New Year New Goals

by Rebekah R. Ganiere

This last year was an interesting one for me. I published more, wrote more and crashed more than ever before.

For years I’ve told myself I would cut back on writing, spend more time with my kids, clean my house, organize my life, and be a more well rounded person. And every year I have not done it. But this year when I hit a writer’s block big enough to trap King Kong I knew I needed to do something different. Now, I’ve never really been a goal person myself, but I finally said it was time to get my crap together and try to organize my life. But where to start?

Goals are different from resolutions. Resolutions are things you tell your friends you are going to do and then you give up within the first month.

Goals are detailed, they are thought out and written down. And here are a few ways I found help with both goal setting and goal achieving.

Look Back – The first thing you want to do is look back at all you accomplished over the last year. See where you excelled, see where you might have fallen short, and find out where you didn’t even try at all. Now ask yourself, of the things you have to show for your last year, are you happy with them? Are they what you wanted to do? Is there something else that you could be doing that would make you happier? Once you’ve taken a look at where you were and what you got done, you can start to form a picture of where you want to go and where you want to be a year from now, five years, ten years, and work backwards. What are the things you need to work on daily to reach those goals?

Be Realistic – So you looked back at your last year and found that you wrote five books and this year you want to write thirty. You didn’t exercise the entire year and single handedly kept fast food chains in business. Now you want to exercise every day for an hour and only eat salads during the week. These goals, while admirable, are probably a bit far reaching right now. Be realistic with your goals. Realistic, smaller, simpler goals are ones you are going to reach. And once you achieve them you’ll be so proud of yourself you’ll set more and before you know it you’ve reached big goals.

You wrote five books last year? Great. Try for six this year. Or don’t try for books try for words per day. Didn’t exercise? Okay, make a goal to exercise and start small. Five minutes a day three days a week. Then every week add an additional two minutes per session until you’re satisfied. Being realistic goes a long way to achieving success.

Break it Down – Goals can sometimes be overwhelming and daunting when looking up the giant rocky mountain that you have to climb to reach them. So break them down into small manageable chunks. You want to write a book? Well, you have to start by writing. Set a goal to write a thousand words a day. Or thirty minutes a day. Then do it. Every day. If you write a thousand words a day and you only work on weekdays, in ten weeks you would have a 50,000 word novel. Not bad. If you want to get a bigger newsletter following, do something every day to put it out there and get more sign ups. It doesn’t have to take a ton of time, small things add up. Every step gets you closer to the peak of your goal mountain. If you want to build a bigger writing community, spend a few minutes a day reaching out to authors you want to get to know better and say hi. Ask a question. Introduce yourself. You can’t eat a whale in one sitting, but if you stay in your seat and chew a little bit every day, you’ll finish it eventually. Goals are for the long haul, not short term. Break it down and stick with it.

Make it a Priority – Make it a priority and make sure you do it everyday. For me when I commit to change something in my life I have to do it at the same time every day to make it a habit. After a month it’s a habit and then you won’t even have to think about it or force yourself to do it, it will be automatic and you can then see your goal getting closer and closer. You accomplish those things in your life that you value most. If you value social media most, that’s where you spend your time. If you value writing most, you write every day. If you value a clean house above all else, you make sure it’s clean. Figure out what means the most to you and then either follow that or adjust your thinking so you can accomplish what matters most to you in your life. Look at the people you want to be most like and think about what habits they’ve given themselves to help them get where they are.

Don’t Give Up! – A simple concept right? Not as much as you’d think. There will be days, weeks, maybe even a month or more where you do not do one single thing toward achieving your goals. You may forget to water your goals like a forgotten fern in the corner and by the time you get back to it it’s a pile of brown ash. But you know what? That’s okay. It happens to all of us. Remember the King Kong writer’s block I mentioned? I didn’t write for two months this last year. I almost died at the end of it. I looked back and berated myself for not writing. Told myself how dumb I’d been and how far behind I was now in my writing. For weeks I stressed myself out and made everything worse. Finally I realized it didn’t matter. So what? What was the big deal? I stopped for two months. I have over forty years left to write books, in the huge picture of my life two months was nothing. Once I stopped looking at it as me being behind I was able to move past the block and finish up three projects that had been waiting for me to finish, and you know what? I mapped out my writing goals for this year and found I was actually ahead of the game because I’d finish those projects before the first of the year!

You have to set goals if you want to get things accomplished in life. From a To Do list of day to day tasks to a bigger goals that are five and ten years away. Write your goals down. Talk about them with a spouse or friend. Check in with that person or with yourself. Be accountable. Post them somewhere in your house where you will see them daily. Bathroom mirror, fridge, night stand. Put them in planner and look at them every day. I use Franklin Covey online.

If you stumble and fall, or just take a long winter’s nap, get back up and start again. Everyone stumbles or falls asleep, it’s those who keep trying that end up winning.

I found this cool goal setting pdf online that might help you get started figuring out your goals for this year. http://www.thepassion.co/reflect2016#introducing-reflect

So, what are your goals this year?

Rebekah R. Ganiere – Books with a Bite

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