What is it that differentiates authors who never gain real success from those that have a truly successful career? At the very core of the difference is a set of thinking patterns and beliefs and a commitment to live out certain thoughts and attitudes. Read on to find out more:
An understanding of how thoughts impact the way we feel
Your thoughts impact the way you feel. Try it out. Recollect a really negative experience you once had in your mind. Remember it vividly. Chances are you will begin to feel a corresponding negative emotion. It could be fear, frustration or anger for instance.
Now do the same with a positive experience. Remember one and do it so intensely that it feels like you’re reliving it again, now. Notice how the associated positive feelings are now being experienced throughout your body.
Often, those authors who truly fail to live up to their potential, allow negative thoughts to overcome them, which then lead to feelings of helplessness for longer periods of time. Those authors who understand how to consciously take charge of the thoughts they allow in their minds will feel better and positive, which are strong foundations for a successful author career.
An understanding of how feelings impact behavior
Not only do your thoughts impact the way you feel. Your feelings impact the way you behave. For example, remember the time your writing was first criticized in public. Chances are you took it really personally, and felt bad and either wanted to lash back at the person, or wanted to retreat and not write ever again. Either of these potential behaviors were a direct consequence of the negative feelings caused by the criticism.
Successful authors have learnt how to use their emotions in their favor. By feeling good about themselves no matter what the world may think of them, they put themselves in the right moods, which can help with productivity and to continue the journey of writing and getting published, again and again.
An understanding of self-image
As an author the way you see yourself as being will directly affect your success. Authors with a positive self-image have an advantage, because they’ll spend less time being insecure about the way they look to the outside world, because their view of themselves is grounded in a strong sense of self-love before anything else.
As an author if you’re having issues with self-image, for instance, worries about your looks, weight, the way you speak and so on, you can work on this right away by changing the way you see yourself. Imagine yourself being confident, saying what you want to when you’re out interacting with people in the world, and picture those people responding to in the way you want. If you see yourself as being on par with the Jhumpa Lahiri or J.K. Rowling, before you know it, you will start believing it and strive to be so through working on improving your writing craft.
An understanding of how outside conditions are illusionary
As an author, when you begin to develop increasing amounts of self-awareness (meditation is an excellent way to do this), you will begin to observe the way your mind truly works. All those people and situations out there, that you previously believed made you feel less than adequate, will no longer do so. You will see that what happened is that you took an outside stimulus and then through thinking and reacting in particular ways (all things you are control over) to the stimulus, felt the way you did and then behaved according.
Remember, the key to having a successful author career lies in you. It always did and it always will.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published in December 2014.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]