So, today I was talking to one of my writing clients, who is a therapist and I was actually audacious enough to suggest a tool to help her get through her block about writing her query letter and synopsis, both part of a writer’s proposal package or submission package when they query agents in the quest to be traditionally published.
And this tool, basically comes from Mel Robbins, who is an author, podcaster, and speaker. And, um, apparently the #1 education podcast in the world even though, um, I had never heard of her.
Cough.
Don’t judge, Shaun. She’s also very good at self marketing and is considered a self-publishing phenom and is pretty cute, which means she has a ton of photos of herself on her website.
So, basically the opposite of us except Shaun is cute.
Anyway, enough preamble, she suggests, no insists, that people have a morning routine. It can be five minutes. It can be an hour.
Within this morning routine, you want to focus on an actionable step and nothing else for 15 minutes. During this time, you want to write down your goals, but you actually have to do this big second step, which is imagining yourself taking the steps to get there. According to Robbins, you visualize the steps to get to that end goal and the third step is to imagine and feel the emotions that are connected to each step. Pride? Excitement? Joy? Get all of them in there.
This is similar to Simon Sinek’s who says to go after the things that you want, he tells the story of hiself and a friend going out for bagels.
See the thing that you want. Or see the thing that prevents you from getting what you want. When you go after what you want, he stresses, you don’t want to get in the way of other people’s wants.
Bas Korsten wrote for Harvard Business Review, “Think about it. Great athletes train their bodies for days, weeks, and years to whip them into peak performance. Why, then, wouldn’t a creator do the same with their brain?”
A.J. Adam writes about the science behind visualization for Psychology Today,
“For instance, in his study on everyday people, Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared results of those who did physical exercises to the results of those who carried out virtual workouts in their heads. In the physical exercise group, finger abduction strength increased by 53%. In the group that did “mental contractions”, their finger abduction strength increased by 35%. However, “the greatest gain (40%) was not achieved until 4 weeks after the training had ended” (Ranganathan et al., 2004). This demonstrates the mind’s incredible power over the body and its muscles.”
Ideas come. They come all the time, right? But the thing is that you have to imagine those ideas, practice what it feels like do them, and then have the energy to get off your bum, get out of bed, get out of your chair and actually do those ideas.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
For any change to happen, you have to activate your energy. Be like Pogie. Activate all the energy.
Links To Learn More
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/flourish/200912/seeing-is-believing-the-power-visualization
Take Control of Your Life: How to Silence Fear and Win the Mental Game – https://amzn.to/2EfL8c5
The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage – https://amzn.to/2Xb8uqI
https://apnews.com/hub/oddities
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.
WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
