Priming The Pump
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“Priming the pump” is simply a way of getting yourself started. It’s a kick-start to your work day. It’s what you do to get your juices flowing when you’re feeling uninspired and unmotivated. Here are a few tips to help you prime your pump:
Plan the day before. A really good way to prime your pump is to plan ahead. I keep a steno pad on my desk at all times. I use it to jot notes on and to make my daily TO DO list. I also use it to plan ahead. When you know already that there are certain things that have to be done tomorrow, why not go ahead and start your TO DO list today? The first thing you’ll think of when you wake up tomorrow morning will be what’s on your TO DO list already, which will make you want to get up and get busy working on it.
Read something inspirational. I’m a big fan of inspirational messages. I subscribe to several newsletters and services right now. Each of them delivers an inspirational quote, thought of the day, or message. I love them because it’s like receiving little nibbles of inspiration every day. And since they all arrive in my Inbox every morning, I get an extra shot of motivation and inspiration every morning to start my day off right.
Get excited about your life and your business. Have you grown bored with your life or business? If so, then chances are that’s one of the main reasons why you can’t seem to get going every day. Sometimes you have to stop and dream for a bit. Dream about where you want to be in life “X” years from now. Think about all the different things you want to experience. Get excited about your life and your business again!
Start with exercise. Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get nearly as much exercise as I need to. One thing I have learned, though, is that starting the day with exercise will really get you going. It gets your blood moving, which gives you energy and makes you feel alive again. Something as simple as Yoga, or a short walk, can get you motivated once again.
7 Quick Goal Setting Tips
By · CommentsAre you having trouble setting goals for yourself? Everyone should set goals for themselves so that they have something to work towards. If you need help getting started, use these seven quick tips to set your goals:
1. Decide where you’d like to be in 5-10-20 years. Long-term planning is one of the most important steps to setting goals for yourself. You have to have a vision for the future.
2. Break it down into a yearly plan. Once you have a long-term vision, break it down into what you can do each year to reach your ultimate goal.
3. Set up quarterly goals. Once you know what needs to be done each year, you can lay out goals for each quarter of the year. Knowing this will help you set benchmarks for yourself. These benchmarks are imperative to measuring your success.
4. Divide your quarterly goals into four monthly sets of goals. Your quarterly plans make it easy for you to divide up these goals into monthly goals.
5. Set your weekly goals. Now that you know what needs to be done each month, you can break it down even more by setting weekly goals.
6. Create you daily action plan guide. Assign tasks to every day of the week. Now you have a solid, concrete plan that will take you day-by-day, to each week, to each month, and so on.
7. Take action. This is where the rubber meets the road. All your goal-setting means absolutely nothing if you don’t apply some elbow grease. Get started!
Exercises To Boost Your Creativity
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Creativity comes in many forms and fashions. For many, creativity is elusive, seemingly impossible to attain. If you’ve found yourself struggling lately in the creativity department, I have some ways to show you how to boost your creativity.
- Throw away perfectionism. The “P” word is the worst enemy of creativity. Stop trying to do everything perfectly. When you throw out perfectionism, your creativity levels will begin to rise.
- Stop comparing your work to others’. All creative work is equal in and of itself. There is no such thing as someone’s work being better than your own. Each creative person’s work is unique. So stop judging your work next to someone else’s.
- Pretend like a child again. Have you ever watched a child create something? You’ve probably noticed their lack of inhibition when it comes to the creation process. Children just allow the creation to form on its own, without thinking it through. Take a lesson from that-play with your art as a child would.
- Make a “play” date with another artist friend. Children love play dates with other children. So why not apply this same idea to your art? Invite another artist friend over for a fun afternoon of playing with your art together. Before your play date is over, you’ll both be bouncing creativity off each other.
Boosting your creativity is not hard to do. It merely requires practice and allowing yourself to have fun with your art. Stop thinking of your creative nature as an afterthought and start paying more attention to it.
Are You Confident In Your Writing?
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I’ve seen it time and again: Writers who have absolutely zero confidence in their writing. In fact, I’ve experienced this more times personally than I care to admit, or remember.
Lack of self-confidence seems to be a common tie linking many writers. The daily drill of writing and perfecting your own writing, then submitting and/or selling your writing is challenging. It pushes your every limit, until sometimes it you reach a point where you say, “What’s the point?”
Confidence Can Be Learned
I was an abused child. I taught myself how to be defensive and mentally tough in order to protect myself from the physical and mental torture I had to endure. Nobody ever taught me how to love myself or be proud of my skills and talents though.
As an adult, through reading and educating myself, I began to learn how to nurture my inner self and develop specific talents that I’d never considered as such.
Believe it or not, you can foster confidence in yourself. You can give to yourself what no one else can give you–self-confidence. This especially applies to writing.
Stop Being So Harsh On Yourself
As a writer, you are naturally more critical of your own work. You spit shine every sentence and paragraph until you think you’ve plucked all the flaws. And yet you’re still not happy with the end result. Sound familiar?
Even though you need your editorial hawk-eyes, you have to be willing to cut yourself some slack. Nobody’s perfect. (Ask me, I should know!) Do you nit-pick your writing to its death? This should never happen. Be as kind to yourself as you would anyone else.
Never Stop Learning
One of the easiest ways to build your confidence is to further your education. I’m not talking about going back to college, necessarily, unless that’s what you want to do. But as a writer, you should never stop learning.
You can learn in many ways:
- Magazines
- Newspapers
- Library
- Internet
- Books
- Interviews
You should feel a constant thirst for more: more knowledge, more understanding, more practical usage of what you already know and what you’re learning.
Stop Second-Guessing Yourself
Just as you shouldn’t be so tough on yourself, you also shouldn’t second-guess yourself. If you do this a lot, you’re not alone…I do it all the time. (I’m preaching to the choir here.)
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve completed a project for a client, emailed it to them, then sat at my desk a nervous wreck, waiting for a response back. Even more, expecting a negative response.
My husband refuses to even entertain my whining anymore when I get like this. “You did fine, and you know you did,” he’ll say, as he rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me. “You always do this. You always second-guess yourself, but you’ve never gone wrong yet.”
I know this to be true, but yet my lack of confidence in my own writing at times causes me to second-guess the greatness of my work. Second guesses only lead to frustration and anxiety. Stop doing it. (That goes for me, too!)
Start Small, Work Your Way Up
To build your confidence as a writer, begin with what you know best. You can sit and fret over what to write all day long. Or, you can get up this very second and start a new draft. The easiest way to begin is with what you already know.
Try answering some of these questions to find a starting point:
- What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
- What do you talk about with friends, colleagues, or family?
- What kind of magazines do you buy or browse on the racks?
- What kind of books do you enjoy reading?
- What are your top 5 favorite websites?
I can tell you from personal experience that trying to build a writing career around niches you don’t know much about is not only tiring but it’s extremely unrewarding. It’s totally doable, but you get very little, if any, feeling of reward from your work.
Make a list of 10 topics you can pluck from the questions above. Then add three more to your list. Chances are, those last three will be the topics you enjoy the most. Use those as your starting point.
If you’re nervous about sending queries or looking for paying work, start by writing a few articles to include on your website as samples. Just by taking this small step, you’ll begin building your confidence because you’ll show yourself that you can write, and write well.
Keep practicing every day. Confidence isn’t created overnight. You have to work long and hard at it on a daily basis.
Feed Just One
By · Comments“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
- Mother Teresa
Sometimes writing can get overwhelming. When you think about how many people could potentially read your work, you might feel unconfident or even scared.
Writing for the masses is daunting and if you experience this common fear, you probably also start playing the “What if…?” game (something I’m also good at):
- What if my writing isn’t good enough?
- What if I hurt someone’s feelings with my words?
- What if I make a fool of myself?
- What if my opinion is wrong?
- What if my article doesn’t stand above the crowd?
The truth is, when you focus on the crowd you’re writing for, you can easily and quickly get lost in that very crowd yourself.
“Help! I Can’t Find My Daughter!”
If you have children and ever lost one in a crowd, you know that panicked feeling. Your throat tightens, your heart races and you start berating yourself for being such a terrible parent.
My parents “lost” one of my sisters once. They had everyone searching high and low for her. And then she was discovered talking to a clown, probably fascinated by the bright colors and silly humor.
Just like my little sister found her way through a crowd of people back to the clown she was so interested in, as a writer you must find your way through a crowd to the one person who needs your message the most.
Dig Deeper
You’ve probably been told, or have read, that you have to know who your target market is when you write. It’s important to know who your audience is. But you have to dig down deeper than knowing your audience consists of married females, ages 35-35, who own their home and work full-time.
While these statistics are interesting and important to know, they don’t paint a complete picture. They don’t tell you:
- What matters most to her?
- What does she do in her spare time?
- What causes does she support?
- How does she feel about “X”?
Write To One Person
When writing, take a little time to think about who will read your work. If you could write a letter to just one person who needs the information you are going to provide in your article (or book), what would you tell her? What would you want her to know?
This type of writing becomes very personal. Not only for you, the writer, but for your audience, the reader. When you begin to write with this kind of deep, personal touch, every single person that reads your work will walk away feeling as though they just experienced a deep, meaningful conversation with you.
The next time you pick up your pen, close your eyes first for a few moments. Envision a single person who will read your article. What does she need? What is she searching for? Now open your eyes and write.