Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
In this solo episode, I’m celebrating reaching thirty episodes of Alchemy for Authors. Wahoo!
I spend this episode reflecting on how Alchemy for Authors came about, and the eleven things I learned from writing a book that helped make this podcast a reality. Once you’ve written a book, you can do anything, including stepping outside your comfort zone and pushing through imposter syndrome. If you’re wanting a behind the scenes peek into how writing a book and becoming an author has changed my mindset and my life, then nestle in for this episode of what writing a book has taught me.
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Episode 30: What Writing A Book Has Taught Me
Hello my lovelies. Welcome back to another episode of Alchemy for Authors.
In previous episodes, I’ve talked about the power of celebrating everything. The good, the bad, but particularly those little successes. And the purpose behind doing this is to try and keep your mindset positive. A positive mindset tends to attract more positivity. And there’s also a power to celebration that’s really motivating and helps to build momentum as well.
So in the spirit of walking my talk, here is my celebratory episode number 30 of Alchemy for Authors. Woo hoo!
So I always find that round number milestones are an easy thing to celebrate. Whether it’s a pat on the back for reaching your first 1000 words of your new novel, or 20,000 words or 700 followers on social media. And so I’m really excited to reach episode 30 of Alchemy for Authors. Now, of course, compared to the hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, this is really small potatoes. But 30 episodes for me is actually still really significant. And I guess in the world of podcasting too, I have always been warned that there is such a thing as pod fade around episode nine, where a lot of podcasts just disappear into thin air.
And so in today’s episode, I want to talk a little bit about how I went about even starting Alchemy for Authors and the purpose behind it. But more importantly, I want to talk about how it was that writing and publishing my first book, or all of my books, have contributed to me being able to have this podcast. And not only that, but how my author journey in general, has just completely changed my life.
So some of this might be familiar to you if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a little while, or following me on social media. But Alchemy for Authors was a seed of an idea that I’d actually had for years. When I first had the idea for this podcast, I was, and to be honest, I still am, just a baby on the author scene. At the very beginning of my author journey though, I just absolutely devoured all the information I could get on being an author, self publishing and all that good stuff. I listened to a lot of podcasts. I read a lot of books. I also did a whole lot of online courses and that as well. During the same time, I was also listening to and reading up a lot on mindset, manifestation and living your passion. And a lot of that as you probably heard before, was driven by the fact that I was really, really miserable in the job I had at the time.
So when I had the seed of the idea for Alchemy for Authors, it came about through the fact that I wasn’t finding the information that I was really looking for out there. A sort of marriage between the nuts and bolts of being an author, and also the mindset and manifestation techniques that can help make it a reality as well.
Now at the very core of my being, I have always believed that we all have a calling, a purpose for being born into this life. And I have always believed that writing was a part of mine, but despite that, of course, it took me a very, very long time, and many years of driving my family and friends nuts, before I actually stopped just talking about being a writer and author and started to put it into action.
Now, whether it’s just the idealist in me, but I have never subscribed to the idea that we should be miserable in our jobs. Time and time again, life likes to prove how very short our time here on earth is. And so it seems an almost no brainer to me that we need to take advantage of our time here on earth and enjoy as much of it as possible.
Now I think part of what has driven this belief in me. Is that I grew up with a parent who worked his butt off, but was constantly miserable in whatever he was doing.
So my father is an incredibly creative person. And every now and then as I was growing up, he would allow his creativity to take him off on a side mission. Whether it was building hovercrafts or woodworking amazing bowls and vases, or creating wrought iron masterpieces that framed artwork from a local artist. There was always this desire for him to be creating something with his hands, to be making something. But inevitably he would always fall back on, what I guess I grew up believing was societaly normal and easy and guaranteed an income. He would always go back to a run of the mill day job. And he would always go back to being miserable. So his dreams, schemes and passions over and over again, got pushed aside for doing what I guess he thought was expected of him, and I guess what was expected of him, which was providing for his family.
And so growing up with that, it makes complete sense that I did the absolute same thing. I got all the respectable jobs straight out of school. I had that consistent pay. I moved up all the ladders expected of me, and got the more responsibilities, more hours more pay, and all the time feeling that something was missing. But also, finding it incredibly hard to backtrack on the life that I’d created for myself.
And what made that incredibly difficult was that my interest in self-help and personal development and that, meant I was also constantly being bombarded with the advice to follow your dreams, follow your passions, you have a calling, you need to go out there and do it. And boy oh boy, did I really, really want to. But of course, like most of us, I also wanted to ensure that I ate, I had a roof over my head, and I could continue to play the expected role of being a fiscally sensible adult, and please my family and friends. And I’m sure many of you have felt similar pressures, particularly if you’re starting to embark on any creative pursuit, such as writing.
But like I said before, I have always believed we can, if we desire, make a life around and are living from those things that light us up. And I also believed, or really, really wanted to believe anyway, that this idea of it having to be hard, that following our dreams is hard, and making a living from the things that we’re passionate about, is hard, it was a bit of a fallacy. Because who said it had to be hard? Well, in honesty, a lot of people. A lot of people say it has to be hard. All you need to do is join any social media group of authors, or listen to authors speak about their journeys to publication, and you will find many, many of them talking about how very hard it is. And, in some ways I agree writing a book can be hard. But it’s not always hard. Publishing a book can be hard, but it’s not always hard, and making money from your books, can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Why does it have to be hard? Why, as a collective, are we so determined to limit ourselves in such a way? So what if we could make it easier for ourselves?
And so that’s where this podcast kind of came to my mind. I was not finding the information on how to make writing and publishing easy. But I knew that there had to be a way. Because, without a doubt, there are people out there, they’re often talked about as being unicorns, but there are people out there who have found the whole process easy, including making financial livings from their writing. So it comes down to what is it that they do, that the rest of us can learn from?
What ever it is that you’re passionate about and feeling called to do, without a doubt, someone is out there doing it and making a great living from it. We just need to find those people. So the idea of Alchemy for Authors was born in that desire to find the way of ease and encouragement for us to go after our author dreams, and to create those lives around our writing that we’re really passionate about and feeling fulfilled by, and to share that information with the world, to let people know that going after their dreams, doesn’t have to be hard.
So this was my whole ideology around Alchemy for Authors. But, with this idea came a whole long list of problems. Because for starters, I had zero idea how to start a podcast. I don’t even know why I chose the forum of a podcast, because not only did I know nothing about how to podcast and all the technical aspects, the sound of my voice made me absolutely cringe, and I’m an extreme social introvert. So right off the bat, I thought there was no way I was going to be able to ever interview anybody. And therein lay another problem, in that if it was just me talking, I don’t have all the answers to the question of how people can create a happy, healthy, prolific, and wealthy, author life that they love. I don’t know all those answers. And so it was a bit of a predicament feeling called to do something, but also feeling like I was the most ill-equipped person on the planet to do it.
Now, I wonder if you’re listening to this and you’re like, Hmm, that sounds a little bit familiar. Because for me anyway, that was pretty much how I felt when I first started my author journey. I did not at all, know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to go about publishing a book. I didn’t know how to go about writing a book, despite all the podcasts I’d listened, to the books I’d read, the courses I had done, it still seemed like a completely foreign language to me about how to go about doing it. I had written some short stories before, but that’s a completely different thing to writing a full length novel. I also wasn’t sure that my words were any good. I wasn’t sure that my writing was any good. And who was I to write a story anyway? Who was I to call myself an author and write a book? I mean, all the ideas had already been taken. Everybody had already written the books that I wanted to write. Right?
So when it came to doing this podcast, I was faced with all those very, very similar feelings of imposter syndrome and self doubt that I’d already encountered before on my author journey. And so this is where having written a book actually helped me to make this podcast a reality.
As I’ve expressed many, many times, writing a book, becoming an author, has been absolutely life changing for me in ways that I never expected it to be. Yeah, I’m still not making that million dollar income, but that’s okay because I really wouldn’t trade this life in for anything. The confidence that came out of me, actually being able to write a book, and then another, and then another, has taught me so much about stepping outside my comfort zone, following my passions, following those hints from the universe, and taking that inspired action. It made this whole journey to creating and putting out this podcast so much easier.
So here are a list of eleven of the things that I have learned through writing and publishing my books.
Number one: Taking that first step on your journey can be as easy or as hard as you let it be. Now, this is so true. Quite often, we make things out to be so much harder than they need to be. I spent decades talking about wanting to be an author. And I didn’t do it because I was so locked into fear, I thought it was really hard, it would take too much time, it would be too expensive. I had every excuse under the sun. I made it really hard. But when that crunch time came, and I was kind of like, well to hell with it, I’m going to do it. It’s now or never. It really wasn’t half as hard as I expected it to be. And that was such an amazing thing to learn after the publication of my first book, Rest Easy Resort, on reflection it just seemed so much easier than I ever anticipated it to be.
So we decide whether something is easy or something is hard. And you often hear a lot of writers and authors bemoaning how hard the writing process is. And it can be hard. My second full length novel, Unspoken Truths, felt like a little bit of a trickier book to write. I had a lot of mindset things going on there, too, that was holding me back. Presently, I’m working on a new novel that’s a complete change of genre for me. I’ve never written in it. But I’m having so much fun and I’m finding it the most easiest thing I’ve ever written in my life. And I think part of that is because I’m having fun. And I recognize that my first draft is allowed to be shit, and that’s what the editing process is for. To make it much better. So I’m just giving myself that freedom to get words on a page and I’m enjoying every moment of it. And because of that, it’s not only a joy to write, but it is so easy to write.
So when it came to this podcast, I decided to invest in a course to help me, and that also kept me accountable with weekly zoom calls and the like, because I knew that I have a tendency to make things much harder than they really need to be. So to make it easy for myself, I wanted somebody guiding me along the way, where I could follow the whole process, step-by-step, and I could have a group of other people encouraging me along and keeping me accountable.
And the cool thing is about the day and age that we live in, is that there is so much information out there, that anything that you want to learn, we pretty much just have it at our fingertips. A quick Google search will bring up YouTube videos, or courses we can enroll in, or articles and blogs that kind of break down how to do things. We don’t need to overthink doing the thing, whatever that thing is. To make it easy on ourselves, we really just need to make the decision to do it.
And now the second thing that writing my books and being an author has taught me, is that you don’t need to know everything. One of my big hangups with doing this podcast, and what still sometimes sidelines me with imposter syndrome, is that I don’t have all the answers. I’m no guru on manifestation techniques. I’m no millionaire best-selling author. And yet I still have this podcast out in the world. It still gets a reasonable amount of listens and downloads. And I still get people contacting me, reaching out to me saying that I’ve inspired them in some way, or something that I’ve said has resonated with them, or they’ve learned something. And so that really shows that you don’t have to know everything. You don’t need to be a guru in whatever you’re doing. You have to be willing to learn. And you can be a curator of information.
So, if you’re writing a nonfiction book, you don’t need to know everything, but you can help curate the knowings of people who do know a lot more than you do. Same with this podcast. The thing that I really, really love about this podcast is I get to interview and talk to experts in the field. So I get to learn from them. I don’t have all the answers, but sometimes other people have some of the answers that I’m looking for. And then through the interviews and that, I get to share that with you. And things will resonate or they won’t, and that’s okay.
Same with writing my books. I didn’t know everything. I was learning as I went. And every time I’ve written a new story or a new book, I change things up because I’ve learned more. You are allowed to be a beginner.
Number three: Imposter syndrome and self-doubt is inevitable. Whenever you start anything new, whenever you undertake a new challenge in your life, those nasty mental naysayers of imposter syndrome and self-doubt are going to get super chatty. There is very little way around that. So, what you need to do is you need to recognize them for what they are and just move through it. Imposter syndrome, self-doubt, all that negative self talk, that’s all it is, is just negative self-talk. It’s in your head, literally. We have a choice in whether we allow it to hold us back or to not.
That worrying about what people think, really doesn’t serve us. There are always going to be some people that aren’t necessarily all that supportive of what we’re doing. And that’s okay. They’re not our audience. They’re not our readers. They’re not our listeners. They’re not the people that we are trying to reach. The people that we’re trying to reach, they’re just going to be happy that we’re doing what we’re doing. So be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Number four of what I learned as being an author, is that not doing the thing can be so much worse than actually doing the thing. It can be so much more detrimental to not do that thing that lights you up. So, whether it’s writing a book, starting a podcast, undertaking a new business venture, whatever it is, not doing it when you’re called to do it can be almost painful. And that’s because you’re out of alignment. And you know when you’re out of alignment, and I’ve done an episode on this that talks a lot about integrity and being in alignment with who you are. But when you’re not in alignment with what you should be doing and who you are, then things tend to go wrong in your life. And your moods tend to go down. It’s when you’re more susceptible to depression or anxiety. It’s when you find yourself in a bit of an apathetic funk. You’re not happy. You may not necessarily know why you’re not happy. But it’s a sure sign that you should be doing the thing that you’re putting off.
Cathy Heller often quotes that the opposite of depression is not happiness. The opposite of depression is purpose. So when we’re feeling in that funk, it’s because we’re not following our purpose. We’re not doing that thing. I don’t know about you, but I have noticed this so many times in my life, when I am off course and I am out of alignment with doing what I know I should be doing, then my mood really, really plummets.
If for some reason I stop writing for awhile, or life just gets so busy that I’m finding it near impossible to make time to do any of my writing, or work on my books, or podcasts, or anything like that, I get so grumpy. I honestly do. And when I make that time, I’m like a different person. I just feel so filled up. And that is really what the world needs more of, people that are happy, people that are doing what lights them up. We are honestly different people when we’re doing that. We have more to give. We’re more present with people. So it’s not only in your own best interest to follow through with these little callings and hints from the universe that we get to be doing these creative pursuits, but it’s in the best interest of everybody around us as well.
Now number five: Something that I have noticed in being an author, is that most people actually want to see you succeed. And I know for myself and probably many of you, one of our biggest fears is the, oh my gosh, what are people going to think? I’ve had that with every one of my books. I had that even sending my books to the editor the first time, the second time, actually, every time. Oh, my gosh, what is my editor going to think of this book? Is it complete rubbish? Same when it launches and it’s out there in the world for people to purchase and read. It’s terrifying. Every time I put out a podcast episode, particularly these solo episodes, I’m always battling that feeling, those insecurities around, oh my gosh, what are people going to think?
Now the truth is, and I’ve said this before, not everybody is going to love what you do. Not everybody is going to love your books. Not everybody is going to love your other creative pursuits. I still have family members, and people in my social circle as well, who have made it blatantly clear that they have zero interest in my writing life, and my podcast, and in fact even me mentioning it around them seems to rub them the wrong way. And I don’t really know for sure why that is. But that’s not something that I allow myself to get too hung up on, because I’ve also found that overwhelmingly, most people are really supportive and want to see me succeed. They cheer me along. They like my posts on social media, they provide reviews, or they leave me a note, or a private message, or an email, or just come up and let me know how my words have somehow impacted upon them.
In fact, some who have turned out to be some of my biggest cheerleaders, were people that I didn’t even think liked me. Like honestly, people that I thought really had no time of day for me, have come out of the woodwork and cheered me on, and brought all my books and raved about me to their friends and family. And it’s been such an amazing pleasant surprise.
And I think maybe the reason behind this is people want to see you succeed. Because when we follow our passions, when we step outside societal norms, we’re in a way, giving other people permission to do the same. We’re lighting the way for other people. We’re showing them that if we can do it, they can too. It’s another important reason why you shouldn’t just sit on the bench and let life pass you by, and not follow through with those things that really kind of light you up and tickle your fancy. You need to get out there and do them because in doing so you inspire other people to take action as well, and to follow their dreams and their passions.
And, just know too, that if you are a person that really is struggling with negativity from other people in your life, you have a lot of power to curate who is in your circle. With social media and the like, it’s easy. You block or unfollow people that you don’t want in your circle. Same through emails. If you’re getting nasty emails or something, block them, unsubscribe them from your newsletter. It’s harder to do with family, but you can find ways to distance yourself, if you’re finding that negativity from certain people is really holding you back. And same with your friend group as well. If your friend group consists of people who aren’t really acting like friends, don’t have them in your friend group. Get tough and set boundaries and curate the people that you want in your life. Those people who cheer you on and build you up and make sure that you’re also being that person for other people as well.
Now number six: Being a published author and in turn, doing this podcast, has just shown me how I am so much more capable of more than I ever imagined. I could be.
And it’s worth taking inventory of our lives really in this respect. Because all of us, I think have, have had times in our life where we were faced with something that we just thought there was no way we were going to be able to do or to get through. And yet here we are still standing. We’ve done it. And you should celebrate that and take pride in that.
When I first started writing short stories, I didn’t know that I’d ever be published. And I think I had four published in a literary journal. Writing a novel was another thing that seemed incredibly daunting because I’d only written short stories. And yet I still managed to do it. I still managed to write 80,000 words, a hundred thousand words. Now that, for a long time, was completely unfathomable to me. Showing up on social media. Putting myself out there through marketing. Writing fortnightly newsletters, all those things were things that I really was never sure that I’d be able to accomplish. And yet. Here I am.
Same with this podcast. Now, I had a lot of fear in undertaking this podcast. I spent a lot of money on the course that I did prior to this. I invested quite a bit of money into it to make sure that I was feeling comfortable enough to actually make this podcast come alive and be a reality. But because of that, I was faced with a fear of what if I couldn’t follow through? What if after a couple of episodes I just gave up? And there was even greater fear because in the year that I decided to release this podcast, I’d also undertaken a brand new job. Brand new day-job that had significantly longer hours, which left me with significantly less time to invest in what I didn’t realize was such a time consuming endeavor as doing a podcast.
And so you can see why this is why I am celebrating reaching episode 30. Because this has come down to 30 weeks of consistency. 30 weeks of putting an episode out every week. Of interviewing people in my weekends and spending late nights editing, and doing all the things. Now, it was probably a blessing that I knew so little about podcasting going into this, because had I known just how time consuming it was, it’s possible I would have wimped out and not have followed through. Same thing with the day job that I undertook, had I known in advance just how much more time consuming it was going to be, that might’ve had a huge impact on me undertaking this podcast as well. But as I’ve said so many times before, it has been totally worth. So worth it.
Now number seven: And this is true for anything, creative endeavor or not. But messy action is always better than no action. Done is better than perfect. And always start before you’re ready. Now, this is coming from a recovering perfectionist. Now I think I’m recovering. There are still times, I really battle with my perfectionism. But if I didn’t adopt the mindset of messy action being better than no action, and done is better than perfect, then there is no way I would’ve got to this point. There is no way I would have ever submitted a short story to any literary journals. There’s no way I would have ever finished my first novel. Because anyone that’s undergone the editing process knows that you can edit forever. I would never have put out my Reader Magnet. It’s not perfect. It just is what it is. I would never be able to keep up with the consistency of putting out this podcast every week. Because it’s never perfect there. The editing is never perfect, despite my best efforts. But it is what it is, and it’s out there, and that is so much more important than having an absolutely perfect product.
Because something that is perfect, or in the process of being perfect, and not out there in the world, isn’t making any impact. It’s not reaching anybody. And you just don’t know how powerful your words can be and the impact they can have on somebody else.
And so that leads to number eight, of how being an author has helped me on this journey of doing this podcast and impacted upon my life. And that is in the knowledge that your words have power. Like they honestly do. And I know that sounds like a bit of a cliche, but it is so true. I’m a fiction author. I write Gothic Suspense. Recently, I’m trying my hand at Cozy Supernatural Mysteries. We’ll see how that goes. But what I found really interesting is that even my fiction books have a sort of power to them. The reviews that I get, or the feedback that I get, or the people that talk to me, whenever they say they’ve been moved by my books or felt a certain way, positive or negative, there’s a sort of power in that in how our words can make people feel. It can take them out of there normal mundane lives, and transplant them into a completely different world.
It’s also the power of, again, just doing that thing that lights you up. I’ve had one person say to me after reading one of my books, how inspired they were to finish a book that they had started 10 years previously. Now of everything, that is probably one of the best compliments I’ve ever had. It wasn’t even about my book, per se, but just the fact that I, a normal everyday person, had done this thing, had put a book out there in the world, somehow inspired them that it was a possibility for them too. Now how cool is that? By you doing that thing that you’re drawn to, it’s encouraging other people to follow their passions as well.
And then of course, that gave me the confidence to share my voice, my literal voice, with the world, with all of its imperfections here and my Kiwi accent. I’m here and I’m often vulnerable and I’m often suffering all that self-doubt and imposter syndrome, but I am still sharing my experience and what I’ve learned. And my very imperfect interviewing skills when I have guests on the show. But the feedback that I get of how some of these episodes have really resonated with other people, or made them think about things differently, or given them some guidance into their next step with their author life or their book, that is – I can’t even describe what kind of an amazing feeling that is to be on the receiving end of. So your words really do have power.
Now number nine, that this process of just creating has taught me, is that making mistakes is okay. Be open to pivoting when you do. Be open to learning when you make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, and it is completely natural and it is completely normal. And I’ve talked about that in just messy action is better than no action. Nobody’s going to die if sneaky little grammar mistakes slips into your books and was missed by the editor. Or several rounds of editing, which has happened to me on several occasions. Because you can open any book, any book nowadays, and you will find some grammar mistake, spelling mistake, punctuation mistake. It is all there. You can have the best of the best, and I feel like I’ve got one of the best editors, and those sneaky little devils still sneak in.
And same with this podcast. It is not going to be perfect. Not the recording of it, not the editing of it, not even the content of it. And that’s okay because we learn by our mistakes. And going right back to, it’s better to just have our voice and our words out there and to be doing the thing that lights us up than sitting on the benches consumed with fear and doubt because we don’t want to make a mistake.
Number 10, that I think is so important that I’ve learned on this journey, and then as you need to find your own way. You need to listen to that inner voice. Follow those breadcrumbs, that inspired action, know your strengths and know your weaknesses. And be really, really aware that what works for one person may not work for you. And this is particularly true in the author world.
I talk about this episode, quite a lot, my episode, where I spoke with Becca Syme. And she is amazing because she has an entire business around the Gallup Strengths, which evaluates our own personal strengths that we can learn from, to help our writing and to help our writing careers. And she’s talked about how there is no one way to be successful as a writer. What works for one person is not necessarily going to work for another person. We are all individuals. So your journey can not be compared to another person’s. Your journey will look very different to other people’s, and that’s okay. So to succeed, you really need to find out what works best for you and what aligns to your strengths? There’s no point wasting your energy doing the things that feel wrong, or don’t get you results, just because everybody else is doing it. Or trying to do all the things. That is such a big one, particularly if you’re an indie author. Trying to do all the things. We don’t need to do all the things. But just know that our paths are different. You need to find your own path. What works for one person will not work for another.
I was speaking to another author here in New Zealand, just a couple of weeks ago. And he has considerably more books out than me, and he’s a hybrid author. So he’s both traditionally and indie published. And he was talking about how he was just really struggling with the indie publishing part because he was only able to sell his indie published books here in New Zealand. He wasn’t able to get any momentum with them overseas. Now why I found that really interesting is because I have had the complete opposite.
I am full 100% indie published by choice, and majority of my books are sold overseas. I find it very hard to sell books here in New Zealand. And so I just thought that that was quite interesting. Now we have reasonably different books. There’s some crossover. We’re very different people. And I’m sure we have very different ways of going about how we put our books out there. But I just thought it was really interesting that our experiences as indie authors was so very different.
Now the final point that I want to make that being an author, following my passion has taught me, and what really gave me the confidence and the push to make this podcast a reality, is that mindset is crucial. You need to find a positive mindset to do this. You need to be able to recognize that imposter syndrome and that self doubt, and move through it. You need to do things like I am today, where I’m celebrating the 30th episode of this podcast. You need to celebrate all your little wins and your little successes. You need to keep that fire lit and burning in you, so that you can continue on this path.
And however you help your mindset, whether it’s through meditation or affirmations, whatever it is, if you want to be successful, if you want to have the courage to put yourself out, there to do these new things, to show up, then you need to try and swap out as much negative self talk as possible with the positive. It’s honestly the key. It’s the one thing that will work beyond all else.
And so here I am, episode number 30. I released my first episode of Alchemy for Authors end of February this year in 2022. And in that time I have interviewed authors all around the world. Many of whom are best-selling authors. It has opened up collaboration opportunities. I have just learned so much that I’ve been able to put into my own writing and author practice. It’s also helped me on things like increasing my social media followers, increasing subscribers to my newsletters, selling books. But most importantly it has built my confidence in ways that I would never have foreseen. And it’s allowed me to inspire and help other people, also in ways that I had no idea I’d be able to do.
The confidence and joy that comes from achieving something that you set your mind to, like writing that book, getting it out there in the world, it’s something that can be really transformative. It has almost a ripple effect in all other areas of your life. When you take the lessons that you’ve learned as you’ve reached the point of being able to put a book out there in the world, you can use that in any part of your life whenever you’re faced with a big decision, or a new direction, or a passion to follow. You’ve done this process before. It goes without saying you can do it again.
So in ending this episode, I really want you to do a little bit of thinking around what it is that you might’ve been putting off. Is it writing your first book? Is it changing genres? Is it taking action in your personal life, or is it starting a new passion project? Whatever it is, take this episode, episode number 30, as the sign that now is the time for you to take action. Don’t let fear hold you back. You a capable of so much more than you could ever imagine. And how you live your days is how you live your life. So you need to make sure that every day you are living a life that fulfills you in some way.
Seth Godin has this quote that I just absolutely love. He says, “How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable.”
And it really has. We just need to recognize that ease. Because going back to that very first point that I made taking that first step, can be as easy or as hard as we let it be. That’s up to us.
So I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and it’s left you feeling motivated and inspired to write that book, to go after that thing, that thing that you’ve been putting off, and just do it. So please help me celebrate 30 episodes of Alchemy for Authors by leaving a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to. That would be just so appreciated and really make my day.
If you’d like to connect with me, I tend to make my home on Instagram. So you can find me @jobuerauthor, is my author account. Or @alchemyforauthors to follow this podcast. So I’m going to leave off here with wishing you a wonderful week ahead, my friends, and happy writing.