Create a GBHG for This Year

Do you have a Great Big Hairy Goal (GBHG) for the new year?

Whenever the calendar flips to a new year, it's an opportunity to change and make some dream of yours happen. Mark Victor Hansen often talks about the necessity of creating this GBHG. Write down your goal in a few words. Then paste it on the mirror in the bathroom or on the top of your desk or some place that you see it often.

When you see that goal what steps are you taking today to accomplish this GBHG?

One of my friends wants to publish her fiction. She has taken courses and attended writers conferences. Active in publishing, she regularly helps other writers improve their books through detailed work and critiques. From time to time, I ask this friend about her own writing and what is happening with it. Year after year, it never happens and yet I know she continues to hang on to this GBHG.

I love what my friend Bodie Thoene told me years ago about the work of writing her 600+ page manuscripts. “No little elves come out at night and type my pages,” she explained. Instead Bodie consistently writes pages and completes novels.

Maybe you've actually completed several novels or nonfiction manuscripts. It takes something else to get that material published. You have to craft an amazing pitch or book proposal. Yes, fiction authors need book proposals. You have seconds to grab the attention of the agent or editor.

If you've done the work to create this proposal or manuscript, it does absolutely no good to keep it in your computer or file drawer. You have to actively be looking for the right connection—the right editor or the right literary agent who will champion your cause and get your book into the marketplace. I'm keenly aware that it is hard work and takes consistent and regular effort.

Consistent effort is how you accomplish a GBHG. You have to take your larger goal and break it into smaller goals. Get it on your daily list of “things to do” so you move forward and accomplish your goal.

A year ago, I was speaking with a friend about how I had not accomplished one of my GBHGs. For a year, I took a course on how to create a membership course. I worked through the lessons in the course and created my game plan of what I would make and what it would look like. I even wrote the website for it. But it never happened. I was speaking with this friend about how I had never pulled it completely together to launch this project. It was in limbo where it resided only in my head and not in the public.

As I spoke to my friend, I was struck with how crazy I must have sounded. In that moment, I decided to take action and complete my course and launch it.

Taking action is not simple. It required hours of focused work yet last year I launched my Write A Book Proposal course and have had great feedback from the various students who have completed the course. The course is 12 lessons and over three months. I am continuing to market this course and encourage people to take it. I know it is helping writers around the world to have better proposals and pitches.

Last summer, I met one of my students who came to the writers' conference in Philadelphia. She came from Sydney, Australia! It opened my eyes that my online course has no geographic or time boundaries. Students can learn on their own pace and schedule anywhere in the world.

I've got my own GBHG for this year. I've written it down and I've broken the goal into smaller parts that I can easily accomplish—with consistent effort. I'm excited about the potential of my GBHG to help many people in the weeks ahead.

OK, now it's your turn. What have you been dreaming about in your heart to accomplish, yet for whatever reason not getting done? Pull out some paper or open a file on your computer and write down your GBHG. Then break it into smaller steps and create a plan for you to get it done in the weeks ahead.

We've started a new year. I believe you can get it done. I will be accomplishing my GBHG. How about you?