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The Law of Attraction gained a huge audience with the global success of The Secret
Whatever your opinions of the Law of Attraction, the principles can still help authors and writers on their journey. In this post, I explain some of the principles using my own experience in the hope you will find it helpful. It is more of a personal post than usual, and as ever, I appreciate your comments.
- Decide what you want
- Ask the Universe for it
- Feel, behave and know that you already have it
- Be detached from the outcome
and the extra piece that is very important is…
- Focus on doing what you need to in order to achieve it. Take action and it will manifest itself.
How can the Law of Attraction help you as a writer or author?
- Deciding what you want from your journey as a writer is important if you want to achieve goals along the way. If you want to write a book, you need to make that decision and then work towards it. If you don't know what you are aiming for, you will not make a career or a success from your writing or your books.
- Ask for it and believe you can have it. This is related to positive affirmations and is a lot about how worthy you feel. Can you say out loud “I am creative, I am an author”? You need to be sure that you can achieve what you ask for, or it won't happen. Whether you ask God or the Universe, or just yourself for what you want, then you need to have this positive energy behind it. You can be a writer, you can be an author, you can sell your books.
- Act as if you already have it. Again, this relates to affirmations. I started to say “I am creative. I am an author” as an affirmation when I decided to write my first book. I didn't feel creative and I did not have a book so I was not an author. 8 months later, I was still saying those phrases as affirmations and I had my first book for sale on Amazon.com How to Enjoy Your Job
- Be detached from the outcome. It isn't not caring about what happens. It is about taking the unexpected in your stride and changing direction as things happen. I wanted “How to Enjoy Your Job” to be a success and make me a speaker on the corporate circuit. I was thrilled when it was selling on Amazon.com and then I started getting speaking requests. I then realised that I wanted to share my knowledge about self-publishing and marketing. I wanted to be in the community of authors, NOT the corporate world. So I changed direction and started The Creative Penn, which I love! I didn't feel too detached from the outcome at the time of deciding on book success, but I have gladly changed direction along the way.
- Focus and take action. The hardcore LOA teachers might say that your desire just manifests, but the more realistic ones say you have to focus and work for it. I am a believer in the latter concept! Once you have decided on what you want and you have the mindset to succeed, you then have to put in the hours and the effort to make it happen.
You can have what you want, but what will you do to make it happen, and what price do you need to pay?
How can you use the principles of the Law of Attraction in your personal journey?
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons ignaciosanz
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1 2 Next »I'm participating in the "why I write" contest and I will go in depth there. Honestly I wasn't writing, or even knew I was able to write until I veiwed "The Secret". When the DVD was over I started writing out of no where and could not stop and I loved it. It's nice to hear how another writers experience with the law of attraction. Thanks
Hi Joanna,
Excellent post.
"Focus and take action" - that's the crucial point for me. The first four steps are important. You need to know what you want to achieve, and affirmations are an excellent tool to built up confidence in your abilities. Unless you're willing to sit down and write, though, the chances of becoming a writer are rather slim. Then again, at least you can blame the Universe if your writing ambitions don't manifest...
Best,
Sonya
Great article Joanna. The Secret was great in that it allowed people who had not been using their own creative powers to build their life, an opportunity to learn some basics of the law of attraction and yes, there has been some backlash as people started to realise there was something missing. You got it, the missing ingredient was the action you need to take to get what you want.
Like you I decided I was an author long before I had actually been published and using affirmations strengthened that belief until it became reality.
Anne Aleckson
Thanks for putting these two things together, Joanna - writing and law of attraction. My coaching specialism is law of attraction / manifestation / power of meditation and something I refer to as 100% intention /100% surrender. I'm also a writer and find that its essential to practise what I preach and dip into this inner resource to guide what I write, when I write, who I'm writing for, how I write, and how to market what I write. I've just been listening to a hypnosis CD by Paul McKenna(which I recommend) this morning then practising a manifestation meditation called the Ah/Om meditation. Powerful stuff. Have you heard of it? And then there's my own guided meditation just out this week - Answers: Finding Wisdom from Within. I find guided meditation really helps with all this. Thanks for raising the topic.
I'm glad you enjoyed the post ladies - people do have mixed reactions to the LOA but it has also done a lot for people! Thanks, Joanna
Joanna, when you wrote "How To Enjoy Your Job", did you have a job and continued working in your job?
Just wondering about how one writes about things with authority.
Thx
Yes, I was working fulltime as a business IT consultant in large corporates when I wrote the first incarnation of the book. I have just rewritten and re-released it based on becoming a full-time author-entrepreneur
http://www.amazon.com/How-Love-Your-Find-ebook/dp/B008ER3UYE/
I definitely think authority is critical with non-fiction. This is the book that changed my own life so I hope it helps others :)
Thanks.
Sounds great Joanna! Do you have a post on pricing strategies you can link here? I'd like to check it out. My book is on how someone can profitably leave their jobs by negotiating a small fortune. Those that I have helped have all negotiated tens of thousands in severance money, so how much would someone pay to earn that much? Of course the upper bounds of an eBook have to be somewhere... perhaps $99.99? Love to learn more.
Finally, do you have a post on how much you make, or authors make in general? I'm assuming it's quite low (for the industry) and wanted to get an idea. Gotta sell lots of ebooks if priced at $0.99!
Cheers,
Sam
The Yakezie Network
Hi Sam,
I focus on writing fiction which has very different pricing strategies to non-fiction! This book is priced at $4.99 though which is normal for a Kindle book. If you're wanting to charge a lot more than a book price then I suggest you sell from your own platform and then you can name your price. You should check out Ramit Sethi at I will teach you to be rich - he has a career negotiation course - and it is expensive. He would be more your model. I have different income strategies :)
All the best with it - Joanna
Gotcha. I think it is very smart that Ramit at the age of 24 could teach people how to be rich without being rich himself and is now rich. This is why I am so bullish on the entire process. Anybody can do it!
Thanks Joanna.
Hi Joanna. I stumbled upon this article by chance as I am finally "taking action" and making time to write (fiction) which has been a long held desire of mine. I know the Law of Attraction teaches to focus on what you want, not what you dont want in your life, but my question is (having spent the weekend thinking of various plot scenarios, crimes, troubles, relationship issues, difficulties thats I can bombard my characters with to create a suspenseful plot!) how does my brain know that these thoughts are ideas for a novel and not what I want to happen in my own life?!! I read somewere that the subconscious mind can't tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined so I just wondered if you had any thoughts on this. I want to spend time conjuring up thrilling scenarios but not at the expense of my own reality! How do you separate your thoughts for your fiction and your thoughts for what you want in your own life?
Hi Julie - classic question!
I find that as my imagination becomes freer to roam into the depths, my life becomes more calm and less crazy! I had a lot more drama in my life when I wasn't writing thrillers!
I don't know how the mind separates these things but I do have affirmations on my wall around achievement as an author, not affirmations around murder and terror! So I am focusing my attention on creating works of fiction - what goes into the books is not what I am focusing on attracting. I do think that many alt-fic and horror writers are the most psychologically healthy so clearly it's not a problem :) Hope that helps .... I also find writing stuff gets it OUT of head, which is better than staying in ...
Thanks Joanna. Yes that does help. Having affirmations & visualising what we want to have in our lives is what our focus is on - not the made up stuff! Great site by the way!
Thanks Joanna. Yes that does help! Great site by the way!
I am still editing book 1 of my first series, and I'll rapid release when the first four are complete. I'm doing so much editing/rewriting, I am on month four of editing(from a draft that took 3 weeks), how do I use LOA in my life when my ability is the weak link, the limitation if having to write these books with my own two hands?
Being my first book, I don't have books out there for LOA to help sell more of, so how can I use LOA to help me write faster? IF I focus LOA on making money, I start getting opportunities to make money elsewhere(design or video, which I do), but those projects will take time away from writing. IF I focus on building my storytelling media studio, I get connections to designers, actors, and other people to build a team for later, but that doesn't help me edit faster to create my catalog.
How can I use LOA to help me with my author business write now?