Free Birthday Gifts

To celebrate my first year of blogging and thank my amazing readers I’ve adapted two of my most popular posts and made them into printable PDFs. I hope you’ll print them out and put them on your wall at home<!–more> or work to help you stay on track with being happy and motivated every day. It’s only a small token of my gratitude and doesn’t reflect how much I appreciate your being here but I hope you’ll enjoy them.

Self Improvement Freebies

51 Ways To Feel Happy – Simple ideas which allow you to take control of your own happiness and turn it on when you need to. Have fun getting your daily dose of happiness. Get free happiness tips now.

9 Ways To Get What You Want Out Of Life – Perseverance is the key to achieving your goals and these tips will motivate you to keep trying. Get 9 Ways To Get What You Want Out Of Life now.

My Blogging Challenge

I started writing Get In the Hot Spot seriously in 2009  for three main reasons:

1. To force me to write more often.
2. To challenge myself by learning about blogging.
3. To help people who wanted to move overseas.

Because I work best with a purpose in mind I set myself a goal of 1000 subscribers after one year of blogging. I went for 1000 because I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where!) that publishers might actually start to get interested in a writer with 1000 subscribers and that sounded appealing.

My Blogging Evolution

My first post was actually written in 2006. I set up the blog because I was a writer with a fear of being read and I wanted to overcome that fear. Three years later I finally got round to tackling and overcoming what now seems a ridiculous fear and started blogging about how to move abroad. That topic was a natural choice because I’ve lived and worked in the UK, France, the USA, Zimbawe, Laos, New Zealand and now Australia so it’s a subject I know and love. But somehow Get In the Hot Spot morphed into a self improvement blog because I realized that my goal was actually broader than helping people who wanted to emigrate. I wanted to help anyone who had a dream and thought they were too scared, uninformed, busy, poor, old or whatever the excuse was to achieve it. I was motivated because people often asked me what I was going to do when I got to a new country, where I was going to live, how long I’d spend there and where I’d go next. Most of all I was motivated by people who asked why I wanted to go or said they’d love to do it too.

The Live Your Dream Blog

I think everyone has dreams or things they’d like to do in their lifetime and I believe everyone has a right to achieve their dreams and the possibility of making them happen. But not everyone does. I also believe that no matter how big or small your dream is it helps to be in touch with people who support your dream and want you to make it happen. That’s the role I want to this blog to take. Although my two main goals, travel and writing are quite common there’s one dream we all have and struggle with at some point in our lives: happiness. I experience depression and it’s not fun. I think many people live with depression or dissatisfaction for years and do nothing about it. I did. But after being diagnosed as depressed I started to study how to be happy, to focus on my personal happiness and learn what made me content and what didn’t. I also realized that some of my dreams weren’t being fulfilled. Most importantly a lifelong childhood dream to be a writer. So I worked out how to make time in my life for more writing and still run my own business and take care of my three children. I knew I had a lot to share with people and I wanted to make people realize the urgency to strike out for your dreams, seek happiness and get what you want out of life. My first post about self development in June 2009 was called Changing Crappiness Into Happiness. It was inspired by a talk from a remarkable woman and a lesson we all get when someone we’re close to dies ~ life’s short and we need to make the most of it while we can.

Look into your crystal ball and what do you see?

A long healthy life with plenty of time to achieve all your goals and realize every dream? I hope so. But it’s possible life might be cut short at any moment and that’s why we should be living our dream life now. This blog got a life of its own and became a self improvement blog urging people to follow their dreams, no matter what they were, and giving them the tools and confidence to go for it. My dream of writing and travel are fairly common ones but the dream of living your dream is universal.

The Results of One Year of Blogging

Today (March 23) 9 months after setting the 1000 blog subscribers target I have 1014 subscribers (637 by RSS feed and 377 by email.) A resounding success. Please note the feed count varies from day to day. I’m not sure why Feedburner does that apart from to screw with my head – just this morning it plummeted to 850 – but it’s clear that the blog is definitely on an upward turn. In a short time I’ve changed from a woman who wanted to be a writer but had a fear of being read to a writer with over 800 regular readers and about 6000 unique visitors to my blog so far this month. Apart from writing regularly here I’ve also had guest posts on some of the most popular blogs on the Internet, like Zen Habits, Problogger, Dumb Little Man, Unclutterer and Stepcase Life Hack, and been published in a major Australian newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph. One thing I love about this blog is that in reality most of my readers are already living their dreams or setting the wheels in motion. They come to hang out here because they like being with people who are doing it too and understand them. At Get In the Hot Spot selling everything and moving abroad isn’t weird and taking a big risk to follow your dream isn’t crazy. It’s applauded.

My Blogging Journey

It hasn’t been a smooth one. There have been plenty of times when it seemed as if no one was reading my blog. To be honest, apart from one supportive friend who commented on every post in the early days no one was reading it. But I realised that blogging, like all challenges is something you need to persevere at. The 1000 subscribers challenge was partly to make me commit to this blog and also to give me an escape route if my blog failed. Although I love writing this blog it does take up a lot of my time so I shouldn’t carry on doing it unless there’s some possibility that I might one day be able to make an income from it and for that to happen I need readers and the more the better. I also gained enough confidence to send my writing to other blogs and newspapers. There were the inevitable rejections (it’s a writer’s rite of passage) but I took heart from what I’d written about having grit and kept on trying until I succeeded. It worked.

My Gift To You Today

I’ve been wanting to make some of my blog posts into printable Pdfs ever since I saw how popular they were. I’ve finally done that because I want to thank you dear reader for hanging out here and by doing so encouraging me to hang on writing my blog. The original posts are: 101 Ways To Be Happy and 10 Ways To Get The Life You Want. I’ve adapted them so that you can print each of them out on one sheet of A4 and put them on your wall at home or in the office as a constant reminder to stay on track prioritizing your happiness and keeping you moving closer to living your dream. Please email them to anyone who you think would enjoy them too so we can spread the happiness.

Get free printable Pdf of 51 Ways To Feel Happy PDF now.

Get free printable Pdf of 9 Ways To Get What You Want Out Of Life now.

My Blogging Plans

I’m determined to carry on blogging now. It’s brought so much to me and my readers. Here are my plans:

• To write more information and inspiration that keeps me and my readers focused on our dreams.
• To get a slick modern look for the blog. I’m finally going to invest in professional graphic design.
• To earn some income from the blog so that I’m paid for my time creating it and can keep at it.
• To sell e-books and maybe other products such as t-shirts, notepads and posters.
• To continue growing my readership and building my profile on the Internet and in print.
• To work out how I can also help people learn about blogging and online marketing for small businesses. I want to integrate this new topic into Get In the Hot Spot so please let me know what you think.

There’s a lot I haven’t worked out yet but I’m sure of one thing. It’s going be fun.

PS

It’s not just my blogging birthday but my real birthday too. I like to keep quiet about that one. But for all you nosey parkers let’s just say that I’m twice 21 and getting better every year.

Thanks for Reading, Please Subscribe

Thanks so much for reading. If you haven’t already subscribed to Get In the Hot Spot please do. It’s a great way to stay motivated and inspired plus it’s totally free. Don’t miss out. Subscribe now by email or to choose the RSS Feed for updates in your feed reader. Photo credit: MarcinMoga. Technorati token: VX8KYAP5DK7Q (Just ignore this, Technorati made me do it:)

Recent Guest Posts

I’ve been honored to write for these fabulous blogs. Check them out and please leave a comment if you have a moment. Lemons To Llamas: How To Ace Your Job Interview Eden Journal: On Happiness Media Interview at Every Bright Day: Do something scary every day The Noosa Journal: Sun, surf, sand, sea and separation – Interesting thoughts on why Noosa has a high divorce rate including my theroy that people who make a big move were often unhappy before they moved. A change of location doesn’t bring happiness. At the end of the day if you’re not happy, you’re not happy. I’d like to write more about this in a seperate blog post but do contact me if you’re interested in the topic.

Free Downloads

51 Ways To Feel Happy

9 Ways To Get What You Want Out Of Life

Enjoy the print outs and please email them to all your friends because I think we all need as much help staying happy and focused on getting what we want out of life as possible.

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