Yep, you’ve heard it before. Do or do not, there is no try.
My friend J has pounded this into my head. If you say you’ll try to do something, you’re already giving yourself permission to fail.
Say you’ll do it, and then do it. But what if you fail?
Oh well!
That’s the other half of this. You set out to do something, without giving yourself an out, but you also have to let it be okay if you do fail.
Because then at least you reached and did something.
Now, I don’t like mushy, unmeasurable goals. To me, those are ways to let yourself off the hook, and I have a hard time with anything that I don’t have set out steps for and ways of measuring progress.
Like J is helping me learn to process my emotions. There’s no steps for that and it makes it very difficult for me because I have no clue if I’m doing better yet, but I do know I’m getting impatient.
For goals like those, I can’t help.
For more tangible goals, I can.
Set specific ones. No try or I want to do this. None of that BS.
You want to lose weight and get into shape? Join a gym, set a goal of how many trips a week for how long, and do it. And check your weight and measure your waist once a week or month or so.
If you want to write, then do it.
I have a book that must be out by Halloween. This weekend I said I was going to do a 25K words weekend.
And I did!
No excuses, no whining, no I can’t do that much. I did 7500, 7500, and 10K, and now I just have the last stretch of the book to go, maybe 12K.
Set a specific goal and just go do it. It’s not magic. It is your mind telling you that you not only can do this, but you will, and therefore you do.
Happy writing!
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