I am an author!

I am an author! I am an author! I am an author!

I keep saying that to myself as I am working my way through my first book tentatively titled, "What Was I Thinking?"

That's not the actual name of the book, but it is what goes through my head at least once a day as I'm dedicating more and more time to a lifelong dream of publishing a book. Telling myself, "I am an author" is my daily affirmation to convince my normally negative-leaning brain to get on board with this new adventure. Our brains are wired to lead with negative thoughts (partly as a protective mechanism), and I know most of us struggle with keeping the those thoughts at bay. I actively try to replace negativity with a reminder that I'm too hard on myself, and I deserve to live my dreams as much as the next person. I've actively retrained my brain already to understand this: I don't believe that others who have written books are smarter than I am, but I do know they have better habits.

That's just step 1 and I have many others to take, but I am confident I will get there because I also know that willpower is bullshit! Willpower has nothing to do with me achieving my goal of publishing a book(s). It's just an excuse we create in our brains to attach emotion and feelings to our goals, which in turn leads to failure (and more excuses). You have to take the emotion out of creating better habits. What will work? Doing the damn hard things to create the habit of daily writing until it becomes second nature.

I'll be talking about habits on my Building Authentic Relationships (BAR) call tomorrow (Wednesday, 2/15/23 at 10am central). Notary Business Builders can find the link in their Tomm app on the events calendar. I've been listening repeatedly to Mel Robbin's podcast about hacking habits, and how training a human is no different than training a dog. Seriously! You can actually teach an old dog/lady new tricks with a science-backed formula for success. I'm excited to talk more about this with you tomorrow.