Before I jump into talking about getting back with your goals after already feeling like a failure, two things. (1) Over the weekend I just happened to figure out how to enable for you to sign up to receive posts via email. I youtube-ed it and smacked my forehead at the easiness of it. So be sure to sign up. (2) Daylight Savings Time is just a weird thing. We actually still got the same amount of sleep over here—the kids slept in until 9. I was just surprised by how quickly morning went. Before I knew it I looked up and it was noon and time to make lunch. And then the afternoon dragged. How does that happen? I was ready for supper by 2 PM (and if I’m honest, I was kinda ready for bed at 6:20). So weird. Anyways. Back to the topic at hand.
We’re almost three full months into the new year, and I’ve already missed most of my self-imposed deadlines (well, “finishing my novel” by April 1st doesn’t really look like it’s going to happen at this point, so I’m counting that as a miss). I am trying to remind myself that I did have a baby two months ago, and I shouldn’t beat myself up that much that I’m not going to have it finished, but, if you know me, that’s hard (I like beating myself up . . .) So you missed out on your goals (resolutions, whatever you call them is neither here nor there) So what do you do? Is it time to just throw in the towel? Heavens no! If you look at the big picture, there’s still nine months to make good on the promises you made yourself at the beginning of the year. So here’s the pep talk that I’m giving myself and everyone else.
Stop beating yourself up.
So you failed. Great. Which inventor was it that said “I haven’t failed 99 times, I just figured out 99 ways that don’t work”? So chalk this time up to figuring out what doesn’t work for you.
Figure out what is going to work for you now, and do it.
By now you should have an idea of what will work for you. Example. January-Februay was pretty much a wash when it came to trying to get any writing done much less the 776 words that I had allotted for myself to write. Every. Single. Day. I’m only now starting to feel like I’m getting my feet back up under me (three kids, not difficult, but it does take a bit to figure out how things are going to work such as showers and that dinner making thing. . .) But now it’s a little easier for me to get some writing done after the kids go to bed (Oliver’s starting to get the sleeping at night thing down a little better) on the nights that Andy’s working. I can generally get at least 1,000 written. And I’ve started writing in “focus mode” on Word. I laughed (actually laughed—sorry, Sara) when my friend told me to turn off my word count while writing and I’d get more words written during a sitting. I didn’t believe her. Until I did it and my 1,000 word goal in one sitting ended up being 1,200 in half the time it generally took me to write the first 1,000!
Make sure you have a dang good support system.
Yes, maybe I haven’t been writing words the past two months, but I have two really good friends who I talk to every single week about writing. It really kept me excited about my writing, even if I wasn’t getting to write it. It also kept it on the forefront of my brain, so when faced with the choice of trying to get some writing in or watching another episode of the latest binge on Netflix, I wanted to choose writing. (It also helped when a friend of mine recently told another one of her friends that I was a “honest to goodness, real, talented author.” Whether or not I agree with the “real” or “talented” part, I now feel like I have expectations to live up to :)).
So there’s my three tips. What are you waiting for? Get back on that big, glorious goal-horse already!
What are your tips for getting back up on the “goal-horse” after you’ve fallen off?
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