What kind of success do you want? Success is not limited to money rewards and financial wealth. Success is our measure of accomplishing the goals we establish in any endeavor whether Academic, Business, Career, Elective Office, Diet, Employment, Fitness, Gaming, Healing, Investments, Job, Love, a Particular Project, Relationships, Spiritual Growth, Sports, Travel, Writing, etc.

Whatever our interest or need, we must establish Goals—be they large or small—and develop a PLAN to bring about SUCCESS. And we need to review our plans and measure our degrees of accomplishment along the way.

It's really not a lot of work to develop a plan – just a matter of common sense..

The Game of Life: Your Life!
Your plan is not limited to any one set of goals but rather it should cover all your goals for everyday because you are always playing the "Game of Life." Your Life!

At birth we are given a set of tools to play this Game of our Life, and we are likewise given a sense of what our plan for this lifetime should be through our innate interests and skills. Watch any child grow and you see this working at the most instinctual levels. A child reaches out for things that stimulate growth and also for things that begin to establish his or her priorities and interests.

But a child has little opportunity to develop plans. You, however, do.

Your birth horoscope can help you discover and understand your Life Plan. So can any other kind of self-analysis. The earlier you do this, the more self-directed your life becomes. Instead of reacting to the chaotic and ever-changing forces from the world around us, you follow your own Life Plan, programming your own Purpose Driven Life.

It's simple to start by making a list of your natural skills and of your deep interests. It is important to distinguish between those interests that are really of life-long importance in contrast to those that are just part of "growing up" and the influence of other people in the form of advertising, news events, political and economic developments, and other external factors. All of these may be important, but they are not meaningful in your pursuit of who you really are and what the plan for your life really is.

And that's where a birth (or "natal") horoscope becomes so helpful by introducing objectivity into your program of self understanding. Your deep interests—those that will probably be with you throughout life—are not likely to include your early fascination with hobbies and collections, or devotion to the coming and going of various celebrities and heroes, nor with the natural response to the biological factors in a teenager's life.

Nor do these deep interests include the natural hunger of a young adult for a mate and a family, for independence from your parents and the establishment of your own household. These are part of the structure of human life just as is the sensible concern for good nutrition, healthful exercise, a clean and safe environment, education, job security, and a peaceful world.

Mapping out your innate skills and deep interests—the recognition, perhaps, of your talent for logical thought or artistic expression, and the acknowledgement that you will always be deeply interested in history or medical science—will give you the framework for your personal life plan.

And you are the only person who can do this—although others can help, and your birth horoscope can be even more helpful.

Every plan, however, needs constant fine tuning and adjustment to the moving events around you and to the cyclical ebb and flow of planetary forces impinging on the matrix of those forces manifesting at the time of your birth. It was at the moment of your birth that the basic plan for your life was set, and the tools with which to carry it out were given to you. But only as possibilities and potentials!

After birth, it is your job (with the help of parents and educators) to develop and enjoy those possibilities and potentials. You may have been given the potential to be a fine artist, but you can only become one through study and development. Your interest in history is without meaning until your study and analysis give it meaning and perspective, seeing today's events in terms of their origins in the past.

Setting Goals and Developing Plans
The Game of Life will be with you all your life. It's the Journey you have undertaken from birth to death, and perhaps beyond.

But your life is made up of many steps along the way, and many of these can be seen as small journeys. It is with these smaller journeys that we can best employ Planning for particular accomplishments, and it is in these plans that your 12-month Advanced Forecast is so very useful.

Among these smaller journeys are actually some pretty major ones. Building a strong and healthy body starts in babyhood when decisions are mostly in the hands of your parents, but increasingly shifting to you as you grow older. Getting a basic education is mostly in the hands of your teachers, but that too shifts as you get older and decide that you want more of science, for example, and less of art history or French literature. Too, as you grow older, it may become important to have summer jobs and while the choices may be limited each choice we do make is part of a bigger pattern that you are creating. It's the beginning of your life resume.

Each of these journeys can be further broken down into shorter term goals and plans. Because we all celebrate birthdays and the annual calendar, it is easy to think in terms of 12-month mini-journeys. In school, we become introduced to shorter time periods: often the school-year is broken into two semesters or three quarters (the fourth usually designated as summer "vacation," which can be devoted to something else). We begin to break the calendar year into smaller segments—commonly into seasons or quarters, then months, weeks, and days. Likewise, we can think in term of several years—the four years of high school, the four years of college, perhaps two years of graduate school. And we can sometimes set truly personal multi-year goals like getting married after your 28th birthday, or traveling to a different country every annual vacation.

Every time division can be broken down into parts calling for scheduled decisions and actions. Everything within these schedules is composed of steps towards a goal. Once you set the goal, you can determine the appropriate time and action to be taken in the individual steps towards that goal. And, as you do so, you incorporate various factors "from the outside" into those steps: factors like the hours of the day, the days of the week, holidays, external schedules imposed by organizations and institutions involved, even the particular month may have a significance.

To help us with our personal schedules and plans we use Calendars, Date Books and Almanacs—often those that incorporate particular resources such as the Moon's Signs and Phases for people involved in gardening activities or wanting to determine the best timing for everyday activities like having a haircut, or that provide the significant dates for the political or economic year.

A Plan of Action
Perhaps as a teenager you made a vocational decision to become an attorney. That sets a goal, and now you have the challenge and opportunity to make a plan to accomplish that goal.

You have your goal, and you learn about the important steps leading towards that goal. Often we work backwards from the accomplished goal to determine what those steps are and the time involved for each. In the case of a profession like the practice of law, you know the critical point is to pass your bar examination. Before you take that examination you need to have graduated from law school. Before being admitted to law school you must have either graduated from college or had sufficient college education to meet the law school requirements. Before college you have to graduate from high school.

Each of those steps involves many decisions and smaller steps. You need to take certain courses in college, depending upon the law school of choice and even upon the kind of law in which you may want to specialize. If in Entertainment and Literary Properties, you may need to study the history of Hollywood and take courses in American Literature. Depending upon the college of choice, you may determine that certain high school courses and activities will favor your chance of admission.

And, then, there are the decisions to be made about the financing of your higher and professional education. What are the costs, and where will the money come from? Do you need to have part-time employment, or secure loans? Or, is there a chance to win a particular scholarship?

Every step involves many decisions, and better decisions are made with better knowledge of all the factors involved. And, all of this has to be reduced to Plans, and Plans have to be reduced to schedules. And that means determinations of the best dates for particular activities, the most important of which is the starting date—and even time—for the chosen action.

Every Day is a New Beginning
Every date is a "package" of extraneous factors made up of both simple and complex elements including: The time of day, the day of the week, the day and week of the particular month, whether it is a holiday of what sort or another, the season, particular professional or commercial date factors, predictable weather in your area (snow and ice in the Winter, hurricane season for Florida, wild fire season in the southwest, etc.), elections, family birthdays and celebrations, other people's choices and events you must incorporate into your schedule, etc.

And, there are the universal astrological factors that can be found in your Moon Sign Book and Astrological Calendar or Daily Planetary Guide, and the particular astrological factors that apply only and specifically to your personal horoscope or matrix of astrological factors that manifested in your birth.

It is these particular astrological factors specifically applying just to you that are found in this 12-month Advanced Forecast.

Every day incorporates all these factors regardless of whether you know and recognize them or not. Knowing that a particular Sunday happens to be Easter allows you to plan and schedule accordingly. Knowing that a particular date is a New Moon in Cancer allows you to plan a particular gardening activity accordingly. A Full Moon in Pisces tells you about fishing on that date.

Once you have a Plan that recognizes the necessary separate steps you need to incorporate those steps into a schedule reflecting all these factors and put it all together in your Date Book or Planner.

In this process, it is vital to see that every date is individually important, and that whatever action you start on a given date is actually the beginning of something new. It's like that act has a birthday and a horoscope that tells you about the character of that day.

Every day is a new beginning, and what was started that date takes on the character of all the influences on that date as they apply to you.

With the knowledge provided in this 12-month Advanced Forecast you are empowered to take advantage of these astrological factors to make the very best planning and scheduling decisions towards the realization of your goals.

Your job is to bring this all together into your own daily scheduler or planner. To do that you will want to utilize the instructions and special forms provided at the end of the Forecast and make appropriate notes as you read through the entire report.

It will take work, but it is some of the most important work you can do towards your personal success. Anything you build has to start with a strong foundation, and the success of your plan is founded on the Timing of the scheduled steps. Your Date Book or Planner becomes your magical key to success.