Back when I used to watch TED talks — what happened to them? — I saw one by Elizabeth Gilbert, the Eat Pray Love woman.
Gilbert’s talk came soon after she had published the book, which immediately went on to became a raging, runaway, international bestseller-to-be-made-into-a-movie-starring-Julia-Roberts.
Gilbert’s TED talk was about what now. What does she do now that she’s gotten everything she ever worked for? She seemed nervous, and she admitted to being afraid.
Weird, right?
Gilbert was probably set with money for the rest of her life. She had achieved more than 99.9% of people who ever dream of being a writer will ever achieve. She had endless amounts of praise and recognition.
And yet, what now?
This is a common thing. It happens whatever you’re after, not just with writing but whatever achievements you’re working towards, even with small goals.
Trivial though it sounds, it happens to me whenever I end up concluding a launch.
What now?
Usually I’ve been working on this thing for a while, building the actual product, preselling it, then there’s the climax of the launch promo. If it all goes well, I feel elated. For a bit. And then, what now?
I’ll tell ya.
I learned a long time ago that the answer is, now you get to work on the next thing, which is really where the satisfaction lies. As business coach Rich Schefren says, goals are there to get you excited to take action. That’s really their only purpose.
So this email is for you if you have recently completed a project or achieved a goal, and you’re wondering, “What now?”
Since I help getting people started with writing a daily email, maybe your next project could be writing, building a personal brand, or simply seeing what happens if you consistently send an email out each day into the world.
Because in my experience, the process of writing and publishing something every day is a micro-goal in itself.
It takes some work to do it. It’s satisfying to have done it. And then it starts all over again tomorrow. But again, that’s really where the satisfaction lies.
In any case, if you’d like my help with daily emailing as your new project: