It's week one of the Write Your Transformational Book Challenge. Here's your first tip.

It's been said by some of the top experts in the human potential field that your current habits have helped you achieve only your current level of success. If you want to achieve a new level of success, you must change your habits. Habits for writers and authors include not just where and when you sit down to write, but also the attitude with which you approach these activities.

As you start the Write Your Transformational Book Challenge, look at your attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and habits. Analyze whether they are getting you where you want to go. Decide if they serve you.

And what are your goals? The most successful writers have goals; without goals, you don't know what you want to achieve. Each small goal gets you closer to the larger one: authorship. Each time you progress along the path, you get closer to the destination.

In his classic bestseller Think and Grow Rich, Napolean Hill offers six steps for setting and reaching goals. With this course, you've got the first four handled: finish the first draft of book by the end of July; write approximately 700 words per day and 5,000 per week. You need to complete steps #3 and #4.

1. Have a specific goal.
2. Have a specific time to achieve your goal.
3. Write down your goal.
4. Develop a plan to achieve your goal.

Of utmost importance are the last two steps in Hill's goal-achievement formula:

5. Decide what price you are willing to pay.
6. Think about your goal every day.

Use all six steps in this course.

I'd like to focus on #5 for a moment. Paying a price to reach your goal means achieving something, which costs you personally on some level. You might actually have to sacrifice, give up something . . . like a few hours of television, a vacation, some sleep, time spent reading. Yes, I'm talking about not doing something you enjoy to achieve the goal you desire.

For the next three months, you might have to give up things. But turn that thought around. Think of it this way: you are gaining something. By the end of the challenge - just 90 days from now - you will hold a manuscript in your hands.

You aren't paying a price, sacrificing or giving up anything. You are investing in the future, holding on to that which is important to you and fulfilling your dream. You are also making it possible to make a positive and meaningful difference with your words.