‘You cannot out-perform your self-image.
Improve your self-image and you will improve your results.’
~ Karen Brook, High-Performance Mindset and Results Coach
It is an oft-quoted statistic in the publishing world that 90 percent of people want to write a book in their lifetime. How many of that 90 percent actually publish a book that has a positive impact?
Very few, it seems. So what gets in the way of success for most?
- Is it a vague hope or fantasy, or is it a true goal?
- Do they make a clear decision, even though they do not yet know how?
- Do they set a deadline or completion date?
- Are they excited and enlivened by their goal to be a published author?
- Do they do what it takes to find the information, resources and assistance they need?
- Do they set a high standard for their work and ensure quality outcomes?
- Do they think, feel and act like a successful author?
So let’s assume you have decided now that you DO want to publish a quality book within a reasonable timeframe, and let’s focus on ways you can ultimately get what you want – status as a published author of a book that impacts your preferred audience and brings extra joy into your life.
Write down your goals
In her practical and inspiring book, Write It Down, Make It Happen, Henriette Anne Klauser explains how simply writing down your life goals is the first step towards achieving them. In her book, she includes stories of ordinary people who witnessed large and small miracles unfold after they performed the basic act of clarifying their dreams and putting them on paper.
Research has also validated that successful people journal – or that journaling impacts success. In a study many years ago, conducted with 63 recently-unemployed professionals – ‘Expressive Writing and Coping with Job Loss’ – those assigned to write about the thoughts and emotions surrounding their job loss (expressive writing) were re-employed more quickly than those who wrote about non-traumatic topics or who did not write at all. The study simply asked the writing participants to write for 20 minutes a day for five days. Eight months after the writing assignment,
- 52.6% of those experimental subjects who were asked to do expressive writing (which included articulating desire and visioning an improved self-image) had accepted full-time positions.
- Only 23.8% of writing control subjects (keeping a diary about job search practices) had accepted full-time jobs.
- Only 13.6% of non-writing control subjects had accepted employment.
There have been many studies on this subject, all reporting positive results on participants’ lives in various ways, including mental and physical health.
Why does this work?
Karen Brook, the Australian-based top-performing results coach globally with the Proctor Gallagher Institute (based in Canada), also a pilot and a friend, explains:
Writing causes thinking, thoughts cause feelings, feelings influence behaviour, and behaviour produces results. As you begin to write, you begin to form pictures in your mind; and as you write in positive terms in the present tense, you begin to form positive pictures on the screen of your mind.
These pictures begin to program the cybernetic mechanism of your mind, or the ‘servo-mechanism’, which is like a goal-seeking device keeping you on course to a particular destination.
The easiest way to explain how the cybernetic mechanism of your mind functions, and why it’s so important to understand, is to think of the global positioning system (GPS) and autopilot in an aircraft. The pilot programs the GPS with an end destination, and no matter how off-course the aircraft might get, the autopilot brings it back on course thanks to the cybernetic mechanism of the GPS. If the pilot decides to change the final destination they must update the coordinates in the GPS, otherwise the aircraft will ultimately keep tracking towards the old destination.
This exact process happens to all of us: our destination is a self-image goal programmed in our subconscious mind. How we really see ourselves is set in our subconscious. That is where we will end up heading, no matter how hard we try to go in another direction – our GPS is set!
It is a common misconception that to change results, behaviour must change. While an element of that is true, behaviour is a secondary cause of results. The primary cause of your results is the self-image you have programmed in the deepest part of your mind – your subconscious.
A person actually has two self-images: they have the image they project to the outside world – how they walk, how they talk, how they dress and comb their hair – and they have the inner image which is ultimately reflected in their outer image. The inner image is made up of beliefs at a very deep level, and will dictate the kind of opportunities a person attracts, how much they earn, the kind of relationships they will create, their logic and many other things.
For a person to change their results, they must consciously and deliberately build a new self-image of the person they wish to become, and begin to program the new image into their subconscious mind through repetition.
The same is true for you and your goals. If you do not update the programming in your mind, you will keep getting the same results.
Where to begin?
Begin today to build a new self-image of yourself as a highly successful, published author making the impact you want to have and earning the amount of money you really want to earn. Begin to visualise and write down your new self-image, as you want to be 12 months from now.
As you complete your new author self-image script, written in the present tense using positive language, with a goal date, begin at once to read and write it out at every opportunity you get. Challenge yourself to write it every day for 90 days and notice the positive influence it has on every area of your life!
Don’t do it alone
A book coach works with authors privately, sometimes in a one-off kick-start session, or on an ongoing basis, to guide and encourage them through the writing and publishing process. It is a fact that people who choose to work with a book coach say they may never have achieved their success without that support.
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This is the third of a series of articles taken from the book, ‘Smart Women Publish – Write the book that expands your world’ by Bev Ryan. Each article in this series will present the key ideas in its 15 chapters, from what a book can do for you, through planning, writing, publishing and leveraging your published book.
Bev is a certified non-fiction book coach (including memoir with a message) and book production manager, working with accomplished individuals and small business owners as they write and self-publish their best books. Contact her to help with your book.
Bev’s book is available here. Her low-cost book plus kick-starter coaching package is here.
Karen Brook can be found at www.karenbrook.com.au.