Today I am talking about the seven best self developmental books for self published authors. This is an article which I penned on selfpubwriter.com.
I thought it would be neat to take some time and just focus on one book, and how that one book applies to me as an author, and how you can use these same teachings to further your own self publishing career.
So the book that I’m talking about today is The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. There are many teachings in this book, which will help you become a much better person, a much calmer person, a much more spiritual person. And it will also help you gain success in just about any career that you are endeavoring in, including self publishing.
So let’s jump right into that.
The first lesson we’re going to talk about is believing in your success. This is extremely important. In fact, it is the vast majority of the battle, when you get right down to it. If you believe in your success, you can make that success come to fruition. So the first thing you want to do is visualize your books being well received by your readers. You may also visualize yourself coming up with fantastic ideas, and crafting a brilliant novel.
Do daily affirmations. I don’t want you to start thinking this is about standing in front of a mirror like Stuart Smalley on the old SNL skits. You can even do them silently in your head, or you could speak them aloud. This is something you should do in the morning and before you turn in for sleep.
You’re just affirming the fact that you come up with great book ideas and that your next novel is going to do very well. And it’s going to be well received by the public.
Number two, let’s discuss writer’s block.
This is also something which your subconscious mind can solve. The idea here is to be strategic in your methods when trying to overcome writer’s block, by employing your subconscious mind to do the work for you. You are a creative. Inside you is the answer to all of your story needs, whether it be a character arc, which just isn’t working out for you, or a plot.
When you turn in for sleep at night, and you’re dealing with writer’s block, tell your subconscious mind “I need a new idea for this character. I need a new direction to take this story.”
Know I that this answer is going to come. Leave it in the hands of your subconscious mind as you go to sleep. The next day when you decide to write, you should have much better ideas. You should find that you enter a flow state in your writing a lot more easily. Ideas will come to you a lot easier than before.
You may end up just putting writer’s block in the mirror and never having to experience it again. And wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Also, affirmations are really important, if you want to overcome writer’s block, so affirm to yourself before you go to sleep or first thing in the morning, that you have great ideas for stories, that you’re a fantastic writer, and that your readers really will enjoy the stories.
Give yourself positive talk. If you do it at least twice a day in the morning and before you fall asleep at night, writer’s block will go away.
Now let’s talk about attracting readers. First let’s start with the law of attraction.
The Law of Attraction really is about positivity. And the more positive you are with your outlook. The more positive outcomes you’re likely to invite into your life. If you see yourself as a great writer, if you imagine your readers engaging with your books and really enjoying them, then you are engaging with the law of attraction.
Visualize who your ideal reader is. You already know the types of books that you want to write. Therefore, there is an ideal reader who is going to enjoy those types of books. Always have a good picture of who that ideal reader is. And that visualization will help you attract the right readers into your author fold.
The next lesson is about avoiding negativity.
As an author, you will receive bad reviews. Handle all criticism constructively. If somebody is being unreasonable, don’t bother reading that review. Or stop reading your reviews to begin with.
Now let’s discuss handling negativity in the author community.
Many of us flock to forums. There is strength in a crowd, and we love to be part of forums with other writers. And yet, when we go to these forums, way too often, we find a lot of negativity.
Authors say that the market is dying and they can’t sell their books anymore, that Amazon or some company is cheating them, or readers are unreasonable with their reviews. Avoid this negativity. Whenever you are invited into such a situation, just excuse yourself. It is so important to not only maintain a positive outlook, but push the negativity aside. If you want to have a successful author career, you really need to think about the crowds you hang out with.
The next topic is goal setting.
Goal setting is part of any type of positive mindset. If you have a goal in your writing career, then it’s time that you get to work on affirmations and visualizations to make that dream become a reality.
You make conscious suggestions to your mind, so your subconscious picks up on them, and comes up with ways to bring those goals to fruition. These could be monetary goals, these can be goals for writing a certain amount of books per year or increasing your word count per day. Whatever that goal is, write it down. Then get to work on it by impressing it upon your subconscious mind.
There is a strategy to this. This is something which Dr. Murphy talks about quite a bit. If you impress upon your conscious mind, something which you know is obviously not true, then your mind will reject this impression and the lie will not make it through to your subconscious mind.
Here’s an example. I don’t sell a million dollars in books per year. Let’s say I’m driving down the street and I kept repeating to myself, “I sell millions of dollars of books per year.” As soon as my mind encounters this idea, it will reject it because it knows it’s not true.
Instead I could repeat “creativity, wealth, success” over and over for five minutes. And I could do that three or four times a day. That’s a smart way to impress these ideas upon upon your mind.
If you have a specific goal in mind, get your subconscious to act is you handle the task the way we did in the overcoming writer’s block lesson. When you’re getting ready to go to sleep at night, and you’re nice and relaxed, impress upon your mind that you need an answer to how to solve this problem, or how to reach this goal.
Now, let’s talk about enhancing creativity. This is hugely important. If we want to write great books, we need to be creative people.
Just about any self development book that you read will talk about the importance of meditation. It’s pretty well established that meditation can lower your blood pressure, cure you from illnesses, and make you a much calmer person.
Meditation can also make you a much more creative person. Our mind can only focus on so many things at once. So if our our minds are focused on worries, then it’s hard to be creative. For this reason, it is imperative that if you don’t have a meditation practice yet, you develop one immediately.
Lastly, let’s talk about financial success. You put a lot of work into your book, and you might as well sell as many copies as possible. This is about more than just positive expectations about your forthcoming revenue.
Consider others authors and their financial success. Many authors get into a jealous mindset regarding another author’s success. As soon as you talk poorly about somebody else’s success, what you’re really doing is you’re saying, “success is is a bad thing.” And therefore you are going to repel it in your own life.
I think it goes without saying that supporting other authors and being positive is a great life lesson. It will make you feel a lot better. If you wish other authors well and cheer for their success, you will have a much better opportunity to attract success into your own author career.
And that’s it for today’s lesson. Remember, the seeds of happiness flourish when you shine a positive light. So remember to make somebody smile today and stay amazing.