#WisdomWednesday – Small Steps, Big Changes

I’ve been hearing a lot about micro-goals lately, whether in relation to dieting or any other kind of task. Without really thinking about it, it’s something I’ve been doing for a lot of my life. While thinking about the big picture, like becoming a published author, I was setting smaller more achievable goals along the way. Write a chapter and the chapters became a book. Finish the book and look for an agent. Start the next book. Small steps leading to a big change. I took the same approach with my diet. Do ten minutes on the elliptical. Walk 10,000 steps. Lose 1 pound. Each small step leading to a bigger change.

Why is that so important? Setting goals that are unrealistic only sets you up to feel like a failure. No one is going to lose 100 pounds in a month or even a few months. It takes time. The same with writing. No one is going to become a bestseller overnight. It takes time and dedication.

But if you approach that goal with small steps, it not only seems more attainable, it is more attainable. When I do workshops and people say that they can’t imagine writing a book, I ask them “Do you think you could write a page a day?” The answer is invariably yes which prompts me to say, “Well if you did that, you’d have a book in a year, right?”

I’d like to think that my helping them think about doing such a big thing in small steps might help them reach that bigger goal, namely, writing a book.
micro-goals

#TransformationTuesday – An Unexpected Hard Month Vlog

I’m doing something a little different today with a video chat about this month! In short, I had expected that July would be the hard month on account of the two back-to-back conferences. To my surprise, August is proving even harder for a number of reasons that I’m sharing in the video! Hope your transformation is plugging along well if you’re on this journey with me.

#WednesdayWisdom – Fear of Failure

There are lots of things that can hold you back in life, but one of the biggest ones, at least for me, is fear of failure. A lot of that fear has to do with my writing life, I must confess. It can be draining to put all your heart and soul into a book and see it tank. It leaves its scars and it leaves its fears, namely the fear of failure. What if I write another one again and the same thing happens? It becomes a roadblock to your creativity until you tell yourself, “You can’t succeed unless you’re willing to fail.” It may feel like falling off a cliff, but do it to regain your creative freedom.

I think another part of the problem is that once writing becomes a “career” you start measuring your success based on sales which is probably one of the worst things you can do. Sales don’t necessarily mean you’ve written a good book and vice versa. What’s important is that you wrote the book of your heart and if even one person writes to you to say they liked it, you’ve succeeded!

So that’s my wisdom for today! I hope you won’t let fear of failure in your life keep you from reaching for your dreams.
fear of failure
Original Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

#WednesdayWisdom – My Love of Upcycling

Those of you who follow me on Facebook have seen some of my renovation projects, like my park bench makeover, hall tree, or small table. I love being able to salvage things that still have lots of life left to them for a variety of reasons. One of them is because doing so reminds me of my grandfather. He could fix ANYTHING, but on top of that, he came from a time where even the smallest things, like a nail, were precious. I remember him having a collection of nails and screws in the garage in little baby jars because in his day you didn’t throw out useful things.

Now that we’re moving, I find myself doing the same thing as I organize my little section of the garage so that I have a place to work. I’ve got jars filled with screws, nails, and bolts for assorted projects. I’ve got a list of things I want to do and am excited about tackling them.

Another reason I love upcycling is that I get to see a project take shape in a way that is much more immediate than writing. That provides a lot of satisfaction. So does saving money on not having to get new things, but making old things seem new!

Finally, I feel like keeping something useful from ending up in a landfill is my little way of helping the environment.

How much do I love upcycling? Well, the heroine of a new book I’m working on is going to be a furniture flipper! That’s how much! LOL!

#WisdomWednesday – Leaving Home with a Book

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up so we travel was a luxury, but that didn’t stop me from visiting so many new places via the page of a book. I was always reading and I loved going to the library or waiting for the bookmobile to get a new book and explore the places it took me. So today’s wisdom is from Saint Augustine. Somehow appropriate since I went to a university run by an Augustinian order.
book quote saint augustine

#WednesdayWisdom – Connie and Smelling the Roses

I’m my mother’s daughter and that has it’s good and bad parts. The bad part is that I’m very driven to achieve which is why I identified so much with Connie Reyes, the heroine in WHAT HAPPENS IN SUMMER. Much like me Connie wants a partnership in a New York City law firm and much like me she finds herself stonewalled at a key point in her career. For me the salvation was my family and my writing. For Connie it’s finding herself tossed together with Jonathan Pierce again. Jonathan is almost as driven as Connie, but he also knows how to have fun and balance life and work. I really enjoyed putting them together so that they could both heal the wounds of their past and find a way to stop and smell the roses together!

I hope you’ll take a moment to check out WHAT HAPPENS IN SUMMER which is now available for pre-order and releases on June 5. Also, don’t miss the free downloads of ONE SUMMER NIGHT, #1 in the At the Shore series.

You can purchase WHAT HAPPENS IN SUMMER at these retailers:

Amazon Kindle: http://amzn.to/2y6hi4h
Amazon Paperback: http://amzn.to/2y92UIQ
B&N: http://bit.ly/2BJNcov
GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/2hKg3BW
iBooks: http://apple.co/2hKgP1J
Kobo: bit.ly/koboWHS

ONE SUMMER NIGHT is now free until June 11

Amazon Kindle: http://amzn.to/2krMwfE
B&N: http://bit.ly/2kNuo0p
GooglePlay: http://bit.ly/2ik8EfG
iBooks: http://apple.co/2qsqdwx
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2fuEphL
Smell the roses