The ABC's of Author Success
I recently went on a holiday, a cruise. It was sailing the Pacific Ocean where I got a little creative myself -- I know, I'm supposed to relax on a cruise, not read thesis’s or write books – but hey, when you love what you do…
On reflecting on the author success that had been generated over the years, I was inspired to write a book about it. A large component of the first part of the book is what I have called the ABCs of Author Success.
The 'A' is for ACTION. Taking action is that point in time when everything begins to happen for you and your goal. It’s also the moment where you stop ‘trying’. God loves a trier – how often have we heard or said that? Well, by taking action you realize that trying doesn’t exist. It is simply a matter of do or do not. To illustrate this point I’d like you to take a pen and place it in front of you. Great, now I want you to try to pick it up. That’s it, try and pick it up. Now, did you pick it up? Yes? Fantastic. You do realize that you didn’t try to pick up the pen don’t you? You actually picked up the pen. You just did it. Now place it down in front of you, and try again. You’ll soon see that you either are, or are not, picking up the pen. This philosophy applies to anything. You either take ACTION or you do not.
The 'B' is for BELIEF. Belief in yourself; belief that you will accomplish your goal; belief that YOU, and you alone, are responsible for your own success or failure is CRITICAL. You must believe that you are the person who creates your life. It’s your design and responsibility to make it the life that you dream it to be. Just as we take action towards that dream, you must also believe that you will reach it without any doubt. It is important that you see yourself as the person who has reached that goal, even surpassed it. For example, if your dream is to write a book then the terminology and language you use here is very important. There is a clear difference between the statements ‘I am going to try and write a book’ and ‘I am going to write a book'. If you are the person making the first statement and you don’t actually achieve the goal, then you have in fact given yourself an out because, well, you were only trying. You never actually said you were going to do it. There has to be BELIEF.
The 'C' is for COMMITMENT. Commitment can be shown by consistently doing a specific action over and over again. You can see that the word ‘action’ exists within this definition as does the ‘belief’ in that action. So if you are committed in the follow through of the belief that you are going to write a book, and take the necessary action to make it happen, then you must succeed. It’s only when your commitment to the vision wavers or you break the cycle of consistency that you can, and most likely, will fail. When I wrote this, I was on the balcony of my cabin on the ship watching the waves curl up against the hull of the ship, It made me think of water and I associated it with consistency. It’s much more effective for a body of water to consistently flow over a rock for a year and in effect, make it smooth, than it would be to blast the rock with a high pressure water blaster for an hour and then stop. The same philosophy applies to your success. If you expect to achieve success by giving it all you’ve got for a single day and then stop, you’ll never achieve the success you want. You must make a COMMITTED effort towards your vision and take action every single day until you reach the goal.
Remember to take ACTION, exercise BELIEF in your creative vision and show COMMITMENT to the success of that vision. #becreative #beinspired #bepublished
Ocean
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