The Secret of Writing Success - Trust the Process
Success doesn't always come in one dramatic leap.
Most of the time, it is incremental, one tiny step at a time.
Then, one day you look up and think, "Wow, I made it!" Success is as the attainment of a goal toward which one has worked.
I have set and worked toward many goals over the past forty years.
Some were small, though they didn't seem so at the time.
Some were beyond imagination, but I worked hard to reach them no matter how distant they appeared.
The most important thing about my goals was that they were incremental; one led to the next in a relatively logical formation.
I didn't realize that while it was happening.
In fact, I had no plan.
Every time I reached a goal, I thought of something else I wanted to do, and that became my next target.
Haphazard as my "system" was, it worked for me.
At some point on my journey, I learned a simple process for getting from where I was to where I wanted to go.
I read it first in a book called The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz, stumbled on it in seminars and other writings, and eventually began to teach it in my classes.
This is the process: Imagine a road with signs at both ends.
At the place where you are standing, the sign says STATUS; at the end of the road, the sign says SUCCESS.
Success is your goal, what you want to attain.
STATUS is where you are now in relation to SUCCESS.
Your job is to narrow the gap between those two signs until they overlap.
There are two ways to do that: you can back your definition of SUCCESS, or you can change your STATUS one step at a time until you get to the end of the road.
The trick is to stay aware of what success means to you and how you are progressing toward it.
You can't lose sight of either signpost.
Here is an example from my own life.
My idea of success was to have one article published--just one.
That road sign seemed impossibly far away.
I read books on how to write and submit articles, and I wrote and wrote.
That was progress, so my status had improved.
I did many thing wrong as I continued to write and send out articles and receive rejection slips; but with each one, my writing improved and my choice of magazines became a bit more realistic.
I kept marching down that road until I did something right at last.
I wrote a humor piece about being a "handball widow" and sent it to a national handball magazine.
It was published! My road signs overlapped.
The process worked.
I put it to another test, just to be sure.
I redefined success--to write regularly for a magazine--walked back to the beginning of my road, and replanted my status sign.
In other words, I started over again.
That in a nutshell is the process I have employed, unconsciously at first and quite deliberately once I read about it in The Path of Least Resistance many years ago.
I trust that process implicitly.
It works for me every time I put up those imaginary road signs.
It has taken me from one little article to a long and satisfying writing career.
Thank you Robert Fritz.
Most of the time, it is incremental, one tiny step at a time.
Then, one day you look up and think, "Wow, I made it!" Success is as the attainment of a goal toward which one has worked.
I have set and worked toward many goals over the past forty years.
Some were small, though they didn't seem so at the time.
Some were beyond imagination, but I worked hard to reach them no matter how distant they appeared.
The most important thing about my goals was that they were incremental; one led to the next in a relatively logical formation.
I didn't realize that while it was happening.
In fact, I had no plan.
Every time I reached a goal, I thought of something else I wanted to do, and that became my next target.
Haphazard as my "system" was, it worked for me.
At some point on my journey, I learned a simple process for getting from where I was to where I wanted to go.
I read it first in a book called The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz, stumbled on it in seminars and other writings, and eventually began to teach it in my classes.
This is the process: Imagine a road with signs at both ends.
At the place where you are standing, the sign says STATUS; at the end of the road, the sign says SUCCESS.
Success is your goal, what you want to attain.
STATUS is where you are now in relation to SUCCESS.
Your job is to narrow the gap between those two signs until they overlap.
There are two ways to do that: you can back your definition of SUCCESS, or you can change your STATUS one step at a time until you get to the end of the road.
The trick is to stay aware of what success means to you and how you are progressing toward it.
You can't lose sight of either signpost.
Here is an example from my own life.
My idea of success was to have one article published--just one.
That road sign seemed impossibly far away.
I read books on how to write and submit articles, and I wrote and wrote.
That was progress, so my status had improved.
I did many thing wrong as I continued to write and send out articles and receive rejection slips; but with each one, my writing improved and my choice of magazines became a bit more realistic.
I kept marching down that road until I did something right at last.
I wrote a humor piece about being a "handball widow" and sent it to a national handball magazine.
It was published! My road signs overlapped.
The process worked.
I put it to another test, just to be sure.
I redefined success--to write regularly for a magazine--walked back to the beginning of my road, and replanted my status sign.
In other words, I started over again.
That in a nutshell is the process I have employed, unconsciously at first and quite deliberately once I read about it in The Path of Least Resistance many years ago.
I trust that process implicitly.
It works for me every time I put up those imaginary road signs.
It has taken me from one little article to a long and satisfying writing career.
Thank you Robert Fritz.
