Success as a Writer is a Journey of the Finding Self , not the Goal.
Many people fail to recognize the true nature of success because of faulty thinking and lack of self confidence about themselves.
Self confidence that leads to successful living in business and personal life is achieved by accepting who we are and what we do as being the only basis for successful achievement.
The Path
Many people set out on a path to writing success by first looking at a successful writer — on the internet — and then believing that if they emulate them, they will naturally get the same results. In so doing, they fail to allow their own ideas to develop, and they block their own self confidence from developing into the powerful tool it could be.
Self confidence is knowing you are right about your own thoughts and ideas — then following through completely with actions.
A Vision of Self is a Powerful Motivator
It’s only when we see that our own ideas of what’s right and wrong for ourselves that we will be able to measure and gauge what works and what doesn’t.
To measure and gauge the results of another writer who appears successful, and to enjoy the thoughts surrounding them, see them, and imagine how it all feels, doesn’t affect our own success. Not a jot.
I’m all for reading about successful people in my own area of work as an author, then taking ideas that seem to make sense and applying them to my own work. There is a limit to what I take as useful, though.
Successful People and their Egos
When I read that some wildly successful author runs 15 kilometers everyday, reads 300 books a year and donates 10 pints of blood to the local blood bank each month, I can’t seriously see that as a part of their success factor.
Weirdly, some people do think that each and every action of these people leads to success, so they attempt to read 300 hundred books a year and whatever else.
If that same person says that reading Vladimir Nabokov helps them exercise their imagination, then I’ll go for it and give it a try.
I can report, Vladimir Nabokov fills the mind with the most wonderful images of human behavior that you could imagine — and he educates your writer’s mind at the same time.
Reading and Writing and Your Imagination
Stephen King reads everyday, it’s essential to his success. I can see why, reading expands the imagination, it exercises the fantasy and develops the mind’s abilities in story telling.
A writer who doesn’t read can’t be a writer. Reading and writing are like two sides of a thought process that nourish each other.
Stephen King reads everything that is good — not just stories that are similar to his own style, he’ll read a bestseller, the classics, mythology, and obscure works that you and I have probably never come across.
Many authors read a broad spectrum of works. I do this, too. My experience is that it feeds something inside that builds story worlds that I can work with. It also entertains me. Reading is discovery, authors need to discover new ideas all of the time.
Mundane Problems in a Workaday World
All the things that other people do has nothing to do with me, from breakfast to dinner and in between, their lives are individual lives full of ups and downs that I don’t need to know about.
Even the most successful, and richest people on the planet, still have to deal with getting out of bed in the morning and facing up to the fact that they’re going to have to do it all over again, that day.
Heavy Weather and the Joy of Life
Life is tough. It doesn’t get easy, ever. But we can learn more and more about how to navigate the heavy weather and become good captains who enjoy the roll of the waves, and the uncertainty of what’s ahead.
It’s when we realize that the storms we face are our testing grounds, that we begin to rely on our own resources to get through to find the sunny side of the ocean once again.
Choose Your Own Battles
Highly successful authors and business people build lives based on what they choose to be good for themselves. Their choices don’t include their fans, or you, or me. What they do to get through the day is a personal matter and shouldn’t be misconstrued as some element of their success strategy to be elicited by strangers.
If you find yourself stumped, in a jam, or doubting your own ideas, see it as a challenge that when you overcome it through self-searching and self reliance, it will lead to more knowledge and understanding about the path of success that you are walking on.
Nobody else can show you the way. There is nobody else walking on the path that you have chosen in the successful journey of life.
You can only find small hints about your own success, they appear like sparks in the darkness.
The best we can hope for are pointers that others have left along the way. The worn down tracks of travelers who went before us, the ones who followed their own path, yet intertwined in the ways of similar beings along the way.
“Success favors the brave”, is a great expression. The thing about it is, it’s also a tall order when applied to life. We have to be brave, very brave to make big changes in life.
Courage is when you pitch your work out into the world of editors. You take a risk that your sweet ideas will be ripped apart and sent back with a one liner that sounds like a reprimand.
Rejection and Soul Baring
Any rejection can feel as bad as a slap in the face from a lover. We want our relationships to be caring and understanding affairs, but in the world of business reaching out and baring our souls to strangers can be chancier than a one night stand with the queen of clubs on drugs.
Comfort Zones and the Imagination
It’s easier to stay clear of imagined failure and enjoy the basic warmth of our comfort zones — so we do, quite often.
It’s that comfort zone that gives us a small safe space to do imaginary work that only reaps more ideas, more dreams and inspiring visions of future success. I don’t mean the writing work, I mean the idea of being a successful writer, a business person.
From the safety of our homes we can read about all the things that made another person successful, and alter-ego our way into their lives and dream about how we want to be like them.
Landscapes of the Mind
It’s like being on a weekend trip down to the coast, a road trip across great landscapes of the mind. We enjoy the danger and the harsh experiences that the characters we read about go through, and all the time we know that we are safe. We can close the book anytime we please.
Courage takes us to real places. Sometimes theses places can be frightening, but we needed something to wake us up and force us to realize the reality of what we need to do. We want success, so we have to make changes by being brave.
Life as a Story that we Write
This is when we become the character in the story. We get up and leave our comfort zones and get ready to take the unpleasant rejections, and we tell ourselves that each rejection is a step towards meeting the perfect situation that leads to a small success. Because we know it is right.
Courage comes from self confidence. Self knowledge moves the fighting spirit into action and takes us into the real world. The place where things happen because we are really there, not dreaming in a chair in front of the screen, but shifting and shaking things, taking up space in front of other people who can make decisions about what we have to offer.
When we trust our own thoughts, we can feel secure in our actions. Then we can answer questions and get results. We create the scenes of our lives, and each scene, just like in a story, has a climax that must lead to a new scene.
If a scene in our lives leads to a conflict, then it is a good thing, we have agitated and attracted movements that must be answered with actions.
Actions cause more action and developments, and we go on and experience successes and failures, just like in any story that is worth living.
Self knowledge creates self-esteem, and with these two we experience the ability to live with courage and determination.
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