You need to have a positive yet cautiously realistic attitude toward your own abilities and yourself. Knowing your capabilities and being realistic about your possibilities are starting places for success.

For example, your chances of being a rocket scientist are slim if you flunked high school math twice, so spending several years in college taking every course you need to be a rocket scientist but avoiding the math classes until the last semester is the same as planning to fail.

Unrealistic expectations are the seedbed of depression. If you gained 20 pounds over the last three years, believing that you can lose all 20 pounds in three or four weeks is setting yourself up for a letdown. That goal just isn’t realistic.

You should, however, be far more positive than negative. You can undermine your success just as easily by setting your sights…