So I asked Santa for a moleskine and a fountain pen because I want to do more journaling by hand. When I write things down it helps me reflect with a bit more clarity. I used to do a lot of that when I was younger but it went by the wayside when I got my first laptop. When I think of some of the classic authors – Alcott, Dickens, or Poe — it’s amazing to think they wrote entire novels by hand. Hypergraphia was an oddly Victorian affliction. Do you think you could write a novel with a quill? How about a few lines a day with a ballpoint?

Many cultures have traditions around writing. In Japan, people will gather together to write down their resolutions in calligraphy on banners. That’s not such a big tradition in the US. Until someone figures out a way to commercialize it, I don’t think there will be a televised Resolution Writing Day Parade any time soon.

Writing New Year’s resolutions means reflecting on the past — not a popular concept in pop culture. If there seems to be a reoccurring theme in your life — self-doubt, lack of commitment, or an inability to finish the things you start — the answer may lie between the pages of your journal — if you keep one.

It may not feel pleasant to reopen old wounds, but getting things out of your head and on paper is a step toward self-understanding, and from there you can strategize how to get where you want to go. Did you know that people who keep food journals are more successful at losing weight?

Aim to write at least once a day and then as often as you need to. Include everything, both positive and negative. If old memories pop into your head, let them flow freely onto the page. Make peace with your past by writing down what frightened or angered you the most about hurtful events.

Talk to someone about any events that can’t be resolved–even if that means a professional. Sometimes we need someone to help us over the final hurdle that frees us to grow toward the kind of future we want to have.

Reference: Gold Mine to Success

Most of us want to improve our lives. We want to live life instead of what many feel is drudgery or mere existence. We want to have meaning in our lives, freedom to do the things we love and spend time with the ones we love.

When you start down your self improvement path, you’re filled with enthusiasm and motivation. Then you hit a few speed bumps and unexpected failures and your motivation waned. You may have fallen into depression and decided to give up. All of those positive thoughts turned into negative ones.

We’ve all experienced these emotions that can cause us to give up prematurely. All that upsurge of energy when we started a new project inevitably ends as dreams become reality and we lose our confidence.

You must turn these negative emotions around and the best way to do that is to understand them, analyze them and what caused them. We lose our motivation as we lose our focus, our confidence and our direction. If you can learn to control these three emotions you can control your life.

Focus on what you really want. Be specific and be positive. We generally think in terms of what we don’t have rather than focus on what we want. Don’t focus on your fears but what you can do to overcome them. Don’t focus on being poor but on a plan to create wealth.

To do this make a plan to get there one step at a time. You don’t become the president of a company until you’ve come up from the ranks. Focus on your plan to achieve your objectives and your goals. Be realistic on your goals. Goals that are unreachable can lead to depression. But even small goals that are achieved lead to increased motivation.

Boost your confidence by taking stock on what you already have and not what you lack. You’ll probably discover you’re more successful than you think. We waste our mind power being jealous of others instead of working on achieving our own aspirations. Don’t take your strengths for granted and count your failures one by one. Count your blessings one by one and whatever your mind thinks it can accomplish.

Without direction there is no motivation. You must create a day-to-day strategy. Make a to-do list and do it. Mark off each item once it’s accomplished and do not mark it off until it’s done.

You’ll eventually get tired of looking at it on your list and do it. By making a list or outline of what needs to be done, you’ll find ways to do it and you’ll believe that you truly deserve success. Don’t waste time by worrying about the future. Start today by doing something to change your future for the better. Today’s actions can create a better future.

Don’t be surprised or depressed about a loss of motivation — it’s human nature. Look at it as an opportunity to step back and analyze what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right. Discover your faults and correct them. When you re-evaluate your plans and goals from a fresh perspective, you’ll feel a new surge of enthusiasm and motivation.

Keeping a motivation journal can help you in so many ways they’re hard to list in this short space. If you’ve ever kept a diary or any other journal you know what it’s like to make this sort of commitment.

Making daily entries into your journal is like talking to a friend. In a sense, your journal is your friend that you can tell anything and always know it’s confidential. If you’re concerned about anonymity don’t put your name in it.

A motivation journal will help you think positively and creatively. It will help you develop new skills and increase confidence as these skills evolve. By writing your activities down, you crystallize your thinking and your goals allowing you to act with greater self-understanding.

As you discover yourself, you may become aware of things that need change. You may also discover that you’re a pretty wonderful person as you are. By keeping a motivation journal, we can assume that you’ve already set goals and mapped a path to accomplish those goals.

You’ve remembered to set realistic goals with attainable increments. These should contain specific objectives with a time frame and deadlines. With no time frame or deadline you could find yourself floundering endlessly and never making any noticeable progress.

This may be a good time to list lifetime goals for you. Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? These could be family lifetime goals, academic goals, even social and athletic goals. Again, it’s critical that you be specific. For instance, what grade average do you want to maintain, how far do you want to run or how much weight do you desire to lose?

A journal enables us to see what we’re doing, thinking and feeling on matters that support our motivation. It’s almost like seeing yourself through another person’s eyes. You discover what’s going on inside your head when you write them down.

Your thoughts, attitudes and goals become clearer when you can actually see them on paper. This shows what’s really important to you and helps you to maintain a positive attitude.

Write down your successes and your failures. By doing this, we can analyze what went wrong and what went right. We learn what lifted us up to that success and gave us the motivation to do it. We also learn what lowers our motivation and what’s preventing us from succeeding.

Make it fun and something you look forward to each evening when you make your entry. The journal can be simply written on any paper or you might enjoy purchasing a colorful journal with pictures that you can associate with your goals.

It can be written in first or third person, depending on how you wish to view yourself in the journal. Is it about you or this person you’re observing as they climb and stumble each day?

When you’ve accomplished your goals and your journal is complete, you’ll feel empowered to take charge of your life. (Actually, you’ll feel this before completion.) You’ve charted a new direction for yourself and saw it through to the end as you sifted through fears, doubts and worry. You can relive your successes and review what made you fall backward. Start a motivation journal today. You don’t want to miss a day of your new and exciting life.

Did you set goals last year and not achieve them? What obstacles prevented you from achieving your goals? Have you come up with a game plan on how you’re going to deal with those barriers in the new year? If not, you’ll be frustrated again with your lack of progress. It’s time to get a clear vision for the new year.

One thing that is inevitable when it comes to goals is obstacles, but why do some people make up their minds to achieve something and do it, while others let themselves be controlled by obstacles?

I used to live in a small house that had no dishwasher. I hate the sight of dirty dishes so I’ve always done my washing up right away. However, in this little house I found that I hated doing the dishes with a passion. When I came home, I typically used the kitchen entrance and there they would be –- waiting for me like moldy old friends.

I tried to analyze why I developed this aversion to dish washing. I came to realize that I was physically uncomfortable standing at the sink. There was a vent directly under my feet so it hurt to stand there. The double sink itself was shallow so it seemed full with only a few plates. The position of the faucet was awkward and caused me to constantly bang dishes into it when I washed them. All these obstacles combined to make me hate doing the dishes.

I removed all the obstacles with one trip to my local home store. I had a deeper double sink installed with a goose neck faucet so I wouldn’t bang things into it. I put a mat over the vent. Not just any mat –- one of those made for people who stand for long periods.

Many people wouldn’t have spent the money on a rental home, but it was worth it to me since I knew I’d live there for several years. What I learned from this experience is to analyze your situation and work relentlessly to remove obstacles.

What are some of the typical obstacles when it comes to setting goals? Without a doubt, fear is the biggest of them all. Fear can initially get you going because you don’t want to fail, but it won’t keep you going. What would your life look like if you achieved what you want? What would you have to give up? Who would you have to leave behind? It can be scary.

A close second is procrastination. Tomorrow will never come if you are a procrastinator. Remember Wimpey from the Popeye cartoon? I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Don’t be a Wimpey — you’re just cheating yourself of your dreams.

Procrastination requires a support group. Involve family and friends to help keep you accountable. Support lets you know that people who care about you are watching.

The flip side of procrastination is simply losing interest in your goal. If you procrastinate long enough, something else will come along to divert your interest — or the naysayers have finally taken their toll.

What do you do when the thrill is gone? Diagnose the problem. Have you truly lost interest or is something pushing you towards that end? Maybe a new direction on the same goal is in order. Instead of getting a degree, take course at the local community college — just don’t give up.

Perhaps the most serious obstacle is negative self-talk. You probably don’t even realize that you are doing it. Remember the brain accepts whatever programming we give it. So if we tell it something often enough and strongly enough, it will take action and make it happen.

The antidote to negative self-talk is positive self-talk. It requires effort on our part to notice when we are thinking negatively so learn to recognize it. If necessary, write positive affirmations on a piece of paper. Say them aloud and tape them to the bathroom mirror. Read them while brushing your teeth.

When you achieve your goal, you’ll look back and realize you learned a few things about resiliency and overcoming obstacles.

Have you seen the show Ruby on the Style Network? The network describes Ruby this way, “Ruby is an amazing woman trying to lose hundreds of pounds without surgery, miracle diets or shortcuts. Just one person—mind, body and soul—in the fight to save her life.” Each week we get to see what it’s like to walk in Ruby’s shoes as a large person in a world that doesn’t always fit. I was hooked on the show the first time I saw it. Ruby is so inspirational, and she’s been successful at losing weight. But what I noticed about her success is that she has a whole team of people behind her.

Anytime you have a goal to achieve, you have to realize it’s not a solitary process. Assistance in some form is needed to make the process work. You’ll need to develop a support team of individuals to help you achieve your goal.

Remember that you’re not reinventing the wheel. Whatever your goal is, there are people who have done the same thing before. You don’t need to do things the hard way if you use the experience and knowledge of others who have been there and done that. Of course you will personalize your goal, but there are few original ideas in the world.

In order to keep you from giving up in frustration, make reaching your goal as simple a process as possible. That way, you won’t end up feeling like you have to do everything all by yourself. With a support team, you will have a group of people that can be counted on when times are tough and you’re at the end of your rope.

The team can consist of anyone that you trust and has your best interests at heart. Consider those closest to you such as family and friends, but don’t limit yourself to that group. Family members can be notoriously one sided in their opinions of you. In fact, they may be enablers that keep you from reaching your goal. Feel free to look outside your inner circle to people that are professionals in an area you need help.

You may want to keep your goals from certain people if you feel they won’t be supportive. Sometimes goals are like preemies — they need to be incubated a while before being introduced to the whole wide world. You want to be well established in a pattern of positive behaviors before you face naysayers.

If you are a spiritual person, you may want to involve people of your faith group. Become a part of a prayer group to increase your spiritual strength as you undertake this goal. For religious individuals, the spiritual component of the support team is an integral part of achieving their goals and should not be left out.

Another option is a mastermind group. A mastermind group is composed of people who are all working towards the same or similar goal. They may be at different stages on their path to success, but the benefit is that you will receive help from people who have been where you are, and help those who haven’t progressed as far as you have. Each person in the group is united in the fact that some day they will all achieve that goal.

Mastermind groups can be found on the Internet or you can create your own from among your family, friends, and acquaintances if you have the inclination. Mastermind groups are equally helpful for business and personal goals. Everyone in the group realizes that multiple heads are better than one.