Goals & Losing Trust in Yourself

Morning pages, small wins, and self-confidence

I promise this post is going somewhere writing-related, but you’ll have to stick with me for a minute first.

So.

I have been having trouble with my energy levels for a while now. Part of it’s being in my forties. Part of it is was a lack of exercise. Part of it is hormonal/mood stuff. Part of it is lack of sleep (thanks, high school band camp!) Most recently, part of it is grief.

I mentioned in the last letter that July was rough. My dad passed away last month (for those who know me personally, this was my biological dad, not my stepdad.) He had a short but tough battle with colon cancer that went from us thinking he had a few years left to a very rapid decline in three short months.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about, but I’m sharing that because when you see someone pass away too soon (he was 66), especially if it’s a relative, you can’t help but start to evaluate your own health. So I’ve been more diligent lately about sticking to the healthy eating I’ve been doing over the past year and a half, I’ve scheduled a colonoscopy, and I’ve started to focus more on the exercise portion of healthy living—which is always the most challenging part for me to stick to.

So, when looking at ways to incorporate exercise in a consistent way into my life, I thought of my morning pages. If you’ve followed this newsletter since the start, you know that I began doing morning pages back in March. Three pages of free-writing/journaling every day.

I’d never stuck with a journaling practice in my life, despite countless attempts. But this time, it stuck. I haven’t missed a day since I started. I even wrote pages on the plane on the way to see my dad in the hospital. The process has become a part of my day I look forward to. If for some reason, there’s something in the morning that prevents me from doing the pages, I make sure to do them before the end of the day.

And keeping that commitment to myself (along with making my bed every day) has turned out to be a bit of a revelation. It feels GOOD. It gives me “energy pennies” in Becca-Syme speak. So when I decided to try to apply it to exercise, I kept this in mind.

I’ve committed to 30 minutes a day of exercise (dealer’s choice on what the activity is each day so that I don’t feel locked into one thing.) But when I made the mental commitment, I heard that snarky inner voice say, “Oh yeah, sure you’ll do that. Uh-huh.”

Because this is a commitment I’ve struggled with all my life, my inner confidence about it was mostly non-existent. I didn’t trust myself.

And that sucked to realize. I didn’t trust myself? What the hell? If I can’t trust myself, who can I trust?

BUT WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS, WRITER FRIENDS?

You may be wondering why you should care about my fitness woes when this is a newsletter about the writing life. Well, I think because of this:

The writing life is LOADED with self-commitments that we break. Not because we’re lazy or dumb or *insert your personal brand of negative self-talk*, it’s because creativity doesn’t always operate on the timelines we confine it to.

Deadlines are a business thing. The creative mind, especially the tired, overworked, trying-to-write-X-number-books-a-year-while-also-being-a-parent/working person/whatever mind, doesn’t give a shit about your deadlines. It can only do what it can do with the fuel it has.

Which is how we end up in burnout.

But it’s also how we end up eroding our self-confidence. Every time we make some (often nearly impossible) writing commitment to ourselves (a book in three weeks! Five books a year! Making X amount of money!) and then we can’t/don’t do it, we’re telling ourselves, “You can’t be trusted. You’re a liar.”

It’s subconscious, but that hit to our self-worth can eat away at us. And if you continue to fail to keep those self-promises (or you keep them but you run yourself into the ground doing it), you naturally stop having the enthusiasm to make new commitments or set new goals. We stop wanting to try. Or at least that’s what I think happened to me last year before I took the sabbatical. “I know I can’t do it. See evidence. So why bother setting another goal or planning another book?”

Now, I’m not saying that we should stop setting goals or stop reaching for “stretch” goals, but I think we need to be cognizant of the story those goals will tell us if we don’t reach them.

I think setting smaller, more realistic goals that are in your control can help repair some of the damage. For example something like “every weekday between the hours of 1pm-3pm, I will be at my computer with the internet turned off and I will work on my writing. If the words come, great. If they don’t, I will sit there and brainstorm or free-write in a notebook or write a journal entry in my character’s voice.” Something that is in your control, doable, measurable (by time which you can control more than word count) and still moves you toward your deadlines.

Then, those bigger, stretch goals should be labeled as stretch so that if you meet them, you can celebrate, and if you don’t, you only promised yourself you would TRY to get those not that you WOULD. That way, you’re not breaking the trust you have in yourself. You’re not eroding your confidence.

Now, your mileage may vary depending on your personality type. I’m an Achiever (in Strengthsfinder speak) and A+ student type, so not hitting a goal and not getting the A+ is quite a blow. If that doesn’t affect you that way, you probably can ignore this post.

But for me, this feels like a revelation. I am happiest when I make commitments to myself and keep them. When I don’t keep my word to myself, my mood and motivation plummet (and this eventually leads to burnout.) Therefore, I need to be really careful about what those commitments are and how I phrase them.

Small wins each day can be more powerful than a big win at the end that I had to drain myself dry to achieve.

For instance, I started Weight Watchers last year and lost 30lbs, but that was over eight months. Slow by most diet methods. But…it’s stayed off. Because I developed a habit/style of eating. And I never told myself (like I had in the past), I’m going to lose this many pounds by this date. (Which sounds real similar to, I’m going to write 100k words in three months!) My goal was just to use their food-tracking system each day, stay within my points, and trust the process.

Having success with it built back a little self-trust because, honestly, I went in expecting myself to fail because of past history. But honing in on small daily wins changed the game for me. (Really, it’s just a version of the one-day-at-a-time concept used in addiction recovery programs.)

So for now, I’m keeping my self-commitments focused on health/wellness stuff (physical and mental) and then will expand out to my writing as I build those self-trust muscles back up. But I wanted to share my thoughts in case framing things this way might help someone else or save them from burnout.

I’ll let you know how this new way of thinking goes for me.

But I’d love to hear if any of this resonates with you. (Or am I totally talking in circles? LOL.) Do you ever feel like you’ve eroded some of the trust you had in yourself when you set goals and don’t meet them? Are your writing goals motivating you or draining you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Hit the comment or reply button below to chime in or tap the Like button to let me know I’m not shouting into the void. ;)

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