Lots of people have asked me what it’s like to be a successful author.
To be honest—I was never quite sure how to answer.
Some part of my brain knew I was a published author, but the majority of it still hadn’t truly let the idea set in yet. It’s like I was afraid to accept it.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t feel like an author.
I still had a 9 to 5 job I worked on the weekdays, everyday life hadn’t changed much, most of the people who knew me personally didn’t really ever mention my new career choice.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was what was holding me back. I didn’t feel like an author because I hadn’t allowed myself to truly become one.
When people asked me what I do for a living, I would still mention my day job. When people asked about my books, I would answer them with an air of embarrassment, rather than one of confidence.
If I wanted to be taken seriously as an author, I needed to start taking myself seriously as one!
Once that happened, the flood gates seemed to open wide! I was writing more, happier, more confident.
The point of all of this is to say, don’t let the fear you feel hold you back, no matter what it stems from. Here is my list of things, once I thought about it, I realized I was fearful of:
Fear of being judged for my career choice.
The arts are always a career field that seem to bring out the best eye rolls in people. I could practically see the thought bubbles popping up around peoples heads of “Yeah, you do that” and “Oh, alrighty then” when I told them I was writing my first book.
Fear of failure.
Surprisingly, this one fell second to fear of judgment. For myself, if I failed, I could at least say I had tried. But the judgement I would receive after was what really got to me. The last thing I wanted to hear was people telling me they knew it would never work.
Fear of realizing my dream would never come true.
This is the one that sticks with me the most. Sure, those other things would suck, but this one is the life-changer. My dream is to be able to have a sustainable income that solely stems from my writing. It doesn’t sound that far fetched but—let me tell you—it’s hard! And the worst part is knowing, if you fail, it 100% falls on your shoulders! You can’t blame anyone else!
But the real fear, for this one, is I will eventually feel like I’ve failed enough times to give up on that dream. That I will let the nay-sayers and my own doubts win, and stop trying to become what I aspire to be.
My fear is I will no longer have a purpose in life.
All of these things are a revolving door of anxieties I’m constantly having to squelch. Just because I’ve accepted my rightful title of “Author” now does not mean these issues magically disappeared—I wish!
What that means is, I have to work extremely hard to constantly tell myself I can do it, that I am enough! This has made all the difference for me. Self-acceptance is key.
If you’re still reading by now, I’m sure you’re wondering what the point of saying all this is.
Well, it’s simple.
The point is to tell you that you are enough.
That’s it.
You don’t need anyone else’s approval for you to feel like you are good enough. Sure, it’s nice to hear, but you don’t need it. We live in a society full of insecure people posting pictures of themselves online pretending they’re not feverishly checking their posts every 5 seconds to see how many more likes they have, hoping for that little jolt of dopamine to make them feel they’ve been accepted by their peers.
All of that is crap.
Don’t you let yourself think, for even one second, that the size 2 girl in her bikini on the beach whose life seems so perfect isn’t sitting on the other side of her smart phone making herself miserable, waiting for just one more like, or one more follow, to make her feel like a success.
The mistake we are all making is a simple one, but it’s a very hard one to change.
We are all looking to everyone else to bring us self gratification, to tell us we have “made it”. When, in reality, everyone around us is too wrapped up in their own quest for fulfillment to even consider helping us on ours!
So, what do we do?
We choose for ourselves what makes us a success—whatever success means to you.
It could be finishing the laundry today, or going for a run. Once you get to a place where you set your own opinion of yourself as your compass, things will just fall into step.
So—if only one person reads this blog and finds some meaning in it, then that is a success for me. If only two people in the entire world buy my books, that is a success for me.
Why?
Because I have chosen that as what success means to me today.