As the first week of the new year comes to a close, I want to share an observation about resolutions.
- The health club is packed. Everyone and their grandma wants to get in shape this year. However, not everyone and their grandma will. By mid-February, Anytime Fitness will be half as busy. By the beginning of summer, only a few diehards will remain. Only a handful of resolutioners (yep, that’s my new word) will be bikini ready in twenty lifetimes, let alone by the end of 2012.
Why? Because it takes more than a whim to reach a goal. It takes proper goal-setting, perseverence, motivation, skill, ability, training, support (human and fabric) and time. To name a few.
Guess what? Becoming a writer is no different. Minus the sports bra, of course.
To keep you on your resolutionary path, I’ve pieced together tidbits from past posts.
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Assessing Success. Make sure your goals are specific, measurable and attainable. You can’t succeed if you never define what success means. Likewise, reaching a goal is impossible if you set your sights on attaining things completely outside your control. In other words, failure is guaranteed when we dream of wearing size one pants on size six bones.
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What’s Your Writing Weight? Understand the process. Take time to learn the nuances involved in reaching your goal. Weightloss does not occur overnight. Neither does publication or good parenting or better organization. Only by understanding the journey, can we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead.
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Didn’t Feel Like It. Don’t hit the snooze button–figuratively or literally. Some days it’s nearly impossible to get up and get going, but don’t give into the temptation to take the day off or buy into the excuse that your muscles (brains or butts) are too tired, too sore or too stressed to work out. They’re not. It only seems that way when you’re nestled under the covers. Once you get started, you’ll always be thankful you did.
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Getting Back Up. And when it feels like you’ve done everything humanly possible to reach your goal and the only alternative you have left is to throw in the proverbial towel, don’t. Success never comes out of quitting. Instead, take a peak at your goals and seriously reflect on your reasons behind setting them in the first place. Redefine them if you must, but don’t walk away from the challenge–and the dream–that prompted you to set your goals in the first place.
How do you prepare yourself for goal setting? What tips do you have to help others reach and/or maintain their goals?
Curious minds want to know.
Words from the Woods 
In January, I look at markets open to submissions, unline and print, and try to submit a few poems and short stories to different journals. All the while, researching agents and editing, of course. I don’t make resolutions anymore. But on a sunny day like this I resolve to walk down the road instead of drive.
I approve that resolution very much!
I love #4. 🙂
Me, too!
I use the Writing Odometer over at AgentQuery Connect to help hit my writing goals. Publicly setting goals helps me to hit them, and reporting back is of course, key.
Well, it works! You’ve done a stellar job of keeping on track. If only the rest of us could succeed so gracefully.