Lesson 26 - we can do hard things.
So, let’s address the elephant in the room, you will see that this week’s image is of a book cover and yes, that book is mine! After two (ish) years of writing, I have finally published ‘The Art of Self Advocacy’ a book designed to help professionals advance their careers by understanding their worth and learning how to market themselves.
I will tell you that this has been a labour of love. I know some of you who read this blog have written books yourself, so you know that effort that goes into doing it. I can safely say there has been a lot of effort gone into this book! Writing a book isn’t just about making the effort to put pen to paper. That is a challenge in and of itself but there have also been other feats that have come up these past couple of years that have felt Herculean as I have gone through them.
Writing a book is a massive exercise in vulnerability. You put your mind, body and soul into a book. You put your thoughts out there. You put your opinions out there. You talk about your experience some of which can be deeply personal. You give guidance and your best strategies and throughout all of this you have to keep telling yourself that what you have to say is worth saying. I wrote this book because I wanted to help the many men and women out there who struggle to advocate for themselves. I know what that feels like because I have been there. Despite being a professional brand and confidence coach, and having personal experience of the subject, I have doubted myself and the value of the book this entire journey. There have been many times where I have backed away from publishing it because I didn’t think it was good enough. Equally, I have written some of the chapters so many times because I didn’t think they were unique enough, innovative enough, or useful enough to put out there. Self-doubt and limiting beliefs have been my bedfellows these last two years.
I have also suffered what many other writers experience which is getting into a writing routine. Like many, when I first started writing, I considered it a hobby. I remember telling a fellow coach once that I ‘wasn’t a writer’ because it wasn’t my day job. As I continued on the writing journey, I realised that I had to make it part of my day job. So many writers tell you to block out time each day, week, month and year and they are right. I therefore had to learn to make it part of my day job and write every day, even when I didn’t feel like it. Especially when I didn’t feel like it. Once I started making that commitment to myself the book moved along more swiftly.
I also had to learn how to do this myself. I have chosen to write, edit, and publish this book entirely on my own. That doesn’t just include writing the book itself. It includes working out how to format kindle books and paperbacks. It includes designing and creating the book cover. It includes working out how to upload manuscripts and work out royalty options (should I be so lucky!). All of this has been painful. The paperback book cover has had about thirty or so iterations, several of which were to ensure that the font on the spine of the book kept within the spine margins. The text font in the book has changed five times. The base colour of the book cover has been red, green, white, pink and grey before the final cream colour and I won’t bore you with the details on the number of times I have changed the size of the book.
There have been times where I have been so overwhelmed and unsure I have considered giving up. But I kept going. The things that I once considered difficult are now easier. The things I thought impossible, manageable. I made the commitment to myself and my potential reader and I figured it out.
There will be things that you do today that will feel daunting, overwhelming and perhaps even impossible. But you will figure it out. You will break it down into bitesize chunks. You will iterate. You might procrastinate a bit but eventually you will do what has to be done. At some point in the future you will do these things without a second thought and you will look back with a smile when you remember how challenging you found it when you first did it. You can do hard things.
Should you be inclined, the book is available on Amazon and the link is below. You can get it as a paperback or a Kindle edition. If you do choose to purchase my book, you have the grateful thanks of this – finally Bonafide – author.