It’s not a question of whether anyone needs to give you permission. Rather, it’s a question of whether you can muster the resources, energy, creativity, discipline, and focus in order to do things you have never done before.

There are many examples throughout history of people who faced the question, “Can we do this?” when they were staring a big challenge in the face. One such example is the Apollo space program from the 1960s. NASA was consumed by the question of whether they could develop the technology and processes to send a crew to the moon and bring them safely back to earth.

But they kept forging ahead, and the question of “Can we do this?” was finally resolved when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 21, 1969.

It took resolve. It took patience. It took hundreds of thousands of people working in the space program to make that moment happen. You may not be going to the moon, but you still have big goals. There is a price to pay.

The very first way you invest in your dreams is by believing in yourself. Henry Ford famously said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

So, if you’re asking the question, “Can I do this?,” the answer is YES… you can do this! You have what it takes. You really do.

But first, you have to believe it’s possible. Nothing will happen until you believe.

Today’s Challenge: As you think about your big goals for 2023, do you believe you can accomplish them? Why or why not?

The post Do You Believe It’s Possible? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Today, I want to challenge you with a topic that makes some writers uncomfortable: making money.

Why does it make some writers uncomfortable? Because many writers are only concerned with the creative side of writing. They’d rather hole up in their office, work on their books, and never think about the marketing or business side of what they do.

If that describes you, consider these questions:

What if you could make a part-time or full-time living as a writer? How would that change your life?

What if you had more income to attend conferences, take courses, or join a mastermind on writing?

What if your income was at a level where you could be more generous to causes you care about?

What would it feel like to have regular money coming in from your writing-based business—income from book royalties, courses, a membership, client work, and more?

I ask you those questions because I want you to dream about what could happen when you have more income from your writing. As a writer, you DESERVE to be paid for your creative work. If this topic interests you, go back and check out the podcast series I recently did on Making Money as a Writer. It will open your eyes to the possibilities!

So this year, I want you to be thinking about the amazing things that could happen when you increase your writing income. I worked as a college professor for many years, and over time, I built up my writing business so that I was able to quit and do writing full-time.

It happened for me, and it can happen for you, too.

Today’s Challenge: Write down three things you would do with the extra money you could make from writing this year.

The post New Year’s Goal: Make More Money in 2023 appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

The idea goes something like this: the main purpose of your life, vocationally speaking, is to find your dream. The dream is what you are meant to do. It’s granted by some otherworldly force or power. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to keep seeking and searching, defeating obstacles and naysayers, until the dream becomes a reality.

There is some truth to that story. Anyone who has achieved anything worthwhile has defeated obstacles and ignored naysayers. But the main fault in this philosophy is that a dream is “out there” somewhere. And if you work hard enough and seek it out, you will eventually find it.

The truth is that dreams are not found. A dream does not exist out there somewhere. The whole idea of finding your dream is based on the idea that you are a passive observer to your own life.

In truth, a dream doesn’t exist anywhere outside of yourself. A dream is created from within.

A lot of writers spend years or decades passively waiting for their dream to come true. Maybe they’ll get discovered by an agent or a publisher. Maybe that book will magically get written. Maybe someone will hand them that opportunity they’ve been waiting for.

That’s not how it works. Yes, people do get discovered sometimes, and their dreams come true. But for the vast majority of writers, their dreams become reality because they worked for them. They did the work. They put in the years of effort and built their platform, their business, and their success one brick at a time.

It’s the cold, hard truth… but it’s also the most liberating thing you can possibly hear. Your dreams are not out there… they’re in here, in your mind and heart. But it’s up to you to do the work and take them from the realm of possibility to the realm of reality.

Question: Do you find this truth frustrating or liberating? Why?

The post Dreams Are Made, Not Found appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

One of the benefits of the modern world of content creation and publishing is that you can get your material to your readers very quickly. Books, blog posts, newsletters, emails, social media posts, and podcasts are things you can create and have them instantly available to people.

Think about the opposite for just a moment, though. In addition to having short-term goals and taking action on them, I want you to think about having a ten-year dream. It’s been said that most people over-estimate what they can accomplish in a year and greatly under-estimate what they can accomplish in ten years.

There’s a lot of truth to this. Imagine what you could accomplish if you consistently take action over a ten-year period. You could radically change your life and build a highly successful writing career, if that’s what you want to do.

The great thing about having a ten-year dream is that it takes the pressure off of having to have great results right this second.

Remember the fable about the tortoise and the hare? The tortoise won by keeping it slow and steady, thereby winning the race. That’s the key—slow, steady, and sustainable progress.

So, what is your ten-year dream? Have you ever thought that far ahead? Take a moment to dream about all the things you can accomplish and how it might take the pressure off of feeling like you have to get immediate results right now.

Question: What might be possible for you in ten years? Dream big and think about the incredible possibilities.

The post What’s Your Ten-Year Dream? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

We all wish for success… but sometimes we forget that it comes at a price.

Take Harper Lee, for example. She published the classic American novel To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960 when she was just 34 years old. Considering that many successful authors don’t get started until their 40s, she was practically a baby by most standards of literary success.

But the success of To Kill a Mockingbird overwhelmed her and Harper Lee never wrote another novel again. Success had come too quickly, and it was too huge, for her to handle. She once said, “When you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go.” She spent the rest of her life making sure that she would never risk putting out another work that would stain her reputation or cause her even more emotional distress.

That’s not to say every writer would respond that way to great fame, fortune, and success. Harper Lee had her own demons and no one but her will ever know exactly what was going on inside her head. But her life acts as a stark warning to all of us who dream of having that #1 bestseller, being on all the talk shows, or getting all the attention we ever wanted.

Be careful what you wish for because as Harper Lee has warned us, success can be both a blessing AND a curse.

Daily Question: Does the thought of great writing success scare you? Why or why not?

The post Success Comes at a Price appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

If someone gave you the assignment to write a sentence without the letter E, how would you respond? Would you think it’s too difficult, or that it can’t be done?

What about a whole paragraph, a scene, or even a whole chapter? And ultimately, an entire book?

It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? After all, the letter E is the most common letter in the English language. How could you possibly write a book without the letter E? It simply can’t be done.

At least, that’s what people kept telling a writer named Ernest Vincent Wright in the early years of the 20^th century. He got so tired of hearing people tell him it couldn’t be done that he decided to prove them wrong. The result was a 50,000-word novel called Gadsby, which, in fact, doesn’t contain the letter E.

To accomplish this feat, he had to tie down the letter E on his typewriter so he couldn’t use it. Yet, he met his goal. As you can imagine, a whole novel without the letter E is fairly clunky to read, but you have to respect Mr. Wright’s determination and persistence in the face of everyone telling him it couldn’t be done.

So, the next time you have a big writing goal and people keep telling you all the reasons you can’t do it, why you will fail, or how they tried something and failed, remember good old Mr. Wright banging away at his typewriter.

Unfortunately, he died in 1939, the same year his novel was published, so he didn’t get to enjoy his success for long. But he died knowing he reached his goal.

Not a bad way to go.

Daily Question: What goal do you have that others doubt can be done? Does it motivate you to prove them wrong?

The post It Can’t Be Done… or Can It? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

The post The Clock is Always Running appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

One of the most pervasive ideas in Western culture is the concept of “finding your dreams.” No one knows for sure where this idea came from. It has probably been around in some form for as long as there have been stories about heroes and their goals.

The idea goes something like this: the main purpose of your life, vocationally speaking, is to find your dream. The dream is what you are meant to do. It’s granted by some otherworldly force or power. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to keep seeking and searching, defeating obstacles and naysayers, until the dream becomes a reality.

There is some truth to that story. Most anyone who has achieved anything worthwhile has defeated obstacles and ignored naysayers. But the main fault in this philosophy is that a dream is “out there” somewhere. And if you work hard enough and seek it out, you will eventually find it.

The truth is that dreams are not found. A dream does not exist out there somewhere. The whole idea of finding your dream is based on the idea that you are a passive observer of your own life. In truth, a dream doesn’t exist anywhere outside of yourself. A dream is created from within.

A lot of writers operate by the idea of passively waiting for their dream to come true. Maybe they’ll get discovered by an agent or a publisher. Maybe that book will magically get written. Maybe someone will hand them that opportunity they’ve been waiting for.

But for the most part, that’s not how it works. Yes, people do get discovered sometimes, and their dreams come true. But for the vast majority of writers, their dreams become reality because they worked for them. They did the work. They put in the years of effort and built their platform, their business, and their success one brick at a time.

It’s the cold, hard truth… but it’s also the most liberating thing you can possibly hear. Your dreams are not out there… they’re in here, in your mind and heart. But it’s up to you to do the work and take them from the realm of possibility to the realm of reality.

The post Dreams Are Made, Not Found appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Some writers came from a supportive environment where his or her parents and extended family nurtured their talent. They were encouraged to write and express themselves.

Others were not so lucky. They had a much harder climb to writing success. They had to break out of a family system that didn’t encourage writing, saw it as a worthless pursuit, or worst of all, was abusive.

In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield makes a keen observation: “Often couples or close friends, even entire families, will enter into tacit compacts whereby each individual pledges (unconsciously) to remain mired in the same slough in which she and all her cronies have become so comfortable. The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket.”

It’s hard, probably nearly impossible, to break out of a dysfunctional family system. If you grew up in this kind of environment, or perhaps you’re still there, find other writers who can support you. You have bigger goals and brighter dreams than the cold, gray nothingness that surrounds you.

They may be your family or friends, but they don’t define you. You have the power to define yourself.

So, make the leap for the rim. It is easy? Of course not. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

The post Make the Leap appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Nobody intends to kill their big dream. 

After all, our dreams are what keep us going. We think about them day and night, we plan our future around them, we nurture them with books, movies, and other content that keep the dream alive. 

But inevitably, sometimes we kill the dream. How does this happen? The comedian and game show host Steve Harvey tells us how. He said, “If you want to kill a big dream, tell it to a small-minded person.” 

In our excitement, we sometimes share our dream with people who don’t want to hear it. If you want to be a bestselling author, and you tell your dream to someone who doesn’t think it’s possible, they will wound your dream. 

They will say you shouldn’t have those ridiculous notions in your head. They will say your plans won’t work. They will say you should be realistic.   

Pretty soon, if you tell enough of these people about your dream, it will die a slow death.  

So, reserve your dream for people who support you. Those people will not only listen to your dream, they will also help you achieve it. Your dream is a living, breathing thing, and it must be nurtured and cared for by people who want to see it grow. 

And when those small-minded people ask what you’re working on, you can just be vague or only share a bit of your dream with them. They’re not bad people… it’s just that their dreams have already died, and they don’t have the ability to help yours grow. 

The post How to Kill Your Dream appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.