Hello Friend,
Are you too scared to start your book? This is something I hear all the time.
“I feel like I’m ready to write my book, but I’m so scared to start! What if I fail???”
Failure is scary. I get it. But why are we all so afraid to fail?
Because failure hurts. It hurts. Our brains learn by making patterns, and that’s one that has been burned into our synapses for a long, long time. There are painful consequences when we don’t measure up.
I’ve failed so many times I’ve lost count, and each one stung. Some were even catastrophic. My most painful failure happened early in my speaking career.
I failed through a small silly mistake that cost my company $87,000 in a single day.
At the launch of my speaking career, long before the days of online order forms and web stores, I brought hundreds of paper order forms to a speech. I always sell multiple resources in different media at these events. For this speech, I brought a tape recording of the speech, an accompanying month-long course on CD, and copies of all of my books. I had to pay for all these items out of pocket and lug them to the venue myself. After my speech, people flocked to my merch table. For every single order, I filled out a paper order form by hand with the buyer’s name, their credit card info, and the order details. I then handed over each item myself. (I know, this sounds like ancient times, but this was only 25 years ago.) I sold almost 200 orders that day!
On the plane ride home, I put the folder of order forms in the seat back pocket in front of me. Yes, you guessed it. I walked off the plane without any of the orders. I had sold about $87,000 of merchandise, and I lost the damn forms to be paid for it.
That was a big failure.
It’s easy to become risk-averse after that kind of mistake. As an entrepreneur, I was terrified of financial loss. Of course I was, it’s my investment on the line! So I told myself that I would never let myself fail like that again.
The thing is, everyone has a story like mine. Everyone. We’ve all failed. You included.
Your brain has learned again and again that failure causes pain. It programmed itself to avoid failing again at all costs. It decided that failure can’t be part of your reality.
So, you live in fear.
You overwork and over-plan and do every single thing you can possibly think of to mitigate risk. You refuse to start writing until you’ve mapped out every subsection of every chapter, desperate to avoid losing your momentum in the chaos of an unedited manuscript. You keep telling yourself that you’ll start next year, when you have more free time, so you don’t miss a single writing goal. You put your book off time and time again, because if you start it now, you might not finish it, and that’s failure. Every decision you make is rooted in your desperate wish not to fail.
But… everyone has failed, including every single successful author. And you.
If we’ve all failed, and we’re all still here, then clearly failure isn’t the end.
So, what’s the truth about failure?
Successful authors–I’m talking about the ones that have written books that have helped thousands, if not millions, of people–realize failure IS success.
Failing is necessary! It’s how you build the backbone you need to write a good book.
All successful authors face setbacks, challenges, and failures. What sets them apart is their ability to bounce back, learn from their mistakes, and persist in the face of adversity. The defining characteristic of a successful author is resilience, the willingness to keep writing when it’s hard.
And how do you build resilience?
Failure. It’s the only way.
You cannot become resilient through anything but practice, and the only way to practice is to fail hard, brush yourself off, and try again. There will be days when you sit down to write and nothing comes. Days when you question whether anyone out there wants to read what you have to say. You’ll get rejected by publishers and turned down for interviews. If you want to be the person your book needs–someone who can find inspiration on days when creativity comes hard, or someone who can weather rejection and criticism and still stand firm in your message–you have to be resilient.
So you need to fail. You need the practice.
Failure is also good for you! It inspires more adaptive problem-solving and confirmation of your values, making you a better person. It is in failure–the really painful kind–that vows are made, lines of demarcation are drawn, and a person is radically changed. It’s the pain of failure that inspires such conviction that the decisions are emblazoned on the subconscious mind and a new level of commitment arises. I know it hurts, but sometimes a little hurt is okay. It’s what makes your growth stick.
When I lost that $87,000 over such a small mistake, it hurt. It hurt a lot.
I cried with frustration, I yelled at the Delta customer service rep who couldn’t recover the forms, I lashed out at my husband at the time who had no idea why I was so distraught. I told myself horrible things about my idiocy and incompetence. I was in pain.
But then, I remembered that I had access to the registration list for the speech. If I wanted to, I could look up every attendee’s name and phone number. I could call every person on the list and ask if they had purchased merchandise from me. I could get their credit card and order info over the phone.
That was a crazy idea. Lunacy, really.
So that’s exactly what I did. I called every single person that had registered for the event. By the end of the week, I had 113 completed order forms, ready to be charged. I recouped almost the full amount of money.
It was a ridiculous idea, and I felt ridiculous doing it. I had to humble myself to hundreds of strangers. I had to set aside hours each day. If not for the pain of such a massive failure, I don’t think I would have done it. But it is in that pain that we find ourselves. I found that I was determined, creative, and willing to humbly admit to failure. And that line of demarcation I talked about? In my pain, I drew a line so thick it has persisted to this day. I will not allow my pride to derail my goals.
That personal growth helped my business, but more than that, it helped me. Failure made me a better person. And the people I called could feel it! Humbly apologizing and asking for their info again inspired trust. It turns out, people like to see vulnerability in a life coach. Who knew?! Haha.
So, my friend, failure can be a step up for your backbone and a teacher for your character. It will catapult you into new realms of wisdom and growth that will reflect in your book. It is a vital part of being an author.
The trick is, you want to fail fast.
The faster you fail, the better. Each failure shows you what works and what doesn’t. It forces you to refine your ideas and approach concepts differently. It redirects your course.
Now, doesn’t it make sense that you want to learn you’re going the wrong way early? Imagine driving a thousand miles on a road trip, only to realize you’ve been on the wrong road the whole time. If only you’d checked your course at the beginning! Well, that means defying your fear of failure and–gulp–doing the hard things early.
When I was writing Mindset Reset, I knew my Mindset Reset Formula would be my primary IP. It is the culmination of years of coaching, and I knew I would use it in every new book I wrote. It had to be perfect. But perfection takes time, and I was already getting marketing spots for the unfinished book.
So what did I do?
I gave the formula in every interview. I let my imperfect creation change a little each time. And let me tell you, some versions failed.
I forgot steps, or I stumbled over my words as I edited the phrasing in real time. And these interviews were recorded! These unpolished failures will live forever! The horror!
I can’t help but laugh remembering how nervous I was to let myself fail.
But it was exactly what I needed. I was too close to the message to notice its flaws. Speaking the formula out loud to an audience helped me to hear where things could be clearer. I could gauge their reactions, see the tiny moments of confusion and the ‘aha!’ moments of clarity. I perfected the formula in those interviews, and it is better now than it ever was in my head.
Being willing to fail big and fail fast allowed me to course-correct right at the beginning.
Because of all those in-person tweaks, the version in Mindset Reset is exactly what I want it to be, trademark and all.
Imagine what you could create if you let yourself start today, failure be damned. If you let your book start to flow onto the paper in all its early messy beauty.
Those days when you have nothing to say could teach you how to access inspiration in any circumstance. Those confusing chapters that don’t flow could show you what’s important in your message and what isn’t. Those missed deadlines could give you time you didn’t know you needed to learn new lessons that launch a higher version of you and your message.
Think about that today. The world needs your perspective, fear and all. Don’t let your fear of failure stop you from starting the journey of a lifetime.
With love and respect,
~ Lisa J.
P.S. If this message resonated with you, and you are ready to radically erase fear from keeping you from writing your book, set up a breakthrough call with Lisa J. She will help you unleash the courage to become a published author. Here’s the link to set up a call and create a whole new future for yourself as a published author Go to: https://calendly.com/mindsetreset
