Tag Archives: To Succeed

To Succeed, Write As If Your Life Depends On It

I know this article’s title sounds extreme. But my target audience are people who’ve tried “everything” to start writing, and still struggle. Sometimes we need drastic measures to get ourselves out of a rut! I believe any adult with a clear sense of purpose should not struggle endlessly to write about what s/he does.

If you’ve been reading my articles on , you’ll know I advocate using intelligent creative writing for self-promotion, and business marketing. Writing/Blogging

Over the years, I’ve practiced what I preach, and gotten increasingly beneficial rewards – financially and otherwise.

I’ve however found that too many people are unable to make the long term commitment to write the way they should.

They express the desire to reap the kinds of rewards they see “conforming” others (like me) enjoy. But they find it too hard to invest the consistent time and effort needed to do the same thing.

Talking with many of them, and reflecting over how I see them operate over weeks and months of interaction, one thing has struck me.
Most of them are simply unable to convince themselves that not writing, when they should, really costs them anything tangible. They cannot see any negative consequence of not doing it.

And in a sense they are right…

When it comes to writing, the rewards of doing it, or not doing it, often take time to show up.

I’ve said it many times. The rewards rarely appear overnight. You will have to dig in, and kept at it, making intelligent changes, as you study the results you get. Those who struggle to commit to writing regularly as described above, are often those who end up quitting the use of writing as recommended above.

Then, one day, they hear or read about the success story of someone who kept going, and refused to stop writing, they suddenly wake-up again!

That’s when the person who just had a breakthrough finds himself getting asked by them: “How did you do it? Wow, so this really works. What do you think I can do to get started?”

Usually, that would not be the first time they would have had such a conversation with that individual, or with some other mutual acquaintance, that the latter would be aware of. But they’ll still do it anyway.

My experience with fielding such questions from such individuals has taught me that only ONE other solution exists for them. And it’s the extreme one that’s described in this article’s title.

That’s Why People Who Struggle May Need to Imagine That Writing Is a Matter of Life and Death – for Them!

Yep. I consider it to be probably the only way people like that will ever make the needed commitment to writing with purpose as they need to.

If you’ve tried writing and failed to get yourself up and running with it, this is my recommendation:

Trick your mind into believing that not writing could result in a loss of life – could be yours, or that of a loved one. The human mind is an interesting tool. Even when it’s “aware” of our thoughts, we can “train” it to believe whatever we want (Re: auto-suggestion. Napoleon Hill wrote about this in Think and Grow Rich).

I came to this realization from personal experiences of my own writing struggles. Each time I missed writing an article on the date/time I wanted, I felt very bad. This was because I cared passionately about sending out my message to my audience.

Over time, in order to avoid having that bad feeling, I forced myself to develop the discipline to get the writing done even if one minute before midnight…even if I’d not eaten for 2 days…even if I was dead tired and dozing on my feet…even if I was stuck in a stuffy bus in the middle of a traffic jam on a Lagos road.

Regardless of where I was or what I was doing, I resolved to NEVER let my writing go undone.

I said to myself:

What if writing 250 words today was the “price” you had to pay to keep yourself alive for ONE more day. Or to keep your loved one alive for another week?

That really brought it home for me. It helped me weigh just how badly I wanted to do it.

I realized that even though no one’s life was really at stake, writing as if that was the case, did add up to IMPROVING my life, and those of my loved ones EVERY day I did it.

How?

When your life (or that of a loved one) is at stake, you’re bound to put in your very best effort. Also, each day you write, and that you write good quality content, you add to the volume of useful content your target audience can get from you. You never want to miss even ONE!

This would gradually boost your name recognition and lead to rewards of all kinds. And that would mean greater success for you, with each passing day!

So, if you’re tried everything else and nothing works, start today, writing as if your life depends on it.Unless you’re lazy, you’ll find this strategy will get you up and running, and keep you going as long as you want, in no time.