Maintaining a mindset that supports you in relation to your writing goals can be the difference between getting your book written, or having the desire to write a book gnawing away at you for ever. The bottom line is that you’ll experience much more joy in your life if you take control of what goes on in your mind, rather than having it control you. You’ll experience more peace of mind, and you’ll improve your health, your relationships, and your prospects of a future that has infinitely more opportunities than it would if you let yourself be derailed by things like self-sabotage, procrastination, or any of the hundred and one mindset hacks that can pop up to derail you at any time.

What you need to take on board from the get-go, is the fact that the question of mindset in relation to getting a book written comes down to personal responsibility. The problem is that this is not an easy proposition for many people to accept. That’s because as Carol Dweck writes in her book – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, there are essentially two overarching paradigms that our lives are played out in. Furthermore, our ability to really get this point about responsibility depends on where we are sitting on the fixed/growth mindset continuum.

People who primarily operate from a fixed mindset believe that they are born with talents in some areas and not others, and that the capabilities they are born with are more or less the ones they go to the grave with. You’ll hear people with fixed mindsets say things like “I’m no good at writing. I could never write a book”, or “I’m terribly scattered. I could never organise my thoughts enough to write a book”, or “I’m not an expert in x, y, or z. What right do I have to write a book about it?”

People operating from a growth mindset on the other hand are likely to be much more comfortable in embracing the challenges writing a book presents to first time authors.

I wonder how you see yourself positioned at the moment from a mindset perspective in relation to your writing goals.

I cover this territory in detail in my new book “Mindset for Authors: How to Overcome Procrastination, Overwhelm, and Self-doubt” which is due out in the second half of 2016. Sign up for my newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when it’s available, or drop me a line below and I can answer any specific questions you’d like to ask.