Last week, the first week into my layoff, I set a somewhat big (arbitrary) goal: I wanted to make $1000 in a week.

Now $1000 isn’t BIG money, some folks make that in a matter of hours. But $1000 is a nice chunk of change, and it felt like a solid number for my first foray back into the freelance writing game in a year.

I knew how I’d make it happen (uh, writing), but I also knew it would take a whole lot of consistent effort to pull it off. Thing is, I used to be a quitter. When things got too difficult I wouldn’t forge ahead, I would make excuses and I would give up. The old me would say that whatever half-assed effort I put in was good enough, and eventually, I would fall off. But after getting laid off, I knew I needed to hustle, so I told myself I’d make $1000 no matter what.

For the past month, I’ve been reading Jen Sincero’s book, You Are A Badass At Making Money. Even before being let go from my job, it was helping me shift my mindset and opening me up to so many creative ideas, from writing scripts to brainstorming new ways to take The Write Pitch to the next level. Before the layoff, I had already started writing daily gratitude lists in my journal and thanking money for being in my life and helping to provide freedom and options. Like Lisa Nichols always says, “Energy grows where energy goes,” and even before parting from my job, my energy was flowing toward some extra zeroes in my bank account abundance.

So when I challenged myself to make $1000 I knew I could do it, so long as I stayed the course.

And I did. I took my own Write Pitch advice and wrote + sent one pitch a day to editors at different publications. Some didn’t get picked up , some were ignored, and some were published–this article about Black Lightning, this piece about Everything, Everything, and this quick piece about a natural hair vlogger. The result? I made $1,150. Goal crushed.

Moral of the story, kids, if you want to do big ish, you’ve got to push yourself way past your comfort level. And when things get hard or boring or whatever, you’ve got to push yourself even more. No excuses, just action and results.

PLENTY of times (probably around Wednesday), I didn’t feel like writing a pitch or told myself I didn’t know what to write about. But an idea would appear and I kept writing them, even if I didn’t feel like I was seeing many results (fun fact: 2 of those articles were commissioned on Thursday afternoon and Friday–at the the end of my challenge. Stay the course, y’all).

The path to our goals is pretty simple (note: I didn’t say easy). Peep the formula below.

I can *seriously* accomplish whatever I set my mind to. And so can you.

Dream big.
Set huge goals.
Take ACTION.
Stay the course.
Win.

— britni danielle (@BritniDWrites) May 20, 2017

Now, who’s ready to win? Cuz success, to me, is when everybody is out here flourishing in whatever way we want.

Leave a comment down below letting me know what BIG ASS goal you’re setting for yourself this week and how you plan on accomplishing it. Let’s do this together.