How to Start Living your Best Life - Part Two

If you’re like me and most of the people I meet (meaning you’re human), the odds are that every day of your life isn’t perfect. Sorry, I can’t fix that. But, if you really are like most of the people I meet, you have or at some point had ambition. In the next three posts, I’m going to guide you through some practical steps to discover, create, pursue, and achieve your goals with three steps: stop, start, and go.

In my previous post, I went over the STOP. In this post, we’ll talk about STARTing.

Now it’s time to START

You’ve changed your mindset about some things and set a specific goal to work toward. Maybe you’ve set several goals. You’re motivated, focused, and ready to get started. But how? I hate those motivational videos people post to YouTube or share on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong; I watch a lot of them. My problem isn’t what they say; it’s what they don’t say that bothers me. They play that music that makes your blood pump faster, and they say words that make you feel like you can conquer giants. Awesome, right?

No.

Can you tell me how to conquer those giants? Let’s see if we can start there. (See what I did there?)

unsplash-logoPaweł Czerwiński

Believing

Instead of hoping to become a writer, I started believing I was a writer.

I wanted to be a writer all my life. Seriously, I started talking about wanting to write books when I was seven or eight years old after I read my first chapter book by myself. (I’m a reader and a book nerd. Don’t judge me) I said, “I want to be a writer” or “I’m going to be a writer” until I was thirty. You know how many things I published in that time?

None. I didn’t even have any real writing worth sending to a publisher. So what changed?

Instead of hoping to become a writer, I started believing I was a writer. I already knew my purpose. Believe me when I say I went through a lot of prayer, meditation, research, and tears to figure out my purpose. But now I believed in my purpose. I was custom-made and hand-picked to be on this earth, during this time, to be a writer.

I began living and thinking like a writer. I immediately purchased all black clothes and started consuming ridiculous amounts of coffee. Kidding. I don’t wear that much black. But I did start incorporating writing into more of a daily routine. It took me a while to get that all figured out, but I got there. I began studying my craft to improve myself, and my writing began to get better.

Being practical

If you noticed what I said, some real practical steps were made in the last post and within what I just said. I figured out my purpose (I’ll write a post about that in the very near future), set a realistic goal, and began treating my goal seriously. Now it was more than a passion and a dream; it was my job, and I take my job very seriously.

I did some honest reflection. What do writers do? Do I do that? What is good writing? Do I write that way? What can I do to become a better writer? This wasn’t a one time thing; I reflect constantly, always thinking about how to improve.

I realized that I had raw talent but not much in the way of honed skill and knowledge in my craft. I began reading more books. I reached out to authors and got some good advice. I watched videos made by writers on how to plot, develop characters, and more. I began reading articles and blogs about the publishing industry and writing. I asked my college professors for help. I let people critique my writing and paid attention when they tore it apart. This was all happening after hours, and it was exhausting, but I knew I had to do it in order to reach my goal.

So watch the motivational video. Listen to the music or people that encourage you. That’s fine. Then, get off your butt and do some work. Quit talking about what you’ll do some day, and go do it. Either be about it, or quit talking about it.

This wasn’t a one time thing; I reflect constantly, always thinking about how to improve.

Planning

People that know me would laugh over the fact that I actually wrote the word planning, but I’m going to tell you that you need a plan. Personally, I’m a “wing it” sort of person. I do things on a whim, and I’ve learned to think on my feet and produce some better outcomes than when I plan things out to the minute. That’s fine, once you’re already operating in the field you’ve learned to operate in. You can’t try that if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I’m and English Teacher. That’s my day job as I work on building my author platform. I’m very passionate about both, and it took the same steps to get to where I am with both teaching and writing. I had to plan. I had to know which step was next and what the series of steps for the long-term were. Now that I’ve been doing the job for a couple of years, I get to wing it, but I do that with the tools of an expert.

I remember my first year of teaching. I had tried all year to help my students understand the importance of point of view in a story, news article, or anything else. The point of view is everything. Get that wrong, and your audience doesn’t get to where you’re trying to take them. My students just couldn’t get it, and we were at the end of the year.

There I was, in front of my class, with the year almost over, and someone asked me a question that mentally shut me down. I couldn’t answer it, and these students who had finally begun to trust me for all things English and many things in just general life, were staring at me. The writer in me told the teacher in me to sit down and keep his mouth shut. I went to the dry erase board with no plan, and magic happened.

I gave them the same story of a plane crash from four different perspectives; some serious and some ridiculous. I asked them what each of the characters would see and asked them to discuss it in groups. The room erupted with learning. The writer’s expert understanding of point of view had latched on to the teacher’s limited understanding of the Socratic Method of drawing from within through questioning. I then let the writer tell a story from each perspective.

When I told the story through a dog in the belly of the plane’s perspective, they laughed. When I told it through the eyes of the pilot, they were tense and fearful. When I told it through the eyes of the flight attendant on her way to get married, they were sad. When I told it through the eyes of the little boy who hadn’t spoken to his mother the entire flight, they broke down in tears. They said, “Mr. Pettit, what are you doing to us?” I looked at them and said, “showing you how important point of view is.” Their response was a unanimous roar of “OH!”

They got it.

You know what I’ve done with that lesson since that day? I’ve tweaked it and tweaked it down to a perfect lesson PLAN. New students getting that lesson understand POV on an even deeper level. My point? Get the tools first, and learn to use them.

None of that would have happened if I hadn’t had study strategies and time management skills. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t spent hours and hours deep in my craft, learning, honing, and mastering these skills. You simply cannot “wing it” into success.

Carve out time to create a success plan with practical steps. Make it a priority checklist, and stick to it. So people think I’m a “wing it” person. I’m not. Not at all.