The reality is that no one can slay dragons, attend parents' night, and write the great American novel all at once. I gave my best effort toward doing one major thing at a time to the very limit of my ability. Would I do differently if offered a do-over? Of course not!

If someone were to look at how you are living, would your actions support the priorities you deem most important? Are you making the time to clarify, then focus, on your priorities? Are you ensuring that your actions follow suit?

Even though we might not be able to use positive visualization to help us achieve our goals, it can help us stay clearheaded -- which might be a better mindset for pursuing goals.

For a moment, let yourself wonder -- and let your mind wander -- about what you've been a part of this year. All of these things, and more, are things that could offer you an opportunity to improve your performance.

The guidance of our wisdom is always available to us, but at times can be a bit hard to hear amidst the noisy chatter of our fearful thoughts. But once we do begin to hear it and understand its significance, there's no going back.

At the California Women's Conference, as a speaker my intention was to share practical, non-intimidating tips for attending entrepreneurs in way that was both concise, informational, and motivational, and to be seen as someone who had the ability to do so.

Fear is loud and powerful. In order to continue, Baumgardner needed to turn down fear's volume and increase the volume of reason. Gervais did this through helping Baumgardner speak over his fear with positive self-talk.

Failing is the easy part -- it's how you handle failure that will either stop you or allow you to move forward in your life, your career and your relationships.

How often do you talk yourself out of even looking into something or checking out a possibility because of that voice inside your head saying things like "gee, they must get bombarded with things like this all the time," or "that's never going to work"?

How often do you let yourself dream? I mean, really let yourself go and dream BIG? Big bodacious dreams can be intimidating and so exciting. (It all depends on how you look at it.)

A growing body of research, including new studies by Berkeley's Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, suggest that self-compassion, rather than self-esteem, may be the key to unlocking your true potential for greatness.

We are often so focused on finding answers that we forget to keep asking questions. We need to explore the unknown in order to further our learning.

In these studies, the researchers were interested in whether activating a goal without conscious awareness would interfere with tasks that people were consciously trying to pursue.