Saturday, June 19, 2010

How To Define And Achieve Your Success: A Guest Article From Beth Ann Erickson

In my last post, I promised to announce the winners of my writing contest. I apologize for the delay, AGAIN.

Next week, the winners and prizes will be announced, awarded and the winning entries posted here and on my website. My most sincere apologies to everyone. I've had a lot of personal issues to deal with the last few months and I am happy to report things are back to "normal", so to speak.

I appreciate your patience during this difficult time in my life. I am now committed more than ever to making my writing career and business the priority it should have been all along. If you want to read more about it, go to my personal blog at http://www.greetingsfromthepolebarn.blogspot.com/.

I will be writing an article and posting it here next week.

This week, the featured article is from Beth Ann Erickson of Filbert Publishing. Enjoy, and see you next week!

How to Define and Achieve Your Success




Beth Ann Erickson



You can easily define your success and achieve it.



But here’s the rub: You must, absolutely must, know what you want. You need to define what success means to you.



Does success mean a six figure income? Does it mean you set your own hours?



Does it mean you’re working with people you enjoy? Maybe you want to make a difference in your community.



Perhaps you want to ________ (fill in the blank).



Once you define success, once you know what you want out of this biz, it will become your Polaris, continually guiding you through this crazy profession.



Whenever a new opportunity arises, and new opportunities always arise, you can measure it against whether or not it will enhance your voyage toward Polaris.



It’s tough to say “no” to a potential assignment, but when you follow this path, you’ll be amazed at how assignments present themselves, you evaluate, you decide whether or not to take on the task, and how new, targeted doors will continually open.



Once you know exactly what you want to achieve, you leave the rest to the magic of the universe.



You don’t know exactly how you’ll achieve your goal. Those doors open exactly when you need them.



It actually becomes a matter of trust.



But I can break it down a little more.



You know what you want, then you pour hope into the process.



You send the query, then you hope.



You hope you’ll eventually hit pay dirt.



As long as you cultivate hope into your career, you won’t consider the option of giving up.



You cultivate hope by engaging in regular, consistent marketing. You send out a set number of queries every day. You send out solicitation letters. You write that second novel.



As long as there’s a glimmer of a chance that your short term goal can be realized, you’ll experience that all-important ray of hope.



Then, as you notice you’re making consistent progress towards your Polaris (as a result of your consistent action) your hope begins to evolve into full-fledged belief.



Hope begets belief.



This is a nearly imperceptible shift in your mindset.



One day you’re hoping you can make a living as a writer. Then you achieve just a few acceptance letters. Unknowingly, you tentatively strengthen your hope and find yourself believing that you can actually achieve your goal.



You know you believe when you feel confident joy as you write. You’re beginning to feel an inkling of adventure as you query, research, and plan your next project. Positive thoughts begin to outweigh the negative ones.



You believe you can actually achieve your loftiest goals, you believe nearly anything you can imagine if possible.



But it gets even better.



As you move along and allow belief to grow, you will eventually settle into a sense of knowingness.



Belief gives birth to Knowing.



You begin with hope. Hope grows into belief. Belief begets knowing.



Somewhere along the line, as you remain faithful in writing, marketing, querying, you begin to understand that marketing is a numbers game.



As you send out queries, you know a certain number of them will hit pay dirt. You understand that as you write a set number of words every day, you know that your skills will continue to develop and grow.



You no longer need to believe that all will work out, you know it will.



Subtle yet very distinct difference.



The bridge between belief and knowing may seem insurmountable when you’re in the “hope” stage, but as you proceed through your writing career, you’ll find the progress through these three stages as natural as breathing. As beautiful as the writing process itself.



All that is required throughout this process is continual, faithful action.



Write daily. Market on a regular basis.



Remain faithful no matter what physical reality may look like. The inward landscape always trumps what our physical senses may be perceiving.



You may occasionally feel discouragement, but when you focus on your Polaris, if you busy yourself acting like a busy writer, you will very soon find yourself living a busy writer life.



More on this next time. :)



~~~



Beth Ann Erickson is the “Queen Bee” of Filbert Publishing. You've just read an excerpt from her newest title, “Advice to Freelance Writers: Insider Secrets to Effective Shoestring Marketing, Managing a Winning Mindset, and Thriving in Any Economy, Volume 2. You can order your own copy along with a ton of freebies by clicking here.



P.S. You can use this article free of charge on your own website or zine. Just don’t make any changes and be sure to include the entire byline. Enjoy!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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