🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How is your week going?
I am now 25 weeks pregnant, meaning I am just 3 weeks shy of the third trimester and a baby coming near Christmas. It’s a little terrifying to be on the brink of this major change.
But I know that creating this process will evolve me into the person that I am meant to become, like all good creative projects do (more on that below).
So far I have had a lot of energy the past 2 months and have been doing as much as I can to be productive.
But I won’t be feeling like super woman forever. I have never been a morning person–but I notice that it’s getting harder in the mornings to gear up for the day.
Today I promised myself a baked good if I could pack up and get to a cafe as early as possible since all the good treats are gone after around 10.
Then I spent several hours on a Seasonal review including how the last season of summer went, what I learned, what projects I completed or didn’t and what is on the docket for fall ahead.
A seasonal review process really helps me feel like all my ideas for the next 3 months (for writing, for life, for creative projects, for my 2 businesses) are in one place
so I feel less scattered and can make best use of my time and energy.
I really need that right now so I’m glad I got that review done. All I needed was a bribe!
Today I’m sharing an article I posted to my Linkedin newsletter. I like my newsletter there, but I do fear that sometimes my articles don’t make it to enough people.
I really want people to read the article below as it is a message I really believe in.
My business has changed me. Becoming a writer has changed me.
And I have seen over a hundred writers and entrepeneurs enter the door of my virtual coaching office change their lives by following their inspiration and ideas.
So let’s talk about that 🙂
Personal Evolution Through Writing for a Book or Business
(Article first published on LinkedIn)
Not to freak you out, but if you are writing for a book or a business, you may have noticed that you have some difficult choices to make:
What are you talking about in your writing?
Who are you talking to in your writing? Who is the writing for?
How are you addressing the person you are talking to? Are you giving them something to relate to?
What is the purpose for your writing? What are you hoping they do next?
You don’t have to make these decisions this second, BUT they are things to think about.
And beyond these wide ranging questions, there are the simple ones:
How do you start?
What word do you put down first, and what word do you put in next….and on and on until you reach the end.
Writing is a sequence of difficult choices for many people, but, to be honest, I often find it extraordinarily easy.
It is that ease that I want to share with my clients, my readers and my community.
Because at its heart, writing is one of the most accessible tools of communication: all you need is a notebook and a pen, or maybe a computer or a phone, if you want to get fancy.
And it offers so many benefits.
Writing has been shown scientifically to improve the way people think and remember, and to even have the power to heal trauma.
Plus, I have seen with my eyes how the written word has connected people from around the world into communities, funded nonprofits, and brought businesses a higher level of success.
But so often, the daunting nature of the choices necessary to write for their book or business causes people to not write much of anything.
There’s another way
I won’t argue with you that writing can be a difficult endeavor.
I know this, I’ve seen it, and I have been there. I’ve also walked along hundreds of writers struggling to write time and time again.
So let’s not belittle the struggle. Let’s not turn it into a story about your personal failing or lack of skill or knowledge, or allow it to be an excuse to give up…as so often the inner critic wants us to do.
Instead, let’s move into the solution. Let’s talk motivation:
If you want to do something really difficult, then it helps to have a good reason for doing it.
So let’s discuss why you should bother pushing through difficulty to create that thing that has been coming to mind:
A book, blog, youtube video, podcast, a class, or marketing for it all.
All these things seem like projects that could be fulfilling, make you money, or serve someone in a deep way…
but what if it could do something bigger, something life-changing?
What if the ideas for your book or business were planted in your mind to help you become more of who you were meant to be?
Change sometimes comes from unexpected sources.
And your ideas may be showing you the way.
I’ve spent over 10+ years coaching and supporting writers and entrepreneurs. I know lives change when you engage your ideas and try to bring them to life.
I’ve seen:
-The article that healed someone’s past.
-The bestselling book that opened doors you couldn’t imagine.
-The class that taught the teacher even more than the students.
My 10+ years in business has changed me, as has the 25 years I’ve spent publishing my writing online.
And the point I want to emphasize today is that:
Your book, your business is the spirit guiding you to the next level of who you are meant to become.
Pressure from the Outside
Think about what you’ve been feeling called to work on:
Your business, your book, a blog, a youtube video, a class, a podcast, your marketing…
These are things that may be on your mind, or on your to do list. They are in the realm of ideas right now, as you haven’t fully completed them yet.
Pick one of them. You may see this idea as an extension of your personal self – a way to express what is inside of you, or your gifts, talents, beliefs, and experience.
But I like to think of these ideas for books and business as something else.
They are forces of pressure pushing on you from the outside. They pushing on you to create them.
Ideas don’t have tangible form until you go through the process of creating them, but if it helps you visualize how they exist outside of you, you could imagine them as little thought bubbles or pools of light dancing near your head.
You could imagine them putting pressure on the veil between ideas and reality. Begging you to let them in.
However it helps you to understand, know that you can reach out, touch the idea (so to speak), connect to it, tap into it, and learn from it.
It wants so badly to help you create it into form that it is happy to shower you with love and all the help and support it can muster.
Not love from a desperate place of a child, either, but from the endless love of the most perfect parental figure, someone who wants well for you from a place of total personal detachment of their own needs.
Because in the end, bringing this idea into form is more about you stepping into your purpose than anything else.
You need the heat
The truth is, if it were all up to you–or any of us–if you could choose, you would probably stay the same.
Or you would choose to only grow in certain ways that are comfortable, controllable or make sense to you in your current state of mind. That mind is limited.
The biggest, and probably most positive, sorts of changes that you could undergo often involve outside intervention.
That means a pressure, a push into a new form. Some heat.
And your projects will provide that.
Your book or business will challenge you.
Here are some examples:
1. Your writing for a book, article, or blog will force you to explain things.
Rereading this first draft or thinking about how to put it into words will make you confront the things that do not make sense in your thinking. You’ll work on rewording the things you can’t explain, and find new ways to understand yourself or your work.
You’ll take things to a new level, whether it’s a new way to explain your brilliant ideas, or a new way to understand your past fears.
2. Your business will force you to learn how to ask for help, work through your money fears, talk about money with other people and many other things.
It will be one of the most challenging things that anyone can try to do, and the true reward won’t be financial, it will be who you will become out of it.
3. Anything you want someone to read or to buy will force you to learn how to market.
That will bring up your worst fears about being a fraud, being exposed, being rejected, seeming too much or too little.
You’ll face these fears and overcome them, becoming stronger in the process.
You Must Change to Evolve
If you really want to be successful, you have to change.
To change, you have to go through the process of creating your book or business and following your ideas to the end.
And that means that you have to walk into uncomfortable situations, do hard things, and resist the urge to run away screaming.
In order to make change less painful, and less scary, you have to change. If you don’t bend, you’ll break.
Many people have given up. What makes the people who stay in it different? They learn, they grow, they change.
And there’s something that I recommend that you try. Take on this idea: bringing your creative ideas into life is a collaboration.
It is not all on you. You are not alone. Something is rooting for your success.
Outside forces are shaping you into who you are meant to become.
You still have choices within this process, that’s what makes it collaborative…
But the challenges you face are shaping you, like pressure that turns coal into a diamond.
When you see it that way, it’s a little bit less scary because:
First off, you are not alone and the universe isn’t punishing you. It wants you to succeed.
Secondly, it means that there is no failure. You probably will make mistakes, or have things that do not work out.
But in the end, you’re always going to learn something and grow from it.
You can relax knowing that whatever happens, one way or another you will use the dung that you are given as fertilizer to grow something good.
My Hopes for You
May your creative process not be led by limited thinking.
May you release expectations of perfection, no typos, no stumbles, never looking anything less than cool or professional.
May you learn the concept of “good enough.”
May the success of your endeavors not lock you into a lifestyle of overwork that risks your health and relationships.
May you not be short sighted and reject everything that would give you joy for the opportunity to make or save a few dollars. Don’t lose sight of other factors.
May this creative process you are riding be led by something bigger.
May this adventure remind you of what is truly important to you.
May it help you value everything you have right now in this moment and see the things that are precious.
May you choose to leave limited judgements and anal-retentive impulses in the dust.
May this process of creation help you to become a version of yourself that you will be proud of on your deathbed:
fully alive, appreciative of the beauty in life,
free, creative, & whole.
I truly believe that if you listen for the ideas you are really called to pursue and write, and follow them to their end
then step by step you will find yourself making this alive, and free way of being a consistent part of your reality.
So remember that you always have choices.
And writing and creating is all about choices.
So choose to evolve your writing and your work in the direction of the person you are here to become.
Thanks for reading and have a good day!
-Sofia Wren
Get coached by Sofia
Ready to finally stop feeling overwhelmed or confused?
Consider me the translator between you and your writing ideas for your book or business.
I help you listen to yourself and your ideas so you can know what to do next to finish your projects, and in the process, evolve into the next level of who you are meant to be.
Don’t waste a minute more–know what to do next to write for your book or business as easily as a mermaid swims.
Click here to read more about my 2 month “Rapid Progress” coaching package.
I offer both coaching services, as well as editing for nonfiction books and business marketing copy.
For questions contact me here.
Reminder: I will be going on Maternity leave later in 2025.
My leave will start in November or December, so be sure to reach out about individual coaching, or editing services right away!
Thanks for reading
