Creating the Real You

Hey everybody! This post concludes our February series, The Imaginary You: Finding and Becoming the Real You. We have talked about how we see ourselves, accepting ourselves as we are, and accepting who we want to be. Today we’re pulling it all together with creating that person you want to be.

Your Imagination

The imagination is a powerful tool. It sees things that are not reality but can be made into reality. Here’s one example how I used my imagination to help me become someone new.

An Example

I pictured myself as a professional writer, someone who wrote every day and made a living off of it. I saw myself sitting in a clean, light-filled office. I had plenty of counter space around me and a computer in front of me. My walls were decorated modestly so they wouldn’t be distracting. My papers were organized on my desk and the office contained anything I might need in creating a book: a file cabinet for all my ideas, a printer, a soft chair in the corner to be comfortable while I edited my work or did some reading, shelves of books to create a “writer” feel to the room. I would literally sit and imagine out new things in my office and pretend I was sitting at that desk working. I imagined what it felt like to wake up in the morning with nothing before me but working on the next chapter of my book, knowing I had a fan base waiting to read it.

Before I knew it, I was rearranging my real room where I worked, cleaning and organizing it as best as I could to give it the same feel of the office in my imagination. Even though it was far from exact, when I sat down at my little writing table in reality, I had the same feelings as I had as a professional writer in my imagination.

I still practice seeing myself as a professional writer. These pictures in my head pulled me from insecurity as a person and as a writer and put me in a new place. I’m living out those thoughts in my head.

Your Turn

Take some time to picture yourself as that person you want to be. Whether it’s a specific goal you’re trying to reach, such as being an architect or beauty consultant, or being a happier person or being more friendly, picture yourself doing that thing. If you don’t know how to picture it, google “happiness” or “architect” and see what you find in Google Images. Maybe print out a picture or two and put it up in your room to help you imagine yourself the way you want to be. Your thoughts will eventually become part of you and make you a new person.

This is not an overnight thing. Keep at it. It does make a difference! Notice how your feelings change and become lighter as you think about happy things, as you see yourself becoming whatever it is you want to be. The real you begins as the imaginary version of you. Then from your imagination it enters reality. Your mind starts to believe whatever you think about yourself, and your actions follow accordingly.

If you have any tips on what has helped you to find and become the real you, leave them in the comments. Also, if you have any goals or dreams you would like to share, let me know so I can cheer you on. You can leave a comment, tweet me @EdinanRoman, or visit me on Facebook at One Lady of Shalott. Thanks so much for reading!

Next week: March means a new topic. I have something fun for you that you won’t want to miss! In March I’ll be traveling around town, showing you places and people that have inspired me during the writing of my series Mint Julep Adventures. You’ll get to meet some of my friends here, learn how they inspired me, and get a mini-tour of some great shops they own downtown (because a lot of my friends happen to be business owners :) ). I’ll see you back here next week!

Accepting Who You Want to Be

Hello, everyone. Hope you had a good week! Today we are talking about accepting who you want to be. Last week we learned the truth about ourselves, the good and the bad. Now, we’re going to focus on the good.

Who do you want to be?

Read that question again. Who do you want to be? I was a depressing, complaining sort of person, once upon a time, but that’s not who I wanted to be. I wanted to be a writer who influenced others for good, a happy person that others wanted to be around. But I couldn’t get there by continuing to call myself “depressed,” “lonely,” “a loser.” Words have power, and I wanted to leverage that power to my benefit.

Write down who you want to be.

One great way to bring words out of your head and into reality is to write them down. Speaking is also very powerful and perfectly acceptable. For me, it was hard to stand in front of a mirror and say, “I am wonderful,” because I had such a low opinion of myself. But I could do something as simple as write down “I want to be a great writer,” “I am a great writer.”

I still have the notebook where I practiced using words to reprogram how I thought of myself.

I found inspiration everywhere, even the children’s book Harriet the Spy, which I had never read until three years ago. At the bottom of the page of quotes I took from Harriet the Spy, I wrote, “Hmm, when did I stop being a writer? When did I stop imagining?

You may recall a time when you were a much more vibrant person. Well, that person is still in there. You can become that person again.

Take time today to write down or speak out who you want to be. Is there some dream you never fulfilled? Do you wonder how your life would turn out if you were to pursue that dream? Do you want to be happier, healthier, enjoy life more? Write it all down, or use some other method that works for you. Then remind yourself every day of who you want to be. Accept that you CAN be that person.

Next week, we’ll finish this month’s topic with talking about how to use your imagination to become who you want to be. That negative person we imagined ourselves into being is about to be replace with a better version of ourselves. We’ll created a different kind of image for ourselves. The “imaginary you” -- what you imagine about yourself -- whether good or bad, becomes the real you. Don’t miss our last week in this series. See you right back here next week!

Next week: Creating the Real You (our final post in the series The Imaginary You: Finding and Becoming the Real You)

Accepting Yourself As You Are

Last week the question we talked about was How do you see yourself? The wording on that question is important. We were not writing down who we ARE but rather how we perceive ourselves. Oftentimes our perspectives can be very far from the truth.

This week we’re going to talk about accepting ourselves as we are. Ask yourself and others who and what you really are. Choose close friends who will be honest with you and not sugarcoat their answer. If they see you as a vivacious, loving person and not as a depressed mope, you need to hear that. If you are depressed and that’s what they see as well, that’s what you need to hear. You need to hear the truth.

Compare other’s answers with your own perspective of yourself. Do they differ? Which do you feel is more accurate? Your view or their view? A combination of both?

Here’s an example to illustrate this step: I was very depressed for a long time, then I met my boyfriend Jorge (pronounced George). He could see I had many problems, and yet he saw a side of me that I did not. He saw me smiling and joking. He saw I had a sharp mind. When he described me to myself, it was hard to accept anything good about myself. The truth is I had good qualities and bad qualities.

Yay for the good qualities, but what would I do with the bad qualities that seemed to outweigh anything good in me? I decided to accept that I was a depressed, complaining person who had wasted many years of her life. Then I told myself “That is who you used to be. You’re not that person anymore. You may still feel like a scared loser who doesn’t get anything done, but that’s not who you are now. That is all in the past.”

This process took much longer than the thirty seconds it took to put into words and type up, but the important thing is not how long the process takes for each person. The important thing is that you come to those realizations, you don’t give up until it sinks in for you, and you reach that place where you can accept who you are, good and bad. Then you proclaim that you are no longer those bad parts of yourself. The feelings and perspective you have of yourself is ALL based off of past events and decisions you’ve made.

If your entire life was erased from this second backward, you would not have anything negative to say about yourself because you’d have no memory of it. The only moment that would matter would be this one and what you would decide to do with it. You can make it anything you want it to be. You can create a new you by focusing on just this present moment. Even though the memories of your past failures will not be literally erased, it is still true that the moment that matters most is the one you’re living in right this second. After you have found a way to accept that truth, you can move on to the next part, the decisions you choose to make in this present moment.

Next week we’ll talk about looking into our futures and accepting who we WANT to be.

Next week: “Accepting Who You Want to Be”

Also, stay tuned for updates on the release of my current fictional work in progress, Mint Julep Adventures!

How Do I See Myself?

First, my apologies for not posting on Thursday as I stated in my last blog, but happy Friday to you! I have a great post for you today to finish out the week.

This month we are talking about The Imaginary You: Finding and Becoming the Real You. I’m not an expert on the subject, I’m just sharing some things that worked for me. You can try some of these things out to see how they work for you, or come up with your own ideas.

The Question

One of the first things that helped me get started on finding myself was to ask myself this question: How do I see myself?

What is your self image? Mine was of a person who was very afraid, never got things done, made proclamations to the world about writing a book then never followed through, someone who didn’t want to face life, who was more comfortable hiding than being an adult, an awkward person steeped in depression and rejected by everyone she dated or wanted to date.

Being truthful in answering this question about myself was vital to the next steps I would take, which we will talk about in the following weeks. For now, take some time this week to ask yourself how you see yourself. Write it down, do a voice recording, make a video. Then play it back or read over it and be as honest as you can with yourself. Write down how you feel about yourself. Do you like yourself? Hate yourself? Why?

There's lots of things we imagine about ourselves, thus creating an imaginary version of ourselves. This "imaginary you" can work for you and against you, a concept we'll cover later in the month.

Next week we’ll talk about how your self image plays into finding the real you.

The Announcement

I promised an exciting announcement this week, and here it is: The current fictional series I’m working on, Mint Julep Adventures, is in its editing phase right now and will be ready for publication very soon! I will be self publishing it as an ebook. I have plans to create a paperback, but not for a while yet. As soon as we pass edits, I will be choosing a release date. I’m so excited to have such a fun project almost ready to put out into the world.

Thanks again for reading. I’ll see you next week for more about finding and becoming the real you.

Next week: "Accepting Yourself As You Are"

Creating Daily Goals Based on Your Long Term Goal

First, I apologize for not posting last week. I had one priority that absolutely had to be finished by last Friday so some other things on my schedule had to get bumped. One of those things was my blog post. But I’m back this week and have a great post for you about a goal-setting secret I learned that really helped me reach more goals.

Here we go:

My goals used to be more of a “to do” list where all my goals were listed randomly. For example: write a book, drink 60 oz of water a day, go to the post office, build a following on social media, etc. I kept failing at reaching my goals. (I think some of you can already see why.) Then I figured out the secret. Some of the goals I was setting were short term goals and some were long term. Writing a book is definitely a long term goal, but my brain was seeing it as something that had to be completed as easily as going to the post office. I needed to organize my goals to show my brain that some of these goals needed a lot more work than others.

I started dividing my “to do” items into categories: Writing, Life (for all those little errands, time with friends, date night), Cleaning Day (for laundry and, obviously, cleaning), Finances. Some of these categories don’t really have long term goals, but the ones that did, I chose which long term goal I was going to focus on first. To keep this post simple, I’m going to show you how I created short term goals for just one long term goal in the category of writing.

Writing Category

Long term goal: Write and publish a book

1. I research.

If I know nothing about my long term goal, I research it. I form a rough idea of what reaching the goal is going to include or what kind of steps are involved. I start with only the basic information because, if you like details like I do, it is very easy to get overwhelmed and feel like quitting before I even get started.

For the writing example, I had a list that looked something like this:

Write the book

Write

Edit

Rewrite

Publish the book

Format for self publishing

Upload to self publishing platforms

Market the book

Choose main social media to connect with fans

Create a marketing and sales plan

(This list changed a lot, by the way, as I learned more about each area during my ongoing research.)

2. I write out one or two of my first steps.

Next, I started writing down only the first few steps toward my long term goal, no more than would take a month to complete. (Note: Your first two steps will be different than mine. My mind was hung up on different things than yours might be.) For me, the first few steps to getting started on writing my book were something like this:

Research writing processes

Figure out a writing process that works for me

Record ideas for the novel I want to write

3. I break down my monthly goals into weekly goals.

I took my monthly list and asked myself, “What do I need to do to complete my goals for this month?” Then I wrote a list of ideas and steps required for each goal. Based on that list, I would gauge how much time I needed to devote to each to have them done by the end of the month. (Keep in mind, this is just what works for me. You can figure out the steps that work best for you and your specific goals.)

For the list above, my weekly goals would look something like this:

Research writing processes - 1 week

1. Create profile on one writing platform; make at least one writing friend to discuss writing processes with

2. Google “How to write a book”

3. Check out YouTube videos on how to write a book

4. Research J.K. Rowling and Amanda Hocking for inspiration on their writing processes

Figure out a writing process that works for me - 1 month

1. Write out an ideal schedule for my writing day then use it. Write what works and doesn’t work with the schedule and adjust it for the following day until I find the schedule that best works for me.

2. Make a list of ideas of what inspires me and puts me in the mood to write, then test out those ideas and mark the ones that work.

3. Find a location where writing comes easiest to me. Make a list of places that I think will work for me, then test them out.

Record any ideas I get for the novel I’m working on - 1 month

1. Use a 1-subject notebook to record any plot ideas, names, characters, locations, etc.

2. Set aside specific time each day to brainstorm for the novel

3. As my information grows, figure out a system to organize that information so I can find it and add to it easily.

(From here I chose what I would work on each day. Looking at this list felt a whole lot better and manageable than my original jumbled "to do" list.)

The above is just an example, but the concept is there of how I would break my long term goal down into monthly, weekly and daily goals. The specific goals I set changed a lot, and I let that be ok. I had never written an entire book before, so I didn’t know the daily steps involved. I had to figure them out as I went. I also didn’t know what kind of setbacks I would run into, so I let that be ok as well. Sometimes I would change a goal to better suit me, other times I would completely get rid of a goal. I felt it out each day and wrote down what was working for me and what wasn’t. By adjusting the things that weren’t working, I found the best process possible for myself. I can now accomplish goals much more easily because I’m setting specific goals that I know will work for me. I still adjust goals that aren’t working. It’s all about learning yourself and what works best for your personality and the way your brain is wired.

Best wishes to turning your long term goal into short term goals and getting those goals accomplished! I’m rooting for you! Take whatever helped you in this post and test it out, adjust it and find what works for you. It’s all about you, the way you learn and the way you function.

Thanks for stopping in again this week. Next week is February, so we will be starting a new subject I like to call The Imaginary You. I’ll be sharing my journey of how I used my imagination to find and become the person I always wanted to be: the real me.

Each of us is special. Each of us has been given a gift that fulfills us, gives us confidence and provides a unique way for us to connect with and add value to the world. Each of us has a Real Me inside, waiting to shine.

See you next week for more about finding this wonderful you. Plus, I’ll have an exciting announcement to post that you won’t want to miss, so I’ll see you right back here next Thursday!

Why I Quit Making Resolutions and Started Making Life Changes

We have all gotten caught up in writing those impossible lists of resolutions for the new year. Those lists have never worked for me. I eventually quit making them. At the end of last year I finally figured out what works better for me than a list of resolutions I won’t keep. That’s setting goals. In the process, goal-setting and resolutions were redefined for me. I had to think about resolutions as life changes and that these changes will take time to figure out. Today we're going to look at resolutions as life changes and how to succeed at making those changes.

1. A resolution equals a life change.

When I made those lists of resolutions in high school, I saw them as a task I had to do every day for a year. Once I started missing a day or two (and you inevitably do!), it was easy to miss more days then just chalk the whole attempt up to a failure. Then I had to wait till next January 1st to give myself a second chance.

Now, I see resolutions as changes I want to make in my life. It’s hard to make a life change and get it right from the first try. You need room to mess up, to grow. Let’s say I want to exercise more this year. The first thing I do is choose a type of exercise I would like to incorporate into my life. (For me, it’s walking, just in case you wanted to know. :) ) I then decide how many times a week I would like to walk. I did this last year and started out with five days a week. In no time I saw this wasn’t going to work for me. I live in a state that when it rains, I mean, it rains. So there’s no walking for me on days like that. But instead of feeling like I “just can’t keep my goal” I decided to change it to something more feasible like “walk 3 out of 5 days a week.” I now keep this goal no problem. Eventually I won’t even need to keep track of whether or not I do this goal because it will have become part of my weekly routine.

2. Start with one thing at a time.

Another important tip I learned was to work on only one large goal at a time. I am famous for trying to do too many new things at once. I quickly overwhelm myself and get nothing done. After working through the mentality that getting one thing done a day was better than writing a list of ten things to do and completing none of them, I was able to start achieving my goal of choice. I choose one large goal and write down ideas for how I will accomplish it. I adjust what doesn’t work for me on a daily basis until I find the method that best suits my personality, likes and dislikes.

For example, I have a goal to complete a short book in one month. I don’t know how many times I attempted and failed at this one. But then I made a list of things that work for me. Writing short chapters, keeping the book around 10,000 words, choosing characters and plots that interest me and touch on at least one of my passions, these were all things that contributed to me being well on my way to success this month.

3. Stop looking at how others are doing it and figure out what you need in order to succeed.

This was a big one for me. It was so much easier to watch videos on how others got their book finished than it was to sit down and figure out where I was going wrong. I spent all my time trying methods that worked for other people (only to eventually fail), instead of making a list of what might work for me.

I encourage you to study yourself, because reaching your goals and following your dreams is all about being the best YOU that you can be. It’s about learning what you need in order to be motivated to reach those goals. Once you start giving yourself what you need, you may be surprised at how easy it is to reach your goals.

Cheers to you and your success! If you have an experience you’d like to share about reaching one of your goals, please leave it in the comments below, and keep being you!

Next Week: "Creating Daily Goals Based on Your Long Term Goal"

Why I Changed Everything About the Way I Set Goals

Hey, everyone. It's a new year and time to brush off those resolutions that have been gathering dust since last January.

This year I have made a commitment to quit making resolutions and start setting goals that work for me. I'll show you three things that worked for me in goal-setting. But, hey, these three things may not work the same way for you as they did for me. So I encourage you to figure out your own personalized list for the area in your life that you want to improve this year.

1. Find what works for me
This was an actual goal I set several months ago. I realized I was constantly looking at the examples of others, trying to copy them, then ending up disappointed when their methods didn't work for me. I started asking myself questions like If I could create my writing day in any way I wanted, how would I do it? My answer included things like 1) Have coffee as soon as I wake up. 2) Stay in my robe and PJ's until I actually felt like showering. 3) Put off all my errands till the end of the day so I could give the best part of my mind to my writing in the morning.

Immediately there were protests from the peanut gallery in my brain. "But what will people think of you?!" "You know only lazy people wear their robe and don't shower till after lunch." But it was like I had discovered a magical strength in my body. Was I going to let these critical voices keep me from pursuing my dream of a writing career? NO! So I kept my robe on! I drank coffee and gazed dreamily out the window when I got up in the morning! And no matter how much those pesky errands tried to pressure me into getting them done, I ignored them until I chose to tend to them.

Stand up for how you need to order your day or organize your space so that you can create. Find what works for you.

2. Write what works and doesn't work for me
Each day I wrote down ways I felt I was either successful or had failed in the goals I had set for that day and in how I managed my time. (I have the tendency to feel like a failure even when I achieve a difficult task. Not at all a helpful quality.) After writing out my list, I could see clear ways in which I had succeeded. In fact, the list of things I was happy with was longer than the list of my failures, so I declared that, overall, my day had been a success. 

When I had a day where the list of failures was longer, I assured myself that was not a problem because I was in the process of learning...which leads me to my last point. 

3. For the things that don't work, write a list of ideas on how to change these areas or goals so they will work for me
So every time I "failed" I wrote down what I could do next time that would work better for me. For example, I kept setting more goals per day than I had time to accomplish. So one change I made was to be more honest about how long each goal would take to complete. By making this change, I had a realistic list of goals that I could accomplish instead of overloading myself and setting myself up for failure. Even though, logically, I know not to set more goals than one can accomplish during a set time, but I wasn't realizing that was what was holding me back until I took the time to write down my successes and failures.

So this is why I changed how I set goals: I wasn't reaching my goals because something wasn't working for me. So I took the time to figure out what does work for me. I still write what is working and not working for me when I get stuck on a particular goal I can't seem to reach.

Now go out there and write your own ideas of what might work for you. Choose an area you want to improve, whether it's writing or something more personal like making more friends this year or that notorious "lose weight this year" resolution. But this year, you're actually gonna do it, 'cause you're going to figure out which methods work best for you so you can accomplish those meaningful goals.

Be sure to come back. We'll be talking about goals and goal setting all January long to keep you excited and inspired.

Leave a comment about the one goal you want to tackle this year--for good. You can do this! You're going to set your goals this year, and reach them!

Next week: "I Quit Making Resolutions and Started Making Life Changes"