1. Assume responsibility for your actions. The Bible tells us that as we sow, we reap. Scientists talk of cause and effect. This meaning is the same: our rewards depend on the contributions we make. You yourself must take the credit or the blame for your place in life. Responsible people look at the shackles they've placed upon themselves and, in a moment of truth, declare their independence.

Joe Sorrentino grew up in an inner-city neighborhood, became a teenage gang leader and served a sentence in a reform school. Remembering a primary school teacher's confidence in his academic aptitude, he realized that, despite his poor high-school record, his only hope for success was through education. He returned to night school at 20, went on the University of California where he graduated with honors and then finished at Harvard Law School. He became an outstanding juvenile-court judge in Los Angeles. None of this would have happened if Joe Sorrentino had not had the courage to alter his identity.

2. Find your own gifts; follow your own goals. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonius tells his son: "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Polonius was advising his son to live according to his own deepest convictions and abilities-daring to be different, while respecting the rights of others.

Most of us, however, find ourselves in a quandary. How do we really want to spend our lives? How do we know we have selected the right career or the proper goals?

My research and experience corroborate the importance of learning what we are "good at," rather than letting parents, teachers, friends or economics make our long-range plans for us.

Having been accepted at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis after an outstanding high-school record, I then found it a struggle to make it to graduation. I had gone to the Academy, which was oriented towards engineering, to please my father, and had unwittingly led myself away from my natural interests in communications and human relations. My subsequent Navy career taught me self-discipline, goal setting and team-work. But it has taken me a quarter of a century to find a profession I truly enjoy, where I can express my talents.

3. Don't escape-adapt. The key to success, to mental and physical health, is adaptability. Under pressure, many of us become depressed; lose our incentive and excitement about life. We tend to drink more, smoke more or rely on tranquilizers to help us cope. While alcohol and other anti-anxiety drugs temporarily reduce emotional reactions to threats of pain or failure, they also interfere with our ability to learn to tolerate this stress,

One of the best ways to adapt to the many stresses of life is simply to accept them as normal. The adversity and failures in our lives, if we view them as corrective feedback, serve to develop in us immunity against the adverse responses to stress.

In developing our critical attitudes for success, we must recognize that there is more freedom in society than ever before and more opportunity to express one's talent and opinions. Those who feel that they are forced to do things ar to escape are not in control of their lives. Winners take the talent or potential they were born with and use it fully towards the purpose that makes them feel worth-while. In short, losers let life happen to them; winners make it happen.