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I’m a Goal-Getter

21 Jan

As I mentioned recently, progress is the key to the goal, and as you’ll see in this post, I’m a goal-getter.

Thought I Told You… All I Do is WIN

I’ve already achieved one of the goals I mentioned this year, which is to win a Toastmasters contest. I won the International Speech contest this week at one of my clubs (I’m currently an active member of three clubs). In order to win the title of Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking, you have to win 5 levels of competition:

Club
Area
Division (contestants come from several “Areas” of the state)
District (during a banquet at the District Spring Conference for your local district)
Finals (at the Annual Convention)

I’m really proud of this accomplishment because it’s a first for me, and a lot of hard work went into it since I started preparing for the contest 3 months ago. I applied several tips from a former World Champion of Public Speaking, studied pointers for this contest (including recommended speech topics), committed my speech to memory for the first time EVER (I didn’t memorize it word-for-word after I wrote it), and most importantly, I visualized winning. I pictured my “stage time” in my mind and saw myself giving the speech onstage. I saw people’s reactions and felt myself connecting with them. I practiced at home multiple times with and without notes, and I told myself I was going to win.
I will compete in another club contest next week and then advance to the next level competition, the “Area” contest. (I am what Toastmasters considers a “dual member” and am allowed to compete in multiple club contests, but can only compete in one Area contest.)
That’s my biggest news for this week. In other news, I have been doing well with keeping a daily quiet time with God. Normally in the morning I wake up with just enough time to check email and dash off somewhere, but I have rearranged my priorities this month to keep first things first. I believe that staying committed to this alone time with Him will be the key to my success.
Also, I’m still doing well with Lexi’s 6-month Weight Loss Challenge on my goal to losing 25 pounds, and I purchased a set of dance classes at a discount but I have yet to go :S I will do a more in-depth post on all that next week.

False Starts

In the meantime, there are some tasks I’ve pushed to the backburner. Things I still need to do are:

Move through the edits and rewrites on my book. I just paid the balance of my invoice, so the ball is in my court. Procrastination has reared its ugly head and I’ve been letting fear keep me from really digging in like I should. I have set a date to have all my rewrites, second round of edits done and sent to the publisher by Memorial Day. (It sounds like a long way off, but it’s not.)
Re-load my savings account. I tapped into it pretty heavily in December for gift-giving, but at least I won’t have any credit card statements coming to me. I’ve also been consistently tithing, so I haven’t slacked there.

Are you making headway in some areas and slipping back in some, like me? Let me know how your goal-getting is going.