Planning your Future

Dreams stay dreams because they seem impossible. This is a great reason to put off moving towards them! To get beyond this, you need to make a career plan in which you break the big goals into small, manageable steps.

Whatever you goal, if you reduce it to a number of smaller goals, you'll find there is something you can do today, or tomorrow at the very latest. For example, buy a book, search for information on the internet, ring a college about courses or download some free tutorials. Put your plan on paper, in whatever form you like and be sure to include timescales for all the steps. Review and update your plan regularly.

There is only one person who can make your dreams happen and that is you. Stop holding yourself back - write your plan now. If it will take 5 years to reach your goal, make a five year plan. On Saturday or Sunday make a list of things to do in the coming week and each month for the next year. Cross them off the list as you do them and review and update your plan every week.

Let's say you want to be a famous novelist. What do you need in order to achieve this? A fantastic manuscript and a publisher would help. What do you need to create a fantastic manuscript? A great plot, a decent style and the discipline to write. How will you go about developing these?

Your answer will depend on your experience so far. Perhaps you have already had some short stories published and have a terrific idea for a novel, but you have a problem sticking to a long term project. To overcome this, you need to decide exactly what is holding you back and then do something about it. This could involve making some changes. If lack of time is the problem, get up an hour earlier, cut down on your TV viewing, skip the after-work trip to the pub on Friday, get a babysitter once a week, delegate some of the housework - whatever it takes.

If you lack confidence, have writer's block or are held back by any of the other psychological barriers that stop us doing things, buy the book (there must be one for overcoming every fear and obstacle known to mankind) and don't just read it - take action.

Staying with the dream of wanting to write a best seller, let's take a look at a few steps you could take. There are hundreds of books on writing and finding an agent or a publisher. Or you could try self-publishing. Another (much cheaper) option is setting up your own website, perhaps as a forum for aspiring writers to discuss ideas and publish short stories.

To make money, you could have a members only subscription area, where you publish a chapter of your novel every month - good motivation to get it finished! If you dream of self-employment, a website could be the first step to making it happen. If you've never built your own website, Make Your Site Sell by Ken Evoy will point you in the right direction for information on HTML coding and web-building software, and teach you how to create a website that both attracts readers and sells your product!

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Whatever your goal, ask yourself what it will take to make that goal a reality. Keep asking what you need to do to achieve each step. Do this until you find a step you can take right away. Then take it!