Change

When change knocks
on the front door
Fear leaves by the back door
Old habits jump through
the bedroom window
Tired thoughts hide in the closet
Then change comes in, takes its place
and
Sits in the big chair

Your Journey

Your soul stirring goal to live a full and bountiful life is a journey of change. As with any journey, in addition to the smooth stretches, expect bumpy patches, potholes and hills that often seem more like mountains. You can minimize these potholes and bumps by developing reliable skills. Your journey of change begins when your goal walks out to meet a plan. They pick up commitment and focus. These three coax discipline to join this march. Immediately perseverance jumps on board. Next stop success. You may begin your journey to goal achievement with old habits, but adopting and using these five skills you arrive with a changed outlook and new behaviors.

No one can take the journey of change for you. It is your walk. Own your goals and dreams and when you do, you’ll take responsibility for their fulfillment. Personal responsibility causes you to think differently. You become more creative in planning and recognize additional opportunities that link necessary information for problem solving.

Life is not just the good times. You live and breathe no matter how the winds of circumstance blow. Putting forth your best efforts only when life bends to your will, sets you up for heartache and frustration when you encounter bumps in the road. On this journey you’re competing with many previously learned habits and actions that you simply don’t need any longer. Try your best to overcome the demons of inertia, procrastination and lack of belief in self. Procrastination, especially, is the thief that steals your dreams. It hides in your habits.

Resources

As you advance your literary efforts, harness the resources available to you. One of the most valuable resources is time. It is a gift. Respect its limitations and opportunities. Protect your time by budgeting it wisely. Time is with you at the start of your journey. It will walk beside you every step of the way if you give it respect, but will slip away if you don’t.

Eliminate distractions. They hijack focus and weaken commitment to completion of the literary project. Distractions include unnecessary noise, clutter and sometimes people who try to hand over their problems to you.

Recognize procrastination in all its disguises. Procrastination is a dream killer. There are many ways we procrastinate: over-scheduling, delaying making decisions, lying about the true nature of our time, grandiose and magical thinking, daydreaming and giving into unreasonable fears. Unless you have an authentic answer for why you are not reworking that weak paragraph, tightening the description of a character, writing the next stanza of your poem, reconsidering the beginning sentences of your project or putting in the changes and corrections you made last night, you are procrastinating.

Commit to completing the task in front of you before moving to another. Remember time keeps moving forward; don’t let it leave you behind.