Well, folks, it's a new year.  Whatever may have happened in 2012 is over with and we can start this year with a clean slate.  As for me, I'm getting glasses so I can see distances, I'm working out more (again), and I've lost two pounds.  Little victories.  I figure if I can have one little victory every week, by the end of the year I'll have 52 victories under my belt.  Not a bad way to end a year.

What are your goals for this year?  Do you want to have a book written by June?  Do you want to weigh twenty pounds less by July?  Do you want to run a marathon in September?  What goals do you want to set for yourself?  If we're making a cake, we follow a recipe step by step, one small step at a time.  To achieve a goal, we need to go step by step, one small step at a time.  Little victories along the way add up to a goal reached.  No goal is so big that we can't break it down into doable pieces--like eating an elephant, one bite at a time.

I'm excited about this blank new year ahead.  As I told someone the other day, "Life begins at seventy and I'm just getting started!"  I'm writing a series of eBooks called, "The Cranky Senior Series."  I figured out how to design a cover and I've designed one for the first book in the series, Mishaps and Miracles.  This book is based on my former book, Bumps Along the Way, but will now have a different cover and will be available on eReaders like Kindle and Nook, etc.  The other two books in the series will be about two cranky seniors getting married and two cranky seniors buying a restaurant.  Sound familiar?

There just aren't enough hours in the day to do all I want to do.  My "job" is offering LegalShield memberships to people who want the protection and security of knowing they can get legal services from a top notch legal firm without being billed.  Triple A is a pre-paid service so that when you need it, it's already paid for.  There are pre-paid phone cards and some pre-paid credit cards.  Now, you can pre-pay for legal service so when you need it, it's already paid for at an astonishingly low rate.  Fred and I have used our membership about eighty times over the last eleven years and wouldn't be without it.

Now, go and set some goals for yourself for this year and break it down into small steps.  Each time you reach a step, reward yourself for your little victory.

Quotation for the day:  Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.  Howard Thurman

Dream High

How high would you dream if you knew you couldn’t fail?

This saying has been my beacon for many, many years.  It tells me that the biggest impediment to achieving my goals is my own insecure self.  I’ve been told since childhood, or at least learned by watching family and friends, that someone like me should be content to be average.  Don’t make waves.  Don’t set your expectations too high so you don’t get disappointed.

Writing a book, being a published author, doing book signings, being a success, is something “other people” do.

Babe Ruth said, “Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”  Of course, if you never get up to bat, you never strike out.  Thus, you are safe in your own little world of never taking chances.  If you write a book but never submit it to a publisher, you never, ever, get one of those nasty rejection letters.  Then you can sit back and say, “My manuscript is probably great but as long as I keep it in a drawer, I’ll never know and never have to face being told it doesn’t meet someone else’s standards.”

What if, every manuscript you sent in was accepted?

What if, every goal you set, you achieved?

How high would you dream if you  knew you couldn’t fail?

The summer Olympics are on right now.  What if every athlete said, “I won’t win so why bother?”  Olympian Dara Torres says "Never put an age limit on your dreams."  She didn't and she won the gold in swimming 2000, 1992, 1984, silver 2008 and 1988, bronze in 2000 and 1988.

Are your dreams turning into nightmares?  Would you rather not try at all so you don't experience failure?

Dreams are those marvelous thoughts that tell us we can be more, have more, do more.  But we have to dream high enough.  We can’t limit ourselves by our own vision of what we “should” do or are “expected” to do.  Get out there and tear down the barriers that are holding you back.  Write that book.  Send in that query letter.  You never know what might happen when you “go for the gold!”

Today’s quote:  Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.  Winston Churchill