Your #2020Success: Three Ways to Reach Your Yearly Goals -

Our #2020Success begins today! 2020 is finally here and this year Your Literary Prose is back with the more great tips for your writing and business life. As Colleen talked about yesterday, she will be sharing her weekly ideas and thoughts in our #MondayMusing blog series. This year I will be taking over the #TuesdayTip series every week.

Today I want to share with each of you how you can make your 2020 a year of great successes.

#2020Success For Everyone

Today marks the end of the first week of 2020. Many of us are just coming back to work full time after the holidays, many of us are settling into new routines after making our New Year’s Resoultions, and still others are looking for how to make 2020 their own. The beginning of the year is often tempting us to look for some way to make a huge impact on our year. We say we’re going to exercise everyday or read 50 books this year or finally write that book you’ve been thinking about.

For many of you, you won’t be able to accomplish your goals and by the beginning of February you will already be off-track or you will have given up all together. And guess what, that’s normal! Jumping into huge life-altering changes usually doesn’t happen overnight. As I was looking into this blog I came across an article from Marla Tabaka on Inc.com where she says one of the biggest reasons we fail our resolutions is because we leave no room for failure.

What I notice is many of us fail to meet our New Year’s resolutions because we do not take a holistic approach to setting our resolution. For each of us to have #2020Success we must take a look at these three items:

Holistic Approach
Daily Successes
Determination

Holistic Approach

What does holistic mean? In simple terms, holistic means taking into account all parts of your life. Today I want to look at a resolution many of you may have set for the year and, in fact, it is one Colleen and I have set as well: Write a book in 2020. So how do you holistically approach your resolution to write a book in 2020.

First, take a look at your own life. Do you already have time during the day where you can write? Is your day filled with work, school, kids, family, and friends? I bet it is so you need to find time in your schedule to write and that might mean making a few tough decisions to find your writing time.

Second, look at your book in general. Do you understand the essential parts of your book? Who is your audience? Do you know how you will sell your book? What marketing strategies will work best for you? There are many questions you will want to be clear on to make sure you have a successful book. – HINT: Download your Guide To Develop Your Best Seller for a quick understanding of your book’s needs.

Finally, understand your life, your business, and your book are all interconnected. One area of your life affects the others. For example, are you not eating properly? You might feel more sluggish at work. Are you not sleeping enough, maybe too much? You might see a bit of difficulty writing. Your life, business, and book are important, make sure you treat them right to see your #2020Success.

Daily Successes

Celebrate your daily successes! Like I mentioned above, life-altering resolutions don’t usually work. It’s time to re-think your resolution to celebrate your daily successes. For those of you looking to lose weight, you know you can’t lose 50 pounds in a day; it’s a process. No one makes a resolution to lose 50 pounds in a day and you shouldn’t make a resolution to write a book in a week or a month.

It takes time and effort to consistently work on your resolution. Re-frame your thoughts to celebrate the small successes. A habit takes time to build and at the beginning you probably won’t be perfect. You won’t be able to go to the gym everyday this year or write an hour a day. Again, your life is all interconnected, writing an hour a day will take that time from your personal life or your business life. Remember to set your daily goals at a level where you can celebrate daily successes.

Determination

The hardest part of setting a yearly resolution is maintaining determination. Early on in the year big lifestyle changes often make people less determined to accomplish their goals. They feel like too much has changed. That is why it is so important to take a holistic approach and celebrate the daily successes to maintain your determination.