5 Ways You Can Be Your Own Writing Inspiration
What’s the fire beneath your writing goals?
We all know, albeit reluctantly at times, that life doesn’t always go the way we plan. Even our best thought out writing agendas sometimes get derailed despite our ardent efforts to keep them intact.
Sometimes we are unexpectedly hindered in our writing goals or set back in our self-projected progress by things in life that are simply out of our control.
The COVID pandemic is a perfect example. Perhaps you had big writing plans at the beginning of 2020. Then the virus hit and you were quite possibly thrown off your writing game.
Maybe you got blindsided by losing your job, your “writing time” was interrupted by your kids being home from school, and life as a whole felt like it was turned upside down.
While the news and social media gave us plenty of excuses to sit back and be lazy, the extra time we had on our hands once quarantine mandates were set in place put us in a unique position.
Though we may have finally been “available” to make progress on our writing goals, life may have also seemed too chaotic for us to feel like we could think straight enough to use our time productively.
Whether or not that was the case for you with the COVID situation, however, it certainly doesn’t have to be the case the next time life happens to throws a curve ball your way.
I want to discuss five things you can do to motivate yourself to maintain your writing goals during both the highs and lows of life. These are accomplished by cultivating healthy and productive habits related to both your writing life and your personal life.
Contrary to the mistruths society sometimes likes to perpetuate, your life does not have the be at the mercy of the situations you may find yourself in. Nor does it have to be governed or measured by the large-scale writing goals you may have. You can certainly choose to be tugged and tossed about by life, but you don’t have to.
This is because YOU have the power to choose how you respond to life’s challenges and YOU have the power to decide the path you will take in life.
The keys to being your own writing inspiration are based on the simple concept that life is made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years; regardless of what your daily grind looks like, it’s up to YOU how you will spend those chunks of time.
Constantly living life on the large-scale versus the small-scale often distorts and debilitates what we are taught to perceive as progress as it relates to life in general and writing in particular.
This is because when we don’t reach those large-scale milestones, we often become frustrated, disgruntled, and even self-sabotaging in our perspective.
Society consistently promotes the false notion that we have failed if we don’t comply with some unwritten standard of living.
We are encouraged to earn a college degree by this age, or get married and start a family by this age, make this yearly income by this age, or accomplish X by this date, and so on.
But why does what society says matter, and why do we feel compelled to conform? I can’t answer those questions, but I can help you focus on something less confusing.
Let’s dive in and see how being your own writing inspiration can calm these unrealistic expectations and allow you to accomplish your writing goals now and forever after.
- Write your plans out with specific detail. Break down your big goals into smaller goals so each task is manageable. Being able to check each task off as you complete it will do wonders for your motivation, vision, mental health, and confidence.
- Recognize both your strengths and weaknesses and outline the improvements you will make. Give yourself the extra time you may need to get a task done and give yourself permission to get it done in the way that works best for you. This step is about learning yourself and learning how to make progress despite your weaknesses.
- Purposefully cultivate positivity in both your thoughts and actions to foster mental and physical health. It’s scientifically proven that positive thinking and participation in activities that elicit positive emotions produce higher productivity, a brighter outlook on life, increased energy levels, and lower levels of depression and anxiety (more info here). Purposeful positivity will help you in the long run, but also in the day-to-day nitty grit.
- Guard your time and energy against negative people and unproductive activities. You know yourself like no one else, and having the wherewithal to decide when you need to step back is a judgment only you can make. Know your limits, set your boundaries, and do YOU.
- Create attainable daily, weekly, and monthly tasks so you can both track and celebrate your progress. Give yourself something to tick off each day, each week, each month. This provides you with a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment because it allows you to see your progress.
While these steps may seem elementary, they are calculated maneuvers that can drastically improve the accomplishment of your goals. You are in control, and you have the power to take the wheel and drive where and how you’d like.
Choosing to be your own writing inspiration is something you can start today, on Tuesday, on the 5th of next month. It doesn’t matter when; what matters is how and why.
Do you have a writing project you want to start? Set a date and draft a plan.
Do you have a writing project you want to complete? Set a date and draft a plan.
Your writing goals are attainable. You are capable.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or to share the ways you are your own writing inspiration. I’d love to hear from you!