So you are forty years old with a list of boring, entry-level jobs. No girlfriend and no kids, no formal education, and you feel like life passed you by. You will never be a success story. Here is the truth: you can still turn your life around. Here are some ideas.

1. Stop doing what you are doing
If you are dwelling on the past or what could have or should have happened, STOP. That is not going to change anything. In fact, it will make it worse, because you are not making any progress forward.

2. Accept where you are
Take full responsibility for where you are in life. Not because of your friends or your parents. Not because of your environment, but because of the choices you made and the route you chose to take.

3. Make a plan
Decide what you are going to do from this point forward. If it’s going to be going back to get a degree or starting that business, make a detailed, step-by-step plan of what you are going to do every minute of every day for the next five years.

4. Go for it
Give it everything you’ve got. It’s live or die—give it every single piece of energy you have. Think that every day for the next five years is going to be hard and almost impossible if you don’t give it every single piece of willpower to change.

5. Once you achieve your goals
Once you achieve your goals in five years, be grateful and appreciative, because you could lose it fairly easily by falling back into your bad habits and thinking patterns.