By Catherine Storing
Did you know it took me 20 years to write my first book? Yes, that’s a long time. I just could not get it done, or should I say, I was not making the time required to get it done?
Without fail, every year I would promise myself that I would finally write my book that year, and inevitably, that year would come and go and there would be no book. What changed? The pain or discomfort of not been able to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish became greater than the difficulty of actually doing it.
What does all that have to do with you ask? Let me ask you a couple more questions before I explain.
What have you been promising yourself for years?
What changes have you said you would make in the new year?
Let me take a wild guess, you probably start strong on January 1st but before the month is out that goal or desire is quickly forgotten. How am doing so far?
What needs to change is your approach or your plan. A plan? Yes, a strategic and organized way to see through what you want to accomplish. That’s how I was able to finally finish my first book. I created a plan and I saw the plan through.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend the intimate book signing of local author Dr. Terika Smith. Her book, My God, Our Plan is very interesting because it includes the principles necessary to make changes and also a guided journaling process. After reading the book I discovered two of my favorite sections were the journaling and the planning sections. Why? Because journaling helps us check in with ourselves and makes it easier to recognize patterns we might not be aware of. For example, you may want to lose weight and might not able to figure you why the needle on your scale is not moving down. But then after you check your journal entries you realize your current eating habits don’t support losing weight. Often when you can see the problem following a healthier eating plan becomes easier because now you have accurate information.
I have discovered that knowing where you are and where you want to go makes arriving to your desired destination faster and easier.
Whether you want to write a book, lose weight, change jobs, start a business, eat better or begin to exercise in 2020, you will need a plan. Otherwise you will have a repeat of the last decade and that would not be good (unless the last decade was a great one for you and you need to make zero changes or improvements – eye rolling emoji totally implied).
Having said all of that… a promise is a promise… and on the last article I promised to share my favorite writing tool with you. The tool is the amazing app Evernote. Evernote is my go-to app to take notes while I am away from my beloved laptop. I can start taking notes on an iPad/tablet, continue or finish on a laptop/desktop or phone. Pretty cool, right? The information saves automatically and can be shared with others and it can be printed as well. You can download the app from your phone or from a computer by going to www.Evernote.com
Final thought: my advice for your best year yet is this, begin to journal and make a plan that is in alignment with the type of year you want to have. May you have a blessed and prosperous 2020.
