Chicken Soup for the Soul and MORE magazine

This past January, at a Yes to Success seminar with Debra Poneman, we spent some time writing down goals and accomplishments that we wanted to achieve in one month, one year and five years.  We also listed 100 things to do before we kicked the bucket.  I wrote “be in a major magazine” and “publish a story in Chicken Soup for the Soul” as two of the things I wanted to accomplish.  What I really meant for the magazine goal was to publish an article, but as it turned out, Andrea Atkins from MORE magazine did an article on “I Didn’t Know I Had It In Me” for the November issue.  MORE flew out two photographers from NY to do a photo shoot at the Barefoot Ski Ranch in Texas the day before the Nationals.  Despite two hours of pictures and several runs up and down the lake, to my surprise, they selected a picture of me sitting on the boat instead of standing on the water:

I’ve always loved the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and years ago, I casually said to myself, “I’d like to get a chapter published.”  But I never wrote down the goal, nor did I actively pursue it.  It wasn’t until the Yes to Success seminar that I put it in black and white in front of me.  I finally visited the Chicken Soup for the Soul website and browsed through their upcoming books.  “Find Your Happiness” was the title of an upcoming book and the deadline for submissions was a short time away.  I sat down and wrote.  Less than an hour later, I was done writing.  I gave it a quick once over and hit the send button.

In early July, I received an email that I nearly deleted because I didn’t recognize the sender and didn’t pay attention to the subject line.  It was from the editor:

July 8, 2011

Dear Karen,

Your story “The Best Years of Life Are Still Ahead  ” has made it to the final selection round for Chicken Soup for the Soul: Find Your Happiness. Only a small percent of the submitted stories have made it this far. The vast majority of stories in this “last round” will appear in the book, but we do not make the final decisions until about a month before the publication date.

As you can see, the story did make it to the final round when I received a box of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Find Your Happiness books:

So today, it’s your turn. Start your list of 100 things you’d like to accomplish, do or achieve.  Share some of those in the comments section.  And along the way, let me know what you check off that list.