Running Header: Habits of Success

Habits of Success Ariella Chagolla California State University, Chico

Habits of Success Habits of Success Habits of success can be measured by multiple things. Success is attaining favorable or desirable outcome (Merriam-Webster 2013). Being a good writer helps if you have the most important habits of success, curiosity, creativity and responsibility. These three habits of success will get you just that, success. Curiosity helps create success because you have a desire to know more about certain things. As a writer, you should have the desire to want to learn more about other things. Great deals of people have a topic they dont usually want to know about, religion. I feel that curiosity and the topic of religion go hand in hand. Once you have the religion you like to practice, it isnt accustomed to have a desire to go and learn about another. In Christianity, idolizing other gods is a sin and is part of the famous Ten Commandments, its states You must not have any other god but me (Exodus 20:3 New Living Translation). Personally, Christianity is a big part of who I am as an individual. My own curiosities lead me to a great life style. In my life curiosity has lead me to a life changing experience, utilizing this in your writing can only help you and make our writing more noticeable. Curiosity is a great trait to have as a writer because it puts you in the position to learn other things and be content with your work. Creativity is another great habit to have as a writer. Being creative gives you the mind set to create your own things; aside from being a writer you could do much more. Creativity can come from the experiences you have had or looking back on other things you didnt think was creative but actually was. I believe noticing if something is creative gives you a new look on the true meaning of being creative. Being a college student gives you the time to be creative and aspiring to do something different, be innovative. College is the time to make mistakes in the aspects of being creative, giving you more time to truly be a master of creativeness. I once wrote

Habits of Success a love letter to a tree, using the traits of the tree to explain my love to an actual person (Chagolla 2013, October,4). Being a successful writer has the traits of this habit, because through creativity you can embrace a purer self and it can be seen through your work. Responsibility is part of being a successful writer. When being responsible in general, you have to own up to what is rightfully the thing to own up to. Being a responsible writer you have to make sure your writing is all it can be and more. As a student, that is involved with outside activities and not just being a full time student, always working on assignments is not an easy thing to do. I play ultimate Frisbee and that is a different responsibility to deal with because it does take up a lot of time. Managing practice twice a week from 7pm to 10pm can really consume a lot of my time, and not just practice to worry about but with playing a sport comes dedication outside of practice as well. Outside dedication deal with traveling for tournaments, Ive been to Santa Cruz, Sonoma, and Humboldt just this semester. It can get very exhausting. As writers, however, everyone has deadlines, and it is your responsibility to make sure that it gets done and it is done right. Even if our schedule contradicts with work from this English class it is important to make sure all of your responsibilities are done. Having that responsibility makes you a successful writer. There are certain habits that writers should have but are not as important as others: Engagement, which makes you more involved with your work, persistence, which keeps you pushing more and more, and metacognition, which goes into depth on an authors thoughts. I struggle with these certain traits. I do struggle with engagement because sometimes I cannot get interested in a certain topic. For an assignment, my group had to do a lot of research on trees that were on our schools campus, and I would have rather watched paint dry then do the assignment (Frank, Ross, Nguyen, Pleitez,& Chagolla, 2013). Being engaged in an assignment is a difficult

Habits of Success task, but if you master it, you can be successful. Persistence is another habit of success I flounder in. Persistence is the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects. This also has to do with the aspects of engagement as well; this can connect with the same assignment about the tree research. The tree research project was a long term project, and sustaining interest and attention was very difficult. However if a writer has this habit, it can lead to success. Another trait is metacognition, the ability to reflect on ones own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge. This habit I struggle in greatly because I can barely connect my thoughts to the authors thoughts. If a writer can master these habits of success, engagement, persistence and metacognition, they will become successful writers. There are more habits that writer can have as well, openness and flexibility. Me, as a writer, I believe I use them but not as well as I should. Dealing with openness, I keep an open mind when I have to do topics I am not familiar with, however if the topic is boring I dont really want to engage in the matter. Which I feel defeats the purpose of having openness and goes more into the habit of persistence in a writers work and habits. Flexibility is another trait that I use, I can be flexible when dealing with topics I do not favor or with things I dont like to do. When I think of flexibility I think of a ballerina because they are flexible performers with their body, I feel that writers should be flexible in their writing like a ballerina is on stage. Being flexible helps you not complain and ultimately helps you become a better writer. The habits of success in becoming a good writer are curiosity, creativity, and responsibility. These three habits have helped me become more successful because I have advanced as a writer utilizing the aspects of these habits of success. These three habits can ultimately help you become a successful and well-rounded writer.

Habits of Success Bibliography Success [Def. 2]. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster Online. In Merriam-Webster. Retrieved December 17, 2013, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/success Holy Bible New Living Translation, Second Ed. Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois,2007. Print. Chagolla, A (2013). The Love Letter. Retrieved from http://ariellaflorinda.weebly.com/the-loveletter.html Frank, T., Ross, C., Nguyen, L., Pleitez, L., & Chagolla, A. (2013). Our Trees. Retrieved from http://theedreamteam.weebly.com/