Jenny Hansen wrote an interesting article titled: Is Fear Freezing Up Your Creativity? In the article, she discussed a strategy she's used to abandon her fears and work toward her monthly goals. She concluded the article by asking a series of questions. But one stood out for me: How do you approach your goals?
I used to make a long list of goals. I even added a fun goal at the end to help with motivation--something like eat chocolate. But nothing worked. Lists were usually abandoned, half-finished. Well, I chided myself. But all that did was make me feel bad.
My overall goal was to build my author career. I knew what I needed to do to work towards this goal. I was doing it, every day. But the lists didn't reflect this. Clearly, something had to change.
2014 dawned and, with help from my friend Laurie Buchanan (of Tuesdays with Laurie), I fell into a brand new plan. This year I choose one word to summarize my goal. That word was 'keep'--as in I will keep writing; keep submitting; keep working on revisions; keep learning the writing craft; keep building community. 'Keep'--that one word is so easy to focus on. Motivated, I now do at least one thing every day to work toward my goal. At the end of the day, I use a journal to document my progress this helps to keep me on track and motivates me to build on my daily successes.
