should be. Quick hint 1: The world came first, and it'll still be here long after you're gone. Stop beating your head against the wall.