Set Your Goals for a Successful Year: Nonfiction Writing Prompt #2

Over the years, there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not goal setting works. However, I’m a firm believer in using goals to help me achieve the success I desire. So have some of the people I admire and whose advice I follow, such as Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield and Michael Hyatt. I’ve successfully used goals with my clients as well.

That said, you have to know how to set and use goals if you want to achieve them. Use them incorrectly, and you might find they hinder, rather than, help you.

Nonfiction Writing Prompt #2: Set Your Goals for a Successful Year

How to Write Your Goals

Some people like to talk about writing SMART Goals because they have many qualities that help you achieve them, including a clear description or definition (specific), deadlines (timely) and a way to determine if you have achieved them (measurable):

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Time-Bound

How to Achieve Your Goals

Here are 7 tips for how to achieve your nonfiction writing goals.

1. Be sure not to make your goals to large a stretch, even though the idea of doing so can seem positive. In fact, if you fail, you’ll be less likely to attempt any goal, let alone a related one, again. Set yourself up for success. Your goals should be attainable and realistic.
2. Be sure your goals line up with your passions. Remember, you are creating your writing goals; you should be passionate about these since they constitute your career. Develop a career around the work that inspires you.
3. Don’t let your goals revolve only around accumulation of things or getting more—making more money, having a larger platform or selling more books. All of this might help you succeed, but you will find it easier to achieve your goals if you tie them into your values and your sense of purpose or mission. That is why sometimes you will see SMART goals with the “realistic” changed to “relevant”; both words make a huge difference to actually achieving your goal since it must be both realistic and relevant. Your goals become achievable when they are relevant.
4. Keep in mind the difference between your intentions and your goals. An intention has a huge amount of power once set. It is the direction you want—intend—to take or the action you intend to pursue. Hopefully you do so with passion, lending even more positive energy to that intention. Choose intentions that line up with your values and purpose. Your goals then will fall into place with your intentions. If you intend to become a professional journalist, for example, because this fits with your values and a sense of purpose, you will find yourself creating goals easily and effortlessly that are always “on purpose” with your intention.
5. As you go through the process of writing your goals, or the vision of your Best Positive Self that you created last week, don’t get stuck in the negative sink hole of focusing on what you don’t have right now. This will produce negative emotions that make it difficult for you to move toward achievement of your goals. Be grateful for what you do have and for every baby step you make toward your goal.
6. Be kind to yourself. Accept where you are now as you look toward the future. Don’t compare yourself to others. You are traveling at your own speed toward your own destination.
7. Be accountable to someone. This can make a huge difference to whether or not you achieve your goals. For this reason, sometimes the “realistic” in SMART goals is changed to “reportable.” So, do consider sharing your goals in the comment section below. That’s what I’d like you to do every Friday anyway—share your prompt. This week it’s more important to do so than any other week. Let us witness your goals so you can make them reportable.

Don’t forget: Share your work in a comment!