Deep Breaths

Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties ~ Barbara Walters

Boundaries are hard to abide by. If you’re like me, you probably made a big goal and are trying to accomplish it. Or, also like me, you enjoy doing something so much that it starts to consume much of your time.

Two things usually happen. First of all, I tired out and then boundaries are not problem to abide by…LOL  After that, I revise my plans and try to accomplish as much as I can in as little time as possible, leaving plenty of time for rest, relaxation, and play.  And again, once I find the balance, boundaries are usually not a problem.

How do you keep everything in balance?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Define Boundaries 

Play a Shoestring

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere ~ John Coltrane

I have no doubt you could play a tune on a shoestring if you were determined! All it would take is…you got it!

Create a Vision
Set Goals
Develop and Follow Routines
Define Boundaries
Find a Friend

Even I have been struggling with my morning routines lately. There’s so much I want to get accomplished, yet so much to do. I’ve taken the same approach at home with work by emailing myself things I think of that need to be done after work. I also try to accomplish one or two tasks before I start making dinner or while dinner is cooking.

I am going on Week 2 of not getting up in the morning. I know it’s temporary, I’ve done it before. I’m not freaking out just yet that my mornings have gone to hell, but still maintain that my normal routine is to get up at 4:30/5:00 each morning and work on my writing projects before I go to work. I know I’ll get back to those routines soon, if not this week.

How did you get back on track after a bout of missing daily or weekly routines?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Develop and Follow Routines

Here's to Elephants

Here’s to elephants ~ Jill Badonsky

Today is Elephant Appreciation Day. In honor of elephants and their memories, let’s remember our goals and the why behind the goals.

I love writing. Working on my projects has helped me get through the summer. I remember my goals because I do work full time and I want to continue to produce publishable manuscripts.

What are some of your goals and why have you set them? I’d love to hear!



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Setting Goals

Fountain of Youth

There is a fountain of youth; it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source you will have truly defeated age ~ Sophia Loren

I truly feel young when I am busy working on my dream goals. When I returned to school to finish my degree, I remember how energized that made me feel. No longer was I coming home and crashing at night, but coming home and working on homework and class projects.

Same now. Last winter when I took a break from writing and other dream goals, I sure felt old. In bed by 9 pm, some nights earlier, home on the weekends before “traffic” got too bad. Since my life changed in May, I can certainly tell the difference when I am working on my romance novels and this blog regularly. It keeps me young.,

How does working on your dream journey keep you feeling young? I’d love to hear!



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

Ideas

I don’t know where my ideas come from. They just come, usually when I’m mowing the lawn, driving to work, or walking my hound ~ Ron Kofron

Sometimes my greatest ideas come not when I’m sitting down and working but doing a million other things. Now that I always have my cell phone with me, I have a place to capture notes and ideas and review them later. It wasn’t always that easy before cell phones.

The best ideas I have for my romance novels come from church. There I have the bulletin make notes and then I have info about Bible verses, hymns, etc.

I’d love to hear about the craziest place and best idea you’ve come up with on your dream journey?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

Setting Goals

Develop and Follow Routines

Define Boundaries 

Dream Buddy

Timing

Life is all about timing…the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable…attainable. Have the patience, wait it out. It’s all about timing ~ Stacey Charter

Patience. It’s something I don’t have any more.

I developed my patience as a corporate trainer back in the early 2000’s. I was able to empathize with new employees trying to learn about, in some instances, the banking industry, and, in may instances, how the system worked. For some, it was the first time they worked on a computer ever. (Yes, that was 2001.)

But when it comes to my dream goals, I am very impatient. I remember being two weeks in a January Big Weeks month while selling Tupperware. I had not recruited any new consultants and even my own party schedule was lacking. My director (distributor at the time) told me as long as I was doing the work each day/week to date parties and recruit consultants, in time my  team and my sales would grow. I’d achieve my goals, but it takes…TIME.

Same thing with my writing. I wished I could sit down and pound out 10,000 words per day. Sometimes my daily 500 word goal takes me longer than I really want. Although I won’t get more than two novels published a year, my writing is goal is what I can handle right now.

Be patient with yourself, be patient with your goals. As long as your completing your daily and weekly routines to reach your goals, you’ll get there when the time is right.

I’d love to hear about time when you were impatient with the process?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

Setting Goals

Develop and Follow Routines

Define Boundaries 

Dream Buddy

Humorous Wisdom

Here’s to wisdom that can be framed humorously ~ Jill Badonsky

The best friends can help you find humor in everything! My friend Cindee and I laugh about so many good memories that are more than ten years old.

Don’t fall asleep when tanning because you might end up in the shade.

Traffic isn’t really that bad if you’re going 55 mph (or the posted speed limit) during rush hour.

Don’t lock your keys in the van because someone might have to drive 50 miles to unlock the vehicle.

Our dream paths have diverged, but we’re still the best of friends. What are some funny memories you have with your dream buddy?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Dream Buddy

Boundaries are a Good Thing

At worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived ~ Rose Macaulay

Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite blogging about following routines in one post and then touting the benefits of setting boundaries in the next. This time hasn’t been so bad. On Sunday, my post was about NOT becoming monster in pursuit of your goals.

Labor Day Weekend I took a quick trip to Colorado to take care of some business. I stayed with my longtime friends and we talked about my writing routines. When I explained that I stopped writing every day when I reached my 500 word count goal, they were shocked.

“What if you are in the middle of a really good part?” I stop writing and move on to the next task for the day.

“What if you forget where you left off or what the next step was?” Sometimes I write myself a note, but I stop writing once I reach my goal.

I keep a hard boundary around my 500 word count goal for two reasons. The first one is because if I didn’t have that goal, it would take forever for me to get a novel written. The word count is a minimum goal. My goal is also a maximum goal. If I didn’t stop when I reached the goal, I could spend all day writing and not get anything else done some days.

Boundaries help me to reach minimum goals and not over do it either. How do boundaries help you?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Define Boundaries 

Monsters

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn’t become a monster ~ Frederich Nietzsche

I would not have published three novels if I had not followed routines religiously. Setting daily goals and accomplishing those goals in a certain order has also helped me become more efficient at my job, and more organized at home as well.

Holiday rituals are routines as well. I’m sure you have certain traditions you look forward to and follow when it comes to Thanksgiving, Christmas, even the summer holiday weekends.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned lately about routines in not turning into a monster to achieve them. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with stopping at nothing to achieve a goal. Once you have things under control, it’s okay to let things go on autopilot. Life does get in the way and you have to take care of life stuff first sometimes.

For example, every Labor Day weekend, my mother’s family has a big family reunion. We do hamburgers and hot dogs on Saturday night and a big potluck on Sunday. We’ve done this for sixteen years. But this year, I had to forego the family reunion to take a trip to Denver, Colorado to finish some business from my separated spouse who passed away. As much as I wanted to see my aunts, uncles, and cousins and catch them up on my current life adventures, my business trumped my routine.

Now I could have said, I have a family reunion to go to, so the business trip must wait. It was more important to get the business taken care of. I couldn’t allow myself to become a monster to because of my labor day routines.

Tell me about a time you refused to become a monster despite your drive to accomplish goals and routines?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Develop and Follow Routines

Meep! Meep!

Meep! Meep ~ The Road Runner

When I first looked at this quote, I chuckled and passed it by as possible blog post header. But nearly immediately, I laughed out loud and told myself it would be the perfect quote.

The reason why this quote works so well for the blog, especially when setting goals is the topic, is because I remember the Road Runner being the embodiment of setting an achieving goals. He had one goal: escape the clutches of Wile E. Coyote. He achieved his goal every single time.

Whenever it feels like you’re not getting anywhere or you’re having problems focusing on your goals, think of the Road Runner and his one goal.

How do you find focus on setting and achieving goals?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Setting Goals

Life to be Lived

In between goals is a thing called life that has be lived and enjoyed ~ Sid Caesar

Many times, the vision of reaching a dream journey includes living a dream lifestyle. For some people that is living in an exotic location. For others it might be the same place they grew up and have always, just a little easier with extra money from reaching sales or other career goals.

But I think it’s also important to give yourself rewards as you make the small goals. For example, as much as I want to save my royalty checks for something significant, I always find smaller rewards that seem to do the trick. Last summer, I bought a new recycle bin and a new trash bin with my royalties (don’t laugh, I am old, home furnishings make me giddy now).

And don’t forget, like the quote says, there is life to be lived between goals. I’ve blogged about that the last couple of weeks. Sometimes life gets in the way. Thankfully for me, I’ve taken care of everything and moving forward.

Tell me about a reward you gave yourself when you achieved a small goal.



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

LIberating, Transporting, and Restoring

Here’s to being liberated, transported, and restored, all for free in our imagination ~ Jill Badonsky

The awesome thing about figuring out your dream goal is that your imagination really is your limit. Once you figure out your goal, it really is liberating, restorative and transporting.

Did you feel this when you found your dream journey?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

Setting Goals

Develop and Follow Routines

Define Boundaries 

Dream Buddy

A Lack of Sel-Realization

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread ~ Richard Wright

For those of you following me, you might know I became separated from my husband of eight and a half years in May and then he passed away suddenly last month. Throughout the last year, I’ve learned to take care of myself first.

I learned that lesson a long time ago. Right after I graduated from high school, I got involved with Amway and started reading self help books. Those type of non-fiction books propelled my reading for the next fifteen years. It was those books about improving myself that got me through my first break up.

I stopped reading to improve myself when I started writing fiction. I’ve read a few books about the craft of writing, but they got in the way of reading genre fiction to improve my writing. Now I understand the importance of keeping the self help books in the mix. I created a reading schedule that has worked well and I have been able to read a fiction book and keep up on my self improvement reading as well.

Although the events in my fiction writing do not mirror the events in the my life right now, keeping up on my writing has been been cathartic for me. In retrospect, writing has probably been my savior for the a long time.

I blogged a week or so ago about letting life get in the way. Now that the memorial service is over, I am back to my business of writing and helping others to achieve their dreams.

Tell me about a time when working on your dream goals helped you in a time of great stress or grief in your life.



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Creating a Vision

Setting Goals

Develop and Follow Routines

Define Boundaries 

Dream Buddy

The Relatives You Make for Yourself

Friends are the relatives you make for yourself ~ Eustache Deschamps

Thanks goodness for friends in my biological family, church family, writer community, and on-line community. The last year has been crazy and thank goodness for people looking out for me and letting me know they care.

That’s the thing about dream buddies. The very best ones grow to love not only your dream, but you as well. They become concerned when other parts of your life aren’t going right. The best friends understand that when things aren’t right in the other parts of your life, they know you can’t devote the energy needed to make your dreams come true if other parts of your life are out of order.

The best dream buddies know when to push you and when to support you. I’m so happy that I’ve found a community of folks who understand that the last year has been about support and not pushing.

Tell me about a time when you had a supportive community.



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Dream Buddy

Trust Yourself

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live ~ Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

I mentioned last week that I had had a major life event come up the beginning of August and it set me back. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself the time to deal with the life issue and take care of myself. Before I would have continued to run  myself ragged, trying to accomplish goals that could wait and not dealing with the life issue at hand very well. I would have not worked the tasks at hand very well and only superficially dealt with the stressor in my life.

The difference is I trust myself now. It feels like I have been through hell and back, and now that it’s out of the way, I can move on. I trust myself that I’ll be able to accomplish the vision and goals I’ve set for myself, now is just not the time. The awesome thing is, once I got through the memorial service and time with my family, I was/am ready to kick ass. At the same time, I’ve had some other social and work obligations as well. But each day I set out to accomplish certain things and each day I’m getting them done.

When you trust yourself you’re able to set boundaries and keep balance in your life. It feels wonderful to be able to do that.

What changes came about in your life that allowed you to set boundaries, which in the long run helped you achieve a goal or dream?



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Can't get enough of the 5 Steps? Look at the archives in my original blog:

Define Boundaries