Success Breeds Success

A lot of the time, success can be the little things you are doing...

Hi there, and welcome to 2025.

I trust you had a healthy holiday celebration in December and are now back in the swing of things again. It doesn’t take long, does it? This exact day last year was the first blog of 2024; by coincidence, it’s the same for 2025. (30th January)

Getting back into the Routine

I found it difficult to start writing again after the holiday, and it was the same last year. It’s something I have tried to address this month. I find that being out of my normal routine affects my writing schedule. It might only be for three or four days, but that is enough to set you back. Then, it’s back to the drawing board to evaluate where you at in your writing. It’s frustrating because it can take a few days to catch up.

Setting Goals

I wrote in last year’s blog about setting goals for the new year, much like making New Year’s resolutions. Some people cannot live their lives without setting goals, and others don’t set any. It’s a personal choice. I like to set writing goals as they keep me focused. I don’t set many because there is a danger of putting too much pressure on yourself, making you feel guilty if you don’t achieve them.

The likelihood is that in January, many people will have the appeal at the start of the year to re-organise their lifestyle to improve their work/life balance, which is important to everybody. Life is demanding, and setting goals can be a daunting task. The secret is knowing how to set them and what to write as your goal! I will come on to that in a moment.

Many people admit to making New Year’s resolutions but break them after a short time. Is this because you gave up too easily or because things weren’t going to plan? Or, more than likely, the goal/s was probably not realistic and achievable in the first place. I made that mistake last year when I gave an example of one of my goals. It was too ambitious and failed miserably. However, you learn from your mistakes and set a more realistic and achievable goal. We are all fallible to making the wrong decision!

Reflection

If you do set yourself goals, a good starting point might be to reflect on how you did last year. Did you have success? Evaluate what worked and why it worked. If you are satisfied with the outcome of your goals, keep doing what you are doing, and well done.

If your goals were not successfully achieved, why do you think that was? There could be many reasons why: -

You became discouraged
You lost motivation
Things were happening in your life that were outside of your control
Priorities changed
You gave up
You were too ambitious

Never be ashamed or embarrassed. It’s not always your fault. This is where SMART goals come to the rescue.

Keep to the Basics

I have used this system for years in my professional career, and it works if you keep to the basics. You can use the same principles for anything:- losing weight, de-cluttering your home, work/life balance, stopping smoking, exercising and so on.

Take a deep look at your daily/weekly/monthly schedule and see what might be possible. Don’t be too ambitious. Start slowly. You are in charge and can change things accordingly to suit yourself.

To get started, refer to last year’s blog, ‘Goal Setting’. Good luck.

Be Realistic

Keeping to the same theme, another goal of my mine last year was to try to write every day. You would think that being retired would easily make that achievable, but it’s true what they say about retirees, ‘you are busier than when you worked full-time’. Much of the online writing advice states you should try to write every day, but that is just an unrealistic goal for me, no matter how much I wish it could be. I envy those who have this opportunity.

Success breeds Success

I found an interesting article a couple of weeks ago By Derek Doepker, rock guitarist turned bestselling author, speaker and consultant on the art and science of mind, body and business mastery. He was writing about ‘Success breeds success’ and I thought there was a lot of sense to what he was explaining.

He states that ‘success as an author isn’t always about selling hundreds or thousands of books; it’s not about having a big-name celebrity give your book a rave review, nor is it a number on a bestseller chart. A lot of the time, success can be the little things you are doing.’

He gives examples of setting aside 5 minutes to write on a busy day, reaching out to somebody to review your book and asking somebody a question for support. Although these might not seem like big deals, he says that every big success is made up of these ‘micro-successes’, which means you don’t have to wait to achieve some huge goal to feel successful. The more you recognise the little wins, the more likely you will feel inspired to achieve even more.

I thought this advice was simple, realistic, achievable and worth putting into practice. I hope you agree.

Until next time, happy reading and writing.

Mansel